Official Book Club Selection (28 page)

“Matt, I have to ask you, what did you do with the money? It was cash. That’s a lot of tax-free money. Did you buy stuff? Do you have anything to show for it? Is there anything else you need to tell me?” I was desperate for answers.

“I just kind of pissed it away.”

“On what?” Because it’s not like Matt ever showed up with a Rolex, or a sports car, or a $1,000 suit. I never saw any evidence of what he did with it, aside from the occasional trip to the electronics store to buy some new gadget for his computers, but it never seemed exorbitant. He just kept maintaining he didn’t know how he spent the cash. To this day, in fact, I have no idea what he did with it. Later that day the accountant told me that at that one Universal City ATM alone, the withdrawn amount was $72,000. So that’s $72,000 completely unaccounted for. He says he has no idea where it went. He never really gave me an answer.

At this point I went into fix-it mode. That’s what I know. It’s my comfort zone. Yes, it was devastating emotionally. Yes, I was in shock. But like so many people who the night before found out their partner was cheating or lying or stealing, or who received some sort of earth-shattering news and still have to get up the next morning and make breakfast and drive the kids to school, I was no different. I didn’t have the luxury of falling apart and bringing everything around me to a halt, anymore than anyone else does in these situations. I believed we should continue with the show, because I wanted Matt to continue making money from the show, and I needed the stability of work. I didn’t think the answer was for both of us to quit working and cry in separate homes for two years. Besides, I just couldn’t make a colossal decision only an hour after getting the initial call from my accountant.

I started spewing whatever suggestion came into my head. I was trying to make sense of everything at this point. I needed an action plan.

“Here’s what you’re going to do,” I said. “You’re going to go to a program called Debtors Anonymous. It’s exactly like AA. It’s twelve steps, and it’s free. Or maybe one dollar a meeting. You never have to give more than that. It’s a program that helps all kinds of people that are having all kinds of money problems.” I was hoping he’d get the tools he needed to help him through whatever problem this was. I was grasping at straws, but I knew that I had friends who had had great success in various twelve-step programs. I told him he had to go tonight, and could go to a meeting every day if he needed to. I also suggested he go to Overeaters Anonymous meetings, because it was a program that I had attended several years earlier and found incredibly helpful in dealing with my own food issues.

He agreed, and then I went to talk to Jessica.

“Look, I can’t go into the details, but I know it’s not you,” I said. “You probably figured out that it’s Matt. There’s no sense in trying to hide it.”

“I’m so sorry,” she said.

“Well, let’s see if this is an insurmountable problem or not.”

Matt and I started couples therapy shortly thereafter, and I began to feel good about the future of our marriage. During those sessions he’d express remorse, saying what he did was a bad thing, although when the therapist would ask if he had a reason for what he did, he’d usually give the same response over and over, “I don’t know, I don’t know.”

Through the course of therapy, he did admit to entitlement issues. “I understand it’s not a healthy thing for me to feel entitled to all of your money and everything you have,” he said. “I understand you worked really hard for it, and I basically goofed off.”

Times like these made me think we could work things out. I took our marriage seriously, and while I’d been hit with a real whopper, I knew couples could have big problems and still be together for decades. One of my attorneys, however, did try to have the “come to Jesus” talk with me. He’s an attorney. I’m his client. It’s his job to be direct. And I’ll never forget the way he worded it. “I know you love Matt,” he said. “He hit you for seventy-two thousand dollars this time. Next time it could be five hundred thousand dollars. And at that point, you have no one to blame but yourself, because you won’t be able to act like you didn’t know what you now know.” It was the whole fool-me-twice-shame-on-me scenario. But I didn’t want to believe it. I couldn’t argue with his logic, but I still wanted to make it work. At the insistence of my attorneys, who were thinking more rationally than I was when it came to protecting everything I’d worked so hard for, I filed for divorce. But the idea was still to try to work it out. Even if it led to some uncomfortable moments, like on Jimmy Kimmel Live.

“I heard you’re getting divorced but you’re staying with your husband,” Jimmy said.

