Deeper Illusions

by Jocoby, Annie

  However, I soon found out that he developed a newfound respect for me.

  “You know, when I first met you, I have to admit that I didn't see it. I didn't see you and Ryan together at all,” Nick said over a dinner of take-out pizza and beer. Nick apparently wasn't a cook like Ryan, and I, myself, was always too busy with Dalilah to cook.

  “I know that,” I said. “I heard you guys talking on the night that you and I met.”

  “I mean, I was pissed when I found out that you took Dalilah from him and didn't tell him about her. Don't get me wrong. But Ryan told me that you didn't want a thing from him when you divorced him,” Nick said with a shake of his head. “Every time I get another call from Rielle's lawyer, demanding more and more, I start thinking about the wisdom of finding a girl like you. Just down to earth, not pretentious, not in love with money and possessions.”

  “Well, thank you, Nick,” I said, clinking my beer bottle with his. “I admit that I wasn't too fond of you, either, because I thought you were judging me. Ryan loves you, though, and you've always done so much for him. That means a lot to me, too. Just because Ryan means so much to me.”

  Nick and I bonded that week. We watched movies together in the evenings, finding that we shared a similar sense of humor. We both laughed until we cried at Chris Rock standup comedy and Monty Python movies. I showed him my favorite movie, The Way We Were, and, to my surprise, Nick teared up at the conclusion of that movie, even more than I did. He showed me one of his favorite movies, The Departed, and I was enthralled with this movie from beginning to end.

  He was also great with Dalilah, playing with her in the evenings after he finished his work. He sat with her at our new baby grand piano, which arrived that week after being on back order for over a month. The enormous piano was the centerpiece of the living room, fitting in with the masculinity and dark colors of this room perfectly. It turned out that Nick was an excellent piano player, and he helped Dalilah put her chubby hands across the keys. I wondered if she would be musical as well as artistic. It did seem that she was understanding and appreciating the music.

  Nick and I were becoming friends, at long last.

  The week ended without incident, with Ryan arriving that Friday night on the red-eye. He got in around midnight, climbing into bed with me. I verbally acknowledged him in the bed, so that he would know that I wasn't sleeping, so he put his hands on my breasts and stomach, then got undressed and made passionate love to me. “I missed you,” he said. “God, how much I missed you,” he said while he thrust, his head buried in my shoulder. He quickly came, then rolled over and continued to stroke my body until he was hard again. He kissed me slowly and tenderly, and entered me again, without the urgency of the first lovemaking of the night. “I love you so much. So very much. I would die for you,” he was saying. “I would die for you.”

  We made love like that, slowly, tenderly, leisurely, into the morning. The sun came up when we finally disentangled and tried to get caught up on some much-needed sleep.

  Of course, Dalilah got up, herself, around 8 that morning, so it turned out that I only had about three hours of sleep.

  But it was well worth it.

  Chapter Fifty-Six

  I found out unpleasant news that week – Rochelle wasn’t going to plead, so the trial was scheduled in a month. It had been over two years since the incident happened, and the trial should’ve gone several times, but, each time, there was some kind of continuance for one reason or another. I was also supposed to be deposed several times, but this kept getting put off as well. Now, finally, I was going to be deposed, and, since the trial was getting near, the media was becoming interested in the story as well.

  I started getting phone calls from random media personnel, asking for some kind of comment. They were interested in not just the trial and the crime, but also my personal life – why I divorced Ryan, yet was still with him, and they also wanted information about our daughter. I politely told each person who called that I didn’t have a comment, and I didn’t watch any 24-hour news channels, so I had no idea if I was being discussed on the shows. I probably was, but I didn’t want to stress out, so I didn’t bother with watching these shows.

  Yet, somehow, information was being filtered to these media people. Some of the messages on my voice mail referenced my drug abuse and rape, and my stint in rehab. I had no idea who was feeding the media this private information, but I would imagine it would be somebody with a bone to pick – probably Natalie, maybe Alexis. Alexis seemed to have given in to her dark side again, like when I first knew her. Only now, she wasn’t hassling Ryan, she was hassling Nick. Nick was threatening to break up with her, but he confessed to Ryan that he couldn’t cut the cord completely because “the sex was just too good.”

