Fourteeners

by Sarah Latchaw

  But I didn’t tell Samuel.

  The orchids and roses of Tía Lucia’s autumn garden emitted such a heady fragrance, her in-ground pool could have been filled with Chanel No. 5. We sat on the patio of her Mission Viejo home with sweating glasses of lemonade and watched the California sun call it a day. Tío Carlos swam lazy laps in their pool, his wake rippling golden as the last rays clung to the horizon.

  Samuel stifled a yawn. It had been a grueling day of press interviews. Mainly fluff about the new movie, though a journalist went rogue and asked him about his arrest three years ago. Old news. But if a gossip columnist could dredge up a new revelation, old news became new news, and that meant web hits. He’d handled himself well, but he wasn’t used to the back-to-back interviews anymore. I grabbed his empty glass before it slipped from his sleep-limp hand.

  “Sofia mentioned you and Carlos were in Ciudad Victoria last month. How is your mother-in-law?” I asked Lucia.

  “Still refuses to move to L.A., even after Carlos offered to build a suite onto our home. We visit often enough to keep an eye on her health, but I’m afraid Carlos will have to put his foot down.” Uncle Carlos was an investigator with a firm that helped families locate their missing immigrant relatives, and frequently traveled to the Mexican border. I often wondered if “visiting his mother” was code for something else.

  She pulled her black braid over her shoulder and toyed with the ends. Lucia’s features lacked the soft roundness of Sofia Llorente de Cabral’s, and whenever I saw a Frida Kahlo’s self-portrait, I was struck by the likeness between them (minus Frida’s daring uni-brow). When I was young, I’d thought Sofia’s sharp-faced sister was the epitome of California cool, with her bright, breezy skirts and even brighter smile. She’d always tell us stories about celebrities who walked into her custom furniture gallery, which were polite as peas and which had sticks up their wazoos. One had to be cautious when chatting with Lucia; she had a knack for drawing the juiciest stories from people. Still, she lured me into her web of gossip.

  “Do you ever see any of the Cabral familia when you’re back home?”

  She flipped her braid over her shoulder. “Not if I can help it.”

  I glanced at Samuel, now wheezing in sweet oblivion. “That’s surprising. I thought you got along?”

  “Sofia’s in-laws think they are haute society of Ciudad Victoria because their family used to be in maize and cattle. Ha. All of our grandfathers were cheap laborers at the maquiladoras when the hacienda system ended.”

  I’d heard Alonso mention the old Cabral hacienda, just south of the city. In its heyday, it had been a thriving plantation in the Spanish style, lush with citrus trees and agave plants. “What happened to their hacienda?”

  “The estate was broken up not long after the revolution—1920 or so. Whatever remained declined until the sixties, when the Cabrals simply didn’t have the money to continue farming. If it hadn’t been for Professor Cabral’s job at the university, the hacienda would be in ruins like the others. The family used to live there in the summer because the city was too hot. In the summer, when we were children, we used to hang sheets between the concrete blocks for shade. I was glad when cooler months returned, because it meant the Cabral boys also returned to Ciudad Victoria.”

  She gathered our empty glasses and rose. I grabbed the pitcher and followed her into the kitchen. “That’s what I don’t understand. Your families were friends when you were young.”

  “No no, only Alonso and Antonio played with us. Mariángel, their older sister, was too much like her mother. She oversees the hacienda now, but no one lives there.” She rinsed the glasses. Through the kitchen window, I saw that the patio was completely dark and flipped on the switch. Yellow light flooded Samuel. He twitched and turned onto his side. Beyond him, Uncle Carlos climbed out of the pool, his carefully groomed handlebar mustache now a sodden dishrag. I averted my gaze before I got an eyeful of his very European swim attire.

  Beside me, Lucia took in her twilight garden, her eyes somewhere in Mexico. “Marieta Treiño, their mother, was an old witch. Antonio was such a sensitive, serious little thing. Samuel is much like him. My poor boys.” Ghosts were in her voice. “I never see them now, and I couldn’t give two pennies for the Tamaulipas Cabrals, especially after they told Samuel to stay away.”

  “Wait, what?” The pitcher nearly slipped from my fingers, but I caught it before it clattered to the counter. That wasn’t typical in Mexico, where their entire culture was built around familia. “Why did they tell Samuel to stay away? When?”