“Well, you know, Jimmy, love is odd! Sometimes it’s not till you get divorced that you realize you really love the person!”

But it was kind of true. It’s what I was feeling. So Matt and I kind of carried on as we had, with not a lot changing on the surface. Matt seemed to understand why filing for divorce was in my best interest, but he also appeared to go along with the notion that we were trying to mend the relationship. Sometimes we’d fight about what happened, and there’d be tears. But he never denied his actions, never said I was crazy or I made things up. He didn’t argue about the fact that he did it. If it came up, he’d say, “Yeah, I’ve got to work on that.”

He started leaving the house on a regular basis, and while I never attended OA meetings with him, let me tell you something: I have never seen anyone in my life so dedicated to healthy eating and rapid weight loss. He dove into that program headfirst. He shed pounds so quickly, that it led me to believe that he really wanted to change his entire life. That gave me a lot of encouragement. I was actually concerned that he was getting a little too obsessive about losing the weight—he took his own low-calorie food with him everywhere—but I thought, he’s bettering himself. Good. What I didn’t know until later was that while he was committed to a weight-loss program, he had been lying about regularly meeting with folks to deal with his money issues. It became the same old thing. He’d say he was going to Pasadena for a DA meeting, tell me the details about it: about his new sponsor he’d had coffee with, the work groups he’d joined, the columns of numbers they’d have him write out on notepads. Then a month later he’d admit, “I didn’t go.”

“What about two nights ago when you came back at nine thirty and told me about the meeting?” I said.

“I didn’t go.”

“You made that up?”

“Well, I just drove around.”

“Look, Matt, it’s great that you’re steaming broccoli three times a day, but I think the debt and the compulsive lying is your core issue to deal with. The overeating is a symptom of that. I think DA is the program you need to focus on. Matt, if you can lose one hundred pounds, then you can do anything. You’ve clearly got the discipline and the strength.”

He would agree halfheartedly, but it was clear that he had completely thrown himself into losing all this weight. If actions speak louder than words, then by his rapidly shrinking body it was obvious he had focused on his weight-loss program over anything else.

But he’d also tell bizarre little lies, too. Small things that made no sense. Matt would say he talked to a mutual friend of ours, then I would talk to the friend and they’d say, “No, I haven’t talked to Matt in weeks.”

When I’d ask Matt why he said that, it was again with “I don’t know, I don’t know.”

What did he gain by telling little lies? Would it ever end? When I tried to discuss it, and God knows I tried many times, he seemed very shut down, and really, you can’t force someone to give you answers. So anytime this came up, I would liken his reaction to that of a little kid who’s gotten caught doing something, has just checked out in his mind, and tries to end the conversation as quickly as possible. While I was frustrated by these moments, I kept thinking there must be an answer; I just hadn’t figured it out yet.

A big change happened when Matt and I were watching a program on compulsive liars on Oprah, of all things. Of course, it made me uncomfortable. The similarities to Matt were weird. Well, one of the liars on the show wound up in prison. When the show was over, I turned to Matt and said, “You know, Matt, if I wasn’t your wife, you’d be in jail right now. I hope you’re smart enough not to embezzle from one of your clients, cause they’d put your ass in jail in two seconds.”

And incidentally, when we were initially dating, Matt told me that when he was in the army and stationed in Germany, he’d gone to military jail, for stealing a buddy’s ATM card and trying to use it. At the time he told me this, I just chalked it up to being nineteen years old and stupid. Now, in retrospect, I realize I didn’t have the appropriate reaction. I focused on the honesty of him telling me it, rather than the fact that he was caught stealing.

Anyway, when I mentioned prison to him, he had the oddest reaction.

“I think I’d be fine in jail,” he said.

“Oh come on, pasty white guy,” I said. “What are you talking about?”

“I really think I could survive in prison,” he said. “I would know how to assimilate, I would know how to blend in to the point where I just don’t think anyone would bother me.”

