Tell Me One Thing

by Deena Goldstone

  IT IS BERNADETTE’S HOPE, WITH RICHARD GONE back to Riverside, that Lucia can now take the next necessary steps—finding an apartment of her own, a job. They had all agreed in the weeks before Lucia and Maggie showed up, during the many phone calls leading to their flight, that Max’s garage apartment would be a temporary refuge, “a way station,” as Bernadette referred to it when speaking with both Max and Lucia. But Lucia has seemed to have forgotten that agreement, or worse yet, and this is Bernadette’s fear—Lucia is stuck. It seems to Bernadette that all forward motion has stopped.

  Max hasn’t complained—he’s generous and understanding that way—but Bernadette feels responsible for the disruption in what was an almost idyllic solitude that they both cherished.

  BERNADETTE REALIZES SHE HAS TO do something. What she’d like to do is jolt Lucia into action, but she knows that probably isn’t the best way of approaching the situation. Change is hard, she keeps reminding herself in order to bolster her compassion level. What she needs to do is guide Lucia to the first step. It’s always the hardest, that first step.

  With “guiding” in mind, with “easing” as her goal, Bernadette takes Lucia with her to the Santa Monica Farmers Market, the one she always goes to on Saturday mornings at Pico and Cloverfield, exactly across from the off-ramp Lucia and Maggie took when they got off the Santa Monica Freeway weeks ago. Fitting, isn’t it? Symbolic, Bernadette thinks.

  It’s not the biggest of the farmers markets, but it’s in their neighborhood and Bernadette knows most of the vendors now by name. Of course, she stops and chats every few feet as they make their way through, Lucia following along in Bernadette’s wake, feeling like an afterthought.

  And then there is the produce. Bernadette seems mesmerized by the varieties of heirloom tomatoes—yellow, pink, striped, blushing red. Huge tomatoes that must weigh more than a pound, tiny tomatoes that look like clusters of grapes. And the squash—zucchini in shades of green and black, crookneck squash in sun-bright yellow, pale green trombone squash that curves around itself almost three feet long. And eggplants in all colors—pink, lavender, white, deep purple that glows black. Bernadette is in her element. All the colors, the aromas! She picks up a bouquet of Thai basil and inhales its smell before putting it back. No one seems to mind.

  As they walk, Bernadette chatters on about the “edible art,” as she calls all the gorgeous vegetables, and tries to figure out how to bring up the issue of Lucia’s unemployment. She can hardly say, “When are you going to do something about getting a job? How can you rent an apartment without any money?”

  Instead she begins talking about Max’s oldest son, Danny, who teaches first grade at a charter school in East Oakland. How much he’s taken to teaching, how grateful Max is that his son has found what he loves to do.

  “But the summers are hard,” Bernadette tells Lucia as they approach a vendor selling a kaleidoscope of sweet peppers. “They pay beginning teachers so little that he has to find a summer job. Each summer. There’s something wrong with that, don’t you think?”

  Lucia agrees, but Bernadette can tell she’s not really listening. They’ve got to sit down and face each other so she can have all of Lucia’s attention. She steers her to a little outdoor café—really just a coffee cart and a few tables set up under a tree—and brings two lattes back to the table.

  “Richard must be calling you,” Lucia says before Bernadette can even put their coffees down. “He’s harassing you, isn’t he?”

  “Don’t worry about that.” Bernadette doesn’t want to have yet another conversation about Richard.

  “Because we both know he can be ruthless.”

  Bernadette needs to focus Lucia’s attention on her own situation. “He’s just venting—”

  “He’s taking advantage of you. That’s what he does! He uses people—”

  “Lucia, we don’t need to talk about Richard. It’s fine.… I wanted to tell you about Danny and this really interesting summer job he got.”

  “Danny?” Lucia is having trouble shifting gears.

  “Max’s oldest, who we were talking about.”

  “Oh, yes. The teacher.”

  “Right. And he got this research job with an educational think tank, something about different learning styles for different kids. Anyway, it dovetails beautifully with his real job and pays enough for him to get through the summer and he got it on Craigslist. Amazing, huh?”

  “I’ve thought about Craigslist.…” Lucia says, a half sentence.

