Illusions Complete Series (Illusions Series Volumes 1-3)

by Annie Jocoby

  I piped up – “How can that be? Nobody died here.”

  “No, but you got that cray cray bitch out there making both of you look like you are just this side of being committed to the nut house. I feel for both of you.”

  I just bet you do. Why was I feeling this way about Nate? I liked him so much the first time I met him at the ice skating rink. Now he was just annoying me with his glib comments.

  We got to Nate and Nat’s place on the Upper West Side. Their apartment was a pre-war four bedroom place, with 20-foot-tall ceilings, crown molding, huge arched windows, hardwood floors, and a beautiful view of Central Park. I knew something about real estate in Manhattan in general, and the Upper West Side in particular, and figured that his place was worth about $4 million.

  “Where's Nat?” Ryan asked, looking around the apartment.

  “Working. She'll be home soon enough to see her great love.”

  I sighed. Nat was in love with Ryan, and everyone, unfortunately, knew this. I wondered if there was going to be a problem with that while we were here. I hoped not.

  Nat did return home around midnight, after working late at her job as an investment banker at Goldman’s. Her eyes got wide upon seeing Ryan and me. She made a beeline for Ryan. “Oh, honey, I heard about what's happening to you guys. I'm so sorry.”

  “Not a prob, Nat. I just am glad that you guys are letting us crash here while we figure out our next move.”

  She looked at me. I looked down. I could almost feel what she was thinking. To my surprise, she grabbed my hand, and stroked it tenderly. “Iris, let’s talk a little in the den, ok?”

  I nodded, and she led me into the den.

  She lit a fire in the fireplace. “Sit down,” she said, patting the floor next to her.

  I hesitantly took a seat next to her. Was she hitting on me?

  “Uh, Iris, I heard about your, uh, problems. I wanted to see if there was anything that I could do to help you.”

  I looked at her quizzically. What could she do?

  “That’s all in the past. I'm better now.”

  She shook her head. “I know what it's like to self-destruct. I never hurt myself with a knife or anything like that, but I hurt myself in other ways.” Then she mimed putting two fingers down her throat and nodded.

  Nat was a bulimic? But why? She was the most beautiful girl I had ever seen.

  “Why were you a bulimic?”

  “For the same reason you cut yourself, I would imagine. I didn’t like myself very much.”

  At that, I felt completely dumbfounded. Nat was indescribably gorgeous, Harvard educated, intelligent and sweet. Why was she filled with self-loathing?

  “I don’t understand.”

  “My sister died when I was 14. My parents always made me feel that they wanted it to be me, not her. She was so perfect – athletic, musical, always got straight As. She was always the good daughter. I never quite measured up to that.”

  “In what way did you not measure up?”

  “I was rebellious, kinda a Goth kid when I was 14. Black eyeliner, black nail polish, black clothing, black hair. Everything was just – black. Not her, though. She was blonde, petite and perfect. Never caused trouble.”

  “Uh, how did she die?”

  “Leukemia.” She had little tears in her eyes. “When she died, I felt that my parents looked at me and found me lacking. I was far from perfect. I was smoking pot, getting drunk, and sleeping with boys. So, I always felt that my parents thought that the wrong daughter died.” She shrugged. “I was filled with self-loathing, so I puked my way through middle school and high school. Nobody ever knew except my dentist.” She looked at me. “So, I guess I'm saying that I know from self-loathing. If there is anything I could do to help you, I would love that.”

  I put my hand on hers sympathetically. Yet I couldn’t open to her like she had just opened up to me. I admired her for being able to tell me these things. I wished that I could be an open book as well, but I had always been pretty closed-off. That was probably a lot of my problem.

  Nat continued. “Nate doesn’t know about this. Ryan neither. So, please don’t say anything to the boys. I'm only telling you this because I see a kindred spirit.”

  “Ryan has been through a lot, too, in his life. He used to also self-destruct. He would probably understand what you were going through.”

  She kept quiet for a bit. Then she finally said “Yes, but I never want Ryan to see me in that light.”

