Chapter Nineteen #2
“Dario, I’m here. I’m okay. We’re okay.” Charlie’s voice sounds a million miles away, stuck behind several panes of glass. It’s like he’s missing all over again even though he sits right there, has his arms around him. Why must his brain play tricks like this?
Charlie takes him by the elbow to the nearby, single-stall bathroom. Dario barely registers as he gives Charlie a euro to pop in the lock and twist.
The tile floor is grimy, and the lights are an off-putting yellow, making the white walls look like bruised banana peels. But this room with its four walls and its lock is like an oasis. And Charlie Moore is a beautiful mirage in the mist of a gurgling waterfall.
Except there’s no waterfall and Charlie is flesh and blood, leading him to the porcelain sink where cold, tap water plunks out. Dario splashes his face. The temperature shock settles him the slightest bit.
Charlie’s right hand lands on his upper back where he rubs slow, gentle circles. His left hand gathers Dario’s hair back, so it doesn’t get wet. Dario appreciates that because every other time he has been hit with a panic attack over the past year, he has muscled through it by himself.
Talking to his mom tonight made him realize that maybe there are people out there who understand and want to help. He just needs to give them the chance to.
“Should I call someone?” Charlie asks. “Like a doctor?”
Dario closes his eyes, steadying himself with the edge of the sink. He takes several breaths. “No, grazie. It is a panic attack. It will pass. Eventually. I get them often…”
“I didn’t realize,” Charlie says.
“I have something called agoraphobia,” Dario stutters, the word still feeling foreign in his mouth the way “grazie” felt foreign to Charlie on the first day they met.
“Isn’t that a fear of spiders?” Charlie asks.
“It’s a fear of open places. When I go to places I’ve never been or crowded places, I get intense anxiety and panic attacks.
It’s debilitating.” He thinks momentarily about what they left outside this bathroom.
The crushing crowds. The swell of noises.
The speeding trains. As much as he wishes he could spend forever in this bathroom with Charlie Moore, he’ll have to face his triggers again and soon.
The acrid smell of this room is starting to wither in his nose.
“What about Isola Polvese and the factory?” Charlie asks.
“Those are places I go often. They are in my comfort circle. I haven’t been past the factory in over a year,” he says. A swarm of shame engulfs him. His hands shake harder.
“Is it rude of me to ask what caused it?” Charlie’s eyes are beseeching and sweet. “I’m just trying to understand.”
“I am still trying to understand it myself.” Dario sighs, wishing explaining himself could be as easy as running a board meeting or wooing distributors.
But he’s learned the hard way that he can’t treat his mental health like a business.
If he could, he would’ve sold off his agoraphobia a long time ago, even if it came at a loss to his bottom line.
The human brain is far more complicated than candy.
“Take your time,” Charlie says, meaning it. Obviously unperturbed.
“You see, it’s like this. My brain plays tricks on me.
It tells me I’m not safe even when there’s not a specific threat.
My anxiety started when I was young and my father died.
He was there one morning and gone by the time I got home from school, and suddenly the world was terrifying.
I worked through that,” Dario says, tracing back his struggles on a timeline of his life as if it were an exhibit in the Amorina museum.
“Once everything happened with Preston, the panic attacks started up again. They got sharper and more frequent, until I broke down very publicly at my nonno’s funeral and have avoided crowds since. ”
“So that’s why you didn’t want to go to Isola Maggiore?” Charlie says.
Dario nods. “My grandfather’s funeral was held at the Church of Buon Gesù on the island.
You may have seen it while you were there.
It’s a tall, orange-and-green historic building with these fading frescoes on the inside walls.
It’s exactly where I’d have expected my grandfather to want to have his last service.
But it’s also tiny. It was originally an oratory, so it was not meant to house hundreds upon hundreds of family members, friends and candy lovers.
As soon as I saw the number of people in and outside the building, I froze and shut down,” he says, reliving that awful day over again.
“I haven’t been back since.” He stops for a long breath.
“Scusi, I’m ashamed to talk about this.”
“Why are you ashamed?” Charlie asks.
“Here, it isn’t like in America. We don’t talk about mental health. It is taboo. I only just told my mother tonight. I suffered alone for so long.” Dario stares down at his hands, which have calmed a bit.
