I stood up, fighting back tears. “He sees a . . . a. . . . a real person!” I stammered.
John reached out and gently took my hand. He smiled at me and said, “Barbara makes me feel special. She has no airs; she’s honest and trusting. I’ve looked a long, long time for someone like her.”
I wiped at the tears that spilled from my eyes. After an uncomfortable silence, I thanked John and sat again. The visit continued with no more of Dad’s endless, confrontational questions. That day I never noticed how easily John answered each one. He hadn’t skipped a beat.
Later, on our way back to my place, I apologized for my father’s unforgivable insensitivity. John laughed it off.
“Please don’t apologize. It’s typical. Believe me, I know. Even at my age, I catch plenty of grief. I’m considered the black sheep of the family.”
“Why, for heaven’s sake?”
“I don’t live up to their expectations of what I should be doing with my life, or with my inheritance.”
I bristled. “Well, John, at least you know it’s not your money that attracted me to you. I told you that first night at Debbie’s, and I’m telling you now...what I want, what I need more than anything is honesty, plain and simple honesty, especially after my first marriage.”
I surprised myself with my own frankness and talked for a while about my first marriage, about enduring thirteen years of sexual infidelities. The pain still hurt.
“I want someone I can trust,” I whispered.
“I’ll never be anything but honest with you,” he said as he reached across to stroke my hair. “You’re too precious to hurt.” His soothing words made my heart skip a beat. This man really loves me, I thought, and doesn’t everyone deserve a chance to be truly loved?
At that very moment my parents were discussing the man who was promising always to be honest with me. They didn’t care whether he was famous. Even though Dad had his suspicions about John, they both could see I was infatuated with him. They had decided they would not interfere in my life. In any event, it would not be proper to discuss their feelings or mine. Silence, not sharing, ruled in our family. Never again did they voice any opposition to John, his family, or his career.
Joyfully, I took their silence as acceptance. When John and I visited them the following week and John began calling them “Mom” and “Dad,” they seemed to like it, and they seemed to like John, too. I saw no reason to question why John moved so quickly into my family, much sooner than one would expect in a normal budding relationship, because his presence vanquished my loneliness. In hindsight I should have recognized a red flag but, back then, I was hopelessly color-blind. So although I never had their official approval to go along with John to Mexico City, when I did go, I had the time of my life.
FOUR
Moving In
The Mexico City trip was as exciting as I dreamed it would be. We shared beautiful scenery, exquisite meals, sightseeing excursions, and great shopping. And John wanted to buy, no, insisted on buying me expensive gifts throughout the trip. I felt I had stepped into the pages of a fairy tale.
Back home, in real life, things were pretty fantastic as well. John was spending more and more time at my house. When he suggested moving in permanently, he made it seem not just a welcome idea, but an obvious one. Not only would we be together as much as we wished, but “with me around all the time,” he said, “your life will be as grand as it deserves to be.”
As tempting and right as the idea sounded, something held me back. I didn’t say yes.
As though to prove his point, one afternoon John showed up with a twenty-four-by-twenty-eight-inch, $8,000 lithograph from the Collier Art Gallery in Los Angeles. He informed me of the details as he hung the art above my fireplace.
“No, no, no!” I cried out. “I can’t have that here. My insurance doesn’t cover such expensive art.”
He waved away my reaction. “Nothing’s going to happen to this, Barbara. Come here and take a close look at this Zapatista, the bold lines, the color, the passion!” I did. I stood beside him and had to admit that what I was examining was stunning and unusual, like John. “It is an exciting piece,” I agreed, “but I don’t see how. . . .”
“Think about it. When I move in, the painting is protected, you’re protected. Now that Jenna’s no longer renting I’ll help with the expenses. Who can argue with that?”
Bingo! He called my winning number. After I agreed to his plan, he fixed us a drink, remarking offhandedly that he would soon be improving my liquor cabinet, as well. “Grocery store brands,” he said, “just don’t cut it.”
John moved in the next day. He didn’t come with much. He brought his clothes, some furniture for the room that would serve as his office for consulting work, the hospital bed he said the doctor had prescribed for his back and neck issues, and most wonderful of all, his golden retriever, Gobi. When I expressed surprise at how little he’d brought with him, he said he had decided to leave most of his furnishings behind for his cousin, Jason Green, to use over in John’s Danville house.
“You’re so good-hearted, John,” I said. He gave a no-big-deal kind of shrug. Then we turned our attention to our newly integrated family: me and my two cats, John and his dog.
The next six weeks provided plenty of ups and downs, as they probably do for any couple that comes together to work through the awkward period when candlelight and stardust meld into the unexciting routines of daily life. It wasn’t easy. I knew it would take work and time to achieve a full level of comfort. Yes, I assured myself, we just needed time.
But it wasn’t long before time became my adversary. One evening, as I sat at the oak desk in my upstairs study, I looked at the pile of bills before me and shuddered. Before John had come on the scene, I considered bill paying a dull but not unpleasant routine. Bills came in . . . checks went out promptly in full or at least with minimum amounts due. It was a practical matter, not an emotional one. Now bill paying had become pure torture. Decisions about who would get paid and who would not were getting harder and harder to make. There wasn’t enough money to cover them all. Tonight was no exception.
