Deena Goldstone - Tell Me One Thing

He opens it to read:

Richard ,

I’m afraid you’re going to be surprised when you read this. Looking back on the eight years we’ve been together, I can see now that I never managed to say what I needed to say. I realize that my failure makes this note that much harder .

I’ve known for a long while that we were never meant to be married. Instead of getting pregnant when we did, we should have broken up and each of us should have moved on, but that’s not what happened .

I’m not saying I wish Maggie hadn’t been born — oh no, just the opposite. She is a miracle and makes my life joyful every day. I guess what I’m saying is that I haven’t been happy for a long time. Would I have had the courage to leave you if I hadn’t gotten pregnant? Probably not. I honestly don’t know. I just know that somehow, maybe through being Maggie’s mother, I’ve found the courage to do what I should have done five years ago .

I’m sorry this is so long and unfocused. I’m sure you are reading it saying to yourself — will she please get to the point already?! Okay, the point is Maggie and I have moved away. I am sure of my decision. I’ve been thinking about it for more than five years. Please don’t try to change my mind .

You know that I will take good care of Maggie and when we are settled, I will contact you .

Lucia

Richard stands in his tidy kitchen with a look of utter confusion on his face. Blindsided by Lucia’s words, he really can’t process what he just read. It makes no sense to him. Lucia unhappy? Their marriage a mistake? Neither of those things is true. They can’t be. He has to read the note again.

He sits down at the table, lays the note flat in front of him, and starts from the beginning. When he’s finished, his first thought is that something has happened to Lucia. You live with someone for eight years and you don’t know they’re unhappy, that they don’t want to live with you? That’s impossible. Something’s wrong, very wrong. He has to find her and talk to her and bring her home. That will make everything all right again because when she was here, everything was all right. And once he decides that, he launches into goal-seeking mode. Not for another second does he stop to consider what Lucia has tried to say. He knows what has to be done and he will do it.

He calls her cell phone.

LUCIA AND MAGGIE ARE HAVING DINNER with Bernadette and Max in their house when Lucia’s cell rings in her car, parked in front of the garage. She made sure to leave the phone behind.

The four of them are sitting at a banquette table in the large kitchen, which overlooks the backyard. Lucia and Maggie sit on the bench that is attached to the wall. The child, leaning against her mother’s side, plays with her food. She’s not used to what’s on her plate — a lot of vegetables and grains. Across from them sit Bernadette and Max, someone neither Lucia nor Maggie has met before.

Lucia watches Maggie watch Max. He’s such a different sort of man from her father. Where Richard is slender, precise, and exacting, Max is big and shambling. He has blond, bushy hair that is mixed with gray and in need of a cut. Every few minutes, without thinking it seems, Max has to flop the hair off his forehead and away from his eyes so he can see. As big as he is — and he’s well over six feet tall and more than two hundred pounds — his presence at the table is soothing and quiet. Bernadette does most of the talking for both of them. And he appreciates her, it’s obvious. He’s either patting her shoulder or putting an arm around her or holding her hand in those few seconds when she’s finished gesturing with it and places it on the table.

Max teaches history at Santa Monica City College, where he got Bernadette a job in the anthropology department. They drive to school together. They teach. They come home together and find very little reason to go anywhere else.

Bernadette told Lucia all about Max when she met and quickly fell in love with him, but seeing them together for herself is another thing altogether. This is what love looks like , Lucia is thinking as she watches them across the table — a delight in the other’s presence, a need to be touching, a lightness of spirit just being close. It’s how she feels about her daughter but not Richard. She’s not asking the universe for validation that she did the right thing in leaving her husband, but the evidence is in front of her anyway. Bernadette and Max love each other. She and Richard do not.

Bernadette is talking to Maggie now, telling her how glad they are that she’s visiting. That’s how Bernadette explains why Lucia and Maggie are here — she says that they’re visiting. Maggie presses closer to her mother, not really looking at Bernadette. “Are you feeling shy?” Lucia asks her as she raises her arm and fits Maggie snugly into her body like two puzzle pieces clicking into place.

“It’s been quite a day,” Lucia says to the adults in explanation.

“Yes,” Bernadette agrees, struck again by how much mother and child look alike — both small and dark, each with an air of gentle patience. Neither looks very happy now, and then Bernadette has an idea. Her eyes light up. “Maggie, maybe you’d like to see what Max has in the backyard. It’s pretty amazing. Would you like him to show you?”

Maggie wouldn’t, but she sees her mother looking expectantly at her and she realizes she’s supposed to say yes, and so she does.

“Come on, then,” Max says as he gets up. He holds out his hand, and Maggie puts her very small one in his very large one. His hand is warm and gentle. Lucia and Bernadette watch the two of them walk through the kitchen, Max doing all the talking. “It’s a project I’ve just started, so I’m not much of an expert, but still, it’s pretty interesting, I think.… Well, you’ll tell me if it is.…” And the back door opens and closes and it’s quiet.

The two women look at each other, Bernadette waiting for Lucia to speak, and Lucia, having so much to say, doesn’t know where to start.

Finally she tells the whole truth in one sentence. “I’m thrilled and terrified all in the same breath.”

Bernadette nods. “He won’t just let you go.” She’s known Richard for the five years they’ve been in Riverside, and she knows this about him — he never gives up.

“He doesn’t know where we are.”

“For now.”

“That’s all I can handle, Detta, the now.”

And Bernadette believes her. She’s frankly amazed that Lucia is sitting in her kitchen.

As much as she likes Lucia — and Richard, for that matter, although she’d never want to be married to him — she never thought Lucia would be able to leave her marriage.

She watches Lucia fiddle with the silverware, her eyes downcast, her shoulders creeping forward, her very posture apologetic. Here is a smart woman , Bernadette is thinking, who doesn’t think she’s smart enough, who second-guesses herself constantly . The woman she sees in front of her is a gifted mother, certainly, a kind woman, unfailingly kind, who always feels she’s falling short. Bernadette has no idea how Lucia managed to actually put her escape plan into action.

“We wouldn’t have been able to do it without you,” Lucia says now as if reading Bernadette’s thoughts. “If we didn’t have you to come to …” Lucia breaks off, looks out the window to the backyard where Max and Maggie, hand in hand, are nearing the farthest corner of the yard. She shakes her head and doesn’t finish her sentence. There’s no need.

OUTSIDE IN THE BACKYARD, at the opposite corner from the garage, Max brings Maggie close, but not too close, to a structure made up of three rectangular white boxes stacked on top of each other.