I raced back to America and straight back to the set.
“You can take more time,” Penelope insisted.
But I couldn’t. I could feel myself falling apart like someone had sliced me at the seams, could feel the flesh peeling away, and I knew whatever it would reveal was too repulsive to be witnessed.
I never felt more whole or more myself than when I acted, knew the easiest way to stop myself breaking would be to surround myself with people for whom that break would be anawful inconvenience.
So I filmed the movie. I pretended to be alright, and I distracted myself from my grief during the day.
I was okay, okay, okay—so okay the press began to push that maybe I should have taken a break, maybe I was callous,or maybe I was lingering in stasis, just waiting to implode. They were eager for it, setting countdowns of their own for a degeneration they could sell.
All I know is I couldn’t sleep. Could hardly settle enough to sit down in the bed, would often, on the cusp of falling asleep, remember losing control of the wheel, careening forward, blinking dazed after the collision. My parents did not die in a car crash, but they seemed connected somehow, like death was a stalking thing. Maybe part of me felt guilt, but if I’m honest my feelings were buried so deep I’m not sure I’ll ever truly understandwhatI felt then, only that there was very little of it and also, farfartoo much, like I’d suffocate on all that nothingness.
I ran from distraction to distraction;yesto every party, to every bar, to every game of poker that a group of the crew began playing, Caleb there too, Caleb who finally said: “Here, Nadine, you can try this if you want. I think it might help.”
He closed my fingers around a cigarette—because that’s what I thought it was at first.
He was right, the marijuana relaxed me, helped me calm enough to sleep wholly and deeply.
It would be unfair to blame that joint on where the problems began. If I had left it there I might, at worst, become a little too dependent on it to fall asleep.
The issue was that my whole life was characterized by caring very deeply about everything, caring so much it burned, driving me forward to my next challenge or goal, often tothe detriment of not actually celebrating the ones achieved. I cared so much it scorched anything in its path, including, occasionally … me.
And now I did not care about much at all.
And I certainly did not care about myself.
A FATAL FEUD
Nadine twirls on a dance floor, arms raised. She stops as she sees the camera, her gaze unfocused for a moment too long.
Ivan Drozdov:We should have gotten her help earlier.
Nadine in the spotlight. She wears a high-necked gown, her hair piled atop her head and steadily she takes aim with a gun. The scene cuts to Nadine backstage, that same gown. She is collapsed in her chair, head on her dressing table, hyperventilating.
Nadine Heywood:I was very good at hiding it. And I had a historic reputation as someone who wouldn’t dream of touching anything, let alone the hard stuff.
Amos DuPont:I still don’t quite believe it. You should have met the Nadine I knew in our student days; she’d have fainted at the sight of a Tylenol.
Nadine Heywood:I don’t blame anyone for not realizing. Those closest to me knew the complicated relationship I had with my parents. I doubt they realized how terribly I was reacting to their passing. Even I was baffled by it, which I suppose was part of the problem.
Sasha Wallace:Her parents were … It’s not really my place to say.
Ivan Drozdov:Neglectis the word that springs to mind but emotional starvation feels more apt.
Sasha Wallace:Their deaths robbed Nadine of the possibility of it ever getting better.
Nadine Heywood:Look, it’s unfair to assign all of the blame to grief. It would be too easy. There were other factors—the quieter sadness I was constantly running from, a lifetime of never cutting loose, the invasive press who robbed me of my privacy, and me, of course—my vapidity and materialism, my relentless pursuit that carried one part of me so far and left quite a lot of me behind.
Jasmine McKenna:From a media perspective, 2000 was the era of Heywood’s rebrand. Party-girl Nadine was born.
Nadine Heywood:The millennium raced forward. And I became a tragic little icon.
January 2000
I’D DISCOVERED THAT YOU COULD TAKE ONE SHINY pink pill and dance until the sunrise broke across the sky. And that yawning chasm within you could be very good for an echoing beat and the reverberation of music through your chest, your bones, until you didn’t feel quite so hollow anymore.
I celebrated the new millennium in a basement club in New York. Lana had advised me to get cash out in case the stock market crashed, so I had a purse full of bills and a room full of people desperate to exchange it (powders, pills, smiley-faced little tabs, all at my disposal). I was so high all I remember were some bright flashing lights and lips against mine.