That was a chilling moment for me. The fact that he’d given consideration to how he would assimilate in prison scared the shit out of me. What it told me was, this guy’s not afraid of anything, and more important, not afraid of getting caught. I don’t know about you, ladies, but I’d want a husband who’s actively taking steps to stay out of prison. It freaked me out enough that I made a drastic move that night.

“This is really hard, Matt,” I said. “But you have to move out.”

Matt found a roommate to share an apartment, but I still held out hope for a miracle reconciliation, because despite the gravity of the situation, I couldn’t stomach the notion that things wouldn’t work out. Filming for the second season of The D-List was coming up, and I wanted my husband to be at home, and to be honest, I was determined not to act out my divorce for a comedy-driven reality show. Like anyone else, my responsibilities were such that I couldn’t afford to take an infinite amount of time off to fix my personal life. I actually thought we could film the show during the day and when the cameras left, we could run to couples therapy or somehow work on the damaged part of our relationship off camera. Besides, that’s not what the show was. Then we had a therapy session in which the therapist actually told Matt, “You have to start doing things to help Kathy. I’m suggesting you go back to work, Kathy, and Matt, probably the best thing you can do for her is go back to work as usual.”

So when the crew began filming again, they never knew that Matt would arrive at the house half an hour before the call time, and he’d leave twenty minutes after they left. It was excruciating, really tough. At one point I took him back for a few months, then we’d be back in therapy, and I’d believe him for a while and be optimistic, and then I’d catch him in another lie. It wasn’t some coldhearted decision where I hated him and he just showed up to support me. I was hoping for the best the whole time. And that went through the entire season.

I can hear the naysayers now: I was filming a reality show, but deceiving people. Well, I honestly never felt that, because number one, the show is not A&E’s Intervention. It’s not a show that claims to help people. Just like my act is given to exaggeration, the show films heightened comedic experiences in my life. My first responsibility is to make people laugh, and a show where I’m crying or hashing out serious problems in my marriage with my husband is not what an audience signs on for. It’s not Breaking Bonaduce.

Well, as filming on season two came to a close, things hadn’t been very good between us. We hadn’t been getting along, and we were both starting to realize it wasn’t going to work out. Pessimism was finally settling in with me. Matt seemed emotionally out the door. But a part of me still saw him the same way I did the first day we met, or the day he proposed, or the day we had some other great time together.

We had our wrap party for season two in Vegas, because we’d been shooting my appearance at a very D-listy casino outside of the city. Matt was there and when it came time to make the party happen, he was at the height of his greatness. He got all the food and the booze, and when people started showing up in my suite, he was a wonderful host, making people laugh, telling stories, and I was proud to be with him. It was the guy I’d said yes to on that beach in Mexico.

The next morning, though, we had a really bad fight. I honestly don’t even remember what it was about, but it was a doozy. Matt said, “I can’t take this anymore. It’s over. I’m going back to LA and moving my stuff out for good.”

I was sobbing hysterically, and I had a show to do that night, so I couldn’t follow him. One of the crew saw Matt get on the shuttle for the airport, and I made some excuse for him. The crew still knew nothing. Thankfully I had a couple of nice gays with me and they both said, “Kathy, you’ve got a show tonight. Focus on that. Matt’s not coming back today. We’ll stay with you one more night and fly home with you tomorrow.”

They kept me company, and it was really wonderful and comforting. When I got back to LA, Matt already had been there with his sister and her boyfriend and they had taken all of his stuff. Matt and I made an appointment to get together and talk that night. We sat down and I was hysterically crying and despondent, and he said something at that moment that was in retrospect probably the kindest thing he could have done.

“Kathy, it’s not going to work,” he said. “Stop trying to make it work. I don’t love you anymore.”

“I want to try again!” I said, rattling off all manner of ideas I had for trying to prop this thing up one more time.

“We’ve tried everything,” he said. “It’s really, really over.”

When he walked out the door, I just fell apart. But it’s what I had to hear. I needed him to sit me down and say in no uncertain terms that it was done, and that he didn’t want me to try anymore. He hadn’t wanted to try for a while. “Now it’s just ridiculous,” he’d said. “You’re trying to force something.”