  The words that she said left words also unspoken. The unspoken words were that she was still in love with Ryan, and she never wanted him to see her as anything but perfect.

  It occurred to me that this house was a vortex of dysfunction, three of us recovering from destructive tendencies. Me a recovering self-mutilator, Nat a recovering bulimic and Ryan a recovering drug addict. I couldn’t help but wonder if Nate had a similar dark secret.

  I smiled. “Well, we certainly are a group of people in this apartment, huh?”

  Nat laughed. “It seems that way.”

  I once again was reminded of the need to get beyond the façade of beauty and wealth. You pull it back, and they are more vulnerable than anybody else. More vulnerable because they are expected by society to uphold their end of the bargain, as it were – they are given much, so they should be almost god-like. Then, when they fall, people like to pounce. Schadenfreude as Ryan says – that is what drives the media coverage about the beautiful people doing bad things. It’s like the famous F. Scott Fitzgerald quote, where he said that he had never been able to forgive the rich for being rich. This was how society looked at the rich, a lot of times, and this was why people like Ryan and Natalie were vulnerable.

  Ryan presently came into the den. “Honey, Nate and I have been talking. We can stay here for as long as we need to. I don’t think that the media is going to figure out that we’re here. But I want to get in touch with Nick back home, to see how he’s holding up. I’d imagine that he’s getting it as much as we are. Alexis, too.”

  “Call him, and put him on speaker phone, if you don’t mind,” I said.

  So, he did.

  “Buddy,” Ryan said when Nick answered the phone.

  “It’s about fucking time. Where the hell are you?” Nick asked.

  “I’m so sorry about all this.”

  “What the hell? What’s going on? My phone has been blowing up, and I have media people camped out on my doorstep, trying to get information about you two.”

  “What do you tell them?”

  “No comment, of course. They won’t go away, though.”

  “What about Alexis? You heard from her?”

  “Of course. She’s been calling non-stop, because she can’t get ahold of you guys. She’s pretty sick of her private life blowing up on TV as well.”

  Ryan sighed. “The chickens have finally come home to roost. I knew that they would, eventually. Now they have.”

  “When are you coming home?”

  “I’m not sure.”

  “I really don’t know why your job puts up with your constant absences.” Nick seemed incredulous about this.

  “Never mind about that. I have to figure out how to address this.”

  “Tackle it head-on. Talk to the media, give them your story.”

  “I hate to ask this….”

  “Rielle wants a divorce, of course. She’s not happy about any of this.”

  “How much does she know?”

  “Enough. Put it that way. But, the divorce was a long-time coming. This was just the final straw, that’s all.”

  “What about the kids?”

  “I’m pretty sure that’s gonna be a problem too.”

  “I’m so sorry about this.”

  “Hey, don’t worry about it. It’s not your fault. It’s that psycho’s fault. By the way, how is the new Mrs. Gallagher?”

  He looked over at me. I simply raised an eyebrow.

  “As well as can be expected,” Ryan said.

  �
�Well, come home. Don’t keep dodging the issue. It’s not going away. Every day that you don’t get on top of this is another day that the lies are out there unanswered.”

  Ryan nodded his head. He knew that was true. I knew it was true, too. We were both running, trying to buy time, trying to have some kind of a happy life together. But we weren’t living in reality. I knew this.

  “Right,” Ryan said. “Well, I wanted to check in.”

  “K. Talk later.”

  He got off the phone and came over to sit next to me. He took my hand. “We have to address this. He’s right.”

  I nodded. It sucked that we had to do it, but there was nothing more that could be done.

  Now it was just a matter of figuring out to whom we would tell our story.

  Chapter Eight

  The very next day, we met with a reporter from People magazine. They would be running a cover story on us. The reporter, Darlene Goode, came to Nate and Nat’s apartment to meet with us. We decided that People would be the best magazine to give our story, because it had such a wide readership, and had a better reputation than any of the other pop culture magazines.

  Darlene seemed eager to talk to us.

