And Never Let Her Go (17 page)

On April 26, Tom came to Anne Marie's house to have dinner, and afterward, he told her gently that she deserved to have a man without children, a man who had a lot of time to spend with her, because she was “very special and deserved much more.” She was bereft when he said that they could not go on seeing each other. And she watched from her window as he got into his car and drove away, probably, she thought, for the last time. She blamed herself, as she always blamed herself when someone left her behind. “I know it is my problem and my fault, because from the very beginning, I knew what I was getting myself into. After he left, I was so empty, sad, lonely. I [had] told him things that were hidden inside me. I feel so comfortable with him—I can say anything. I went to bed and cried myself to sleep.”

Anne Marie grieved for two days and then Tom was back, calling to tell her that he loved her and could not stay away from her. They agreed to keep seeing each other, and her world seemed temporarily brighter, although she felt sorry for him because he told her he had to go to some stupid law seminar that he dreaded. “He is going to Canada from Wednesday to Friday for law school,” she wrote in her diary. “Poor thing. Ciao Tomas, I love you.”

B
OB
C
ONNER
had known about Anne Marie's eating disorder for some time, but she had never really admitted it to him, and he was waiting for her to bring it up. On this Thursday, the same day she and Tom had agreed to continue their affair, she confessed her obsession with food to Conner.

I cried a lot as well as informed him of my eating disorder. I realize how poor of an eater I've become, and that it's not healthy. However, it feels great every time I get on the scale if the needle has decreased from before! My ideal weight is 125. I can do it. I now weigh 133. Eight more pounds. I could easily do that in a week! I also feel that my world is so out of control, and the only thing I can control is my food intake. I know one thing, Prozac is not for me. Bob is aware, so I suppose we'll take it from here. Cheers—AMF

Anne Marie did not expect to see Tom the next week, since he would be in Canada for the law seminar. It may have been a relief for her not to listen for the phone, wondering if he was going to start the come-here, go-away, come-here discussions again. She
knew
he had gone away, at least for a time.

T
HAT
A
PRIL OF
1994, when Tom told Anne Marie that he wanted to continue seeing her, he was hardly a man alone. Not only did he have a wife, but Debby MacIntyre had been his mistress for almost twelve years. Tom had made Debby understand that his marriage was unhappy, but divorce wasn't even a consideration. “I'm miserable in my marriage,” he told her in a soft, hopeless voice, “but I can't leave my kids. You know that, Deb.”

Of course she did. From the way Tom described his situation, she pictured him living a life of quiet desperation. Kay was a truly nice person, but she and Tom were so different, and Debby had seen for herself how he doted on his girls. It would break Tom's heart to have to walk away from his four daughters.

Debby had been caught in an unhappy marriage and she had escaped—but then,
she
had her children with her. She couldn't even imagine what it would have been like to live away from them. She
made sure their father saw them as often as he liked. Victoria and Steve needed their father, too, and she and her ex-husband had worked it out. They saw him every other weekend and stayed with him every Wednesday night.

“Tom loved his girls,” Debby recalled. “I thought he would do
anything
for them.” She could empathize with that; she would do anything for her children.

Tom was a highly organized man and he liked things to move smoothly, with chores and events fitting neatly into the time slots assigned to them. From his comments to Debby, it sounded as though his home wasn't run as efficiently as he would have liked, although she knew that it was
Kay
who saw that the girls got to school, to their games, to doctors' appointments, to birthday parties. She couldn't have been doing that bad a job, but how could anyone know what went on behind the walls of someone else's home? Tom made an appearance at the girls' games and meets, but his career rarely allowed him to attend an entire event, while Kay was always there.

Debby's own life revolved around her children—who were now in junior high and high school at Tatnall—her job, and Tom. He needed her to be his friend and confidante as well as his lover; and she tried to always be there for him, to listen to whatever was on his mind and provide a safe haven from the pressures of his world. She had been with him through his years with the city, through the time he advised Governor Castle, and now when he was back in private practice. He was so pressed for time and usually late for the times they had arranged to be together, sometimes
hours
late. But Debby always waited for him and never chided him, even though she was often terribly disappointed.

