Tell Me One Thing

by Deena Goldstone

  Well then, isn’t it fair for Bernadette to suggest that Lucia let Richard know where they are? Should she describe what his daily phone calls are like? How he sounds frantic and bewildered and furious, sometimes in the same sentence. How he goes on and on without needing Bernadette to say one word. Of course, Bernadette isn’t surprised by any of this. She’s always known that within Richard the precise, detail-oriented scientist is in tension with the extravagantly emotional man. That combustion is part of his charm and what makes him so exasperating.

  Bernadette is mulling all this over as she parks her car in the college parking structure and begins walking to the anthropology department office, her briefcase stuffed with graded finals, her mind preoccupied with her concerns about Maggie and Lucia and Richard. That’s why she doesn’t see him until she’s practically on top of him. He says nothing, simply stands alongside the path and watches her approach, smoking, looking like he’s dropped fifteen pounds in the ten days his family has been gone.

  “Oh, Richard,” Bernadette says, and all resistance flees. He looks haunted, horrible. She has to tell him some version of the truth. “Let’s sit somewhere.” And Bernadette leads him to a bench tucked into a small green space, one of the many pocket parks that seemed to have sprung up around campus in the past year.

  She sits. He doesn’t. “They’re with you, aren’t they?”

  Bernadette doesn’t answer.

  “At first I thought she’d gone home to Ohio and I tried her parents. When they said she hadn’t contacted them, I thought they were lying, because, after all, they’d be protecting her, you know? But their story never changed—they didn’t know where she was. They hadn’t known anything was wrong. She told them nothing. Finally, it made sense to me. Her parents are the last people she’d tell. Leaving your husband isn’t something you do in Lucia’s family. She wouldn’t go home to her parents. She wouldn’t want to hear what they had to say, but you, Bernadette, you’ve left two husbands, so there you are—the logical person to support Lucia’s insanity. That’s how I figured out she’s with you.”

  Bernadette takes all this in without rancor and says nothing. She watches him smoke and pace, head down, not looking at her, lost in his version of events, wound up to a degree she’s never seen. She proceeds carefully.

  “She seems quite clear and resolved to me, Richard. This isn’t a whim.”

  “Are you kidding me? Are you fucking kidding me?! She walks out of an eight-year relationship with no explanation. She leaves a husband who loves her more than anyone ever will. That’s sane?! That makes sense to you?!”

  And before Bernadette can utter a word, Richard begins to weep. He turns his back to her, but his shoulders rock with sobs and strangled gasps of grief pour out of him.

  Bernadette waits. She doesn’t try to comfort him or interfere. It seems clear he has to do this, as if he needs to show her just how devastated he is. Finally he subsides and turns around, wiping his face with the sleeve of his T-shirt.

  “I have to see her. Alone. You need to tell her that. Otherwise, I swear to God, Bernadette, I’ll follow you day and night until you lead me to her.”

  Gently Bernadette says, “She has some rights here.”

  “NO!” explodes from Richard’s mouth. “She owes me an explanation.”

  Bernadette nods. She agrees with that, if not with the way it is said. “I’ll speak with her and I’ll call you.”

  “She needs to see me, you tell her that” is put forth as a final threat.

  It occurs to Bernadette as she continues on to the anthropology office that Richard didn’t mention Maggie’s name. Not once.

  THAT NIGHT AFTER DINNER, after Lucia has put Maggie to bed and come back down to the backyard, she finds that Bernadette is the only one there. Max has made himself scarce and Lucia knows, even before Bernadette opens her mouth, that she’s seen Richard.

  “How did he find me?” Lucia says as she sets foot on the grass.

  Bernadette sighs; this isn’t a conversation she’s eager to have. “Come sit with me.”

  And Lucia does, in the lawn chair next to Bernadette. The two women stare out over the backyard in silence, each bracing herself in her own way for the words to come. The light from the kitchen windows pools a warm yellow on the patio where they sit, but the rest of the yard is in darkness, the sky overcast again, no stars or moon this night.

  Bernadette begins to speak. “He needs an explanation, Lucia. It’s killing him not knowing why.”

  Lucia nods. She knows Richard well enough to know he has to understand. What she doesn’t know is how to explain it all to him so he hears her. He’s never been big on listening. He gets impatient with points of view that don’t contain his own brand of logic.

  “Why has all this come as such a surprise to him? Usually when couples separate, they leave behind a long trail of arguments and trips to the therapist’s office.”

