“What do you mean?” I snapped. “I changed my whole work schedule for this! The network rearranged things so I wouldn’t have to go to Detroit so that I could spend Thanksgiving with my kids!”
“Well, we’re not coming,” she repeated.
“Why? You’ve got to give me a reason!”
“I can’t,” she said. “Just, you know—the trip’s off.”
I couldn’t believe it. This was the same woman who would call me two and three times a day, to walk down memory lane, to talk about feeling sad and lost, and here she was, telling me she wasn’t letting me see my kids over Thanksgiving—and not even bothering to explain herself.
“We decided this in court!” I shouted. “In front of the judge! You can’t change the deal on me!”
“I don’t like it when you raise your voice to me,” she said, and hung up.
I was furious. I called my lawyer and he called her lawyer, but by then it was too late. I didn’t get to spend Thanksgiving with my kids, and I ended up going to Detroit for the network, as originally planned, which made them happy. Still, I decided I was never going to let anything like that happen to me again, and after Thanksgiving my lawyers called her lawyers and read them the riot act. They agreed to let me have my kids over Christmas, alone, just me and them, and I was immensely relieved and immensely excited. I went shopping for presents, got tickets for shows, and arranged to do all sorts of fun stuff with the kids. It was going to be a nonstop party. I was going to make it a Christmas they’d never forget!
I called my oldest daughter, Arnelle, and asked her to fly the kids to New York, and I booked the three of them on a flight for December 21.
I was excited, but I was still wary—still pissed at Nicole for pulling that little Thanksgiving stunt. Later, I found out that she’d had a fight with yet another guy—the guy that got her pregnant, I think—and that she had been feeling needy and fragile and had wanted the kids to herself. I wondered if she was going to keep her shit together over Christmas, or whether she was going to try to mess up those plans, too. And I wondered whether I was going to get drawn into Nicole’s bullshit and drama for the rest of my life. It didn’t seem right. I’d always been there for her when she needed me, during the marriage and long after, and I suspected that her inability to get her life in order was going to create endless problems for me and the kids. I didn’t like it.
On December 21, I went to the airport to pick up Arnelle and the kids. We were over the moon with happiness. We spent the next day running around town, shopping and eating and having fun and visiting with friends. I thought to myself, Being a single dad ain’t half bad!
Then the next day, December 23, I got a call from Nicole. She was crying so hard I couldn’t understand a word she was saying, but she finally pulled herself together and told me that she desperately wanted to come to New York. “I can’t be away from the kids,” she said. “I miss them too much. Please, O.J. Let me come. I want to be with my kids. I don’t want to be alone.”
Now don’t get me wrong, I was pissed at Nicole, but I’ve never been much good at holding grudges. “Okay,” I said. “I’ll have a ticket for you at the airport.”
“Really?”
I guess she couldn’t believe it was going to be that easy. “Yes,” I said. “I’m sure the kids would love to have you here.”
“Thanks, O.J. I mean it.”
“There’s one catch,” I said. “You can’t sleep in the apartment with us. Paula wouldn’t like it. I’ll get you a hotel.”
She didn’t complain, she didn’t say a word, in fact, because she knew this didn’t concern her in the least. Paula and I had been dating for several months now, and we were very happy together, and I wasn’t going to do anything that might jeopardize the relationship. Of course, Nicole didn’t know that Paula wasn’t actually going to be there over the holiday—she was spending Christmas in Florida, with her parents—but that didn’t make any difference to me. If I let Nicole sleep in the apartment, it would have been disrespectful to Paula, and that wasn’t going to happen. Unfortunately, I had to call Paula to tell her what was going on, and I kind of dreaded it. Paula had taken the time and trouble to fix Christmas dinner for me and the kids before getting on her plane to Florida, and this is how I was going to repay her—by spending Christmas with my ex-wife?
“Paula, it’s me, O.J. How are things in Florida?”
“Great. How are you? You sound funny?”
“I’m fine.”
“How are the kids?”
“They’re great,” I said. “But I sort of wanted to talk to you about Nicole.”
“Nicole?”
“Yeah. She decided she wanted to be with the kids for Christmas. She’s flying in tomorrow.”
Paula got mad, and things went downhill from there. She hung up on me, and when I called back she wouldn’t answer. I called back obsessively, and for a few hours I imagined how Nicole must have felt when she was trying to get hold of me and not succeeding. I left messages—“I’m sorry. I can’t do anything about it. She’s the mother of my kids”—but Paula didn’t return my calls.
Anyway, to make a long story short, Nicole joined me and the kids in New York and we had a very nice time together. We went to Radio City Music Hall for the Christmas pageant, ran around the city like tourists, and on Christmas morning we opened all the presents Santa had left.
That afternoon, the weather was nice, so Nicole and I took the kids for a long walk in Central Park. When we got back, we ate leftovers and put them to bed. Afterwards, Nicole and I packed their bags, for the flight home the next day, and when we were done Nicole poured herself a glass of wine and came into the living room. “Thanks for letting me come,” she said. She looked real sad.
“The kids had fun,” I said.
“Did you?”