In all the years of their relationship, Debby had never once given Tom an ultimatum or told him she wanted to end their affair. She was so afraid that he would leave her, and she could not imagine her life without him.

Two or three times, Tom had alluded to some woman—a secretary at his office, she believed—who had taken too much for granted, pushed too hard. Debby thought that relationship had gone on a year or two before she came into Tom's life; she recalled her ex-husband saying something about Tom's having trouble over a woman. It hadn't mattered to her then, and she hadn't listened closely. But she knew Tom was like quicksilver; if anyone tried to trap him, he would be gone.

“I never rocked the boat,” she remembered. “I always wanted
to please him, because I wanted his praise. I wanted him to love me. I thought that was the way I had to be for him to keep loving me. There were a number of times in our relationship over the years when I knew that it was wrong, I knew it was going nowhere, and that I had to
try
and break it off, and I
couldn't
do it. I didn't have the strength to do it. I never threatened to leave him. I never, ever could say that. I was always afraid that
he
would leave me.”

And she could not have borne that. One bleak October, he
had
left her for several weeks, but he had come back. Debby had made her peace with the way her life had turned out. “I finally came to some level of happiness,” she said, “thinking, Look at the good he's brought me. Look at how he's made me feel about myself. He's always there for me.” If she and Tom were not meant to be together as a couple free to walk in the bright sunlight of public awareness, at least she knew she was
special
to him. And from the time she was a very little girl, all Debby had ever longed for was to be special to someone.

One of the topics that raised Tom's ire was Tatnall School. Debby had long since moved up into an administrative job. She ran the before- and after-school programs, and for five years the entire summer program. She was very efficient, worked long hours, and took pride in her work at Tatnall. But Tom often pointed out that she worked too much overtime and got too little pay and respect. He told her that she was always letting people walk all over her. “You are everybody's doormat,” he said.

“You're right,” Debby would agree. “I
do
let people walk on me.”

It became a self-fulfilling prophecy for her. Every time he told her she was too wishy-washy, she felt weaker and her achievements seemed less important. “And
he
treated me like a doormat,” Debby recalled. “He admitted it. He said, ‘Sometimes, I treat you like a doormat. I don't mean to, Debby. You know that—but every once in a while, I do.' ”

In truth, he almost always treated her that way. As much as she loved him and depended on him, Debby often had the feeling she wasn't smart enough, attractive enough, or worldly enough. Even though she did her best to anticipate his moods, she often irritated Tom because she had guessed wrong about what her response should be.

Twelve years should have made her a little confident in their relationship—but she never was. Tom told Debby often that she shouldn't be waiting around for him. She needed to have a life of her
own and she should be seeing other men. He suggested that she go to bars and pick up men, and he seemed to have no jealousy about any physical relationship that might ensue. Rather, he told her he would love to hear about what she did with other men. When he talked like that, Debby felt sick. It was the ultimate rejection. He didn't want her and was ready to palm her off on other men. Worse, he wanted the details. She tried to tell herself that he didn't really mean it.

But he did. There had been incidents that she tried never to think of. Sometime in the late eighties, after they had been together for several years, Tom encouraged Debby to accept a date with a former classmate who was in town from New England. “I would do what he wanted to compromise what was best for me lots of times,” she said ruefully.

This was one of those times. At Tom's instigation, Debby invited the man home and there was a sexual encounter, again following Tom's instructions. Indeed, he was watching from the window. She didn't understand why he would want to watch her with another man, or her own acquiescence in his voyeuristic fantasy. She tried to forget it had ever happened.

