Once Upon a Day (35 page)

“If you do this, you’re going to lose everything.”

“I don’t believe you and I don’t care.”

“I will leave and you’ll never see me again.”

“I don’t believe you and I don’t care.” She waited a minute. “Are you finished?”

When he didn’t answer, she finally looked up and realized he was gone. Good riddance, she thought, though she wanted to cry, but that was always true. No matter what he did, she still felt this pang about him, which she hoped wasn’t love. She didn’t want to love a man who obviously hated her.

She kissed the children good-bye before she left. She’d already promised them that when she finished this film, she would be around a lot more. She also told Jimmy that she would be back early on Monday and she would take him to school. When he asked her if she’d really make it, she said of course, that she was driving herself to the airport so her car would be waiting, and she could just jump in and head for home the very second the plane landed.

As always, shooting out of town was hard work. Most of the time, Lucy was in such bad pain that she needed twice her usual pills to get through her scenes, and something to sleep each night. She tried to call home on Thanksgiving, but when they didn’t answer, she didn’t leave a message. She didn’t want to get into it again with Charles. Of course he didn’t call her, not once.

They finished up on Sunday evening and the cast and crew hopped on a plane to get home. Everyone was celebrating the wrap-up. Lucy made it out of the airport by 5:30, plenty of time to get home and take Jimmy.

The drive to Malibu took less than an hour, since it was still too early for traffic. PCH was almost deserted too, and Lucy decided to stop at Zuma and take a walk. If she went home now, the children wouldn’t be up, but Charles might be. She wasn’t in the mood to fight with him. She wanted to savor the end of another film.

Also, she hadn’t been to the beach alone in years.

It was cool, but the breeze made her feel more awake and alert. She took off her shoes and rolled up her jeans, and started walking toward the ocean. The sun was just rising and the sea was the deepest blue tipped with white; the rhythm of the waves crashing seemed to match the beat of her own heart. She felt strangely excited and alive, even though she was alone. Because she was alone, and she wasn’t afraid.

It was hard walking in the sand though. Difficult to keep her balance. Much more tiring than she remembered. She was just thinking she might have to turn back when, about halfway to the ocean, her leg suddenly gave way. There was nothing to break her fall even if she’d had time to grab for something. The next thing she knew she was sprawled out sideways on the beach.

She wasn’t hurt, but she couldn’t get up. She tried and tried, but her leg refused to hold her weight, and balancing on one proved impossible. Now she knew how stupid she’d been to come out here, after using up everything she had on the last few days of filming. “You idiot,” she said to herself. Yelled it. She looked around and
there was no one to help. No one to come even if she screamed.

At some point it hit her how alone she was. Alone and absolutely vulnerable, just like she’d been that day.

She tried to crawl then, but her right leg was still completely numb. She had to drag it along like a dead child, and her progress was pitiful. She kept looking around to make sure no one had come up behind her. After a few minutes of this, she was whimpering, but she kept telling herself she wasn’t afraid.

In the distance though, she could see a man. It looked like he was walking toward her. It looked like he was wearing a dingy T-shirt. She tried to crawl faster, but it didn’t make any difference. She was back there again and she couldn’t get away.

This man had controlled Lucy’s dreams for over two years.

She started trembling violently as she thought of his voice telling her what he was going to do to her, the hatred on his face as he stuck the knife into her again and again. The pain had been unbearable. Even at the time, she knew it was breaking her down, changing her forever into someone who knew what it meant to go crazy.

She was sobbing now, so desperate to get to her car and get home, but knowing she’d never make it. She was crawling so slowly that the man in her mind would catch up with her and there was nothing she could do. He had stabbed her and kicked her and burned her in her dreams, night after night after night. Jimmy screamed out his nightmares, but Lucy swallowed back hers, telling herself that if she never spoke of it, never even thought about it, it would have to go away.

But it hadn’t gone away. She’d moved back to her house and moved back to her job and even tried to have a baby, but still the man was in her dreams. She’d tried so hard to convince herself that she was a normal person who just wanted to work and have friends and relax. She’d tried to convince herself that her headaches and her weaknesses were the only results of that day she couldn’t escape.

But now she was face down in the sand and completely alone. And she was afraid, oh God, she was so afraid she thought she’d die
from this much fear. This was what she’d wanted to tell Charles that day when she stabbed her hand. She kept forgetting what she had to tell him, but this was it. I am afraid too. I wanted you to protect me, but you couldn’t, you can’t. The man will still come after me and hurt me whenever I close my eyes.

“Do you need some help?”

The voice was kind, a woman’s voice. Lucy turned her head to see an older lady in a gray sweat suit walking her dog. The dog was sniffing around her, and after a few moments, Lucy managed to calm herself enough to sit up and stroke the dog’s soft fur. Finally the woman helped her stand and then helped her to the road so easily that Lucy couldn’t believe how hard it had been before. Her leg was stiff, but working again. All the woman had to do was guide her.

Once she was in her car, Lucy reached into her bag and got out the bottle with the strongest pills, the ones she used when she was so wired she couldn’t sleep. After she swallowed down two without water, she told herself that she was just having a reaction to how tired she was. Now that the film was over, she’d be fine again. There was nothing wrong with her; she just needed a little rest.

Fifteen minutes later, she pushed the driver’s seat back and locked all the doors. She closed her eyes and forced herself to hear nothing but the sound of the ocean and the morning traffic on the highway. She wasn’t afraid anymore; she’d never been really afraid. She’d fallen on the beach, big deal. It could happen to anyone with a bad leg.

