“I’m not going to back out,” I said. “I just need to-“
Jack was standing there, his hands on his hips. “Listen here, Missy, you’re going to see that cop today and that’s that.”
“I can’t, Jack.” And I really couldn’t. All I could think was that my poor mother thought that I was dead. I couldn’t take that. That wasn’t fair to her. She couldn’t go for one more hour thinking that I had killed myself. She was so fragile anyhow. That would surely throw her over the edge.
Jack and Nick were just standing there staring at me. I could see in Nick’s eyes that he was angry, but he didn’t say anything.
Finally Jack piped up. “Is this about that letter to your mother?”
I shot Jack a look. He smirked at me. He obviously had no idea that I hadn’t told Nick about the letters. I felt my face flush scarlet.
Nick looked at me expectantly. “Letter to your mother, Scotty? What’s Jack talking about?”
I took a deep breath. “Uh, well, uh….”
I was intimidated by the two men, who were just staring at me. This was one of the most embarrassing things to talk about, but, more than that, it was an awful admission to make. I had no idea how I could tell the man that I loved how close I really came to killing myself.
Finally, I hung my head. “I didn’t want to tell you about this, Nick. Ever. But I guess that jig is up now.”
Nick’s face went immediately from pissed to concerned. “What? What did you feel that you couldn’t tell me?”
“I, well, uh. When I was on the island, I, well, I felt, well, I was desperate. I really didn’t think that anybody would be able to find me. And I remembered the awful feeling of being in that man’s clutches for years at a time. He, he, he even threatened me. He said that he would keep me chained up in his apartment. I was hopeless, and…”
I felt like I couldn’t continue. That I couldn’t admit to exactly how desperate and hopeless I was. But, Nick was staring at me, clearly wanting me to continue. Even Jack had finally shut his mouth and was wordlessly watching me. So, I felt that I needed to go on.
“I was hopeless,” I continued, “and, well, Mr. Lucas promised me that if I married him that he would take care of my mother. He would make a trust in her name, and the trust would be made conditional on her getting help. And I wanted that more than anything. Because I still love her. She’s been a terrible mother, but she’s my only mother, and I want nothing more than to see her get better.”
Nick looked like he was starting to get it, but he still just looked at me and urged me to “go on.”
“I, well, I decided to go through with it. I decided to marry him, and then, well, I decided to kill myself. And make it look like an accident.”
I wasn’t looking at either Nick or Jack as I was talking. I was just so ashamed that I was willing to give up so easily. I was sure that Nick was thinking about how weak I was.
Nick kneeled down so that I was forced to look at him. “Scotty, I don’t know what to say. I can’t say that I’m not shocked, because I am. At the same time, I’m extremely upset to know how close I came to losing you permanently. Why would you just want to give up like that? And how could you not have faith that I would try to find you?”
I sighed and looked at Jack. For once, he didn’t have a smirk on his face, nor did he have his bitch, please look. He looked sad and concerned and more than a little bit bemused.
I turned my attention back to Nick. “Well, I thought that you didn’t care. I caught you with Portia, and I thought that you couldn’t care less about me. So, I figured that I couldn’t count on you. And, no offense, Jack,” I said, turning my attention back to Jack, “but I knew that you couldn’t afford to go traipsing around the world to try to locate me. And my mother can’t afford it, either, nor would she stay sober for long enough to take something like that on. So, yeah, I felt pretty hopeless.”
Now Nick was looking more pissed. His face was contorted in a grimace and there was anger flashing in his eyes.
I put my hand on his cheek. “What is it?”
“It’s you,” he said. “Listen, I didn’t want to say anything before, because you had just gone through such an ordeal, and you didn’t need me piling on. But now it needs to be said. I don’t know what it is that I have to do to show you that I’m absolutely crazy about you. Completely. I mean, you saw Portia and me together, and you immediately assumed the worst about me. Not about her. About me. Despite the fact that I have always been the one who has had your back and protected you, and she has always been the one who has treated you like shit.”
