Nearly Normal

by Cea Sunrise Person

  But Adrienne’s face remained serious. “No. I mean—I know how crazy your family was, Cea. I was there. And I don’t mean just wacky-crazy, you know? I mean stark-raving mentally ill crazy. I think it’s a miracle you survived at all.”

  I shifted my weight uncomfortably. What Adrienne said was true—I’d been the only real voice of sanity within my family, torn between accepting their choices and trying desperately to make them see how their world looked through my eyes. As a result, I’d endured near-drownings, fires, encounters with wild animals, getting lost in the forest, Mom’s crazy boyfriends and a deranged uncle with whom my family left me, unsupervised, even after he had kidnapped and sexually assaulted me as a baby. It really was unbelievable when I looked at it in such black-and-white terms—the same way people looked at it as they read my book.

  Though Adrienne’s words offered validation of what I’d long believed about my family, they also pained me. I thought about Papa Dick, who had always told me there was nothing to fear in the wilderness as long as you kept your wits about you and knew your survival skills; as an adult, those teachings had saved me on several occasions. Despite the madness of my early years, there was no doubt that I’d learned some unique and valuable lessons. And if I were to acknowledge that my family had put me in danger because they were too selfish or lazy or crazy to care, it seemed even more important to me that I find the positive in those experiences. So maybe it all evened out. Maybe in some weird way, all the hardships had set me up to be the pattern-breaker of dysfunction in my family. Because I knew that those who continued their family’s patterns of destruction not only hurt themselves but also admitted defeat to those who had damaged them, intentionally or not.

  From the corner of my eye, I saw the festival coordinator waving me over from across the room. I turned toward Adrienne, reluctant to say goodbye.

  “Listen, Adrienne, I have to run. It’s been so great seeing you.”

  “You too. And whatever you’ve been doing . . . keep doing it. You’re a survivor, if I’ve ever met one.”

  I smiled as I made my way to the Gallery Room for my reading. If there was one thing I’d learned today, it was that I’d wasted too much time doubting myself. How many times in my life had I questioned whether an experience was normal, weird, unacceptable or downright terrifying, when all along the answer had been right here inside me?

  1998

  Tunisia

  My plane was late—not just a little bit, but several hours late. I cupped my hands around my eyes and gazed out the window as we taxied into the gate, but all I saw was blackness. I sighed and sat back in my seat, praying there was a taxi service at this airport. I could never be certain—I would land at my photo shoot destinations at all hours of the day and night, and if it was a location I hadn’t been to before, I had to be prepared for anything. Usually there were taxis available, and sometimes the client would send a car, but if not, it would be up to me to figure out the public transportation system. Once, I’d stepped off a train in the Austrian countryside. I waited for half an hour for a taxi or bus to pass by, and then I just started walking to town.

  One way I’d grown since leaving Kevin three years ago was that I was more courageous now. I’d discovered my physical and emotional independence and realized that I was absolutely fine without a man. But there was a flip side to this coin: I’d been right about my ex’s grounding effect. Since our split, I had spent way too much time partying, and my only real criteria for the men that passed through my life was physical attraction. At least my career was thriving—there was little more important to me than that.

  I disembarked from the plane and strode purposefully through the airport, surreptitiously scanning the overhead signs. I saw one with a picture of a taxi, and, breathing a sigh of relief, I made my way in that direction. Two cars with lighted domes sat waiting at the curb. I climbed into the first one and gave the driver the name of my hotel.

  Tunisia? Be careful there, my friend Suzana had warned me when I told her where I was going, but I had waved off her concerns. My job didn’t exactly take me to destinations worthy of CNN news bites. Most of the time, my biggest worry was whether I had packed enough sunscreen to avoid having to pay the prices levied by the hotel shops in Mauritius, Cape Town or Guadalupe. But I certainly wasn’t naive about such things. As always in these circumstances, I splayed my keys between my fingers and kept my fist hidden in my lap in case I needed a weapon. Though most people imagined dangers in modelling to be horny photographers, drug-pushing industry insiders and agents who put their girls on a diet of rice cakes and water, the real threats were less glamorous. They lay in situations such as this—travels to foreign cities where languages and cultures were unknown, or the apartment on the seedy side of town she was expected to inhabit, or the hurried walks home after dark when a photo shoot ended late at night. Sixteen-year-old girls from Brazil or the Ukraine without a dime to their name lived at the mercy of their agency’s willingness to keep them sheltered and fed. I’d known three models who committed suicide over lost jobs and waning prestige. Though I’d seen enough to be realistic, I also felt just this side of untouchable because I’d almost always managed to avoid the ugliest side of my industry.

  Eventually the driver pulled into a palm-tree-lined driveway that ended at the entrance of a gorgeous resort hotel. I smiled. Any potential danger was behind me—from now on, I’d be under the protection of my photo team, whom I already knew well.

  “Welcome to Tunisia,” the receptionist said when I approached her desk. “Your name, please?”

  “I’m here with the Marika party, for the photo shoot,” I said, already digging through my purse for a cigarette. It was close to midnight, but I would smoke just one before bed.

  The receptionist was still tapping at her computer.

