Lost in Carmel Read online

  “Nothing, really. I was just looking out the window.”

  Natalie turned her face to the tall, narrow window across the room while she searched for her words. She liked the way Anne sat back, allowing her time to find her place. The morning's emotions mixed with sunlight filtering through the leaded glass and fell in broken pieces on the patterned rug in front of her.

  “And... everything was so beautiful.” Natalie shrugged, unable to define the dark shroud that covered her.

  Anne let the silence settle in the room before she nudged, “Go on.”

  “People were strolling down the street, I could hear laughter. Construction workers next door where talking. And...and singing.” Natalie shook her head. “Have you ever heard of such a thing?”

  “Only in Italy.” Anne nodded.

  “Anyway,” Natalie looked away as the clouds closed in, “it was all too much. I—I know it doesn't make any sense.”

  “Don't worry about making sense. We'll sort it all out later. Just let the faucet run.”

  Natalie pulled the scarf tighter around her palm waiting for the first trickle from the tap. “I didn't fit in.” She looked over at Anne, eyes wide, brimming with tears.

  “I get it.”

  Unable to sit with the truth, Natalie reached for an exit line as she rubbed her hand over her scalp. “Or maybe I do fit in. I guess I should just go ahead and join the convent while I'm here.”

  “You're not too far off.” Anne looked thoughtful as if she were carefully measuring her words. “It is the last divestiture of self before taking final vows. Hair is a significant piece of our individuality. Whatever we do with it, it's very much a part of our identity. So, if we cut it away, we're cutting away a bit of our self. For what it's worth, I think you're trying to find a way to tell the truth.” She leaned forward, closing the space between them. “What is it you want me to see?”

  The unexpected question left Natalie struggling to connect the dots before one tiny syllable pushed forward.

  “Me.”

  The answer was small and the room absorbed it, leaving Natalie to wonder how many words of confessions still clung to these ancient stucco walls.

  “Not Natalie Hampton,” she continued. “Just me.”

  She pulled back the curtain, exposing The Great Oz to her audience. In his place stood a damaged woman, head shorn like a penitent, her life a muffled scream.

  “I hear you,” Anne said softly

  I hear you.

  I hear you.

  Anne's words formed a bridge across the divide and Natalie held her breath as she reached out to test her footing on the first rung. Having stripped herself of all pretenses, she shivered now in her nakedness.

  “I say I want you to see me.” She lifted her eyes to meet Anne's calm and steady gaze. “But I don't even know who that is. I look at this woman smiling back at me from glossy magazine pages …and I know she’s a phony.”

  Silence filled the space between them as Anne took a deep breath.

  “Did you feel relieved?”

  “Relieved?” Natalie repeated, as she tugged at the scarf. “At first. Maybe. I felt like I was in a pressure cooker and I had to press the relief valve.”

  “Did that work?”

  “Only while I was cutting. I felt a little bit of exhilaration.”

  “How so?”

  “Because it was so drastic, there’d be no going back.” Natalie looked over at Anne. “I didn’t want to go back.”

  She'd been holding onto the reins with a death-grip for years, her fingers blistered from the leather sliding back and forth. What would happen, she wondered, if she dropped the reins and let the horses run free?

  “Back to what?” Anne asked.

  “Any of it. Stan. My life. The lies.”

  “What kind of lies?”

  “That everything was fine.”

  “We have a saying in my profession. Fine stands for: Feelings Inside Not Expressed.”

  “Good one.” Natalie didn’t even try to hide the rolling of her eyes.

  “I know, that’s the kind of psychobabble most people hate, but you’d be surprised how often it’s true. Case in point, you just said you didn’t want to pretend anymore that everything was fine.”

  “Right.” The word was a sigh. “Everything is definitely not fine.”

  “I think it's perfectly reasonable that you would feel confused and overwhelmed right now.”

