Kate Nason Learns To Trust Her Intuition

TW: There is a brief description of a violent attack in this episode. 

NOTE: Also, we’ve changed the names of the people in this story. By the end of it you’ll most likely know who we’re talking about because much has been written about this person but we wanted the focus of this story to be on Kate. You can find Kate’s memoir “Everything is Perfect” on her website.

OPENING: In 1987 Kate Nason was pregnant and living in Los Angeles. After work she’d take walks along the Venice Canals near her and her husband’s home. 

In the big city she often found herself looking for wildlife. On her walks she came upon a big gray goose. Kate became so fond of her, she started to call her Lucy. 

On the surface, everything seemed fine… Kate had married her college sweetheart. She carried out her dream job of working in the art world. But Kate kept having nightmares…

KATE: One of the dreams had me chased by a man and a black overcoat who ripped all the out of the left side of my head and broke my arm. So as I was running in this dream to get away from this person I woke up and I knew I had to go see my goose. So I ran out the door, found Lucy with a broken wing and all of the feathers ripped out of the left side of her body. 

At first she wrote it off as a strange coincidence but it wouldn’t go away. She kept having vivid dreams of break ins and being attacked. They were influenced by a sense that their Venice Beach neighborhood wasn’t safe. And everytime she told her husband about them he’d discount them as silly dreams.

This is 2 Lives. I’m Laurel Morales.

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Months went by and Kate’s belly grew. She worked at an artist’s studio, as she prepared for her baby’s birth. 

Three weeks before her due date there was a heat wave in LA. Her husband Hank was working late. So Kate decided to take a bath. As the tub filled with cool water, she opened the window in the bedroom with the hopes a breeze might blow through. (July 1, 1987)

KATE: That noise of the water, filling the tub, um, blotted out a sound I may have heard as this guy climbed through the open bedroom window. So it wasn't until I turned the taps off that I heard a creak in the floorboards and saw him. He pulled me up out of the tub by my neck.

Kate says he then strangled and raped her.

KATE: He never took his hand off my throat the entire time. The rapist heard the doors swing open. I said, that's my husband…I said, that's my husband. He then pulled his pants up and, um, stumbled and ran back through the bedroom out the open window. And my neighbor, Marty who lived upstairs had heard me screaming… Marty caught the guy and strangled him honestly, wrestled him to the ground, Hank checked on me and then I'm outside and begged Marty to stop beating the guy. So they sat on him till the police got there. 

Kate and her baby survived the attack but Kate and Hank’s marriage did not. A year later they divorced.

KATE: I had extreme PTSD. His way of dealing with it was very different from mine. I allowed myself to feel all of it to not push it down. He would have preferred I push it down and get over it.

Kate blamed herself for not paying attention to her gut. 

KATE: I just doubted myself. I really did. I doubted, um, my feelings, I doubted my thoughts … I had extreme PTSD and  his way of dealing with it was very different than mine. I allowed myself, um, to feel a little bit to not push it down and he, he would have preferred, um, and often said, you need to get over it. You've lived, Molly's alive, just get over it.

Kate and Hank separated a year after their daughter was born and Kate moved to another part of Los Angeles. On the day she signed her divorce papers a friend set her up with a young, handsome guy who made Kate laugh.

KATE: He was just meant to be a distraction. The year following the rape, combined with the PTSD combined with the strife in my ending marriage, I was ready for some some light. And Charlie was that.

The Santa Ana winds had blown out the city smog. It was her daughter’s first weekend with her now ex-husband. Kate made sangria for them. They sat around the fire that Charlie built in the fireplace. Charlie was a good listener. He played Kate’s guitar and sang. He was charming.

KATE: Everybody loved Charlie. You know, my friends loved him. Like my mother loved him. Um, my best friend adored him.

Kate told Charlie about the assault. He was very protective of her. When Hank fought Kate about how to parent their daughter, Charlie was supportive.

After almost a year of living together Charlie asked Kate to marry him but she had promised herself she wasn’t going to remarry. Besides, she wasn’t sure she could trust Charlie. 