  “I’m so sorry,” she said. “But your party has all checked in, and I’m afraid there are no more rooms available. I am obliged to send you to the hotel next door for the night. Please don’t worry. Before the Hotel Riu was built, it was the best in the area.”

  “Oh,” I responded, annoyed. “Can you call me another taxi then, please?”

  “There is no taxi necessary—it is the next hotel over from us. The fastest way there is to proceed through these doors to the beach and walk fifty metres. You will see the gated entrance directly to your right.”

  “Okay, then,” I said with a comfort I didn’t feel. I was tired and hungry, and I had to be up in less than five hours. I just wanted a bed.

  I picked up my bag and went out the door. When it closed behind me, deafening the sound of the late-night partiers in the bar, I could hear waves crashing on the shore just a few feet away. The moon shone in the night air. I made my way down the pathway until my feet hit sand and then turned right. The beach was completely deserted, which initially relieved me but then quickly set me on edge. I could see the lights of the other hotel beckoning, though they looked much less inviting than those I had just left. Cheap and too bright, they revealed a building in a serious state of disrepair. Who cares? I thought. It’s only for one night. I can survive anything for a night.

  There was someone behind me. I heard footsteps and turned to see a bearded man strolling along the beach. I felt a pang of unease. He was huge, so huge in fact, that I wondered if he might be one of those gargantuan people like Andre the Giant. He was at least seven feet tall and two-fifty, with hands like baseball mitts. Though he was walking nonchalantly, looking out at the crashing waves, I quickened my pace. My carry-on bag, which I was used to rolling on wheels, suddenly felt very heavy. I swung it up into both arms to lighten my load. It was then I realized that with my suitcase in both hands, I couldn’t access my makeshift key weapon.

  Behind me, I heard soft thuds on the wet sand breaking into a run. Without looking back, I made a dash for the hotel gate and grabbed at the handle. It was locked.

  Fuck. I turned to face my enemy, who stood not three feet away from me. Then I dropped my bag, know
ing at this point I would happily give it up if it meant saving my ass, and crossed my arms over my chest in a way that I hoped looked aggressive.

  “What do you want?” I asked furiously.

  He said something unintelligible. I narrowed my eyes at him. “Sexy lady,” he said, stepping toward me.

  I was terrified, but there was something else. Something familiar about the way he was standing and the words he had just said. I realized I had three choices. One was to run—but where to? The second was to pound desperately on the gate’s intercom button, praying for them to let me in before he overcame me. The last was to confront him.

  I threw my arms out at my sides in an effort to look menacing. Quick as a flash, I saw myself doing the same thing as a child when faced with a wild animal. The man grinned back at me as I searched my brain desperately for something I could say that would disarm him. I came up blank. Humans are different from animals, I thought. Challenge him.

  I locked my eyes on his and stepped closer to him. He looked triumphant for a few seconds, and then something changed. I squinted at him with a confidence I didn’t feel. Don’t fuck with me, I repeated over and over in my head, as if he could read my mind. Don’t fuck with me—don’t fuck with me, or you’ll regret it. His gaze dropped. We were still three feet apart, but I knew I was winning.

  I bent down, snatched up my bag and walked back to the gate. Jab jab jab on the button. Static crackled sharply over the intercom.

  “Let me in, please,” I said with simulated calm. “I’m a hotel guest.”

  The gate clicked open. I stepped inside and slammed it quickly behind me. Thank god, thank god, I thought to myself, finally breaking into a run. The nightmare is over.

  But I was wrong.

  The hotel room was disgusting. Mouldy smelling, cockroach-ridden, with hair on the bathroom floor and a sagging mattress at centre stage. But none of these were conditions I hadn’t withstood in the past. The thing that worried me was that there was no dead-bolt on the door; the only lock was a flimsy safety button on the doorknob.

  I could go back to the front desk and complain, but remembering the looks I’d received from the male receptionists didn’t make me want to draw attention to the fact that I was alone in a poorly secured room. My only other option was to push the dresser against the door. I did so, then went to bed fully clothed, so I wouldn’t have to touch the sheets, and tried to sleep.

  Instead I lay wide awake for a long time, thinking about the man on the beach. My adrenalin was still pumping, but there was more to it. What was it about him that had niggled at me? I couldn’t figure it out, and I was exhausted. Eventually I drifted into a fitful sleep.

  Bang bang bang!

  Someone was pounding on my door. I shot upright in bed, my heart thundering out of my chest.

  More banging.

  For just a moment, my mind flashed back to another time. I was six years old, living in a cottage we weren’t supposed to be in. My mother was out, so I was hidden in a closet. I heard hammering on the outside door and was terrified, but I covered my ears until it stopped.

  This time it wasn’t stopping.

  What the fuck? Was it the guy from the beach, or someone else? What the hell was wrong with this place? I picked up the phone and dialled Reception. After eleven unanswered rings, I hung up.

  I stole silently out of bed, looking around in the dark for anything that could be used as a weapon. The clock radio was the only thing I could find. I snatched it up and yanked the cord out of the wall. On shaking legs, I moved toward the door and stood with the clock poised over my head.

  “What do you want?” I said loudly.

  The banging stopped.