  “Overwhelmed?” Natalie held the word like a bubble in her hands, studying it. “More like… Humpty Dumpty lying on the ground with all my bits and pieces scattered around me.”

  “Again, that’s understandable.” Anne took a moment before starting again. “When Monty and I talked, he was worried you might try to harm yourself. Is that a legitimate concern?”

  Week-old images of a sterile hospital space devoid of any sharp objects burst into the room. A sour-faced orderly rummaging through her purse, removing her nail file and clippers, even her bottle of aspirin while a nameless tune wafted from the overhead speakers as if she were checking into the Hilton. Except all the offending items were placed in a plastic bag, like evidence from a crime scene, to be returned to her upon her release.

  A doctor she'd never seen before, was talking to Monty in a stage whisper off to the side. She struggled to hold the pen when she was asked to sign her name at the bottom of a page where words swam like watercolors left out in the rain. She looked to Monty for confirmation, and his solemn nod had her surrender.

  “I’m not sure.” Natalie shook her head slowly trying to imagine Monty and Anne having that conversation.

  “Have you ever tried to hurt yourself before?”

  Not knowing what else Monty might have divulged, she answered Anne as truthfully as she could. “Would you believe me, if I said I don't really know?”

  “That depends. Try me.”

  “I was nineteen, overly dramatic and high-strung. Cliff Harrison was my first love, my first lover, and my first heartbreak.”

  Anne's slightly raised eyebrow as she scratched in her notebook, the only indication of name recognition.

  “We were working on a movie together. Everyone knew it was a typical on-set romance. Everyone but me.” Natalie mustered a wry grin. “Anyway… at the wrap party, Cliff told me he was headed to Venice. He all but patted me on the head. I was dismissed. Cliff had spent three months circling me like a golden wolf, now he just turned and walked away, without so much as a glance over his shoulder.

  “I handed over my vulnerability, my inexperience, and my nineteen years to a Norse god who took it as his due. And then I was left standing there at the Kraft Service table, abandoned amongst the bruised fruit. Used. Embarrassed. So, I went home and threw myself a little pity party with one too many cocktails and a few sleeping pills. I passed out. Woke up in the hospital.”

  She remembered Monty hovering over her hospital bed. “Natty, honey, what have you done? Did you do this on purpose? That bastard Cliff Harrison isn't worth this.”

  “Honestly,” Natalie shook her head, “I don't remember what I was thinking beforehand. I don't think I was really trying to kill myself. If I was, I wasn't very good at it.”

  Anne's eyes never left Natalie's face. “And what about now?”

  Natalie folded her hands in her lap, taking her time before she answered. “I don't have any real thoughts about hurting myself,” Natalie assured the young woman. “I’d like to think I couldn’t do that to Tess. But I also worry that it might be in my genes.”

  “How so?” Anne cocked her head to the side.

  “My father killed himself a few weeks ago.”

  6 Fine

  “It knocked the wind out of me,” Natalie said.

  Anne’s nod of the head was solemn. “Of course.”

  It was several days later, and the pair were still unpacking the trunk filled with Natalie’s anxiety. Natalie liked the way Anne allowed some pain to just sit there on the surface and let it breathe. There was comfor
t in knowing they had all the time in the world.

  Anne liked to duck in and out of subjects. Dip into the past and then drag it into the present to see where it fit today. Natalie was already used to her rhythm after only a few days and found she enjoyed the leisurely pace of conversation.

  It felt less like a physician gathering information to check off the boxes, and more like a trusted friend asking questions over a cup of coffee. Anne’s laid-back style worked as a counterbalance to Natalie’s coiled up posture. Under Anne’s steady hands, Natalie could feel herself unwinding. Atrophied muscles tested the ground as she prepared to stand.

  “You’re in charge, here. You’re in the driver’s seat,” Anne had told her. “We go at your pace. If something’s uncomfortable, and you’re not ready to talk about it, just say so. Remember, this is a safe place. In here, there’s no one to impress. No image to protect. Nothing you say can shock me; just give me your truth.”