  It seemed that our story was a real scoop.

  She was exactly on time, arriving at the apartment at noon on the dot. She was very professional, her dark hair loosely knotted, and glasses perched on her nose. Shaking our hands, we all sat down to talk in the den.

  “Do you mind if I record this?” she asked.

  “No, no, of course not,” Ryan spoke. We had decided that Ryan would give his side of the story, and I would chime in when appropriate.

  Darlene began. “I don’t really want to beat around the bush here. I wanted to get your side of the story.”

  “Rochelle Anderson was my lover when I was 14 years old, and she was 34,” Ryan began, then proceeded to tell the reporter the gist of what happened to me. He told her about Rochelle kidnapping me, torturing me, and shooting me up with black tar heroine. He told her about how I was in a coma for two months because of it, and my PTSD. He told her about how Rochelle was obsessed with him, and how she followed him.

  Darlene turned to me. “Mrs. Gallagher, tell me something. I don’t understand. You visited Ms. Anderson in jail, did you not?”

  I shook my head. “We already tried to get tape of that meeting. They don’t have it. They don’t keep it for very long. Trust me, I wish that weren’t so, because that bitch –“ I composed myself. I couldn’t afford to come off unsympathetic. “Sorry, that woman confessed all to me when I saw her in jail.”

  The interview went on from there. As we talked, though, I could feel my anxiety welling up. I had felt that I was over Rochelle’s attack, but all of this was bringing it back up. By the end of the interview, I was shaking. Ryan held my hand tight, then put his arm around me protectively. We had laid it all on the table. Ryan’s affair with Nick, Ryan’s sexual abuse, my cutting, everything. We knew that this was the only way to get our side of the story out there.

  It was completely draining, yet liberating at the same time.

  After about four hours, the interview was finally over. We then made an appointment to get our photos taken for the cover. I would imagine we would look odd together – his stunning beauty, and me.

  I tried to set that aside.

  Darlene looked at me before leaving. With a wry smile, she said “It sounds like you’re living a dystopian Cinderella story.”

  To this, I smiled. I never thought of it that way, but it was true – a dystopian Cinderella story was exactly what I was living. I was just the average girl, looking for love in all the wrong places, finding nothing but toads, until Ryan. Ryan, the sweet, handsome, rich guy who worshiped me, for whatever reason. Turns out that he was not only my savior, but the cause of my personal hell.

  It occurred to me that if I never knew him, I would have been able to escape my past for the rest of my life.

  But, then again, perhaps it worked out the way that it was supposed to. My past was brought to light, and I would have to examine myself once more to find out why I was filled with self-loathing for so long. At the same time, I was not only in love, but loved back, perhaps for the very first time in my life. Our life together was never perfect, and it wasn’t even real – real people didn’t experience the problems that we were experiencing. Real people generally don’t have their dirty laundry aired in front of the entire world. Yet, somehow, we were sticking with each other through this, supporting each other, helping each other through. It heartened me to know that we were in this together. I never in my life had a man who would stick by me through the crap that happened in my life prior to this.

  Darlene finally left. I felt like a deflated balloon. I looked at Ryan, who was paler than I had ever seen him. He was very quiet.

  “That was awful,” I began.

  “Yeah, but it’s out there now.”

  “I guess we can probably go home now, huh?”

  “Might as well,” he said. “But I would like to see my sister before we leave.”

  At that he called her. After getting off the phone, he announced that we would be leaving in the morning to see Sarah on the Vineyard.

  “We’re going to have to fly there, huh?”

  “Yeah. My plane is at La Guardia.”

  I felt a little disappointed. For some reason, I was thinking that Ryan and I would get the chance to fly like normal people for once. It didn’t occur to me that he would have somebody fly his plane here to New York.

  That night, we had one last dinner with Nate and Nat. Nat was doing her usual googly-eyes at Ryan. I felt badly for her, having such strong feelings for my husband. She was as vulnerable as anybody, and couldn’t help the way that she felt. I knew that.