  “I know, but Richard really isn’t interested in anything but his own point of view. I’d talk and he’d interrupt and tell me that none of what I was saying mattered because he loved me so much.” She shrugs. “What I had to say seemed irrelevant.”

  “So you stopped talking,” Bernadette says carefully.

  “Yes,” Lucia says, but Bernadette can tell that Lucia is too caught up with the appearance of Richard to catch her implication. Our children watch us.

  “Well, now he says he wants to hear.”

  “I don’t love him. Can I say that?” And before Bernadette can speak, Lucia answers her own question. “I can’t. I can’t say that. It’s too painful.”

  “Well, you have to say something,” Bernadette says with a trace of irritation. It’s one of those moments when she wonders whatever has she done by inviting Lucia here. “Because if you don’t talk to him he’s going to show up here.”

  “You didn’t tell him—?”

  “Of course not, but you know Richard. All he has to do is hide out at school and follow me home.”

  “And he would.”

  They arrange to meet in a public place. On the bluffs above the Pacific is a narrow park with a path that runs north to south along the rim, high above Highway 1. There are benches situated along the cliff, placed straightforwardly ahead to maximize the ocean view.

  Lucia gets there early and waits on one of them. She wants to be prepared. She doesn’t want Richard catching her unawares. All morning as she gave Maggie breakfast and brushed her unruly hair into shining black curls and brought her to Max at the beehives, where they had plans to check on the Queen, she kept a running monologue in her head. She told herself to be strong, to be clear. To say what she felt. She promised herself she wouldn’t let Richard do all the talking.

  Richard, in his motel room at the Surfsider, rehearsed various opening sentences—“I love you more than my own life.… I can’t live without you.… Whatever you want, I’ll give it to you.…”

  She sees him walking toward her and she’s stunned by how he looks, as if he hasn’t slept in the two weeks they’ve been gone, or eaten, or showered. Richard, who has always been so meticulous about his appearance, could have been mistaken for a homeless man. Rather than being overcome with sympathy, Lucia’s suddenly furious by this kind of self-indulgent excess. This is exactly what she’s run away from.

  Richard looks up and sees her sitting there, small, composed, always that air of elegant calm about her, and he wants nothing more than to pick her up in his arms and spirit her away. It would be so easy. She’s so much smaller than he is. She’s weightless in his arms.

  Lucia doesn’t stand as he nears. She doesn’t move from the bench, but there’s no way Richard can sit down now. “Can we walk?” are the first words out of his mouth. His voice is raw, from smoking, from emotion.

  She nods and they take the path north, the shallow waves of the Pacific Ocean on their left, far below them. The morning overcast is beginning to lift, the sky brightening as they walk, the sun burning through, a hazy circle now. Lucia says
nothing. She’s waiting to see whom she’s dealing with here. Is he as out of control as he appears?

  Finally he says, “I need to know why you did this.” Each word sounds like it’s being ripped from his throat.

  “Because I’ve been unhappy for a long time.”

  “How can that be?!” explodes from his mouth. It’s an accusation and an outrage. “I love you, Lucy, more than life itself.”

  She waits for the outburst to dissipate into the ocean breeze, until there’s a pool of quiet. What kind of love is he talking about? To Lucia it feels like love as steamroller, a sort of love that destroys everything in its path. She says quietly but firmly, without looking at him, “That doesn’t make everything all better.”

  “What do you want me to do? Anything. Just tell me.”

  “I want you to listen to me.” She says it as clearly, as firmly, as she can.

  “I am. Just tell me what to do and I’ll do anything you say. All I want is for you to come back. Lucy, anything. Tell me.”

  They walk in silence, Lucia trying to figure out how they got from her declaration of unhappiness to his demand that she come up with tasks for him. Richard is watching her, holding on desperately to the slimmest hope that maybe, if he’s good enough and careful enough, she will come back.

  “It feels like,” she begins tentatively, “that your need to love me has nothing to do with me.”

  “That makes no sense.”

  Again he doesn’t understand or won’t stop a minute to understand or refuses to try or …? Lucia doesn’t know anymore. All right, she tries something more concrete. “I don’t think we’re well matched.”

  “How can you say that?!” It’s almost a scream.

  Lucia ignores the tone and continues. “You’re certain about everything. It used to be fine for you to be certain for both of us, but it isn’t now.”

  “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.

  Back in his lab at the university, Richard continues his research but finds himself, without warning, several times a week, hunched over his microscope, weeping. One of his lab assistants, Mei-ling, places a hand on his back in comfort and then goes back to her workstation when Richard’s sobs subside. They don’t speak about it.