  “Oh, it’s a great resource.” Bernadette tries to keep the relief out of her voice. “I think Danny met his partner on Craigslist, too, but he hasn’t ever really said that. Max and I guessed it, but maybe we’re wrong. And then Max found a lot of his beekeeping equipment there. You can find anything on Craigslist!” She puts a hand on Lucia’s hand, to reinforce what she’s about to say. “You know, Lucia, feel free to come in and use my computer whenever you want. There are just tons of jobs listed.”

  “Oh, I will, thank you, Detta,” Lucia says.

  And Bernadette lets it rest there, out on the table—You need to come in and start checking Craigslist for a job.

  But Lucia doesn’t. Each day, as Lucia watches her child retreat further into herself, she grows more and more concerned and less and less capable of any purposeful movement.

  Maggie’s eyes are usually downcast. She draws constantly or rereads the books Lucia has bought her since they’ve moved, flipping the pages over and over. Lucia’s initial response to her daughter’s speechlessness—her wait-and-see approach—no longer serves either of them.

  She tries cajoling and bribes and pleading. Early in the morning when the two share the same pillow and look into each other’s eyes, Lucia whispers, “Please, sweetheart, tell me one thing.” But Maggie doesn’t. Any of the things she wants to say to Lucia, her mother doesn’t want to hear. Instead, Maggie chooses silence and her mother’s total attention. Something will happen, she feels it, if she doesn’t talk. She doesn’t know what it will be, but she’s betting that it will be better than what she’s got.

  FROM RIVERSIDE, RICHARD HAS SETTLED on text messages now as his communication of choice. He’s able to send more carefully crafted diatribes, endless loops of accusations. Lucia’s steadfast refusal to change her mind has finally provoked Richard’s anger, and he focuses it where he knows it will hurt the most. Obviously, Lucia’s selfish and precipitous decision has caused Maggie’s problem; obviously, it’s not normal for a five-year-old child to suddenly stop talking; obviously, Lucia must get some help for Maggie. If she doesn’t, Richard will get a lawyer and force her to—it may be the one thing that Richard can make her do. Send me the bills, he texts her, but get Maggie some help. The message that she’s being a terrible mother is delivered loud and clear.

  That’s how they end up at Dr. Greenstein’s. The recommendation came from Max, no stranger to the idiosyncratic ways children have of dealing with life’s vicissitudes. He enlisted Dr. Greenstein’s help after the death of his wife.

  Maggie doesn’t resist going to the doctor’s office. There are lots of things to do there, games and puzzles, new books to read, and large pads of creamy drawing paper next to cups full of thick Magic Markers and crayons, some in colors she’s never seen before—fuzzy-wuzzy brown, atomic tangerine, screamin’ green, and her favorite, razzle-dazzle rose. If she can draw here, she’s fine. She can shut out the rest of the world. The doctor talks to her, and even though she knows she’s supposed to talk back, nothing happens when she doesn’t.

  Dr. Greenstein seems like a nice enough lady, more like a grandmother than a doctor. She wears long skirts and loose blouses and thick, flat sandals. And her toenails are painted a shocking baby blue. Maggie can’t stop looking at her feet. They seem to belong to another person, a younger person.

  After Maggie has been seeing Dr. Greenstein for several weeks, two times a week, Lucia and the doctor have a session. Maggie stays with Max. They have a date to harvest the honey.
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br />   In Dr. Greenstein’s corner office, part of a one-story brick medical building in Westwood, Lucia watches the older woman close the drapes against the afternoon glare and settle her heavy body into her leather desk chair. Lucia waits. Is this the woman who is going to unlock the mystery of her child?

  “Maggie may be punishing you for leaving her father” is what the doctor says. No preamble, simply the diagnosis put forth as a suggestion.

  “That’s not in my daughter’s nature.”

  “Do you have an alternative theory?” the doctor asks, her voice neutral, not a hint of impatience in it.

  Lucia shakes her head. “This is all so out of character for her.”

  “Well then,” the doctor says carefully, “could she be repeating behavior she’s witnessed? Silence as coping mechanism?”