I picked up the phone bill and felt a ripple of anticipation as I ripped open the envelope. The telephone bill held special significance. I’d been waiting, even longing for it, because it would list all the calls John made to his family, calls that hadn’t appeared on previous bills.
I had come to think of those as “phantom calls” because John always made them when I was either away at class, at Mass, at work, or at the grocery store. It hurt that John would wait until I was gone before he’d call to speak with his family. Even though I explained many times how I yearned to connect, to talk with them, he continued to make the calls while I was away. When I finally got him to tell me why, the reason hurt even more. His family, he said, believed me to be a gold digger. It was absurd, of course. Each time I expressed how untrue, how unfair that was, John assured me that eventually they would come around.
This night I determined to take matters into my own hands. From the bill I would get the phone numbers and call John’s family myself. The plan was sneaky and a little embarrassing, but it had to be done. If I could just meet his family, even by telephone, I’d change their minds. They’d come around and accept me as the woman who made John happy. John would be ecstatic, and love me all the more.
Now I perused the bill closely, pen in hand, ready to put phone numbers into my address book. But there were no calls to Coconut Grove, Boston, Houston, or New York City . . . cities where he said his family lived. I was disappointed and confused. What about all the times John told me he’d called Sonny, or Grandmother Dannigan? I shook my head to clear my thoughts, and filed this in the things-to-discuss-with-John part of my brain, as I wrote the check for the amount due.
I put that aside and opened my credit card statement. I couldn’t believe it was right. The card was at its limit. I scanned through it in disbelief. Most were restaurant charges. I grabbed the bill, ran downst
airs, and inserted myself between John and the television set.
“Hey, what gives?” he said, flashing a wide grin.
“This . . . this!” I sputtered, shoving the bill into his hand. “John, you said you needed to use my credit card for one business lunch. One. But... but...” I could hardly get the words out. “Look at all the charges!”
“No sweat,” he said, tossing the bill on the coffee table.
“No sweat? You haven’t paid your share of the expenses yet, and you misused my card. You stomped on my trust!”
“Hey, wait a minute, Barbara. Let’s be fair. You never asked for it back, so I assumed it was okay to continue to use it.”
He rambled on, rationalizing what he’d done, twisting my actions so they seemed wrong and elevating his into the right. He was a master of words, and his words made me dizzy. Then he said, “You’re getting to sound just like the gold digger my family says you are.”
I gasped. If there was one thing I knew I was not, it was that. I had an excellent job and an education, owned a sports car, held two house mortgages . . . held my own. His words struck through me so deeply I felt fighting mad. “I want my card back. Now!”
John stared at me. Scowling, he took out his wallet, yanked out the credit card, and threw it at my feet. “Goddamn Indian giver.” He stood and glared at me. “I didn’t realize this before, but you’re just like your mother.”
“No, I am not!” My voice was loud and harsh and filled with fury, completely unlike the calm me, the controlled me, the rational, reasonable, responsible, let’s-talk-things-out me. As a child growing up with verbal abuse, I promised myself I would never yell in anger. No. I’d always talk things out calmly with my mate. Yet here I was, raising my voice, and I couldn’t stop. “I’m not like my mother,” I cried. “I just want to get the bills paid, and damn it, John, you’re not helping. You’re making it worse.”
“I told you from day one, my commission checks are sporadic,” John barked as he stood up. “I cannot help that.” He shot me a look of disgust before he turned and strode toward the stairs.
“Where are you going?”
“To pack my bags. I can’t stand this anymore. I know when I’m not wanted or appreciated.”
The bewilderment I felt from anger quickly dissipated into fear as I watched John turn and walk away from me. With each angry stomp of his foot up the stairs, my hidden fears grew, fears I would not fully understand until much later. The fear of loneliness, of financial abandonment, of another failed relationship, each of which in turn triggered a fear of social and parental embarrassment. It was more than I could bear. I decided right then that I would back down and find a way to work it out. I would return to the comfort of John’s arms, whatever the cost.
I now know this was not rational thinking for a loving relationship, but back then I had let my idea of a loving relationship slip into an addictive one without noticing the warning signs. This was the beginning of becoming so absorbed in John’s needs and trying to fix them that I forgot about my own. I felt compelled—almost forced—to help John solve his financial problems with my unwanted advice and series of suggestions. I just knew I could change him. I would get him to control his spending so our lives would be stable. What I didn’t realize then was that, one by one, as I let my boundaries slip, John was gaining more and more control of me—subversive control that made it seem like I was still in control, when I definitely was not. I was being manipulated by a psychopath who knew what he wanted and how to get it out of me. I entered the crazymaking world of the psychopathic verbal abuser. Looking back now, I can see that the pattern became entrenched that night. I continued to unwittingly play my role in the repetitive sordid drama for many years to come.
