by Ruth Wind
Her mother's voice, anguished, stopped her. "Sarah, please. Sit down and finish your supper."
She didn't move for a moment. Then, afraid she might weep, Sarah said, "Give me a minute." She went to the bathroom and washed her face with cold water, over and over until the bright red river of anger had subsided.
You're a piece of work, her voice said with a faint sneer. Have a fight with a sick man just to make yourself feel better.
She looked at herself in the mirror, seeing the sad line of her mouth, the grief in her eyes. She'd rather eat rocks than fight with her father, go over that old, old ground again. But she simply could not abide a discussion of their crimes against each other.
When she went back to the kitchen, she said quietly, "I'm sorry I lost my temper."
"My fault," her father said gruffly. "I'll stay out of your business if that's what you want."
"Thank you."
"So, how did Jerry look?" he said, taking up another roll. "Did you tell him he should come see me?"
Sarah accepted the offering, in spite of the lights flashing red against a black night in her memory. "I did," she said, and picked up her fork. "He said you should go see him."
"Maybe I will."
* * *
It was almost eight before Sarah returned home to start work on the contact sheets. She'd developed the film before leaving, and it hung in neat strips in the roomy darkroom. Flipping on the safelight, she put on an apron and turned the radio to a classical station. The vinegary scent of chemicals filled her head, and the cocooning darkness and silence gave her a sense of calm.
Positioning the negatives on color print paper, she quickly made a series of contact prints, and when they were dry enough, flipped on the light to take a look. Her earlier suspicions proved true – Teresa had the mysterious something that made a good model. The camera devoured her face, her form, and the girl was able to express emotion in every crook of her elbow, the tiniest gradiations of smiles. The glamour shots in the black leather dress were stunning, and there were a few in the courtyard that showed promise.
She turned off the lights and slid a strip of negatives into the enlarger. Working purely on instinct, she made enlargements of several shots, in various moods and poses, so she'd have something the girl could show off to her friends. The last was a shot of Teresa in the courtyard, laughing, her black hair tumbling down the arm of the jean jacket, with the Southwest landscape lending an air of the mysterious. As if to emphasize the unknowable, Eli stood in the background, sober and straight and beautiful.
She made the enlargement, put the paper through its steps and left it in the water bath, a soft sense of anticipation in her stomach as she moved on to the next set of negatives.
Even Sarah, queen of denial, had to admit the real reason she was making enlargements was for this – for what she was about to do.
Taking a deep breath, she pulled the strip through the lens, watching as the images shifted from a dancing, leaping Teresa to the man in the background. To his face, a face made by the gods to torture women, she thought wryly. She focused the image, until his dark eyes stared right through her, until only those eyes filled the white square at the bottom of the enlarger. Eyes so beautiful, so haunted, so lost.
Haunted. For a moment she rested her head against the cool metal of the machine, taking a deep breath. She wasn't sure she wanted to see him that clearly. If she did, she would have to admit to things she had never claimed, even to herself.
No.
She pulled the focus back so his whole face and part of his shoulders were in the frame. How many times had she ached to have something like this of him, to remember him, think of him? With a feeling akin to fate, she turned off the enlarger light, took out some paper and positioned it, then made the exposure. She put the paper in the developing tray, watching as his face emerged once more, those large sober eyes piercing her heart.
She finished in a rush, then stood there in the darkness for a moment, a fierce, strange emotion blooming in her. She didn't stop to think as she made the enlargements of the entire series: his face, his neck, his hand in his belt loop. That Italian Renaissance mouth.
As the images emerged, a whispery breath moved on the back of her neck, blew over the nerves in her breasts and along the front of her thighs. She watched his mouth emerge from the developer, and a swallow flew in circles in her belly. The shot of his hand, so long and brown and beautiful, made her think of the way he had once moved that thumb over the tip of her breast, along her lip.
