American Outlaw

by James, Jesse

  My creative lull also seemed to be on its way out, and that helped a lot. We’d developed a new reality show called Jesse James Is a Dead Man, where I performed challenging stunts. The show premiered on Spike TV, a new network for me, where it enjoyed moderate success. We didn’t break the world in two, exactly, but then, audiences were a little harder to overwhelm these days. More important was the fact that I’d created a show again, and I’d expanded my horizons for what I could do creatively. It opened the doors for future projects and gave me ideas about what more I’d like to do.

  The bigger event for our family, though, turned out to be Sandy’s participation in a movie about, of all things, football.

  “I think this film is going to do really well,” Sandy announced the day she returned from filming. “I don’t know, it’s just a feeling I have.”

  “Pretty much every movie you do does well,” I reminded her.

  “Oh, hush,” Sandy said, smiling. It was obvious she was finding it impossible to contain her excitement about the difficult role she’d mastered. “I’m telling you, this story is really special. People are going to relate to it.”

  The film was The Blind Side. Based on a true story, it centered around a conservative Christian family in Tennessee who’d decided to adopt an exceptionally gifted, young black football player from an impoverished background. Initially, Sandy had turned down the role of Leigh Anne Tuhoy, the mother, feeling uncomfortable with the idea of enacting a woman whose philosophy in some ways ran counter to her core beliefs. But in the end she’d taken it on, and from the way she was acting now, she’d emerged gratified and energized by the challenge.

  “I got the chance to stretch a little bit,” she explained. “I can’t tell you how good that feels for an actor.”

  I just nodded, staying quiet.

  Sandy’s instinct turned out to be right: The Blind Side opened in mid-November of 2009 to great interest. It had a huge opening weekend, taking in more than $35 million at the box office. Through all of Sandy’s success across the years, she’d never been part of a movie that had grossed that high in initial sales.

  The Blind Side kept rising. Incredibly, it made even more its second weekend, taking in sales of upward of $40 million. On its third weekend, it ousted the new Twilight movie, to become the number-one box office draw in the United States.

  “This is wild,” Sandy breathed. “I knew it was going to be good, but this good?”

  But the film hadn’t stopped yet. By January, it had grossed over $200 million, making it one of the most profitable sports movies of all time. And Sandy had earned strong reviews from critics across the board for her portrayal of Leigh Anne Tuhoy, the adoptive mother of Michael Oher. It appeared as if the award season might be a busy one for her.

  “This really might finally be your year,” I said.

  Sandy waved me off. “People like to make fun of my movies,” she said. “I’m just not the kind of actress who takes home statuettes. Which is fine! I don’t need them.”

  “You’re so great in whatever you do,” I said.

  “I do a certain thing,” she said, reasonably. “Either you like it or you don’t.”

  “People love you.”

  “But the critics never have,” Sandy said, with a wink.

  This time, though, they did. Nominations poured in for Sandy: the People’s Choice, the Screen Actors Guild, the Golden Globes, the Critics’ Choice, and then, the most prestigious of them all, the Academy Awards. They all lauded her performance, and presented her with the opportunity to join the ranks of the best and most celebrated actresses of the last century.

  Needless to say, our house was a whirlwind of activity that winter. Sandy was constantly doing press junkets for her movie, taking interviews, and planning for the next award show. On January 6, 2010, we attended the People’s Choice Awards, where she took home the award for Favorite Actress. But that was just a warm-up. Nine days later, Sandy emerged victorious as Best Actress at the Critics’ Choice Awards, and then, just forty-eight hours afterward, she took home the same honor at the Golden Globes. The Screen Actors Guild Awards were on January 23. She cleaned house again.

  “I’m going to have to buy you a storage unit,” I joked. “I’m not sure we have room for all this hardware.”

  “Quiet, you.” Sandy laughed. She embraced me. I hadn’t seen her this happy in a long time. “Thank you so much for supporting me through all of this. I know you don’t exactly adore the red carpet.”