“Hey,” Charlie says, stepping nearer. He pulls Dario close. “You’re not alone. I’m here. I want to be here for you. Tell me what to do to help.” Charlie squeezes tighter.
“You being here already helps,” Dario says. “Exposure therapy is supposed to help, too.”
“What’s that?” Charlie asks.
“It’s a form of therapy where I confront my fears. I go to places I haven’t been or have been and had a panic attack before, allow the anxiety to come, and try to push through.” Dario takes another ragged, much-needed inhale. His brain thanks him by quieting a little.
His therapist introduced exposure therapy to him not long after his failed proposal. He made sure Dario knew how important it was to choose recovery so he could live a full life.
Dario was praised when he went sailing again for the first time, and his therapist almost cheered when he went back to the factory. But then his grandfather got sicker, and Dario remembered that the world was a scary place that took more than it gave.
He pushed recovery to the back of his mind and focused on learning everything he needed to know before his grandfather passed.
“Exposure therapy sounds uncomfortable,” Charlie says, as if he’d battle away every discomfort in the universe for Dario if he asked. But he couldn’t. He wouldn’t because…
“I miss the world, Charlie,” Dario says through an unmistakable break in his voice.
It’s not a break of defeat, though; it’s emotional defiance.
He does not want to let his sometimes-traitorous brain run the show any longer.
“Coming inside this train station a week ago would have been unmanageable, but I want to get better, and I had to find you. I was so worried that you were gone or hurt or worse. I…” He clutches tight to Charlie’s soft shirt.
“I like you, Charlie. More than I expected to like anyone who showed up through this wild stunt my nonno concocted, yet here you are, and I can’t deny how I feel. ”
“I like you, too,” Charlie says. He clings closer, yet he looks away. A divot forms in his brow.
“What’s wrong?” Dario asks.
Charlie steps away so swiftly Dario nearly tears the shirt right off Charlie’s back.
“You shouldn’t like me,” Charlie announces.
“Who says?” Dario asks.
“I say.”
“How come?”
“Because… I’ve been dishonest,” Charlie says. He backs up to the door, knocks his head against it, glistening eyes cast up at the ceiling.
“Dishonest how?” Dario asks, stomach shriveling up with nerves. Ansel proved they did not do their due diligence when it came to background checks.
“The bank is going to foreclose on my house,” Charlie says.
Between the noxiously humming fan overhead and the pounding of his heart in his ears, it takes Dario a moment to connect what Charlie has said with the situation. “Your family home?”
Charlie nods. Then shakes his head. Then nods again.
“The day I found out was the day I saw the call for contest entries. When I noticed your net worth, I thought, ‘That’s the kind of money that could save us.’ Without that house, we would have nowhere to go.
Before six days ago, you were just a dollar sign to me, a blank check, and that was wrong. You deserve better than that.”
“Charlie…” Dario’s mind flings to Nonno’s letter about his first love.
A tightness takes up in his chest. But he can’t forget about his earlier thoughts of helping Michelle start a fashion line.
He has money, and marriage would mean he’d share it with his spouse.
Charlie should not feel guilty for needing help.
Maybe he and Charlie are alike in that giving voice to their anxieties does not come naturally. But perhaps that’s a good thing. Something they can work on together.
“No, please. I can’t put that on you.” Charlie berates himself.
“I had plenty of time to think while I was stuck here, and I realized I’ve behaved badly.
My parents work so hard and my grandparents have been through so much that I wanted to take this burden on for them and shield them from any fallout.
But the bank came knocking and now they’re panicked.
And I’m falling for you. I like you too much to ask you to take on our problems when you have your own. ”
“Thank you for your honesty,” Dario says, unsure what to think or how to feel.
Today has been a cyclone of conflicting emotions, but he wants to see the bright side.
There is a golden light at the end of this, he can sense it.
“I think it would be best if we continued this discussion tomorrow, once we’ve rested.
We have both had hard days. You must be exhausted. We can come back to this fresh.”
Charlie hesitates, then nods. “That sounds good.”
Dario grabs Charlie by the hand, and they exit the bathroom.