Something She's Not Telling Us

by Darcey Bell

  THE OAXACA AIRPORT is small, manageable. Charlotte urges Daisy and Eli ahead of Rocco and Ruth, who let the little family check in before them. The guy at the counter smiles at Daisy, who hides behind her dad. Charlotte collects their boarding passes, and the three of them step aside and wait for Rocco and Ruth to check in.

  Some vestigial gallantry inspires Rocco to let Ruth go first. A mistake, as it turns out.

  Later, he wishes he’d checked in before her and refused to intercede when there was a problem with her ticket.

  But the problem isn’t her ticket. The problem is that Ruth has no passport.

  Frantic, she kneels and dumps her purse on the floor, right in front of the counter, despite the line of passengers behind them. Rocco hears grumbling, but most people look away as Ruth paws through coins, old tissues, tampons, keys, and lipstick tubes. She stuffs it all back in her purse, then dumps it out again, as if the second time will do the trick. It does not do the trick.

  Ruth begins to wail. “My passport! What happened to it? Someone must have stolen it.”

  “You probably left it at my mother’s,” Charlotte says. “I can call her, have them look for it. We might have time for Paco to drive back and get it and bring it back.”

  “That’s not possible,” says Ruth. “I definitely remember putting it in my purse this morning. I had it in the car. I checked. Charlotte, did you see it? Rocco, do you think Paco—”

  “I didn’t see it,” Charlotte says, and at the same time Rocco says, “You cannot talk shit about Paco. He’s been with my mom since she got here.”

  “Excuse me,” Ruth says.

  Rocco hates how Ruth thinks that every Mexican with a driver’s license is out to steal her money. She’s making Rocco ashamed of being a gringo, and shame leads, as it often does with him, directly to anger.

  “Where the fuck did you leave your passport?” he says.

  Ruth bursts into tears. “I don’t know. I swear. Someone took it.”

  “Who the hell could have taken it?”

  “I don’t know,” Ruth repeats.

  “Fuck it. I’m getting on this flight,” Rocco says. “I’m going home. I’ve got work. I’ve got responsibilities. You lost your passport, you deal with it.”

  “I didn’t lose it. Someone took it,” Ruth cries.

  “No one took it,” says Rocco.

  This could be just what he’s looking for. A godsend. He could leave Ruth here and clear his stuff out of her apartment by the time she gets back. Disappear from her life forever.

  What if she comes after him? He’ll deal with that when it happens.

  The airline clerk looks dismayed, and Rocco senses a seismic rumble of impatience from the passengers behind them.

  “You can’t leave Ruth here,” says Charlotte. “You need to stay and help her. I don’t think you—”

  Rocco is so hurt and angry that he has to fight tears of outrage welling in his eyes. Since when is Charlotte worried about Ruth? His sister never liked her. Charlotte’s supposed to have his back. So why is she taking Ruth’s side?

  If only he could tell her why he needs to get away. If he explained about Ruth and Reyna. Charlotte would make him tell Mom . . . or someone . . . and then the trouble would begin. He’d be the one the police questioned first.

  “She can stay with Mom,” says Rocco. “Mom and Luz will help her replace her passport.”

  “You can’t do that,” says Eli. “You can’t leave her here.”

  Then they are shocked into silence by Daisy’s voice.

  “You have to help Ruth, Tío Rocco.” Her clarity—her pure certainty—stops them cold. Even the waiting passengers behind them quit grumbling and pay attention.

  A little child shall lead them. Rocco is not a religious person, but hearing Daisy seems, at that moment, like God’s command.

  “All right,” says Rocco. “I’ll stay. Because you said so, Daisy.”

  “Bravo,” Charlotte says. Rocco glares at her.

  “What should we do?” he asks the airline clerk.

  The clerk, a slim handsome man around Rocco’s age with an expensive haircut and a wedding ring, says, “Señor, I assure you. This has happened before.”

  “It has?” Ruth’s so overeager that the agent recoils, though maybe Rocco is projecting.

  “Not often,” the agent backtracks, “but yes. A tourist misplaces a passport. Most often backpackers who—”

  “We know what backpackers do, blah blah,” says Ruth. “And I didn’t do any of that.”