He was a big flirt. When his ex-girlfriend came to visit, Charlie took off, didn’t see Kate for days. Then he’d come home from working at the Groundlings improv troupe and talked about a woman he’d met there.

KATE: He came home called her robe girl. LAUREL: She wore a robe in a scene. KATE: Yes. That was her act. She wore a robe on stage, he kinda said how cool she was. And, you know, I think I'd like to date her. And I was like, what date her, you know, what are we doing?

LAUREL: But he proposed 10 times, he was very persistent.

KATE: He was. Ten times in four years. So I said, no, a lot. I did. 

LAUREL: So you did listen to your intuition.

KATE: I did. I did. I really did.

It was her therapist who talked Kate into trusting Charlie. She convinced Kate to let go of her fear. 

KATE: When it came to make a big decision, I would ask everyone, um, for their opinion. And then my therapist she asked, why, why won't you say yes to him? And I would sit there and say, I don't know. There's just something I don't trust. Her response was Kate, he loves you. He loves Molly. Trust will grow in time. I believe, I believe that it's your fear of intimacy. Say yes.

So Kate did say yes. She and Charlie got married at an old stone chapel by the sea south of Los Angeles in October of 1991 and within two years they had a baby together. 

Charlie got a job teaching theater at Beverly Hills High School. The students would often come to their house after school to work on sets, make costumes, or just hang out, including a boisterous girl named Mallory. 

KATE: She was, um, bouncy. She had an outsized personality, which I always kind of interpreted as insecurity. She always came bearing gifts, whether it was a coloring book and crayons for Molly, frappuccinos for Charlie and myself.

Mallory frequently showed up unannounced, sometimes surprising Kate with ingredients to make dinner. She embedded herself in the family’s life. Kate had grown accustomed to her giggly presence.

Five years after her attack Kate still dealt with PTSD. Charlie started looking for work outside the city and eventually landed a job in Portland, Oregon. Kate was torn. LA held her friends and her career, but she was ready for a change. 

Soon after they arrived, Mallory reconnected. Turns out she decided to go to college in Portland. Kate thought it was an odd coincidence. But when she voiced her suspicion to a friend, she said everyone had a crush on Charlie.

KATE: Mallory had a crush on Charlie and Charlie treated her with sort of disdain.

Charlie would ignore Mallory as she started to babysit for the kids. She felt to Kate like a younger sister, someone who she could commiserate with about missing Los Angeles. 

Meanwhile Charlie worked long hours at his new job in the high school theater department.

KATE: He'd get home really late. There were missed dinners. There were stories about, you know, his coworker you know, crazy things they did over lunch… I started confronting him. I started asking him and he, uh, the gaslighting consisted of him telling me I was imagining things, that I was crazy, I was depressed.

The dreary wet weather had gotten to Kate and she missed her life in LA. Still, Kate knew something wasn’t right. This feeling persisted for five years. They’d gone to couple’s counseling and Charlie said Kate was jealous and depressed. He said he and his co-worker were just friends.

Around this time Mallory had gotten an internship at the White House but still called Kate everyday from Washington, D.C. Kate confided her suspicions of Charlie’s infidelity. But Mallory said Charlie would never cheat on her. 

One rainy morning Kate received a phone call from Charlie’s young co-worker Cheryl. She wanted to come over and talk to Kate. Cheryl said Charlie wasn’t telling the truth.

KATE: It was the day after I'd taken Charlie to our first, session of marriage counseling… And the very next day I got a phone call from his coworker. Um, and she said, she thought we should talk. I said, okay. Um, she came to my house and she unspool the whole story. 

Cheryl told Kate she and Charlie were having an affair. Charlie had urged her to break up with her fiance promising his undying love. 

KATE: He told her how much he loved her, that he couldn't live without her. 

Kate recalls remaining strangely calm as the puzzle pieces clicked into place. Kate said, I suspect you are not here with good intentions but to bring an end to my marriage. She informed Cheryl that she probably wasn’t his only mistress. 