  “I don’t mind it,” I said truthfully. “It’s good to be there next to you. I’m so proud of you.”

  When the day for the Academy Awards ceremony came, March 7, 2010, she was nervous as anything.

  “Those other women are so incredible,” she said, as we dressed in the afternoon, readying ourselves for the long day ahead of us.

  “You’re going to win it,” I said. “This is your year.”

  Sandy looked at me. “Meryl Streep is nominated.”

  “Yeah?” I said, frowning. “I guess she’s supposed to be a pretty good actress or something, huh?”

  Sandy gave me an incredulous smile. “Yes, she’s okay.” She struggled with her dress. “Can you help me with this, please?”

  I walked up behind Sandy and helped her struggle into her white Marchesa gown. “Man, you look amazing.”

  “It’s not me. It’s the gown.”

  “Sorry, but it’s you,” I told her. “You’re breathtaking.”

  “Come on,” Sandy said. “Stop complimenting me. It’s bad luck. I’m nervous enough already.”

  “Don’t be so nervous,” I said. “This is going to be a cinch. Just remember, when you go up there to get that little statue, don’t trip, okay? It could be embarrassing.”

  We rode to the Oscars in style, in the backseat of a chauffeured Town Car. “I never got to do this in high school,” I remarked. “Aren’t you supposed to get all liquored up before prom?”

  “You must have been quite an adorable little football player in high school,” Sandy said, looking out the window distractedly.

  “I had a lot of acne, actually,” I said. “Man, maybe it was in the helmets we wore. Pretty much all of us had acne. Of course, if you really want to talk acne, we gotta bring up my best friend, Bobby. He had a ton of zits. Not just on his face. His neck, too.”

  “Okay,” Sandy said. “Very nervous. Don’t want to discuss neck pimples just this minute.”

  I squeezed her hand. “Sorry. It’s going to be good. I promise.”

  Though I wasn’t much for award shows, even I had to admit that the Oscars was special. Just to be inside that room, packed to the gills with people I’d seen on big screens for my entire life, sort of blew me away. Even though I wasn’t part of their clan, and probably didn’t see the world the way they did, I recognized the magic of the occasion.

  We waited for hours, patiently smiling and applauding through the endless awards: Best Sound Mixing, Best Original Score, Best Adapted Screenplay.

  “You deserve an Oscar just for looking interested this whole time,” I whispered. “Couldn’t we have showed up a couple hours late?”

  “Don’t be bad,” Sandy said, laughing.

  Finally, the time arrived for Best Actress category. Sean Penn sauntered up on stage, and announced the nominees: Sandy, Meryl Streep, Carey Mulligan, Helen Mirren, and Gabourey Sidibe, from Precious. Then he ripped open the envelope.

  “And the winner for Best Actress is . . .” he announced, “Sandra Bullock.”

  Around me, the entire arena exploded with applause.

  “What did I tell you?” I said to her. “Congratulations. You deserve it.”

  She gave me a look that said, thank you. For just a split second, we shared that privacy, before she gave herself up to the rest of the room.

  Sandy began to make her way down the aisle, and I rose to my feet, clapping loudly. The whole room followed suit. We watched as my beautiful wife boarded the stage in her elegant gown, her long hair d
ark, shimmering, and perfect.

  I felt a knot rise up in my throat as I watched her clutch her trophy for the first time, knowing what it meant to her.

  “Did I really earn this?” Sandy asked. “Or did I just wear you all down?”

  We all laughed, and the tension was broken. How foolish I was to have ever risked hurting this woman, I thought.

  “I have so many people to thank for my good fortune in this lifetime,” she continued. “And this is a once-in-a-lifetime experience, I know.”

  She’s everything that any man in the world could want. Beautiful, talented, but somehow humble.

  Sandy complimented each of the other actresses, then thanked the real-life Leigh Anne Tuhoy, after whom her character had been molded. Then she proceeded to thank her own mother, who had been gone for ten years:

  “. . . for reminding her daughters that there’s no race, no religion, no class system, no color, nothing, no sexual orientation that makes us better than anyone else. We are all deserving of love.”

