by Hester Young
“Yeah. But if I ever catch the guy who did this . . . I’ll give these folks a legit reason to lock me up, I swear.”
He doesn’t sound nearly frightened enough. Carrying marijuana across a US border is a big deal. This could mean jail time for him, a permanent criminal record. I try to imagine my life without Noah. I know how hard it was to raise Keegan on my own, and I certainly don’t want to take on two children under those circumstances. Then it occurs to me. If Noah’s convicted, there won’t be two children for me to raise. Ever. Child Protective Services would never place Micky with someone who has a history of drug possession.
We need a lawyer, and we need one fast. Someone smart, capable, and experienced at handling drug charges at a United States border.
The air-conditioning vent above my head lets out a sudden blast of cold air, and I cross my arms, shivering. There’s only one person for me to turn to, and though she’s the last person I want to invite into our lives, we’re out of options.
“Noah,” I tell him, “I’m calling Carmen.”
• • •
NOAH DOESN’T EXACTLY JUMP for joy at the idea of my contacting his ex-wife. One might even say he strenuously objects: Don’t you call her, damn it, don’t you dare! But the facts speak for themselves. Carmen has defended drug smugglers before. She’s obviously intelligent, having earned herself a free ride through law school. And on the rare occasion that they speak, she and Noah are civil to each other. At the very least, she can recommend somebody, remove some of the legwork for us. Who else do we have to go to?
That is how, for the first time ever, I find myself on the phone with Noah’s ex-wife.
“Carmen Palmer,” she says after the receptionist connects me. My heart sinks a little when I hear that she still uses Noah’s last name.
“Hi.” I haven’t planned the encounter and suddenly find myself scrambling for words. “This is Charlie Cates. Noah’s, um . . .” I have no good word to identify myself. “Girlfriend” sounds so trivial, and “baby mama” is hardly the relationship I want to communicate to Noah’s ex. I skip past my nonexistent title. “I’m calling because Noah has run into some trouble and I thought . . . you could help, maybe. That you might know someone. A lawyer. Someone in Arizona.”
“I’m sorry, are you talking about Noah Palmer?”
“Yes.”
“My ex-husband?”
“Yes.” The vent continues to pump out its frigid air. My arms break out in goose bumps.
Carmen is silent for a second. “Who is this?”
“Charlie Cates.”
“Charlie,” she says, and then something clicks. “Oh, got it. I was just . . . thrown off by the nickname.” She doesn’t dwell on it, doesn’t betray any feelings of anger, jealousy, or resentment. Instead, she remains cool and professional. “Okay, Charlie. Explain to me what kind of trouble Noah’s in.”
“He’s been arrested at the United States border.” I pick up my tray of fries and slide into another booth, one not directly beneath a vent. “He was returning from Mexico, and . . . somebody planted weed in the bag. They arrested him and charged him with possession.”
“Well, shit.” Carmen gives an incredulous laugh. “How many ounces was he carrying?”
“Ounces? I don’t know. It was in a baggie.”
“Are we talking, like, a handful of pot?” Carmen asks. “Or more like a sack?”
“God, I don’t know.” I close my eyes. “Small, I guess. Not a lot.”
“Okay.” She exhales loudly. “What point of entry?”
“Nogales. The pedestrian crossing.”
“Seriously? He’s in Arizona?” Carmen doesn’t wait for an answer. “Of all the states for him to need rescuing from, this is pretty fucking funny. I went to law school there, you know. And let me tell you, he was not wild about my going.” I can practically hear her rolling her eyes. “I just hope he appreciates the irony, because it’s certainly no thanks to him that I’m qualified to help right now.”
I wonder if she’s doing this on purpose, flaunting the depth of their history to me, putting me in my place. “So . . . you’re going to help him?” Despite Noah’s high praise for her abilities as an attorney, I was kind of hoping she’d hand me over to a colleague.
“I’ll fly out tonight. Can you have someone get me at the airport?”
Her willingness to drop everything to help Noah both relieves and unsettles me. “I can get you.”
