MEANT TO BE MARRIED

by Ruth Wind

  "Oh, wow." She leaned back.

  "Don't decide anything right now," Sarah said, gathering the pictures. "I'll get your portfolio together, and I'll also call your mother. You can at least try the world of modeling on a local level until you graduate." In a sudden fit of inspiration, she hopped up and got her camera bag, which sat by the counter. From within, she took the old, beloved Minolta. "I've had this camera for fifteen years. It's not fancy. It doesn't have any automatic settings. You have to focus. You have to learn how to figure out depth of field and light and balance in your head with f-stops. But I want you to have it."

  "Oh, I can't," she said. "You've already done so much."

  "I can. Take it. Learn to live with it. Give it a chance and give your heart a chance to decide what it loves most. Can you do that for me?"

  Teresa hesitated. Accepting the camera, she nodded. "I'll try."

  "That's all anyone can ask, sweetie. And now, you can do something for me."

  "Name it," Teresa said.

  "It's not as much as you think," she said. "I just want this photo, and your permission to put it in a show I'm putting together."

  "You and Eli?"

  Sarah nodded. "It's important. I can't tell you right now what I'm doing, but your name will be on it. Is that okay?"

  "Yes," Teresa said. Abruptly, she stood up and hugged Sarah tightly. "Meeting you is one of the best things that ever happened to me," she said emotionally.

  Sarah closed her eyes and breathed in the scent of shampoo and the sweetness of Teresa's flesh. "Me, too," she said. She patted her back. "Now, go take your grouchy uncle home."

  "Wait till I tell him!" She flowed out, practically floating.

  Pleased, Sarah didn't move for a moment, filled with a kind of satisfaction that came from being able to help a young person. She bent over the photos again and spread out some of her own, narrowing her eyes as she shuffled them, setting them side by side, seeing how they balanced in relation to each other.

  Eli's voice startled her. "Sarah."

  She turned, bracing for his anger. He'd halted by the door, and the light coming in behind him haloed his dark, dark hair. Sarah found herself remembering the day he'd come to her in the rain, and she'd wept in his arms at the beloved, familiar, much-mourned taste of him. The memory prompted her to keep her voice gentle. "Let's not fight, Eli."

  "No." His mouth was tense. "I wanted to tell you I'm sorry. I should not have left this morning the way I did."

  "I understood."

  "Did you, Sarah?" His voice was weary. "Can you understand what that was like for me, when I went to jail, and then came out to find you gone? All I've had to comfort me all these years is my hatred." He paused and she could feel his anger, but even larger, his confusion, his sense of despair. His voice was rough when he finally spoke. "I'm not sure I can let it go, Sarita. That's as honest as I can be."

  An ache touched her. "And I'm being as honest as I can be when I say I will not live in the middle of this war. I can't."

  They stared at each other across the room, separated, as they never had been, by the genuine conflicts of adults, not the powerless melodramas of youth.

  At last he said, "It does not mean my love for you is less."

  She closed her eyes. "Nor mine," she said. When she opened them again, he was gone.

  * * *

  Deborah Lucero lived in a gleaming ranch-style house set back in a thicket of cottonwoods, the back of her property abutting the creek that ran through town. The woman who opened the door was small and neat, with a sleek pageboy around her delicate face. She was no more than forty, and Sarah was surprised. She'd expected someone older.

  "Come in," she said with a friendly smile. "I had hoped we could sit on the patio, but the wind is blowing in, and my papers would be scattered over the whole yard." She led Sarah into a room lined with bookshelves and file cabinets. Two book covers were framed on the walls, one about Hispanic legends in the Southwest, another about women in the Spanish colonial period. Notes and file cards and piles of resource material were piled around the computer on a wide desk. Sarah gestured at it with a smile. "Is that book number three?"

  "Yes. I'm gathering the legends of lovers in the area, from the earliest period to now. Which is how I know so much about your family history." She settled on a low, long sofa and gestured for Sarah to join her.

  "Sounds like a fascinating book."

