But despite her psychosomatic diagnosis, still she secretly believed that she too lived with an undetected heart problem. Whatever the cause, her sleepless nights were pushing her to the edge, an edge that was dropping off into a chronic state of sleep deprivation, perhaps leading to insanity.
This latest attack led her directly to the Sanibel Library, where she found a section on grief. By now she had learned that she had a choice. She could either be passively grief-stricken and a victim of grief, or she could actively grieve and move toward healing. She read that the grieving process often included four stages: fear, guilt, rage, and sadness. She felt stuck in fear.
She moved her way to the self-help section and read that the episodes she was experiencing were commonly referred to as “panic attacks” and that millions of Americans at some moment or other have felt such periods of sheer fear. For some, the fear goes away. For others, it takes over their entire lives. It becomes debilitating, making their lives impossible. Fear is expressed in many ways. Some can’t face crowds; others, heights or bridges or water.
As she read that anxiety is the fearful anticipation of impending danger, the source of which is unknown or unrecognized, she felt sharp pains dart through the left side of her chest. She read more, relating to the words on the pages. The central feature of anxiety is intense mental discomfort, a feeling that one will not be able to master future events. Yes, in her case, the night. She needed to survive each night so that she could live to see day again. Physical symptoms include sweaty palms, muscle tension, shortness of breath, feelings of faintness and a pounding heart.
She left the library and quickly found that days away from Tarpon Key meant a return to the things-to-do world that revolved around a wristwatch as she obediently checked off errand after errand on her to-do list. She got her passport photo taken, registered by mail for classes at the University of Madrid, and shopped for clothes for Spain. While opening a pile of mail, she discovered she had been awarded an academic scholarship and decided it would be a great reason to give Ruth when it came time to leave her job at the end of summer.
That night, she called Ben, and they drove to Captiva Island for dinner at a place located on the beach. As she sat across from him, she pictured what their children might look like. One would surely have his blue eyes, and the other her brown. Hold on! Come autumn, she’d leave the country, and after that, she’d return to Michigan. Mr. Right wasn’t supposed to show up, not yet.
Ben playfully stepped on her shoes under the table, as always. “So tell me, what’s this island life like? What sort of people go off to live and work on a small island with nothing to do?” He casually folded his cocktail napkin into an airplane.
“It’s intriguing, Ben. I guess they’re people who want to step back from this hectic world for a moment. Those who need to stop, catch their breath. All sorts.” She took several gulps of white zinfandel.
“Then why are you out there?” he asked, shooting the paper airplane he had folded directly past her.
“It’s refreshing. I can breathe out there.” She rubbed her eyes, hoping it was just hair spray, but she knew it wasn’t. She knew her anxiety was taking over, blurring her vision. Ben went out of focus, and she felt dizzy. She bent down to pick up his plane once she noticed her shortness of breath. Why, at a calm moment, would this occur? She had many hours left until bedtime, until midnight. Not wanting him to see her struggle to breathe, she knocked her purse to the floor and bent down to gather it up. It seemed that bending down helped to clear her airways. Sometimes she’d tie her shoes or fix the cuff on her pants.
“And you can’t breathe here?”
“Well, sometimes we all need to take time out to live on an island.”
“Hello, Vicki. What do you think Sanibel and Captiva are?”
“Islands.” She wanted to tell him that now, even as she spoke, she was thinking of impending danger, of a heart attack. She wanted to tell him of her psychosomatic illness, her phobia of dying in her sleep, and the panic attacks that crept up on her during most of their dates and almost all of her nights.
“So why are you out on that island when you can live here on these islands?”
She needed more air, but didn’t want him to see her gasping. How could an attack come at a calm, relaxing moment, one that provided absolutely nothing to justify a panic attack?
“At this particular time in my life, I need even more of an island,” she answered.
“More of an island?”
“Ben, I want to tell you something. I need to.”
