by Annie Jocoby
Chapter Six
The next day, we both knew that it was time to act. We had wasted the previous day with our shock and grief of what had intruded into our world. There would be plenty of time for crying when we figured out how to get out of this house and into a place that was safe for us. So, Ryan called Nate that morning to ask if we could stay with him for a little while. Nate agreed, so the plans were set, as soon as Giovanni would be heading to New York. Giovanni agreed to take us there, so that end was set as well.
I sighed. “So what's the long-term plan? We're just going to be trapped at Nate’s indefinitely?” And Nat’s. Nat, who was in love with Ryan and didn’t even try to hide that fact. Nat, with her perfect body and face, and sweet demeanor. I suddenly felt insecure, which was an odd feeling for me in our relationship. I always felt insecure about myself, but I never felt insecure about how he felt about me. But that was changing with yesterday’s devastating revelation.
“No, obviously that is not a viable plan. But I hope that we can think more clearly once we get to safety. I don’t think that either of us is going to think clearly with those wolves outside the door.”
Taking a deep breath, I said “Well, I might as well turn on my phone. God, I dread this.” And I turned on the phone to see that it had, indeed, blown up. 166 missed calls in one day, 25 of them from my mother alone. I looked at the voice mails, and saw increasingly frantic messages from her. Also messages from my friends. But mainly the calls were from various news stations around the globe, and people calling for comments for the tabloids.
What was I going to tell everybody?
I called my mother. “Hey. Listen, and don’t talk. I just wanted to let you know that I'm ok. I don’t want to talk about it¸ so please don’t ask me to.”
“Well, I'm glad that you are alright. That’s all I really wanted to know.”
“Thanks. Ryan and I are going to New York for an indefinite period of time.”
“What does that mean?”
“Well, we won’t be there too long. We're staying with one of Ryan’s best friends, who’s a Goldman banker. So, obviously we can’t move in there. We just need to stay there to figure out what to do.”
“What is all this talk about you hurting yourself? I never knew about that.”
“Nobody did. Listen, I don’t want to talk about it, please.”
She persisted in asking. She was always like that, can never leave well enough alone. I finally ended up hanging up on her.
I didn’t call anybody else back who called me. I was drained enough talking to her.
Meanwhile, Giovanni contacted Ryan. He would be heading to New York in a week. A week! A week here, with them outside the door like hungry wolves. That seemed unbearable. And I could not avoid Ryan’s eyes. Imploring me to open up to him. That has always been the problem in our relationship – I was always so guarded with him, and it took a long time for me to trust and break down the walls. Now, I was expected to bare my soul to him, something that I had, thus far, not been willing to do. But I knew that it was going to come out while we were here in this beautiful home, which had become our prison, because there was no escaping it.
We headed to the kitchen, and Ryan opened up a bottle of his wine. Pouring me a glass, he said “let’s build a fire and drink this wine.”
I nodded. The implication was clear – he wanted answers from me, although he didn’t want to come right out and ask me for them.
We took our wine in front of the fire, and Ryan laid down on the blanket. I fingered my glass lightly, then gulped down the wine. I gave him the glass to refill, and he did so. I sipped this.
Taking a huge breath, I started. “Well, I guess you want answers.”
“Only as much as you're willing to tell.”
“Uh. Well, I have always had an issue with myself,” I started. Then I thought better of it. “This is so embarrassing. I mean, you – you had real problems. Me, I don’t have anything like that in my past. No sexual abuse, no schizophrenic mother, none of that.”
“So, what does that mean? Just because you didn’t have tragic circumstances doesn't mean that you don’t have a reason to have issues.” He stroked my arm lightly. “So, please, stop being embarrassed. I'm your husband. I love you more than I've ever loved anybody. Nothing that you can say to me will make me think any less of you.”
I looked at my red diamond, and felt reassured. The red diamond was symbolic of how deeply this man felt for me. The very rarest diamond in the world, and Ryan made sure that this was the stone that was set in the ring that he gave to me.