About five years later, Tom set up another situation designed to end in a ménage à trois. Debby had been surprised when Tom showed up at her house with Keith Brady in tow one evening. Keith was the attorney who had replaced him as adviser to Governor Castle, four years younger than Tom and a tall, handsome man, with black hair. Tom had confided in Keith about his own extramarital affairs, telling him in particular about Debby and describing her as “a wonderful person I care very much about.”

Tom and Keith had been golfing. They had had some drinks at the country club, and Tom poured several more at Debby's house. It was an encounter orchestrated by Tom. At some point, he signaled to Debby and they moved to another room, where they made love. And then Tom asked her to approach Keith and do what was necessary to draw him into a sexual encounter. She didn't want to do it, but like an automaton, Debby did as Tom asked. “I was afraid if I didn't do it,” she said later, “he'd get angry and leave. Leave
me.”

At Tom's insistence, Debby performed oral sex on his friend, but Keith was as embarrassed as she was and failed to get an erection. It was a humiliating incident that would come back to haunt both of them. They tried to pretend nothing had ever happened between them. But Tom knew. It gave him a little more power over both of them.

On another occasion, Tom urged Debby to have lunch with Keith and then bring him back to her house and seduce him so that he could watch. She did have lunch with Keith, but neither of them wanted to take it any further than that, although Keith went on being Tom's friend—at least nominally.

Tom's sexual appetites had always been, at the least, unusual, and Debby had always tried to accommodate him. She had had little sexual experience before her years with Tom and wasn't sure if he was asking for more than most men would. They were very open with each other, and she felt somewhat secure in believing that, for him, she was the female in his life, and that she pleased him.

Both Debby and Keith Brady were mortified by their one intimate encounter, but there was no reason to think anyone would ever know about it. Keith went on to become the second in command in the Delaware Attorney General's Office. He was married and had children. Debby wondered sometimes why Tom urged people out of their safe worlds and put them into positions where they were caught in horrible, unforgettable acts. Maybe it made him feel stronger. He often told Debby that she had no self-esteem, railed at her for being so deficient, and then set about tearing her down. When she protested, Tom backed off and insisted he was only trying to help her.

After so many years, Tom and Debby still spoke on the phone a couple of times a day, and they were together on Wednesday nights. They had a favorite song, “Sailing,” by Christopher Cross. Maybe they liked it because it made love sound so easy, without any of the complications that it had in the real world. They couldn't be seen together in Wilmington, but Tom took Debby to dinner in restaurants in Little Italy in Philadelphia. His favorite was a place called Villa d' Roma. “We never ran into anyone we knew,” she recalled. “It was ‘our spot.' It was very small, but the food was good, and I loved going there.”

Tom was obsessed with hiding their relationship, and Debby thought it was because of his prominence in city government and because he wanted to protect Kay and his girls. Of course, it was unthinkable that they could go out to dinner in Wilmington. Every time they met accidentally in Wilmington, they had to pretend. As far as Debby knew, even Tom's brothers had no idea that he was involved with her.

Tom had never taken Debby on a real trip. When she traveled, she was alone with her children. She was surprised and delighted when he asked her if she would like to go to Montreal with him in April 1994. There was a law seminar he had to attend, but he assured
her he would have a lot of free time, too. Tom explained that she couldn't actually go
with
him, of course, on the flight; they would have to travel separately. “He went up first,” Debby recalled, “and then I came up. I lied to my family as to where I was going, which I'm not proud of. But it was wonderful. I loved Montreal. We walked all over—we had a really good time.”

In all of their years together, Debby had never been with Tom for two days in a row. Now they were in another country, another world, and she knew he wasn't going to go away in a few hours. “It was so wonderful,” she said.

Coming home, there was a reservations mix-up, which meant they had to fly back to Philadelphia on the same plane. But Tom was very concerned that they might be seen together on the flight. “He told me there was a woman lawyer there whom he knew,” Debby said, “and he didn't want to chance her seeing us together, so I had to sit in another seat, far away from him. It made me feel like,
What am I doing here, anyway?”