What Really Happened (25 page)

I also thought the Youngs were complaining to the only person who would listen to them: Fred. He offered to help with the situation. Andrew told me that Fred had offered to reimburse them for every expense they had incurred for themselves and for me. In true victim mode, I’m sure that Andrew was telling Fred that they were in this difficult financial situation because of Johnny and me, so Fred did what he did best. He offered to help.

Fred told Andrew to create a spreadsheet listing everything they had spent. Andrew and Cheri did this for days. Andrew was very concerned about writing everything down and the accuracy of it all, which I now understand, because he had already had a great deal of money from Bunny that Johnny, Fred, and I did not know about. He told me that he couldn’t exactly list things like massages. (Andrew loved his massages.) He was going to lie about a bunch of stuff.

At this point, I had the sense that they lied about most everything related to money and would claim to Fred that it was all my spending. In reality, Cheri would go to Target, spend six hundred dollars, add in a few pairs of socks and shorts for me, and claim that the six hundred dollars was my expense.

I remember telling Johnny while I was on a walk with Quinn, “Something is way off with them and money. Their whole focus is on money. It feels like they are constantly obsessing, fighting, and scheming.”

Johnny started thinking about what Elizabeth—among many others—had told him about Andrew over the years, connecting the dots. “Wow,” he thought, “maybe he is a thief after all.”

They were so anxious about any money I was spending that even if I went to the grocery store, they were unhappy. They had gotten me a credit card under Andrew’s account, and that is what I would use to pay for my groceries or anything else. Every time I spent “their” money, no matter how meager the amount, they would
not be happy
, even though I knew that Fred was reimbursing them for everything I was spending.

I felt like I was living in a war zone.

When Andrew and Cheri finished that lengthy expense sheet (a sheet that, naturally, I never saw), I asked Andrew for the total amount. When he said “$325,000,” my jaw dropped. What?

I immediately asked what happened to the two twenty-five-thousand-dollar checks that he had told me Bunny had given him.

“Oh, I never deposited those, given what happened with the
National Enquirer
.”

My head was reeling. Oh my God, I knew my expenses: used BMW, a house full of mostly Pottery Barn furniture, thirty-thousand-dollar C-section, baby gear, a years rent for the house I had lived in for two months in North Carolina, and the thirty-eight thousand dollars he gave me over seven months in 2007. Add it
all
up and it’s not even close to $325,000. In fact the grand total for all my expenses was between $150,000 and 180,000 (with Cheri’s love for Target, there is no way for me to decipher which ones were actually my expenses or were ones she just claimed were mine).

Andrew told me that after all the expenses were paid he was going to split the remaining cash three ways between himself, Cheri, and me. I was to use that money to live off and after that, he told me that I would be responsible for my own expenses.

They wrote me a check for $9,850.

I deposited the money into my account and it posted on May 8
^th
, 2008.

So just to be clear, at the beginning of May 2008, Fred reimbursed the Youngs for every single cent I spent—and then some!

I told Johnny how much money Andrew said that Fred had given them and also told him I believed that Andrew and Cheri ripped off Fred, charging him way more than what was spent. Johnny later told me that Fred believed the same thing. I believe that Fred knew the Youngs were charging him more than they had spent, and that he hoped that after this one-time payoff, the Youngs would just sort of disappear. I don’t believe he ever confronted Andrew about overcharging him. We could all feel that something was really off with Andrew but we had no idea to what extent. We had no idea that he had received over seven hundred thousand dollars from Bunny. One could actually even say zero dollars of Bunny Mellon’s money was ever spent on me, because it turned out that the Youngs had actually sold their house in Raleigh for a large profit, and they did have plenty of their own money to cover all of my expenses until Fred reimbursed them for everything.

