Getting It Through My Thick Skull (18 page)

I
was used to this kind of crap from the media. I shut the door in the reporter’s face and turned to snap at Paul. “What have I told you about opening the door?” The fact that he answered an unexpected knock at the door was much more my concern at the time than any provocative remark a reporter might make to catch me off guard to try to get a quote. I’d been playing that game for years by this time. I wasn’t going to fall for their tricks so easily.

When Joe came home from work that night, I asked him about it. “Oh, Evanka? She’s just a friend. A customer. Paulie knows her. I was with the guys . . . we ran into her in Vegas . . . turned out we were staying at the same hotel. Someone snapped a picture, you know how people do. I guess someone sold it to the tabloids to get some cash.” He wasn’t the slightest bit rattled. The sociopath always has a story.

Several days later, Amy was released from prison on probation and returned to her mother’s home. There was a brief media flurry as the press followed her around for a few days, but she was keeping a surprisingly low profile. I didn’t much care. Amy Fisher free on Long Island? Good luck to her—
I
couldn’t stay there, and I hadn’t even done anything wrong!

Several weeks later, I was back in New York finalizing some legal matters at Bruce Barket’s office. He pulled out a copy of the
Globe
and said jokingly, “So, what’s this about Joey and a girlfriend?” He handed me the paper, and we both studied the picture of Joey next to a voluptuous woman. It was hardly incriminating. They were just standing there side by side with other people surrounding them, though the article did in fact detail that Joey had checked into the Rio Hotel on Friday night—a hotel Joey and I had stayed in together on numerous occasions.

“I don’t know,” Bruce said. “It’s probably nothing . . . you know this is what the tabloids do . . . they could snap a picture like this of me and you!” It wasn’t pleasant to read this story, but after all we’d been through with the media, I couldn’t take it too seriously.

Still, the incident was out there, a lingering shadow in the back of my mind. Meanwhile, the lease on our little rented house was ending, and we had enough money put aside to buy a home. Joey was doing very well at work—well enough to buy a house in Los Angeles. When the house-hunting process started, Joey acquired a new and very unwelcome attitude, one I’d never been exposed to before. “You did what you wanted to; now I’m going to do what I want to.”

I went to check out lots of houses and found several I thought were viable. All we needed was a three-bedroom house in decent shape—no more fixer-uppers for me—in a decent neighborhood, maybe with a nice little yard. I called him a few times to ask him to come take a look, but he didn’t like anything I found. Somewhere in his travels he had stumbled across an absolute monstrosity of a property way out in Chatsworth, a remote Valley suburb. Possibly it had once been a beautiful, elegant home, but that had been in the distant past. The place was an abandoned wreck surrounded by overgrown plantings and crumbling outbuildings. It had been foreclosed by the bank and sat empty for years, maybe decades, growing more uninhabitable and neglected as the years passed. Joey became obsessed with it.

He took me to tour the property. The main house was probably six thousand square feet—absolutely ridiculous for a family of four. It was a huge pile of stone with ornate iron shutters rusting all over the windows and balconies. I hated it on sight. “We do not need this,” I said. “Forget what it costs. Imagine what it takes just to heat this place. And keeping up the grounds! Not to mention it needs new everything!”

“I’ve talked to the bank. I can get it for a song. It’s going to be great!” Joey was bubbling over with his usual enthusiasm. But I was much older, wiser, and, quite frankly, a lot more tired than I used to be. We didn’t need it, I didn’t want it, and this time I wasn’t going to go along with the latest over-the-top purchase and spend my life in some horrible fixer-upper—just as the kids were growing up and leaving us, too. It was perfectly obvious this property was nothing but a money pit.

For twenty-some-odd years, all I’d ever heard from Joey were variations on one theme. “I’m sorry. I love you. I need you. Whatever you want. You’re right.” It was a well-worn pattern. We both had our roles to play, and mine was the voice of reason. His was to agree with me and promise whatever I wanted to hear. All of a sudden, Joe dug in his heels. “You did what you wanted about Amy. I want this house, and I can afford it. I’m getting it.” There was quite a lot of “I” going on all of a sudden, when I was accustomed to “we.” This entitlement game he was suddenly playing had come out of left field. We were talking about a house, not forgiving Amy Fisher—a decision he had fully backed. “Joe, I asked you twenty times. We discussed it on numerous occasions. I wanted your opinion. I asked you over and over what you thought I should do and how you felt about the whole situation. All you said was ‘Whatever you want.’ You absolutely encouraged me to get closure. Now that the whole matter is behind us, and I actually did something for me that needed to be done and I feel good about it, you’re going to throw it in my face?”

“You should never have forgiven her . . . I never will!” This was news to me. The minute I’d publicly forgiven her, he was suddenly furious—at Amy and at me. I hadn’t heard anything like this before. All I knew was that he was displeased, it was my fault, and my forgiving Amy Fisher had somehow become his excuse to move ahead on a house purchase without my agreement. It was now time for Joe to do what he wanted (as if he hadn’t been all along!). He could attempt to justify this insane purchase by claiming it was “his turn,” but I wasn’t buying it. I felt stronger and freer and not chained to anger and the past since I’d forgiven Amy Fisher. I didn’t want this house, and I wasn’t going along with it.