  Then she pointed tearfully into the audience at me. “And thank you for allowing me to have . . . that.”

  It took everything I had not to cry. It was almost like a fairy tale. My heart felt close to bursting.

  As Sandy held her Oscar in the air, the applause rose to a deafening peak. I clapped until my hands hurt. I suppose, at that moment, I was lost in my own fairy tale, the one in which my actions would never catch up to me.

  17

  You really never know what you have until it’s gone.

  Tuesday, March 16, 2010, was the day I understood exactly how much I’d been given. It was also the day I learned what it was like to lose everything.

  The morning started off like any other: I rose early, kissed my sleeping wife good-bye, ate a quick breakfast, then headed into the shop. But at around ten o’clock, Sandy’s publicist called me with news she had to share.

  “Jesse? I have to run something by you.”

  “Sure, what’s up?”

  Sandy’s publicist related to me that a woman had come forward saying that she and I had been carrying on an affair together. She had gone to a gossip magazine with the story. They would be publishing the news within the next forty-eight hours.

  My insides curled inside of me.

  Sandy’s publicist continued. Sandy herself would soon be hearing the news; thus, it might be a good idea to speak to her as soon as possible, to put to rest any concerns she might have.

  Shortly thereafter, we ended the conversation, and I hung up the phone. I stumbled into the bathroom, shut the door behind me. I tried to breathe, but my heart was hammering in my chest.

  I could try to deny it. Play dumb. But Sandy would know, anyway. She would see it on my face.

  I had been lying for long enough by this point. So after about an hour of waiting for something to happen—a nuclear warhead to hit the shop, perhaps, saving me from my fate—I called her.

  “Hey,” I said.

  “Hi,” Sandy said. She sounded worried. She and her publicist were very close. I guessed that they had probably talked already.

  “Can you come to the shop?” I said. “I think we need to talk.”

  “Okay,” Sandy whispered. “I’ll come over right now.”

  Waiting for her to arrive, I paced back and forth, wishing for some way out.

  Give me a do-over . . . I pleaded. I really didn’t mean this one.

  But that was just the frightened kid in me talking. I’d done the crime; now it was the time for me to step up and do my time like a man.

  “Hi,” Sandy said, when she came in the door. She gave me a hesitant, forced smile. “So, what’s up?”

  I looked at her, searching for the words to tell her. Nothing came out of my mouth.

  “This woman’s full of it, right?” Sandy asked. “Do you want to get your lawyer on her?”

  I didn’t say anything at all for a long second.

  “Come into my office,” I said, finally.

  Sandy came in and sat down on a chair. I closed the door after her and sat down myself. We stared at each other. And then, finally, I told her the truth.

  I admitted the affair. I told her the hard details. I let her know that I had never loved this woman, that I had never cared for her at all.

  Then Sandy asked me why had I done it. But I had no answer for her.

  The feeling of shame and sadness that washed over me as Sandy began to cry was almost beyond measure. I’d never felt that in my body before. I watched her, and for a moment, I wanted to be dead.

  I didn’t touch her. I sat frozen in my chair, watching, as Sandy’s small body shook with sobs.

  There is nothing I can say right now to make this better, I thought. There is nothing I can do.

  Instead of feeling freed from the guilt of having lied to my wife for months on end, all I felt inside was stunned and horrified.

  Sandy rose to her feet. She unfolded her sunglasses and put them on her face.

  She walked steadily and purposefully to the front of the shop, opened the heavy, metal door. For a moment, the sunlight enveloped her. The door closed behind her, and she was gone.

  ——

  I sat, rooted behind my desk, for the better part of an hour, unsure of what to do.

  Things were about to get really ugly. For a moment, I remembered being in Iraq, when we saw those dark, ominous dust clouds on the horizon. An awful storm was brewing. I could feel it.

  For the remainder of the day, I stayed at the shop, sleepwalking like a zombie through my work, incapable of erasing the image of a weeping Sandy from my head.