She was almost asleep when she realized she was forgetting something, but she couldn’t remember what it was. She told herself she could deal with it later, once she wasn’t so exhausted. There would be plenty of time for everything now. All she had to do was rest here at the beach until she could make her way home.

A
FTER TWENTY-THREE
years of marriage and twenty-one years as a social worker, raising three kids and burying her parents, Janice felt as though she had learned—almost nothing. Some people are lucky and some people aren’t, and really, what else could you say?

Her friend Lucy was one of the horribly unlucky ones. It was hard for Janice to even imagine how Lucy had made it all these years. If there was any justice in this world, Janice thought, Charles Keenan should be sitting in some dive with no money and his balls rotting off. For what he did to her, he deserved to have his butt kicked from sunrise to sundown for the rest of his life. Especially as Keenan wasn’t crazy. Let the psychics Lucy used to consult say he was sticking toothpicks under his skin in Maui or eating goat hearts in New Orleans, but Janice always knew he was sitting somewhere in a fancy house, just as normal as he’d ever been. He was power mad, but he wasn’t even close to crazy. Not then—and, she discovered, not now.

It was a normal April evening: kids doing homework, Peter working on a brief, Janice trying to clean up after a late dinner, when she picked up the phone and voilà, there he was. She was pretty sure she knew his voice as soon as he said her name.

“Who is this?”

“I’m sorry to disturb you.”

“Charles Keenan.” She rushed into the dining room, where Peter was at the table. “Charles Keenan,” she said again, looking at her husband.

Peter stood up, knowing this was some kind of emergency, but having no idea what to do about it other than stand up.

“You can try to trace this call,” Keenan said, “but it won’t make any difference. I’m not home, and neither of the children are with me.”

“I wouldn’t trace it,” Janice lied, before looking at Peter, mouthing,
Could we?

“What I want to know is if you’ll talk to my daughter.” He paused. “I thought it might be easier on her if you explained the situation. I want to give her your number, if you’ll be home for the next week or so.”

“We’re always home. We have three kids, we can’t afford vacations.”

“Would you like me to arrange a car to take her to your house?”

Janice was so surprised she shouted, “She’s coming to L.A.?”

“Yes. She needs to see her mother, but I’d like you to explain the situation first.”

“What situation are you talking about?”

He cleared his throat. “That her mother is still alive.”

“You bastard. You told them Lucy was—”

“She’ll be flying on a charter plane. I don’t know what day yet, but I’ll arrange for her to arrive in the evening. Will that be all right?”

Stacy, her seventeen-year-old, was in the room now too, asking Peter what was wrong. As soon as he wrote “Charles Keenan” on a scrap of paper, Stacy said, “Oh my God!”

“I’ll pick her up at the airport,” Janice said, covering her other ear with her hand. “That would be better than having her come here.”

“Thank you.”

“But you have to tell me one thing first. Why?”

Janice could hear him breathing. She wanted the answer to this question like other people wanted to know if there was a God. She’d been there from the moment Lucy first saw Charles to the week before he disappeared. She’d seen it all, and she still didn’t understand. Calling what happened “unlucky” was really just another way of saying she never would.

When the line went dead, Janice burst into tears.

The domestic counseling center where Lucy volunteered was in downtown L.A., a few blocks up from Chinatown. For eleven years, Lucy had spent every Monday, Wednesday and Friday at the center, answering phones, doing paperwork, and watching out for children while their moms were with the counselors. Lucy had donated the toys for the waiting area, and if a child fell in love with a particular stuffed animal or truck or puzzle, Lucy would smile and insist to the mother that it was all right, the child could take that one home. “Thank you,” the mom would say, and pull her son or daughter’s hand. “Thank you, Miss Lucy,” a small voice would echo, and Lucy would wave good-bye to the child and take one last glance at the toy in his or her arms, hoping she wouldn’t forget it, but knowing she probably would. A lot of the toys she’d given the center over the years were things she’d barely known Dorothea and Jimmy had. Charles used to buy them so much stuff she couldn’t keep track of it all.

She always got to the center between nine and ten in the morning. It was a volunteer job, but it was still a job, and Lucy took it seriously. The counselors relied on her, and she never missed a day, even if she had to use her cane, as she did on that particular Wednesday. The cane always meant she’d get there closer to ten,
because she had to walk several blocks from the parking garage at the building where her husband, Al, worked. Of course Al would have dropped her in front of the center, but it was important to Lucy to walk.

When Lucy came in the door that Wednesday, the only person in the waiting room was Janice. “What a nice surprise,” she said, accepting her friend’s hug and hugging her back with her free arm. Janice was wearing a navy blue suit and high heels. She was a good five inches taller than Lucy anyway, and now she was so tall Lucy had to look up to smile at her. “Don’t you look official.”

“I have to testify at a contested adoption. It’s a messy case.” Janice looked at her watch. “I don’t have much time.”

“Okay,” Lucy said. “What’s up?”

“Is there somewhere we can go? Private?”

Lucy led Janice to the office normally occupied by Martha, the head of the center, who was out this week taking care of her granddaughter. The office was at the end of the hall, and Lucy felt bad that she couldn’t walk faster. She could sense how anxious Janice was to get there, and she wondered if there was some problem with Janice’s son Kevin. Three times now, Kevin had been suspended from high school for smoking pot. The next time they would arrest him, the principal said. Lucy hoped it wasn’t that.

Martha’s office was a comfortable room with three overstuffed chairs surrounding a brightly painted red coffee table that a client had built for her. On the walls were inspirational posters.
I AM SOMEBODY. DARE TO DREAM. CELEBRATE LIFE
.