  “Yeah,” Ryan said. “When she’s manic, it usually is good. But the mania brings out all sorts of other goodies from her as well. Just wait. You’ll be begging to leave in a matter of days.”

  Nick reported that Alexis was staying up for days on end, talking incessantly. She had also broken into an Hermés store because she wanted a bag from there after hours, and couldn’t wait until the store opened. She left the money for the bag, $8,000, on the counter, but the surveillance video caught her and she was charged with trespassing and property damage. Nick also reported that David was coming around more and more, and he and Alexis would be going at it long after Nick had left the room. Nick wasn’t sure how David could keep up with her, but Nick was happy to have a buffer there.

  Ryan nodded his head. “This is all sounding very familiar. Just wait until she starts doing lines again. Just wait.”

  It wasn’t a day before Nick was back, wanting to stay at our house again. “Alexis kicked me out, throwing all my stuff out on the lawn,” Nick explained. “And it’s my house! I need to stay here until she cools off.”

  “Get a restraining order,” Ryan said. “Trust me, you’re gonna need it.”

  I sighed. I was in the middle of examining the discovery documents in preparation of my deposition in the morning. I didn’t need the distraction of Nick staying with us, especially as I knew that Alexis was probably going to be at our house as well.

  “If you’ll excuse me, I have to prepare for my deposition tomorrow,” I said, going downstairs.

  Not a half hour later, I heard Alexis upstairs, screaming at the top of her lungs. “Asshole,” she screamed. “Or should I say assholes? You two are peas in a pod.”

  “Good to see you, too, Alexis,” Ryan said.

  “Good to see you too, Alexis,” she mocked him. “What’s good about it? Nick here just ran off, just ran off, leaving me to fend for myself with that sex maniac David. And, what about you, Ryan? You’re so fucking pussy whipped that your stupid slut can do anything to you and you’ll just take it. I’d like to see your reaction if I would’ve hid your daughter for as long as she did.”

  “Nick,” Ryan said. “Remember what I told you?”

  I felt for both of them up there, Ryan and Nick. I wondered what Alexis was really capable of when she got like this. I remembered the last time, when she revealed to me that Ryan was bisexual. What might come out of this tirade?

  Then I heard “Holy fucking Christ!” It was Alexis. “Fuck, that’s Mia with red hair.” Then she started sobbing, loudly. “Mia, Mia, Mia,” she repeated, over and over. “Oh my god, my baby. My baby. My baby.”

  Nick was talking next. “Alexis, you’re going to have to leave.” Leave it to Nick to be completely insensitive about Alexis breaking down upon seeing little Dalilah, who was apparently the spitting image of Alexis and Ryan’s child.

  Then there was absolute bedlam in the living room. Dalilah started screaming and crying, Ryan started admonishing Alexis about scaring her, Alexis continued to howl, Nick continued to yell.

  I went upstairs to try to straighten everything out. I found Alexis looking disheveled – her blonde hair was tangled and askew, her makeup was running down her blotchy face, and two of her fingernail
s were broken, while the others were long. She was dressed in a skimpy, filmy negligee that revealed all of her magnificent body, with no coat on, despite the fact that it was below thirty degrees outside. She had on one sock and no shoes. She had a frying pan in her hand, and was brandishing it like a weapon.

  She saw me immediately, then came over to me and wrapped herself around me, frying pan still in hand, and sobbed into my shoulder. I looked over her shoulder at Ryan, who was watching Alexis with a half-amused, half-pissed, look on his face. Nick was looking at her with a one-hundred-percent pissed look on his face.

  I wondered if the guys expected me to be the official Alexis caretaker for the evening.

  I couldn’t deal with that. I had enough on my mind as it was.

  Alexis was like that for a good five minutes, clutching me hard while sobbing. Dalilah had calmed down, and was now like her father and Uncle Nick – her chubby hand was shoved in her mouth, and she was just staring at the circus sideshow known as Alexis. She was dressed in a blue Winnie the Pooh onesy, her little red curls rioting around her face. She was sitting on Nick’s lap.