“Great.” She sighs and murmurs, almost to herself, “Smuggling pot. That’s unexpected.”
My temper flares. “He didn’t, though! I mean, you don’t actually believe he was carrying drugs, do you? Because I’m telling you, somebody planted that stuff, and I have a pretty good idea—”
Carmen silences me with a dry chuckle. “Whoa, there, tiger. It’s sweet that you’re so loyal and all, but from now on, you let me do the defending.”
• • •
TRUTH BE TOLD, I’m a bit nervous about laying eyes on Noah’s ex-wife. Somehow, in the almost eight months he and I have been together, I’ve never seen a picture of Carmen. I know a handful of facts about her—that she sold their house and moved to Houston back in April, that she retained possession of Gonzo, their Labrador retriever—but Noah and I have never discussed her at length. I’ve always assumed his reticence on the topic is simply another sign of his being a gentleman, that he doesn’t want to speak ill of a woman he spent so much of his life with. Now, though, I begin to wonder. He told me they divorced because Carmen didn’t want children, but what if his version of events isn’t the whole story? Perhaps his reluctance to mention her is evidence of pain and not discretion, the mark of a wound that hasn’t healed.
I arrive early at Tucson’s trifling airport, having vastly overestimated the time I’d need to park and meet Carmen’s flight. With just twenty gates and only a handful of airlines to its name, Tucson International is no Phoenix. I pace around the nearly empty concourse, concocting wild theories about Lety and the man in the pineapple shirt until at last Carmen’s flight lands.
Not knowing what she looks like, I scrawl the word PALMER across a napkin to hold up to exiting passengers. This embarrassing display proves unnecessary. The flight from Houston is small, and when Carmen does make her way out, I have no doubts about her identity. Not because she looks like her sister—she’s not nearly so girly and made up as Cristina—and not because she’s the only young, professionally dressed Latina who steps off the plane. There’s something else I see in her, something beyond the long, dark hair and shrewd black eyes. A style, a sharpness. A quickness to her step, even in heels, that says, Don’t screw with me.
In short, I see a younger version of myself.
Looking down at my own maternity garb, a billowing white-and-tomato-colored sundress with all the shape and elegance of a potato sack, I feel about a hundred years old. Even worse, I feel suburban. Domesticated. Carmen Palmer looks like the kind who would have a loft in the city and a posse of raucous girlfriends to go out drinking with.
“Excuse me.” I step out in front of her, trying to flag her down. “Are you Carmen?”
Whatever she was imagining, I obviously don’t fit the bill. “Oh,” she says. “Yes, hi. You must be Charlie.” Her gaze flickers over my belly, noting it, dismissing it almost as quickly. “Thanks for picking me up. I hate dealing with rentals.”
“No problem. I’m just . . . so glad you could make it.”
“Well.” She smiles grimly as she adjusts the strap on her laptop bag. “Noah and I have certainly had our ups and downs, but he doesn’t quite deserve prison, in my book.”
“I’m glad you feel that way.” I can’t bring myself to look her in the eye. The knowledge that this woman was physically intimate with him—many, many times—makes me feel a little sick to my stomach. “I don’t think I’d be quite so generous with my ex, honestly.”
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Carmen’s already ahead of me, following the signs for parking. “He gave me the dog,” she says with a backward glance. “That goes a long way.”
• • •
EVEN THOUGH I’M ANTICIPATING a long and awkward drive back to Nogales, Carmen proves bizarrely friendly. “I remember buying this car,” she says, hopping into the SUV and rifling through Noah’s CD collection with a knowing smile. “His singing voice is criminal, isn’t it? But he just won’t stop.” Though she says nothing about my pregnancy or my relationship with Noah, she asks where I’m from, what I did before coming to Texas, and gets a little gushy when she learns about my work for Sophisticate.
“You’re kidding me!” she exclaims. “I love that magazine. What have you written for them? Anything that I would know?”
