Lost in Carmel

by Terri Lee

  Natalie moved the worn leather journal sitting beside her coffee mug, closer. The smell of rawhide was a time machine, transporting her back to the convent library all those years ago. The memory of her shorn head crisp and clear. She could still feel the shaking of her hands as Anne placed the journal on her open palms, saying, ‘Take this, and fill it with your thoughts. All the things you want to say, but more importantly all the things you can’t say.’

  Natalie had started off timidly. The weight of the pen resting between thumb and forefinger taunting her as she stared at the blank expanse. But soon enough the ivory pages were the safe harbor she found herself returning to time and time again. Since that day, she’d never stopped scribbling.

  Now, she would lift the words pressed between the pages and hand them over to Sandra for review. Most of them. Some of the dark thoughts were still too private for public consumption. But she was willing to open the vault and hand over a few treasures for her hard-working biographer. She felt sorry for Sandra, who had been tasked with creating some sort of masterpiece out of the piddling scraps of Natalie’s life story.

  “I dug up some old entries in my journal last night.” Natalie ran her fingers over the tanned cover.

  Sandra snapped to attention, her eyes darting from the diary to Natalie’s face. “Really? Are you willing to share?”

  “Some of it, yes.”

  Natalie could almost hear Sandra thinking, what else have you got in there? while she thumbed through the pages, looking for the pertinent entry.

  “Ah, here it is.” Natalie flattened the spine to mark the page. “You have all the details you could possibly need about both lawsuits. All the names and dates, all the facts in black and white. But here is a glimpse into my thoughts at the end of it all. Almost a year later.”

  * * *

  June 5, 1979

  I won.

  I won the battle for my daughter, but my fear is that she may have been destroyed in the process. A hollow victory to say the least. Tess is no longer my sweet and curious little brown-eyed girl. She’s withdrawn and anxious. I am worn and battle weary. We are a couple of soldier’s home from war, with nothing to say to one another.

  Sessions with child psychologists, questions from the court appointed guardian ad litem, home visits, and one-on-one talks with the judge, have taken their toll. And God only knows what she’s hearing at school. Everyone poking and prodding, demanding answers an eleven-year-old doesn’t have. She has no enemy; she loves us both. Yet, she is Switzerland drawn into a world war; a neutral party now forced to pick a side. She’s retreated behind the wall and I can’t say that I blame her. The two people charged with protecting her from the world, failed. We can no longer be trusted.

  She smiles, but it’s empty. As if she only smiles to please me. And each time I see the corner of her mouth resist the attempt, my heart breaks a little more. We ask so much more of children than we would ever put up with ourselves. Forced to shuffle from one home to another, dragging their belongings behind them like a nomad.

  Here’s the punch line; now that the custody battle is over, Stan has moved on with his life and wife number two. He’s been too busy for his scheduled weekends with Tess, for it appears that all his playdates have been claimed by the new Mrs. Graber. He’s barely seen Tess in the last three months. I guess once the case was wrapped up, he was free to step out of the role of doting father. It was an ill-fitting suit to begin with and now it’s back to business as usual.

  The studio lawsuit will be settled out of court. Cheers to that. Nothing left but a few signatures. At least I won’t have to drag my ass back to court over that one. If I never see the inside of another courtroom, I’ll be fine. I plan on getting the hell out of Dodge as soon as the paperwork is final.

  I’m battered, bruised, and broke.

  Side note: one of the more shocking things to come to light in the divorce was the info about what a spending spree Stan has been on over the last few years. He was investing in every hair brained notion that crossed his desk. Not to mention over leveraging us for The House on Fremont. He was spending like there was no tomorrow, only tomorrow is here, and the bill is due. Good God, Nora did a better job of managing my finances.

  Still, I’ll pay my $900,000 fine, and agree to take my punishment like the good little girl I am. But since I can’t make a movie for two years, I’m going to pack up my meager belongings and head out of town. Leave Hollywood in my review mirror and find someplace peaceful to lick my wounds.

