“Oh right. Great idea to bring Dad into this. You know how he felt about me.”
Elsa lowered her eyebrows. “You don’t know what you’re talking about.”
“Hello!” Carmella said to her client, who appeared directly behind Elsa and waited. “Good morning.”
The woman looked to be in her mid-thirties with fire red hair and a bright smile. She knew better than to react to the bickering between the two employees of the Katama Lodge. Elsa stepped back and greeted her warmly as Carmella beckoned for her to sit at the acupuncture table.
“I’ll see you for our meeting later?” Elsa asked, her voice still fake and kind.
“Looking forward to it,” Carmella affirmed as her sarcasm sizzled just beneath the surface.
When she latched the door closed, the woman on the table said, “That was some article in that Boston magazine this morning.”
Carmella grimaced but forced a wider smile. “Let’s just focus on what we can do for you today, huh?”
CARMELLA FORCED HERSELF through her first three appointments. Toward the tail-end of the third one, Elsa texted her to come into her office for another conversation. Carmella ignored it. Instead, she headed out toward the back porch and then trailed toward the water. She felt guided there by some unknown force. She slipped off her shoes and stood off toward the side of the beach and watched as the water traced around her toes. She had felt so big and open when she’d stood like this with Cal a few nights before. For the first time, she’d felt like more than just herself — than just Carmella.
Now, she felt even less than she had before.
The tears came shortly after that. Carmella’s shoulders sagged forward as the waves continued to creep up the beach. She placed her hands over her cheeks and stared out toward the opposite island, Chappaquiddick. Always, it lurked just over in the distance— like it was another world so far away, yet close enough to see the mass of green, beauty, and beaches.
With her eyes closed, Carmella felt a presence near her. There was the soft sound of someone weeping. For a moment, Carmella thought that maybe, the weeping came from herself. But when she opened her eyes and peered toward the right end of the beach, she found none other than Helen Skarsgaard.
Helen wore a white robe, which caught the reflection of the sun beautifully. She looked angelic, like a painting in an old church, and she bent toward the water line beautifully, as though she was a part of a dance, waiting for the music to change.
Unlike Janine, Elsa, and Nancy, Carmella hadn’t yet met with Helen. Now, as Helen adjusted her face and peered over toward Carmella, Carmella lifted her hand and fluttered her fingers in greeting. There they stood: two heartbroken women, at the edge of the world, looking for meaning. What did any of it mean?
Helen straightened her back. She turned her bare feet toward Carmella and walked along the edge of the sweeping water, all the way toward Carmella. Her face was blotchy and she wore no makeup. In the last film Carmella had seen of Helen, Helen had gotten into an enormous argument with the male lead — one that had made her scream and cry and throw a vase across the living room. In that, her cheeks had been streaked with black mascara. She’d told the man she would never speak to him again and then she’d fallen into a heap in the corner.
Without the makeup, Helen just looked like any other woman. She still had very beautiful features, but she could have been any other woman on the island of Martha’s Vineyard, maybe en route to pick up her child at soccer practice or buy a donut at the Frosted Delights.
“Are you okay?” Helen asked softly.
Carmella shook her head. “I don’t think so. And you?”
“I don’t think so.”
They shared a smile. For what was more intimate than shared distress? Carmella collapsed to the sand beneath them and drew her arms around her knees so that she sat like a ball. Helen joined her. Already, her robe was stained with sand and grit. The wind caught her hair beautifully, and she gazed out across the water, her eyes glistening with sorrow.
“I guess you’ve seen the article about the Lodge,” Carmella tried after a long moment of silence.
Helen shook her head. “I didn’t read it. It does me no good to read stuff like that.”
Carmella nodded. She imagined that this had taken her a great deal of time to learn. It was akin to a child learning not to touch the stovetop.
“They threw me under the bus, too. And my family,” Carmella said. “This place — the Katama Lodge — it isn’t always what it seems to be. I hope it’s okay to tell you that.”