I knew that he loved me, so why was this so hard?
I gulped down the rest of the wine, and held out the glass expectantly. Ryan was still on his first glass.
I sighed. “Well, there really wasn’t that much to it. I was pretty much invisible my whole life to just about everybody. No, that wasn’t true. I was invisible to most everybody, yet was bullied as well. I just never fit in.” Ryan was still looking at me, still stroking my arm lovingly, so I felt encouraged to go on.
“I never fit in,” I repeated. “And the hard thing was, I wanted to fit in. I tried out for cheerleader, but was humiliated. The school play - humiliated. Always the last to be picked in gym class, the last to be asked to dance in gym class. God, on the day that everybody was finding dance partners in gym class, I made sure that I looked as good as I could. I'll never forget the look on the face of the guy who was stuck with me – he was stuck with me, because I was literally the last one picked. His look of revulsion…” I took a deep breath. “Never got invited to a party, never got invited to a dance, never had a date, missed my prom because nobody ever asked. A social zero.” I smiled at Ryan. “Somebody like you, in high school, I could only dream about.”
He was looking at me, his eyes penetrating. I still saw vast reservoirs of love in those eyes. He didn’t seem revolted or horrified that he had ended up with such a misfit. So, I decided to keep going. “I got to college, and things changed. I had freedom, and I took it. I drank myself into a stupor every night, and slept with way too many men. That's the way that it was – the alcohol gave me courage and self-esteem, which I didn’t have sober. And it made me way too easy. I was always craving love, always wanting somebody to validate me, to make me feel that I existed, that I was not invisible. But all these men ever wanted was an easy lay. So, you see, there was a bit of cross-purposes there.” I smiled ruefully. Then I suddenly remembered that this was, ironically, how I met Ryan – I went up and talked to him, liquid courage guiding the way, and we ended up in bed together that night.
So, the drunken one-night stand strategy finally paid off.
Ryan sipped his wine, then put his hand in my hair, smoothing back my bangs. He kissed me lightly on the forehead.
I continued. “So, I got depressed. I felt hopeless, and my depression became this deep well. The only thing that brought me out of it was cutting myself.” I looked at my hand, which was shaking violently. “Uh, maybe we should switch to white wine. I'm afraid I’m going to spill this wine on the rug.” At that, Ryan nodded, and was on his feet. He appeared in a few minutes, a bottle of Pinot Grigio in his hand. He poured me a glass and laid back down.
I continued. “I cut myself, and the physical pain took away the mental pain. The emotional pain. It felt – liberating. Freeing. For that period of time when the physical pain was excruciating, I forgot about how bad I felt inside. It became an addiction.”
Finally, he spoke. “How did you end up in the hospital?”
“I, uh, slashed my wrists in my bathtub. My roommate found me when I was near death. I ended up in the hospital, of course, and I had all these other marks on me. There were cut marks everywhere on my body – fresh ones, older ones. Burns, too. I flicked Bic lighters on my skin.”
Ryan’s face remained impassive, although I saw a flicker of pain flash through his eyes. I could tell that he was trying very hard to conceal his emotions.
Taking another gul
p of the Pinot, I continued. “The doctors wanted to know about all of these marks, of course. It wasn’t like I could claim that I was accident-prone. And I couldn’t very well claim that somebody else was hurting me – that would have gotten an innocent person in trouble. So, I told them what I was doing.”
“Did you get help?”
“No, actually. I was a poor college student without insurance. Nobody wanted to bother with me. So, I was discharged after my suicide attempt without any help for me at all.”
Ryan looked away. He looked angry.
I furled my brows. “What's wrong?” I asked.
Shaking his head, he said “That’s such bullshit, how people are treated in this country. If you don’t have money, you don’t exist. I just can’t believe that nobody tried to help you, even when you obviously desperately needed it.”