  The clerk smiles placatingly at Ruth. “Of course. You will need to go to the American consul. Take a taxi. You can get an emergency temporary passport and possibly be out on the later flight.”

  “Wait!” cries Ruth. “Hold on, señor. I photocopied my passport, I have a copy in this book. My grandpa told me to do that. In case I lost it. Very old-school but smart. ¿Mi abuelo?” She smooths a crumpled sheet of paper: “My passport!”

  Rocco doesn’t think this will work. But stranger things have happened. He allows himself to hope.

  They can still make it home. Then he needs to leave Ruth. He never wants to see her again. She tried to kill an innocent woman.

  “I can’t,” says the agent. “I’m sorry. Not with this . . . paper, señora. I can’t let you board with a copy. You understand.”

  “We understand,” says Rocco. A nasty scene will make everything worse. Not even Ruth wants him to make one. What if someone asks to look at his phone and connects him with the attack on Reyna? Would they have heard about that, at the airport? Unlikely, really unlikely. But you never know.

  He’d have to prove his innocence. Mexican jails. Mexican lawyers.

  None of this makes any sense. Nothing like this is going to happen. But he can’t stop thinking about it. And it’s making it hard to think about anything else. He’s so scared that he feels as if he’s turned into Charlotte.

  The agent types and stares into the screen. “There’s a chance you could make it out of Mexico City later today. The flight is wide-open.” He gets no pleasure from Rocco’s distress. He’s trying to sound as if this isn’t so bad.

  “Jesus Christ,” says Rocco. This is hell, and he’s brought it on himself. So many people have it worse. But the thought of how fortunate he is compared to so many others—a thought that’s usually so useful in restoring his perspective—doesn’t help.

  “Now, if you two would please step aside, I can process the other passengers and reissue your tickets. It won’t take long, I promise.”

  Charlotte looks haggard. Perhaps only now does she truly understand that she’s leaving her brother behind in Mexico. With Ruth.

  “We’ll be fine,” Rocco says. “We’ll be home by midnight. I’ll text you on the way.”

  Does Charlotte know how worried he is? He doesn’t want her to know.

  “Mom’s here in Oaxaca,” says Charlotte. “She’ll help you. She knows everyone here.”

  “Does that make things better or worse?” Rocco says.

  Charlotte laughs. “Please text me when you get back. Stay safe.”

  “I promise,” Rocco says.

  Charlotte, then Eli, then Daisy hugs Rocco. Only Daisy hugs Ruth. Charlotte and Eli don’t speak to Ruth; they don’t even look at her, except when Charlotte pulls Daisy away from Ruth in mid-hug.

  Looking steadily back at Rocco as if they are afraid he’ll vanish if they lose sight of him, they head for the shuttle bus waiting to take them to the plane.

  Rocco would give anything to be going with them. He is supposed to be on that plane. With his family. Not with this crazy murderous stranger.

  Goodbye, Charlotte and Eli. Goodbye, Daisy. Goodbye forever. Wait. He is overreacting. A mistake is being corrected. Not his mistake, but whatever. And it is his mistake. No one put a gun to his head and forced him to carry ten pounds of kale to Ruth’s nonexistent office. No one made him ask her out. No one made him sleep with her. No one made him overlook her casual relationship to the
truth.

  The door to the airfield closes, with Rocco on the wrong side.

  The agent looks at him, tilting his head at an angle meant to signal sympathy and willingness to help. Within reason. He squints at his monitor and types.

  It’s never a good thing when a gate agent frowns and types again and frowns and types again and keeps frowning.

  “I’m sorry to tell you”—the agent seems genuinely sorry—“the change fee will be two hundred dollars per person.”

  “Four hundred dollars?” The sob of grief in Rocco’s voice is humiliating.

  “I’m sorry,” the agent says.

  “I have money. Three hundred dollars in pesos!” Ruth reaches under the neck of her T-shirt and hands a wad of bills to the agent. “Rocco, all you need to do is put a hundred on your card. And I will pay you back, I swear. This is my fault.”

  “Where did you get that? You said all your money was gone.”

  He wonders if Reyna was also robbed. If so, no one mentioned it.

