I was quiet for a minute, taking it all in. “Did I ever tell you about them taking me to see a psychiatrist?” I finally asked. We laughed as I told him about the visit to Dr. Ray. Then we talked about the night I left home, and my wedding. I told him how embarrassed I was about the entire situation with Patrick. How blind I’d been. How I really didn’t know what was going to happen next. Chris looked at me intently, taking in everything but saying nothing, while his eyes revealed just how quickly he was thinking and processing. It was harder for me to tell him in person than it had been in letters, especially because I wasn’t out of the woods yet. I wasn’t focused on school. My job situation was a mess. And I was losing faith in men. In just the few months since I’d left Patrick, I’d been propositioned by my boss and by the director of a modeling agency that I sometimes worked for. I was seeing too many Walt McCandlesses in the world and not enough Chrises.
Chris put his hand on mine. “Listen to me, Carine. You can recover from anything. Just believe in yourself and keep your head on straight. You’re a pretty girl and men are going to try to take advantage of you. But you’re very smart, and you need to focus on that and not so much on the outer stuff. If they don’t see what you’re worth, then to hell with them. Move on. And I don’t mean that just in work. When you know it’s time to move on from a bad situation, just do it. Keep moving forward and be true to yourself. You are the only one who can ensure your own happiness.”
“I know,” I said. “I’m not going to be a victim. That’s why I want to have my own business one day instead of just being a stepping stone for someone else’s dream.”
Chris laughed and said, “Fair enough, but don’t let your drive drown you.”
WE MET OUR PARENTS out for dinner later that evening. Chris played his part well, and the discussion was meaningless. He was careful to not speak specifically about his future. He was not a hypocrite and hated liars. But out of necessity he’d become skilled at avoidance, and he used his skills to navigate the night’s agenda. Just as he’d said he would in his letters, he told our parents what they wanted to hear. When Dad asked about future plans, Chris mentioned law school as one of his many options. He gave Mom a sentimental Mother’s Day card, some candy, and flowers.
I supported his performance, but I wasn’t fooled by it. I knew that once Chris made a decision, that was it—his discipline and determination ensured that there would be no deviance from the plan. I also wasn’t concerned with what he had planned for himself. I already knew that he had not yet determined exactly where he was going or what he was doing after graduation. The freedom of no plan was part of the plan. He just had to keep moving, and I understood that completely. I knew it would be hard to keep in touch, but that didn’t concern me, either. I never worried that he would come across anything he couldn’t handle. He was remarkably intelligent and always succeeded at anything he put his mind to. As I sat at this dinner theater, I had no idea that this would be the last time I would ever see Chris as the master of strategy, so in control of his own destiny. This was the last time I would see him alive.
UPON MY RETURN TO VIRGINIA, I met with a U.S. Immigration officer who had left me several messages. Apparently Patrick had been evading the divorce papers, seemingly in an effort to delay the process long enough to qualify for American citizenship. Immigration theorized that this had been his intent from the beginning—that his real reason for proposing had little to do with love and everything to do with control, and, embarrassed, I saw their logic.
I was also constantly watching my back, my senses on high alert. While Patrick had kept a low profile right after I’d filed, now he sent threatening letters and left menacing phone calls. He began stalking me, staying just outside the fifty-yard requirement as he followed me from my apartment to work or social functions. If I had anyone over, he’d call up from the lobby phone and yell vile things at me. Jody had been right when she’d said things would get messier before they got better.
I also had more to learn. I was still only eighteen, and I could see freedom within reach once again. Over the past months, I’d surrounded myself with feigned emblems of success. I filled my new luxury apartment with contemporary furnishings and dressed myself in the latest fashions. I learned a hard lesson about easy come, easy go with the lack of discipline I applied to my spending. I jumped headfirst toward independence without any consideration given to building a secure foundation.