“Yeah, I know.” I paused. “Anyhow, I kept cutting and was hospitalized for it two more times. The other times were not suicide attempts, but I was hospitalized because it just got so bad that my roommates had no choice but to take me in.”
“What finally changed? How did you stop?”
I shook my head. “I don’t really know. It just got to the point where I didn’t really want to do it anymore. I never got over my issues, I just stopped physically destroying myself.”
He nodded. He looked pensive, sipping his wine. He wasn’t looking at me, but was staring at the coffee table across the room. I stroked his cheek. “What are you thinking?” I felt worried. He now knew that he was with a total loser. I faked my way into his life with just enough air of confidence that he could not imagine just how much of a misfit I was.
Now he knew. Would he stay?
He looked at me. Those eyes….
“I don’t want you to think that I feel one iota differently about you because of what you just told me. If anything, I love you more than ever.” At that, I realized that I was holding my breath, because I let out a long tendril of air after he told me that.
What was I worried about?
He continued. “I just wish that you had the confidence in my feelings for you to have told me about this. I wish that it didn’t take a news anchor to get you to open up to me.” He looked hurt.
“I know,” I said. “All that time, with you at Beverly Hills, and confessing to me all of your secrets, and I never said anything.” I looked at him for a long time, then continued – “I just didn’t want you to know how much of an outcast I am. I was afraid that you wouldn’t love me if you knew.”
I couldn’t read those eyes. There were too many mixed emotions hidden behind them – anger, disappointment, hurt, mixed in with love and respect. They all seemed jumbled up, so I couldn’t tell how he was feeling.
Finally, he sighed. “I guess I'll never convince you the depths of my feelings for you. Even now, after we're married. You never opened your heart to me, except now, when you’re forced to. And that’s what hurts.”
I looked at my wine glass. “I suppose you want an annulment now.”
He looked horrified. “What? Why would you ever, ever, ever, ever, ever think that?” His face changed to horror and then to pure mystification.
“Well, you know me, now. You know that I'm not good enough.”
“Oh, hell no. Hell to the fucking no. You're not going to go back to that. I won’t let you. That's bullshit, and you know that's bullshit. I don’t give a rat’s ass about your social standing. All that I know is that you are a beautiful, intelligent, fun and kind woman with compassionate depths that I could only dream of with my previous girlfriends, and wife. You aren’t getting rid of me that easily.”
“But, honey, everybody now knows that you’re married to a self-mutilator who attempted suicide.”
“And everybody now knows that you're married to a bisexual drug addict who was forced to participate in sex parties at the age of 13. As I see it, you have the shorter end of the stick here.”
We sat in silence for awhile, both of us drinking our wine. Could we possibly see the humor in all of this? Maybe after awhile, but, for now, we were simply too much in shock to say much of anything.
Finally, I spoke “Yeah, but you have money and beauty. Society will give you a pass much more than they will me.”
“Don’t be so sure. It’s schadenfreude to bring people like me to heel. No, trust me, the media will be harder on me.”
I brooded a little about this. He was right, of course. People like Ryan – wealthy, handsome, educated –were the very people who the media always sought to bring down. They wouldn’t give a frog’s fat ass about me, except that I had the standing of being his wife.
However, I knew that both of us would be in for this humiliation. We already were. Maybe the public, as a whole, would care more about the titillating details of Ryan’s background, but the people I knew were sure to be snickering at me, and gossiping about me, behind my back.
It would be high school, writ large.
That night, we didn't make love. We didn’t even sleep naked. Both of us put on formal pajamas before getting into bed. However, I did seek his body in the bed, as I moved towards him to snuggle with him. He reciprocated by taking my arm, and holding against his body.
I felt his warmth, and this was what I needed right then.
The week that we spent in our prison was tense like this. We couldn’t go outside, because the media was surrounding us. It seemed that, with every passing day, more and more people descended on our street. We would never give them the satisfaction of a shot of us, not even a shot of us stating that we had “no comment” as we passed through the phalanx of reporters and paparazzi who were camped out. I used to think that those people who muttered “no comment” felt like they were pretty cool. After all, they were getting media attention.
