Tell Me One Thing (13 page)

But even on the Sundays when they didn’t do anything extra special, they still went to a restaurant to eat lunch, or to a park to watch the dogs play, or just drove to see where they would end up.

Those were the times Richard wasn’t impatient or too busy to read her a story, which seemed to happen the rest of the week. It was their Sunday afternoons that Maggie would miss. It is the daddy who did those things with her that she’s afraid she’ll never see again.

LUCIA TAKES THE CLOVERFIELD BOULEVARD EXIT
off the 10 Freeway and stops at the light. Immediately she turns off the air conditioning and opens the windows. It’s like they’ve traveled
to another country. It was close to one hundred degrees in Riverside, and now the breeze coming through the window is cool and smells like the ocean.

Lucia lets out a sigh that sounds like a long, drawn-out “ahhhh.” Maggie turns to her, a quizzical look on her face, and Lucia laughs. “It just feels so much better here. We’ve dropped thirty degrees.”

As Lucia makes a left turn and travels south on Cloverfield, her shoulders lower, her back gets straighter. So concerned has she been with getting them here to Santa Monica that it hasn’t occurred to her that her daughter hasn’t uttered a single word the entire trip.

BERNADETTE IS GARDENING IN HER
front yard as Lucia’s Honda Civic travels slowly down Sycamore Street, braking for the multiple speed bumps that run the length of it. She’s a solid woman, ample, in her forties, with freckled skin and hair that has gone prematurely white and is swept back loosely into a ponytail. She’s wearing shorts, a T-shirt with a giant sunflower silkscreened on the front, and a wide-brimmed straw hat as she kneels next to a flower bed, pulling out weeds. When she spots Lucia’s car, Bernadette stands and waves, wide, long sweeps of her arm, as if she were calling in circulating aircraft.

The house she stands in front of is Max’s house. It is a small two-story, painted white, with a wide front porch punctuated by square pillars. The trim on the house is black, and the shutters are a faded cinnamon. It looks like a miniature plantation, someone’s idea, way back in the forties when it was built, of an homage to the South. Like most buildings in Ocean Park, it is far from spruced up and a long way from new. Along with its nearest neighbor, Venice Beach, Ocean Park is proud of its California casual air.

There’s a long driveway to the right of the house, and, at the end of it, in the far right corner of the backyard, is a two-car garage with a small apartment sitting above, spilling over the sides like a muffin top. Maggie stares at it as Lucia parks their car in front of the garage.
Is this where we’re going to live? For how long? Why?
These are the questions running through Maggie’s head, but she doesn’t ask them. She turns and watches her mother, waiting to see what Lucia is going to do.

RICHARD WEISS ARRIVES HOME AT
five thirty. Today is the last day of student conferences to wrap up his senior seminar on the ethics of genetically modified foods. It’s the one class he enjoyed teaching; the conversations were always lively. He’s already turned in his grades for his freshman Introductory Chemistry and his upper-division Chemistry 240. Now, finally, this summer, he’ll have time for his own research. He’s struggling with a process called RNA interference, which has the potential to shut down an organism’s ability to express a specific gene. Richard is interested in the gene that produces polyphenol oxidase, the enzyme responsible for browning in fruit. Richard’s hope is that he can create an apple that doesn’t discolor when cut.

The first thing he notices as he parks his car in its assigned space, behind the apartment building, is that Lucia’s car isn’t in her spot adjacent to his. She’s almost always home when he gets there, but he figures she might have forgotten something and made a quick run to the store. Or maybe Maggie had a playdate that ran long. Always logical, he runs through these possible scenarios as he walks through the courtyard and makes his way to the front unit of the westernmost building. Although he often spends large swaths of his day impervious to his surroundings, this afternoon, perhaps because he’s a bit more relaxed, he notices
again how graceful their old apartment complex is—two buildings of three units each, forming a square around an open green space. Yes, it’s old, probably built in the twenties, but the architecture is Spanish, the walls are thick, and the roof is half circles of weathered red tiles.

Once inside his apartment, he puts his briefcase and keys down on the small table by the front door and goes immediately into the bedroom to change. This is his routine. Whatever clothes he wears to teach in, even if it’s only jeans and a button-down shirt, always feel too constricting when he’s home. He sheds his shoes and socks, his confining long pants and long-sleeved shirt, and dons flip-flops, shorts, and a T-shirt with the faded Oberlin logo on it.
Ah, comfort, finally
.

Next he goes into the kitchen, as Lucia knew he would, and pours himself a cocktail of his own devising. One part lemonade, one part iced tea, and one part cranberry juice, mixed well with three ice cubes. It is as he’s stirring his drink that he sees the note, but it sets off no alarm bells. His first thought is that Lucia, in her ever-considerate way, has written him a note telling him where she is and when she’ll be home.

He opens it to read:

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.

“Do you know what that is?” he asks her.

She shakes her head.

“Listen,” Max says. “Shhh … be very quiet.”

And they both stop talking and moving and there it is! In the hushed, dense air of the beach twilight Maggie hears a faint buzzing, and her face lights up. She turns to look up at Max and he’s grinning. “You hear it, don’t you? Those are the bees. Shall we open the hive and see what they’re doing?”

“Yes, please,” Maggie whispers and Max grins. He so hoped she’d be as entranced by the colony as he is.

“It’s awesome. You’ll see,” he whispers back at her. “Come with me, we have to prepare.”

He takes her hand again—and she’s so glad that he has—and they walk to a small garden shed. It’s made out of wood and looks a little like a playhouse with a short door in front that Max has to stoop to use, and a little window next to it. He comes out carrying a bunch of strange stuff—something that looks like the oil can that the Tin Man in
The Wizard of Oz
carries, long leather gloves attached to sleeves, and two white hats that look like pith helmets with trailing white netting attached to the brim of each.