Life on the Ramona Coaster (20 page)

The next day, Mario drove Avery to the airport and when he got back we met for breakfast. I said to him, “Mario, I left some bags out for you. You need to pack your stuff up and you need to leave.”

I remember, him being in shock and saying, “Please, don’t do this.”

I said, “I can’t be around you. I’m a wreck. I can’t. I just can’t.”

My heart was broken. My body was destroyed. I was overmedicating to numb the pain. I was falling apart and I just needed some time to myself.

Once Mario moved out, and I no longer had the stress of seeing him every day, I started to regain my health. I was able to sleep at night. I began to feel more like myself and I stopped taking anxiety medication. Two weeks later, I contacted Mario and told him I thought we should go out to Southampton together. I was feeling stronger and healthier and thought we could go out there together and talk about him moving back in. I expected him to be receptive, but I remember that he said he wanted to go out there by himself because he needed some time alone. I decided to drive out to the house and surprise him anyway. Honestly, in the back of my mind, I did think there might be another woman there, but I just figured if that happened, I would calmly tell Mario to ask her to leave.

When I got to the house and he saw me standing in the doorway, he had this strange look in his eyes. I remember thinking,
he doesn’t look right. His eyes don’t look right. Something’s weird here.
He asked me what I was doing there, but the way he was looking at me scared me. I panicked. I couldn’t bring myself to say that I was there to work on our marriage, so I said something like, “Oh, I’m just here to get some contact lenses,” and tried to move past him into the house. I remember, he put his hands on my shoulders and physically pushed me out of the house. Somehow, I was able to twist and duck under his arms, to move around him. As soon as I was inside, I knew there was a woman in the house. In
my
house. I could sense someone upstairs, looking down from the catwalk. I saw takeout from La Parmigiana in the kitchen and I remember thinking,
how could he order from our restaurant?
Things escalated quickly and I called the police. They came out to the house and made a report. While they were questioning us, I was in one room and Mario was in another. I heard the policeman say, “Mario, you’re gonna have to leave with your guest,” and then I remember hearing this female voice whining, “Why do we have to be the ones to leave? We just drove for four hours.” I would have laughed if it weren’t so sad.

The police report should have been private, but someone leaked it to the press so once again we found ourselves the subject of ugly tabloid headlines. At that point I was in a state of shock. I was vulnerable and I felt that I needed to speak to a divorce lawyer just to get some information. What I really wanted was some kind of legal separation, but things escalated quickly and, on January 29, 2014, I filed for divorce. I realized the night before we were going to serve Mario with the divorce papers that things had snowballed and I wasn’t ready for such a drastic and final step. I tried to stop it from happening, but it was too late. The wheels had been set in motion and there was nothing I could do. Who knows? Maybe if I hadn’t filed for divorce, we wouldn’t be where we are now.

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8
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Sliding Doors

A
FTER SHE HAD SOME
time to process what had happened, Avery wrote the most beautiful and heartbreaking letter to her father:

Dear Dad,

I’m writing to you again because I hope that, as your daughter, I will be able to get through to you—but I don’t even know if I can at this point. You admitted to me that you have been reckless and self-destructive. You need to stop and fix your actions before you lose everything that is good in your life. I know right now you are unhappy with your life and yourself. You need to put your life into perspective. You live in New York City, one of the greatest cities in the world, and have a beautiful house in Southampton. I know that you are unhappy with your job, but it was your choice to take on that responsibility. You could have left and tried something else, but you didn’t. You can’t blame mom for your unhappiness. You had this job long before you met her. If anything, I would hope that you can see mom brought you the greatest happiness and love that you experienced—me, your only daughter. You have traveled the world and take vacations yearly. Do you know how many people can say they have this? It is a very small percent. Think about when we went to Africa, and we saw all those families with no shoes and clothes. People have to walk miles just to get water. You have a healthy daughter and a wife who loves you more than life itself. Mom has stood by you through everything . . . She sat by your bedside for six months when you were going through your depression. Even in October when the first article came out, she denied it to protect YOU. She did it to protect our relationship and your business. How could you sit there at dinner when you came to visit me during Parents Weekend, when I went on about how both of you could never do this to each other? You didn’t even blink . . . We were a trifecta and you broke us. What you have done and are still continuing to do is now forever damaging. You have no one to blame but yourself. It’s about time you stop acting like a teenage boy and take responsibility for your actions.

My father who would drag me to church every Sunday for thirteen years would never do this. My father who would tuck me in and pray with me before I went to sleep when I was a little girl would never do this. My father who has always put me first, would never do this. At this point what I decide and what Mommy decides is up to us. We have given you multiple chances. I don’t want it to be this way, but you have given us no choice. You broke our hearts repeatedly. You told me you would do better and try to fix things before I left, but you have not done one thing to make anything better. You show no remorse. Where is the heartfelt apology to either mom or me? Where are the flowers and the cards? Where is any effort to show you actually care? If you don’t want to do that for me fine, but at least please do it for mom. You owe her and your marriage some remorse and a real apology.

This whole thing is an embarrassment to Mommy and me, and you have not once thought about how it would affect us. I am ashamed of you. How can you possibly work on a marriage and still continue seeing another woman? That does not make any sense . . . I know you say that you have been angry with mom for a long time, and there are issues you have had that I won’t understand. You know it was never her intention to hurt you. It was your fault for never speaking up to fix things. You then blame the TV show too, but who are you kidding? You love being on it . . . You say you hate our lifestyle, but you know you love going on vacations and being at our house in the Southampton. You are just lost and confused.

You claim that this is your way of getting back at mom for how she has hurt you over the years and that everyone has affairs. Do you realize how crazy that sounds? You try to make up excuses for everything you have done to justify your actions, but there is no possible justification for this. You have hurt Mommy and me beyond words. You have played with her mind for months. You have cried, telling me you pushed her too far past the edge and are afraid you will never get her back. You told me you never want to lose mom or me because we are the two most important people in your life, but you never tried to actually work on your marriage. Mom was there for months, knowing you were having an affair, and she still tried to work things out with you because she loves you so much. You may say you lost your love for her, but I don’t believe that. Even if you are not in love with her, deep down you still love her and care about her.

Honestly, you don’t even know what you want. You kept changing your mind with Mommy like a light switch. You told me that you don’t even care about this woman, and you see nothing with her in the future. If this is the case, why would you keep seeing her and continue to damage your future with mom and me? How dare you bring her to our house that I grew up in in Southampton? We have endless memories in that home. That is the bed where you and your wife have slept for eighteen years. No sane husband would ever bring his mistress into his family home. You know Mommy came to Southampton to tell you that you could move back in. She had every right to kick you out of the house and pack up your things. You destroyed her mental health. You never respected her wishes or space. You never gave the marriage a chance. One day you will reflect and realize how badly you messed up.

You knew we were in the public light. You knew once the article in October came out that you should have stopped. All of this is your fault, so stop blaming other people and trying to rationalize your thoughtless decisions . . . Do something for me now to fix things. I know that my real dad would see all of this. I know my real dad would be appalled and never forgive himself for how he disgraced and hurt the two people who love him more than anyone on this Earth.

You are my father, but you haven’t been acting much like one. It is time for you to fix the damage. I need you to make changes and show an effort, even if you disagree. You need to show you care about us. We were the three musketeers, the three best friends. You and I had the best relationship. I see light at the end of this long dark tunnel, but it will take time. Please reflect as you read this letter a few times. I miss my dad. I hope that one day soon I’ll have the dad I always thought I knew and put on a pedestal my whole life.

Love your one and only daughter,

Avery

The next few months were some of the darkest of my life. The experience of seeing my daughter suffer while my marriage was collapsing was more traumatic than the three years I spent watching my mother die of leukemia. After he read Avery’s letter, it seemed like Mario wanted to try to make things work between us. As hurt as I was, I just wasn’t ready to walk away from him. We decided to try going on some dates, and by March he had moved back into our apartment. We went back into marriage counseling, but the sessions were very tense because I felt Mario was being impatient with me. On March 14th, Avery was in town, and Mario and I celebrated our twenty-second wedding anniversary. We opened a bottle of champagne, drank a toast, and went out to dinner. He had made a reservation at Rosa, this very romantic Italian restaurant, but it was the saddest anniversary of my life. It was so awkward. We didn’t kiss. We didn’t hold hands. There was so much distance between us. But then the next day we went to the Metropolitan Museum of Art with Avery and being together as a family felt so right. Avery published a selfie of us on Twitter and the press went crazy with stories of how I was back with my “estranged” husband.

Family selfie at The Metropolitan Museum of Art

It felt so good to be connected as a family, but that night Mario seemed to shift again. I remember at dinner he was throwing bills at me, saying I need to pay this bill and that bill. Later, Avery said to me, “That’s your whole problem with Daddy. He’s always throwing bills at you. He expects you to do certain things, but then he gets mad at you when you do. Daddy never stepped up to the plate. He says he feels like we left him hanging in the wind, but he never tried to be in it.” That night I got angry with Mario and I remember him saying that the window was closing on us. How can the window close on a marriage of twenty-two years? I felt like he hadn’t owned up to anything and that he hurt me for months and then was impatient with me when I was trying to heal.

In May, Avery and I decided to give Mario an ultimatum: cut off all ties or lose your family. I was done with all the back and forth. I felt like we would make a little progress, but then something would happen and we would fall even further back. Since I knew him so well, I could tell when he was pulling away because he was connecting with someone else. Mario agreed to change his phone number and I was determined to make things work this time. It was during this very tenuous and fragile period in my marriage that we filmed the Reunion episode for Season 6. At the time, Mario and I were in such a precarious place that I didn’t feel like I could speak about our marriage or his infidelity and I had promised him that I wouldn’t. When Andy Cohen questioned me, I shut down. I got defensive and refused to comment. I regret that now. I have always prided myself on being the type of person who speaks openly and honestly about all aspects of my life. I should not have allowed someone else’s needs to dictate my behavior. I signed on to do a reality show and, even though what was going on in my life at that point was happening off camera, the collapse of my marriage was, and is, part of my reality.

For the rest of that summer we worked on our relationship.
I felt Mario was connecting with me, we were going to counseling, and things were getting better. Then one night he was late coming home from work. I remember, he called to say he was at Grand Central station and was on his way home. Forty-five minutes later, he still wasn’t home. It takes fifteen minutes to get from Grand Central to the Upper East Side. When he finally got home, I remember him giving me some story about having to take the bus because the train was too crowded and when I questioned him about it he got very defensive, so I dropped the subject. I thought,
we’re seeing the therapist tomorrow. I’m not going to upset the applecart right now.
I took a sleeping pill and went to bed.

In therapy the next day, I said, “So, Mario, have you seen that girl recently?”

I remember he said, “Why are you asking me that now when everything is great with us?”

I said, “I’m not saying things aren’t good, but I am your wife and you are my husband. I’m allowed to ask the question.”

Eventually, Mario did admit that he had met with her on the street. I remember he told me that she had contacted him because her father was ill, she was very upset, and needed to see him. I do believe that, up to that point, he really had been trying. Nevertheless, that was my breaking point. I just couldn’t do it anymore. I began to feel that he was just not happy with himself and, if he wasn’t happy with himself, how could he be happy with me, or anyone else for that matter? For months I had I tried to help him, tried to help us, but I felt like he just kept pushing me away.