When it became clear that he was going to buy this house no matter what I said, Joe accompanied me to the bank where he had finagled some deal to buy the property. I flat-out refused to cosign the mortgage, so the bank had me sign a quit-claim agreement stating that the property was his alone and I had no financial responsibility for it—a rather unusual situation for a couple who’d been married for twenty-two years. “I don’t want to be responsible for this, Joe. I don’t want my name anywhere near it. It’s a bad idea.” But Joey didn’t care what I thought. I couldn’t imagine where the large down payment he produced had even come from, no matter how well the shop was doing, but it wasn’t my problem. I refused to allow any of this to become my problem.

Jessica was entering the eleventh grade in the fall, and Paul was working at the shop every day with his father. Our family moved into the new house in July 1999. I lived there for less than six months.

My wonderfully loving and supportive husband turned on a dime with the new house purchase. Looking back, it’s clear to me that his relationship with Evanka had already started. We’d had nothing but strain in our lives since the shooting. Quite frankly, both of us were worn-out. I could even understand the allure of a fresh relationship in which you weren’t constantly rehashing the last twenty-five years. But instead of saying to me that he was feeling a little bit different, or that he needed something more or new from our marriage, he acted on his whims. He wandered off and did exactly as he pleased.

By this point in my marriage and my life, I didn’t much care what he did. I had resigned myself to this marriage for several years now. Every time I had tried to leave in the past, Joe had pulled out all the stops to get me to stay. Always, the scene in the restaurant with Jessica four years earlier on Long Island was never far from my mind. I had given up the idea of ever going—resigned to my fate is the only way to put it. Instead of leaving, I had chosen to try to work on myself—by getting off the pills and getting in the right frame of mind to even be willing and able to meet Roseanne and eventually forgive Amy.

Joey was energized by the new property and spent a lot of time working on it. He threw tons of money into remodeling and fixing it up. He was constantly renovating something, including a private apartment with its own entrance for Paul. I refused to do a thing. I did not give a damn about this black hole of a huge drafty house. All my modern furniture looked ridiculous in this old Spanish hacienda-style place. I privately thought it resembled nothing more than a Mexican brothel, but hey, it wasn’t mine. I didn’t bother to give any input on decorating.

I was free of the fog of pills, and I was at peace with my decision about Amy. Now, clearly, I had troubles in my marriage, but I couldn’t seem to work up much interest in fixing them. We never fought, we rarely even raised our voices, but we also barely spoke. The two of us never went out together or spent time alone at home with each other anymore. We were two cordial strangers sharing a house. Paul was nineteen years old, and Jessica sixteen. What was I hanging on for? By Thanksgiving, I had had it. “Joe,” I told him days before the long holiday weekend, “I think I’m going to leave. This just isn’t working.”

For the first time in nearly twenty-five years, Joe replied calmly, “I think you’re right.” His words were a tremendous shock. “Separation is a good idea.” I was taken aback by this calm reaction, but we continued the discussion and resolved to get through the holidays together—until New Year’s, to be precise—then I would make my announcement and find somewhere new to live. “Go look for your own place,” Joe said at the end of our talk. “Whatever you want, go find it and get it. I will take care of you.”

I started searching for my own place during the day, and I found a cute two-bedroom apartment in Woodland Hills. I was very concerned about minimizing the impact of our separation on Jessica. Paul was an adult now, working for a living and involved with his own girlfriend, so I wasn’t too worried about him. But I still wanted to cushion and protect Jessica as much as possible.

Apartment-hunting and planning my exit over the next six weeks was a strange, sad time for me, knowing I was leaving, and knowing that Joey didn’t care if I left. As always, I worried about the press. I didn’t want it out there that we were officially separating—at last, many would say—because of Jessica, more than anything else. Our interactions at this time were very amicable; there was no fighting, just resignation on both our parts. It wasn’t working for either of us. I had grown tired of the fights, the drama, and the overcontemplation of our situation. I had truly begun to not only grasp the concept of accepting the things I could not change, but was ready to practice it. I was ready to move on to the action phase of my personal change.

That New Year’s Eve, I made a decision I regret very much to this day. “You tell Jessica about the separation,” I told Joe. Of course, we should have broken the news to her together, but at the time I just couldn’t stand the idea of hurting her or letting her down. He did tell her, on New Year’s Day 2000. Joe took our daughter outside for a private talk, and when they came back into the house, shock and confusion were written all over her face. She looked like the wind had been completely knocked out of her—which, in a sense, it had been. After her outburst in the restaurant, I had purposely protected and insulated her from any feelings I had of personal unhappiness or dissatisfaction with her father from that point on; she had enough to deal with. This was literally a bolt from the blue to our daughter.

“This is going to be fun, Jessica! You’ll have two places to stay, and there’s a pool in my new place and racquetball, and you’ll have your own room at my apartment.” I was trying to make the best of the situation, chattering on nervously, when I should have just been quiet. Jessica couldn’t say a word; she was too stunned to speak. Paul didn’t have much to say about it at all, but as always, he was stoic and held his emotions. The news was broken—it was official. I was finally leaving.

I had never lived on my own—not once in my entire life. I went directly from my parents’ house to the first house Joey and I saved for and bought together. For the first time in my life, I was
alone
. Apartment living was a big adjustment for me. All the things every college kid knows were a mystery to me. The first time I used the community laundry, I accidentally grabbed a neighbor’s pile of clothes and took it up to my apartment, and they had to come looking for it. At forty-four, I was learning how to live by myself. Joe and I had cosigned the lease, and he was very agreeable to making the monthly rent payment. My new apartment was only six miles from Joe’s house, and Jessica was welcome to stay at either place, whichever was easiest for her. Instead of being exhilarating, living on my own was anticlimactic. I was forced to acknowledge that the fight was over.