  “Listen,” I continued with a bravado I didn’t feel. “Get the fuck away from me. I swear to god, I will kill you if you come near me. You picked the wrong fucking girl!” The pitch of my voice on the last three words shocked even me. I wasn’t just scared, I realized. I was furious. As terrifying as my circumstances were, there was more to it. The events of the night had triggered an unwelcome hailstorm of old memories and emotions.

  I listened with my ear to the door. I could hear someone breathing, and then a few minutes later, footsteps shuffled away. I sagged against the floor and finally allowed myself to cry.

  On the plane back to Munich, I reflected on how thankful I was to feel safe again—strapped into my seat, fashion magazines in my lap, an apartment to return to in one of the lowest-crime cities in the world. The morning after the scare, I’d told the photo team what happened, and they were suitably horrified. But no one said anything about calling the police or even registering a complaint. And as so often happened to me after a stressful or traumatic event, I found myself questioning my judgment. Was it really that frightening? Or was I just tired and stressed out and overreacting? This was a running theme in my life: I’d experience something that I thought was a big deal, and then dismiss myself as being dramatic after it was resolved. It was the same way when I thought about my childhood. I knew it was different, but I honestly didn’t think it was any more traumatic than anyone else’s. It occurred to me that maybe I had no idea what the normal realm of experience looked like.

  I picked up my magazine and tried to focus on the words on the cover, but my thoughts wouldn’t stop circling. Every time I thought about the man on the beach, it wasn’t his face I saw—it was another that I recognized from my past but couldn’t for the life of me put a name to. And whoever it was, he left me with a lingering sense of dread.

  Chapter 18

  2008

  Vancouver

  I dipped my roller into the tray and slapped paint onto the wall, working furiously. Paint splattered into the air, showering my face with speckles of white. I glanced at my watch and ran a hand across my forehead, wiping the sweat from my brow. Shit. If I didn’t get out of here in the next fifteen minutes, I’d miss closing time. I increased my pace, thankful this carpet was going to be ripped up and I didn’t have to worry about the paint splatter. I finished the wall and then ran to the kitchen sink to clean my rollers and brushes. Yanking my headscarf off, I hurried to my car—Carleigh’s car—and hit the gas.

  Twenty minutes later, still in my painting clothes, I parked at the curb and ducked into the shop. Damn it. The same man I’d dealt with last time was behind the counter. Only this time, a boy of about six sat on a stool beside him, playing a game on an iPhone. The man looked at me placidly as I handed over my wedding ring set. Not that I minded parting with it, but I did mind that this was the last item I owned of any real monetary value. He peered at the diamond through his glass.

  “You understand, everyone want to sell it, but no one want the used engagement rings,” he said in heavily accented English. I nodded. “Eighty bucks. Best I can do.” He dropped the rings back on the counter with a clatter. The boy looked up from his game and stared at me.

  I kept my eyes steady, but I could feel my cheeks burning. I wondered how much this child understood about his father’s business, if he knew that people who visited this shop were in the throes of desperation. I wondered if my own son would ever understand how near we were to the edge. When I was a child, I always knew how close my mother and I were to having the bottom fall out of our world, and it terrified me.

  Eighty dollars for a set that I knew had cost thirty times that. In my head, I spent the cash—twenty for gas, fifteen for the utility bill, the rest for food. That would get me through to the next week, until I got paid for my painting job. Then my rent cheque would clean out my account again, and Avery’s birthday was coming up—but I would worry about that later.

  “That’s fine,” I said to the man, forcing a smile. “Thank you.”

  As I watched him slip the jewellery into his glass case, I thought about the day I’d come across James buying the rings at the mall. I’d been wealthy then compared to now, but I’d valued myself about as much as this man in front of me valued my rings. Maybe that was something I’d learned, at least—that my
self-esteem had little to do with materialism and everything to do with perception.

  If there was a way to earn a dollar without compromising my morals, I was doing it. My weeks were divided into two separate realities—the challenge to be a present and nurturing mother to Avery for three and a half days a week, and the scramble to do anything I could to make money for the other three and half days. I painted, cleaned houses, did the odd modelling job and built websites for friends. Which was another problem, because my Mac had nearly called it a day—every five minutes or so the screen would black out, forcing me to reboot it and pray that it would hold out just long enough to finish the job. Like a person lost in the desert, I kept putting one foot in front of the other in the hope that water would eventually materialize. I sold furniture, clothing, anything I could bear to part with. I scraped together change to buy gas. I lived on beans and pasta and went grocery shopping with a calculator running through my head. In my darkest moments, it occurred to me that history was repeating itself—that this was exactly how my mother and I used to live.

  Though my bank account was poverty-stricken, and I was finding ways to survive that many would have found unthinkable, my careful persona still exuded middle-class. None of my friends knew how bad it was. When they asked me to meet them for lunch or go out for a drink, I cited other obligations. It wasn’t that I was embarrassed or afraid they would lose respect for me; it was that telling them the truth would open up the fear in me that I was trying so hard to hold at bay. I could feel the darkness of depression trying to take over, and I worried that if it did while I was in such a vulnerable state, I might never be able to shake myself from its grip.