Just then my kittens, Peaches and Patches, skittered down the stairs. Peaches crossed John’s path, and tripped him. “Goddamn cat,” he hissed, picking himself up. He grabbed the kitten, raged down the stairs with her, and headed for the back door. Before I could get to him, he hurled Peaches outside. She landed hard, on her head, in the dirt, and began to convulse.
“You son of a bitch!” I screamed, as I tried to push John aside. I rescued Peaches and cradled her to my chest, rocking back and forth. As John came toward me, I shrank away from him.
“I . . . I’m sorry,” he whispered. “Cats are supposed to land on all fours.”
“Obviously,” I managed while weeping, “they don’t.”
“Here, let me take her,” he said. He held out his hands. I stepped back. Things had gotten so horribly out of control I was afraid of what he might do next.
“Please,” he said, “let me have the kitten. I’ve treated convulsions on the battlefield. I have. Honest. I can help Peaches. Let me have her.”
We stared at each other for a long time before I relinquished my sweet pet back into his hands. But the hands that had moments ago abused Peaches were now gentle and caring. When we were inside, I watched as John sat in the rocker with Peaches on his chest. “Please, Barb, get me a blanket,” he said, “I’ll spend the night with her here.” I covered the two of them and left them there, listening as John called up to me, apologizing over and over, saying that his temper came from being half Irish and half Latin American. He called it a deadly combination.
I looked again at Peaches. She had calmed down. John had calmed down, as well, and so had I. At the middle landing, I turned around and called down, “John, so help me, if you ever lay a hand on her again, or me, you’re out. Out! No second chance.”
He didn’t reply. I went to bed, but was too uneasy to stay there. I needed to explore this violent side of John, so I returned downstairs and questioned him. He resisted. I probed some more. He finally acknowledged that he had been violent before, when he was a child and he had tied firecrackers to a cat’s tail and lit them. He said he’d laughed. While I silently wondered how he could do such a thing, I acknowledged this was only a boyish childhood prank, no different than a scene from an Our Gang or Three Stooges comedy. Even my father had admitted to me many years earlier that he and his brothers had tormented their pet cat by pushing her through tunnels they had dug in their backyard. But at least they hadn’t killed her. When I mentioned that I didn’t think it was funny, John quickly added that he had felt bad when his father caught him.
Then he told me that he had also been violent as an adult, but only twice, and both times had occurred with his first wife. She’d asked for sex when he was busy doing the taxes. He shouldn’t have, he said, but he did lose his temper with her. The other time was when she woke him from one of his nightmares. “Can you really fault me for that one?” he asked.
I didn’t answer, but I stored his words as good counsel as I decided I would try my best not to provoke his hidden anger that could so quickly and violently explode at me. I vowed never to wake him from one of his nightmares. As for the sex, our lovemaking amounted to nothing after our first month together because of John’s health problems. If it wasn’t his headaches, it was his back; if not his back, his neck. I’d already sworn to him that it didn’t matter, not when two people loved each other. I knew he needed me to take care of him, and by this time in the relationship I was willing to give up anything, even sex, to keep John in my life.
By now I was tired, worn down. Ready to close my eyes and put the past behind me. As I locked the front door, John called out. “I have an important lunch tomorrow. Can I use one of your other credit cards? I know what you’re thinking, but I promise I’ll get after Vestico to give me the commission check that’s due.”
I looked back at him, sitting in the rocker, serenely stroking my kitten. How could I turn him down?
“I’ll leave it on the kitchen counter in the morning,” I heard myself say. On the stairs I stopped midway and turned back to John. “I noticed on the phone bill that there were no charges for those calls to your family.”
“Oh, that. It’s because I charge all the calls to Grandmother Dannigan’s phone number.”
“How come
you never mentioned it before?”
“Didn’t think it mattered. Grandmother insisted. See, this way she knows I keep in touch with the family, no matter where I am in the world.”
“Oh,” I said wearily. “That makes sense.”
Later, in bed, I again wondered why it was that John never kept in touch with the family when I was at home. I’d have to find out about that, I thought, but another time. I was beat.
The next six months were good, and not so good. Good: I was very happy to have an attentive, loving man in my life. Not so good: the man was incredibly irresponsible. My peace of mind had long ago abandoned me. Despite his promises, John’s misuse of my credit continued.
John’s evasiveness about his family continued as well. One day he presented me with a gift he said had arrived for me from Grandmother Dannigan. I discovered that it had arrived without a card or the brown mailing wrap. When I opened the gift—a sterling silver brush, comb, and mirror set—John told me proudly it had been his grandmother’s. I could see from his expression that I was supposed to feel deeply honored, but I felt only confused. Not that I’d say so and risk insulting him, but if it had been his grandmother’s personal set, why were my initials engraved into each piece? Was I expected to believe she’d had an engraver change them for me?
Most troubling of all were the finances. Just as they were about to cripple me, John presented me with his commission check. It was large and made up for the three months he’d been in arrears. It was a happy surprise, and so was what he did next . . . fly me again to Mexico City, this time to meet him for a long weekend. It seemed again that life was mostly good.
A Dance With the Devil: A True Story of Marriage to a Psychopath Page 5