  At around seven in the evening, I threw on my coat and prepared to leave.

  “See you tomorrow, Jesse!”

  None of them got it. None of them understood that by tomorrow, everything would be changed. They would never see me the same way.

  At home, I found the kids in the kitchen, hanging out and laughing with each other.

  “Hey, Dad, can we order pizza tonight?” Jesse Jr. asked.

  “Dad, if we do, this time can we not get sausage?” Chandler said. “It like, pollutes the other pizzas . . .”

  “How does that even make sense?” Jesse Jr. said. “If you want to be a retarded vegetarian, fine, but it doesn’t mean we can’t have ONE pizza that has meat on it . . .”

  “Guys, hold it for a second,” I said. “Where’s Sunny?”

  “She’s in the living room, watching cartoons.”

  “All right. Good,” I said. “Listen up. I have to talk to you two about something.” I think they saw from my tone that I was serious. “It’s . . . it’s about Sandy.”

  “What is it, Dad?” Chandler said, coming nearer to me.

  “She’s gone,” I said after a second. “She’s gone, and she’s not going to live here with us anymore.”

  Both of my kids stared at me, uncomprehendingly. “What are you talking about?”

  “Did something happen to her, Dad?” Jesse Jr. asked.

  I cleared my throat. “Sandy is okay. I mean . . . she’s safe. That is, I think she’s safe, at least . . .” I let my voice trail off, confused.

  A long moment of silence in the kitchen.

  “Look,” I said, finally. “I grew up not knowing anything that went on between my parents. I never want to do that with you guys. So I’m going to tell you something private and difficult. And it’s going to hurt. But just listen to me.”

  Both of them nodded. I stared at the refrigerator for a moment, finding it hard to look directly at them.

  “I was . . . unfaithful to Sandy,” I said. Every word sounded strange in my mouth as I spoke. Like it was a speech I’d seen on TV that now had found its way into my mouth by chance. “I went outside our marriage. And now, well, she found out about it.”

  “What did she say?” Chandler asked.

  “She ran out of the shop this morning, crying,” I said. “I don’t see her coming back here any time soon.”

  “Will we . . . se
e her again?”

  “I don’t know,” I said. “Maybe eventually. But the thing is, well, even if you do, it’ll never be the same around here.”

  “What do you mean?” Chandler asked.

  “When you’re as famous as Sandy,” I said, “something like this can become a real story.”

  “You mean, like, it’s going to be in the papers?”

  “Whatever happens, it’s not going to be good,” I said. “She’s going to be hurt. In front of a lot of people. Which means I probably won’t ever be able to make it up to her.” I looked them straight in the eyes, to see if they understood. “It’s over.”

  Now it was my kids who couldn’t meet my eye.

  “I screwed up real bad,” I said. “But it doesn’t mean I don’t love you. I care about you guys. More than anything else in my entire life.”

  I must have looked pretty beat up. Chandler came over to me and gave me a hug.

  “It’s all right, Daddy.”

  “Dad, things will be okay,” Jesse Jr. said. “Just give it a couple of days.”

  Slowly, I walked up the stairs to the master bedroom. Our bedroom looked like it had been ransacked. Sandy had removed all of her clothes and books and small possessions. Her bedside table was swept clean.

  I sat on the side of the unmade bed, unable to move, dimly aware there was worse to come.

  ——

  The following morning, the news broke.

  “. . . in emerging news, the husband of megastar Sandra Bullock, recent recipient of Best Actress honors, has been hit with allegations of infidelity . . .”

  I’d known it would be coming, but I was unprepared for the force of the blow. My guilty face was on every channel. I sat in my living room alone in front of the TV as reports continued to file in. Filling the screen was an image of me and Sandy on the red carpet only days before. We looked proud, on top of the world.

  I switched the channel. But the same story was running on a different station. Even the same picture was up on the screen. Me wearing that black tie against a black suit. Sandy in her Marchesa gown, clutching her statuette.