That’s when Cheryl brought up Mallory. She had overheard her leaving solicitous messages for Charlie at work.

LAUREL: How did it feel to finally be told the truth? KATE: Oh my God. It was like all the doors and windows flew open. Knowing that I wasn't crazy, um, that my depression and my suspicions had a reason, a grounding in reality. I think once I knew the truth, um, and knew that what my gut had been whispering or yelling in the latter days was the truth. I could look back and see, oh my God, look at the things I've ignored that I should have been paying attention to. PAUSE

She confronted Charlie. He begged for forgiveness. But there was someone more important for Kate to forgive – herself. 

Early one morning Kate’s mother called from LA.

KATE: She had been reading the Los Angeles Times. It was the first I'd heard that there was a report that the president was having an affair with the white house intern. And because I had shared with my mother about Charlie's affairs, she knew about Mallory and I, you know, so she said, you know, the president was having an affair, the white house said so. And she said, honey, it's Mallory, yeah.

LAUREL: I have chills running up and down my body. What was going, I mean,  what was your reaction physically and emotionally at this point?

KATE:  Physically, I picked up a book and threw it at Charlie's head. He was under the covers, listening to my half of the conversation. I said, ‘oh my God, do you have any idea what's going to happen to us now?’ And Charlie, ever in denial, said, ‘what will they want with me?’ And I said, ‘you're, you're nuts. This is the president of the United States.’ And Laurel, by the end of that day, my little answering machine was smoking. You know, in the olden days, there was a tiny little cassette tape full to capacity, reporters shouting into the, you know, it was awful, the house surrounded. 

In 24 hours, Kate’s life had gone from private to very, very public. Imagine one day, you’re going about your business, living your life when you discover a deeply painful betrayal that is somehow entangled… with the president of the United States.

Kate’s private heartbreak was suddenly a public hell. As she looked out her kitchen window at satellite trucks, TV vans, and reporters, she felt humiliated, ashamed, stupid. 

KATE: Our poor neighbors couldn't even get into their driveways at this point.

At first the family went into hiding. Kate and the kids fled their house in the middle of the night for a friend’s back in Los Angeles. 

Kate called her uncle who worked in crisis management and dealt with the press. He encouraged them to give a statement, side by side. It was the only way to get rid of the reporters. 

KATE: It was for me an act of self preservation, an act of wanting desperately to go home, uh, to put my kids to bed in their own beds. And the determination that while the rapist had chased me out of my apartment, um, I was not going to let this situation chase me from the home I had made, um, which I loved.

So on January 29, 1998, the day after the president denied his “sexual relations” with Mallory, Charlie admitted to his. Kate and Charlie walked out onto their porch together along with a lawyer who delivered their prepared statement. 

AUDIO FROM PRESS CONFERENCE

LAUREL: I've seen a picture of you on this day or that night. Um, and I'm, and I think we've seen a lot of these tableaus in recent years. And I think what often goes, goes through my mind is what could she be thinking?

KATE: I, in the past have watched women stand by their men and thought, oh my God, what is she doing standing next to this guy? Um, or yes, what is she thinking for me along with vowing to trust my intuition, I had also, um, vowed, uh, to learn everything I could possibly learn from this crazy situation. So in that moment, though, I stood next to my husband and I was really standing by me… I think for a moment, I thought, okay, my husband is willing to stand out here and admit his affair. Our president has denied his, I thought that bade well for us. I despised him. I just couldn't believe what he had by his actions, brought us to.

After that a few reporters still hounded Kate even at the grocery store.  One reporter chased her down the party supply aisle. 

KATE: And there on the rack was a package with groucho marx glasses with a big ol nose and I turned to face the reporter and in my best groucho I could conjure I said hello sir can I help you. 

After the press went away, Kate had a chance to work through all of her emotions.

KATE:  I was going to allow myself to feel everything. Um, you know, all the grief, all the sorrow, all the rage. Um, yeah, the rage often manifested itself in me throwing dishes at the wall. Um, very satisfying.

