Helpless (14 page)

             
Then Jason remembered her manager.  Aldo? 

             
Yes!

             
Aldo lived in New York City, but he talked to her almost every week.  He set up her travel plans and her hotel rooms.  She would trust Aldo a little bit. 

             
Jason called and got an answering machine.  Right, time zone issues.  It was mid-morning here so very, very early morning there and Aldo seemed the type who was not a morning person.  Jason leaned back to try and get as much sleep as he could for now.  He would call Aldo after he had his sleep and breakfast, which may be around Aldo’s lunch time.  At least he could make sure one person was in Nat’s corner and trying to look out for her. 

* * *

              I wake up knowing a hangover is going to haunt me all day.  I can kick it back with a few boosters.  I ooze out of bed and glide to the shower.  I toss back two boosters then turn the water on to a respectable warm but not hot temperature.  The water and perfumed soap help my head a little.  I tip my head back and let the warm water beat on my face.  The rhythm is soothing.  I concentrate on the noise, the pattern.  Soothing like my Zen alarm clock.  I am in no hurry to get out, I turn and let the water massage my back.  Then finally my stomach tells me to knock it off.  Hunger wins, I have get out and find something to eat.

             
I’m all toweled off and I ease into the kitchen for some fruit and water.  At least I don’t want to eat when I have a hangover, I’m only eating now because my stomach is cramping it is so empty, but I have no desire to eat.  That’s great for keeping my slim figure.  Modeling is all I have now and I can’t mess it up by eating my way out of this situation.  I’ll have just enough to get my stomach to settle down.

             
Boosters and fruit—the breakfast of supermodels!  Maybe some laxative since I have to be on guard against over eating now that I am really unhappy and really don’t know what to do with any of my time.  I guess laxatives would be bad today, but I’ll take some tomorrow when I feel better.  I only have to get through today anyway, tomorrow I travel to my next shoot and I’ll have plenty to keep my mind busy. 

             
I stay in all day.  I do call in lunch from a local vegan deli, and munch on some tasteless food while I watch stupid movies all day long.  That is about as much energy as I can muster.  I force myself not to think of Jason or my dad.  I’m better off without fake liars.  I’ll just build my own little empire and my own following.  Once I’m famous and fabulously rich, I can do whatever I want.

I wake up angry and in a sweat.  I can still feel the pinprick of the needle in my face. 

             
I’ve been dreaming about my earliest memories.  Jason once told me the earliest memories are usually ones of the first traumas we suffered, and should be dealt with or they haunt us our whole lives.  For months I’ve been suppressing these memories.  They have been sneaking into my thoughts while I change outfits or other small spots in the day when I am alone.  I’ve been looking at them and pushing them away.  The only thing of value I have left from Jason, thank you very much, is the ability I now have to purposely control my memories.

             
But my dream is still vivid in my memory.  I know it will fade soon and can’t wait.  But it is haunting me in the meantime, as I stretch and go into autopilot to get ready for my day on the beach in front of cameras.

             
The pinprick.  It is from a needle full of Botox.  I am three or four, still basically a toddler, and have a beauty pageant the next day.  I still have a little baby chub on me and I guess a fold or two around my eyes from that chub.  So I am in a back room of some restaurant getting illicit drugs pumped into my little face.  I remember I cry a little.  That brings my mother’s face nose to nose with mine with that disappointed look.  Even at that young age, I know what that look means and I shut up.  I don’t want to get pinched so hard my leg bruises.  If I keep it up, she will do it to show how disappointed she is in my behavior.

             
How could a mother treat a baby girl like that?  My mind leaves the dream to flash forward to when I was eight.  I don’t call her mother now, I call her Maya.  This was not my idea, I wanted a mother.  Maya wanted to stay young and didn’t want anyone she knew to see an older girl calling her mother.   It only took me a few slaps across the face to drop with word
Mom
from my vocabulary.

             
This night Maya is rushing around the house getting ready to go out with friends.  Heath is already long gone, disgusted with Maya and divorced and living in Europe somewhere.  It didn’t even slow Maya down for a second.  She always had a group of friends ready to go out and party with her.  Whoever flattered her the most on any given night was who she slept with. 

             
Tonight she was especially pleased because some young male actors were joining her normal group.  She was already flying high on coke and gin.  I remember I didn’t smash myself against the hallway wall fast enough and she bumped into me, stubbing her toe.

             
“What the fuck, Natalie?” I could see red start to flush her face.  I started to run off to my room.  She clamped down on my shoulder and jerked me back.  Taking that intimidating nose to nose position she loved so well, she decided now was a good time to vent out some information about my conception.  Always a good mother/daughter topic.

             
“I never wanted you.  You were a big accident because Heath lied about his condoms.  I was going to abort you, but Heath wouldn’t let me.  You are just lucky I tolerate you here.  So stay the hell out of my way when I am getting ready to go out!”  She pushed me away.  I ran further away.

             
Damn.  Damn.  I can feel her claw-like grip on my shoulders now.  I can feel how my whole body felt cold from the harsh and unloving words.  I always figured they had been trying to create a normal family when they had me.  Maybe that was just the fantasy of a young girl, making up ideas of how she wanted her family to be.

             
I have a flash of disgusted glee as I remember that was the night she had her car crash, the night that put her in a wheelchair for the rest of her life.  Karma’s a bitch.  But she took her abuse to deeper and sneakier levels once she was in a wheelchair.  

