Last Dance, Last Chance

front pages of the Buffalo paper and on television news.
    And it had all been because she still loved and trusted a man who was a liar and a cheat and an adulterer. This time, she couldn’t go back.
    But this time Debbie didn’t explode in a rage or accuse Anthony of being unfaithful. She told him about the letter from Picone, but she let him believe that she was still the deluded, stupid wife. She was buying time, trying to figure out what was the best thing for her children. If she left Anthony, she didn’t know whether she could support them. If she stayed, Ralph and Lauren could probably stay in Nichols School with their friends, and they could have their own home and their own rooms and a chance to go to college.
    And as ashamed that she was to admit it, Debbie still loved Anthony—or perhaps she still clung to the way she wanted to love him.
    The “honeymoon” period of their “new” marriage had lasted such a short time. Because she had pinned her hopes on a fresh start, it was harder for Debbie to accept that it was all a facade. Little shards of the shiny surface began to crack and fall away—just a few at first, and then they began to tumble until Debbie saw too much behind Anthony’s mask as the reformed adulterer.
    The pain in her heart hurt far more than the pain in her neck. She had endured four surgeries after the Florida boat accident, and none of them had completely taken away the pain. Now, she needed yet another operation on the discs in her neck.
    Debbie was biding her time to protect her children’s future, but Anthony proved to her almost at once that she couldn’t count on him to work out their desperate financial problems. The Lamborghini was long gone, of course. But Anthony went out and bought her a new Cadillac to celebrate their remarriage.
    “We couldn’t afford a new car,” she said, “much less a Cadillac. We had a van, and that was fine for us.”
    And, as it turned out, Anthony was the one who drove the Cadillac; Debbie still drove the SUV. He’d always believed that expensive and showy cars were necessary to make a man look successful.
    But he wasn’t successful in the least. Anthony had been unable to find a job in the months he had been home, and he wasn’t trying very hard. They were rapidly running out of money. His mother helped him. Debbie never knew how much Lena gave Anthony, but she did note the regular withdrawals from their bank account almost every day, usually in the amount of a hundred dollars.
    Anthony was on something—something more than tequila. She and the children all noticed it. He drank, yes, but the way he kind of zoned out and fell asleep in his chair made Debbie worry that he was on something much stronger than alcohol. When she added his odd behavior to the frequent bank withdrawals, she suspected drugs of some sort.
    Debbie didn’t know anything about heroin. Not then.
    Anthony apparently didn’t realize how utterly betrayed Debbie felt now that she knew about Tami. Arnie Letovich was out of jail, too, and the two had reconnected. Anthony spent his days working out in the gym, writing down his thoughts in his “book,” spending time with Tami, or visiting Arnie. Tami often accompanied him to Arnie’s place.
    On February 26, 1999, Debbie passed the house where Tami lived and saw a Cadillac parked there—a Cadillac that looked exactly like Anthony’s gift to her. She pulled in closer so she could read the license number, and saw that it was her Cadillac.
    “I knew he was with her,” Debbie recalled. “I was so mad that I parked the van and used my key to drive the Cadillac home. I was picturing the look on Anthony’s face when he came out and saw the van there. I wanted him to know that he wasn’t fooling me—that I knew where he was and who he was with.”
    She would have liked to have seen that look on Anthony’s face when he came out and realized what had happened. But he was apparently too afraid to face her. He picked Ralph up at his ski club and dropped him off at home, but he didn’t come in.
    He called her later with the oldest excuse known to wandering husbands. “Debbie,” he said fervently, “it isn’t what it looks like…”
    The perfect, passive Italian wife had finally come to a place where she could hang up on him. Anthony didn’t come back. She told herself that she didn’t care where he went or who he was with. But she still did care. She confronted Tami Maxell and asked her bluntly, “Are you