The Naked Truth: The Real Story Behind the Real Housewife of New Jersey--In Her Own Words (16 page)

When Kevin started to believe that I’d gained my independence and the strength to leave the relationship, he freaked out, and in one drunken outburst threatened to plant drugs in my car, then call the authorities and have me sent back to prison in Florida. While I didn’t think he’d do that sober, when he was high or drunk, who knew? I was the only person I knew free of alcohol and drugs that was in a constant state of paranoia.

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Throughout the rehab and the domestic disturbances, I developed quite a following as an exotic dancer. Eventually, I created a four-by-six postcard detailing my steady schedule of appearances, which I would hand out to customers. On one side was a listing of the days, times, and various clubs that I would be appearing at in New York and New Jersey, and on the other side was a dramatic photograph of me from behind wearing only a thong and stilettos.

One evening I went in to work at Gallagher’s as I normally did, pleased to get out of the house and ready to dance. I worked as much as I could, since if I wasn’t dancing, I would have been forced to spend my nights with Kevin.

Kevin carried a badge on him, which he would flash around,
pretending he was a cop or FBI or DEA agent, depending on what the situation called for. People didn’t understand how he could flash a badge one moment and then be snorting cocaine with them the next. There was no cop in Kevin. He was a fake cop. Fake FBI agent. Fake DEA agent. But he was a real
rat.

The owners of the clubs I worked at disliked Kevin. He would walk into a place as if he owned it, and they all despised the way he bullied me.

That evening, the lights shone brightly as I danced onstage. Then, through the sea of people, I spotted Kevin harassing the bouncer at the front door of the club. Thoughts of Kevin’s outbursts and threats descended on me in a flash, and I realized that when someone is obsessed, no restraining order or any other legally backed piece of paper in the world can shield you from him or her. Suddenly the bouncers, bartenders, and club owner began rushing toward the stage to protect me. In the meantime, Kevin went out to his Porsche in the parking lot, then returned to the club with a gun.

With nostrils flared and pupils dilated in what I imagine was a cocaine-induced fury, Kevin pushed his way into the club, armed and dangerous. The other dancers and I were immediately rushed downstairs to the dressing room to protect us from the man I called my husband. Somehow Kevin broke loose from one of the big, tattooed bouncers. Even in my shock I was amazed that these bouncers were risking their lives for me; I was at such a low point in my life that
I
wouldn’t even have risked my life for me.

Once the dancers and I were safe inside, Eddie, one of the managers, blocked the dressing room door. Kevin put a gun right up to Eddie’s head. Eddie knew Kevin and, more important, knew his reputation for going overboard when he was drunk and sky-high. Still, Eddie looked Kevin dead in the eye and didn’t back down.

From behind the closed door, my mind was racing as I listened to the bizarre scene unfolding outside. Inside, everyone was freaking out; not many of the dancers had seen guns like that before.

Before Kevin had time to accept Eddie’s challenge, the police finally arrived. The officers approached Kevin to calm him down. He assaulted one of the officers, and they arrested him and wouldn’t let him go. It was rather ironic to me that only when Kevin assaulted another man—a man who carried a gun and could defend himself—did they finally press charges against him. I thought about the times Kevin had hurt me and I’d ended up in the hospital, and how even though he’d hurt me—a defenseless woman—they always let him go. It was extremely unfair. While I was grateful that they were pressing charges, I couldn’t understand why I wasn’t able to do the same.

The police offered me a ride down to the station. When one of the detectives was filling out the report, I told him my full name. They paused, confusion blanketing their faces. “If you are Mrs. Maher, then who is the other woman in the station?” one of the detectives asked.

“What other woman?” I shot back.

Kevin’s other wife, Beth Maher—who I believed was his ex-wife—came down to the jail. I found out later from Kevin that he’d married Beth under the name Edward James Maher, and he married me under Kevin James Maher—
while he was still legally married to another woman.
At that moment I found out Kevin was a bigamist.

Shocked, I immediately walked out of the precinct.

I found out later that Beth resided in New Jersey, and Kevin helped lock up her previous husband, the father of her son. Kevin preyed upon Beth—much the same way he preyed upon me.

After the incident at the club, I quickly moved to Brooklyn and left no trail. However, it didn’t take Kevin long to find me. One day, out of the blue, he showed up on my doorstep, claiming that he had broken up with Beth. In truth, she had ended it with him. He also said that he had stopped using. It was a familiar story, but for some reason I bought into it one last time.

Kevin wanted to get back together with me and suggested that we move to the Poconos in Pennsylvania for a change of lifestyle and a fresh start. It wasn’t as if we had many choices of places where we could live, and the landlords in the Poconos were not exactly discerning. Our track record as tenants
was pretty pathetic: we had moved eight times in a year and a half because we were kicked out of so many apartments and two-family homes in the tristate area. The problem was never that the rent was unpaid.
I
always paid it on time and in full. But we were always fighting loudly and violently, which, plus the occasional visits from the police, prompted several landlords to ask us to leave. They were sick and tired of trouble. Therefore, getting a reference from any of our previous landlords was not an option.

