INSIDE

“There were lovely people at home who could take care of me.”

It was her grandmother, Dede Ball, who barred Lucie and brother Desi Arnaz Jr. from sweets and to this day, “neither of us have had a cavity.”

She throws her head back and opens her mouth as proof.

“They (her parents) would come home on weekends, we’d have summers at Del Mar Beach and that was lovely. But there was a lot of them not being there, so when I had my kids I was really trying hard, because here we are again, two actors doing two different shows.”

Lucie is clearly self-aware and introspective, especially about her husband.

“Probably the moment I fell in love with him (Larry) was during a conversation about characters, and I never say this – God strike me dead --   but I compared something to Lucy and Ethel,” she says. “And he goes, ‘Who?’ I said, ‘You know, Lucy and Ethel.’ And he goes, ‘Oh, I did not watch that show growing up.’ It was like, ‘I always heard there were people like you. What spaceship did you land on?’ I just loved that he didn’t care.”

The couple lived together for years in Katonah until 2007, when Lucie credits New York taxes with sucking the life out of the actors’ existence.

Weston became home because of its closeness to Lucie’s nice “Cuban cousin” and proximity to gigs in New York and goings-on in Westchester.

Art fills the Connecticut home: “Stuff we liked, stuff her dad gave her and we didn’t collect with any eye to anything except what we liked,” Larry says.

Luckinbill points to a painting depicting a poor immigrant turned welcome guest in Joe’s Clam Bar.

“It’s a genuine, Depression-era works project, which is not germane to this article, but it’s just spectacular,” he says, mentioning that, he, too, is a writer, with works in Esquire and Cosmopolitan magazines under his belt. “I love Depression art, not depressive art, but I like how people made their way.”

For the performers, it is about doing what feels right and what is comfortable.

Like filling their home with the sounds of son Joe Luckinbill’s guitar and smooth growl.

Or stashing Hemingway on all shelves.

Actually, stashing books by all authors everywhere. 

“This is only one-third of it, the rest we’re giving to the Westport Library,” Lucie says.

She stores hundreds of photos in scrapbooks – of her family, of her life, of her parents.