“Well …” Lucia continues as the 10 Freeway loops around the shiny, mirrored skyscrapers of downtown L.A., “Bernadette fell in love with a man named Max and she moved to his house in a part of Santa Monica called Ocean Park. She said we could live in their guesthouse for a while, so that’s where we’re going. We’re going to be their guests.”
Maggie doesn’t like the sound of that. When you are a guest, you have to be on your best behavior and you can’t act the way you really want to. She glances over at her mother, whose eyes are now on the road. Maggie knows that her mother doesn’t like to drive the freeways. Whenever they went somewhere far away from home, somewhere that included freeway driving, her father always drove and sometimes her mother would grab hold of the front seat, where she was sitting, hold on tightly, and say, “How fast are you going, Richard?” Her daddy always answered with a wave of his hand toward the road, “The flow of traffic, Lucy.”
Now, as her mother concentrates on getting them to Bernadette’s, her tightly curled body hunched over the wheel, Maggie knows that if she said she didn’t want to leave her bedroom with all her favorite books lined up in order of preference, and her best friend, Ashley, and her preschool teacher, Miss Julia, not one of those things would change her mother’s mind because here they are, after all, in the car, on their way. As Maggie looks out the window and silently counts all the blue cars she sees, she wonders what her daddy did that was so bad that her mother had to pack their bags and leave.
She feels like she has two daddies—the during-the-week daddy who goes to work at the university and comes home talking about his work and doesn’t really have time to play with her because he goes into the den after dinner and works some more. But then there is her Sunday daddy. Ever since she was just a baby, from lunchtime on Sunday till dinnertime, it was understood that it was their day. And as Maggie got older, Richard would let her set the agenda. “What do you want to do today, mouse?” he would ask her. And unless she said something silly like “Fly to the moon,” Richard would find a way to make it happen. Sometimes they went to the beach. Lots of times they drove to different cities—Long Beach to see The Queen Mary or the Anza-Borrego desert to see the cactus. One Sunday he took her to Olvera Street in Los Angeles, the place where the city was born, he said, and there was mariachi music and Mexican food and tiny shops selling straw purses and embroidered shirts. Another Sunday they bundled up in parkas and went to Big Bear Mountain to play in the snow.
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,
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 p
regnant 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.
“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 stu
ff—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.
Max squats on the grass and Maggie follows suit. He puts what Maggie thought was the oil can in front of them. Now she sees that there are two parts—the part that is a round canister with a spout on top and the part that looks like a partially opened book. Max begins by stuffing newspaper into the metal can. Then he lights the paper with a match and quickly layers pine needles on top of the paper, and then, when those are burning, he puts in wood chips and closes the top. When he squeezes what he tells Maggie is the bellows, smoke comes out of the cone-shaped spout.
“The smoke quiets the bees,” Max tells her, and although Maggie isn’t sure what that means, she can’t wait to see what’s inside the white boxes.
The both stand up and Max fits one of the white helmets on his head and settles the netting over his neck and shoulders and chest. When Maggie puts her helmet on, the netting flows from her hat and pools at her feet.
“Perfect,” Max declares. “Now you’re safe from head to toe. Let’s go.” This time they reach for each other’s hand at the same time and walk to the hives.
The first thing Max does is remove the top box and place it on the ground. “That’s where the honey is being made,” he says, “but I want to show you something else.” He squeezes the bellows, which squirts puffs of smoke around the top, the bottom, and the sides of the middle box. Then he gently lifts the hinged lid, and immediately the buzzing gets much louder.
“Come a little closer,” he tells Maggie and she does. Then Max lifts out what looks like a drawer that’s been set on its side. And there are the bees! Hundreds of them, maybe thousands! And they’re very busy, moving around, bumping into each other, vibrating their wings.
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