“Nothing is ever fully what it seems to be,” Helen agreed. “I’ve known that for years. For example, everyone thinks I’m this super successful, beautiful, happy person. And then, everyone wants to eat up the news that I’m having some kind of breakdown. They think they know the whole story! It’s amazing, the things people think.”
Carmella nodded. “I can’t even begin to understand all of that.”
Helen turned to look Carmella in the eye. “But you can. All of life is the same. We’re all these scared creatures who will one day die. My husband left me, but also, what people don’t know, is that I had a miscarriage and fell into such a state of depression and sorrow that I couldn’t speak anymore. He had no compassion for that. And it made me realize that I was even more alone than I thought.”
Carmella’s throat tightened with sadness. “I am so sorry.”
Helen shrugged. “I’m sure you have your own stories. Your own sorrows. Your own pain. None of it adds up to anything. It just happens to you. And then, you find a way forward. I don’t know if you ever get over anything.”
Carmella considered Colton, her mother, all the pain and confusion that had surrounded her father’s death, and she nodded. “You’re right.”
“Being right doesn’t fix anything, though,” Helen said with an ironic laugh. “I don’t know if it’s better to see everything clearly or not.”
“You mean, to be a little more less intelligent and a little happier?” Carmella suggested.
“Something like that,” Helen said.
Carmella dropped her chin to her chest. “I am so sorry about your loss.”
Helen paused for a moment. She collected her fingers together and exhaled. “Three months pregnant. I thought I’d never be happier. And then, in a flash, it was all over, taken from me. And then, my marriage was over, too. I haven’t spoken to a lot of my family in years and so I came here. And I look out across the Katama Bay and I wonder what will come next.”
“Just one day at a time.”
“One day at a time,” Helen affirmed.
Chapter Sixteen
“Why don’t we get out of here?” Helen turned her eyes excitedly toward Carmella’s. They’d held the silence long enough and it seemed Helen had grown tired of it. She lifted from the sand, brushed the sand off her robe, and pointed for her cabin. “I just have to grab a few things.”
“Where do you want to go?” In Carmella’s mind, she was doomed. There was nowhere to turn.
“I don’t know. Anywhere, but here. Out there, maybe.” Helen nodded toward the water. “I have a sailboat on hire. We can go wherever we want. Let’s sail to Europe, for crying out loud. We’re free, aren’t we? From everyone and everything, from expectation and from rules.”
Carmella followed after her and headed toward the large cabin. Once inside, she ogled the transformation Helen had conducted within. This was no longer the cabin that she and her father had decorated a few years before. Helen had brought in a wealthy wardrobe, immaculate art, and a wide selection of sunglasses, swimsuits, large bags, and even a cat, which she stroked lovingly as she eased past the bed.
“Let’s see.” Helen stood before her wardrobe with her hands on her hips. “Maybe this dress?” She lifted a white lacey, strappy get-up from the right-hand side and waved it through the air. “Oh, and my yellow bikini. I always think darkness can’t catch me when I wear this thing. I don’t know if I’m entirely correct. And what
about you? You can take whatever you want. I haven’t worn half of it before. Use it like your own closet.”
Carmella hesitated at the selection of swimsuits, many of which still had tags. She selected a dark red bikini, which scooped low over the breasts and lifted high on the bottoms toward the belly button. She shrugged and slipped into it in the bathroom while Helen played a selection of dance tracks from the stereo, which she’d also brought from elsewhere. When Carmella left the bathroom, Helen handed her a glass of champagne and said, “I think we should transform this day. What do you say?”
Carmella donned a black dress, a large pair of sunglasses, and a wide-brimmed hat. Helen wrapped a scarf around her head and then donned sunglasses as well. She looked the part of an old-fashioned movie star, like Marilyn Monroe on the run from the paparazzi. Carmella said this aloud, and Helen laughed. “Famous women have been on the run from the world for centuries. But the real secret is that we’re actually on the run from ourselves.”
