What's Mine and Yours

by Naima Coster

  When they left, Jemima looked triumphant. She slid on her sunglasses, waved good-bye, and sauntered off nonchalantly, as if she knew she’d see him again; he wasn’t going anywhere.

  He sat on the church steps to collect himself. The day was warm and windy, and he itched in his clothes. He clicked through his phone history, saw the string of unanswered calls from Noelle, and then nothing from her over the last few days. She had too much dignity to keep chasing after him when his silence had made plain that he wanted to be left alone. He knew it was petty to avoid her, but it would have undone the purpose of the trip to answer. Her sadness would hook him, drag him back. He hadn’t invited her along precisely to avoid her obsession with the miscarriage. Her presence didn’t soothe him anymore; she unwound all his efforts to maintain equilibrium. He would return from a run, and she would assail him with her theories: Her baths had been too hot; her cortisol levels were too high. She should have taken more fish oil; she should have avoided caffeine. He would emerge from a dark room, his evening meditation, his mind clear, and find her staring blankly at the TV, still wearing her clothes from the day before. He’d turn to her in bed, reach for her waist, to find her quivering, weeping noiselessly.

  For all his daily terror at the thought of losing Noelle, it had never occurred to him the baby might be lost. It was a sign of how all his luck, the good life he didn’t deserve, had twisted his mind—he had expected everything to be fine. It was one of the things that had first attracted him to Noelle: her understanding that life was unfair, brutal, and all you could do was treasure the good when it came along, while it lasted. And yet, he had taken their lot for granted, pictured it all unfolding easily. She would grow larger, give birth; they’d welcome and watch over their child. He had no fantasies about being a father; he was certain he wouldn’t know how. But to grow with Noelle, to change with her and undertake an adventure, felt natural, as if it were a life they were entitled to. He might have been more like Jemima than he wanted to admit.

  Nelson tucked away his phone. He wasn’t ready yet to call her, and he hadn’t made up his mind about the play. He didn’t know whether Noelle was ready for him, or if he would go home and find only more of the same. He did pity her that she was still in Golden Brook. It was impossible to be home and not to grieve, remember. But here, there was so much beauty to turn to, so much more to consume his attentions. Bridges and rivers and narrow cobbled streets, wine and beignets, gardens and moonlight, and sex, Le Génie de la Liberté.

  He headed for the metro to Belleville. He wanted to find a park he had been to once as a student. It had been full of black and brown Parisians, and he’d felt himself blend in, disappear. It was one of the remarkable things about traveling while black. There were places in the world where he could be anyone. He could be Brazilian, Jamaican, Dominican, a black Londoner, an African émigré to France. And there were places where it was impossible: Austria, the South of France, but also Boston, parts of North Carolina, near where Noelle’s family lived. Places he had felt even more acutely that he was on display, being watched for a misstep. But not here, not today.

  He surfaced and asked around for the Parc des Buttes Chaumont. He stopped in a grocer’s along the way to pick up peaches, a bottle of wine, seeded bread, and Camembert. Before long, he found the park, its sloping greens and muddy lake, the jagged outcrops of white rock overgrown with vines. At the top of a hill, he could look down on dozens of couples spread out on blankets, their limbs tangled up as they kissed or read or slept in the sun. The view was what he had needed.

  Nelson uncorked the wine. He poured a few drops into a plastic cup and let it sit without tasting it. He bowed his head. Then he poured the wine out on the grass, refilled his cup.

