Turning the Tables: From Housewife to Inmate and Back Again (10 page)

She changed her tune, though, on
Access Hollywood Live
six days later, when she said that while we hadn’t made amends, “I don’t believe you kick somebody when they are down . . . I’m genuinely reaching out to her and giving her support. This is a very hard time she is going through.”

While I didn’t like what she tweeted when I got sentenced, I appreciated what she said on
Access Hollywood
. She and I didn’t exactly see eye to eye on a lot of things, but after the dust settled and I was able to look at everything objectively, I realized that she wasn’t the kind of person who would try to hurt me or my family. I don’t hold a grudge against her, either. When I found out in prison that she got engaged, I said, “Good for her!” and I meant it. Though I don’t ever see a day where we will be BFFs, I wish her well. Holding on to negativity doesn’t do anything for anyone.

Throughout the book you will see scans of the diary I kept while I was an inmate. I started keeping a diary as soon as I got to prison because I wanted to remember every detail of my experiences there—and because it helped me cope.

M
y brother and I were always very close, as kids and teenagers and in our twenties. Best friends. Since we don’t have a lot of family here in America, my parents, Joey, and I relied on each other for everything. My parents also raised us to honor and respect each other. As Joey’s older sister, I always looked out for him. He’s my blood and that’s what family is all about to me. People would tell us how blessed we were to have such a tight bond, which I thought was a little strange because I thought every brother and sister got along as well as we did.

As young kids, of course, we played a lot together, but we also had our fights, the way all siblings do, like the time I got mad at him and threw all his toys out the window. But despite our childhood squabbles, which lessened with time, Joey and I always had fun together, especially as we got older. I loved hanging out with him. From the time we were little, we would always spend New Year’s Eve as a family with my parents. As we got older, he would bring his girlfriend and I would bring my boyfriend. We would get all dressed up and go to a fancy catering hall. We would double-date, and go to the Jersey shore with our friends. Some of my favorite memories are spending days at the beach with him and hitting the clubs at night in Seaside Heights (where
Jersey Shore
was filmed). After I got married, my brother would come over for dinner all the time. He and Joe, who had known each other their whole lives, loved spending time with one another.

Most importantly, my brother and I were always there for each other, no matter what. When the weather was bad, I would call him and tell him to be careful driving home—and he would do the same for me. Little things like that. We also confided in each other about everything. If he had a problem with one his girlfriends or something going on at school or work, he would talk to me about it and I would give him my best advice. He returned the favor. If I needed advice, I would always call Joey. While we were both close to our parents, sometimes we needed to talk to someone our own age who understood things better than they did. It was just nice to know I had such an amazing, caring brother. Someone I could always count on.

I never imagined in my wildest dreams that my bond with my brother would ever be broken. We would even talk about other siblings we knew who weren’t getting along, and we wondered how they could have let that happen. Everything with us was fine, until I did the show. I never thought fame and money could ruin a family until it ruined mine. I hate to even talk about what happened with my family, but I want people to understand how I was feeling at the time and why I reacted the way I did. The bottom line is that so many things happened off camera that led to some of the big blowups that were filmed. Sadly, that’s just how it was. Anyone who knows me well knows that I have a good heart and that I am very loyal. But when I’m fired upon, I react by firing back—something I am trying to change.

Joey and Melissa met in the fall of 2003, got engaged that spring, and were married in August 2004. When Joey married Melissa, I welcomed her with open arms to our family. I was hoping she would be the sister I’d always wished I’d had. We all spent a lot of time together. Joey and Melissa would come to our house in Montville for birthdays, get-togethers, and holidays. We would go to each other’s shore house. We always had the best time together, which is exactly what I imagined it would be like when my brother and I each had families of our own.

Many people told me that my relationship with my brother would change when he got married, since that sadly often happens. I didn’t believe them, but things between us did become a bit more tense once he married Melissa. We had never argued before that. Ever. But after Melissa came into the picture, our relationship seemed different. Whenever she had an issue with me, she would tell my brother about it, rather than talking directly to me. He would get mad at me because he was only hearing her side of things. I respect the way he treats her as a wife, but sometimes I felt like it got to be a little too much. I get it. I’m married and am loyal to my husband. But his refusal to hear me out still hurt.

Before Melissa married Joey, I used to call her every morning to talk, like I did with Jacqueline. But after a few months into their marriage, I didn’t hear back from her as much, if at all. I wasn’t sure what was going on. I was confused where our relationship was headed.

Before I started doing the show, I was also close to my cousins Kathy and Rosie. They were among the only family I had here in America. They have three brothers, but the boys are older, so I never saw them much. But Kathy and Rosie were at my Sweet 16. They came to our wedding. Just like with Joey and Melissa, we always had the best time. For years, we invited Kathie and Richie on our boat and to the shore house, spending holidays together and even going on vacation one year. This is what I thought family was supposed to be like.

