Deena Goldstone - Tell Me One Thing

After the paella, Ellen serves him coffee and a caramelized pear tart she bought along with the bread. It’s then that she picks up her story from the night before.

She says, with a grin to acknowledge that she’s quoting him, “So I went to Spain for a fresh start.”

“That I understand.” Jamie is playing along.

“And at first it felt like that. I stayed with Tracy for a few weeks while I found a job and a tiny room. I took Spanish lessons. I walked around the city a lot on my own. It all felt sort of pure, you know? Like, the simpler the better. No entanglements. Just me getting through each day, learning the city a little more, learning Spanish a little more. Seeing Tracy and Rafael but really no one else. It all felt manageable and I felt like I was calming down. I didn’t call Mom or Dad. I e-mailed them occasionally, but part of my recovery, I realized, was scaling those old relationships way back.”

“Why do you think I’m three thousand miles away?”

“I get it, Jamie. I never questioned your move away, did I?”

He shakes his head.

“When my Spanish got better I was able to get a job at a construction company. All that experience in Buffalo helped. It turns out construction is pretty much construction anywhere in the world.”

“Was that smart?” he asks her, his eyebrows raised.

“You’re getting ahead of me here, and no, it turns out it wasn’t smart at all. That’s where I met Miguel.”

“Your ‘savior’? You see, I was listening last night.”

“At first, I couldn’t believe my luck. For starters, he was single and I hadn’t made it a practice to date single men. And he was gorgeous. Not that I’m all that superficial, but when you’ve just left Mickey Fogarty with his two dozen tattoos and questionable personal hygiene, gorgeous and clean go a long way.” Ellen pauses, mashes the crumbs of her pear tart into her plate with the back of her fork. Her eyes down, she finally says softly, “And he wanted me, really wanted me and told me why. Told me what I had and what I was that was worthwhile. He was the first person who ever …” And she trails off. She won’t get teary in front of Jamie.

But when he says, “Oh, Ellen,” understanding exactly how unique that kind of validation would be to one of them, the O’Connor children, who never heard about their specialness from either parent, Ellen’s eyes fill anyway.

She needs to back up to more neutral ground. She lays out some of the facts. “Miguel’s a lawyer, and he was counsel for the company building the shopping center we were working on. They’d had neighbor complaints about the height of the parking structure or something. Anyway, Miguel came into the office one day to go over the building specs with my boss, and when he walked in and we looked at each other, that was that.” Ellen shrugs as if all that followed was inevitable.

“I’d never felt that before,” she tells him, “that instant connection. Miguel said he hadn’t, either. Do you know how powerful that feeling is, Jamie?”

“Sounds exhausting to me.”

“Oh, it was. Exhausting and exhilarating in equal measure, but mostly it was mesmerizing. For both of us. You’ve got to understand I wasn’t some infatuated teenager mooning after some guy who didn’t give a damn. Miguel was in this with me. It’s important that you understand that. He needed to see me every night. He’d call me sometimes every hour, all day. The rest of my life — my friends, the class I was taking, the attention I put into my work — they all fell away, and I was alive only for those hours I spent with Miguel.”

There’s something about this Jamie doesn’t like, but he doesn’t say anything, simply nods as she continues to tell the story.

As if Ellen were reading his thoughts, something they would often do as children, she quickly says, “And he was kind to me. He filled my little apartment with flowers, day after day, week after week, and then he began to buy me things. He had a set of dining room chairs delivered to my apartment.”

“Did you need dining room chairs?”

“No, but he said the ones I had weren’t comfortable and if he was going to have dinner with me every night, he wanted to be comfortable. And then he began to buy me clothes and jewelry. He’d take me to really expensive restaurants so I could wear the dress or the shawl or the jade earrings that he’d just bought me and he would tell me how beautiful I looked.

“When he asked me to move in with him, there seemed to be no other answer but ‘Yes, of course, I love you, of course I will.’ ”

“How long had you known him?” Jamie asks.

“Two months.”

“Did you bring the dining room chairs?”

“Very funny, Jamie, and the answer is no. I left them with the apartment along with everything else I had acquired since I had moved to Malaga. It didn’t matter. They were just things. You’ve got to understand, I couldn’t believe my luck. I had gone to Spain to change my life, and here was proof that I’d been right. I had a man who loved me, who treated me like I was a prize. I had done it. I had escaped the O’Connor curse.”

“How long did that feeling last?”

“Okay, I know you want me to cut to the chase, but you need to believe that we had something that people long for all their lives.”

“I get it, Ellen, but you’re not telling me this story because it all stayed that way, are you?”

“No.”

“When did it turn bad?”

“I don’t know.”

He snorts. “Weren’t you there? How can you not know?”

“Stop being such a prick and I’ll tell you.”

“Okay,” Jamie says, a bit chagrined. “Sorry.”

“It started so quietly I wasn’t even aware of what was going on. His daily phone calls became sort of ‘Where are you? What are you doing?’ instead of ‘I miss you. I can’t stop thinking about you.’ Do you see the difference?”

“He was checking up on you.”

“Yes! But would you have recognized that right away?” Jamie shrugs and Ellen shakes her head at her own gullibility. “Well, I didn’t. Then he began to say things like ‘I don’t like you in that dress, wear the green one I bought you.’ And I’d think, ‘What difference does it make?’ And I’d go and change into the dress he liked.… Then he began to tell me my friends were boring and we’d only go out together if we were seeing his friends. He said I could see my friends during the day. But I didn’t. Somehow, because Miguel didn’t like them, I wasn’t interested in seeing them.”

“Tracy, too?” Jamie asks.

“Not at the beginning, but when it got bad, then, yes, I cut Tracy out of my life, too.”

“When did it get bad, Ellen?” Jamie asks quietly.

“When I quit my job.”

“Because he wanted you to?”

“Because he told me to. He made a lot of money and he had family money, and after we’d been together for about a year, he told me that my job was getting in the way of our life together. He wanted me to travel with him. He wanted me at home when he got home. What did I do all day at my job that was so important? Nothing, I realized, it wasn’t important. Miguel was what was important.… So I quit my job.”

Ellen won’t meet Jamie’s eyes as she tells him, “And then I became his prisoner. He set new rules — I had to call him before I left the apartment and when I got home, the minute I got home. If he didn’t like where I said I was going, he told me to stay home. I began to lie to him so I could go out, and when he found out I was lying, he got very angry.”

“Did he hit you?” Ellen won’t answer. “Ellen, did he hit you?” Jamie asks again, more insistent.

“That wasn’t the worst of it,” Ellen finally whispers. “It became this sort of ritual for him. He’d tie me up.…”