One morning I walked to the parking lot and tried to recall where I had parked my little white sporty Honda. It had vanished overnight. I suspected Patrick had stolen the car, and I called the police. Self-reflection hit me hard when they called back to inform me that the car had not been stolen; it had been repossessed. I was two months behind on my car payment.
I had quit my job when the boss’s advances became too much to brush off, and I was trying to start my own business selling home-care products. The inventory was sitting all around me, but without a car, I had no way to deliver it to customers. I was struggling to come up with next month’s rent. I had no job, no car, and soon no apartment.
I sat on the floor of my fancy apartment, in my designer clothes, amongst my posh furnishings. I was a pathetic and hollow display of vanity and foolishness. I thought hard about Chris’s advice to keep my head on straight and to be honest with myself. I needed help fast. I started to sob. I stared at the phone. I wished I could call Chris and ask him what to do. But he had no phone. And soon I wouldn’t have an address for him to send a reply to. Besides that, I didn’t even know for sure if he was still in Atlanta.
I picked up the phone and dialed the only other phone number I had ever identified with home. I called my parents. Exposing my reality to them was a tough admittance. I was surprised by how calmly they listened as I told them I had left Patrick, and why, and what had happened with school and with work. I was relieved when I didn’t hear the words “We told you so,” because I did not want to get into the discussion of why I had left them. Maybe they’d learned from the distance I’d kept. Perhaps they had been forced into their own self-reflection and had seen the error in their ways. Perhaps my desperation would provide an opportunity for our reconciliation.
I felt comforted when they quickly came up with a plan to help me resolve my mistakes. I was stunned at their last words to me before we hung up: “It’s all going to be all right, Carine. We love you.”
I sat and stared at the phone once again, but this time with hope in my heart. In nearly nineteen years I had never heard my parents utter those words. Not to each other, not to Chris, not to me. It was surreal. I wanted to tell Chris what had just happened, the incredible breakthrough that had just occurred.
I MOVED MYSELF and my costly belongings back into the Annandale house, and with my move, Patrick’s stalking stopped. Mom and Dad were mostly living at Windward Key and did not spend much time on Willet Drive in those days, other than to work in the basement office. They rented it to me for what they had determined was fair market value. They bailed out my Honda and I was able to sell it quickly to pay them back and pay my rent. I sold my inventory back to the marketing company. I was financially back on track, and I felt like things with my parents were moving in a positive direction.
Chris had recently mailed his final grade report for Mom and Dad to Annandale. He’d gotten an A in Apartheid and South African Society and History of Anthropological Thought, and an A minus in Contemporary African Politics and the Food Crisis in Africa. He included a letter that was polite and civil, thanking them for sending him photos from graduation and other gifts. It was nearing my birthday, and Chris had also sent a separate box to me filled with gifts and a birthday card with one final message. He’d addressed the card “To: The Miss Duchess of York—Carine Zsa Zsa Gabor Ivana Marie Trump McCandless.” Within, he wrote, “Happy Birthday to my Sister! Rising Successor to Leona Helmsley!” His message wasn’t subtle, really. He knew I was driven and wanted to be an entrepreneur. He had heard me talk about my nice apartment and
new car. He had seen the way I was dressed in Atlanta. He must have gotten word from my parents that I was moving back home. As usual, Chris and I did not need words to be able to understand each other. The early birthday gifts meant he would not be visiting me before his travels now, and I understood why he wouldn’t risk returning. He was telling me that he was heading out. He was telling me to be careful. He was warning me not to be materialistic like them.
