The Execution of Noa P. Singleton (27 page)

“Sit. Please sit.”

My eyes skimmed the bar. It was uninhabited as usual, but seemed scarily vacant. I didn’t take off my jacket or my bag beneath.

“Come with me,” he said, taking my hand, trying to pull me to his back office.

“No, no, no,” I said. “I’m not going back there.”

He pulled harder. “I need to show you something. That’s why I called you over.”

“I thought you called me because you needed to get it off your chest how horrible a father you are and that you realize that you’re about to make the same mistake again.”

He nodded, running his fingers over his stubble. Still he pressured me to walk into the back room.

“Don’t!” I demanded. “Who knows what other contraband you’ve got. I’m not about to be a drug mule now.”

A nervous laugh ejected from his mouth like a piece of gum inadvertently falling from his lips.

“You have exactly one minute to tell me why you dragged me out of my warm apartment when it’s freezing outside.”

“Okay, okay,” he said, again with those goddamn surrender hands. He walked to the bar and slipped under the wooden door instead of opening it. He grabbed a plastic pint.

“Beer? Coke?”

“Stop stalling!”

“Noa, please,” he pleaded again. “This helps calm me as I talk about it. Beer, coke? Diet? I have Mountain Dew. I know you like that.”

“Just water,” I said.

He served me a pint of water, walked back under the bar as if it were one great limbo construct, and sat down at a table, his back facing the door. I sat across from him. If anyone were to look in, they’d see only my face, only my hands. They’d never see any identifying feature on my co-conspirator’s face.

“I’m freaking out,” he said for what could have been the fiftieth time. He was sweating. Porous beads slipped down his temples and the ridge of his bumpy nose.

“Because of the baby?”

He nodded.

“Really?” I laughed. “Gonna play mute with me after all this time? Don’t give me another story about twelve steps or your mother’s death or me changing your life.”

He looked away from me.

“You’re kidding, right?”

“Shhhhh,” he begged. “Please keep your voice down.”

“I can’t deal with this,” I said, standing to leave.

“Look, I don’t want Sarah to have this baby.”

“Yeah, I gathered that.”

“No, you don’t understand, Noa. I can’t have this baby. I really have changed, you see. I have this bar. I made amends with you. If she has this child, I have no chance at being a proper father to you.”

“I think we’re a little late for that, aren’t we?”

“I’m serious.”

He glanced toward his office and looked back to me. Putrid odors spilled from his lips unlike anything I’d smelled. He must have had eight, maybe nine beers.

“Come up with another reason. I saw you two together. I saw you
walk into Planned Parenthood with a smile on your face,” I said. “You both looked happy, actually.”

Caleb scratched his scar. His pupils danced between my eyes as he struggled to focus.

“She was going to end it that day but decided against it. She knew I didn’t want it.”

“Try again.”

“It’s the truth, Noa,” he said. “I swear.”

I looked behind him to his office. The heavy wooden door was cracked near its hinges.

“What is it you want from me?” I asked.

He looked around his bar for a moment before standing up. “Stay right there, I’ll be back in a second.”

He walked to his office and returned a few moments later with a plastic baggie in his hand.

“Seriously, you really are a drug mule now?”

He sat down.

“This is RU-486. It’s the abortion pill.”

“I know what it is. What are you doing with it? Planning on drugging your girlfriend?”

His expression didn’t alter.

“It’s not really as simple as that, Noa.”

“I was joking.”

He gave me time to flush the thought from my system, before attempting a sophomoric explanation.

“It really isn’t that simple.”

“Did Marlene Dixon put you up to this? Supply you with the drugs?” I asked, hoping it wasn’t true.

He didn’t respond, and for the first time, I wished he hadn’t been so silent. I wished I hadn’t been so vocal when I met with her last. I wished for a lot of things in that moment.

“—she did, didn’t she?”

“How do you …,” he stumbled, as if a light were just beginning
to radiate, a bit too late for him, but finally, it was turning on. “You know Marlene?”

“You’re actually sitting there telling me—”

“—I’m not ‘telling’ you anything.” He stood up. “Please, just come with me.”