“Probably not.” I try not to notice the way the fading light plays upon her unreasonably great hair. “I was an editor the last several years.”
“Did you ever meet any celebrities?”
“Sure. I did some interviews, met some high-profile people at industry events. You get a lot of freebies with that job, people angling for magazine coverage.”
“That’s amazing.” She laughs. “I don’t know what I was thinking, going to law school. Clearly, there were better options. And now you’re living in Sidalie? Why?”
All the small talk strikes me as absurd, a ridiculous diversion from the panic I’m feeling, but when I try to discuss Noah’s case, she raises her hand, waving me off. “No, no. You are not going to stress out about this, you poor thing,” she says. “I can’t believe you got saddled with this craziness. But it’s not your problem anymore. It’s mine, okay? I’ll make it right, I promise.”
She sounds so sure of herself, so confident that she can get Noah back, that I almost burst into grateful tears. Her kindness is so surprising, so bighearted, and it makes absolutely no sense to me at all until she asks, “So how do you like working for Noah?”
At first, I think I’ve misheard her. “What?”
“He’s so disorganized, isn’t he?” she prods. “I told him for years to get an assistant. He was always, ‘No, no, I can handle it.’ I’m sure you’ve made his life much easier.”
I inhale sharply as I realize her error. Oh my God. She thinks I’m Sharlene. An understandable mistake, when I consider it. Carmen’s sister has undoubtedly kvetched about Sharlene for the past few months; the hotheaded Cristina and cool, efficient Sharlene have been at odds with each other ever since Sharlene began working for Noah. And “Charlie” is not an unthinkable nickname for “Sharlene,” nor is it a stretch to believe that Noah’s personal assistant might’ve been the one tasked with finding him a lawyer.
Do I tell her?
For a moment I’m tempted to brush it all under the rug, to play the role of Sharlene and ensure her civility and cooperation a while longer. Sooner or later, though, she’ll learn the truth, and then what? How much worse would things be if I knowingly deceived her?
I put on my big-girl panties and come out with it. “I think there may be some confusion. I’m not Noah’s assistant.”
“Oh, I’m sorry. What’s your title?”
“I don’t work for him.”
She turns slowly to me, suddenly aware this is going somewhere unpleasant. “You said your name was Charlie. I thought . . . aren’t you Sharlene?”
“No,” I murmur. “I’m Charlotte.” From the blank look on her face, my name means nothing to her. Cristina must have spared her sister the details of Noah’s new life, seeing no need to hurt her. On the one hand, I’m impressed the little blabbermouth kept it to herself. But on the other . . . the job now falls to me.
“This baby,” I say, because it’s the simplest way I know to explain things, “it’s Noah’s.”
Carmen blinks. “Really,” she says. “Then maybe you’d like to explain what the hell I’m doing in this car with you.”
“You asked if someone could meet you at the airport. I thought . . .”
“You thought what? That I wanted to meet my successor? Spend time with you?” She practically spits out the words. “My God, you could’ve told me who you were!”
“I thought you knew.”
“Of course I didn’t know! I didn’t even know you existed! And what the—you’re pregnant?” She pulls her arms in against her chest as if protecting her own uterus from this horror. “Believe me, if I’d known that I’d be stuck dealing with Noah’s preggo girlfriend, I would not have come.”
“Oh really?” I don’t like this answer. “So you came because you thought you’d get some alone time with him?”
“I came because you said he needed help and I am a decent human being,” she snaps. “But I think I’m entitled to have feelings.”
I grip the steering wheel a little tighter. “Exactly what kind of feelings do you have, Carmen?”
“Um, not wanting to be around my ex-husband’s new woman? You know we got divorced in December? That’s nine months ago, and look at you!” She gestures in disgust at my baby bump. “I mean, wow, he must’ve been really broken up, huh?”
“He said you’d been separated for months.”
“Four months. It wasn’t that long.” She sits tensely beside me, legs crossed, spine straight, and I don’t know what to say, how to defend myself.
“Nothing about our relationship was planned.”
