Little Girl Blue (47 page)

Although Karen confided in Evelyn regarding her illness, the two never spoke specifically of anorexia. Despite her attempts at honesty, Karen refrained from using the words “anorexia nervosa.” Frenda Franklin recalls, “She just didn't like those words.”

L
EAVING BEHIND
the pieces of her broken marriage, Karen set forth on a year-long recovery mission, relocating to New York City's Regency Hotel in January 1982. Manager Jerry Weintraub was acquainted with the owners of the hotel and arranged for Karen and Itchie Ramone (by then married to Phil) to share a two-bedroom suite with a living room and kitchenette. Itchie secured a private telephone line, in addition to a big screen television with video machine. Karen's weekly TV appointment was every Friday night with prime-time soap opera
Dallas
, while Itchie's must-see was
Dynasty
.

Monthly hotel bills were upward of six thousand dollars, not including room service tabs and phone bills. Although Karen was known to be a penny-pincher, she felt that these expenditures were for the most part justified. Therapist Steven Levenkron received one hundred dollars for each hour-long session five days a week, totaling two thousand dollars month. “I liked Levenkron, at least in the beginning,” Itchie says. “He was the new kid on the block, but he did have some answers. No one really knew why someone would get the disorder or how to treat it. We didn't have answers to any of our questions about the disorder, so we were really looking to him to quote ‘save' her.”

Arriving at Levenkron's office at 16 East Seventy-Ninth in Manhattan, Karen weighed in at an alarming seventy-eight pounds. Although her family cited 1975 as the onset of anorexia nervosa, she felt its
inception was a more recent occurrence. From her therapist's brown leather sofa, Karen explained how her anorexic behaviors began “
the day she walked
away from Menninger's after leaving Richard there.” In a 1993 interview the therapist explained, “She had to take this brother who she loved and lock him up in a psychiatric hospital. . . . That's where she equated the beginning of her anorexia.”

A week into their daily sessions, Karen admitted to Levenkron she was taking an unfathomable number of laxative tablets—eighty to ninety Dulcolax a night. The ingestion of large quantities of laxatives did not surprise Levenkron. In fact, it was a common practice for many anorexics. “For quite some time, I was taking sixty laxatives at once,” admits Cherry O'Neill. “Mainly because that was how many came in the box. . . . I would ingest the entire contents so as not to leave any evidence.”

What did stun Levenkron was Karen's next casual disclosure. She was also taking thyroid medication—ten pills a day. He was shocked, especially when she explained that she had a normal thyroid. He demanded she bring him the bottle, which she did during the following session. Dated August 17, 1981, the prescription for Synthroid had been dispensed by Newport Center Pharmacy and issued in the name of Karen Burris. Realizing she was using the medication to speed her metabolism, Levenkron immediately confiscated the vial and remaining pills. Of all the terrible forms of self-abuse he had witnessed with his patients, this was the first case of thyroid medication abuse he had seen in his dozen years in the field.

K
AREN AND
Itchie enjoyed this time together at the Regency Hotel and took advantage of what oftentimes seemed like a recurring sleep-over between teenage girlfriends. “OK, so who would your perfect guy be?” Itchie asked.

“Mark Harmon,” Karen answered, referring to the actor with whom she enjoyed a couple of dates in the late 1970s.

Although Harmon was in show business, he was not a “Hollywood hoo-ha” as Karen referred to some men. According to Itchie, “Mark
would have been the absolute perfect guy with all the qualifications on her list. He was a star in his own right but really down-to-earth, and he was basically a family guy, which was exactly what she was looking for. But to tell you the truth, I don't know that Mark could have ever survived the sharks around her.”

With notebook paper and pen in hand, Itchie jotted down a list of the qualities Karen desired in a man. “We were writing down every single little thing that she wanted in a guy as a mate or as a partner,” Itchie recalls. Obviously Karen was somewhat separating herself emotionally from Tom Burris, and rightfully so. Her requirements were similar to those she had expressed before her marriage to Burris, but she was determined to never be taken advantage of again. She still desired a man who was articulate, bright, intelligent, and witty. He had to be good looking and be a spiffy dresser. She wanted someone who hailed from a good family and preferred someone who was not in show business. He could be a celebrity but only if he was unpretentious. But above all she wanted someone who would love her unreservedly and unconditionally.