  “I don’t know” is said too quickly, but Lucia knows immediately without having to search for it, the moment when she decided just that.

  She is seven months pregnant with Maggie and so proud of it. She and Richard are standing in the kitchen of their Riverside apartment. It is late afternoon and the setting sun lies in a wide stripe across the tile floor, turning it a glowing red. Richard is going on and on about the stupidity of “all those home-birthers” and how they don’t realize that they put the baby at risk. He did some research, he tells her, since she raised the topic at dinner the night before and he holds several pieces of paper in his hand with columns of statistics spread across the pages and he is waving them around as he speaks. Facts, figures, numbers, and percentages—all that Richard deems holy.

  Lucia remembers that she attempted to get a word in about how she felt. That she wanted more say in what happens during the birth. That if they were in a hospital, then their doctor, Dr. Roebuck, would be setting the rules and she is afraid that her wishes wouldn’t be honored.

  “Richard,” she remembers saying as calmly as she could, “I’m here, too. Try to hear what I’m saying. I want to be present at our child’s birth. I want you there, too. It’s something we can do together—”

  “Of course you’ll be present. Who else is giving birth but you?”

  “No … what I mean is—I want to participate in the choices and the decisions. I want it to be collaborative. You know Dr. Roebuck, he’s so … definite, but if we had a midwife—”

  And Richard interrupted her again. “No child of mine is going to be born at home with some medieval person called a ‘midwife.’ End of discussion. End of story.” And he walked out of the room, leaving Lucia standing there in the empty kitchen. He never listens. Ever. What’s the point?

  Such a small moment, Lucia knows, but she remembers thinking—That’s it, it’s useless. It was the moment that crystallized all that went before, the years of not being heard, the attempts to say what she felt. And then, during all the years that followed when nothing changed, Lucia began to plan her early morning flight that ended up at Bernadette’s.

  “All right,” Dr. Greenstein says now with a certain briskness as she recrosses her legs and pushes her body back in the chair, “then we must ask ourselves, what is your daughter getting from this behavior?”

  Lucia shakes her head. “Everything’s harder because she won’t speak.”

  “For you or for her?”

  “Both of us.”

  “What do you think she would say if she were still speaking?”

  Lucia doesn’t answer right away. This question she considers seriously. She looks around the crowded office, giving herself time to ponder it. If Lucia came here twice a week instead of Maggie, she knows she’d be hard-pressed not to tidy up. She’s itching to put the toys away that are scattered throughout the play area, straighten the medical books that are pushed haphazardly into the bookshelves, or at least straighten up the piles of paper on Dr. Greenstein’s desk so they don’t look like they’re ready to topple over. What does this kind of messiness say about Dr. Greenstein’s skill as a therapist? Lucia has no idea.

  The doctor waits as silence accumulates in the room. Finally, Lucia speaks. “She’d probably tell me she wants to go home, to her father.”

  Dr. Greenstein nods. “Most children, no matter how unhappy the home situation, want their family intact.”

  “I understand that.” Then, “It’s hard to explain to a five-year-old why I had to leave her father.”

  The doctor nods. She agrees.

  “But I did.” Lucia decides to say what she’s told no one else. “I was certain I couldn’t be the mother Maggie needs if I stayed.”

  “Ah …” Dr. Greenstein says as if she completely understands, and Lucia relaxes for the first time since she sat down in the very uncomfortable upholstered chair opposite the desk.

  It is only then that Lucia can ask, “What can we do?”

  “Don’t speak for her,” Dr. Greenstein says carefully.

  “Oh, I don’t,” Lucia answers in a split second, telling Dr. Greenstein that she, in fact, does. Most mothers do without even realizing it.

  “In selective mutism it often happens that the mother, unconsciously, becomes the child’s voice in the world. She knows her child so well. She wants to facilitate her way, but speaking for your child makes it less and less necessary for her to speak for herself.”

  “All right.”

  “And don’t so easily understand all her gestures and signs. Do you feel sometimes that you’re having a conversation with her, only you’re voicing both parts?”

  “Yes.”

  “Don’t. You’re making it too easy for her.”

  After a moment, “I see.”

