Getting It Through My Thick Skull

by Mary Jo Buttafuoco

  It was a bittersweet moment, but certainly one that was inevitable. We did our best to make light of the situation, but the finality of the moment was sad. The end of any long marriage is always sad—even one like mine. The children were grown, so they weren’t an issue. We amicably hashed out a very reasonable support agreement. The decree became final a few months later. The New York papers picked up the story—a few “What took her so long?” kind of articles appeared. Our twenty-five-year marriage had run out of steam and sputtered to this anticlimactic ending in the back office of an auto body shop in California. It was officially over. Except, of course, with Joey it’s never really over.

  Given all of the medical trauma in my life, it was amazing that I’d never broken a bone. Then I got a little too ambitious playing jump rope with Hutton one weekend and broke my foot. The cast was unwieldy and a real pain. I had to hobble around with great difficulty for a few weeks. Ten days or so after the accident, Stu and I were taking the two little ones out to TGI Friday’s for dinner. Because of my injury, Stu dropped the kids and me at the entrance to the restaurant and drove off to park the car.

  It was a busy Friday night, and the waiting area was crowded with couples and families waiting for a table. I approached the hostess and put our name in for a party of four. Literally, in the ninety seconds that my back was turned, the two kids started fighting. It started with a shove, and soon turned into a huge brawl. I turned around to see C.J. and Hutton punching each other as hard as they could in the middle of the crowded room. I could not believe my eyes.

  I walked back to them as fast as I could and grabbed one kid in each hand. I pulled them apart, whipped them around, and hobbled outside, holding them in a death grip. Sure enough, along came Stu, walking toward the restaurant whistling, ready for a nice meal. He stopped in confusion when he saw me standing there with a very unpleasant look on my face.

  “Please go back and get the car. We’re going home,” I told him.

  “What’s the matter? What happened in there?” he asked.

  “Let them tell you . . . but we are leaving. Can you please go get the car?”

  God bless Stu, he didn’t argue. He turned right back around and retrieved the car. Meanwhile, I stood at the entrance to the restaurant with C.J. and Hutton, who had most definitely quieted down. In fact, they were petrified. They were in big trouble, and they knew it. Stu pulled up, we all got into the car, and Stu pulled out of the lot.

  “Okay, what happened in there?” he asked. I told him about the scene in the restaurant. “We are going straight home. I will not go out with them if that’s the way they behave in a restaurant. That behavior is absolutely not tolerable.” I was furious with both of them.

  Stu agreed completely. We drove home with the two kids crying in the backseat the whole way. They were out of luck. We returned to the apartment where they each got a sandwich and were sent straight to bed. Hutton and C.J. were certainly cowed; they apologized over and over. So much for a nice family night out. As Stu and I sat at the kitchen table wondering what we were going to eat, I had to laugh. “You know what I’ve just realized, Stu? I really love those kids. I know I do because I want to kill them right now!”

  It was a stunning realization. I didn’t just enjoy their company or tolerate them as part of the package. I loved these kids—unconditionally, the way I loved my own kids. To their credit, they respected what I said. Even that night, there was never any attitude along the lines of, “You’re not my mother!” or “I don’t have to listen to you!” Stu and I put up a united front. Not once did they go to him and try to get around anything I said.

  I was always very straightforward. “I’m not your mother. You have a mother who loves you, and I’m not trying to replace her. You know I love your dad, and I want to spend time with you, but there are rules here. I’m not picking on you. Ask Paul and Jessica about the rules if you don’t believe me!” The kids sensed the love I had for their father and appreciated it. I had thought I was done raising children, but life was full of surprises.

  CHAPTER 12

  STU TO THE RESCUE

  Nine months after I met him, Stu and I were very happily living together in his apartment, and my bond with his children continued to grow. Jessica was doing very well at college in Santa Barbara. I remained concerned about Paul, who lived and worked with his father, but he was all grown-up, so there was nothing much I could do. Stu and I grew closer and closer. My biggest fear—all the baggage I brought with me because of Joey—began to seem unfounded as life unwound peacefully.