Helen arranged for her driver to whisk Carmella and Helen off from the side of the parking lot. Paparazzi flung themselves after them, but the car whipped out of the parking lot and out onto the main road in such a flash that the cameramen hadn’t time to grab their supplies and get into their own cars to keep up. Helen let out a laugh and dropped her head back. She looked to be the definition of freedom.
They reached the Edgartown Harbor, where a large sailboat awaited them, with a captain already on board waiting. Helen jumped on and then reached out to grab Carmella’s hand to help her as she clambered aboard.
“Did you grab all the supplies I asked for?” Helen asked the man.
“I did indeed. Everything’s in the fridge,” the man affirmed as he reached for a rope and allowed the sails to swell with the wind.
The sailboat swept out from the docks as Helen popped the cork off of yet another bottle of champagne and poured them both sparkling glasses. They clinked them together as Helen said, “I don’t know any other way to heal except to keep going.”
Carmella nodded and tried out a smile. She was surprised to feel how easy it came. Maybe it was just the art of pretending that got you through. Maybe it was all in the mindset of “one day at a time,” just like Helen said.
Helen removed her dress and sat in the splendor of the sun in only her bikini. Her confidence swelled across Carmella, and Carmella grabbed onto it, removing her own dress and matching Helen’s pose. Compared to other summers, Carmella was a bit paler, a bit more lackluster looking and she felt a stab of sadness, as though she’d wasted too many beautiful days.
Helen removed a package of raspberries from the fridge and popped one in her mouth. As she chewed, she closed her eyes and said, “It really is the simple things, you know? I always forget that. When I was living with my husband, I swear, we spent so much money on things to try to make us happier. We bought one of those isolation tanks, and I would float in the darkness and try to pretend that I didn’t have a body. And we would hire massage therapists and meditation specialists and Buddhists and — gosh, the list goes on and on. And every night as I lay there beside him, I thought about how useless it all felt. How we kept adding more things to the pile, but somehow the enormity of my feeling toward him, toward myself grew less and less.”
Carmella thought about her sad little apartment, about its single chair in the kitchen — about how she’d always thought more was more, that if she had a better place, better furniture, more funds, maybe she would be happier.
“We always want what we don’t have or need,” she breathed.
“Yes. I had everything, and I wanted nothing.”
“And I have nothing. And I want everything.”
“Here’s to not knowing what’s right,” Helen said as she lifted her glass of champagne once more.
The sailboat churned through the waves. They reached the west side of the island, where the captain dropped anchor and sat back, allowing Helen and Carmella to leap into the waves and swim around. Above them, a cliffside surged up from the water, and Carmella felt infinitely small. She rather liked that feeling as though the smaller she got, the smaller her problems were. She could hardly feel Elsa’s anger anymore. She could hardly remember the face of that horrible journalist. His name? She would never speak his name again. It mattered so little to her at that moment.
“What would you have done if you hadn’t been an actress?” Carmella asked Helen as they dried themselves in the sun.
Helen laughed softly. “Nobody has asked me that. Ever. Isn’t that weird?”
“Kind of. Although probably, most people can’t imagine that you would have wanted anything else.”
“Yes. And it is true that when I was a girl, all I ever said was that I wanted to be an actress. I was in every community theater production. I was Annie and that little girl in Les Miserables and — wow, the list goes on. I haven’t thought about that community theater in ages. I recently heard that they renamed the community theater after me. Helen Skarsgaard’s Theater. I hate that a bit. I loved that place. I don’t want it to honor me like that. I was just a small part of its history.
“But to answer your question, I don’t know. I guess I really loved all my acting teachers and coaches. They just cared about acting in a pure way. They cared about storytelling. And they cared about passing along that knowledge to all of us. They were tireless in their efforts. I guess I could have seen myself doing something like that. Maybe even working at that very theater. Marrying some local guy — the football coach or a banker or whatever, and having his kids, and bringing the kids to the theater with me. Maybe we would have sat around the dinner table and acted out various performances. Maybe I would have forced everyone to do a terrible Shakespearean play. Can you imagine? All these little kids, putting on those accents. ‘Tomorrow and tomorrow creeps in this petty pace from day to day...’”