  That first summer he’d spent here, his scholarship had paid for the art history class, the airfare and dorm, everything except what he’d need day to day. He had eaten just like this—baguettes and rationed cheese. He bummed wine and weed off his classmates. He walked a dozen miles a day to avoid the metro fares. He scrounged together entrance fees to as many museums as he could, resolved to walk around and take pictures when he couldn’t afford a ticket. His classmates went out for escargot and duck, the forty-euro dinners they’d deemed indispensable to the experience. Nelson ate falafel with hot sauce, butter and sugar crêpes, sheets of ham he washed down with white wine. He ate by the Seine; he ate on park benches; he ate squatting on a curb in the Marais. He wrote Noelle postcards in his stilted French. He masturbated and thought of her breasts and tried to intimate this whenever he borrowed his roommate’s cell phone to call her—she was back in North Carolina, miserable under her mother’s roof again, and sometimes she snuck away to the bathroom, and they’d touch themselves in tandem. After she came, he’d raise his voice and talk about all the things he’d seen that day, mostly bookstores and gardens, anywhere that was free, then he’d wipe his hands and return the phone without looking at his roommate, and go back out into the night alone, taking long-exposure photographs of birds and graffiti, children climbing into fountains, the stained glass of the cathedrals, the river lapping at the stones.

  He had felt that summer like a man with no past. He was anonymous, and he found his life glamorous. He had slipped out of his skin; he was a new self; he was in Europe. He felt far from where he had started. The only piece of home he had wanted to keep was Noelle. He had wished she could be there with him; he’d imagined taking her to the Jeu de Paume to look at the photographs. He’d fantasized about buying her ice cream and wandering the Tuileries, where Noelle would marvel at the red flowers and insist they take a picture together. She’d have slicked his eyebrows back into place with her spit and her thumb. He would have led her through the Père Lachaise, and they would not speak of their dead, or anything they’d lost; they would press their palms together, stand close. To the passersby, they’d seem blithe, carefree. He had adored her even then; his love for her predated everything he knew about himself.

  The first time he cheated on her, they were seniors. Noelle was at a wake for a girl she had known who had died suddenly, disappeared from class. She hadn’t told him where she was going, but he had known. Without her, he went down to the commons, the lounge in the basement of the dorm. He wasn’t friendly with the people on his floor, but he didn’t know what else to do with himself. They were watching football, splitting a milk crate full of beer, passing around enormous bags of chips. There was a girl with big eyes, bangs that covered half her face. She sat hunched over, her skinny legs in fishnets, crossed at the knees. She kept looking at him sideways, passing him beers. When he drank, she drank, as if she were his mirror. He had been good for so long, and he tried not to think of her that way. She must have known he was with Noelle. She didn’t care. When he rose to leave, she followed him. They climbed the stairs, and she brushed his hand with hers, clutched his fingers. He pressed his palm into hers, and it was over. Soon they were in his room, and he was inside her, and she was biting down hard on his pointer finger, a thing Noelle had never done, a thing that thrilled him beyond measure. He came too soon, which was for the best, because he wanted her to leave. He did a load of laundry, wishing he could boil his sheets. He streamed in more and more bleach. When Noelle came to his room that night, she was red-eyed but said nothing about the service. He held her while she slept, and felt sick at what he’d done. But the days passed, and no one found out; the big-eyed girl never came knocking. It was a secret he could keep, another life to stow away, to pull out only when he needed. He could protect her from it, or so he told himself. He had never before let it get out of hand.

  He decided to call. He’d hear her voice, and, in it, there would be an answer. She would be his Noelle again, and he would come to his senses, go home. Or he’d hear that she was still sinking, and he’d bring her here. Show her the bakery, the Seine. The phone rang and rang. She didn’t answer, which he deserved. He poured himself more wine. Then his phone was buzzing, her name on the screen, Noelle, his wife, her picture.
It was a cell phone snapshot of her with wet hair, cross-legged on the floor of the old apartment while she held up the newspaper, open to a review of her last production. The critic had called it resplendent. She was resplendent. Nelson answered her.

  “Babe,” he said. “We’ve been missing each other.” It wasn’t a complete lie to suggest he’d been calling, too. “How you been?”

  “Will you look at who was lost and now is found.”

  It was his mother-in-law, her voice brittle and too high.

  “My prodigal son-in-law. Is he coming home now? Does he expect a fatted calf? Should we throw him a party?”

  Nelson heard muffled coughing. A steady beeping filled the quiet. He tried not to let on that he was surprised Noelle had gone to see her. It had been years.

  “Where’s my wife?”

  “She’s running an errand for me with Diane. I wanted Coke and licorice. I’m in the hospital. But I bet Noelle already told you that?”