  “Oh, I suppose it’s been five or six years now.”

  Caroline’s words from the other night echoed: ‘a scandal with a woman from Tamaulipas’…

  Lucia continued. “Once he became a famous writer, he used to visit us every year during the L.A. leg of his book tour. Next he’d travel down to Ciudad Victoria and stay with the family for a week, a little R-and-R. One year, he told me he wasn’t travelling on to Ciudad Victoria, like before. When I asked him why, he only said he wasn’t welcome there. You know how Samuel is, never one to bad-mouth. So I asked Sofia, ‘your son tells me the Cabrals don’t want him to come home. What’s going on?’”

  “What did she say?”

  She leaned in. “Supposedly, there was a huge fight between Samuel and his aunt Mariángel. Sofia was extremely angry that Mariángel made some unfounded accusations, something she’d read on those ridiculous gossip sites. I guess she’s never heard the saying ‘don’t believe everything you read.’”

  “A relationship with a woman that was completely blown out of proportion by his Cabral relations,” I murmured.

  “That’s it. She said he was a drug addict and philanderer like his father, and he wasn’t to set foot in the old family hacienda again.”

  “Whoa, whoa, whoa, which father was supposedly a philanderer: Alonso or Antonio?”

  “Antonio, of course. Samuel’s birth father.”

  “Wow. Is that true?”

  She shrugged. “There were rumors he’d had an affair with a rural woman while Rachel was back in Boston and pregnant with Samuel. He’d had trouble with his law firm, so he traveled home to Tamaulipas to escape those hoity-toity Caulfields for a time. No one knew if it was true because he died not long after that. Rachel denied it, said the Cabrals were spreading vicious lies and they’d never meet her baby because of it.”

  “I’ve never heard any of this.”

  “Like I said, there may not be an ounce of truth to the rumors about Antonio.”

  So that was why Samuel had ducked my suggestions we visit his family in Ciudad Victoria. They didn’t want him there and he was too hurt, too ticked, too embarrassed to tell me. I had half-a-mind to march across the border, over the plains and mountains of Tamaulipas, and tell them they were horrible people for rejecting one of the greatest men I’d ever known. Samuel had struck pay dirt for cagey, haughty families whose values were so skewed, they framed their social diary clippings instead of their children’s artwork. Thank goodness for Sofia and Alonso.

  “Oh Kaye, you look like you’re ready to take names.” Lucia patted my hand. “I’m glad my nephew found his way back to you, even if you did pop a child’s Neelie Nixie balloon with a penknife at his movie premiere, then told her to ‘get a real friend.’ That was a tad extreme, mi cielo.”

  I looked heavenward. The click-bait bloggers had hit this one out of the park. Unfortunately, now I needed to explain to Lucia why she, too, shouldn’t believe everything she read, and that explanation would include the phrases ‘knock-off Nellie’ and ‘illegal sex toy.’” Not exactly the conversation you want to have with your in-laws.

  After a delay, we debarked from our plane in Denver and cruised across windswept flatlands toward our mountain home. He hummed the harmony line to “Wednesday Morning, 3AM,” and I dialed the radio down so I could hear him. He had a pleasant voice, quiet and unassuming, with a lilt to his phrasing that told the listener he loved language, loved words. I�
��d informed him, once, that if he ever decided to stop publishing, he could have a successful career narrating deep sleep apps. (Then I had to backtrack and assure him his voice was soothing, not boring. Samuel didn’t see the compliment).

  “What are you thinking about?” he asked as the song ended.

  “I don’t believe Simon and Garfunkel really robbed a hard liquor store for twenty-five dollars.”

  “Probably not. Although, they could have gotten some great material out of it, maybe stayed together for another album or two before they broke up.”

  “Such a sad song, though. Watching the one you love sleep away the last few hours of morning, knowing you might not ever be with them again.”

  “It’s so maudlin, it’s ridiculous.”

  I punched his shoulder with the strength of a teddy bear. “Allow me my sentimentality, you stone-hearted statue.”

  “Kaye, Kaye, Kaye. Haven’t you been listening? Rocks don’t feel pain.”

  I mumbled something about a lack of crying islands, because I had nothing else.