I didn't think that anymore.
Chapter Seven
Finally, at long last, Giovanni was ready to fly to New York. John, the helicopter pilot that Ryan knew, landed on the roof of Nick’s estate, and we got in. As we ascended above the clouds, I couldn’t help but give those reporters the bird. They were on the ground, hundreds of them, watching us fly away, as helplessly as the Vietnamese who watched when the last chopper from Saigon flew away from the American Embassy. I could see them down there, and I got some satisfaction in their helpless expressions.
They deserved not to get the story, if they were going to ruin our honeymoon by making us prisoners.
The chopper landed at the Malpensa airport in Milan, and it was there that we met Giovanni. Giovanni was a slight man, about 5’7”, with tightly wound curly black hair and an olive complexion. He grinned as we approached.
“Ryan, my boy!” he shouted exuberantly. “How have you been?” His English was accented but otherwise perfect.
He and Ryan embraced. “Well, Giovanni, to be honest, I've been better. But I have my Iris with me, so nothing can ever be all that bad.”
Giovanni looked at him sympathetically. “Yes, I heard all about the story. It's all over the news here.”
“Yeah, Giovanni, I'm afraid that we are embroiled in some intrigue here.”
Giovanni raised his eyebrows. “That true about you? That you like the boys?”
“No, that's not true. I like one particular boy, but I do not like ‘the boys.’”
Giovanni lightly punched Ryan on the arm. “Well, you know, it's no big deal.”
“I know, it shouldn’t be a big deal, but, somehow it is. I mean, who cares? I really don’t know why this is even a story.”
“Well, you know,” Giovanni said. “You are one of the beautiful people. People are fascinated by people like you.”
I was standing aside, feeling uncomfortable. I was the one who the story focused upon – it was my kidnapping, my assault, my false imprisonment at the hands of a very unbalanced woman. Yet Ryan was the one whose name was being dragged through the mud, because he was the one who had the most to lose.
It didn’t seem fair.
“Anyhow,”
Giovanni said. “Welcome to my plane. Where's yours, by the way? I forgot to ask.”
“It's here, and that's where it'll stay for now. I'd imagine that the paparazzi are swarming that plane, just like they were swarming Nick's home for the past week or so.”
“Oh, okay. Well, welcome aboard.”
Giovanni’s plane was nice, but not as nice as Ryan’s. It was about half the size, and did not have the same luxurious appointments. Nevertheless, I was happy to be on the aircraft, because it would mean that I would be getting out of the hell-hole.
We spent the next 8 hours chatting. Giovanni did not pilot the plane, of course, so he was able to converse with us in the back. I snoozed part of the way there. And, it could be just my imagination, but Giovanni seemed rather intrigued with Ryan. He was downright flirtatious, but Ryan showed no interest. I long knew that Ryan’s bisexual leanings only extended towards Nick, which made me think that most of the reason why Ryan was interested in Nick was because Nick helped him so much in so many ways. I supposed that it was true all over, that it was the person that bisexuals were interested in, not the sex. In this case, Ryan was in love with me, and with Nick. In different ways, of course. But any guy is not going to interest him, anymore than just any woman would interest him.
So Giovanni was wasting his time
Three movies, and one long snooze later, we arrived at La Guardia airport. I half expected the pap to be there, waiting for us, but they weren’t. I was relieved.
Nate was the only person there to greet us.
“Buddy! Just couldn’t stay away, huh?” Nate said, taking my luggage.
Ryan rolled his eyes. “Trust me, Nate, I wish that we didn’t have to meet like this.”
“Man, you guys are really in it, huh? The media has been on this story like flies on shit.”
“Oh? I didn’t know. Iris and I have refused to watch the rags on TV.”
“Well, let’s just say that they think that this has become a major story.”