  “I took it out from the ATM,” Ruth says. “I thought I might need it.”

  “Where did the ATM get the money?”

  “My grandma and grandpa’s account,” says Ruth. “They gave me their bank card for emergencies.”

  “An emergency in advance,” Rocco says.

  “Señor?” They’d forgotten the gate agent, and now they turn, surprised.

  “Take it.” Rocco hears how rude he sounds. Too bad. “And put the other hundred on my card. Can you do that?”

  “I’ll call my manager. But yes, I think so. As long as a credit card is on file.”

  “There will be,” says Ruth.

  THEY SPEND THE day running. Running to get a cab, running to the consulate. Rocco wishes he were running away from Ruth.

  Outside the consulate, two marines, one tall and one very tall, stand upright as toy soldiers. They hardly even bend as they wand Rocco’s and Ruth’s suitcases and scrabble through their bags. They let them through only when Rocco explains the problem. Twice.

  “My wife did the same thing in Cabo,” says one of the marines, shooting Rocco a discreet man-to-man thumbs-up. “Some Mexican lady with my wife’s name is probably packing chicken in the Midwest.”

  She’s probably your kid’s nanny, Rocco thinks but doesn’t say.

  They wait in a large room with dozens of Mexican families who are not going to get visas, except possibly the two wealthy-looking couples. What if Rocco never gets out? What if he has to live here with his mother? That’s not going to happen. What if someone finds out what Ruth did—and blames him?

  Ruth is called into the consul’s office ahead of the Mexicans. Rocco asks if he can go with her, and the marine whose wife lost her passport in Cabo rolls his eyes (women!) and waves him through.

  It’s true what the airport agent said. The consul has seen it before. A woman of fifty with harlequin glasses and improbably orange hair swept Elvis-style up from her forehead, she’s bored with them even before they explain their problem. This time, Ruth’s photocopy makes things easier. The consul’s shoulders inch down from her earlobes. She gives Ruth a stack of papers and asks her to swear that the statements she’s signing are true.

  “I solemnly swear,” Ruth says to Rocco, who looks away as Ruth grabs the papers from the consul before he can see them.

  The bad part comes when they’re back at the airport.

  By then the first clerk has gone off duty, as has the supervisor who approved their payment. What the computer says has changed. Their tickets are no longer valid and can’t be rebooked—the computer can’t be reasoned with. They have to buy new tickets. The airline is sorry, but it’s not their fault. It’s . . . regulations. The man on duty this morning, sadly, he made a small mistake.

  “Deal with it,” Rocco hisses at Ruth.

  “Call your boss,” Ruth tells the agent. She argues with the desk clerk and makes Rocco show his receipt from this morning, but the airline won’t budge.

  “This can’t be right,” says Rocco.

  “Lo siento, señora,” the agent tells Ruth.

  “All right,” Rocco says. “Two tickets.” He’ll do anything to get home. He’ll mortgage his house if he has to. He’ll sort it out later. He hands over his card.

  Either the clerk feels sorry for him, or perhaps he’s decided that they need to be isolated for the sake of the other passengers, but it works in their favor. He gives them two seats by themselves, right across from the alcove where the flight attendants get drinks.

  No matter what is going on, it’s a blessing to get a good seat on a plane.

  As soon as Rocco buckles his seat belt, he is filled with a mysterious gratitude. They’ve done it; they’ve passed through the fire. They’re going home.

  They have been through an ordeal. Something bad has happened. But he’ll deal with it.

  One step at a time.

  He and Ruth don’t have to talk until they land in Mexico City. Right now it’s as if Ruth doesn’t exist. Or that’s what Rocco tells himself.

  When the drinks cart comes around, Rocco says, “A scotch, please.”

  Or, anyway, someone says it. Someone who sounds exactly like him. Someone with his exact voice. The funny thing is, he’d known he was going to say it, and he told himself not to say it, and he said it anyway.

  Several different voices and opinions weigh in on those three words, and all those voices and opinions seem to be his.

  Your girlfriend assaulted an innocent woman. You got hijacked into staying in Mexico and taken for the cost of two one-way tickets. You deserve a drink.

  “Make that a double,” he tells the flight attendant. It doesn’t mean that he’s drinking again. It’s strictly a onetime thing.