As she settled into her new surroundings, Karen again phoned Cherry O'Neill, who was relieved to hear she had finally taken the first step toward seeking professional help. She was also pleasantly surprised to learn Karen went so far as to remove herself from Los Angeles and what she calls “the ever-present pressures of the music and entertainment business, as well as the expectations of family, agents, managers, and record company executives.” But O'Neill believed New York City was just as fast-paced as Los Angeles. “I really felt like her being there was not enhancing or complementing the recovery. She would have benefitted from a more pastoral, less urban, more low-key environment where she would have no alternative but to slow down and focus on herself, her health, and her recovery.”

Cherry was also concerned with what she knew of Levenkron's therapeutic approach, which she explains as an effort to have his patients “develop something of a dependence on him as they wean themselves from their family of origin or spouse who may have contributed inadvertently to the eating disorder.” In Karen's case it seemed that both family and spouse had aggravated her situation.

According to Levenkron's 1982 book,
Treating and Overcoming Anorexia Nervosa
, the patient must become totally dependent upon the therapist. “
The therapist must develop
a care-taking relationship with someone who views relationships as always competitive.” This sort of dependence was not easy for Karen. She was more comfortable offering care and concern to others. Receiving care seemed to leave her feeling helpless and somehow unworthy. O'Neill tried to encourage Karen, even though she knew Levenkron's plan would take much longer than she had allotted. “She had entered therapy with an agenda and time frame in mind that did not allow for that process to run its course. Once the patient has transferred their dependence onto him, he tries to teach them how to create their own sense of identity, and he helps them disengage from their dependence on him with new behaviors, habits, and thought patterns in place. But that takes a lot of time!”

K
AREN RETURNED
to Los Angeles for two weeks in April 1982. Most who saw her thought she looked dreadful, but despite her haggard appearance she seemed quite energetic. She even took time to cut several tracks with Richard at A&M Studios during the visit. In what became her final recording session, she laid down work leads for two new Carpenter-Bettis tunes, “At the End of a Song” and “You're Enough,” in addition to a Ruby and the Romantics oldie, “Your Baby Doesn't Love You Anymore,” and a Roger Nichols composition entitled “Now.” Richard felt Karen sounded as marvelous as ever, despite her ill health and frailty, but hindsight reveals a weakness to her vocals. Her interpretation, phrasing, and enunciation were beautiful—near perfection, in fact—but something was missing from the timbre.

Frenda tried her best to reason with Karen, citing her voice and the need to keep it healthy and vibrant. “Kace, you've been so lucky for so long,” she told her. “But you're going to ruin this gift. I don't care for myself. In fact, I wouldn't care if you never sang again. You have enough money to live on for the rest of your life. It's not for any of those reasons. It's for you. I think you'll be lost without it. If you don't eat something, one of these days you're going to open your mouth and nothing's going to come out!”

When she returned to New York Karen took every advantage of the beautiful spring weather and began a new exercise routine—to and from her sessions with Levenkron—a brisk two-mile round-trip walk. This was yet another method to burn extra calories. Occasionally she would stop by a needlepoint store she'd found on Madison Avenue. Sometimes she was recognized on the street and asked for her autograph, but to those who had not seen Karen in a number of years she was nearly unrecognizable. Comedian David Brenner, who worked with the Carpenters in Las Vegas, was enjoying lunch with a friend at an outdoor café on Madison Avenue one afternoon. “Hi, David,” he heard from a passerby on the sidewalk near his table. Brenner looked up and smiled, said “hello” to the woman he assumed to be a fan, and returned to his meal. “But, David, it's me,” she interrupted. “We worked together!” Bewildered, he looked up again but had no idea what this stranger was talking about. “It's me, Karen,” she said with a laugh. