by Victoria Fox
She dreamed of the elusive heroes of her mother’s novels, their shirts crisp and parted at the collar. So unlike any of the men she had encountered, these men were of a different breed, exotic and treacherous and holding out for her.
5
He arrived on a day in July, when the sky and earth and everything in between was enhanced, as if she was looking at it through her camera lens and could draw it into sharper focus. All week they had drowned in a storm—angry, grinding clouds dousing the soil and filling the lakes—and now it had cleared the air was silver-fresh.
Calida was inside. The door, loose on its hinges, trembled gently within its frame. She heard him before she saw him—the heavy bag that fell from his shoulders and hit the soil, the deep, single cough—and the sound of a man took her by surprise. It was a year since Diego’s death. At first, illogically, she thought it might be him.
‘Hello,’ she said, stepping on to the porch.
The stranger was standing at the wooden gate, his back to her. Paco the horse was nuzzling the palm of his hand, and the way he leaned into the animal, and the animal into him, struck Calida as secretive and rare. When he turned, she caught it in stages: the lifting head, the profile, the crease in one cheek as he smiled. He was in front of the sun, making his hair blonder and his face darker, though his eyes shone like bursts of blue water on the arid steppe. He was taller than her, lean and muscular. He wore a grey T-shirt, the kind that’s been used so much it becomes soft to touch, and faded blue jeans. The jeans were tucked into cow-leather gaucho riding boots.
‘Señorita Santiago?’
He had a sure voice. Paco responded to it, nudging the stranger with his muzzle. A weird thing was happening to Calida’s tongue. It seemed soldered to the roof of her mouth. She tried to unstick it.
‘I’m here for the work,’ he explained. ‘I saw your ad.’
On her mama’s instruction, Calida had pasted the fliers up months ago. Calida wasn’t sure what she had expected—certainly not for someone to turn up out of nowhere, without warning, someone who looked like this: certainly not him.
‘My name’s Daniel Cabrera.’ He put out his hand.
She experimented with the words in her head. The surname sounded like a kiss and a dance, maybe both at once. She took his hand. It was cool and strong.
‘I got talking with Señor Más at the market and he said you were still looking for help. I figured it was better to come straight out here and meet you in person …’
She nodded. Speak, for God’s sake! Say anything!
‘I’m Calida,’ she offered at last.
Daniel’s smile widened. She guessed he was seventeen, maybe eighteen. His forearms arrested her—the colour of them: a deep tan; and powerful—on the outside was a scattering of light, fair hair, and on the tender skin closest to his body a strong vein was visible. His wrists were thick, and around one he wore a leather band.
‘Your home is amazing,’ he said.
‘Gracias.’
‘It’s quite the legend in town, Calida.’ How come no one else could make her name sound like that? ‘People look out at this land. They can’t believe one family owns it all. It would be a privilege to be out here every day, with you.’
Every day … with you … Calida blushed. Her eyes darted to the ground.
‘Beautiful horses,’ he said. ‘I used to work on an estancia in the south—rides for tourists, that kind of thing. I grew up with animals—they’re my family.’
Calida struggled for something to say. If Teresita were here, she’d have no trouble talking. ‘What about your real family?’ she blurted, and instantly knew she’d said the wrong thing. Daniel’s face, formerly so open and friendly, fell into shadow.
‘They live in Europe,’ he said. ‘Where I’m from.’
‘Oh.’ There was a pause.
He was looking directly at her. ‘Calida, is your mother in?’
Just like that, the illusion of her maturity was shattered. Of course Daniel saw her as a kid: she was only thirteen, even if sometimes she felt twice that age.
‘She’s indoors,’ said Calida. ‘I’ll take you to her.’
He smiled a smile she would carry with her forever. ‘Thanks,’ he said.
Daniel Cabrera got the job. Julia took one look at him and hired him on the spot.
‘A good solid man about the place,’ she said, brushing her hair for the first time in weeks. Calida noticed how her mama’s eyes lit up when Daniel walked in, and how she kept playing with her hair and erupting into light, tinkling laughs.