  I’m tired. Down to the marrow in my bones. Every day another headline. The constant drip… drip, feels like water torture on my soul.

  I know. I know. Poor, poor, pitiful me. I still have more than most people will ever see in their lifetime. But I’ve lost so much more than money.

  We all have.

  * * *

  Sandra handed the journal back to Natalie. “That’s pretty heavy stuff.”

  “My state of mind at the time,” Natalie mused, while flipping through more pages.

  “Has Tess recovered?”

  The question caught Natalie off guard. “Well, I’m not in a position to speak for my grown daughter.” She was uncomfortable. “But I would say time has a way of smoothing over the rough edges. She’s finding her own way. She’s seems happy. Luckily, she wants nothing to do with show business, she’s in college now. At Stanford.”

  Natalie wondered if Sandra could sense a change of tone in her voice. That slight variation in octave as the half-truths fell from her mouth. Half was all she could manage because the truth was complicated. Tess… was complicated.

  After years of therapy and a recent stint in re-hab, Natalie could only pray that the very words ‘she’s finding her own way, she seems happy’ would be a prophecy. For now, Natalie would sit on a truth that wasn’t hers to tell.

  Sandra hadn’t seemed to notice the catch in Natalie’s breath as she was busy rummaging through her notes before looking up with another question.

  “So, the agreement with the studio was that you would pay the fine, and not be allowed to work for two years?”

  “Yep, blackballed. Once again, I was a history-maker.” Natalie tucked her hair behind her ears as she gathered her thoughts. “The reality is, no matter how big of a star you are, we’re all only temporary hires. Every actor out there knows the terror of not working. It’s one of the nightmares we live with, that our last movie just might be our last. Only this time, the fear was real. And the god-awful truth was at that point in my career, even if I’d been allowed to work, the only role I probably could have gotten was a cameo on The Love Boat.”

  Sandra’s pinched mouth signaled she wasn’t buying it. “Question.” Sandra held up her finger to stay the conversation. “Why were you sued in the first place, if you had a doctor’s excuse?”

  “Ah.” Natalie sighed. “Good one. Well, basically it comes down to the fact that we didn’t follow proper procedure. Any doctor I enlisted outside of the studio doctors were to be provided with notes, diagnosis, and a treatment plan. An expensive little loophole, we discovered too late.”

  “I see.” Sandra nodded along.

  “Anyway, I had to be properly chastised,” Natalie continued. “And it had to be public. It was bigger than me; the studio was making a statement to any other star who might think of bolting during a film.”

  Natalie searched through the pages of her journal. “I found some other entries you might like, too. There’s something in here about my fall from grace. And I remember thinking, if felt like the whole word was trying to knock me off my pedestal. A pedestal they built, mind you. So instead of hanging on by my fingernails, I dove off headfirst. Jumped for my life.”

  “And you landed in Carmel.”

  “Precisely. Signed my name on the dotted line and never looked back.”

  “Hmm…” Sandra leaned forward, chin in hand, and nodded in the direction of the journal. “Anything in there about Nico?”

  Natalie’s smile was faint at t
he sound of his name. She held the journal in one hand as her thumb riffled through the pages with the other. “Only about a hundred pages. Where should we start?

  47 Digging Up Bones

  “Nico Di Natale.” The name was a smooth caramel, melting on Natalie’s tongue.

  Natalie’s fingers caressed the words on the page in front of her. Her forefinger conjuring up an old spell as it circled Nico’s name again and again. Stalling for time in one instant, while stirring up images of a decade old love story, in another.

  She looked across the table at Sandra. “You know the cliché ‘sometimes, love just isn’t enough?’

  Sandra nodded silently.

  “Well, it’s never been truer than in this case. We wrote furiously to one another, pouring everything out in our letters. Funny, how it’s so much easier to spill the contents of your heart onto paper than face to face. He wrote such beautiful letters; I fell in love with him over and over. Yet, my replies felt so inadequate. The only thing I wanted to say was how much I loved him… but the reality of my life kept butting in. I was drowning in a sea of court documents. I could barely find the time to breathe. Any extra moments were devoted to Tess.”

