American Outlaw - Jesse James [129]
“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 dark, 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