Carmella laughed. “That’s King Lear, isn’t it?”
“Very good,” Helen said.
“I don’t think the world knows what a brainiac you are.”
“Are you suggesting that the world thinks I’m less than? Because I know the world thinks I’m not as smart as I am. And in some ways, I let them think that,” Helen affirmed.
Carmella sipped her champagne and considered this. After a long pause, she said, “You will still have happiness. I believe you deserve it.”
Helen’s laugh was ironic. “I don’t know. I’ve already gotten so many things that I wanted. Maybe I don’t deserve the rest.” She then peered into Carmella’s eyes and said, “And what about you? What do you want?”
Carmella buzzed her lips. “I thought I wanted that guy.” She’d told Helen enough about the journalist for her to understand. “But now, I don’t know. I think that was just an illusion. Maybe I just want to be able to sit in the silence of myself and feel okay with myself? And maybe — well, I know I want to fix everything with my sister. And be fully honest with her for the first time about how painful it’s been the past few decades.”
“You owe it to yourself to be honest,” Helen said. “It’s the first step.”
As the afternoon crept toward evening, Helen instructed the Captain to return to the Edgartown Harbor. Unfortunately, when they latched up to the creaking dock, a number of paparazzi rushed from their vehicles. It seemed like they’d been lying in wait for them. Helen’s driver awaited them and attempted to block the frantic flashes of the cameras.
Midway toward the car, Carmella locked eyes with a familiar man. There, in the sea of other journalists, stood Cal himself. He dropped his camera to his chest and furrowed his brow at her, clearly aghast. Carmella’s lips curled into a smile. Was this some kind of revenge that she’d spent the better part of the day with a beautiful, iconic, incredibly successful actress? It didn’t feel like it to her, really, but she felt the jealousy beaming off of Cal’s face.
In truth, these paparazzi just wanted whatever these beautiful creatures had. They chased them around the world for a glimpse of their
wonder and fame. And Helen had simply opened her world to Carmella, without pause. She wasn’t sure what it meant. Probably, it didn’t mean anything.
The only important thing was that a split-second after she locked eyes with Cal, she turned her gaze toward the car and marched past him as though she’d never met him in her life.
Once in the back of the car, Helen let out another whoop. “Thank goodness for these tinted windows,” she said of the car. “Idiots.”
“That journalist was there,” Carmella said softly.
Helen’s eyebrows rose. “You’re kidding.”
“No.”
“He’s a scavenger, Carmella. Gosh, it makes me so mad that he ever used you like that. As someone who has been used time and time again, I know it’s one of the worst things to feel,” Helen admitted, placing a tender hand on her arm.
Carmella watched Cal out of the window as the car ducked back onto the road and rushed them back to the Katama Lodge. He looked confused and at a loss. She couldn’t contain her grin and she was grateful for that. Maybe, in some small way, she would stick in his mind as a woman he couldn’t fully trap with his words.
Chapter Seventeen
When Carmella returned to the Lodge, she walked past Elsa’s office. There was murmuring through the door — Janine’s voice, then Nancy’s, then Elsa’s. Probably, they were trying to decide what to do to get out in front of this PR disaster. As Carmella paused there, Jennifer Conrad bustled in through the front door, gave Carmella an anxious smile, and then knocked at the door. She’d been called in to rectify any bad social media that had been circulating. What could they possibly post to void the article? How could they get back on track?
Carmella checked her appointment schedule. She had one final client in thirty minutes and then she was home free. What would she do with the strange evening ahead? She immediately texted Cody.
CARMELLA: Can I steal you tonight?
Summertime Nights Page 10