  Sandra’s eyes never left Natalie’s face, even though Natalie’s gaze was thousands of miles away.

  “The calls grew fewer and farther between. The time difference between us made it difficult. He’d call at a bad time. I’d call at a bad time. Once I called and Caterina answered… so I just hung up. And when Nico and I did speak, it felt so stilted. A choreographed conversation between strangers. None of the spontaneous connection we were used to. I could live on the letters, but the phone calls left me doubting everything. I could hear it in his voice. Maybe he heard it in mine.”

  “That he had moved on?” Sandra’s voice was full of incredulity.

  “Yes. We’d missed our moment.”

  After several silent moments, each woman fitting that final puzzle piece into place, Natalie continued. “Caterina never gave that interview denouncing her previous insinuations. Not that it would have mattered to the press.”

  “Why do you say that?”

  “Like I said before, no one ever remembers the retraction on a juicy story like this. It would be like trying to stuff the fireworks back into their casing. But…” Natalie held up her forefinger, “it would have mattered to me. The press had taken what Nico and I had and turned into something sordid and unrecognizable. The shame I felt over the fact that Nico was being dragged through the mud along with me was real. He never signed up for that kind of crap. Knowing that people would believe the headlines and think the worst of Nico, just killed me. And the fact that Caterina refused to offer any help in trying to stay the avalanche she started, spoke volumes. How in the world were Nico and I supposed to move past the elephant in the room?”

  “How did it end?”

  “With a whimper.” Natalie sighed. “It just slipped away. I hate to admit it, but it appears Caterina may have been right all along. I wasn’t right for him. He didn’t fit in my world. And there wasn’t room for me in his. My last letters went unanswered. Which really is an answer, after all.”

  “So, you never heard from him again?”

  “Nope.”

  Where did you go Nico? Nico had disappeared from her life as quietly as he’d entered.

  “I can only hope he found love and happiness.”

  “And what about you?” Sandra laid the pencil across the legal pad, dropping her role as court reporter and asking as a friend. “Did you find love and happiness?”

  “Happiness, for sure.” Natalie grinned. “It’s taken me a while, but I’m comfortable. I love my life.”

  “But no love?”

  “There are many kinds of love.” Natalie played coy. “I love my daughter, my animals, my home, my gardens. I love the acting class I teach and helping at The Playhouse. I’m at peace. At home in my skin.”

  “Is that enough?”

  “Well... there’s always room for love.”

  “It’s so sad.” Sandra shook her head. “It was such a beautiful love story.”

  “A short story,” Natalie mused. “But it was infinite while it lasted.”

  48 Little Girl Lost

  Natalie scuffed across the kitchen floor in her slippers, making her way to the coffee pot for round two of the morning. Cobwebs were dissipating, but stories long put to bed, refused to sleep. Thoughts of Nico, that had curled up in her lap yesterday, were still fresh.

  The ‘what ifs’ plagued her, but the ‘why’, hurt the most. The first why belonged to Caterina. But all the whys that followed were owned by Nico and Natalie.

  Decisions made or left unmade determined the destination. A left when they should have veered right, resulted in them stranded, miles apart.

  The leather journal sat on the kitchen table, innocently wedged between the cream and sugar, its rawhide cord wrapped around pages and pages of her innermost thoughts. Hardly breakfast fare. She flipped to the entry she’d read last night and even though the words were still fresh in her mind, she re-read the letter she never sent. Like silt dredged up from the riverbed, her thoughts were clouded for hours afterwards.

  * * *

  August 12, 1979

  * * *

  It’s been two months since I’ve heard from you, Nico. Sixty long days!!! When the first letter I sent received no reply I started to worry. But when the second letter, giving you my new address here in Carmel went unanswered, I began to panic. I left a message for you on your phone. Nothing. The silence is a knife in my heart.