  "I think so. I don't make much money on books like this, of course, but they stay in print a long time, and I like to think I'm adding something to Hispanic history." She slid a bulging file toward Sarah. "This is what I've collected on your family's story. It may not be what you think it is."

  "I read the newspaper articles today," Sarah said, and took a breath, bracing herself. "Was Emily pregnant?"

  Deborah nodded sadly. "She was. Nearly five months along, by the accounts some of her neighbors gave."

  "Then it wasn't rape."

  "No. This story has bothered me ever since I could remember. I saw a copy of a miniature of Manuel Santiago when I was sixteen or seventeen, and his face has stayed with me all these years. It never felt right, you know?"

  From her purse, Sarah took the wrapped miniature. "This one?"

  Deborah made a soft sound. "Yes." She held it in her palm as if it were a precious ruby. "Yes," she said again more quietly. "His eyes are full of mischief, but there is no meanness. You see cruelty on the mouths of a lot of those men – they were patriarchal to a fault, and arrogant…" She shook her head. "Not this one."

  "Elias Santiago looks just like him."

  "So I have seen." She opened the file. "I wonder if you have seen this." She put in Sarah's hands a grainy photocopy of an old photo. "That's Emily."

  The winded, dizzy sense of déjà vu returned so fiercely that Sarah's hands shook as she stared at the picture of a very young woman, no more than sixteen or seventeen, dressed in a Victorian gown. Her light hair was swept away from her face, and she wore the hideous bangs of the period, but there was no mistaking that the image was Sarah's face. Her nose. Her mouth. Her high forehead.

  "I had never seen you before the picture ran in the paper last week," Deborah said quietly, "but it gave me chills. How much each of you resembles these two."

  Sarah took a long breath, trying to rein in the odd, unsettling emotion. "I haven't seen this before, either. I went to the library looking for one after Octavia gave me the miniature of Eli – I mean Manuel." She swallowed. "I'm not sure why I wanted to find it, but now I know."

  Unexpectedly, tears welled in her eyes. "All this tragedy … all those fights, all those deaths on both sides…" Tears fell hot down her cheeks at the waste of it. "And it was all a lie from the beginning."

  The woman covered Sarah's hand. "Yes, it was. Manuel Santiago petitioned Emily's father for marriage three months before the hanging. Greenwood threw him out and threatened legal action if he came near his daughter again." She paused, as if weighing her next words, then seemed to make a decision. "I hope you don't mind me talking about your ancestors in a frank way."

  "No."

  "He was an avowed racist. Hated Indians and Mexicans and the blacks who were drifting in, a few at a time. He was furious with Emily."

  "How did you find this information?"

  Deborah pointed to the file. "There are letters from Emily to a friend of hers in Philadelphia. I found them at the University of Pennsylvania archives when I did some background research into Emily's family."

  Sarah opened the file with a hand that shook, and took out the photocopied letters. Long, youthful, exuberant, they told of a dashing young man and Emily's hopes for the future. "I'd like to read these some time," she said finally. "Would you mind if I make some copies?"

  "Take those. I have copies." She smiled. "I once left a folder on a bus. Now I make three copies of everything and put them in different places."

  "Thank you." Sarah rose. "I won't keep you, but you've been very helpful."

 
"Let me know how it turns out, huh?"

  Sarah nodded. "I will."

  * * *

  Chapter 15

  «^»

  Sarah worked in a fever all night, matting photographs and newspaper articles and even one of the letters from Emily. She had gone by her mother's house before coming home, and she dug through the photographs she'd taken from Mabel's cedar chest, to find the most illustrative ones for her purposes.

  At dawn she dragged herself to the couch and fell asleep for a couple of hours, but the work fever was in her. She called Deborah to tell her what she planned, and asked her permission, which Deborah freely gave. She made a second call to her friend Joanna to ask where she might get display space immediately. "It doesn't have to be much," Sarah said. "And I only need it for a week or so."

  Joanna promised to call her friends in the art community and see what she could arrange.