“Sure,” I said, trying not to look at her. I didn’t know where she was taking the conversation, but I knew I didn’t like it.
“What happened to us?” she asked, and she began to cry. “We were so happy together.”
“Us?” I said. “What do you mean us? You left me.”
“I’m such a mess,” she said, still crying.
“Look,” I said, cutting her off. “We had a few great days. Let’s not blow it. I have to go to work tomorrow, and I’ve got notes to review, and the limo’s coming at eleven to take you and the kids to the airport.”
She finished her wine and left for the hotel, thanking me again, and I went to review my notes for the next day.
At that point, to be honest with you, I really didn’t want to hear any more of her shit. Paula was still mad at me—it had taken three days of calling before she even spoke to me—and I was in no mood to listen to Nicole. We’d had some great times together, sure, but the last two years had been torture. Nicole had been erratic, moody, and worse, and it didn’t look like she was getting any better. I had vowed to keep her at arm’s length, and I’d failed, but that Christmas I decided that things were going to change. I was only going to communicate with her if it was about the kids. I didn’t want to hear about her personal life. It was her life. She had chosen it. She had made that bed, and she needed to start getting used to it.
For the next three months, I hardly talked to her. She called once to tell me that she had decided to get into therapy, and that she was very happy with the shrink she was seeing. This wasn’t one of those high-priced, Beverly Hills, you’re-a-beautiful-person shrinks, she said—this was the real deal.
“I’m beginning to see that I messed up a lot of things for us,” she said. “I’m sorry I blamed you for everything.”
“We both fucked up,” I said, trying to be generous. “I’m glad you’re getting help.”
Of course, years later, when I was fighting her family for custody of the kids, my lawyers got hold of some of the therapy notes from her many sessions, and the picture that emerged was a little different. One thing that really pissed me off, and that they tried to use against me, was about
the kids, of course. She told her shrink that after that Christmas visit I hadn’t called the house in weeks, and she wondered if I even cared how the kids felt about that. It was total bullshit. I had called, but I called when Nicole wasn’t around, for obvious reasons. On several occasions, in fact, I spoke to Nicole’s mother, Juditha, and she put the kids on the line, and I talked to them at length—and my lawyers have the records to prove it. The lawyers also explained, in court, that I had been deliberately avoiding Nicole, whose constant phone calls were beginning to affect my relationship with Paula Barbieri. I had told her, repeatedly, that I didn’t want to talk to her unless it was about the kids, and then only if it was an emergency, and I had even made arrangements to have my assistant, Cathy Randa, shuttle them to and from our homes—all because I wanted to avoid further drama.
It worked, too. We went several weeks without a single argument. In fact, the only argument we had during this entire period related to the kids’ vacation schedule. I had wanted to take them away for a week in February, and I’d booked a trip in advance, but at the last minute the school told me that it wouldn’t be a good time to take them out of class, and they asked me to reconsider. When I called Nicole to try to change the date, telling her I needed to push it back a week, she wouldn’t budge. “It’s got to be that week or nothing!” she barked. I told her to kiss my ass and hung up.
Later, I found out that she had split with yet another boyfriend, and that she’d been talking to Marcus Allen about it, in great detail, hoping that Marcus would share those details with me. Marcus wasn’t sharing anything with me, however, so I was completely in the dark. The other thing she was telling Marcus was that she was missing me, and that she wondered if he thought there was a chance we might get back together. I didn’t know about that either, because Marcus wasn’t talking, but I never imagined that she was still pining for me. I thought that it was all in the distant past—it was for me, anyway—and I was struck by the way the tables had turned. Nicole was the one who had wanted out of the marriage, and I had tried mightily to save it. When it became clear that the marriage was over, however, I found the strength to move on, but Nicole seemed to be having second thoughts about her decision. Now, these many months later, she had apparently come full circle. I didn’t know it, of course, but she was looking for a way back.
Late in February, clearly frustrated by my lack of interest in communicating with her, Nicole found another way to reach me: Every time the kids came over, they showed up with home-baked cakes or cookies. “Mom made these for you. They’re yummy.” I told them to thank their mother, but I opted not to thank her myself. I just didn’t want to talk to her. I was done. I had a new woman in my life.
One day, the kids showed up with a CD. “Mom made this for you on her computer,” they said. I listened to it and found that every last song was a love song. I was flattered, I guess, and maybe even a little moved, but that didn’t change anything. Nicole and I were finished. “Thank your mom for me,” I told the kids. But, again, I didn’t bother thanking her myself. I didn’t want to get into it, because I wasn’t going back. And yes, I know this goes against the popular conception—that I was still madly in love with Nicole, and pining to get her back—but it’s God’s own truth.
One afternoon, I was packing for a trip to Cabo San Lucas, and waiting for my kids to show up. They were going to have dinner at my place, and spend the night, and I was going to drop them back at Nicole’s in the morning, on my way to the airport. When I was done packing, I nodded off on the couch, and the phone rang a short time later, waking me. I answered it without checking the caller I.D., and it turned out to be Nicole. “I want to talk,” she said.
“I don’t want to talk,” I said. “It’s always a huge hassle. We’re not together anymore. I can’t be listening to your problems all the time.”