The gated community that we moved to was called the Pocono Country Place. Visitors had to go through a security checkpoint to get inside—this was a world away from where we had lived in the various boroughs of New York City—and the development was popular among families from Staten Island and Brooklyn, who could buy or rent vacation homes. The Pocono Country Place was equally busy in the warm months as in the cold; it manufactured snow that covered mountains in the winter and boasted a manmade lake with a beach for the summer.

I paid $1,400 a month to rent a simple yet pretty home for us. The houses were all brand-new, with tons of property and a great deal of privacy. You couldn’t even see your neighbors’ homes. With this move, it seemed as if Kevin and I had finally achieved some peace of mind.
Maybe this is what we needed,
I thought.
Maybe things will get normal.

Soon after we moved, I began working again at two different strip clubs: Shakers in Carlstadt and Satin Dolls in Lodi,
both of which were in New Jersey. (Satin Dolls eventually became famous as the Bada Bing! club in the hit television series
The Sopranos.)

The major difference between the exotic dance clubs in New York City and New Jersey is that New York City is topless and New Jersey is not. I disliked being topless. In the city, I often got into trouble because many times I didn’t want to take my top off. Even when I did take it off, I often had pasties on, which was something you weren’t supposed to do. The money was more or less the same, so going to dance in New Jersey was a welcome change.

Kevin would take me to work in his Porsche, driving all the way down Route 80 from the Poconos. Kevin started using drugs and drinking again shortly after we settled in. He became obsessed with every moment of my day and my total existence, going so far as to follow me into the bathroom. Then Kevin became fixated on the idea of my having a baby with him. It was just like when he was preoccupied with wanting to marry me—he wouldn’t take no for an answer. Getting me pregnant was all that he talked about. It seemed like just another way to control me.

The last thing I wanted to do was have a baby with Kevin, and I did my best not to. There is no foolproof means of birth control, but I was trying everything within my power to get my body to reject pregnancy. His obsession with me was only getting worse. As much as I dreamed of being a mother, bringing
a child into our relationship would have been the ultimate crime.

Since I wasn’t getting pregnant, Kevin insisted we go to an ob-gyn to find out what the problem was with me. On examining me, the doctor didn’t see anything wrong with my reproductive system, but he did see a battered woman.

Kevin wouldn’t let me go into the examination room alone with the doctor, even though a nurse was present. He was completely paranoid. Kevin told the doctor that if I didn’t get pregnant it would be the doctor’s fault, and that if I went to see the doctor by myself and ended up getting pregnant, Kevin would think that the doctor was the father. In one breath he was asking the doctor for his professional help, and in the next breath he was accusing the doctor of having an affair with me. During one visit I said I was having bad menstrual cramps and had the nurse escort me to the bathroom. In reality I was creating an opportunity to get a message to the doctor through her that I didn’t want to have a baby with Kevin. After our conversation, she agreed to help me.

“You should come to our office every day,” the nurse said.

“Why?” I asked.

“Because we can give you a birth control pill every day if you come here.” She knew that if the doctor prescribed me birth control pills and Kevin found them, he’d be infuriated.

Per their advice, I stopped at the doctor’s office every day to get birth control pills. Kevin assumed that I was getting
hormone injections to help me get pregnant. The doctor was giving me a combination of shots in my butt, but they were B
₁₂
for energy as well as saline.

During my doctor visits, my trips to the bathroom with the nurse became more frequent. She began relating ways that I could escape from my relationship; she told me about support groups that could help me and said that if I came to their medical office alone, she and her husband would take me to the group meetings. I wished I had had the courage to go.

Things between Kevin and me got progressively worse. He took off at one point for a few days—for work or on a coke binge, I had no idea. It was a welcome relief, but I was waiting for the ball to drop.

Once, after I finished work at about 2:00 a.m., I drove back to the Poconos. When I entered the Pennsylvania side of Route 80, I looked in my rearview mirror and noticed Kevin tailing me. He began to follow me aggressively, and after a frightening cat-and-mouse chase on the highway, we both arrived home. I locked myself in the car and Kevin banged extremely hard on the window. I was terrified he would break the glass, causing us both bodily harm and enraging him further. I relented and unlocked the door, and he dragged me into the house. Kevin threw me down on the bed and said, “If you just make love to me, I’ll stop.”

Make love to him?
I thought. Making love to Kevin was the furthest thing from my mind. My mind was twisting and turning.
Would it be easier to just give Kevin what he wants?
I thought. I gave in and stopped fighting it. During it, I began to cry—not the type of cry where you are bawling out loud. It was the kind of cry that you are not letting anyone know about. And yet, I was face-to-face with the person causing me to be upset. When it was all done, I put my back to him as I rolled over. Then I heard sobbing sounds. As I turned I noticed Kevin was sitting on the floor crying and looking at me apologetically. He kept telling me how beautiful I was, then asked, “Why do I keep hurting you? Why do I keep doing this? Help me. Please help me. I need your help.”