When I started doing
Housewives
, my life became a whirlwind with filming, interviews, meetings, and appearances. I also wrote my first cookbook,
Skinny Italian
, in 2010, so I was busy doing book signings and traveling for a book tour while raising three young girls and running my household. I was overwhelmed, to be honest. This was a whole new world to me and it was more than demanding, but I loved what I was doing. Being on the show was my job and I was taking it very seriously. That said, I simply wasn’t around as much as I used to be. Later on, Joey and Melissa said they were upset because they hadn’t seen me in two years. Of course I still saw them—at holidays, family get-togethers, and the Sunday family dinners I used to host, just not as much as before. I thought they understood how busy I was as a working mom with three young daughters and, after the first season, a baby. Joey also told me he couldn’t believe I hadn’t asked him and Melissa to be in any of the scenes I had filmed on the show in the two years I had been doing it. I explained that it wasn’t my decision. I told him that the show, at that point, was about the five housewives interacting with each other. I was shocked that my brother asked me about being on the show because he and Melissa had never told me they wanted to be on it before this, and that was just the way I saw it. This was my job.

I will never forget when I was getting ready to shoot Season 3 and got a phone call from Andy telling me that my sister-in-law and cousin were going to be joining the show as the newest housewives. I wasn’t even sure I’d heard him right. I was absolutely shocked. I said, “Are you kidding me?” Here I was, always telling them what was going on with the show, yet they never said one word to me about wanting to come on it as full-time cast members. As far as I knew, they only wanted to make the occasional cameo here or there.

I wish they had gone about everything differently. If Melissa and Kathy had told me they wanted to join the show as cast members and had been open about it, I wouldn’t have gotten upset. My feeling is we could have shown America what a beautiful family we were. I think people would have loved seeing how much fun we always had together. But since they kept everything a secret, I was upset with them. Every family has its ups and downs, but they usually keep their differences out of the public eye. Reality shows are all about drama, so I knew where this was headed.

N
ow, if you saw the show, you know what happened from Season 3 on. If you didn’t, let’s just say that while there were no more table flips, there was drama in spades: everything from a huge fight at Joey’s son’s christening (where people got knocked down, pushed, and punched) to Joey charging my husband at a “healing” retreat we had gone to so that the family could learn to communicate better and get past our differences. (That went well . . .)

Here’s the bottom line. I’m not going to rehash it all. It’s all in the past. There’s no sense strolling down
that
memory lane. Let’s just say there were a lot of fireworks.

But here’s the thing. While all these arguments, squabbles, battles, and brawls may play out on national TV and make for juicy viewing, at the end of the day, this was also my life people were seeing. In our worst moments, I wasn’t thinking about the cameras, or the fame, or the exposure and shame this would bring to my family. I was thinking about how broken we were, and was reeling from the fact that people I cared about could say those words to me. Absolute shock took over: Who had we become? What happened to our tight-knit family?

I’ll be honest. When I first got to prison, I was still mad at a lot of friends and family. It was all still fresh in my mind. But once I was there, I had a lot of time to think. I had time to go back and relive things in my own head. In fact, I had nothing but time.

But then there’s that saying: absence makes the heart grow fonder. It definitely applied to my husband and me. Like many husbands and wives, I think sometimes we took each other for granted. But once we were apart, we really saw how much we meant to each other—and how much we did for each other.

It was the same with Joey and me. When I sat in my prison dorm room, alone, missing my girls, Joe, and my parents, I also missed my brother. I thought back to all the good times we had shared. How much we used to laugh! I thought about how he really was there for me so many times when it counted—like the time he asked someone who disliked me to leave a party he had thrown when she came uninvited. Why? Because he is my brother. It made me cry then and it makes me cry now, because it showed me that even though we had gone through some rocky times, he still loved me no matter what. The more I thought about it all, the more I realized that so many times we react in anger because we are hurt. We come off as nasty, with biting words (that we later regret) because we are in pain. We are trying to protect ourselves—defending ourselves to the end. So many times it’s more about being right than anything else, or trying so hard to get others to understand our point of view without understanding where they are really coming from. We hear their words, but because we are in defense mode, we really aren’t listening. But in the end, who are we really hurting? Not just people we care about so much, but ourselves, too.

Here’s the thing—it all comes back to family for me. I need to get back to my roots and where I came from.
That
is what gave me my strength in life. My confidence. Knowing that my parents and Joey were there for me no matter what was what made me the woman I am today. I was confident because I knew I had backup. I knew that if anyone bugged or bothered me, my brother would be right there for me. And of course I would be there for him. And if something amazing happened? I knew my parents and my brother would be there to share in my joy—and I in theirs—even when our little family unit changed, which is inevitable.

Joey and I had a loving, warm childhood, and then we grew up. We got married. We now have our own families. Of course things changed. They always do. Life is all about change. But what I may have forgotten along the way is that we also have to change how we view things once that happens. In my heart of hearts, I would love for things to go back to the way they were between me and Joey and Melissa, and others I have grown apart from.

I
remember being at Danbury early on and seeing fight after fight in there. Girls hurling the worst insults you’ve ever heard in your life at each other—and even going so far as to punch each other so hard that they ended up with bloody faces and bruises all over their bodies. Why? Over something one of them heard that the other said, or because one of them had cut the other in the line for the phone.

I thought,
These women look ridiculous.
For a split second, I wondered,
Is this how I come across?
While I have never given anyone a bloody nose, I have nailed people with some verbal zingers. Words I knew would nuke their hearts. Why? Because my heart got broken, so I fired back. But when I stepped back, I thought,
This is not how I want to come across. There has to be a better way.