I sat there looking at him, feeling helpless and like there was a sinking sensation in the pit of my stomach. He was angry, angrier than I had ever seen him, and, truth be told, Nick’s anger was the last thing that I needed on this particular day. Not that I didn’t earn his rage, but, still, I started to feel as if I wanted to just crawl somewhere and try to get away.
He started pacing the floor. “So, you somehow thought that, despite the fact that I repeatedly told you that I was in love with you, and that I would never betray you, I betrayed you anyhow by fucking another woman. And not just any other woman. That woman. I mean, how stupid are you?”
I tried very hard not to cry, but I felt the tears coming anyhow. I wiped them away, and Jack silently got a Kleenex for me.
Nick was on a roll by then. “So, you get abducted and taken to an island, and you have so little faith in me that you thought that I would just, what, go on my merry way and forget that you ever existed? ‘Oh, well, Scotty’s gone, what’s on TV tonight?’” He shook his head. “Was that really what you thought? What kind of a person do you think I am?”
By then, Jack was trying to intervene a little bit. He put his hands on Nick’s shoulders and tried to talk to him. But Nick just brushed him off.
“I just can’t believe you, Scotty. You were not just giving up on yourself, but giving up on me, too. I thought that you were stronger than that. More of a fighter. I figured that you would try to give that man hell. Instead, you just make plans to die. You aren’t the woman that I thought you were.”
“Now, Nick,” Jack said, seeing me sitting there with tears streaming down my face, “be fair to her. She was the captive of that horrible man while she had a broken leg. There was only so much hell that she could have given him in that condition. Not to mention the fact that he probably has about 100 lbs on her. I think that you’re expecting just a little bit much.”
Nick looked at Jack, and, for a moment, looked like he was about to punch him.
But then he looked at me, and, just like that, I saw the anger melt off of his face. He shook his head. “You’re right, Jack. Scotty couldn’t have possibly given that man a run for his money.” And then he went and sat down on the couch and put his head in his hands.
I wheeled myself over to him and put my hand on his arm. I so wanted him to look at me and tell me that he understood why I was going to kill myself. That he took back all the hurtful things that he said to me just now, about how I wasn’t the woman that he thought that I was. That he still loved me as much as he ever did.
Instead, he just said “okay, Scotty, I guess I need to call Charlie to take you to your mother’s apartment.” He looked at Jack. “Jack, are you okay going with her?”
“Of course,” he said. “But I think that Scotty would rather you go with her.”
Yes, I was silently pleading. Please go with me. I can’t bear to think that you feel differently about me.
He took a deep breath. “Okay, then, Scotty. I’ll take you to your mother’s. But I’ll be honest with you. I’m not sure about our future. You need to trust me a lot more than you do, or we won’t work in the long-term.”
Those words stung me more than anything else ever had. Suddenly, all my tragedies involving Mr. Lucas faded in the background. I was on the precipice of losing the best thing, by far, that had ever happened to me. And I had no idea how to prevent Nick from leaving me. How I coul
d show him that I trusted him.
Or, really, how I could learn to trust him. Because he was absolutely, 100% correct about something – I shouldn’t have assumed the worst when I saw him and Portia together. I should have trusted him enough to know that Portia was up to no good. I should have, but I didn’t, and that spoke volumes to Nick and to myself. And I should have had more faith that Nick would find me once I was abducted. I shouldn’t have given up so quickly.
“I, I, I don’t know what to say, Nick,” I said. “I love you so much. And I’ve learned to trust you.”
“I don’t think that you have,” he said. “Not really. I think that you still see me as I was before I met you. And you didn’t even know me then. You just heard about how I was. Yet, you seem to think that I’m the same feckless man who cared about nobody but himself. That person, that Nick, probably wouldn’t have went through hell to find you. But I’m not that guy, and you can’t see that.”
I looked into his eyes and saw hurt, not anger, in them. I wounded him deeply by my lack of faith in him.