  It was so peaceful, in fact, that it was difficult for me to adjust to such a calm relationship. Stu didn’t tell me that he loved me ten times a day. He didn’t make over-the-top declarations about how beautiful I was all the time, or remind me constantly that he could not live without me. He didn’t come home with extravagant gifts for no reason. I had only known one kind of relationship—the roller-coaster. It was hard for me to fathom that love could be this comfortable and relaxed. After nearly a year of cohabitation, it was time to take the next step: a trip together to Long Island, where we’d both grown up. Stu was aware that my parents were very religious Catholics as he had heard quite a bit about them from the kids and me. My parents knew all about Stu, of course, and understood that our relationship was very serious. My mother, still smarting over the fact that I was divorced, couldn’t help making some remarks along the lines of, “Well, you could get an annulment, and Stu could convert to Catholicism . . .” but I cut them right off.

  “Mom—I don’t care. Why should anyone we want to marry have to convert to our religion? What’s wrong with being Jewish or Buddhist or anything else for that matter? Stu is an amazing person, a great father, and so different from Joe! No one’s annulling anything or converting to or from anything!” I stood up to her on this one, but, laughable as it sounds, I couldn’t work up the courage to tell them we lived together. Divorcing had been bad enough. I couldn’t bear to hear what they’d say about this living arrangement.

  Stu could not believe that at the age of nearly fifty I wouldn’t tell my own parents that we were living in sin. They always called my cell phone, so I was spared having to explain the move to them. It was much easier just to maintain the fiction that I still had my own place in Newport Beach. Stu found the situation ridiculous. “You’ve got to tell them we live together, here in my place!”

  “No way, Stu. Not because I’m scared . . . but because I don’t want to hear it.”

  We started the official “Meet Stu” tour on Long Island, where Stu met my sisters in addition to Joe’s sister Anne and her husband. Joe had given everybody such a run for their money, and it was obvious how happy we were together, so everybody welcomed Stu warmly. We took a little driving tour, with me pointing out my old school, church, and the infamous house. I had avoided this neighborhood like the plague for six long years—seeing it would have been just too sad. I had been so happy here; I could not have imagined another life. But I’d never had anything to compare it to. I was now with a new man, a new family, living an entirely different life thousands of miles away. I was content. Seeing all the old landmarks, which looked exactly the same, brought only a slight feeling of melancholy. This life didn’t fit me anymore.

  “Hey, let’s stop by the auto body shop,” Stu suggested. “We’re right here in town.”

  “I have no desire to go there,” I said. “I can’t go in there.”

  “Mary Jo. You’ve got to go see Bobby. Come on.”

  “I don’t want to, Stu. I’m ashamed. Joey messed up everything so badly and nearly destroyed everything that Dad ever built.”

  ”You have nothing to be ashamed of. The two of you not talking is crazy. We’re here; we’re going to see Bobby.” He drove to Complete Auto Body and parked. “Get out of this car and go talk to your brother,” he insisted. So I did.

  Bobby and I had not spoken in nearly eight years. His wife Ursula happened to be standing behind the counter when I walked t
hrough the door, and her face lit up when she saw me. We embraced, and the initial awkwardness quickly disappeared. Bobby was out on a call, but he soon returned, and the three of us had a good, long talk. “I’m so sorry, Bobby. I was just so ashamed,” I told him.

  He couldn’t understand that. “Why were you ashamed?” he asked.

  “Because I stayed,” I said. “Because I kept thinking I could change him, that things would get better.”

  Bobby, Ursula, and I really hashed everything out, and all of us learned several things about what had really happened during my marriage. They had no idea that our first house had been sold to Joe’s coke dealer. “He told us he planned to open his own business!” Bobby said. “He told Dad that if he didn’t get the money to start his own business on the spot, he’d sell his shares in Complete Auto Body back to the original owner. We never heard anything about selling the house to a dealer!” Both of them were shocked by this story.