The box held his prized brown leather jacket, which he had worn throughout every fall and winter in high school and college; a sunlamp; a large assortment of new women’s clothing from Britches Great Outdoors; and a bottle of sparkling apple cider. He was careful in his note not to say anything that would alarm our nosy parents, but the contents said a lot to me. The jacket would feel like a warm hug from him every time I put it on. The sunlamp wasn’t practical for a life on the road. The clothing from Britches made me smile. I had followed through on my thought during his graduation and had mailed him a bunch of new clothes from Britches. But he had very clearly returned every single item, exchanging them for clothes for me. I could see him walking into the store, tags still on the men’s clothes, and asking a female employee to help him pick out some things for his sister. Judging by the selections, she clearly did not understand my style any better than he did. Still, point taken. Chris was effectively saying Nice try, sis, but no thanks. He didn’t need fashionable new clothes wherever he was going.
The meaning of the bottle of cider was just as easy to discern: it was to toast to adventure and new beginnings.
Not long after, a new package arrived, this one for my parents. It was a small stack of letters, stamped RETURN TO SENDER by the post office. My mom and dad soon realized that Chris had left Atlanta, giving them no good-bye or forwarding address. I watched to see worry on their hearts, but instead I only witnessed their resentment and discomfort at the loss of control over their son.
“Did you know about this?” they asked me.
“No, not at all,” I said.
I also watched them for signs of self-doubt but saw none. They never asked me if maybe they’d done something to push him away. As far as I knew, they never asked one another this question. Chris left, they maintained, because Chris was Chris. Chris was intense. Chris was selfish.
It was clear the new beginning I had hoped to discover with them was simply a glimmer of fool’s gold. If they understood Chris so little, even in the face of such a dramatic gesture, how would they ever understand me? I’d just done what all my siblings had done before me, and I coiled back before it was time to leap again. Soon I was offered a job in Virginia Beach, and I decided to leave Annandale for good.
I knew that while I headed south, Chris was heading west. Although we had no way to keep in touch, we remained connected as we always had. Neither one of us knew exactly where we were going or what would unfold before us. But we were both absolutely certain of what we must leave behind.
Part Two
Strength
Perhaps strength doesn’t reside in having
never been broken, but in the courage required
to grow strong in the broken places.
—Kristen Jongen, Growing Wings
CHAPTER 7
A MIDST THE CONCRETE AND STEEL of Manhattan lies the famous woodland of Central Park. The green space, lakes, and playgrounds have long provided New Yorkers an escape from the chaos and noise of city life. The day before I turned twenty-one, I stood in a gazebo near the Oak Bridge inside Central Park’s maze of trails known as the Ramble. The trip to Manhattan wasn’t to celebrate my milestone birthday. It was for my sister Shelly’s wedding.
I had only met her fiancé a few times, but I could tell he was a kind, even-tempered soul—a good balance for Shelly’s fiery side. Both were intense, but whereas Shelly was apt to throw a bottle of salad dressing during an argument over dinner, Augustine was more likely to respond with calm, thorough discussion as he finished his meal, staying focused on dessert.
Over the years, Shelly and I hadn’t been in close touch. She was busy making her life while I was busy making a mess of, and then cleaning up, mine. But when we did talk, it was different than before. I was no longer the “kid” she delighted in teasing. When we were younger, she loved asking questions of me in front of my siblings. “Carine, do you know what sex is? C’mon, tell us!” And would squeal with glee at my awkward definitions. Now our conversations were much more frank, and she talked to me as a sister, not a little sister. I had left home; I was an adult. She talked candidly about things like how her biological clock was thumping—pounding her foot on the floor in emphasis—but how she and Auggie weren’t sure they were ready to have children together. I admitted that I was nervous about having kids myself, afraid that I might not be a good parent. It was an equalizing moment, one that cemented Shelly as a friend and ally.
The previous two years had been full of changes for me. I had made the transition to living and working in Virginia Beach, and it was undeniably my home. Three hours south of the Washington, D.C., suburb I was raised in, it had a slower pace and a vibe that felt more real. People couldn’t care less what car you drove or what clothes you wore. And it was beautiful. I could step outside my door and see the bay, drive to the ocean in ten minutes and the countryside in twenty. It was still Virginia, so not so far removed that it didn’t feel familiar to me, yet it didn’t hold the negative energy that I associated with Annandale.