  Where are you, Nico?

  Where in the world did you go? Were you called away on a secret mission? No time to leave a note for your loved ones. Or perhaps, that is the point. I’m no longer your loved one.

  Letters stretching out farther and farther between replies. Words that seem harder to come-by barely fill the page now, when the overflow used to run off the edges, cramming in one last “I love you” before signing off.

  It’s been sad watching it go.

  Stanley hurt me, for many reasons, but it’s nothing compared to this pain. My God, how a heart can hurt. I loved you deeper than I ever thought I could love another human being, besides Tess. I gave you everything. I would have given you everything I had left.

  But I guess the pull from the other side is too much. Too many miles between us. Too many odds stacked against us. Too… too…

  Sometimes it feels like you are just out of reach. Just past my fingertips and I can’t help thinking… if I could only stretch out a little farther. Maybe it would be enough.

  There’s a part of me that understands the slipping away in the night. I doubt that I could ever find the words to say good-bye, either. Yet, I cry for the letter I never received. The one where you would tell me that you were no longer capable of a love affair across the ocean. A finality that I could hold onto. Some sort of answer I could live with.

  Without that I’m left adrift. It leaves me with too many ‘what ifs.’ Mostly because it seems so unlike you.

  How I wanted you to come and get me. Show up on my doorstep and wrap me up in those powerful arms. Somehow, we would have made it. If only.

  But you didn’t come. And I wouldn’t ask. And so here I am. And there you are.

  I do hope you’re happy, my love. I hope you find a beautiful love to wrap yourself up in. But halfway around the world, there’s someone who loves you still and can’t help but whisper, “Maybe someday.”

  * * *

  Natalie wiped the corner of her eye, where a dated tear found its way to the surface. She thought she’d cried all the tears she had with Nico’s name on them years ago. She remembered standing with her feet in the Malibu sand, flinging her tears at the ocean. But reading over the words her heart spilled across the page, left her vulnerable to the loss all over again. Her heart remembered it like it was yesterday.

  It wasn’t a hopeless kind of crying. But a stray tear for what might have been. A love li
ke that deserved a tear. Or two. Even all these years later.

  The kitchen door opened, startling Natalie out of her dusty daydream.

  “Tess,” Natalie looked up as she closed the cover on her past.

  “Hi, Mommy.”

  Tess walked around the table to plant a kiss on her mother’s head, the smell of cigarettes fresh on her breath. Paying no mind to Natalie’s scrunched up face, she turned to the cupboard by the sink, looking for her familiar coffee mug.

  Natalie watched her daughter’s back, taking note of the worn t-shirt hanging over a gaunt frame. Tess was thin. Too thin.

  Maternal instincts took over. “Let me fix you some breakfast, baby.”

  “I’m not hungry.”

  “You look hungry.”

  Tess stared at her mother, with dead eyes. Dark circles where a youthful glow should have been. “But I’m not hungry.”

  The familiar pit in Natalie’s stomach began to turn. Not again.

  “Alright.” Natalie moved back to her chair, hoping to diffuse the moment. It was always walking on eggshells with Tess. “Why aren’t you in class?”

  “I don’t have class today.”

  Tess added a third spoonful of sugar to her coffee with shaking hands that didn’t go unnoticed. Natalie’s eyes flicked from the spoon to her daughter’s face, gathering intelligence like a Russian spy.

  Natalie never ceased to be amazed at how easy it was for Tess to lie. She could look her mother dead in the eye and swear to this or that, without squirming. She was a master manipulator, never blinking in the face of her mother’s questions. Natalie often thought that the girl had inherited her acting skills after all. But it was drugs that gave Tess the confidence to be bold. Creating the allusion of a consummate professional. If only her profession was lying. Stories at the ready, she need only pluck one from her trusty backpack and hand it over with a winning smile, knowing how desperate Natalie was to believe her.