  “It’s not like we were close, but lately everything knocked the wind out of me. I started having nightmares where I saw him swinging from a rope. I’d wake up screaming. It got to the point that I was almost afraid to go to sleep, because I knew what awaited me. Then the dreams starting morphing into other people hanging from the end of a rope. Me. Even Tess. But mostly, me.”

  “I can see that.” Anne nodded. “Is that how he died, did he hang himself?”

  “Yes.” The taste of it was sour on her tongue. “He lived alone. A small apartment in Cumberland, Maryland. It was days before anyone found him. I couldn’t stop thinking about the darkness he must have been living in. So dark that he couldn’t find a ray of light. My God—” The words stuck in the back of her throat.

  “I’m so sorry. That’s a very graphic image.”

  “It seems like that’s all I’m left with.”

  “The news is still fairly fresh,” Anne offered. “Give it time.”

  “I don’t know why it hit me so hard. We were practically strangers.”

  “Strangers, but still connected. Aside from the incident after your break-up with Cliff, have there been other times you’ve thought about harming yourself?” Anne gently nudged the topic onto the table.

  The knot in Natalie’s stomach pulled tighter. “There have been times. My father killed himself. His brother killed himself…” Words trailed off with no place to land.

  “Suicide is not your destiny.” Anne sat very still and let the words speak for themselves.

  “Sometimes I’m afraid that it is. I’m afraid this anxiety I live with is a precursor.”

  “That’s good. That means you’re aware of the seriousness of the situation. Aware of the statistics that point to the fact that you are more susceptible. But susceptible doesn’t mean destined.”

  Natalie closed her eyes and breathed deeper. “I don’t want this to be Tess’s legacy.”

  “It doesn’t have to be.” Anne was direct. “The fact that you’re here, asking for help means you’re already taking the right steps. And another important thing that you might want to hold onto is that struggling with anxiety doesn’t mean it’s going to escalate into anything else. You’re going to find ways to manage your anxiety. Putting yourself in control is half the battle.”

  “I like the sound of that.”

  They talked for a while longer. Digging, dissecting, and discovering. The more Natalie talked about her fears, the less imposing they seemed. It was in the dark, in the still, quiet places of the mind, where such thoughts threw down roots. There was something about pulling them out into the light of day that rendered them impotent.

  “Aside from the obvious alarm that comes with such horrific news, why else do you think the loss of your estranged father knocked the wind out of you?”

  Natalie sat quietly waiting for an answer to show up. “Because his passing meant he took the maybe someday with him.”

  “Yes.” Anne's tone was almost a whisper. “How old were you when he left you and your mother?”

  “Ten. Just like Tess.”

  Anne was nodding. “What was his name?”

  “Alex. Alexander. My middle name is Alexandra.”

  “What do you remember about Alex?”

  Natalie reached back and rummaged through an old toy box looking for an early memory of a man she called daddy.

  “He used to sit at the kitchen table playing Solitaire, a cigarette hanging from the corner of his lips. I'd sit quiet as a mouse, my little legs tucked under me, and watch in fascination at how far the ash would burn before falling off. It was like a magic trick. He always caught it just in time. Funny now when I think about it, but Solitaire was a metaphor for the man.”

  She sat with the faded image, watching the end of a cigarette burn red. “What I don't understand,” she continued, “is how he could twirl me around and call me his little princess then walk away as if I meant nothing to him.”

  “Is that what you think? That he didn't care about you?”

  “Not enough to fight for me.”

  “Maybe he didn't want to interfere with your dream.”

  “Nora's dream,” Natalie corrected the record. “He let himself be bullied out of the picture by my mother. “

  “Was he weak? Or was Nora just stronger?”

  “A little of both, maybe.” Natalie's heart pushed against her chest as she saw the little girl standing in the kitchen, watching a father walk out of her life. Green and white squares of linoleum swirled beneath patent leather shoes as tears pulled the scene out of focus.