  “She left her phone with you?”

  “The hospital line isn’t working, and I’m expecting a call from Margarita. Or Robbie. They’re both missing.”

  “Missing?”

  “Well, they won’t answer their phones, and we don’t know where they are. I’d say that’s missing. How about you? Are you missing?”

  “I’m working.”

  “Your mama called me. That was kind of her. Noelle must have mentioned I was sick. I told her I’ll never live to see my grandchildren, and that’s sad. She understands it. I’d have liked to meet them. And I’d have loved them like crazy, if you can believe that. Even after everything. Even if I never wanted Noelle’s life to go this way.”

  Nelson winced. Her reasons for disliking him were as plain as they had always been. His racist mother-in-law. He wouldn’t miss her if she died, but he’d rather she lived, for Noelle. Losing a parent was like losing a part of yourself, even if it was a part you’d rather forget.

  “Enough about me,” said Lacey May. “Can I take a message?”

  “Tell Noelle my trip’s been extended. I’ll explain later when she calls.”

  “And call she will. You know my girl—she’s the kind that keeps her promises.”

  “I hope you don’t die before I see you again.” It was the crudest he’d ever been with his mother-in-law, but he couldn’t help himself. The way she talked to him—it was as if she knew what he was up to.

  “Hmmm,” said Lacey May. “Well, we’ll see how it all goes, won’t we? One thing I’ve learned is we don’t always get what we wish for. And some of us get more than we deserve.”

  “Just tell her to call me.”

  “Sure thing,” said Lacey May. “But don’t you rush. Take your time. There’s none of us that want you here, and if I go before I see your face again, that would be just fine with me.”

  8

  September 2018

  Los Angeles, California

  Margarita left before dawn. On days she had a job, she liked to watch the sunrise as she drove down the 405, away from Cerritos. She liked to use the extra time to clear her head, to visualize getting all the things that she needed. She cranked down the windows, checked her hair in the rearview, and chanted to herself: This face is going to work for you. You’re going to work this face.

  The commercial was for a banking app that let all your money live online. It was a solid job, and the client had chosen her. Before she came to L.A., she had told herself she was pretty. She had won pageants, appeared in a print ad for squeezable yogurt tubes. Now that she had been here for years, she knew that it wasn’t quite true. She was versatile, interesting, but she never got gorgeous or stunning, like her business partner Celeste. In a way, she was lucky—to be ordinary was worse. Out here everyone was gorgeous, and not just the models.

  The trouble was her chin. It was broad, and it made her face resemble a square. She had inherited the shape from Robbie, and she’d have given anything for her face to come to a fine point like a heart (Diane), or a neat horizontal ridge like a diamond (her mother; Noelle). But her face got her work, and she couldn’t complain. It was going to be a good day.

  As the car glided down the freeway, she visualized herself nailing the job. The line producer would hand her a check. She’d show up at Celeste’s house in Venice Beach with a box of chocolate cupcakes, a bottle of rosé, and a twisty-tied baggie of coke. They’d post a selfie of themselves licking frosting off their fingers, a looping video of their clinking glasses. After, they’d go to that brick-oven place on Abbot-Kinney, share plates of beets and eggplant and artichoke hearts, and resist all the free bread. Margarita would pick up the bill, flirt with the waiter, fuck him in Celeste’s bedroom. In the morning she’d drive back to Cerritos and pay the building manager what she owed him. She’d drink her coffee on the balcony facing the Home Depot and plan her content for the day. What couldn’t she do with all that cash?

  When she was close to downtown, she listened to her voicemail to see if her agent had left any last-minute advice about the job. All three of her messages were from Diane.

  I’m here with Mama at the hospital, she said, as if Margarita didn’t already know. Noelle’s here, too. Naturally. Look, I know you’ve got a lot going on, but you’ve got to at least let us know whether you’re coming. Noelle says we should just assume you aren’t, but maybe I haven’t made it clear. Things are looking real bad. Mama’s been asking about you. If there was ever a time for us to all be together—

  Margarita deleted them all. Diane was too sentimental, brainwashed by Lacey May. It was why the poor girl didn’t have a life of her own. And Noelle was a big phony; she didn’t care about any of them, she just wanted to save face, avoid being the sister in last place. They were kidding themselves if they thought she’d leave L.A. Her life was here. And they had her number. When the brain scans came in, they could text.