“Yes, I’m listening, my little high-maintenance princess,” he laughed. She stole a few more sips of wine, assuring herself that all was safe and nothing life-threatening was going to happen. She looked around for escape routes like the bathroom. Then she reminded herself that she was an imaginative person, and that her imagination loved to tease her.
“I need more space, more solitude, more time away from things,” she said.
“We have spent so much time together, and there is much I know about you and much I don’t,” he said, taking her hands into his and massaging them. “I want to understand why a woman living on an island feels a need to leave for an even farther island. I’d love to know what a woman gains from time spent on a remote piece of land in the middle of nowhere, with no shops, hardly any phones, no roads, no cars, no link to the mainland, no desirable men. Women thrive on all of these things and can’t survive without them.”
“A woman can survive without those things, Ben.”
“Oh?”
“Yes, and a woman craves time alone, time to do absolutely nothing.”
“Really?”
“Yes,” she said, and then thought of tulips and how they need four to six months of cold dormancy to flower.
“I knew women crave things like chocolate and shopping but didn’t know they crave being alone and doing nothing.”
“Do you know anything about tulips?” she asked.
“Not a thing,” he said.” Why?”
“Well, coming from Holland, Michigan, I know a lot about tulips. Too much, in fact. A tulip needs morning sun to open,” she said. “And as much as that tulip needs morning sun, a woman needs time alone. She discovers immense power from within, power she never knew she had, once she spends a moment with herself.”
She arrived at the condo and climbed into bed by one o’clock in the morning, not ready to sleep. How could death be so cruel? How unfair to take Rebecca in her sleep, and Grandma too! Who next? Her pillow felt damp, as if someone on the beach had stood over it, shaking their wet, salty body. She longed to have coffee with Rebecca, or paste together seashell mirrors with her grandmother.
She couldn’t help but think about Grandma, who came unglued after her husband died. Grandma’s mourning had turned into depression, and she started to live most of her days in the past, in their home. She had raised her family in that home, in that neighborhood, in that comfort zone. After Grandpa died, she crossed a bridge back to her glory days and never fully returned to the present.
She sat up to stop the stabbing but didn’t have the patience to counsel her breathing. She let it go untamed, and the battle took its course.
She closed her eyes and took several deep breaths. When she opened her eyes, she glanced down and saw the pile of mail she had neglected to open. She opened a yellow envelope postmarked from Holland. Reading just the first line was like reading an affidavit. It validated, in writing, what she had refused to believe after all this time. She stopped after the first sentence because her hands began to shake, so for a moment, she held it and kissed it, then continued to read.
Dear Vicki,
Doctors say Rebecca had a heart condition that we never knew she had. She suffered several minor heart attacks in the months leading up to her death. I haven’t been sleeping or eating or smiling or doing anything pleasant at all. Why couldn’t it have happened to me instead? A mother only wants the best for her children. Why am I stuck here in th
is world filled with holidays, parties, and parades, in a world that pressures us to celebrate, smile, and socialize? Since Rebecca’s death I have been trying hard to create a world for myself in which I don’t have to do any of these things. I’ve been sitting at her graveside for hours at a time. I bring flowers, but their colors clash with the ugly brown ground. Suddenly, one day, as I brought a bouquet of yellow roses, I could almost hear Rebecca telling me to leave her grave site and take the flowers with me. It confused me, so I stood there a moment with my eyes shut. I swear I heard her telling me she didn’t want me sitting there on the ground any longer. She’d rather see her mother bringing flowers to a party, smiling, socializing with others. She told me a daughter also wants the best for her mother and that it would bring her much peace to see me happy again. I whispered that I didn’t feel that I had any reason to socialize or smile, or party for that matter, and she told me I was wrong. She told me I had great reason to celebrate. She told me to continue buying flowers, but instead of dropping them here on the ground, to keep them, or give them to Dad or her sisters, and to party every day. Now that sounded strange, and I had to laugh. Then she told me, “Mom, go and celebrate your life. It won’t last forever. Your time will come as well, so make sure you live the life you have been given.”
