From the moment I arrived at Vanessa’s home in Greenwich, CT, I felt the first layers of my frozen emotions giving way.
It was bitterly cold in her part of the country, too, but just being near her warmth and comfort did wonders to thaw my feelings and emotions. I remember feeling empty when I arrived, and physically, I was absolutely depleted. By this time, according to my bathroom scale, I had lost a full 34 pounds — most of which I think was muscle by then. I felt like I managed to camouflage my ugly body under layers of sweaters — but you could really see the weight loss in my face. I looked frail and drawn. It was not a good look. So Vanessa slowly started to feed me tasty bites of cozy food, and she let me nestle into her being in every possible way.
Vanessa, and her two gorgeous daughters, Charlotte and Millie, hugged me and made me laugh until my sides hurt. I hadn’t laughed like that in so long. The dumbest things could get us going — like the fact that my boobs had literally disappeared. Our favorite line from the movie, Bridget Jones’s Diary, was when Daniel Clever instant messaged Bridget with the following postscript:
“PS: I like your tits in that top.”
I used to whisper that to Vanessa all the time when we were at parties in our very fancy days, or in a mix of ladies who didn’t seem to have a sense of humor. But as soon as Charlotte lent me one of her padded push up bras, Vanessa and the girls started randomly quoting this line from the movie in my direction! (Grrr!)
Vanessa told me it was her personal goal to make me “round and happy” — and I think it worked. I couldn’t help but relax into the love and comfort of her friendship, and I was eating her delicious home-cooked meals like a prisoner who was just released from jail.
I honestly think I was growing rounder and more full of love and honest words within hours of my arrival. Vanessa and I would have marathon conversations about what was happening to me, and how I was slipping away. I confessed every thought I had in my head because I needed her to tell me which ones were facts, and which ones were products of my tricky fiction. Vanessa knew my voice so well that she always knew how to spot my Truth from a lie.
But the biggest thing Vanessa did was protect Lou for me. I told her how afraid I was about losing him, or keeping him if this was how we were going to be with each other… And, I was constantly worried about hurting Lou beyond repair. I felt like I was mostly responsible for ruining us — even though she often assured me that it was not all my fault.
Life was dealing us some painful experiences, and we had to keep the blame in check. No matter what anyone sees on the surface, it’s never just one thing that breaks marriages apart. It’s all of the little tears and fractures along the way that decompose the strength of something a husband and wife vow to hold as unbreakable. I had actually told Vanessa that very thing once, she reminded me, and she was just gifting my own words back to me like she was returning some wisdom I’d loaned her long ago.
So whenever we would talk specifically about Lou, Vanessa would always assure me that she had him. He was already safe inside of her heart, and she would not lose track of him. She gave me permission to let go of Lou so I could admit things to myself that I was afraid to say out loud.
My thoughts at that time seemed so selfish and insane, but I couldn’t keep them inside of me anymore. I remember breaking down in tears in mid-sentence so many times because it frightened me to talk so freely about my fears, my regrets, my confusion over Sam and all of the disappointments I was struggling with inside of my marriage.
Vanessa encouraged me to emote, and she made it possible every time she’d remind me that she had Lou, and she could give him back to me when I was well. But I wasn’t well yet. I needed time away from Lou, and that was what Vanessa was giving me.
Time to myself in a foreign country.
Two days before we were scheduled to leave for London, Vanessa told me over breakfast that she was taking me out to lunch, and to a spa for a “bit of a makeover.” I remember the look in her eye when she said this to me. I was seated at the counter in her snuggly and warm kitchen.
Vanessa is positively stunning — everything about her is beautiful, and sometimes, I find myself feeling overwhelmed by how magnificent she is. But she’s real, too. A lot of people put Vanessa up on a pedestal because she is so gorgeous, and they miss the fact that her inner soul is what makes her so ethereal and beguiling. But for me, it’s the whole package that makes Vanessa my Beauty. I trust her more than anyone and I wanted to give her permission to remake me and reshape me into someone I actually wanted to be again.
A few hours later, we walked into this swanky Greenwich salon, and I instantly knew what Vanessa had planned.
I was going to get fancy fingernails — just like hers (only mine were going to be “sportier.”) On the surface, that might seem like a boring or uninteresting idea for a makeover, but not to me. And not to Vanessa.
In my novel, Hurricane Season, Eloise Butts gets a fancy fingernail make-over when she’s trying to change herself into someone new, but in her case, it backfires in a fiery mess that gives her a huge reality check. But somehow, Vanessa knew that borrowing from my fiction one more time was necessary to help me find some piece of myself again. She knew that something so silly from my book was actually a place for Truth and discovery, and she was ready to put her theory to the test.
So she asked me what would be the only color I would never put on my fingernails. I thought about it for a moment, and then said, “Hooker Red.”
Vanessa didn’t even hesitate. She looked at the nail spa worker, and said in her very posh British accent, “She’d like Hooker Red for the fingers and toes — or whatever red color the working girls are wearing these days!”
My nail tech jumped into action and pulled out a wheel of gel nail chips in every shade of red imaginable. Vanessa carefully considered all of the shades, and then selected one she was sure would complement my skin tone. I remember feeling kind of nervous — I don’t really love painted fingernails on me. I just like to put polish on my toes. And then, only in a soft shade of pale pink that makes my feet look clean and tidy.
But “The Thrill of Brazil” was the name of the polish Vanessa picked. (And, as you can see from the header on this post, it was a thrilling shade of red, indeed!)
An hour later, Vanessa and I walked out of the salon after giggling our hearts out and sipping on fizzy water like a couple of boozers while our nail tech’s gave us fancy fingers and toes. I couldn’t stop looking at my nails. It was so strange to see these bright red nails on my ugly old hands. But it didn’t take long for me to embrace my fanciness.
I just remember incorporating a lot more hand gestures into everything I did! Vanessa would laugh with me when we’d see my stubby pointer finger sliding down the menu, or when we’d both notice me checking out my nails like I was a woman of leisure.
It was this crazy expression of color in my life that seemed to be dearly lacking at the time.
When I went to sleep the night before we were flying to London, I folded my hands in front of my face, and I prayed my heart out. I was profoundly sad, and more than a little afraid of leaving on the trip. I felt un-tethered from every part of myself, yet seeing those dark red nails on my fingers in the dim light of the moon gave me a strange kind of hope. I had to find a way to look at myself differently if I was going to get better. I had to be willing to dig beyond all of the contained and controlled parts of myself to find the repressed goodness that I hoped was still in me.