  “I was begging him to stay and for a moment I thought I'd won when he stopped and looked back over his shoulder at me. He had the brownest eyes I've ever seen. Time froze, just like in the movies. Only if it had been a movie, he would have run back to me. Instead, he turned and walked away, without another word.”

  “He didn't just leave Nora, he left you.”

  “Precisely.” Natalie drew her arms around herself in an unconscious hug for the little girl left standing in the doorway. “The time between visits stretched out longer and longer. Then one day he casually said he was moving back to Cumberland, Maryland, to be closer to his family, and I thought, wait a minute, I'm your family.”

  “Since you said earlier that you didn't have a relationship, I'm assuming the visits fell by the wayside?”

  “Scattered moments at best,” Natalie agreed. “A sixteenth birthday, cards here and there, and random phone calls. The last visit was after Tess was born. We were such strangers it was painful.”

  “But there's a piece of that child still living inside of you. The little girl who hoped her daddy would choose her.”

  “Pathetic, right?”

  “Not at all. Completely normal. You said you got the wind knocked out of you because his dying took the maybe someday with him. I know you hate the idea of whining about your childhood, but trust me on this, Natalie, incidents like these leave a mark. There are no excuses, but reasons. It doesn't mean you get to go around and blame your parents for all your bad decisions. What it does mean is that you're human, and you're a culmination of all the things in your life. Good and bad. It's just one more piece of the puzzle.”

  “Trying to put Humpty Dumpty back together again?”

  “Something like that.”

  7 Excavating

  Anne was sitting in her usual chair, one leg tucked under her, the notebook now thick with three weeks’ worth of comments and observations spread open on her lap, nodding as Natalie spoke.

  “I was ready to file for divorce,” Natalie said. “But even so, it caught me by surprise.”

  “I can imagine,” Anne said. “Do you feel strong enough to talk about it, today?”

  So today is the day?

  Natalie was standing in front of the tall window, staring down into the cloistered garden below. She knew Anne was used to her fidgeting and left her alone. Sometimes it was easier to talk when she walked around the room instead of sitting with the words in her lap. She'd wander and her thoughts would follow, tum
bling out as if the exercise released them from captivity.

  Her attention was drawn to a tiny slip of a girl dead-heading flowers in the far corner of the garden. Sister Elisabetta. Her slim frame was bent over her task, and Natalie knew from experience that she was probably humming as she worked.

  The two of them had bumped into one another several times and struck up a conversation while Natalie strolled around the private garden. Anne managed to pull some strings and receive permission for Natalie to use the walled off area traditionally reserved only for the sisters. It was a place to soothe jangled nerves, and Natalie was grateful for the peace and quiet among the flowers and fountains after her daily sessions. She didn't even mind the conversations with the tiny nun who sat beside her on the bench one day and asked if she was American. Thrilled to be considered an anonymous tourist, Natalie found herself looking forward to their impromptu meetings and the young nun's questions.

  Forehead pressed against the cool windowpane, Natalie watched Sister Elisabetta digging in the corner of the garden, yanking with both hands, one foot braced against the brick border for leverage, as she struggled with a stubborn batch of weeds. She pulled and tugged until the deep roots gave way almost sending her backwards, and Natalie smiled at the young woman's tenacity. All the while Natalie was internally pulling at her own batch of weeds.

  A lot of the hard work had already been done. Daily sessions achieved what would have taken a couple of months under ordinary circumstances. Day after day Anne held the flashlight as Natalie reached into dark corners, dragging seemingly unrelated bits and pieces out from hiding, to be made sense of in the light of day. Reaching back to find the common threads tangled up in the history of her anxiety and panic attacks.

  Like the construction workers outside Natalie's bedroom window, she and Anne were excavating. Digging at the crumbling foundation and clearing the way for repairs. But more importantly, they were building a foundation of trust strong enough for Natalie to stand on in this moment.