Vicki, let’s celebrate life. It’s not going to happen immediately. But let’s try.
Love,
Rebecca’s Mom
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
RETURNING TO THE ISLAND meant stepping into a world without pressed dresses. The color of the sky on a particular day mattered more than the color of clothes she chose to wear. The humidity on her skin meant more than the sweat that came from working out in a gym. She enjoyed walking the rugged, sandy path more than sweeping and mopping the kitchen floor back home, where things like sand and turtles surely didn’t belong. Stepping foot on the island meant returning to a world where errands didn’t matter. She felt like a person removed from the developed world, from malls and grocery stores, gas stations and traffic. Here, everything was simple—not boring, just simple. She felt a sense of elation after returning to the island, her kingdom of Narnia, as if life off the island tossed her one too many things to do.
The island represented a newly discovered mentality, something she was capable of embracing anywhere and anytime. She would charter a boat out to some island any time her list of things to do became overwhelming.
Some people never needed to make a list in their lives. They stored details in their memories, not knowing why they felt agitated and stressed. These people needed to visit an island. Vicki was one of those who write down every item of every day’s agenda, including things that might be natural instinct—wake up, eat breakfast (Quaker Oats Life cereal, something from the fruit family, plain yogurt), shower, bank, post office, etc. This at least gave her brain a break from having to store it all.
On the other hand, she was a perfectionist and a list maker, and that combination—along with a strong work ethic and a Type-A personality—threatened to drive her to the edge of sanity. Such people needed to make perfectly beautiful lists, and if they screwed up one word, or the order of their errands, they felt compelled to crumple them up and start over again. Making lists coincided with a profile on obsessive behavior, but Vicki’s reasons for making lists were entirely practical—a disorganized list meant a disorganized day, and a disorganized day naturally led to a frazzled, unproductive mind.
Island life required no lists. Life just happened there, like the weather. Rain arrived whenever it pleased. Its timing didn’t matter. It could hit in the midst of an outdoor party and not care that it was falling on guests’ expensive hairdos and drenching their designer gowns. Let them worry about that. And this they surely did! If rain took into consideration all the events, it might ruin on any given day or night, the world might shrivel up into dryness because the rain worried so much.
Tarpon Key was a small mangrove and didn’t allow much room for worry. Lists, whether mental or written, would fall through the branches into the murky water. Life there stayed rudimentary. And it forced Vicki to notice smaller things, like a roseate spoonbill pacing deliberately in slow motion. Or the smaller oystercatcher, with its long, curving beak and dainty steps or anhingas perched in the mangroves to dry their wings, while the great and little blue herons stalked crustaceans and small fish in the shallows.
Vicki worked lunch, then walked briskly back to the staff house to change her clothes for dinner. Denver had told her a new vessel had arrived, and Vicki couldn’t wait to meet the new waitress.
There were lines on her face, tracks, but not the railroad type created for a purpose—more like the bad kind of tracks, not meant to be there; the kind left behind after a heavy suitcase is pulled across a hardwood floor that someone would love to hide, but redoing the floor might cost a fortune. Her cheekbones were as pale and sunken as a collapsed sand dune falling into a lake. Thick black mascara enclosed her eyes like a barbed wire fence, warning people not to get too close. Only her long, curly brown hair added feminine softness, and it fell around her face like a flag torn by the wind. Her name was Evelyn, and she was assigned Old. Mr. Two-Face’s spookiest room—the attic way up the steep stairs.
The ceiling hung low, forcing the women to duck as they stumbled up and down the stairs like Halloween guests scurrying through a haunted house. Together, they cleaned out the piles of old newspapers, empty cigarette boxes, and beer cans stashed in the closet. They brushed the cobwebs off the gray paneled walls. As Evelyn washed the window facing the east, tree branches slapped against it like the hands of an abusive partner.
