Big Red Tequila (Tres Navarre #1)(4)

Vandiver Street hadn’t changed. Sprinklers cut circles across the huge lawns, and wraithlike retirees stared aimlessly out the picture windows of their white, post-WW II houses. The only difference was that Mother had reincarnated her house again. If I hadn’t recognized the huge oak tree in front, the dirt yard covered with acorns and patches of wild strawberry, I would have let the cabby drive right past it.

Once I saw it, I was tempted to drive past anyway. It was stucco now—olive-colored walls with a bright red clay tile roof. The last time I’d seen the house it looked more like a log cabin. Before that it had been pseudo-Frank Lloyd Wright. Over the years Mother had become close with several contractors who depended on her for steady income.

"Tres, honey," she said at the door, pulling my face forward with both hands for a kiss.

She hadn’t changed. At fifty-six she could still pass for thirty. She wore a loose Guatemalan dress, fuchsia with blue stitching, and her black hair was tied back with a festive knot of colored ribbons. The smell of vanilla incense wafted out the door with her.

"You look great, Mother." I meant it.

She smiled, dragging me inside by the arm and steering me toward the pool table at the far end of her huge living room.

The decor had shifted from late Bohemian to early Santa Fe, but the general theme was still the same: "put stuff everywhere." Shelves and tables were overloaded with antique knives, papier-maché dolls, carved wooden boxes, replica coyotes howling at replica moons, a neon cactus, anything to attract the eye.

Around the pool table were three old acquaintances from high school. I shook hands with Barry Williams and Tom Cavagnaro. Both had played varsity with me. They were here because my mom loved entertaining guests with pool and free beer. Then I nodded to Jess Makar, who had graduated when I was a freshman. jess was here because he was dating my mother.

They asked the standard polite questions and I answered them, then they resumed their game and Mother took me into the kitchen.

"Jess is aging gracefully," I told her.

She pursed her lips and glared as she turned around from the refrigerator. She handed me a Shiner Bock.

"Now don’t you start, Jackson," she said.

When she called me that, the name I took from my father and grandfather, I never could tell whether she was scolding me or the whole line of Navarre men. Probably both.

"You could at least give the man a chance," she said, sitting down at the table. "After the years I had to put up with your father, and then years of getting you through school, I think I’m entitled to my own choices for once."

Since her divorce my mother had made a lot of choices. In fifteen years she’d gone from the pecan pie baking champion of the Wives of the Texas Cavaliers to a freelance artist who preferred big canvases, younger men, and New Age.

She smiled again. "Now tell me about Lillian."

“I don’t know," I said.

Expectant pause, waiting for an admission of guilt.

"You knew enough to come back," Mother prompted.

What she wanted me to say: I’d marry Lillian tomorrow, at the drop of a hat, just based on the letters and calls we’d exchanged since she’d phoned me out of the blue two months ago. Mother wanted to hear that, and it would’ve been true. Instead, I drank my Shiner Bock.

Mother nodded as if I’d answered.

“I always knew. Such a creative young woman. I always knew you couldn’t stay away forever."

"Yeah."

"And your father’s death?"

I looked up. The air of frenetic energy that usually swirled around her like a strong perfume had dropped away totally. She was serious now.

“What do you mean?" I asked.

Of course I knew what she meant. Had I come back to deal with that too, or had I put it behind me?

Mother stared at me, waiting. I looked down at my beer. The little ram on the label was staring at me too.

“I don’t know," I said. “I thought ten years away would make a difference."

“It should, dear."

I nodded, not looking at her. In the next room someone sunk a billiard ball with a heavy thud. After a minute my mother sighed.

"It hasn’t been too long for you and Lillian," she told me. "But your father—that’s different. Leave it be, Tres. Things have changed."

Fifteen minutes later, after three attempts at automotive CPR and lots of strong language, my VW convertible coughed itself back to life and chugged fitfully out of the driveway. The engine sounded bad, but no worse than it had a decade ago, when I had decided it would never make the trip to California. The left headlight was still out. A cup I had been drinking beer from in 1985 was still wedged between the seat and the emergency brake. I waved to my mother, who hadn’t aged in two decades.

I drove toward Lillian’s house, the same one she had lived in the summer I left.

"Things have changed," I repeated, halfway wishing I could believe it.

4

"Now I know I’m in love," Lillian told me after she tasted her drink.

The perfect margarita should be on the rocks, not frozen. Fresh-squeezed limes, never a mixer. Cointreau rather than triple sec. No tequila but Herradura Anejo, a brand that until a few years ago was only available across the border. All three ingredients in equal proportions. And without salt on the rim it might as well be a daiquiri.