‘She likes him,’ Calida confided in her sister.
Teresita was unfazed. ‘You’re only mad because you like him too …’
‘I do not!’
‘Liar.’
‘Cállate, shut up!’
‘I’ve seen how red you go.’ Teresita put on a silly voice and danced around: ‘Oh, Daniel, you’re so handsome! You’re so perfect! I think I love you, Daniel!’
Calida smiled in spite of herself. ‘You’re an idiot.’ But she couldn’t help her blush—and she couldn’t think of anything else to say except to repeat her protest, but the more she repeated it, the more it exposed that Teresita was right. Daniel Cabrera occupied her thoughts twenty-four hours a day. Whenever she was alone, she pictured his arms around her, his golden head bowed to hers and his warm breath on her neck. They stayed like that in her imagination, just still, unsure how the moment moved on. Calida felt there was more, but it was reckless and adult and she didn’t understand it, and to feel his embrace, if only in her mind, was, for the moment, enough.
But it wasn’t Julia she should have been afraid of. It was her twin.
‘Daniel should move into the outhouse,’ said Teresita, after supper one night.
She delivered the suggestion with a careful insouciance that immediately rang alarm bells. Calida looked up, tried to find a way into her sister’s countenance but, as happened so often lately, she could not. Her heart quickened. Teresita took a tight sip of her drink and in that moment she knew. She didn’t know how she knew, but she did. They had been twins too long. Her sister wanted him, too.
‘There’s running water out there,’ Teresita went on, ‘and he could come up to the house for food. I’d like to have him close all the time … Wouldn’t you, Calida?’
Teresita’s eyes met hers, but, instead of the reassurance she’d been hoping for—that the proposition was for Calida’s benefit, a selfless act made in knowledge of her devotion—instead she met a dead-on challenge. Teresita’s gaze was one of sheer resolve. Turns out I’m into him. What are you going to do about it?
‘That’s a wonderful idea,’ said Julia.
Calida swallowed her distress. She stood and cleared the bowls. All night she refused to talk to Teresita, or even look at her. ‘What’s wrong?’ her sister asked. ‘Are you angry with me?’ But Calida couldn’t form her accusation. Teresita would deny it, in any case; say she’d imagined it. But Calida knew better. She had seen the confrontation in her sister’s regard, the glint of cunning. It made her want to give up, because if she were ever pitted against Teresita in a game of love, she knew who would win. Her twin was magnificent, and she was ordinary. It was as simple as that.
And so it happened. Over the coming months, Daniel became part of the ranch, as integral to Calida as the horses and the mountains and the sunset. Slowly but surely, she fell in love with him. She loved the fact he only spoke when there was something to say. She loved his smile, which seemed to find humour not just in the joke but in a private comedy that existed only between them. She loved his focus as he worked. She loved his passion. She loved his strength. She loved his silhouette as he rode off into the dust, the black shape of his cowboy hat and his boots upturned in the stirrups.
She loved how he taught her bareback riding; and when they went together to retrieve a wild pony that had strayed from their neighbour’s land, he showed her how to capture the animal and rein her in, bucking and twisting, until sh
e calmed.
Once, Calida witnessed him showering. It was dawn, and he wouldn’t have expected them to be up yet. She watched from her window, her blood pounding.
Daniel used an outdoor steel tub, a bar of soap, and a hose connected to a hand-driven pump. He removed his T-shirt. His chest elicited in her a confusion of feelings: desire at the map of taut, bronzed muscle, and the trail of hair that vanished into his jeans, but also a sharp tug somewhere deeper and more affectionate. She felt that she knew him, every part of him, even though she hadn’t met those parts yet. She saw him as a stallion, wounded by a past encounter, untamed and untrusting, but that she might whisper to him and find she could gain that trust, and it would be a gem far rarer than the rarest treasure in the deepest well in the most distant part of the earth.
He pumped the handle, tendons in his back rippling, and the water came quick and hard. He bent over the basin, head bowed, and his hair turned light to dark.