“I feel more at home with this window than I do with the one overlooking that enormous body of water,” said the woman, jumping back as a large branch slammed against the glass. “Yeah, I’d rather have just this one window. The window overlooking the water reminds me I can’t swim.”
“Well, I just hope you’ll get a glimpse of the sunrise through those tree branches,” said Vicki.
The woman stood like a hunchback in the low-ceilinged attic. “You look like a college-educated gal; am I right?” she asked.
“You could say that, yes,” replied Vicki. “So tell me, Evelyn, why are you here on the island?” She tossed the last two beer cans into a Hefty bag.
“I’m in hiding. But I’ll tell ya about that some other time. For starters, I was wondering about your birthday. When is it?” Evelyn tucked her cleaning rag into the waist of her jeans and opened the window facing the east for air.
“My birthday? Why?”
“A birthday tells me more than a name. When’s your birthday?”
“December 18.”
“Nice to meet you, my little arrow-shooting centaur.”
“What?”
“You’re a Sagittarius. We’ll talk later.”
Evelyn certainly didn’t require much training. She said she had waited tables her entire life – except for the decade when she danced topless in a bar near a beach. Despite her curiosity, Vicki left the woman alone her first few nights on the island, assuming she might want initial privacy, the kind she herself had wanted weeks ago when she first arrived, before agreeing with John Donne that no man was meant to be an island.
There was a strange glow in Old. Mr. Two-Face’s eyes, and Vicki noticed it as she approached the staff house after a busy night of waiting tables. She planned on sitting outside on the wooden steps for a few minutes, something she often did when insomnia struck, but tonight the glow from the newcomer’s window caught her curiosity. She altered course and made her way up the narrow, steep stairs and peeked into Evelyn’s room. Kerosene lanterns, belonging in the restaurant, were glowing everywhere. The woman sat Indian-style on the sandy floor. In the flickering red light, her facial lines showed up as more embittered than they appeared in daylight.
“It’s dark in there,” whispered Vicki.
“I don’t mind darkness, but the window is totally freaking me out,” said Evelyn.
“I’m used to the branches slamming against that window. It’s still the other window that freaks me out the most.”
“Why?”
“All I see is water. I’m not even going to look out it. I feel like a small bug that can’t swim.”
“How can you find your way to the window, let alone see what you’re playing in this dark room?” whispered Vicki, noticing a deck of cards in her hands.
“Oh, my little college-educated girl, welcome, welcome,” said Evelyn. “Come on in now, out of that doorway. Come on.”
“Let me guess. You’re playing a lonely, desolate game of solitaire,” said Vicki, squinting at the cards.
Evelyn laughed, “Oh no, not solitaire, and I’m not playing, honey. This is serious stuff. Here, shuffle this deck and draw eight cards. Come on. Don’t be a scaredy-cat.”
A horrible shuffler, Vicki clumsily moved the cards through her hands, while looking at the weird and colorful pictures on their backs. Candlesticks, men with wings, other men with horns, gold wine cups, ladders. She selected eight cards and handed them to Evelyn.
“These are Tarot cards, and they’re going to tell me about you. About your past, your present, and if they feel comfortable, your future.”
“Why would I need cards telling me about my past and present? I already know about them. I would, however, like to know about my future, my immediate future.”
“What do you want to know?”
“Am I going to die anytime soon?” She knew she had asked a serious question, but she put no belief in the cards, or in what Evelyn was saying.
“The cards will tell me what they want you to know. I have no control over that, babe.” Evelyn laid the eight chosen cards in two rows on the floor and studied them seriously for a moment. “Now this is your past. They want to tell me about your past, maybe so you’ll believe in them more. You were comfortable, surrounded in comfort. I get a strong sense of home, belonging, comfort in people and places you loved all around you, and -”
Sanibel Scribbles Page 16