I followed him into the back, where Sarah Dixon was lying, sprawled across the couch, peaceful as a corpse.

“Oh, my god!” I cried, tripping over my feet.

“Shhhhh.”

“Is she … is she …
dead
?”

I nearly fell to the ground. My heart skipped a beat. My hands shook.

“That’s why I needed you here.”

“I don’t understand.”

“I gave her the pill—”

“—you actually gave her an abortion pill?” I cried. “How … how on earth? How did you get … how did you get this kind of a pill?”

He stared at me, but we never exchanged words. Not that day, not during my trial, not for any moment of my incarceration.

“Holy shit …”

“I put it in her drink, but then, after, she sort of passed out. I don’t think it has anything to do with the pill, but what … what if it does? What if she’s sick? What if she had a reaction?”

“Holy shit … holy shit …” I started pacing. “Why? Why do you keep bringing me into your business? I don’t want to have anything to do with you. Jesus Christ, stop calling me.”

“You’re the smartest person I know, Noa,” he said, holding out his hand to meet mine. “You were valedictorian of your high school.”

“Salutatorian.”

“You went to Penn.”

“For a year,” I corrected, my hands still shivering. “Less, actually.”

“You teach science. Right?”

“I sub.”

“But you still teach.”

“I sub, Caleb,” I said again. “I substitute. I’m not real. That’s what a fucking substitute is—someone who isn’t real.”

“Noa, I know how bright you are,” he insisted. His voice was weak. “You’re the only person I knew to call. I couldn’t just leave her here.”

“Of course not!” I yelled, quickly calming myself. “Take her to the fucking hospital.”

“We both know I can’t do that.”

“Do we?”

“They’ll want to know about the pill. How she got it,” he said.

I stared at him. “Then tell them.”

“I can’t,” he said, pacing. “I can’t. I didn’t know this would happen. I didn’t mean for this to happen. I shouldn’t have done it.”

“She’s not actually going to turn you in,” I said. “She wouldn’t have actually turned you in, you know.”

I walked over to Sarah. Her thin limbs stuck out from the couch. Her mouth was open, her eyes closed, and her stomach was half covered with her two palms as if she was showing everyone in her dreams her unborn child. I know it’s strange, but at that point, the only thing I could think of was Liza Minnelli. I pictured her singing
Cabaret
, thinking of her dear friend Elsie, spread across the bed, corpselike as a queen.

My mouth opened.

“How long has she been out like this?”

“I’m not sure … Maybe twenty, thirty minutes before I called you.”

“Thirty minutes?”

I took off my gloves and threw them to the floor. Then I sat down beside her and pressed my fingers against her throat to check her pulse. There was a beat, slow but present. The temporal artery bounced off my fingertips enough for me to know she was alive.

But still, the music continued in my head.

“You know that pill isn’t supposed to be given by nonmedical professionals. Especially in such a high dose.”

“I know, I know.”

“And it’s only a part of the process. She needs to follow up with someone. Did you think you could drug her a second time? Because that’s what you’d have to do. Godamnit, why do you do these things?”

He held out his hands in prayer.

“What are we gonna do?”

“Again, we aren’t going to do anything. You are going to take her to the hospital. She’s unconscious but breathing normally, as far as I can tell. I’m not a doctor, Caleb. She needs a doctor.”

As soon as I removed my fingertips from her warm neck, I felt something move on the couch. It set off a wave of fear in my spine that I’d felt only once before. I’m not talking about the fear that overtakes you when you see a shadow moving through your dark home at night, or when that creak in the wooden planks of your floorboard definitely—almost positively, you swear—came from an intruder inside the house. No, I’m talking about the fear of discovery, the scintillating fear that you know you may be doing something wrong, but you can’t quite spell
wrong
or understand what
wrong
is.

My father and I locked eyes just as he knew he needed to take her to the hospital. His eyes spread open, wide like the Adriatic, and he started backing away from me. I looked closer at him until fingertips touched my back. Tentacles, as if from a spider, inching along up my spine vertebrae by vertebrae. And the music played in that wretched mellifluous soundtrack.

“Where am I?” I heard her say, and then I turned around back to face Sarah.