By the time she finished, she had seventeen shots of Elias Santiago drying on the line, in comparison to twelve of Teresa. Her hands and knees felt shaky. Her heart thudded and her hips were soft and her breasts ached.
Suddenly struck with the absurdity of being aroused by pictures, she laughed. "Yeah, Greenwood," she said aloud. "You're so calm and cool it's frightening."
Not.
With a resigned smile, she took the shot of his face from the line and held it. "I loved you more than the sun," she said to his image. "More than breathing." She'd thought she would say more, but the words jammed in her throat, and she found that single declaration was all she could manage for now.
* * *
Eli's brother Miguel came to see him that evening. Two years younger than Eli, he was a clean-cut capitalist who ran the production angle of the factory. He looked troubled when Eli opened the door. "Miguel, come in," he said. "Is there a problem at the factory?"
"Not with the factory." Miguel accepted the invitation and moved into the living room, taking a seat on the edge of a chair. In his chinos and pale pink cotton shirt and with his razor-cut hair, he looked like an ad in Golf Quarterly – Miguel adored the sport, as a matter of fact.
He folded his manicured hands. "I have been hearing rumors, Elias," he said.
Eli took two bottles of soda from the fridge – Miguel did not drink spirits – and sat down on the couch. "Elias, huh? Am I in trouble?"
"You will be if Mama finds out you've been hanging out with Sarah."
Somehow, he'd suspected the news would get out. "How did you know?"
"Pete Pacheco saw you with her at La Palmona the other night. Dancing."
"So what? We're all grown-ups now."
"That isn't the point, and you know it. It almost killed Mama when you got arrested, and she'll never forgive Sarah for that." A sullen look settled on his mouth. "Neither will I."
A burst of fire lit in Eli's chest, and he took a swallow of his soda to quell it. "This family is as much to blame as theirs. If it weren't for this stupid war between us all, none of it would have happened."
"How can you just forget about 150 years of bad blood, Eli? What about all the Santiagos who've been killed or hurt by Greenwoods?"
Bitterness soured the taste of soda on Eli's tongue. "And we know all their names, don't we? Every one of them has been repeated over and over to every new child, every generation. Manuel and Luis and James, Alonzo and Rita." He gave his brother a fierce look. "The Greenwoods have their own list of names, too. And what's the point, Miguel?"
"The point is honor."
"Honor." He shook his head. "There's no honor in any of this." He thought of what Jennifer had said the other night. "Don't you see, Miguel, that it has to end? We can't let this go on for another generation."
"Is that so?" Miguel narrowed his eyes. "You think I don't know how you burn for revenge against Sarah's father? You think anyone doesn't know how much you hate him?"
"That's not a family vendetta," he said. "It's personal. Me against him. Not against his family."
"Ah, I see. So if you managed to make the old man jump off a cliff or something, that won't bother his family any. And we can go on to heal this long war."
Eli jumped up, propelled by things he couldn't – or maybe wouldn't – name. A nerve in his eye jumped. "No." He turned to face his brother. "But maybe they will understand."
"You're blind in this, brother. I will tell my children of this
war, and will remember those names to them so they are burned on their hearts, as they were burned on mine." He stood up. "As your name is burned on mine, as the latest victim in this war." He lifted his chin. "And I'll tell you something else, Eli. I pray you will finish that vendetta – and that you will punish Sarah along with her father. Because I hate her more than him. She stole more than he did – she stole a child of our blood, sent it away into the world, where we can never claim it, where the child will never know that his or her face belongs to a proud and ancient family." His eyes, shiny with emotion, narrowed. "I curse Sarah for that."
"Miguel," he said softly, holding out an imploring hand, "that hate will eat you up. Give it to me – this is not your battle."
"It is," he insisted. "It belongs to all of us, Eli, because you belong to us, because that baby belonged to us."
The phone rang, and Eli looked at it in surprise. Few people ever called him here, and not so late, either. With a frown, he said, "Excuse me," and answered it gruffly, fearing bad news.
