If I Did It (6 page)

“Well, I don't want you to change,” she said. “You're fine the
way you are. I'm telling you I've changed.”
I thought that was messed up. She was the mother of my chil-
dren, and part of me still loved her, but I was pretty sure we didn't
have a future together. Still, I wanted to let her down easy, so I
urged her to focus on the kids. They had always enjoyed spending
time with both of us, together, and that had been the original plan
when we first separated—to try to keep the kids happy by showing
them that we were still a close, loving family—and I thought we
could work on that. “I know the kids would love it if we had dinner
as a family now and then,” I said.
“I agree,” she said. “Let's do it.”
When we got back to the house, she asked if she could come
in. To be honest, I didn't want her to, but it seemed odd to keep her
out, what with the talk we'd just had, and with the kids there,
watching us standing by the front gate, so I let her in. We got the
kids fed and I took them upstairs and put them to bed, and Nicole
was still there when I came back down.
“I see you got pictures of Paula all over the house,” she said.
“That's right,” I said. “In case you hadn't heard, we're dating.”
She smiled, trying to hide the hurt, and sat on the couch
across from me. I didn't know what she was still doing there,
and I was about ten seconds away from getting rude. “Thank
you for letting me hang out,” she said. “I just didn't feel like
being alone.”
“That's cool,” I said. “But I'm tired, and I've got a plane to
catch tomorrow, and I'm going o bed.”
“Okay,” she said, but she looked disappointed. I walked her to
the door and watched her cross to her car. She looked good. She
looked as good as she had when I first met her. I thought, It's amaz-
ing the way people can whip themselves into shape when they put their
mind to it.
When I went back inside, I opened the letter and read it. In
her letter, Nicole went on at length about the issues we had just
talked about—that it was her fault the relationship had fallen apart,
and that she had learned through counseling to “turn negatives into
positives” and to “get rid of” her anger:
I always knew that what was going on with us was about
me—I just wasn't sure why it was about me—so I just blamed
you. I'm the one who was controlling. I wanted you to be
faithful and be a perfect father. I was not accepting to who
you are. Because I didn't like myself anymore.
She told me that after New Year's Eve she sank into a depres-
sion and blamed it on what I had called “that 30's thing.” She
said that she had given up on treating me as if she loved me, but
she said:
I never stopped loving you—I stopped liking myself and lost
total confidence in any relationship with you.
And she made her goal clear: to have her and the kids move
back in with me.

I want to put our family back together! I want our kids to
grow up with their parents. I thought I'd be happy raising
Sydney & Justin by myself—since we didn't see too much of
you anyway. But now, I . . .
I want to be with you! I want to love you and cherish
you, and make you smile. I want to wake up with you in the
mornings and hold you at night. I want to hug and kiss you
everyday. I want us to be the way we used to be. There was no
couple like us.
I don't know what I went through . . . I didn't believe
you loved me anymore—and I couldn't handle it. But for the
past month I've been looking at our wedding tape and our
family movies—and I can see that we truly loved each other. A
love I've never seen in any of our friends. Please look at the 2
tapes I'm sending over with this letter. Watch them alone &
with your phone turned off—they're really fun to watch.
She ended her letter with the following:
O.J. You'll be my one and only “true love.” I'm sorry for the
pain I've caused you and I'm sorry we let it die. Please let us
be a family again, and let me love you—better than I ever
have before.
I'll love you forever and always .. .
Me.
At the bottom, she had drawn a smiley face.
I went to bed and reread the letter, and I had trouble falling
asleep that night.
In the morning, I woke the kids, got them fed, and dropped
them at Nicole's on my way to the airport. I didn't bother going in.
I didn't want to see Nicole. The previous day had stirred up a lot of
feelings, and I wasn't sure that was a good thing.
On the flight to Mexico, however, I couldn't stop thinking
about our conversation, and about the letter. I still had feelings for
her, and she was playing to those feelings, and it bothered me.
Nicole was the one who had wanted out of the marriage. Why was
she coming back now and making things so hard on me?
When I got to Cabo, I stopped thinking about her. A car
picked me up and took me to La Palmilla, which was one of the few
fancy hotels there—back in those days, anyway—and I unpacked
and went off to take care of business. I was meeting with a group of
guys who were going to be putting up several hotels and a golf
course in Cabo, and they were hoping I'd be able to attract a few
highprofile investors. We looked over the plans, talked business,
then went off for drinks and dinner.
The next morning, I got a call from L.A. One of my friends,
Billy Kehoe, had died unexpectedly, and I was forced to take an
early flight back to L.A. I went straight from the airport to a funeral
home in Santa Monica, for the wake. The actual funeral was sched-
uled for the next day, but I wasn't going to make it: I had already
made plans to take the kids to Las Vegas the following morning,