  “And never underestimate the courage it will take your child to begin speaking again. Not speaking reinforces itself with almost no effort. To break free and speak … well, that is an act of bravery.”

  “But she’ll do it, won’t she?”

  “We certainly hope so.”

  That answer isn’t at all satisfactory to Lucia.

  MAGGIE WATCHES MAX TAKE A LARGE KNIFE and cut around the edges of the honeycomb frame. “We’re using the crush-and-strain method,” he tells her. They’re standing in the backyard, both wearing their pith helmets with veil. Max is making sure as he cuts that the honeycomb falls into a large white bucket, the kind painters use.

  He’s already explained what the other white bucket, which they’ve washed and is now waiting, will be used for. It looks exactly like the first one, only it has a spigot at the bottom. And Max has placed a large, snug-fitting strainer across the top.

  “There’s something called an extractor,” Max explains as he takes up the second frame and begins cutting through the waxy comb, “which is a big stainless-steel bucket with a crank on top. You put the whole frame in and the extractor spins it around and flings the honey out, but I don’t have one of those yet. It’s probably a whole lot easier, but I think this will work fine.” Maggie thinks whatever Max does will work out fine. Max has taken up residence in a small piece of her empty heart, aching for Richard’s presence.

  After Max has cut the comb from the third frame, he shows Maggie a tool that looks like a paint scraper and tells her it’s her turn. “Here’s the ‘crush’ part. We need to break up the comb we’ve got in the bucket so that the honey can get out. Do you think you can do it?” Maggie nods, eager to try. “Mash away. Like this.” And Max shows her how to jab and press on the comb so that the lovely honey squirts out.

  “And after you break it up as much as you can, we’ll pour the whole mess into the strainer and slowly, without us having to do a thing, only the honey will seep out through the strainer and drain into the bucket. And then we turn on the spigot and eat it!” They grin at each other like the coconspirators they are, and Max hands her the scraper.

  Tentatively at first, Maggie pushes the metal against the delicate comb and is amazed to see honey spurt out in a golden ribbon. She looks up at Max, who stands close by watching. There’s wonderment on her face and he laughs. “Yep, pretty amazing. Keep on going. We’ve got a lot of h
oney to squeeze out.”

  The afternoon is gentle—a soft breeze, the sounds of traffic a distant hum, the house empty and waiting because Lucia is at Dr. Greenstein’s and Bernadette is at the market. To Maggie it feels like she and Max are sharing something secret, something magical. Only them, only the two of them. This is as safe as she feels these days—out here in the backyard with Max and the bees. It is the kindness of Max and his complete lack of expectation. He doesn’t need her to talk. He’s fine with her just as she is, which is why Maggie is able to murmur, without looking at him, “Where’s my daddy?” It’s a whisper, just as Dr. Greenstein said, no more substantial than the air rustling the palm fronds, but Max hears it and he makes sure he doesn’t startle.

  Maggie’s eyes are downcast. She concentrates on her task, her brow furrowed, pushing and poking at the combs and releasing the luscious honey. Did he really hear what he thought he heard? He answers it anyway.

  “In Riverside, at the apartment there.”

  “Why doesn’t he come?” And this time she looks up at Max, and her total bewilderment, her helplessness, breaks his heart. What can he say?

  “Your mommy and daddy are working that out” is what he finally comes up with, even though he knows it’s not satisfactory in the least. More evasion, he knows, and then a flicker of anger within him that he’s being put in this situation—having to dish up half-truths to a desperate child.

  Her eyes still searching his, Maggie pleads with him, “Don’t tell. Promise.” And he knows she means, Don’t tell about my talking, and all he can do is promise. He nods solemnly and she is comforted. She believes him.

  Later in the afternoon, as Max and Maggie are finishing up by carefully filling sterilized bottles with the strained honey, Lucia watches from the kitchen window. She’s helping Bernadette prepare dinner, but her thoughts are on her child and the talk she had earlier with Dr. Greenstein.

  “The only time she seems happy is when she’s with Max.”

  Bernadette, stirring spaghetti sauce on the stove, shrugs. “He has the same effect on me.” But Lucia hasn’t heard her. She’s still staring out the window, watching, the silverware in her hands forgotten.