She was still smiling.
“You don’t want to do that in court,” Lucia said. “Don’t act amused.”
“Well, of course not.” Katherine smoothed her hands over her knees. “I was thinking how I once read an interview with Dolly Parton talking about the first time she saw a ‘fallen woman’ with bleached hair and too much makeup and tight dresses, and she thought, ‘Yes. I want to be that.’”
“Miss Kitty on Gunsmoke,” Lucia said, and she thought of Saturday nights sitting on her parents’ couch, her cold toes tucked under her father’s thigh. “There is an appeal.”
“I was proud, actually, of how kind Miranda was,” Katherine said. “The woman just came lurching across the sidewalk. But Miranda was gracious. They really like blond hair there. You’d be popular.”
“I get touched enough in this country, thank you,” said Lucia.
Katherine tilted her head, and the polite confusion in her expression struck Lucia. She wondered how often men groped a botanist. Even sitting, Katherine looked formidable. Broad across the shoulders, taller than some men. She was compelling but not pretty, and how much did prettiness have to do with the frequency of groping? Might height be a factor—sheer physical space occupied? Lucia considered that there might be some equation—if you were blonde and five foot three, you might be, say, three times more likely to have your ass remarked on as you left a courtroom than a solid five foot ten brunette. And if you avoided the ogling, did you pay a price for that lack of attention? There had been plenty of moments when Lucia had wished for more wrinkles or gray hair, and yet she knew that she would not make that trade, and was that because of vanity or because of power? If they were in a bar instead of in her office, she would ask Katherine’s opinion.
“Miranda told her dad about the prostitute,” Katherine said. “She thought it was a funny story. Bert would have laughed at it. Before.”
Lucia did wonder about Bert Jemison. She hadn’t spoken to Katherine at all during the divorce. In the event of a floundering marriage, friends either grilled her for free legal advice or they vanished entirely, self-conscious about trading on friendship. Katherine had been in the latter group. Lucia found out about the divorce over lunch with a mutual friend: it was not every day that someone they knew told her husband she was leaving him because she preferred women. But instead of making Katherine’s sexual preference an issue in the divorce, Bert had named only “irreconcilable differences.” That did not seem like the action of a mean-spirited man.
Had his sense of aggrievement intensified? Would he belatedly bring sex into this? Lucia did not relish that scenario. If he chose to go that route—and if he got the right judge—Katherine would likely lose her daughter.
“He mentions Mexico,” Lucia said. “When did you take Miranda there?”
“I’m not sure what he means,” Katherine said. “I took her to New Mexico last year. Las Cruces. It was a conference.”
Lucia felt a swell of anticipation, like when her younger self was bodysurfing chest deep in the Gulf and she spotted a ripe, easy wave she knew she would catch just right.
“You took her to New Mexico—never Mexico?” she said.
“Correct.”
“And your ex-husband—”
Katherine smiled for the second time. “Does not seem to recognize the difference.”
Lucia looked down at her desk drawer, which was slightly open, showing paper clips and two pens, both from Rachel. A hot-air balloon floated in one of them, and the other was topped with a woodpecker on a spring.
“If you have any contact with him,” she said, “don’t correct him. Was there anything else about the Rio trip that he might possibly bring up?”
“It was no more dangerous than going to Atlanta. Lord, Lucia, Bert’s never been out of the country. Once I thought he would—well, I don’t know: I suppose I gave him enough surprises.”
Katherine leaned forward, feet flat on the floor. She no longer looked like she was reading a scientific paper.
“The trip wasn’t dangerous,” she repeated. “It was—lovely. On our third day, Miranda and I hiked to an abandoned sixteen-story hotel in the middle of the jungle—Esqueleto Hotel, which means Skeleton Hotel.” She flapped a hand. “I know. I’ll only say it in English. But the two of us and a few other tourists wandered through this beautiful ruin of a place, vines wrapping around the walls. Miranda ate cod balls. She tried coconut juice. She surfed, sort of. I didn’t visit a foreign country until I was thirty years old—two weeks in Costa Rica looking at high-altitude vegetation.”
Something had loosened in Katherine. Her face was wide-eyed and open, and the words came fast. Lucia was not sorry to see it. She preferred to know—before the court date—what it looked like when the dam burst.
“Bert wants her safe and tucked in,” Katherine said, “but so what if she meets a prostitute? So what if she sees breasts? She has them, for God’s sake. So what if she sees some ugliness and it makes her uncomfortable? Why should you want to feel comfortable and safe—where does that get you? She’s not safe. That’s a fairy tale. She’s going to suffer at some point. Bert can’t stop that, but he can stop her from falling off a surfboard or climbing on a plane, and maybe he can even stop her from wanting anything at all. And you know what? She still won’t be safe. He’s keeping himself comfortable, not her, the prick. I want her to know there’s a world out there. A whole world, waiting. And, yes, I know I sound like a bitch.”
Lucia glanced at the pens again. “If you were a man, they’d say you were a prophet.”
What difference would it have made, she wondered, if Rachel had this