Her voice sounded thin. "Eli? This is Sarah."
At the sound of her voice over the line, sounding so much the same as it had in the past, Eli was no longer a man in his own house, arguing with his brother. He was seventeen and drunkenly in love, waiting by the phone for Sarah's call, standing guard so no one else would pick it up.
He ducked his head, curling around the phone in an unconsciously protective gesture before he realized what he was doing. "What can I do for you?" Despite his best effort, his tone was husky, and he felt his brother look at him.
"I made the contact sheets tonight, and I just wanted to tell you they are very, very good. If you want to bring Teresa by tomorrow, I'll show you, and we can set up a schedule for shooting her portfolio."
Relief whooshed through him. "Ah, that's great news. Thank you." He tried to avoid glancing at his brother, but his eyes darted guiltily in his direction anyway. "Tomorrow, maybe? I'll have to call her and see what's going on. Can I call you in the morning?"
"That would be fine."
A humming silence spun between them, and Eli tried to imagine where she was standing in the cottage, and what she was wearing. He visualized her in the kitchen, wearing the thin-as-water red tunic; feeling slightly winded, he thought of her breasts moving beneath it. "Thanks for calling," he said quietly.
"My pleasure," she said, her voice warm as velvet, and Eli put the receiver back with a sense of loss. For a minute he was lost in his vision of her in the dark, silent kitchen, the silver-and-gold threads of that tunic shining along an arm, a buttock, a thigh—
"You are a fool," Miguel said.
Eli raised his head and made his face blank. "What are you talking about?"
His brother only stared at him, his eyes burning bright, then he gave a single shake of his head. "I am finished with it."
"You're jumping to conclusions, hermano."
"Lie to yourself, Elias, but don't lie to me."
"Who do you think you are to come to me like this, like I am a child to be scolded? You have not lived my life. You have not been in my heart." His throat tightened. "You don't know, Miguel."
With a dismissive, angry wave of his hand, Miguel said, "You're going to do what you want no matter what I say. But do me a favor, huh, Eli? Keep it private, so I don't have to worry about my mother." He left, his head held at a self-righteous angle.
Eli watched him go. Always, Miguel had been the one to take the moral high ground. Everything to him was black and white, right and wrong, up or down. Nothing gray or in-between. And he expected the rest of the world to fall in behind him. Miguel was the one the priests loved when they were children, the one who made the best grades, dated only the nicest girls. It had been that high code of honor that made Eli choose him for his position in the company – Miguel would see to it things were properly run, that there was no waste, that employees showed up on time and did not stand around gossiping too long past their break time.
Oddly, that old code won Eli's younger brother a respect, made it easy for others to obey him. No one could ever accuse Miguel of playing favorites, and it was never difficult to know exactly what he wanted.
But Eli doubted his brother had ever been touched by passion. For anything – a song, a sky, a beautiful face, an exquisite kiss. He'd never been mesmerized, for weeks or months on end, by a woman who seemed to have hung the stars. He'd never known the belly-deep yearning for the taste of a particular woman's flesh—
A cold sweat washed down his spine. Not a woman, a girl. Eli had loved a girl. The girl who had been destroyed. The girl he would avenge, along with his lost child and his broken dreams. The woman did not matter. He had to remember that.
* * *
Chapter 6
«^»
Eli made arrangements to pick up Teresa at a friend's house the next afternoon. He'd not said anything to her about Sarah's announcement, choosing to let Sarah see the girl's pleasure firsthand.
To his annoyance, when Teresa came down the walk from her friend's front door, she was dressed in her usual attire: jeans at least six sizes too big, cinched with a belt she let hang down to one side, a cropped shirt that showed far too much of her tummy, the ghastly Frankenstein makeup the girls were adopting these days, and her fake nose-ring.
It embarrassed him. "Why are you dressed like that? This is a professional meeting and you look like a gang-banger."