  I felt nervous about seeing Sarah again. She was never all that warm to me, and I knew why – she thought I was a gold-digger, and could never accept that wasn’t the case.

  Nevertheless, I had to steel myself to see her again. Because it was about to happen.

  Chapter Nine

  Sarah’s house on the Vineyard was just how I pictured it. It was a neo-Classical mansion, with four columns on the front porch. The home was made up of a light colored coral stone, with enormous windows and a gorgeous, and enormously solid, door. The garden out front of the house was perfectly manicured, with five different varieties of roses and African daisies. A circle drive was out front, and there was a six-car garage.

  Ryan had explained that Sarah’s husband, Gil, was a collector of classic cars. But the classic cars that he collected were unlike any other. For one, he owned a very rare Aston Martin and a Bentley. Gil also had a Duesenberg, which was among the very rarest of all classic cars. They were handmade, and sold for around $6,500 in the 1920s, and now sold for around a million dollars. That particular car was in mint condition, with white-walled tires, and was enormous, shiny and black. I somehow pictured Gil as a guy with a cigarette on the end of a long cigarette holder, like FDR.

  Sarah and Cori appeared on the lawn. Gil appeared next to her. He was a fortyish hedge fund operator, with greying temples and tan skin. He wore his dark hair slicked back, and he was just a little bit taller than Sarah, who was 5’7”. Her two children, Alice and Henry, were at their private day school at the moment, but would be meeting us after school.

  Sarah greeted us with a “Well, well, well. You two sure did get yourselves into a pickle, didn’t you?”

  “Great to see you too, Sarah,” Ryan said.

  Sarah’s blonde hair was different than the last time I saw her. Before, she was a platinum blonde. Now she sported a darker blonde hairdo with highlights and lowlights. She was gorgeous as ever.

  Genetics definitely favored this family.

  “Well, come on in. How long are you staying?” she asked. Gil was mute, so far.

  “For just a few days,” Ryan said. “We have to get home and face reality.”

  She addressed me. “How you holding up there
, kid?”

  I smiled a little at her calling me “kid.” Ryan was “peanut” and I guess I was now “kid.”

  “I’ve been better.”

  “You mean you don’t like having all your personal problems aired for the world to hear?”

  “Surprisingly not,” I said. I was finding it easier every day to face the issues, though.

  Then, addressing Ryan, Sarah said “You and me gotta talk. Alone.”

  At that, they went into the sun room and shut the door.

  I looked at Gil. He raised his eyebrows.

  “What’s going on?”

  “Sarah has to talk to Ryan about seeing their father.”

  Chapter Ten

  “See Benjamin? What the hell? Why would Sarah want that?”

  Gil just shrugged. “Something about Benjamin wanting to see them about what’s going on in the media. He’s really getting a lot of bad press, and he’s losing all his friends. He’s retired, so there isn’t a job to worry about, though.”

  “Cry me a fucking river,” I said. “Why would Ryan want to see that guy?”

  “Well, there’s something else.”

  “What?”

  “Sarah and Ryan will tell you about it.”

  I could hear shouting coming from the den.

  “Like hell. I don’t care if he is sick, I’m not going.” Ryan.

  A muffled voice. Sarah.

  “Not doing it,” Ryan shouted.

  The yelling continued for a bit. Then it stopped. However, the brother and sister remained in the den for the next hour.

  Finally, they came out. He looked cowed. Sarah didn’t exactly look happy, either.

  “We need to talk,” Ryan said to me.

  At that, we mounted the winding staircase into the guest bedroom.

  I looked at Ryan, who was sitting on the bed, his head in his hands. I sat down next to him, putting my arm around him, and holding his hand with my other hand. I stroked his hair for what seemed like a long time. He didn’t react, just sat there with his head in his hands. I eventually put his head on my lap, as I continued to tousle his hair lightly. To my surprise, he started crying. This was the first time I had ever seen him cry. He grabbed onto my leg tightly, sobbing, his face in my lap, his entire body spasming. I just continued to rub his head and his back silently.