JANUARY 1999 #2
And it was a PA who rushed in, desperate, phone clutched in his hand that he shoved toward me.
I still had curlers in my hair.
“Nadine?” It was Victor, sounding as frantic as the PA, who cast me a strange sort of look before he ducked away again.
“What’s wrong?” I said, rising to my feet like I might outrun this. Victor was scheduled appointments and phone calls on the hour as a meeting finished—not this.
“I’m so sorry. We didn’t see—they’d tried to get in touch, but it got filtered and … your parents have been in an accident.”
The world around me began to fade, and next I knew I was on those sands, flat on my back staring at the bright, burning sky above.
They had been swimming—and when had they begun doing that?
Driving to Whitby and wading into the ocean, joining a whole club of wild swimmers with plans to retire nearby—and got caught in a riptide—it can happen to anyone, apparently, sudden and random—and the alarm was only raised when a third parking ticket was placed on their car—why?
My father worked like it was the way his body moved, to wake and eat and work and eat and shower and sleep.
My mother phoned her sister every night to discuss the latest Corrie.
How hadn’t anyone else noticed?—and they found the bodies this morning, had been trying to get in touch with me for days, but how do you contact a famous actress in Hollywood?
Sent off an email to my agent that got caught by his firewall and stuck in his junk folder, so it was local news, and then national news, and then international news before anyone thought to let me know.
I wanted the sands to pull me through, to consume me and bury me there.
There were paparazzi with long-range cameras already—capturing every moment of my reaction: from lying on that sand to Caleb helping me rise, holding me close, though I don’t remember that hug, and guiding me back to set, my dazed form stood before Penelope Lutz and a few of the techies as they spoke, telling me logistics I couldn’t quite understand before I was in a car back to the hotel.
I ignored enough calls from Ruchi that she jumped on the first flight to Arizona, which was very much not her job.
But by this point I think I knew she cared, our careers and goals were entwined, and I might have considered her my closest confidante, even if she saw me only as a girl left in her charge.
“Do you want to go home?” she asked.
“No, no, god no.” I couldn’t face LA, not right now. I knew the paparazzi would surround my home, would press in even more intrusively than they had before.
“I need to tell you that if you don’t go back for the funeral it won’t be a good look—but if you’re not up for it, we can handle it.”
Oh, that’s what she’d meant by home. England. Yorkshire.
I thought of my last trip back and knew I couldn’t bear it.
I knew too that I might be able to suffer through if I had someone by my side: Ivan or Sasha or Ruchi herself.
But I didn’t know how to ask. Sasha could tell me I could ring anytime, Ivan could rush to the hospital for me and Ruchi could fly herself to Arizona, and I still couldn’t choke out what it meant, what I needed.
“I’ll go,” I said quietly, even though I knew I could not handle this. It would shatter whatever weakening barrier I’d put between me and all the complicated messiness of my home, my family, everything.
I didn’t go into it unaware—I knew it would break me.
But I lined myself up in the sights, and I pulled the trigger anyway.
———
It was a quick visit home, dominated by stepping into the various cars Lana had arranged and barricading myself in my hotel room.
I had not told Ruchi I couldn’t see my family home, but I think she knew.
I stood at the funeral in a dark coat and sunglasses, looking for paparazzi who were less invasive here but more underhanded, set up a respectful distance away to intrude in and capture the shot.
Everyone kept a wide berth, even my extended family who perhaps clapped me on the shoulder or offered their condolences but clearly saw me as the estranged, distant being that didn’t fit here at all (my aunt offered me a tissue though, just as she had at my grandfather’s funeral, and next thing I knew I was sobbing in the back of a car, the driver pulling the divider up hurriedly).
I raced back to America and straight back to the set.
“You can take more time,” Penelope insisted.
But I couldn’t. I could feel myself falling apart like someone had sliced me at the seams, could feel the flesh peeling away, and I knew whatever it would reveal was too repulsive to be witnessed.
I never felt more whole or more myself than when I acted, knew the easiest way to stop myself breaking would be to surround myself with people for whom that break would be an awful inconvenience.
So I filmed the movie. I pretended to be alright, and I distracted myself from my grief during the day.
I was okay, okay, okay—so okay the press began to push that maybe I should have taken a break, maybe I was callous, or maybe I was lingering in stasis, just waiting to implode. They were eager for it, setting countdowns of their own for a degeneration they could sell.
All I know is I couldn’t sleep. Could hardly settle enough to sit down in the bed, would often, on the cusp of falling asleep, remember losing control of the wheel, careening forward, blinking dazed after the collision.
My parents did not die in a car crash, but they seemed connected somehow, like death was a stalking thing.
Maybe part of me felt guilt, but if I’m honest my feelings were buried so deep I’m not sure I’ll ever truly understand what I felt then, only that there was very little of it and also, far far too much, like I’d suffocate on all that nothingness.
I ran from distraction to distraction; yes to every party, to every bar, to every game of poker that a group of the crew began playing, Caleb there too, Caleb who finally said: “Here, Nadine, you can try this if you want. I think it might help.”
He closed my fingers around a cigarette—because that’s what I thought it was at first.
He was right, the marijuana relaxed me, helped me calm enough to sleep wholly and deeply.
It would be unfair to blame that joint on where the problems began. If I had left it there I might, at worst, become a little too dependent on it to fall asleep.
The issue was that my whole life was characterized by caring very deeply about everything, caring so much it burned, driving me forward to my next challenge or goal, often to the detriment of not actually celebrating the ones achieved.
I cared so much it scorched anything in its path, including, occasionally … me.
And now I did not care about much at all.
And I certainly did not care about myself.