Deena Goldstone - Tell Me One Thing

“What the hell are you saying?”

Lucia winces and then pushes herself to try again. “I don’t know anymore what I like or what I want or how I want to be in the world. All I know how to do is to agree with you.”

Richard stops walking and so she does, too. “Just come home.”

She looks at him in complete incredulity. “Do you hear one word I said? I’m trying to explain—”

But he cuts her off. He doesn’t want any more explanations. “We’ll work out everything we need to when we’re home. I promise you.”

She stares at him. She’s a statue, turned to stone, a statue staring, then suddenly she turns and starts walking away from him.

“Lucy!” he screams.

And she whirls around and screams back at him, “I hate that! My name is Lucia, Lucia! Lucy is someone you made up!”

LUCIA DRIVES AROUND IN CIRCLES. She travels east on Wilshire and makes an angry left turn, north, on Fourteenth Street instead of south into Ocean Park. She checks her rearview mirror every ten seconds— Is that Richard’s car? She makes a precipitous right turn onto Montana, checks again, drives all the way to Bundy. Another look. She knows he’s capable of following her, and the possibility keeps her anger lit — how intrusive he is! It’s more than an hour before she feels safe enough to drive to Max’s. Finally, the need to be “home,” the need to talk to Bernadette, propels her to Sycamore Street and the long driveway, where she leaves the car, almost tripping in her haste to get into the kitchen. Let Bernadette be there alone .

And her prayers are answered. Bernadette is sitting at the kitchen table, drinking a cup of tea, quietly reading the morning paper as Lucia rushes in.

“I feel like I’ve been mugged.”

Bernadette sighs as she puts the newspaper aside — does she really want to hear about this? But she has no choice. And then she sees that Lucia’s hands are shaking as she pulls out a chair and sits down across from her, and immediately Bernadette regrets her own lack of empathy.

“It’s all about what he’s feeling, Detta—‘I love you, therefore everything’s all right!’ But it isn’t. And he won’t hear me. I tried, really Detta, I did.”

Bernadette nods. She believes her. “Did he cry?”

“No. At least not that.”

“He cried with me.”

“Oh no, Detta. I’m so sorry, but then you saw — he revels in this excess. He keeps saying he loves me, but it’s all about his need to love me. Him. Him. All about him!”

Bernadette shakes her head, a finger to her lips, her eyes over Lucia’s head to the doorway where Max and Maggie stand, hand in hand. But Maggie has heard, at least some of it — her mother’s angry tone, saying bad things about her daddy. And she doesn’t want to hear any more of it. She launches herself across the kitchen into her mother’s legs, pushing her head into Lucia’s lap. If she were speaking she would be screaming, “Don’t say that! Don’t talk about my daddy that way!” but her actions speak loudly enough because Lucia gathers Maggie into her lap and the angry buzzing in the air settles at once. Better, now it’s better, Maggie sees, and she didn’t have to say anything. Words don’t matter all that much because look — her mother is holding her and has quieted down and she’s not talking about her daddy in that way now.

Lucia stands with Maggie clinging to her. She looks at Max and Bernadette over Maggie’s head, a condemnation of Richard in her eyes— Do you see what he’s wrought? And with Maggie’s legs circling her waist and the child’s arms around her mother’s neck now, Lucia walks out into the backyard and then up the steps to their apartment, murmuring words only the two of them can hear, soothing sounds that quiet them both.

RICHARD DOESN’T GO BACK TO RIVERSIDE. He can’t manage to get into his car and drive east for an hour to the empty apartment that is waiting for him, so he stays at the Surfsider on the outskirts of Venice and calls Lucia nonstop. He leaves tangled, rambling messages that he fears don’t help his cause, but he can’t seem to stop himself.

At night, he walks. Long midnight hikes that take him from Venice Beach north to Santa Monica, then farther north to Pacific Palisades and then up the coast through Malibu, until his legs give out.

During the day he haunts the Santa Monica City College campus, hoping against all expectations that he’ll see Bernadette again. And then, one day he does. She’s walking hand in hand with a large man with a lot of bushy, blond hair who he figures must be Max. They’re talking to each other in the way that people do when their relationship is new and they have lots to say, so Richard has to call out to her—“Bernadette!”—which stops them both. Bernadette finds him standing outside Drescher Hall, and something close to panic races across her face. Max sees it and tells her to stay put. Then he walks toward Richard.

“Max Weber,” he says with his hand extended for a shake.

Richard ignores the gesture. Looking over Max’s shoulder, he says, “I need to talk to Bernadette.”

“No, you don’t.”

Max’s words don’t even register with Richard. He attempts to push past the larger man, to get to Bernadette, who takes two steps back instinctively. Max wraps his hand around Richard’s upper arm and starts walking him away. “She’s told you everything she’s going to say.”

Bernadette, watching, is so grateful to Max that she thinks seriously, for the first time, of marrying him.

“You need to go home,” Max is telling Richard in a low voice.

“This is none of your goddamn business.”

“Yes, it is, because you’re upsetting Bernadette. When you love someone,” Max says pointedly, “you don’t want them upset.”

“Don’t you lecture me on—”

“Lucia and Maggie are upset, Maggie especially. It’s Maggie I’m worried about.”

Richard wrenches his arm free and stops walking. “What are you talking about?”

“She’s stopped speaking. She won’t utter a single word.”

“To you, maybe.”

“To anyone. Her mother included. Lucia didn’t tell you?”

“No.” Richard seems genuinely stunned. “For how long?”

“Weeks now.”

“But she chatters away nonstop.”

“Not now.” Then, because Richard looks so puzzled: “It may be her way of dealing with all this stress.”

“Stress that her mother created!”

“That you’re making worse.”

Richard shakes his head. “Don’t put this on me. I’m not the one who left. I’m not the one who’s ripping this family apart—”

“Richard!” Max overrides him, his voice harsh— Pay attention to what I’m saying . “You can’t think all this stalking and drama is helping. You know it isn’t.”

Max puts a hand on the younger man’s shoulder in sympathy. What does Richard want but his wife, whom he loves, to come back to him?

“Go home,” Max tells him. “Let them be for now. Let Lucia take care of your daughter. Be a mensch.”

Richard lowers his eyes and stares at the sidewalk beneath his feet. “And then what?”

“I don’t know. You’ll wait and see.”

If Max weren’t so nice, Richard could get angry, but he can’t. Instead he has to do the hardest thing for him — nothing. Instead he has to feel the pain that has turned his heart into a tiny, tight kernel of perpetual ache.

Now he knows he has to go home. Max is going to be the gatekeeper, he’s made that clear, keeping him at bay. Richard leaves an explicit message on Lucia’s voice mail saying he’s leaving and making sure she understands that it doesn’t mean he’s given up or that her insanity makes sense to him.