American Outlaw - Jesse James [96]
“You took . . .” Janine said, laughing, once, drunkenly, “my parking spot.” Then she shrugged, fell facedown into her pillow, and began snoring lightly.
“Janine!” I shouted, furious, my blood racing. “JANINE!”
——
The following day, I drove as planned to Las Vegas to officiate the wedding. A couple from North Carolina had won a sweepstakes from Discovery, securing for them the honor of being married in a car by a dysfunctional welder. Fittingly, my eye had swelled up terrifically where I’d been punched. I had a big ol’ shiner.
“Get into some trouble last night, Jesse?” the makeup artist asked me, cheerfully.
“You could say that,” I muttered.
“How about you let me cover that up for you?” she proposed. “It might not look so terrific on television.”
Humiliated, my mind whirling, I sat in the makeup chair and let her apply pancake and rouge to my swollen eye and cheekbone.
This can’t go on, I thought.
With cameras in tow, we set out for downtown Vegas, where we orchestrated a street-side pickup of Chris and Sara, the excited young couple. I let down the automatic doors, and they strutted up regally into the mobile Suburban wedding chapel.
It was showtime. My heart felt unexpectedly heavy as I spoke the words, “Do you take this woman to be your lawfully wedded wife?”
The groom looked at his wife with love and excitement in his eyes. “Yes,” he said. “I do.”
As I stood there and watched the happy young couple come together, I realized, with a sinking feeling, that this thing I had signed up for might not turn out as I’d hoped.
That evening, I called Janine from my hotel room in Vegas.
“I think we have to face facts. It’s not working,” I said, flatly. “I mean us. We’re not working.”
“Jesse, love, I can explain . . .”
“You punched me last night. Do you even remember that?”
“I recall doing something like that,” she said, “but if you’d give me a chance to explain, I think you’d understand. It wasn’t my fault. I wasn’t feeling well . . .”
“I’m frightened to be around you,” I said. “Don’t you get it?”
“A big, tough guy like you? Scared?”
“Janine,” I said, exasperated. “I came from a violent family. Okay?”
“I know that, but . . .”
“One of my earliest memories is my dad breaking his hand in a fight with my mom,” I said. “I heard him do it. They were yelling at each other for hours.”
“Jesse, please . . .”
“Then I heard him hit something. I heard it through the wall of my bedroom. Do you know what that’s like for a kid, Janine? The next day, his hand was broken. They both tried to tell me that he fell off a ladder. I was only six, but I was already too old to fall for that one.”
Janine waited for a moment. “Well? What does that have to do with me?”
“I can’t have that kind of thing in my house,” I said. “I just . . . I can’t have it.”
“I didn’t mean to,” Janine sighed. “I love you, honey. Give me another chance.”
After some more discussion, we agreed to try again. But my patience was running thin. And then, only a week later, an everyday argument exploded, and I left the house in a huff. Janine followed closely behind me.
“Get back here,” she screamed. “Where are you going?”
“I’m out of here,” I said, striding past her, toward my vehicle.
Without another word, Janine leaped into her car and gunned the engine. Dumbfounded, I watched as she jerked the car into reverse recklessly, then drove it straight toward me.
“What the FUCK is WRONG with you!” I screamed, leaping out of the way. “You almost hit me, you crazy bitch!”
Janine backed the car up, revved the engine. Again, I leaped out of the way.
“That’s it!” I cried. “You are so fucking out of here! You’re GONE! Now! Leave.”
“Or what?” she screamed.
“Or I’m going to call the cops and have you arrested for assault, Janine!”
Quickly, she turned off the car, then said she didn’t mean it. But by now I’d been through it enough times to recognize things weren’t going to change. She had to go.
I watched in silence as she packed a suitcase, and then she left.
——
For the first time, I had the whole house to myself. I sat down in the kitchen,