  I finally had to extricate myself from the sobbing Alexis. I got a better look at her, and it seemed that she wasn’t quite in touch with reality. She had an expression that was one of extreme pain and fear – her beautiful mouth was quivering, her blue eyes were saucers, and her pupils were extremely dilated. She was looking at me, yet didn’t really seem to see me. Her hands were trembling wildly.

  “There, there, Alexis, why don’t you have a seat?” I said, directing her to one of the chairs in the living room. She obeyed, and sat down, staring into space, her eyes glazed over in catatonia. I went to the kitchen to fix her a cup of hot chocolate. Ryan followed me in there.

  “I’m so sorry, beautiful, about all this. I know that you have a stressful day ahead of you tomorrow, and you don’t need this kind of bullshit occurring in this house.”

  “It’s not a problem,” I said, thinking that bullshit just came with the territory of being with him. “She needs back on her meds, obviously. So, you better talk to her somehow. You were the one that she listened to the last time. I don’t think that Nick is equipped to deal with this.”

  “You’re probably right,” he said, with a sigh.

  Before we got out of the kitchen, Alexis was back at it. She was screaming at Nick “You’re an asshole, a goddamned asshole. I hate you,” she screamed, then hauled off and wacked him with the frying pan in her hand. Nick caught the frying pan before it could smack him a second time, and grabbed it away from her.

  This made her howl even more.

  Ryan sighed, nodded at Nick, then disappeared briefly. He came back in a few minutes, a syringe in hand. He then tackled Alexis, overpowering her while Nick held her feet, and injected her while she screamed and kicked. In a few seconds, her screaming and kicking subsided, and she was passed out on the couch.

  “It looks like she’s going to have to be checked into the hospital,” Ryan said, stating the obvious. “I doubt that she’ll go willingly, though. At any rate, we can’t take her over there right now. We need to just let her sleep this off, then deal with it in the morning.”

  Nick just nodded, mute for once. Then he said “Holy Christ, how did you do it all those years?”

  Ryan just smiled wryly and said “Now you know why I was so high all the time.”

  In the morning, Alexis woke up, and, surprisingly, she was lucid, and, even more surprisingly, she was willing to check herself into the hospital. “Yeah, sure,” she said, when Ryan told her that he was taking her to an exclusive mental health facility for evaluation and treatment. She evidently wasn’t manic anymore, but had swung down to depression, because she was laying on the couch, one arm draped over the side. “I don’t really care what you do. My life is over, anyhow.”

  At that, Ryan called his work, and got her on her feet. Nick was on the other side of her, and they marched her out of the house and into Nick’s car, which was parked in the driveway. Ryan immediately came back in, and gave me a big hug and kiss, and said “I’m so sorry about this, beautiful. I know that today is important to you, and I’m behind you all the way. I love you, more than you can ever know.”

  I just nodded. “Good luck with her,” I said. Then went back into the house to wait for the sitter to arrive. Helena was from the same agency as the last girl, Janelle, and I went through the same drill about explaining about Dalilah and her specialness. Dalilah was sitting in her playpen, then looked at Helena and said “Mommy go to court. Daddy go to hospital. You watch me.”

  Helena looked at me “She’s seven months old?”

  “Yes,” I said. “Here, give her these Winnie the Pooh books to read, and these puzzles to work,” I said, giving the girl some of Dalilah’s favorite little puzzles. “She’ll be fine, she’s a wonderful little girl.”

  “I guess so,” Helena said. “Take care.”

  At that, I left for the courthouse for my deposition.

  Chapter Fifty-Seven

  I dreaded this deposition, for some reason. For one thing, I was going to the courthouse for the deposition. This is where Cindy wanted to hold it, in one of the courthouse conference rooms. This meant that I could not bring my gun with me, and I felt a little naked without it, to tell the truth.

  There was also a matter of knowing what questions were in store for me. I knew that I had absolutely nothing to hide, but that the attorney was, no doubt, going to go on a fishing expedition with this. I would imagine that he was going to ask me all kinds of objectionable questions that would never be allowed in court, mainly to find out what my weaknesses would be.

