Spirit of Tabasco

By Richard Diedrichs

Precocious teen, Julian, helps his mother retrieve a mysterious and possessed ancient Mayan mirror from the hands of his greedy estranged father.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Richard Diedrichs
• Release date: Jun 11, 2017
• ISBN: 9781370616022

Richard Diedrichs

Richard Diedrichs grew up in Los Angeles. He edited travel and health magazines in Seattle, worked as an editor at the schools of Engineering and Public Health at the University of California, Berkeley, and then taught Fourth and Fifth grades and Kindergarten in public elementary schools in the San Francisco Bay Area. Richard has published novels, short stories, nonfiction and essays. He currently works as an assistant editor at Narrative Magazine. Richard lives in a beach town on the south central California coast.

Book preview

Spirit of Tabasco

by

Richard Diedrichs

Copyright 2021

I stood in the kitchen and heard my mother shriek.

Everything, Julian! He sold it all, she cried.

I stepped into the dark living room and watched her face in the glow of her phone screen. The storage unit. We didn’t even divide it up yet. Everything we owned, all those years. She lowered the phone and reached for her wine glass.

I wanted out, but I stood in front of her chair. I offered to open the curtain to let some light into the room. It’s depressing, I said.

I don’t want light in here, she said. I don’t want to see this dump. She sipped her Chardonnay and swore that she would get even with that man, if it was the last thing she did. The gloom of the room, and the stress of battling my father, made her face look tired, haggard beyond her forty-four years.

***

I congratulated her on her attitude. The cold dish of revenge tastes so sweet and cleanses the palate, I riffed.

You listen to me! my mother said. That man has gone too far. If he thinks he can cheat me out of my half, he’s in for a very unpleasant awakening.

I sat in the chair and kept my feet flat on the carpet.

My mother warned that Gordon Laigle, my father and her soon-to-be ex-husband, crossed the line, and there was no going back.

Wonderfully ominous, I must say, Mother. And good luck with that. I stood and used my homework as an excuse to exit. I walked out as she drained her glass. I stood by the sink in the kitchen and filled a water glass. I could have taken the wine bottle to my mother, but I figured that would be enabling. I never understood why she left the bottle in the next room. Did she think it showed restraint? Maybe by the time she reached it, she figured she earned another glass. Or maybe she worried that if the bottle was right there in front of her on the table, she would finish it off, and then, go get another one.

I don’t remember my mother being much of a drinker before my parents split. Every night when my father got home, she mixed him two or three Vodka Collins, and they debriefed his workday. Usually, she nursed a glass of wine. At their parties, she was the one left standing by the end, propping him up, while he staggered around making an ass of himself. And she certainly was not the parent who drove through town running Saturday-morning errands with an open pint of vodka jammed in his crotch and two young sons standing behind him on the back seat.

Fantasia of a bygone era. I did not have time to indulge. I had too much else to think about, including three hours of homework. It usually took me an hour a night just to do Chemistry. I was in a new high school, in all Advanced Placement classes and a National Merit Scholar, as a junior. I don’t know how it happened, since no one in my family had ever gone to college. In fact, none besides my mother made it through high school. But I was a star student from the start. In Kindergarten, I was the first to read