  As Samuel’s Subaru eased around the curving highway south of Boulder, I recollected on a visit from Alonso’s eccentric Tia Belinda years ago, when I was about twelve. They’d invited me over for tres leches and I’d stayed until my father’s shift ended at The Garden Market. It was growing dark, so we’d retired to the Cabrals’ family room in the basement and I listened, fascinated and confused by the mix of Spanish and English flying back and forth. But the summer heat soon caught up with me and I leaned my sweaty head against Samuel’s knee, their folktales blurring with my half-asleep dreams.

  “…Antonio and I climbed the Sierra Madre Oriental in Tamaulipas, high up, into the oak forests,” said Alonso. “The mountains of home aren’t like Colorado. Smaller, isolated, thick with desert thorns and tall grass. We would travel through the villages…once, they gave my brother toloache for a sprained ankle and he hallucinated he was trapped inside its thorny fruit…It is what the Aztecs used to subdue their human sacrifices, sí…

  “…The village is where we first heard about the leoncillo…Yes, Samuel, there is such an animal. Most call it a jaguarundi. Smaller than a puma, solitary, secretive. They almost look like otters.”

  “You never see them, which is why spotting one is the stuff of legend,” added Great Aunt Belinda. “They are harbingers. It’s true, young man, don’t shake your head at me. If you see one, it’s because he wants to be seen. He’s warning you.”

  “Antonio spotted it first, so perhaps the leoncillo was meant for him...” There was a long stretch of quiet. I wasn’t sure if I’d drifted or if no one had spoken. “Not long after that, we received our acceptance letters to Boston University.”

  “If only Antonio had listened…”

  As I fell off completely, with Samuel’s touch gentle against my hair, one thought lingered: if Antonio had listened to the leoncillo’s warning, Samuel wouldn’t be here…

  I lifted my head from the car window and rubbed tired eyes. There had been a wildcat on the rocks, I was sure. Too small for a mountain lion—a bobcat, or a lynx?—but he’d darted behind a boulder before I could identify him. The warmth of the sun had lulled me to a cozy place and who knew how long I’d snoozed, so perhaps there hadn’t been a wildcat at all.

  Beyond the road were the Rockies, streaked in November snow. It wouldn’t be long before winter found us in the Front Range. I groaned and stretched.

  “Can I ask you something delicate about your birth father?”

  “Ah…Sure.”

  “Lucia mentioned it and I’m wondering if it was true,” I hedged. “She said he had an affair with a woman in Mexico, when your mom was pregnant with you.”

  Samuel frowned. “How on earth did that come up?”

  “Well…she said you had a falling out with your family there over that woman in Tamaulipas, something about your father being a philanderer and the garbage in the gossip mags.”

  “Lucia needs to rein in that wagging tongue. I suppose she also mentioned I’m barred from visiting?”

  I nodded. “Why didn’t you tell me before, when I asked to visit the hacienda?”

  “I guess it falls under that ‘nothing of importance’ category.” We both knew it wasn’t ‘nothing of importance..’ He sighed. “No one can prove he had an affair, but I’m ninety-nine percent certain it happened. My dad—Alonso—has a letter from Antonio that hinted at it. As for my argument with Tia Mariángel, it was more complicated than a misunderstanding about a woman.”

  “You weren’t buying drugs, were you?”

  Samuel opened his mouth but bit back whatever he’d planned to say. He narrowed his eyes thoughtfully. “That would make sense, wouldn’t it? Tamaulipas’s cartels are notorious. But no, I didn’t visit for drugs.”

  “Your bipolar disorder? No, no one knew about it five years ago. Or maybe Mariángel did?”

  “No, she didn’t.”

  “A romantic entanglement?” Silence. Bingo. “That’s it, isn’t it? This woman—”

  “Firecracker, please let it go. It’s in the past, and my relationship with the Tamaulipas Cabrals won’t change in the foreseeable future. It’s a non-issue.”

  “Then why—”

  Samuel smacked the steering wheel in exasperation. “Look, Kaye. I know that asking you to drop this is incredibly unfair. I recognize that as my wife, you should be privy to my secrets.” And as my husband, he should be privy to my secrets, I silently added. Apparently this was a lesson we both still needed to learn. “The last time I was there, some…shady things went down. This is one secret you don’t need to know about. Please, just trust me.”