Countless press reports year after year said Bunny’s money paid for my expenses, yet not one report stated that Andrew double-dipped and Fred actually paid for everything. I have stood in the kitchen of my little rental house and screamed in frustration (more than once), “Where is my million dollars? You are going to send Johnny to jail for money that I didn’t even
get
? That he supposedly solicited for me?”

Speaking of screaming, one day, around the time that Fred gave the Youngs the $325,000, Cheri got so mad she was screaming at me at the top of her lungs: “
You are not who you think you are!
” She physically came after me. I shut my door in her face. Shortly thereafter, there was more talk about why they shouldn’t give me their BMW. (Cheri always maintained it was their money that was spent on me.) I said, “Listen you guys, you do whatever you need to, I don’t care. Take ‘your’ car that Fred just paid you for. I don’t care. I am done here. As soon as I find a place to live, I am leaving.”

And that was it for me. No more Youngs. Though we were still sharing a living space, there was essentially no personal interaction between us after Cheri’s outburst.

Strangely, as though nothing had ever happened between us, on Mother’s Day they knocked on my door to give me balloons and a card for Quinn. They asked me if I wanted to come to brunch with them.

I thanked them and declined.

And then came the endorsement that sealed their hatred of me forever. Johnny had called me and said Hillary was kicking Obama’s butt in West Virginia. Johnny and I had an interesting discussion about why that was.

I suggested, “Maybe they just like her better, maybe it doesn’t have anything to do with race. Or maybe it does. I don’t know.”

“I am thinking about endorsing Obama. What do you think?”

This was May 13
^th
. Obama had been calling Johnny since he dropped out on January 30
^th
. I replied, “I don’t care.”

He said, “You could talk me out of it if you wanted to.”

I did an internal scan to see if I had any feelings at all about his endorsing Obama. Nothing came up. No thoughts. No feelings. I replied, “I have no opinion or feeling about this at all. It just doesn’t matter. Do whatever you want.”

So he said to me, “I don’t know what I’m going to do yet but I will call you before I endorse him, if I do.”

I said, “Okay.”

The next day I was in a store on State Street in Santa Barbara, wheeling Quinn in her stroller. She was just about to fall asleep, so I was doing laps in the store to keep her moving as she transitioned into naptime. My cell rang. It was Mimi. “I just heard on NPR that your boy is going to endorse Obama.”

“Really? Cool. I haven’t heard.” As I was talking to her, Andrew called. I said, “Hold on,” and switched over.

Without even saying hello, Andrew asked, “Is he endorsing Obama?”

“I don’t know. Last I heard was he might. Nothing definite.”

Andrew didn’t believe me. He was all up in arms. “They are saying he is going to. He is flying to Michigan and he’s endorsing him.”

I replied, “Well, that’s news to me. I haven’t heard.” I wondered how many times I would have to say, “I don’t know, I haven’t heard.” I just didn’t remotely care about any of this. I had checked out of the world of politics and into the world of motherhood.

We hung up, and then I cruised around State Street a little longer until I, too, was tired. Quinn and I headed back to the big beige house.

I walked into my section of the house and turned on the TV. There was a big rally on CNN (I think), all waiting for Johnny. It was a long wait. The cameras were on the empty podium. Everyone was waiting. I thought, wow, that was fast. It looks like he is actually going to endorse Obama.

My phone rang. It was Johnny. “What are you doing?” I asked. “I just turned the TV on and everyone is waiting for you.”

“I told you I would call you before I endorsed Obama, so I am calling.”

I laughed. “I didn’t realize it was going to be so soon.”

“Yeah, neither did I. I’ll fill you in later. Right now I gotta go endorse Obama.”

“Okay, have fun. I’ll be watching.” I hung up, smiling at how funny my timing always seems to be. Not knowing a thing, I had just walked in and turned on the TV and didn’t miss any of it.

Andrew and Cheri were on the warpath. They couldn’t believe I didn’t tell them that he was going to endorse Obama. No matter how many times I told them I didn’t know, they continued to call me a liar. They were now beginning to act as if there was some great conspiracy against them. And as I said, they had turned Johnny and me into one person, the ringleader of this big bad conspiracy against them. The paranoia was absolutely unreal.

Soon after that, thank God, all the Youngs went away. They claimed they were going back to North Carolina for more work on their new house, but I had seen brochures on the counter for the Las Ventanas al Paraiso in San José del Cabo, Mexico, which is where I suspected they were actually headed after they dropped their kids off somewhere.

Fred and Lisa flew out to see me and meet Quinn for breakfast on May 21
^st
, 2008. Lisa came with yet another box of clothes for Quinn. We had a lovely breakfast at the Four Seasons Resort in Santa Barbara. I took pictures of Lisa holding Quinn. I felt a little uneasy for them because Fred didn’t look well and I had seen that look before on my father’s face. His energy and complexion looked similar to Fred’s about six months before he passed away.

At some point over lunch Fred said to me, “I want to help you. What do you need?” I said, “I need a place to live.” He asked, “Where do you want to live?” I thought about it for a second and replied, “I would love to stay in Santa Barbara; it is pretty wonderful here. And I also would need some money to live on.” He said, “Done. Start looking for a place to live and let me know when you find one.”

“Okay, thank you for your help!” So Quinn and I started looking for places to live; we looked at everything under the sun. I had no idea what my budget was, nor could I find anything that would work for us: furnished, private, and clean. Or affordable—Santa Barbara is very expensive.

Lisa called me one day and said, “Fred wants to give you fifteen thousand dollars a month.”

I thanked her and promptly told Johnny what Fred had offered, and he was floored by his generosity.

Now knowing my budget, I continued looking for a new place to live, with and without the Realtor. One day when Quinn and I were out house hunting, without my consent or knowledge, Andrew and Cheri videotaped themselves going through my living space and some of my belongings, including my checkbook. In our settlement agreement, this videotape is officially called the “Santa Barbara Walkthrough Video.” I would actually call it something else and before the civil case I had against them settled, I was willing to bet that a jury would, too.

Thank God, I finally found (on my own, through some ad online) a fully furnished gated house that would work perfectly for six thousand dollars a month. So on June 4
^th
, 2008, I packed up all of Quinn’s and my stuff and, with Bob’s help, loaded my car and said goodbye to Andrew. Cheri wasn’t there. As I drove away from the big beige house, I thanked God that I was free from those crazy people. And I admit it: I hoped that I would never see them again. And even though I thought that I knew the Youngs, I still had no idea just how deeply disturbed they really were, or how far they would go for vengeance.

NINETEEN

The End of
My Mistress Stint

“Celebrity and secrets don’t go together. The bastards will get you in the end.”

—
G
EORGE
M
ICHAEL

L
IFE WITH QUINN in the new rental house was heaven. Although, compared to life in the big beige house, everything felt like heaven. For Quinn it was eat, play, and sleep all the time. I remember Iris the housekeeper saying to me one day, “This is the luckiest kid I have ever seen. She gets all of you all the time.”

One of the things on my to-do list was to have all my stuff packed up from the rental house in North Carolina. The big, bulky furniture (that Fred now owned and gave to me) was to be put in storage; my clothes, personal belongings, camera, hatbox, and father’s ashes were to be shipped to me.

Fred told me he would take care of this. Lisa asked if I would email her a detailed list of what was where, which I did. The hatbox was on top of my armoire, my camera in the camera bag in the front hall closet, and my father’s ashes on the mantle. Of course, I had no idea at that time that I was drawing a clear map for Andrew and Cheri to go rifling through my house or through my belongings in North Carolina, helping themselves to whatever they wanted. Or that they would take another “walkthrough” video. In this video, Cheri is going through all the contents of my hatbox, which contained all of my very personal mementos. As she is taping an item, you can hear Andrew say to her, “We’re taking that, you don’t need to tape it.”