Illusions Complete Series (38 page)

And there was another problem – there was something else that I had never told him about, and it was something for which I still felt a deep well of shame. It occurred to me that my cutting problems and suicide attempt were mainly due to this incident, even more than the invisibility issue. But I couldn’t tell him about this. I prayed that the media never picked up on it and ran with it. I would be absolutely devastated if it got out.

But I tamped down my feelings and decided not to bring it up.

He was still staring at me. I finally got up the courage to look at him right in the eye, and not look away. I knew what he was thinking, without him even saying a word. He wasn’t thinking about the horror that had befallen us – the paparazzi and reporters outside on the street, the world knowing his secrets at last, the fact that Rochelle was on the loose. He was thinking about me, about why I would never tell him how much I really hated myself. All that time, when he confessed one horrible thing after another, and I never said a word.

I simply stared back at him, willing him to speak.

Finally I spoke. “How're we going to get out of here?”

“I called John. He has a helicopter, and he's going to take us from the roof.”

“To where?”

“To the plane. Then onto…somewhere. We could stay with Nate for a few days. Nick wouldn’t be safe. I talked to him, and the pap are swarming him as well. They are being very careful not to be on his property, but are on the public street, waiting for him every day.” He stared at the ceiling. “Whatta mess.”

“The plane. You don’t think that the pap and reporters are going to be there as well?”

“Yeah, I thought about that. I'm going to have to call Giovanni, a friend from Harvard, to see if he doesn’t mind taking us the next time he heads to New York. He makes business trips there all the time. That would probably be our best bet.” He looked at me. “In the meantime, we have plenty of food and drinks here. But it looks like the honeymoon is literally over.”

I nodded. “In the meantime, let’s not watch any of those stupid news channels, huh?”

That night, I woke up in a start. Was it all a bad dream?  I nudged Ryan awake. We had gone to bed that night without making love, wearing pajamas. Neither of us reached for the other in bed. I was on one side of the enormous, king-sized bed, he on the other. The distance between us was engulfing me. We were so close before.

Ryan awoke with a start after I nudged him.

“I can’t sleep,” I told him. I was shaking.

He immediately put his arms around me, and I felt comforted. I hoped that we could fight this together, and not let it tear us apart. We were, after all, in this mess together – both of us were going to be humiliated, so we might as well lean on each other. If we could get through this, we could get through anything.

It was then, when I finally accepted his touch, his affection, that I was able to let loose with the tears that were threatening all day. I cried for hours in his arms, and he held me silently. We were at the point in our relationship when each knew instinctively what the other needed at any given moment. And he knew that, right now, I just needed to be held, so this is what he did.

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 gulp 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.”