  Shady? Chilling ideas flooded my head. What the heck happened in Mexico? Did someone die? Was Samuel caught up in something illegal? Given the organized crime problem Tamaulipas suffered, it was possible. I didn’t believe he’d lie to me about buying drugs. So what was the deal with this woman?

  I turned back to the window. We were in the homestretch; the foothills and cliffs on the outskirts of Boulder flew by.

  Perhaps he’d had a lover in Ciudad Victoria, like his father had—a lover to whom Mariángel had objected. I could understand him not wanting me to know. Was that why Samuel didn’t want to take me to Tamaulipas? Because he’d cared for someone there, someone special he never told me about, and it ended badly?

  But why would he have revealed his other romantic entanglements and not this?

  Maybe you just answered your own question…she was special. Or maybe I was just being a paranoid wife/ex-wife/wife.

  Whether there was any truth to my speculation, I knew one thing: I didn’t like the idea of another woman being so special to Samuel, he couldn’t tell me about her.

  Not at all.

  Chapter 6

  Belay Monkey

  A mountain climbing addict’s significant other, who desires to share in the climber’s passion but gets suckered into long hours of belay duty.

  Hydraulic Level Five [WORKING TITLE]

  Draft 2.106

  © Samuel Caulfield Cabral and Aspen Kaye Cabral

  MOUNTAIN HOLLIDAY

  The air of Leadville is so thin, the winter so chilling, it’s little wonder it killed Doc Holliday. Consumption, not a gunslinger, got him in the end, and Caulfield thinks this Old West town must have been booming in silver and law and order to keep Holliday alive when he’d made so many enemies along his flamboyant lifespan. Why would a man whose lungs were emaciated by tuberculosis live his last years in a mining town at an elevation of ten thousand feet? Maybe it was a leisurely suicide. Maybe he had friends here. Or maybe the silver song of profit was too alluring to turn a deaf ear.

  Their climb team didn’t plan to stop in Leadville, but Caulfield’s swollen ankle set them back several hours and now they need to eat before they hit the treacherous mountain roads to Bear Creek. His foot throbs with every heartbeat. His head and stomach ache from altitude sickness courtesy of Mount Elbert, but he would rather secretly vo
mit in a grimy old saloon bathroom than appear an anemic Gumby to Aspen and the man who used to pursue her.

  Aspen sees anyway—his face is clammy and pale. She grasps his hand under the table, not a pity move but one born of genuine gratitude. Mountain climbing is her passion and not Caulfield’s, and he’s suffering all the indignities of a novice to restore some of that passion to her soul. His hand was steady as they trudged over routes packed in ice and snow, his whispers encouraging when panic set in and she lost her breath, her brain. He was there, always there, pulling her back to earth with his mantra of “slooow breaths, slooow breaths. You want to feel okay. Say it now, Aspen.”

  She wants to feel okay.

  She felt okay when they reached the summit, astoundingly okay. Caulfield saw the brightness of her eyes, the invincibility as she pumped her fists and laughed, collapsed into the snow and closed her eyes in pure joy, pulled him down next to her.

  He’s so damned proud. It’s a high he remembers well, this adrenaline coursing through his veins, though there’s nothing synthetic or false about it. The high of conquest. Of eminence.

  Remnants of that high still glow in Aspen’s freckled face and he can’t stop watching. They’re ensconced in a red pleather booth at the Silver Dollar Saloon, straight out of an Old West movie with swinging doors and wood so dark, Caulfield squints to see the menu. But he sees Aspen, loud and clear, and she validates his gamble. A sprained ankle is his summit trophy. Pushing her up that fourteener was the right call.

  H and L sit across from them. Banter flies over a plate of fries, beers, and they fist bump as if a director has instructed them to “show me bromance and really play it up for the camera.” L has replaced Aspen as H’s daredevil go-to, and Caulfield wonders if this hurts her feelings, because she watches them with plain envy and recalls those post-climb plates of fries, beers, and fist bumps she used to share with H. But then Caulfield asks her, “Do you want to split an order of fries, too?” and he is now her hero. In his current state of nausea, combined with the turmoil of a stomach that hasn’t digested anything fried and greasy in over a year, that plate of fries is so far off his food pyramid it’s in the Gulf of Suez.