She casts my belly a long, contemptuous look. “Are you sure about that?”
“Are you implying I intentionally got pregnant?”
“Are you implying that you didn’t? Because there’s this thing called birth control, you know. Works great. Any moron can keep from getting knocked up these days.”
I grit my teeth and let her have that one. In her position, I’d be angry, too.
“Just tell me one thing,” Carmen says softly. “One thing, and I don’t want to know the rest of it—”
I don’t let her finish. “He didn’t cheat on you, if that’s what you’re after.”
She searches my face for any signs of deceit. “Do you swear to me?”
“You guys were married for ten years. You really think he’s the kind of man who doesn’t respect his marriage vows? You really think he’d be unfaithful?”
“That’s not an answer,” she says coolly.
“He wouldn’t and he didn’t,” I say. “I swear.” I try not to go off on her, but it’s hard. I’m wound so tight, and she’s here, a convenient target of my ire simply by virtue of her proximity. But you’ve been cheated on, I remind myself. You know that it matters. I take a careful breath, steady myself. “I met him in Louisiana. January, when your divorce was already final. One night, and we both got more than we bargained for.”
Something in her deflates, and I wonder if I’ve actually done her a disservice. Maybe it would’ve been easier for her to hate us, to have words like “adultery” and “infidelity” on her side. It certainly made it easier for me to move past my ex.
We’re close to the American Nogales now, a few minutes from city limits. In the dark, I can just make out the rolling hills dotted with buildings, the sudden burst of industry that springs up on both sides of the border. I already regret calling Carmen. She’s just another layer of stress and guilt to add to everything else right now.
“Look,” I say, “I understand if you don’t want to help Noah, I do. But if that’s the case, tell me now. Because I’m going to need to find someone else, fast. A lawyer who can fix this.”
She doesn’t answer for a moment, just opens my glove box and rifles through it until she locates a broken-tipped pencil. I watch her gather up her mane of long black hair, wind it expertly into a knot, and then jam the pencil in. She looks over in my direction, all business now, every hair in place. I can no longer read the hurt or anger in her face, although I’m sure it’s there, simmering beneath the surface, preparing to
boil over.
“He’ll have his arraignment on Monday,” she tells me. “I’ll stay until then. But if they won’t plea down to probation, then Noah’s really up shit’s creek. He’ll need someone else, someone who’s in it for the long haul. That’s obviously not me.” She turns to stare out the passenger-side window, so that I see nothing but her neatly knotted hair. “Not anymore.”
Twenty
The fanciest hotel in Nogales, Arizona, is probably not, by Carmen’s standards, very fancy. It’s a chain hotel that comes in at less than a hundred dollars per room, and I can just see Carmen wrinkling her nose at the salmon color scheme as I check us in at the front desk.
High maintenance, I observe with a certain amount of satisfaction. I could’ve guessed as much. She’s a Sophisticate fan, after all. Who knows what she’ll bill us for her time.
Once settled into my hotel room, I take a long shower, grateful that at least I no longer have to fear my own demise while doing so. The baby responds to the sound of falling water with curiosity, poking her hands and feet in a series of sudden and bizarre bulges across my abdomen. I poke her back.
“It’s just water,” I tell her. “It won’t hurt you. We’re okay now, little girl. No more worries.”
She’s not even born yet, and I’m already telling her lies. We’re far from okay. Noah’s absence chafes, wears away at me until my mind is raw and red and sore. And the person responsible is still out there. How do I find him?
I try to conjure up a mental image of the man in the pineapple shirt but find I’m fuzzy on details. He had broad shoulders, dark hair, and a receding hairline, yet I remember little about his face, neither handsome nor ugly. All I can picture is that damn shirt, so loud and eye-catching it distracted from all the rest of him.
I work shampoo through my hair, catch a whiff of coconut and something citrus. Review the key facts with growing unease. Clearly, Pineapple Guy can move freely back and forth across the border. He has something against Noah and/or me. And I might not recognize him when he inevitably changes his shirt. I need to watch my back.