Only when his hands went to his jeans and he started to unbuckle them did Calida look away, pulling the material over the window. Part of her wanted to peel it back and see, but the other part was stronger. It knew that one day it would be her hands on Daniel’s jeans, her unbuckling, and she would wait patiently for that day because it would be perfect, and that as fast as she undid him he would be undoing her, unravelling and unravelling until she was a spool of silk in his fingers.
December arrived, and with it the first flush of summer.
In the kitchen, Teresita was up, already dressed in her riding gear. The sisters never went riding without the other, and Calida asked: ‘Where are you going?’
‘Cattle herding,’ said her twin, as if this were something she did alone every day. Calida heard Daniel getting the horses ready in the yard, and, in her own nightshirt, felt panicked and unprepared.
‘I’ll come too.’
‘We’ll be fine on our own.’
Daniel came in. He smiled when he saw Calida. ‘Ready?’
‘Calida’s not coming,’ said Teresita.
‘Actually, I am.’ She recalled her sister’s defiance over the supper table and a flash of anger spurted in her chest. ‘You’ll wait for me, won’t you?’ she asked him.
His smile widened. ‘Sure.’
‘It’s a stupid idea.’ Teresita scowled, folding her arms.
‘I think it’s a good idea,’ said Daniel.
By nine o’clock they were crossing the steppe. The wilderness was dotted with beech forests and glittering rivers. Calida was uncomfortable on Diego’s old criollo, and, despite the extra sheepskin she had piled on top of the saddle, she lagged behind.
All morning she was forced to watch Teresita up ahead, riding alongside Daniel, as if it were just the two of them.
Approaching midday, the heat became searing. Dust swirled in their eyes and nostrils, and they tied scarves around their faces to ward off the worst. The horses’ hooves picked a path between rocks and boulders. Calida saw Daniel finish an apple then lean forward, deep over his animal’s mane, to feed him the remains. When they stopped to rest, he tethered the horses in the shade and, before fetching a drink for himself, he filled a bucket with water from the stream and poured it gently over their heads, working it through their coats and removing the metal bits from between their teeth. Calida wished her father were here, because Diego would have liked Daniel.
The herd was on the other side of the valley and they rode hard to reach it in the light. Mustering was one of her favourite things: the rush of the cattle as they swarmed across the plains and the beat of their tread echoing across the land; the chase the horses gave as they circled the drive—and how, when the job was done, the beasts poured like water through a funnel into the next prairie. When night came, they set up camp in a sheltered vale, by the remains of a fire all ash and dust from their last visit.
Daniel warmed empanadas, and cooked an estofado stew, which he prepared on a wooden board. The handle of his facón was silver and intricately carved, and Calida decided it was of personal importance to him—a gift, perhaps—and remembered the family he had mentioned, so briefly, in Europe. Who were they?
After they had eaten, Daniel lit a cigarette and lay back on the arrangement of sheepskin and leather that would serve as his bed. His features danced in the flames. He let smoke out in a thin plume that shot deep into the night.
‘Daniel, will you help me?’
Teresita was struggling to lift the saddle from the ground, caught up as it was in her stirrups and reins. Calida sat on a log, her chin on her knees, and watched.
‘Here, like this,’ he said. Teresita giggled. Calida glanced away.
‘Should I set up next to you?’ Teresita asked.
‘It’s the best shelter,’ he replied. ‘Better to be under the trees.’
‘Better to be private …’
The voice Teresita said this in was older, more adult, than her thirteen years. From where had she got this way of speaking—their mama’s books?
Daniel didn’t respond, but then maybe he didn’t need to. Maybe he was looking at Teresita in the way Calida prayed and hoped he would one day look at her.
Unable to bear it, she got into her own bed. Normally, staying overnight, she and her sister would share, warm safety in the reassuring shape of each other’s bodies. Safety? All she thought now, when she thought of her twin, was danger. She wanted to scream: What are you doing? They were meant to be allies, not rivals.