I enrolled in business management and accounting classes at Old Dominion University. It felt good to focus on just myself for a while. Between my studies and a full-time position as a secretary at a busy CPA firm, there was little time for anything or anyone else.
Yet I made the trip to New York to share the joy of Shelly’s nuptials with my new fiancé, a kind soul who had made me believe in love and trust again. Chris Fish was lead technician at one of the CPA firm’s “petroleum accounts”—a gas station with several service bays. We met under the hood of an old 1981 Volkswagen Rabbit, the affordable cash-purchase replacement for my shiny new Honda. I had driven the VW to Chris’s workplace to deliver some papers for my boss, but its high-mileage diesel engine decided I would spend a little more time there than I’d intended.
As I lifted the hood and peered into the engine compartment, a deep voice floated into my space. “What’s going on with this little gem?”
“I’m not sure yet,” I answered, my head and hands still focused on auto parts. “I think it’s either the battery or alternator. Not sure if it’s charging. The belt isn’t in the best shape, but it’s still tight.”
I looked up to see an incredibly good-looking man standing beside me in a Shell uniform. Tanned and muscular, he had brown eyes and nearly black hair and stood roughly six feet tall. His perfect smile shone brightly under his dark mustache. I felt an instant connection with him. “Oh, I’m sorry . . . Were you asking about me or my car?” I smiled back, then looked down, embarrassed by my flirtatiousness. Geez, did I really just say that?
“Well,” he laughed. “Perhaps both! You know about cars?”
“Enough to get by”—I looked back to the engine—“but not enough to know what I need to spend my money on. The battery terminals are tight; the cells are full of water. I don’t have anything to test the charging system with.”
“No worries. You broke down in the right place. I’m Chris.”
“Good name,” I said as I shook his hand, and he led me into the building. “That’s my brother’s name. I’m Carine.”
“Carine? That’s very pretty. Yeah, my first name is far from unique. Everyone calls me by my last name, Fish.” He handed me a work order to fill out.
“Well, that’s definitely different. Okay, Chris Fish, how long will this take?” I was already worried about the extended duration of this errand.
“We’re pretty slammed today, but I can get you in early this afternoon. You work for Thompson, right?”
“I do,” I confirmed.
“Oka
y, how about I drive you back to the office and I’ll call you when I know more about why your little white rabbit doesn’t want to run for you?” he gallantly offered.
Traffic delayed the short ride back to the office just enough to establish that our interest in each other went beyond the needs of my car. By the time I had paid for my repairs that evening, we had a date for dinner that weekend.
He picked me up on a Saturday night in a freshly detailed Toyota Corolla, apologizing that the Jeep he would have preferred to take me out in was currently in mid renovation. I told him about the classic Corvette still parked at my parents’ place. We went to a restaurant called The Hot Tuna, which was known for its great seafood. Since I wasn’t old enough to drink yet, he ordered a soda for himself as well. The more we talked, the more I shared with him. He was easy to talk to, a good listener, and not shy about opening up about his life, too.
I could tell Fish was more than just handsome. He was smart and hardworking. He wanted to start his own auto repair shop one day. He was six years older than me, and despite being ages that others would describe as young, we both felt driven beyond our years. We wanted the same thing: a future of our own making, one marked by self-reliance. Fish mentioned he lived alone but had chosen a home one street away from his mother, because he remained very close with her and his sister. His father had been violent, too, and we talked openly about what it was like to grow up strong in the midst of a hurricane. We talked about the hard stuff early, but I preferred it that way. I even told him about Patrick. I felt it was best to be totally transparent. We walked on the beach after dinner, and I knew I wanted to see him again. As I found myself already beginning to imagine what the future might bring with Fish, I thought about Chris’s warnings: . . . men are going to try to take advantage of you. . . . You are the only one who can ensure your own happiness.
The Wild Truth Page 11