Finally, he just said in obvious frustration, “well, come on, then. Let’s go and see your mother, and then let’s go to the police station. I don’t want to make any decisions about us right now. I want to have a cooler head.”
I started to panic a little. It sounded bad. Like he might break up with me. I felt my heart racing, and I bit my lip to stop the tears from coming.
He called Charlie to meet us downstairs.
“Jack,” I said. “Can you come too?”
“I’d like to, Scotch, but I think that you and Nick need some alone time right now. I’d just be in the way.”
“No, you wouldn’t,” I said, thinking that Nick was so hurt and angry right at that moment that I didn’t think that we’d have quality time together anyhow. “Please come with us.”
Jack looked at Nick, and Nick motioned him to come along. “Yeah, why not, the more the merrier,” he said.
“Okay, then. Let me get my coat. What the hell, it’s been awhile since I’ve been treated to the sight of Loretta in all her glory.”
So, Jack got his things and the three of us made our way into the waiting limo to go and see my mother.
Chapter 44
It was the longest limo ride of my life. My mother lived in Brooklyn, in a run-down tenement that should have been condemned years ago. I dreaded going to see her, because it was always so depressing, knowing how much of a desperate situation she was always in, but that wasn’t the reason why I felt severely depressed.
My depression, which was coming down on me like a hammer, had to do with the fact that Nick was staring out the window instead of talking to me. I was so afraid of what he was thinking as he stared out that window. Was he thinking about how he wanted to leave me? About how he wanted somebody who was more mentally together than myself? Somebody tougher?
As Charlie drove us to the home of my mother, I thought back to when I first thought about getting involved with Nick. How I thought that he wouldn’t want me because I had too much mental baggage. Yet I thought, or I was starting to think, that perhaps we were going to make things work, in spite of the fact that I still had so many emotional issues, because it seemed that Nick had patience with me. With my problems.
Now I wasn’t so sure. Nick appeared to have reached his breaking point when he found out that I had almost killed myself because I didn’t have any faith in him finding me. I could see that I hurt him very badly with this lack of belief in him. And I wasn’t at all sure that he was going to recover from finding out just how faithless I was.
Finally, after what seemed like hours, we arrived at the tenement. We got on the sidewalk, me in my wheelchair with Jack pushing me. We crunched on broken beer bottles, which were everywhere. On the grass there was a whiskey bottle that was filled with urine, and there were several condoms tossed aside carelessly. We passed by a man who was halfway passed out on one of the stoops, a bottle of cheap rum cradled in his arms. He mumbled something about a woman named Destiny, and how she needed to let him in. And then we heard a woman’s voice, presumably belonging to Destiny herself, screaming out the screen door “you just rot in hell, you mother fucker.”
The man started sobbing now “let me in. I promise I won’t do it again. Please, Destiny, please let me in.”
We traveled a little bit further, away from that particular drama, towards my mother’s building, which was adjacent to the townhomes where the Destiny soap opera was taking place. I opened the door to the building, and we walked up the narrow stairway that was filled with the stench of human excrement and curry. Nick was carrying me, and Jack was carrying my wheelchair. The odor in the stairway was a most unpalatable blend, and it always made me want to hurl, thereby adding to the smell.
Once we got to the third floor, we passed by an apartment that was blaring loud rock music, and another apartment where two people were screaming at each other and throwing things. The place right next to my mother had the sounds of potential domestic violence coming through the walls, as a man was screaming and a woman was crying.
Sometimes I forgot just how desperate of a situation my mother was in. I guess I tried to forget, lest I go crazy, but being here brought it all back to me.
Nick, for his part, looked remarkably unperturbed by it all. I was surprised – he was a rich guy, and always was affluent. I wouldn’t imagine that he would have ever had occasion to come to a neighborhood like this.
I looked at him questioningly, and he said “my best friend had a serious drug problem in college. I used to come to these kinds of neighborhoods all the time to drag his ass back home.”
“Ryan?” I said. I thought about Ryan’s gorgeous clean-cut face, and just couldn’t picture him being involved in something like that.
