Getting It Through My Thick Skull (19 page)

For years, I had been fighting tooth and nail to hold things together. All that energy and effort had come to nothing. Here I was three thousand miles from home, forty-four years old, alone, financially dependent on Joe, in an apartment in the Valley, of all places. All the strength I’d gathered over the past couple of years by getting clean and off pills, settling the Amy Fisher matter, and so on seemed to evaporate in the anonymous apartment building. I sat alone and wondered, once again, how my life had come to this. Who was I . . . and where the hell was I headed?

The time had come to make the phone call I dreaded—to my parents. Since we’d moved to California, I’d never told my parents how bad things had gotten for me. We spoke on the phone frequently, but I always just said, “Oh, fine, fine, everything is fine here.” Even when I lived two miles away from them, I had done my best to keep my problems just that—my own problems. I wasn’t going to start unloading all my troubles at this point!

Now I had no choice because they would need my new phone number and address. My mother had mellowed considerably in recent years, but at that time I was still very fearful of her reaction. I gathered my courage, dialed her number, and finally told her, “Mom, I’ve left Joe. I had to. Our marriage wasn’t working out. It hasn’t been working for a long time.” Her immediate reaction was anger and disapproval.

“This is what happens when you don’t have God in your life!” she said. This was an old, old battle between us. She constantly reminded me that I was a living miracle and how hard so many people had prayed for me when I was shot. She believed I should be thanking God every day for sparing me, preferably at daily Mass. It drove her crazy that I didn’t attend church regularly, to the point that I finally just asked her to stop talking about it. But it all came pouring out again with this news.

“A marriage involves three people . . . the husband, the wife, and God!” she said. On and on she went in this vein. It was a long lecture. I sat in my lonely apartment three thousand miles away and felt visibly smaller and more hurt as the minutes passed. I was so down already, so shaky about living alone . . . this was not what I needed. Not at all. Her disapproval was what I feared and dreaded and did my best to avoid for years, and it all came raining down just when I was at my lowest. As she continued to rant, I started to get angry and defensive.

“You’re kidding me, right?” I finally said. “You’re not here . . . you don’t see what’s going on! This situation has nothing to do with going to church!” It was fruitless. By the time we hung up, I was absolutely furious. I called my sister Jeanne, crying and angry at the same time. She sympathized, listened to me, and did her best to make me feel better. I hung up and immediately called my other sister Eileen, who was also wonderful. If nothing else, they both understood how my mother could be when she was upset and got on a roll. “I’m not calling her again,” I told Eileen before we hung up. “She can call me!”

And damned if that phone ever rang again. She didn’t call, and I absolutely refused to call her. As the days and weeks passed, it became a Mexican standoff. A deep melancholy overtook me. I had my own place, and I’d finally left Joe, but I couldn’t seem to find the interest or energy to do something— anything—else. I made a conscious decision to let all the friends we’d made in California—not that there were many, but I had a few—go with Joe. I gradually faded out of the picture and let everybody stay in touch with him—the fun half of the couple. Now that I was free to do what I pleased, I didn’t want to do anything except sleep. I was very, very tired.

Jessica was so busy with her school events and sports teams that I didn’t see much of her. She was old enough to drive herself where she needed to go. I made sure to pull myself together when she was around—usually at night. My apartment was close to her high school, so she generally spent weeknights with me. Usually I went to bed early with a bottle of wine, drank it until I fell asleep, and mourned the end of life as I knew it— again.

Every sad song on the radio reminded me of Joe and the many good times we’d shared going all the way back to high school. That had been the hardest part of getting away—the good times had been so great, and no matter what, he’d always professed undying love and adoration for me. I sat alone in my little apartment on beautiful sunny California days and cried for hours. I was absolutely grief-stricken. I had gotten away, but I was badly wounded. Not to put too fine a point on it, I wallowed in self-pity. One weekend I knew Jessica was spending the weekend with her father. My big plan for Friday night was to go to the local Albertson’s grocery story, buy a bottle of wine, come home, and drink it. By myself.

I put on a baseball cap and chose my bottle at the store. It was all I bought—a pretty sad, lonely, single purchase. As I stood at the counter paying, the cashier said to me, “Are you Mary Jo Buttafuoco?”

“Yeah, guilty,” I half joked.

“Oh. My. God! I admire you so much!” the woman said. She went on and on. “You have been through so much, and you’ve handled it so well! What a beautiful example of forgiveness you’ve set. You’re such a kind human being.” She could not have been nicer or sweeter. “You are such an inspiration!” she exclaimed.

Some inspiration. I stood there listening, almost squirming, thinking,
If she only knew.
I was a mess. I was heading home to drink an entire bottle of wine alone in bed, and she thought I was an inspiration. I thanked her and took that bottle of wine to the car, where I sat for a minute and reflected on how ironic that encounter had been. A total stranger thought I was great. I didn’t feel great about me; I felt like a total failure. I was just getting through the days, drinking and crying myself to sleep at night. I had survived, but for what?

A good four months after I left Joe, my mother finally called, as if we had spoken the week before. “Hi, haven’t talked to you for a while—what’s going on?” she asked. I was shocked, but went along with the game. Neither of us mentioned our previous conversation. We pretended that nothing had happened and resumed our regular talks, but she had no idea how bad off I was. No one did.

Jessica, Paul, and even Joe had no idea that I was an absolute wreck, broken inside. Joe remained very cordial, paying the bills without a question, and became openly involved with his new girlfriend, Evanka. She was a thirty-something divorcée with a young son, and she demanded a great deal of Joe’s time and attention. I never met her and didn’t know anything about her personally except what I heard about her from the kids. It was clear that she was “high-maintenance.” I didn’t really care. She had had nothing to do with my leaving. Joey swore up and down until well after I was in my apartment that she was only a casual friend. However long she’d been in the picture, she was no longer a secret. I made it to all of Jess’s events with a smile on my face. As usual, I did what I had to do. For almost a year, I grieved for everything. Joe, the only man I’d ever loved, was gone. It was over. But what was I going to do now?