  After a hasty shower and a breakfast of a stale bagel, Sarah was at the library. Glenna, evidently pleased to have a project to amuse herself with, helped Sarah copy old photographs, newspaper reports from various times through the years. Sarah stopped on the way back to pick up some more supplies, and ate a fast-food lunch. When she got in, there was a message from Joanna about the gallery space.

  By two, she could see she was nearly finished, and she called her father. "Dad, I have something really important to show you, and something I need to tell you. Do you think you can give me … say, two hours, without any objections to anything I say or do?"

  "What's this about, Sarah?"

  "It's about everything, Dad. But mainly it's about us. Two hours. Can you do that?"

  A brief pause. Then, "Sure, honey. I can give you a whole day if you want it."

  "The big thing is not getting angry, Dad."

  He chuckled. "You want me to take a tranquilizer?"

  She let him hear her laughing at his joke. "Well, maybe that's going too far."

  "I'll listen, Sarah. I promise."

  Emotions, rushing too close to the surface, threatened to send her into another weeping fit. She swallowed. "I want you to meet me at The Blue Cock tomorrow evening at seven-thirty. Bring Mom. She needs to see this, too."

  "We can't see you today?"

  "Sorry, I'm working," she said.

  "Working, huh? That's great."

  She hung up the phone. One down, one to go. She leaned back in her chair for a moment, suddenly feeling the long hours rush over her. Her neck ached and her eyes were grainy, and she was afraid she'd lose it if she heard Eli's voice.

  So much was riding on the next twenty-four hours! All at once she wasn't sure if she could bear to lose him again. With a sigh, she put her face in her hands, and, as if waiting for the darkness of her eyelids to unreel, a filmstrip of images rolled over her imagination. Eli in his truck that first day she came home, looking severe and angry and hungry; the day he'd come to ask her if she'd shoot Teresa's portfolio, when he'd been so delectably sexy she'd wanted to invite him inside to her bed no matter how many bad years lay between them.

  She thought of his hand, light as a butterfly, on her spine as she bent over the flowers, and of his pride over his land – pride she had never truly acknowledged, she realized with a pang of regret.

  And more – she remembered him standing naked and free in the night, his face and arms uplifted to the blessing of rain in the desert, accepting it with joy and pure abandonment.

  But most of all, she thought of the way it felt to sleep next to him, in a bed, all night long. His hips, warm and bare, against her side. The smell of his skin in her nose when she awakened. How right it felt to wake up to him and eat a meal with him, and talk of little things.

  All those years of wandering, and she had come full circle. She loved Elias Santiago. She wanted to marry him, to live next to him, and carry the children they made inside her body. She wanted long days of ordinariness, with babies sleeping against her breast, and teenagers who drove them both crazy. She wanted to breathe her last breath in his arms, or hold him as he breathed his last.

  "Please let it work," she whispered to any sympathetic spirits who might be listening. She picked up the phone and dialed Eli's number. When his answering machine picked up, she was almost palpably relieved. She left a message telling him almost exactly the same thing she'd told her father – that she needed to show him something – but she asked Eli to come a half hour later. "Eli," she said at the end, "please just give this a chance."

  She hung up and stared at the phone for a minute, then called back again to leave a postscript, but to her dismay, he answered this time.

  For a moment she was speechless. "Did you hear my message yet?" she asked.

  "Yes. I was trying to get the door open. Did you forget something?"

  Sarah took a breath. "Um … well, I was going to leave another message."

  "Yeah?" His voice grew intimate and she thought she could hear the smile in it. "What was it?"

  She closed her eyes, liking the feeling of his voice in her ear. "I don't think I can say it to you," she said at last.

  "Must be good. Should I hang up and let you say it to my machine?"

  "I'd know you were listening."

  She heard a clink of keys on a table in the background, and imagined him kicking off his shoes, going to the fridge for a glass of tea. "I could go get in the shower. Although—" his voice turned liquid, seductive "—it would be better if you came over here and took it with me."

  Her body liked that idea, she noticed with amusement. "I'm working."

  "Are you?" He sighed with pleasure, as if he'd just sat down after a long day. "I'm not working anymore. I could come rub your back."