“Yeah,” he said. “He’s pretty open about it, so I don’t think that he would mind that I tell you about his problems. They’re far, far behind him now. But, trust, I’ve seen some pretty rough types around him. So, if you think that I’m shocked by all of this, I’m here to tell you that I’m not.”
I loved Nick more than ever at that point. He surprised me so many times. I only hope that he still feels the same way.
Finally, we arrived at my mother’s home. I knocked, but nobody answered. However, I heard a child crying, so I took a deep breath and tried the door.
The door opened, and we walked into the tiny one-bedroom apartment.
My mother was lying on the couch, watching a soap opera, and half snoozing. Aaron was standing up in his play-pen in the middle of the room. There were empty bags of potato chips and empty cans of pop lying all around the room. A huge coffee can, filled with cigarette butts, was on the table in front of the couch. And, of course, there were the empty bottles of booze. Vodka, rum, tequila, wine – the bottles were everywhere. In the trash can, on the floor, in the potted plant that she was trying to care for, yet was clearly dying - everywhere. They were even in the bathtub, which was in the middle of the tiny kitchen. The tub was filled to the brim with liquor bottles.
I knelt down next to the couch. Nick went to pick up Aaron, and cradled him a little bit. Aaron seemed to take to Nick, as he grabbed his nose and giggled. “Let me down,” Aaron said. “Let me walk.”
Nick looked around the room, wondering where it was that Aaron was supposed to walk. There wasn’t room to begin with, and the floor was so filled with trash that Aaron couldn’t possibly get around without tripping.
“Mom,” I said, brushing a tendril of hair out of her eyes. “It’s me, Scotty.”
She opened her eyes, and said “Scotty? Scotty, it that you? Scotty?”
I nodded my head. “Yes, mom, it’s me. I’m here.”
She started to cry. “I thought you were dead,” she said. “Oh, Scotty, I thought you were dead.” And then she threw her arms around me and stroked my hair. “Oh, my Scotty, I can’t believe it. I just can’t believe it.”
I tried to put my arms around her, but her girth prevente
d that. She smelled of cigarettes and body odor, and she was dressed in a tent dress that she favored, for obvious reasons.
To my surprise, I was crying too. “Mom, I’m so sorry for worrying you like that. I’m so sorry. I didn’t mean for you to get that letter. I’m so sorry, mom.”
Nick and Jack were standing in the tiny kitchen, talking. Nick still had ahold of Aaron, who was playing with Nick’s hair and asking for a bar of chocolate.
Jack nodded his head, and looked at me and my mother.
Nick motioned to me to come and talk to them.
I looked at my mom. “Stay here, mom. Stay right here. I’ll be right back.”
She looked at me desperately, like she was afraid that I was going to somehow vanish into the ether. But she didn’t protest.
I wheeled my way over to Nick and looked up at him. “You wanted to talk to me?”
“Yeah,” he said. “I guess that I didn’t imagine that it would be quite like this. At any rate, we can’t just leave your brother and mother in this state. We’re going to have to take Aaron and your mother to my place, while I line up a rehab center to get her dried out once and for all. I should have done this a long time ago, and I would have if I would have known that her situation was this bad.”
I was confused. Nick had been here before. Hadn’t he?
“You were here, weren’t you? When you came into the bar that one time?”
Nick sighed. “Actually, no. I sent the nanny over, and Charlie gave me back the keys. So, I never actually saw your mom and brother that one time. Charisse, the nanny, did call me to let me know that everything was under control, though.”
“Oh,” I said. “That makes sense.”
“Well, anyhow, now that I’m seeing for myself how your mother lives, I feel that it’s my duty as a human being to not let it go on another day. So, they’re coming with us, and I’m going to see how long of a wait it will be to get her into a rehab center in Beverly Hills. I’ve known, uh, a few people who have gone there and this place is the best there is in dealing with addiction and things like that.”
Saving Scotty Page 24