             
I shake my head.  I am in no way ready to go back to those times.  I literally stomp my feet on the floor hard as I walk to the hotel bathroom, set up like a spa, so lovely and the floor is all hard flagstones.  The stones are heated from underneath, hot and hard and perfect to send pain shooting up my legs and help me shake off these memories.  Send them away so I can get down on the beach and show off my rocking body and make some money.

* * *

              Jason was sitting in his office.  He was suspended from seeing any patients while he was under investigation.  He was far from sure if things would work out for him…he had returned all the money well before Natalie found out... yet, he hadn’t found a way to tell her before she found out, so not keeping the money didn’t seem to hold too much weight.  Those two issues seem almost perfectly balanced and they held his career in the balance too.  Not taking the money; not telling her soon enough.  He had so desperately wanted to tell her, but he also desperately wanted to keep their relationship solid.  He saw no way out, so he had panicked and done nothing out of fear.

             
At work all he could do was help around the office with paperwork and phones and other little things.  Right now, he was hunched over his desk after a call from Aldo.  The two had been keeping in touch, Aldo reporting what he observed with Natalie and Jason giving him pointers on how to help her through things.  Aldo had just reported another night out with a strange man and lots of drinks.  He supposed drugs too, but the people who told him what they saw could only confirm the heavy drinking.  This caused more acute guilt to flood over him.  It had only been four days since that terrible binge he had watched her stagger home from, only four days since he spent the night on her doorstep to make sure no one walked in on her. 

             
Although he was not responsible for her learning to use alcohol to dull her pain, he felt he was responsible for her current lapse; therefore he was going to have to help her.  He didn’t care if it cost him his job.  He didn’t care if she never came back to him, but somehow he was going to put her back on the path to health again.

             
First off, he would have to make sure she was safe when she went out with strangers.  There was no way he could stop her right now, that would come with other things.  But he could shadow her and be there in case something went south.  He tapped his fingers on his desk as his mind flew over scenarios.  Nothing was really going to be easy, and then there was money.  He had to pay for his flat, he had to eat, he had to travel to wherever she was meeting these guys.  So far it had all been in London, but she had Aldo booking her solid and was now seeking out companionship if she had any type of spare time before or after her flights or shoots. 

             
This was the main thing that worried Jason.  Something bad could happen anywhere, but London was a little more civilized.  He actually shivered when he thought of the headlines over the past few years about people disappearing or being killed in some of these exotic places she was going to be traveling to.  There was no way he could fund his own travel around the globe keeping up with Natalie.  Also, he may be able to pass off her spotting him in London or somewhere in Europe, but if she tagged him somewhere else, like Istanbul, the game would be up. 

             
He was making himself sick thinking about it.  He wished there was some way he could let her feel this—feel how this was really making him feel.  If she felt his stomach rolling, if she felt him clammy cold but still sweating; she just might believe that he truly loved her.

             
The physical sickness forced him to stand up and start pacing in his office.  Physical movement has been proven to help the brain run logic problems, Jason was forced into pacing so this knowledge was not the reason he was pacing.  Yet he hoped the movement would break some idea lose in his mind.

             
All his mind did was flashback to a conversation he had with Heath before he started the job.  Actually the conversation that convinced him to take the job.   After all, it was a weird job and Heath was a movie star.  It all seemed strange and overly dramatic.  He was going to decline the job when Heath started in on the story of the way that Natalie had ended up leaving her mother in Texas to come to live with her father in London.

             
Jason sat down again.  Then he popped back to his feet and started to pace again.  The images his brain was creating for him to go along with story chilled him to the bone.

             
Maya had placed Natalie into the beauty pageant and modeling world as soon as she could.  By the time she was four, Heath had left at Maya’s request and they handled their divorce long distance.  It was better that way, and Natalie by default stayed with her mother.  Heath barely saw Natalie.  It was always an ordeal to deal with Maya, it was like setting up an appointment with the president and Heath just did not have the patience to play games. 

             
Heath just checked out from Natalie’s life; he saw his obligation as sending expensive presents for birthdays and holidays.  He had no idea what was happening to his daughter and when the last incident took place, Natalie refused to ever talk about it.  Heath had only doctor and police reports to go on.  He tried to get Natalie to talk about it, but she would just run to her new bedroom in London and slam the door.  So all that Heath could pass on to Jason when trying to set up this scheme was the following:

             
In her obsession to make her daughter live the life she could no longer be a part of, Maya was molding Natalie physically into the equivalent of a red-headed Barbie Doll.  Jason remembered a media segment about girls with this aspiration.  They had computer generated models and doctors, basically, if a human had the dimensions of this doll, she would not be able to even stand up on her own.  So Natalie was subjected to this outrageous goal.  The child was plucked and waxed and Botoxed, she was also always on a strict diet.

             
The event that landed Maya in a mental institution for months (instead of jail) and sent Natalie to London was kept out the papers only because Natalie was fourteen and the attorney Heath hired was well paid.

             
A bathing suit commercial was coming up in a few weeks and Maya had decided that her fourteen year old daughter was too fat.  She was so skinny already that clothes dropped off her hips.  But Maya was determined that the cameras not zoom in on an ounce of fat.  For days Natalie was fed only grapefruit and water.  Then, with two more days to go, all Maya would allow Natalie to have was ice cubes to suck on.  When the girl complained about cramps in her stomach, Maya insisted that the ice would calm the muscle spasms and she should suck it up and would get some salad after the commercial was finished.