  When I made a passing reference to the fact that I completely understood why Ursula had been forced to put her foot down and refuse to let Joe work at the shop after his jail term, Bobby looked at me incredulously. “Ursula had nothing to do with it; it was all me! It was my business, my decision. She didn’t say anything about it! After he got arrested in L.A., I was done; I couldn’t deal with him anymore. People were driving by, throwing eggs, coming in and pointing and making fun of us . . . I needed to make a living! I went to see him in jail and told him he couldn’t come back!”

  How well I remembered all of Joe’s bitter complaints about Ursula and the fact that an outsider was taking away his birthright. They’d been endless and had eventually worked me into a righteous state of anger, too. Bobby and I had both been so wrapped up in our separate miseries that it had been easy to drive a wedge between us. That had been Joe’s genius. One story to his brother and father, another to his wife, and both had been convincing enough to make us feel awkward and uncomfortable around each other—so much so that we’d become estranged, which was Joe’s whole intent. This way, no one would ever compare stories. Bobby and I were both taken aback by each other’s revelations.

  The meeting ended warmly, with promises to remain in touch. An old, nagging hurt had been healed, and I had Stu to thank for the return of a long-lost family member.

  Next it was time to drive to rural Maine. Stu was a wreck, picturing Christians holding up crosses at the door when he entered or something. His imagination was running wild. I kept trying to reassure him that it would all turn out fine, and that my parents, while religious, were lovely people. He wasn’t sure; he had heard some stories.

  The first thing my father said to Stu when they met was, “Let’s get one thing straight. Call me Dad.” It set the tone for a delightful visit. As I observed them together over the next few days, it occurred to me that Stu was in many ways like my father: honest, hardworking, and an upstanding citizen. Not the most exotic traits, but after you live with a sociopath, these were all new to me. Stu and I didn’t have huge ups and downs, a fact I was just beginning to adjust to. Because I had never known what it was like to have a reliable partner, for months I had unconsciously braced myself, waiting for the shoe to drop. Seeing him with my parents gave me a hopeful glimpse of the future: Stu would always be right there, steady and reliable, just as my father had been at my mother’s side for nearly fifty years.

  “Mom, I’m going to tell you this now,” I said one day, as we sat in the kitchen. “Stu and I live together.”

  “I know, Mary Jo. What did you think, I didn’t know that?” she laughed. This was a very encouraging reaction, but I wanted to really get things straight once and for all. No more ignoring inconvenient facts or pretending they weren’t there or hadn’t happened. I wanted to hammer the point home that I was capable of making my own decisions and fully intended to do so, and I wasn’t going to be afraid to tell my own mother about them, either. I would no longer permit myself to live in fear of her reactions.

  “Mom, Stu’s been very concerned that I haven’t told you this before. But I didn’t tell you because I didn’t want to be read the riot act. I love you, but I am now a middle-aged woman with grown children and gray hair. Believe what you want to believe, and live exactly how you want to—and I’m going to do the same. I know you don’t approve of divorce or living in sin, but living with Stu is the right choice for me. Anything you say won’t change that. I love him, and I want to be with him, and that’s how it is.”

  It was a strong speech, one I would have been completely incapable of making even a year or so before, when I’d dared to speak up to my mother for the first time. I refused to live in fear of what my parents thought or said any longer. I had completely broken free of the need for Mommy and Daddy’s approval—the pattern I constantly returned to— and, like that, my comfort zone was gone. I appreciated that my mother has a very strong faith, which is a tremendous source of comfort and strength to her. But my path wasn’t hers, and for the second time in my life—it only took fifty years—I made it clear to her that I was going to live for myself and make my own decisions about what was best for me from that point on. I was officially a grown-up.

  Our visit back East was a stunning success in every way.

  The quiet life was nice while it lasted—until December 2003. That’s when everything fell to pieces, as it inevitably had to. I was out shopping for Christmas presents one morning, listening to a CD of carols in the car as I drove to the mall, when Stu called. “Do you have the radio on?” he asked. I didn’t like the tone of his voice. Something was up.

  “No,” I said hesitantly. “What’s the matter?”

  “Joey just got busted for insurance fraud by the FBI, and they raided his house. It’s all over the news.”

  I felt sick to my stomach, a familiar feeling. Paul lived there, and I was sure he was on the scene. I knew Jessica was spending her winter break from school at her father’s house, and I prayed that she wasn’t there. It was very likely that she was at a friend’s house instead. I dialed her cell phone several times, but she didn’t answer. I grew more and more agitated, picturing her sleeping late as I tried to reach her and break the news. I tried Paul’s number, too, and only got his voice mail.

  I headed for Stu’s office, where the staff was hard at work. I ran inside, absolutely frantic because I couldn’t reach either of my kids. My cell phone was ringing constantly with friends trying to alert me. Helicopters were buzzing overhead, and reporters were all over the scene, both at Joe’s home and the nearby body shop. I wanted nothing more than to race to the house and see for myself what was going on, but Stu convinced me to stay away. “The media will be all over you, and they won’t let you in anyway.” He was right, but I felt frantic and helpless as we sat and waited and watched the television coverage.

  At the end of the very long day, Jessica and Paul’s girlfriend at the time, Jamie, burst in, still wearing their pajamas. They’d been sitting around the whole day in the clothes they were wearing at 6:00 AM, when they’d been literally pulled out of bed by FBI agents. Both were crying and near hysterical. Jessie had been forced to sit on a couch in her father’s living room for five hours in her pajamas while I had no idea where she was.

  “They wouldn’t let me answer my phone, Mom! I kept telling them, ‘That’s my mother calling, and she’s worried because she doesn’t know where I am!’ They didn’t care!”

  We put the girls in an empty office and did our best to comfort them and calm them down. Their presence was disruptive to the office, to say the least. My relief was overwhelming, but then panic set in. This was my boyfriend’s place of business. I had brought utter chaos to the place, and no one had gotten any work done all day. How could they? Stu was most certainly getting the true picture of what life with Joey was like.

  Paul, too, was eventually released and showed up at Stu’s office. He looked pale and drained, which was to be expected, as he’d been woken out of a sound sleep by men standing over his bed, pointing guns at him a
nd shouting, “FBI! Freeze!” He, too, had been virtually held hostage all day, until Joe was eventually taken away. As I fussed anxiously around him, he said wearily, “It’s all right, Mom. In fact, I’m glad this happened. It’s finally over.” Then he headed downtown to jail to bail out his old man.

  As an employee of Joey’s auto body shop in the Valley, Paul had gotten a good up-close look at what was going on, and he hated it. Padded bills, insurance fraud, shady dealings . . . he protested loudly and often. But when you’re twenty-one years old and your father, who also happens to be your boss, is telling you that you should stop worrying so much, it’s hard to keep fighting. The arguments always ended the same way, with Joe telling him, “This is my shop, and we do things my way. When you have to pay all the bills, then you can do things your way. Until that day, you do what I say.”

  But after a really bad fight, Joe would show up the next day and put his arms around Paul. “It’s been rough around here lately. You need a break. Take some time off and go to Hawaii for a week,” and hand over two first-class tickets to Maui. Or present the keys to a new car. It’s hard to turn down that kind of inducement when you’re twenty-one years old. The constant stress and tension of waiting for the house of cards to collapse had made Paul very sick. No wonder the FBI raid came as somewhat of a relief.

  My nerves were absolutely shot, not least because one of my worst fears had been realized: How would the new man in my life react to this insanity? Who would put up with this kind of chaos? How embarrassing and mortifying that this was my exhusband! Thank God Stu was in it for the long haul. He was more upset by how upset the kids and I were than any inconvenience we caused his company. I wasn’t living with Joe anymore. We were officially divorced, but his life would never fail to affect mine.