  Sarah chuckled. "I'm sure I'd get tons of work done." Relaxing a little, she tucked the phone between her shoulder and her ear, and went to the kitchen to pour a glass of milk. "I seem to have this slight hormone problem when you show up."

  His laugh was as rich as a cello. "Hormones, huh? I would have called it something else."

  "What?"

  He was quiet for a moment. "Love," he said. "I would call it love."

  "That's what I called to put on your machine," she said before she could censor herself.

  "That you would call it love?"

  "That I love you, Eli."

  "I know," he said roughly. "It hasn't changed, that love between us."

  "No."

  Another clink in the background, maybe a pan. "I want you to sleep next to me tonight," he said roughly. "I want to hold you."

  "Is that all?" she teased.

  "No. Do you want me to tell you what I want to do?"

  "Yes." The word was barely a whisper.

  "I would like to kiss your neck, right under your ear, that place that makes you sigh. I'd like to kiss it and then put my tongue on it, while I put my hand around your breast."

  A wave of erotic longing burst in her, and she sat down on the floor, her back against the wall. "I changed my mind," she said, surprised at how breathless her voice sounded. "Don't tell me. I don't think I can stand it."

  "I deliver," he said. "Thirty minutes or less. Let me come over."

  It was desperately tempting. It might be her last chance ever. "I can't." She sighed. "I really have to finish this work."

  "So what is this big project? What are we doing tomorrow night that's so important?"

  Dread dropped like a rock in her belly. "You'll have to just wait and see." She weighed her words carefully. "It's really important, Eli, that you give me one hour, without judgment. Can you?"

  "Sarah, I swear I'll do my best."

  "Okay. That's all anyone can ask." She fell silent for a moment, listening to him breathe, and she was suddenly transported back to a time when they had spent hours on the phone, sometimes talking, sometimes not. She grinned. "Do you remember when we used to watch TV together over the phone?"

  His laugh was warm and surprised. "'Miami Vice.' I haven't thought about that in a long time. I wanted to be Crockett in the worst way.
"

  "I just wanted Crockett," Sarah said with a throaty chuckle.

  "I wanted the girl in the little bikini in the beginning."

  "Ah, and here I thought it was the fast cars and gun battles you were watching." Her rear end started to ache, so she stood up to heat water for tea. "And the fashion dictates – remember when you didn't wear socks for a whole month?"

  "No fair," he said, laughing. "Bring up my sockless era and I'll talk about your henna era."

  "I still have no idea what possessed me to go red." In the background she heard a sound like meat frying. "What are you cooking?"

  "Steak. It's a really juicy T-bone, too. I've got thin little onions, and a little garlic that I rubbed in the pan—" a rattle while he put the phone under his chin "—fresh ground pepper."

  Sarah's stomach growled and she laughed. "My stomach is growling, you rat. All I have in my cupboards is a box of instant oatmeal and a dried-up tortilla."

  "Pobrecita. You know I'd share this one with you if you came over. Now I'm putting a giant red potato in the microwave, and I have sour cream and fresh chives from my own little garden to put on it."

  "You have a cold, cold heart, Elias Santiago."

  "No, it's warm. Very warm. Hot, even." A sound in the background. "Hang on a minute, okay?"

  "Sure."

  "It'll sound like I'm hanging up, but I'm not."

  She smiled. "I'm familiar with call waiting, Eli."

  "Touché."

  The line went blank, and Sarah dug hopefully through the lower cupboards and the bottom drawer of the fridge, looking for anything remotely edible. "This is getting ridiculous," she said. "Gotta grow up someday, Sarah, and buy groceries like a real person." Tucked into a corner of the bottom drawer she discovered a container of tuna salad. She almost put it on the heel of bread left in the bag, but remembered the cat, who was curled on her bed as if he lived here.

  Which she supposed he did. The Cat Who Needed A Name.

  Eli came back on the line. "Are you there?"

  "Still here." She discovered a half bag of raisins, hiding behind the peanut butter, and gave a little cry. "All right. I found some food."