We fell into a loose routine where Jessica spent most of her weeknights with me and stayed at her father’s house on weekends. She eventually came around to accepting the new living situation. Where she studied and slept was only a small part of her busy life. She was enjoying every minute of her senior year. Sports, drama, studies, dances . . . and looking forward to college. My daughter’s schedule was jam packed with activities and friends. She had a bright smile and a great attitude. Just being around someone so bursting with life and energy inspired me, when it wasn’t filling me with regret about my own state of mind. Jessica reminded me of what I’d once been.

It took nearly a year of all-out wallowing, but as the holidays approached, I made a solemn vow to myself at Christmastime. Once again, enough was enough. It was time. This pity party was getting me exactly nowhere. I decided that I would pull myself together through sheer willpower. It started with a promise to myself to put down the wine, join a gym, and start coming to terms with the end of my marriage.

I found a gym, hired a personal trainer, and started working out. I had a lot of years left to live . . . what was I going to fill them with? I started haunting bookstores, leafing through all the various career change and business books. I resumed my volunteer work reading tapes for the blind. I liked to read, and I liked to talk, so it was a good fit for me. Slowly, fitfully, my confidence level and interest in life began to build. Certainly, I took two steps ahead then one step back. It wasn’t the smoothest recovery in the world, but the daily gym trips helped. Getting strong physically reinforced my mental resolve, which thankfully started to return.

As the months passed, I became Joe’s confidante, his pal, someone he could even complain to about his relationship with Evanka. We had started out as good friends in high school, after all, and I still cared about him. My birds were almost out of the nest. Paul lived an independent life in his own apartment on Joe’s massive property. Jessica was in her last year of high school and planned to attend college in Santa Barbara after she graduated. There was no way I wanted to live in L.A. once Jessica was launched into the world, and I knew I couldn’t return “home.” Apart from the fact that I had come to love the California weather, Long Island was in the past. I couldn’t return to any sort of life there. My family still lived there, sure, but that wasn’t enough. Whether they were grown or not, I didn’t want to live three thousand miles away from my kids. Also, I would always be a freak show in Massapequa. I would never again live the blissfully anonymous life I’d enjoyed for thirty-seven years. I had grieved the loss of that life for eight years now. It was time to move on, find acceptance, and build a new future. I needed to follow my daughter’s example and learn to bloom where I was planted. I began to plan my next move, and Joe and I started discussing plans.

My sister, a pediatric occupational therapist, loved her job and found it very gratifying. I began to think this might be the right occupation for me, too. The first step would be to earn my associate’s degree, and then go on to specialized schooling. In California, there were only three schools specializing in pediatric occupational therapy (OT) programs—the only one anywhere nearby was in Santa Ana, about ninety miles from my Woodland Hills apartment. I toured the school, liked what I saw, and made plans to begin all over again. It was a scary feeling, but I wanted to do it.

It was humbling to imagine going back to a life of homework assignments and tests. My only full-time job outside the home had been in the years following high school, in a bank, but that had in no way been a career. It was a job, to earn money while I lived with my parents, so Joe and I could buy a house and get married. The plan had always been that Joe would be the family breadwinner. I would raise the children and take care of the home. But here I was, children grown, alone in an apartment in California. It was time to figure out not only how I was going to earn a living, but what kind of job would really suit me, where my strengths lay, and whether or not I was good at anything besides caring for a family. School, I hoped, would provide some of these answers.

Joe didn’t like this idea at all. “How about we rent you a little cottage in Santa Barbara. You can be near Jess and not so far away from us, too.” He tried everything to manipulate me into this alternate plan, but I stuck to my guns. My being too independent wasn’t part of his plan. I didn’t want to go to Santa Barbara—pleasant as it sounded. I wanted Jessica to live her own life without me hovering, and I wanted to do what I needed to do without worrying about my kids. I found the most beautiful apartment in Newport Beach, a gorgeous seaside community just up the freeway from Santa Ana, and I knew I had found the perfect place for me.

As Joey and I were tussling over my future plans, notices started arriving in the mail at my apartment. Creditors were asking for money, and collection notices started showing up almost daily, coming after me for money owed by Joseph Buttafuoco. We were still legally married, after all. I learned that Joey had filed for bankruptcy six months earlier. (Of course, this was news to me until I confronted him). Unfortunately, his filing left me on the hook. Everyone came after me instead. That damn boat, the
Double Trouble
back on Long Island, is what precipitated this turn of events. He’d had to leave the boat there when we moved. Of course, we still had years of payments left on it. When he couldn’t find a buyer, rather than continue to pay the loan company, Joe unilaterally decided to file for bankruptcy. Hey, no big deal, it was just filing some papers. He didn’t care.

I was very alarmed when all the credit card notices started coming to me, and the phone rang all the time with dunning calls. “Just file for bankruptcy; it was nothing,” was Joe’s advice. I was furious. No matter what I did, this man dragged me down. I felt like I was climbing slowly and painfully out of a deep, dark hole, but had just gotten sucker punched again. I lived frugally. I didn’t waste money. I cared deeply about my name and credit standing. A sociopath, on the other hand, has the same regard for financial obligations as he does to personal ones: no remorse, no conscience. Get what you want now, and damn the consequences later. When I got a clearer picture of how dire our debt situation really was, I realized he had left me no choice. I, personally, was going to have to file for bankruptcy, one of the most shaming acts of my life.