where we were going to meet up with Paula, and they were so
excited that I didn't have the heart to let them down.
Anyway, I got to the funeral home and hung around for a bit,
and the first person I ran into was Nicole. She come over and said
hi and gave me a little kiss, and she told me she had left the kids at
my house. She had been unable to find Kato, she said, and she
knew I was taking the kids to Vegas the following day, so it seemed
like a good solution.
“How was Cabo?” she asked.
“It was fine. I might build a little house there.”
Then we saw Billy's wife and family and went over to express
our condolences. Our friendship went all the way back to when
Nicole and I were first married, and we talked about the old days,
and I could see that stirred up a lot of feelings for Nicole.
When things broke up, Nicole and I found ourselves out in the
parking lot, alone. “I'm hungry,” I said. “You want to get a bite to eat?”
“Sure,” she said.
We went to a little restaurant in Santa Monica, and for some
reason Nicole started talking about Marcus Allen and his fiancee,
Kathryn, who were about to get married, and who had asked me to
host the wedding at my place, on Rockingham. I told Nicole, “It's
funny. Kathryn reminds me a little of you when you were preparing
for our wedding. She's over at the house almost every day, running
around and worrying about every little detail, from the table set-
tings to the flowers to the music. She wants to make sure that every-
thing turns out just right.”
Nicole got a sad look in her eyes, and said, “She's a nice girl,
that Kathryn.”
“She's more than nice,” I said. “I know you don't know her all
that well, but she's been in your corner from the start. When you
moved out, and she saw how upset I was, she told me you'd be com-
ing back. `O.J.,' she said. 'Nicole has been with you since she was
eighteen years old. She needs to do this—she needs to find herself—
but she'll be back'.”
“That's the same thing I told you,” Nicole said. “But when I
told you, you didn't believe me.”
“About coming back? You never said anything about com-
ing back?”
“No—about finding myself,” she said. “I didn't know who
I was.”
“And you know who you are now?”
“I'm getting closer,” she said.
“Well, anyway, let's not go there,” I said. “All I was trying to
tell you is that you've got a good friend and a big fan in Kathryn.”
Suddenly Nicole was crying and I couldn't for the life of me
figure out why that would upset her. These big old tears were pour-
ing down her cheeks, and people at the neighboring tables were
taking notice. “What's wrong?” I said, whispering. “I wasn't trying to
upset you.”
“That's not it,” she said.
“Then what?”
“Marcus is not your friend,” she said.

