What Really Happened (12 page)

Sure enough, at 9:51
A.M.
, my cell rang again. I answered the phone with, “Hello?” this time, but it was Johnny on the other end. Hoping I was wrong about Elizabeth calling before, I asked if he had just called and hung up. He replied in a very odd voice, “We are done. And I need to get all the tapes from you.”

Oh. It had been
Elizabeth.

When I didn’t respond, he repeated himself. “We are done. And I need to get all the tapes from you.”

“What? What are you talking about?”

“You and me, we are done.”

“Oh, she’s standing right there.”

“We are done.”

In my head, I was thinking: “We are done? What do you mean? We’re just getting started.” But what I said was, “Okay.”

Then he said, “I need to get all the tapes from you.”

“Okay.”

“Goodbye.”

“Bye.”

The entire conversation lasted less than a minute.

I sat there on the bed in my room at the Marriott for a while. I felt very emotional yet, deep inside, I felt a peaceful stillness. And then I pondered the bond between Johnny and me, and yes, there it was again. I was convinced that my previous thought was accurate—this relationship wasn’t over yet.

I called Mimi as I was packing, then Andrew called about my departure. He was unable to take me to the airport. I told him my contract was up and this was it, I wouldn’t be working for the campaign. “What are you talking about?” Andrew said. “He loves you like a sister. He’s not going get rid of you.”

That was one of Andrew’s tics, that brother/sister love thing. He would constantly say things like, “We were like brothers,” or, “I love you like a sister.” Clearly, the campaign staff talk of our affair had not hit Andrew yet, or he was flat-out lying.

Andrew continued, “There is no way you won’t be working for him.”

“Oh no, Andrew, I will not be working for him. Guaranteed.”

We hung up and I took a cab to the airport. My cell rang, I looked at the number and it was Johnny’s home phone. I answered, but no one spoke. Clearly it wasn’t Johnny.

At the airport, Andrew surprised me by arranging to have two drink passes waiting for me in the Admirals Club. I took advantage of that and ordered a glass of wine, attempting to numb my pain.

While I was waiting for my flight, I got another hang-up call. Elizabeth proceeded to do this for the next two days at all hours of the day and night from various numbers, all Johnny-related. Of course I had them all, and I would answer because I never knew if it was Johnny calling until I answered. I didn’t understand why she was calling, given she obviously had nothing to say to me, and I didn’t really have anything to say to her. I felt miserable for her and for what she must be experiencing upon awakening from denial. But my loyalties were with Johnny.

I think I may have felt differently about this if I had been Johnny’s first mistress instead of his last. When I met Johnny, he was leading a life that was completely separate from his married life. He was making his own decisions; I just happened to be a part of that other life. Because he told me when we first met that he was involved with other women and had been for the last twenty years, I felt that Elizabeth’s anger had nothing to do with me. But as the third party, I would be the obvious target of her misplaced anger. I did feel like my relationship with Johnny, and our love for each other, did help move him forward, and thus helped bring his problems with Elizabeth out of the dark. And yes, that is a painful experience for anyone to go through.

Suffice it to say, it was the worst New Year’s Eve of my life. I stayed in bed and faced my pain head-on, tortured by the hang-up calls from Elizabeth. I answered every single one, always hoping that Johnny would be on the other end.

On the evening of New Year’s Day, Johnny finally called. He had gone out to get food. Obviously, he had been going through hell. He told me that Elizabeth was physically attacking him in between all the screaming. He just kept saying to me, “You have no idea. You have no idea.”

He was right—I didn’t. I had never heard him like this. It sounded like he was drowning. He said he had to go and didn’t know how or when he could call because she had taken his phone. But he would be in New York on Thursday as planned, so I should call him at the hotel.

The next day I went to the AT&T store. I changed my number to end my hang-ups from Elizabeth and bought Johnny a new phone to give him on Thursday. There was no way I was leaving this relationship right now. He needed me more than ever—I was sure of it.

But when I called his room on Thursday, I did not recognize the person on the other end of the line. His voice was weird and distant. He said he couldn’t see me.

I began to cry, but he was not moved by my tears. In fact, he had a new, strange reaction to my sadness. As I was crying into the phone, I could hear him turning to stone. I realized that he was in survival mode and shielding himself from any possible emotional manipulation.

I told him I had bought a new phone for him. And suddenly his entire demeanor changed. “I want that phone. I want to keep talking to you. But what am I going to do with it? Elizabeth will go through all my bags. I can’t take a phone to my house.”

The whole situation sucked, but I was in love with this man and I was going to make it work. I thought for a moment. “Why don’t you give it to Andrew? Let him keep it and then give it back to you when you leave the house. That may work. He knows you like talking to me. He’s already said he loves how happy you are around me. If he asks, tell him you want to keep talking to me. I’ll talk to him.”

As we continued talking, Johnny started becoming more recognizable.

“I think Elizabeth may have someone following me. I’m afraid to have you come see me tonight. But I really want that phone. It’s been bad. You have no idea what I’ve been through the past few days.”

I went to the Regency that night and called from the lobby. I was sitting on the couch in the lobby and I saw Josh walking into the lounge. I assumed he was going to meet his old work buddies, John Davis and Brian Mixer. Josh didn’t see me. Johnny told me what room he was in and I went up. He was in a corner room, a suite.

He was a mess. Strangely detached, he reminded me of an abused animal. He was skittish, wary, and withdrawn. I started crying again but like before, my tears had no effect on him. The man I had known and loved had disappeared. He was a shell of himself. I think back on this now and it breaks my heart to know that he was like that, and still had a long road of abuse in front of him.