  The city came into view, the dry-earth hills, the glimmering fleet of buildings downtown. It made a beautiful backdrop. Margarita angled her phone overhead, smiled up at the little image of herself on the screen. Her hair rippled behind her. She kept an eye on the traffic as she typed a caption, Home Sweet Home, then set a geo-location for L.A. and applied a filter to brighten her skin. She sent it out to her followers.

  She pulled into a lot and didn’t even flinch when the attendant said parking was forty dollars. Nobody was going to bring her down today—no one.

  On her walk to the warehouse, she spotted a pretty peach wall, and stopped to take another video. So excited to be working with a new brand today! She pressed a finger to her lips. BIG SECRET! Can’t say who it is yet, but I’ll be posting clues & pics all day.

  She checked the engagement on her last post—over two hundred views already—and it buoyed her. She visualized herself back at Bikram, Celeste taking a picture of her in dancer’s pose, the perfect thumbnail (her long legs, her solid breasts, her head not so square in profile).

  When her phone rang, she went to ignore Diane instinctively, but she saw that it was her building manager, Gavin.

  “Babe,” she said in her softest voice. “Good morning. What can I do you for?”

  “Margarita, where are you? I am outside your door knocking. The owner wanted me to tell you in person that we’re changing the locks tomorrow. He sent you a final notice.”

  “But I’m getting paid today. Can’t he wait one more day?”

  “He doesn’t believe you anymore, Margarita.”

  She had given Gavin more than one blow job. Not in exchange for rent, not in exchange for anything, really, besides his goodwill, some reason to believe he’d be on her side when she needed.

  “Can’t you do anything? Help me?”

  “I don’t make the rules, babe. He’s my boss. And he’s being nice. You’re so far behind he could have kicked you out a long time ago.”

  Margarita took her oceanic breaths as she rode up the freight elevator. All would be well. How many people were lining up for a place in Cerritos anyway? It was too far inla
nd, too regular. It could have been anywhere.

  A man in a ratty T-shirt was waiting for her in the reception area. He carried a clipboard and his shoes were suede, expensive. She turned on a smile.

  “Margot?” he said, sizing her up. His eyes seemed to snag on her chin. “You’re on time.”

  “Of course!” Margarita laughed. “Why wouldn’t I be?” She laughed again and wondered if it was too much cheerfulness.

  “You never know with talent,” he said. She shimmered at the word.

  He was the producer, Ollie, and when they entered the loft, he introduced her to the team. The director was dark haired, beautiful, not quite white, Colombian maybe or Lebanese. Oblong face. Margarita wiggled her fingers at him, and he glanced back at his phone. The DP was a plain-faced woman in a black T-shirt, her mangy hair tucked under a Lakers cap. She slurped her coffee with one hand. Margarita was certain they’d have nothing in common. The prop stylist was much more L.A., in clogs and a linen dress, her red-and-gold hair piled on her head. Margarita decided she’d get her handle by the end of the day.

  The set was tiny: an oak bed with pale sheets, a straw rug, a brass nightstand arrayed with delicate objects: a crystal paperweight, a navy-blue alarm clock. Margarita wanted it all. Her bedroom was nothing more than a mattress on a frame with wheels. It slid around when she was having sex.

  When they started filming, she’d sprawl out on the bed and pretend it was the end of her day. She’d repay a girlfriend for brunch, order flowers for her grandmother in a nursing home, and, last, zap money to a handsome white man on a crowded street in Bangkok. He’d get her wire, check into a lavish hotel, plug in his laptop, and call her. She’d laugh at the screen, blow a kiss. Et fin.

  They were starting at nine sharp, so she had to hurry to hair and makeup. Ollie showed her the breakfast spread: boxed coffee and greasy sandwiches. She had expected better from a brand like this: cold brew, avocado toast, yogurt, and melon.