  He can feel Ruth’s eyes boring into him. Fuck her. It’s her fault.

  “And you, miss?” the flight attendant asks.

  Rocco communicates to Ruth, without a word, that Miss is not putting one more thing on his credit card.

  “Just water, please,” says Ruth. “No ice. If it’s not too much trouble.”

  But then an unexpected thing happens. After Rocco finishes the double, and is ordering another, he asks Ruth if she wants a drink.

  Maybe things aren’t as bad as they seem. Maybe there’s something he’s missing. Maybe he’s not seeing clearly.

  Ruth says something funny that he forgets as soon as she says it. But it makes him laugh. Then she says that she’s not going to judge him about falling off the wagon.

  But his sister and brother-in-law and his mother will judge him, she says. He needs to know that. He already knows. Ruth means: It’s us against them. Us against the world.

  Ruth says, “It’s our secret.” He doesn’t want to have a secret with Ruth, but now he does.

  A big secret. More than one. This secret and a bigger one. A serious one. Actually, several big secrets.

  Ruth upends the last of her drink and sets it on the tray table. She leans her head on Rocco’s chest and presses her chin into his clavicle so hard it hurts.

  “You know what would be crazy?” she says.

  “What?”

  “If we got married.”

  “That would be crazy,” Rocco says. “Clinically insane. Certifiably insane. One more round?”

  He should stop now. He had a tiny bit of trouble pronouncing certifiably.

  “Totally,” says Ruth. “When does the crew cut us off?”

  “Not yet,” Rocco says. “And we’ve got some time in the Mexico City airport. I’ll bet we can find a great bar.”

  “Here’s to us,” says Ruth.

  21

  Charlotte

  Charlotte didn’t mean to steal Ruth’s passport. She’s never stolen anything. She never even shoplifted as a kid, when everybody does. She has never done anything like that in her life. She is not a person who does things like this. She doesn’t believe she did it.

  She probably wouldn’t have done it if Ruth, who can’t tolerate one split second of s
ilence, hadn’t turned to her in the van and said, “I’m sort of glad we’re going home, aren’t you? Don’t you think we’ll all have to have some, like, totally honest conversations?”

  Charlotte nodded. What did Ruth mean by like, totally honest conversations?

  Something about it felt threatening. They both knew what she meant. She meant a totally honest conversation about Daisy.

  It was as if Charlotte were someone else. Having an out-of-body experience.

  When she saw the passport sticking out of Ruth’s purse, and when Ruth was staring out the window, oblivious, Charlotte realized that Ruth losing her passport would solve a lot of problems. Or at least it would give Charlotte extra time to think about how to solve one.

  Ruth knows something that Charlotte doesn’t want her to know. Something Charlotte herself can’t bear to think about or call by name. Or admit.

  Ruth figured it out. Charlotte doesn’t know how. And if Ruth tells someone, anyone—Rocco, Eli, anyone—the damage will be major.

  Besides, what sane person carries her passport sticking out of her purse?

  Charlotte’s not a thief. She’s furious at herself for doing this. Humiliated.

  But she’s feeling a little desperate. More than a little desperate.

  She needs to be home. She needs to be able to think. She needs to figure out what she’ll say if . . .

  She takes the passport from Ruth’s purse and slips it into her own purse.

  There. It’s done. No going back now.

  She could always say she found it on the floor and give it back to Ruth. But she doesn’t.

  She’s guilty and horrified at herself, but when she and Eli and Daisy get on the plane without Rocco and Ruth, relief instantly overpowers her guilt and shame.

  CHARLOTTE HATES THINKING of Rocco stranded with Ruth in Mexico. She feels awful for leaving him, for being glad that Rocco and Ruth aren’t traveling with them. But she’s grateful for the few hours she’ll have to decompress before they get home. And doubly grateful for the chance to sort things out.

  As soon as they find their seats on the plane, she feels free. Safe. As if she’s escaped with her life. But her life was never in danger, so what has she escaped? Mom? Oaxaca? She loves Oaxaca, and despite everything, she loves her mother. She admires her. She respects the life Mom’s made for herself, though it’s easier to admire her from a distance.