She got therapy. She went to see tarot card readers and shamans. Kate didn’t want a second failed marriage but repairing this betrayal seemed insurmountable. No amount of marriage counseling would help. 

Meanwhile Charlie lost patience, told Kate to get over it. 

KATE: On that final day when I told Charlie that I wanted him out of the house, by the end of the day gone, I was through, he begged me. He honestly said, how can you ruin our family this way? I was just like, are you kidding me, me? PAUSE

Kate learned when you don’t listen to that little voice inside, it’ll come back to bite you.  In her case, it spiraled into a sub-plot of the biggest U.S. scandal of the nineties.

Kate wasn’t the only one caught up in the tornado. She had small kids who were dodging reporters along with her. 

When they ran out of dishes to break she and the kids would go to Goodwill for more. Before they got out of the car the kids would say Grouchos and Kate would pop open the glove compartment and pull out their glasses.

KATE: People would point and laugh at the three of us. For a tiny moment I could imagine they would point and laugh because we looked silly not because we were the side show to a national scandal. These things helped helped me certainly and helped my kids because in those moments of levity life almost felt normal. 

LAUREL: I'm wondering if you've thought much about how we teach our kids to trust themselves.

KATE:You know, I have thought about that and I was really, um, I love this question because I think it, I think we teach them to trust themselves by honoring their feelings, their expression of their thoughts, their hurts. Um, one of my favorite memories, um, when Finn was like maybe four, something had happened. I asked Fynn how it made him feel. And I have this written in my journal because the response was mom. I know when something's right, because all the lights go on in my body. I know it still makes me cry.

Ten years after Kate and Charlie’s divorce Malory wrote Kate acknowledging her betrayal and asking for Kate’s forgiveness. Kate says we’ve all made choices we wished we hadn’t and she’s forgiven Malory.

Two decades later Kate wrote her side of things in a memoir. It’s called “Everything Is Perfect.” In it she writes, “in a world that strives to reduce us to good or bad… victim or vixen we must be careful not to oversimplify. Our stories are complex and nuanced.”

She says claiming her story as her own, not bending it to fit someone else’s idea of her, has been powerful. And the process of writing the book was very healing. After she finished a draft she workshopped it, took it to writers conferences. People kept telling her she’d have to put it in the past tense.

KATE: I was told you know you’re going to have to put this in the past tense. I was able to put the entire book in past tense in almost one sitting. And I can't, I mean, I get goosebumps Laurel, every time I think about it, because there was something about taking that, that was present every verb transformed to past that, by the time I got to the end, it was like, I'm done, I'm done with this story. And oh my God, what a gift, a completely unanticipated gift. And, um, you know, my intuition tells me that I couldn't have done it until that moment because I was still in it. 

LAUREL: It's almost like if someone else's story? 

KATE: Is, it is, and boy's that incredible. PAUSE

After swearing off romance, she gave into her friends' urging about a decade ago. Got on a dating app and found someone who gets her.

LAUREL: And I'm curious if this time around, if you are careful not to ask for other people's opinions.

KATE: Never, never, um, no, I didn't honestly, let me think about that. No, I never did. And, um, uh, no, I just completely listened to my gut…I had come to believe that if I was wildly attracted to someone, I should run screaming in the opposite direction. 

Early on when they were dating they went to a concert. They were listening to the artist sing a powerful song and Kate looked over at her date and noticed he had the same reaction as her own.

KATE: And I heard a voice honestly that said, ok you need to pay attention to this guy. You really need to pay attention.

So she listened and they’ve been together since. Today she doesn’t make any major decisions without listening to what her intuition says first.

This is 2 Lives. I’m Laurel Morales.

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This episode was produced and hosted by me, story edited by Camila Kerwin of the Rough Cut Collective, music from Blue Dot Sessions. Annie Gerway creates original illustrations for each episode. You can see them at 2 lives dot org or on our social sites -- Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter @2LivesPodcast.

This episode contains a promo of The Bittersweet Life, a podcast about expat life.