"I do not!" She slumped in her seat. "Anyways, what does it matter? If she had good news, she would've told you on the phone."
"Not necessarily." He put the truck in gear and backed out. "And it doesn't matter if the news is good or bad. She offered a valuable service to you, and you aren't going over there looking like that."
"I'm not changing."
"Then I'll take you home."
She gave him her best adults-are-insects glance. "Fine. Doesn't matter to me."
For a split second he felt mean for withholding information that obviously meant a lot to her. But if she was going to make it in the world, even if it wasn't the modeling world, she would have to learn to respond to stress in more appropriate ways. "I'm disappointed, but it's your choice." He turned in the direction of her house.
It wasn't far, but for the entire drive they had a contest of wills. Teresa sulked silently, and Eli resisted the temptation to give in and tell her the news. Without a word, he pulled up in front of her house.
Teresa did not move, only stared through the front window with her arms crossed. At last she sighed noisily. "Fine. Let me change and I'll be right back."
"Don't forget to wash the makeup off."
"We'll be late!"
"Sarah won't mind."
Within a few minutes she was back, barefaced, dressed in a normal pair of jeans, still baggy but decent, and a crisp blouse that looked as if it had never been worn. He wondered when girls would start wearing tight pants again, and felt a twinge of pity for boys growing up now.
Sarah was not waiting outside for them this time. They went in the gate and knocked on the front door, but she came out of the studio. He had braced himself on the way down the hill, but it was still like a fist to the gut to see her anew, every time. She wore exotic clothes today – a filmy skirt and a tank top he thought might be tie-dyed or something. No, not tie-dye. "What's that material in her blouse called?" he asked Teresa quietly.
"Batik, silly."
"Right." Batik. In dark and light blues that brought out the golden hue of the flesh on her arms and the faint golden freckles on the upper swell of her breasts.
"Come on in," she said, smiling at Teresa. "I made some prints for you."
They followed her into the room, where several large photos had been thumbtacked to a pasteboard display.
"Oh!" Teresa breathed, and moved forward. "I can't believe this is me."
Even after watching the session yesterday, Eli was a little startled by the images scattered over the board. The images were like magazine ads, which he supposed was the p
oint. The ones in the garden looked like something for selling perfume, a young girl's scent. The ones in the black leather mini made Teresa look like a dangerous femme fatale – maybe a vodka ad. And in the soft green dress she'd first worn, she looked like spring and hope and innocence.
He looked at Sarah. "They're very good, aren't they?"
"Yes."
And it was only then that he realized there was something different about her today, an almost palpable shine, an exuberance of spirit that gave a glow to her eyes and skin. It had been this quality, more than anything else about her, that had captured him. A small puff of yearning burst in him. He looked away. "I didn't tell her what you said. I wanted you to do it."
Teresa turned, her entire body a rigid line. "What?"
Sarah laughed, and her hair fell back from her face in a gold-and-yellow tumble. She grasped Teresa's arms. "Don't look so worried!"
"But I am!"
"I can't promise anything, Teresa," Sarah said. "But I've worked with a lot of models, and it would be an honor to work with you, to shoot a portfolio for you."
"Really?"
"Yes. But there's something I'm going to want in return."
"Anything."
Sarah smiled, and there was gentleness in the gesture. Eli liked her suddenly for being so kind. "I want you to agree you won't go to New York until you graduate from high school."
"New York?" She said the word as if it were Atlantis.
"Yeah. You have a lot of talent. And I really have no doubt that, especially with my connections, you could have a career there tomorrow. But I've seen too many girls get lost there. Or something happens, and they can't work anymore, and they don't have anything to fall back on. If you will agree to finish high school – and agree to give some thought to what else you want to do with your life – I will shoot your portfolio, and send it to my friends, and help you get summer work between now and graduation."
"She needs to talk to her mother," Eli said.
"Of course. I'd also like to talk to her, if you think she will."