He told me Elizabeth was going to call and he needed to take the call. I said okay.

When she did, he went into the bedroom. I went in the bathroom to give him some privacy. I sat down on the floor and started thinking. I hadn’t given him the phone yet and I thought to myself, “If I leave now, he will never be able to reach me.” I thought about just getting up and walking out. But I didn’t want to abandon him as he was drowning. I decided I didn’t care, that it wasn’t my problem. “Oh fuck it, I’m going to leave,” I thought to myself. I tried to move and I couldn’t. What was holding me here? I wanted to go, but I couldn’t move. As I was doing an internal scan of my new paralysis, Johnny opened the bathroom door. He looked terrible.

Years later, I would revisit that moment in the bathroom many times over. It was one of those turning points. Would my daughter even exist today had I been able to move my body and get the hell out of that bathroom and out of his suite? What kept me there? Why couldn’t I move my body? And what was I doing involved in this mess? The latter was a question I would ask myself repeatedly over the next two years; the only answer I received back was, “learning.” Learning about relationships. And now looking back, that is the understatement of the century.

And wow. He wasn’t kidding about Elizabeth screaming at him. About two hours later the phone rang again and she went off. I have never heard anyone scream like that in my entire life. I could hear every word and was wondering if the people in the room next door could.

Johnny immediately warped into some person I had never seen before, attempting to calm her down, playing right into her drama. She would hang up and call back. This went on for hours in between me helping translate what was actually happening and showing him what patterns they were in. In Elizabeth’s defense, she was bonkers because she had been in denial for years and was now attempting to put the pieces of her life back together. I really get that. She was torturing herself by asking for details of every night we’d spent together—what we did, where we did it, and how we did it. Johnny, in an attempt to be honest, was giving her way too much information. He was revealing way more than the “one-night stand” claims that I would later hear throughout the media. His details were feeding her frenzy, and the phone calls got worse.

What was clear to me was that I needed to get out of there, and that they needed professional help. What was not completely clear to me at the time was that their disagreement wasn’t a one-time issue triggered by an outside event. What I was witnessing was their actual dynamic, the way they had always related to each other. Of course, the intensity of her rage varied depending on what she was thinking about. Her own random thoughts about anything and everything varied wildly at any given time, and his reaction varied depending on the intensity of the venom she directed at him. He had lived every day for the last thirty years tiptoeing around land mines. No wonder he liked being away from home so much!

I left well before dawn. He was paranoid that she had a detective following him. I doubted it because, from what I could tell, she did not sound like someone who wanted truth. From everything I had just heard, it sounded like she was stuck in a pattern of avoidance, and he was just playing right into it. That pattern is a deflection, an ego-control game, and it keeps you from discovering the truth. It keeps you in denial of what’s really going on inside of you. But there was no way for me to foresee the depth of her attachment, the strength of her will to fight viciously to get her way. I underestimated her desire
not
to know (and her desire not to have anyone else know), as well as her attachment to her life in denial. And even more importantly, I underestimated Johnny’s fear of her wrath.

I called a car service and left the suite. The first call came on my way home. Elizabeth was apparently threatening him with all kinds of things. I didn’t buy any of it. The problem was, he did. She would beat him into submission with her emotionally charged words, repeating over and over, “How could you do this to me?”

He began calling me often from the new phone. Between being in his bubble, the alternate universe of campaigning, and Elizabeth’s hysteria, that new cell phone turned out to be his lifeline to reality. Over the next few days, as he processed everything he had been through, he told me what had been going on the night Elizabeth had discovered the phone.

The night of December 30
^th
, when he called me, Elizabeth was in full accusation and attack mode and had gone looking for him. She found him in the “barn”—a huge four-bedroom guesthouse with an indoor swimming pool that is attached to the basketball court, which is attached to the main house by what feels like a mile-long corridor. Upon hearing her approaching, he hung up quickly, and went to meet her, leaving both his cell phones next to each other.

They went back to main house and, after more fighting, finally went to sleep. Elizabeth had awakened early to take Cate to the airport. Johnny, lying in bed alone in the early morning, had the thought, “Go move the phone.” But he ignored this thought because he was exhausted and didn’t want to get out of bed. He went back to sleep.

Elizabeth returned and rang his cell phone in an attempt to find it, suspecting he had been in the barn last night talking to me. She finally found it, and next to his phone was the phone that I had bought for him. She picked it up, and rang the only number in it, the last call the phone had made. I answered and said, “Hey, baby.”

She confronted him again, just as she had been doing the night before, and he denied some more, and then finally caved. Yes, he was having an affair.

And that’s when he called me, saying it was over and he needed the tapes.

She then stayed glued to his side—screaming, yelling, and attacking—so he would not be able to call me again until the next night, when he went out for food. I guess she thought if she left his side for one minute, he would call me. She was right.

When he got back to the house, Elizabeth was waiting for him at the gate and took his phone away from him. She was now going to attempt to control his every move.

After listening to Johnny’s side of the story, I had a fuller understanding that this marriage was a sad and very sick relationship filled with issues that clearly neither Johnny nor Elizabeth wanted to address. They did not want to disclose the truth to themselves, much less to the public. I have learned that such behavior is not only generational but also geographical. It’s very Southern to talk around things and to avoid directness at all costs.

What was important to Elizabeth was how she was perceived, what people thought about her, and anything—including the factual truth—that didn’t fit into how Elizabeth wanted to be perceived would cause an extreme reaction. She would go on a venomous attack with complete disregard for the people she was hurting. And then she would work very hard at fixing that image by blogging and talking to reporters and her friends at
People
.