  How right I was with this assumption.

  “Mrs. Gallagher,” the attorney, Greg Schultz, began. The man was around 55, and he was an imposing figure at 6’5”, and around 200 lbs. His thick hair was completely grey. He was dressed in a megadollar suit, much like what Ryan wears to his job, and his shoes were black and buffed to an impeccable sheen. Next to him was Rochelle, looking subdued in a dark suit with a silk orange shirt underneath. Her dark hair was pulled back in a severe bun, she had on glasses, and her teeth were fixed. “Mrs. Gallagher, I understand that you spent some time in a treatment facility just recently,” he said.

  The man was not beating around the bush.

  “Objection,” Cindy said for the record. “Lack of relevance. You may answer the question.”

  “Yes,” I said.

  “Why did you spend time in this treatment facility?”

  Cindy renewed her objection, then directed me to answer.

  “I had a drug addiction,” was all I said. I wasn’t going to give him more than what he asked, at any point. I was annoyed that he was going there, although I fully expected it. I also knew that none of these answers could be used on the record, because they weren’t relevant to my mental state at the time of the attack. He was just trying to get me off-balance.

  I was determined that he wouldn’t succeed.

  The deposition continued like this, with one objectionable question after another about my stay at the Beverly Hills Hospital, my divorce from Ryan, my rape, my drug addiction. All of these events were after Rochelle attacked me, so none of these events were in the least bit relevant to the matter at hand. Yet I had to dredge all this up. I was feeling more stressed, anxious and irritated with every question that I had to answer, and I knew that Schultz’ strategy was to break me down mentally before he would ask me the relevant questions.

  I was more liable to slip up that way.

  I didn’t care. I didn’t have anything to hide, so he couldn’t trip me up.

  He had been asking questions for four hours, so Cindy called for a lunch break. I could tell that Schultz was none too happy about breaking, because he had me on the ropes, and was going to go for his knock-out punches soon.

  “Can I take you to lunch?” Cindy asked.

  I simply shook my head. “I’m going to stay here during the break, if you don’t mind,�
�� I said. I had to compose myself, and the best way I knew how to do this would be to just contemplate in solitude.

  At that, everybody left, including the court reporter. I stared out the window, feeling resentful that Ryan wasn’t there with me. He was with his ex-wife and best friend, instead. Granted, said ex-wife was a mess, but so was I. I just didn’t show it like Alexis did. I really needed him, even though he couldn’t actually sit in on the deposition. I needed him in the waiting room, so I could see him during my breaks.

  I then tried to call him, but the call went straight to voice-mail.

  I closed my eyes, and took deep breaths. I tried my CBT exercises, because negative thoughts were crowding my headspace like no other time since I got back with Ryan. I started to feel a little bit better, then I started to meditate. I felt better still.

  After lunch, the attorneys, Rochelle, and the court reporter crowded back into the room, and I felt ready to tackle this round of questioning.

  Schultz didn’t waste time. “Mrs. Gallagher, did you have practice self-mutilation in your younger years?”

  This time there was not an objection.

  “Yes,” I said.

  Then there was a series of questions related to that, and to my prior suicide attempt. I answered all of these questions calmly, not meeting anybody’s eyes. This was still so humiliating for me to talk about.

  Then Schultz passed me a picture that was marked as Exhibit G, Exhibits A-F being various documents and pictures that I had to identify. I looked at the picture, and tried to make my face impassive.

  “Mrs. Gallagher, is this you?”

  The picture was me, completely nude and lying on a bed and posing. This was the picture that was taken on Spring Break around 13 years prior, during one of my many drunken escapades that week, by some random hookup.

  Cindy registered her objection about the relevance of the photo.

  I knew what Schultz was trying to do. He was trying to shake me up by my knowing that he had ahold of this photo, and he probably got it off the Internet. Which meant that I was right about my earlier suspicions – this humiliating photo was probably viral and making the rounds. I had consciously not followed my name or my case on the Internet, so I had no idea that this photo was out there, although I suspected it.