A tear slid out of Calida’s eye. If only Diego were still here. Everything had gone wrong after he’d died. Teresita wasn’t the same girl she had been.
‘Calida?’ Daniel’s voice interrupted her thoughts. ‘Come sit with us?’
‘I’m tired,’ she replied, rolling over. Daniel wouldn’t be able to trace the upset in her voice, but her sister would. A small, silly part of her expected Teresita to come and lie down next to her, squeeze her tight until she fell asleep like they’d used to do when one of them was sad. But the bed remained cold. Teresita stayed out in the night, a sovereign queen. She had never needed Calida in the way Calida needed her.
Over at the fire, she heard the slosh of a bottle passing between them, and talking, but mostly her sister talking. Whenever Daniel spoke she strained to hear, grasping after his words like a desert after a drop of rain. It was unfair, so unfair, that she should be shut out on account of her being plain, and nothing special, and nothing remarkable, or anything that would make Daniel look at her twice. She pictured Teresita flicking her long hair, cat eyes twinkling in the night. The bottle passed again, followed by the catch of a lighter as Daniel lit another cigarette, enjoying the evening and wishing to prolong it. Calida longed to block her ears in case she heard something she could never un-hear—or, worse, stopped hearing things, because that meant they might be, they could be … No, Daniel wouldn’t. He wouldn’t.
Above, the stars were out in force. A warm breeze shivered on the leaves. Calida thought of the photographs she had taken of Daniel, back on the farm, without him knowing, ones she would pore over in private. What had seemed romantic at the time now seemed desperate and hollow, paper wishes that would never come to anything. He would never look at her and think she was beautiful—not the kind of beauty Teresita possessed. That power would forever be beyond Calida’s reach.
In a depressing instant, Calida’s life rolled out ahead of her, as average as the face she saw whenever she looked in the mirror. She would always be behind the camera … never in front of it. Teresita was different. She was destined for more. And in her mind’s horizon, before she drowned in sleep, Calida glimpsed the ship that was coming to take one of them away, sailing stealthily through the night towards them.
6
At fourteen, Teresa Santiago’s body was changing. Her breasts were growing—now, when she put her hands on them, their fullness filled her palm. She compared them with Calida’s, glimpsing her twin’s flatter chest under a smock, and wondered why some girls had them and others didn’t. Her legs were
lengthening and her waist was shapely. There was hazy fuzz between her thighs. It reminded her of Señorita Gonzalez in the stables: the mysteries of the body that played on a loop in her mind.
Today, the house was empty. Teresa ventured into her mama’s bedroom and sat at the dressing table. It was a claw-footed thing in eggshell-beige with an oval glass top: a relic from Julia’s former life, and at odds with the austerity of the rest of the farm. Above the dresser was a mirror, mottled where it met its frame, and in it Teresa appraised her reflection, the effect uncanny because she looked so like Julia in her younger years that it could well have been the same person. She reached for a brush and ran it through her hair, black as coal and sheer as silk. Her eyes were green, wide, and Cleopatric, and her brows were thick. Her mouth was a Cupid’s bow.
Your beauty will serve you well … Julia’s voice reached her—or was it her own? It will be the thing that gets you out of here. She clung to it, her pass, her ticket to freedom: the one thing she had that was all hers, not her twin’s, not anyone else’s.
Her reflection gazed back at her for so long that she began to lose her grip on which was the real version—the one here or the one in the mirror.
Quickly, she left the room.
Calida wasn’t speaking to her. Teresa understood why, but the further she climbed in, the deeper she dug, the harder it became to turn back. She was testing her beauty; how far it would take her and the currency it held—and Daniel would give her her answer.
Every time she felt bad about Calida, knowing how her sister adored him, she reminded herself of the many things Calida had taken from her. Forever being the one in control, telling Teresa what she could and couldn’t do, always making the decisions and treating her like a child. Being the apple of their father’s eye, the one people trusted and relied on and respected. Being born first: the eternal offence.
What did Teresa have? Her looks. They were all she had.