“What do you mean 'Marcus is not your friend.' 'What is that
supposed to mean?”
She looked at me like she really wanted to say something that
she couldn't bring herself to say it, and then it hit me. “Did some-
thing happen between you and Marcus?” I asked.
She put her head down on the table and started crying louder.
I felt like the whole restaurant was looking at us, so I turned and
signaled for the check. 'When I turned back to look at Nicole, she
was lifting her head off the table, sniffling, and using the napkin to
dry her tears. She looked at me, all pitiful.
“What?” I said.
“Something did happen with Marcus.”
Man, I'll tell you, another guy would have probably lost it, but
I didn't lose it. I just shook my head, kind of stunned, and the bill
came and I paid it and we went outside. I hadn't said a word to her
the whole time. I was still trying to process what she'd just told me.
“What?” she said, like she was scared of me or something.
“You're not going to talk to me now?”
“I'll talk to you when I can think of something to say.”
I drove her back to the funeral home, because her car was still
in the parking lot, and I didn't say a word to her the entire time.
But when we got there, not ten minutes later, I cut the engine and
unloaded on her. “Why did you tell me this shit about you and
Marcus?” I said. “I didn't need to know this.”
“I just thought you should know,” she said, stammering. “He
pretends to he your friend, and then he fools around with me. And
I don't think it's right that he knows about something that hap-
pened between us and you don't.”
“Hey, we're not married anymore, remember? You're single and
he's single. The only thing I don't get is why you did it. You're always
bitching about people cheating and fucking around on each other,
and here you are getting it on with a guy who's about to get married.”
“I don't know what I was thinking,” she said. “He was so nice
to me, and he always listened, and it just sort of happened.”
“That shit doesn't just happen,” I said.
“I'm sorry.”
“Forget it. You don't owe me an apology. You don't owe me
anything. But I still can't understand why you told me. Or what all
you expect me to do. It's not like I'm going to cancel their wedding
or something.”
“No, of course not.”
“You know what I'm going to do?” I said. “I'm not going to do
anything. This has nothing to do with me.”
“Don't get mad, O.J.”
“I'm not mad. I'm just telling you: We're not married any-
more, Nicole, and the reason we're not married is because you
didn't want to be married.”
“I'm sorry.”
“Stop apologizing,” I said. “I'm just telling you how it is.”
“So what am I supposed to do about Marcus?”
"See—there you go again! You're asking me what to do. Can't
you figure it out for yourself? Isn't that what you wanted? To get out

from under my shadow? To go off and be on your own and have
your own friends and be your own person?“
She was crying again. ”But he keeps calling me.“
”So tell him you're going to tell Kathryn.“
”You think I should?“
”I bet that would stop him pretty quick.“
”I'm sorry,“ she said again.
I took a deep breath. ”You know, Nicole, this right here is why
I've been avoiding you. Every time we talk, something comes up.
You've got a problem with this or a problem with that, and you put
everything on me. 'Help me, O.J.! Fix this for me, O.J.!' Well, I
can't be doing that all the time. You asked me to move on, you
wanted to break us up, and you got it. We're broken up and I've
moved on. Or I'm trying to, anyway.“
She was crying again. ”I'm a mess, O.J.“
”You're not a mess.“
”Can I come to your house to see the kids?“
”Nicole, come on. They're asleep.“
”I want to see them.“
”No,“ I said, but I said it nice. ”I'm taking them to Vegas in
the morning. You'll see them Sunday.“
”Okay,“ she said, wiping her tears.
She got out of the car and I waited until she was in her own
car, then I drove home. The kids were still up, past their regular
bedtime, and I got them to brush their teeth and tucked them in.
Just as they were falling asleep, someone buzzed my front gate. I
went downstairs. It was Nicole.
”'What's up?“ I said.
”I don't feel like being alone,“ she said. ”I miss the kids.“
”They're asleep, Nicole. And I'm tired. I'm going to bed.“
”Can I just stay here for a little? Please?"
If you want to know the truth, I felt bad for her. Even with all
the therapy and all of these new insights and stuff, it was obvious
she was still having trouble getting it together. We went upstairs.
The kids were fast asleep. I stripped to my underwear and got into
my side of the bed, careful not to wake them. Nicole lay down on
the far side of the kids, saying she wouldn't stay long.
I guess I must have nodded off, because the next thing I knew
she was standing on my side of the bed, tugging at my arm. A
moment later I found myself following her into the bedroom next
door, and a moment after that we were making love. It was the first
time we'd been together since the split, and I was feeling all sorts of
feelings I would have preferred not to feel.
Needless to say, it was all very confusing.

3.
PERIOD OF
CONFUSION
I woke up early with Nicole still there, fast asleep. I felt pretty bad
about the whole thing. I was dating Paula, and I hadn't wanted this
to happen, and suddenly I felt like one of those fools that tries to
make all sorts of phony excuses for screwing up. I woke Nicole and
told her she had to leave before the kids got up—I didn't want them
to see her there, and to tell Paula about it—then I walked her
downstairs and let her out. I felt lousy. I was cheating on my girl-
friend with my exwife. How weird was that?
At noon, the kids and I left for the airport and went to Vegas
and had a wonderful weekend with Paula. I didn't tell her about
Nicole. If that makes me a coward, and I guess it does, then I'm a
coward. I justified it like a million guys justify these things: It was a
mistake. It would never happen again.