“I know, and I’m sorry,” she said. “But there’s something I need to say to you.”
“Okay,” I said. “What?”
“I can’t tell you on the phone. I need to tell you this in person.”
“I can’t talk right now,” I said. “I have another call coming in.” This was a lie, but I wanted to get her off the phone.
“Will you call me back?”
“Sure,” I said, but that was a lie, too, and I didn’t call her back.
An hour later, my kids showed up at the house, and they had a package for me. I opened the package, which was from Nicole. I found our wedding tape inside, along with a letter. In the letter, which I didn’t read till later, Nicole told me that she was learning a great deal about herself in therapy, and that she had come to realize that she was responsible for most of the problems in our marriage. She also said that she still loved me, that she had never stopped loving me, and that she wanted me to know that she believed we’d had a truly great relationship. I had always thought we had a great relationship, so this wasn’t exactly a revelation, and as I read between the lines—or not even between the lines, really—it was pretty clear that she was looking for us to reconcile.
I went out to join the kids, and I was surprised to catch sight of Nicole, standing on the far side of the gate, looking toward the house. I didn’t know she had dropped the kids off—Cathy Randa was in charge of that—but there she was, staring at me, and it didn’t seem right to ignore her. I went over to talk to her.
“So what are you doing here?” I said. “What’s with the wedding tape and stuff?”
“I thought you were going to call me back,” she said, avoiding the question.
“I fell asleep on the couch.”
“Well, like I said on the phone, I have something to tell you.”
I was trapped. I sighed a big sigh and said, “Let’s take a walk.”
We took a little walk around the neighborhood, the same walk we had taken hundreds of times before. It’s a nice neighborhood, quiet and peaceful, and we used to love to wander up and down the streets, looking at the houses, chatting with the neighbors. This time we weren’t doing much looking or chatting, though—this time she just wanted to talk, and what she wanted to talk about—no surprise—was us getting back together. She repeated she had come a long way in therapy, and that she was sorry about everything, and she was wondering if I could find it in my heart to forgive her. “I’ve always loved you,” she said. “I’ve never stopped loving you. And I’ve never told you I didn’t love you.”
“That’s not entirely accurate,” I said. “You always told me you loved me, but you said you weren’t in love with me.”
“Well, I was wrong. I’m still in love with you.”
“How can you be back in love with me?” I said. “We barely speak anymore, and I’ve hardly seen you in months.”
“I don’t know,” she said. “I guess I’ve been dealing with all the stuff I was supposed to deal with, and everything’s a little clearer now. I really feel we could make it work.”
I couldn’t believe this, even though I’d seen it coming. “You’re telling me you want to get back together?” I asked.
“Yes.”
“I don’t think that’s in the cards,” I said. “I think it might be good for the kids if we tried to have a friendly dinner from time to time, but that’s about it.”
“You don’t have to make your mind up right away,” she said. “All I’m doing is putting it out there. All I’m asking is that you think about it.”
“I don’t understand you,” I said. “I’m the same guy you left. I’m the same O.J. I haven’t changed a bit.”
“Well, I don’t want you to change,” she said. “You’re fine the way you are. I’m telling you I’ve changed.”
I thought that was messed up. She was the mother of my children, and part of me still loved her, but I was pretty sure we didn’t have a future together. Still, I wanted to let her down easy, so I urged her to focus on the kids. They had always enjoyed spending time with both of us, together, and that had been the original plan when we first separated—to try to keep the ki
ds happy by showing them that we were still a close, loving family—and I thought we could work on that. “I know the kids would love it if we had dinner as a family now and then,” I said.
“I agree,” she said. “Let’s do it.”
When we got back to the house, she asked if she could come in. To be honest, I didn’t want her to, but it seemed odd to keep her out, what with the talk we’d just had, and with the kids there, watching us standing by the front gate, so I let her in. We got the kids fed and I took them upstairs and put them to bed, and Nicole was still there when I came back down.
“I see you got pictures of Paula all over the house,” she said.
“That’s right,” I said. “In case you hadn’t heard, we’re dating.”
She smiled, trying to hide the hurt, and sat on the couch across from me. I didn’t know what she was still doing there, and I was about ten seconds away from getting rude. “Thank you for letting me hang out,” she said. “I just didn’t feel like being alone.”
“That’s cool,” I said. “But I’m tired, and I’ve got a plane to catch tomorrow, and I’m going to bed.”
“Okay,” she said, but she looked disappointed. I walked her to the door and watched her cross to her car. She looked good. She looked as good as she had when I first met her. I thought, It’s amazing the way people can whip themselves into shape when they put their mind to it.
When I went back inside, I opened the letter and read it. In her letter, Nicole went on at length about the issues we had just talked about—that it was her fault the relationship had fallen apart, and that she had learned through counseling to “turn negatives into positives” and “to get rid of” her anger:
I always knew that what was going on with us was about me—I just wasn’t sure why it was about me—so I just blamed you. I’m the one who was controlling. I wanted you to be faithful and be a perfect father. I was not accepting to who you are. Because I didn’t like myself anymore.
If I Did It Page 10
