American Outlaw - Jesse James [131]
“Will we . . . see 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.
Masochistically, I switched from channel to channel. It was all the same. The bad news rolled in over and over again, like waves of toxic radiation.
“Bullock moved out of the couple’s Sunset Beach home yesterday, fleeing to an undisclosed location . . .”
Click.
“The actress has canceled her trip abroad to promote The Blind Side . . .”
Click.
“A source close to the couple reports that James, once abnormally protective of his wife, had grown sullen and discontented in recent years . . .”
After several more minutes of watching the news of my disgrace unravel, I finally got it. The news media weren’t going to drop this. They’d been handed their dream story. Now it was time to run with it.
“Gosh, Dad, they’re killing you,” Jesse Jr. said to me sympathetically.
“Hey,” I said, turning around guiltily, seeing my son witness my public execution. “Look, bud, let’s just turn it off. Let’s do something else.”
But the news was so widespread, it couldn’t be turned on and off like a valve. I could ask my kids not to watch TV, but their friends were watching. So were their friends’ parents. People who had never met me could follow the trail of my public disgrace. The news was splashed on every gossip website. It was the top story on Google news.
TV had always been an avenue of escape for me, a way to zone out when I didn’t want to deal with my own internal monologue. But now some nightmare version of my guilty conscience was being broadcast on four hundred channels, all day and night. The title of my most recent show came to me in a flash: Jesse James Is a Dead Man.
The shop was the only place I could hide. But even there, no one would look at me. I felt like a pariah.
I built this place, I thought bitterly, and now they’ve turned on me, too.
Fuming and fumbling, I retreated behind my desk, but I lacked the strength to turn on my computer. I just stared at the black screen. My own reflection stared back at me. Dark, hopeless circles ringed my puffy eyes.
Mustering the last vestiges of strength I had left, I tried to lose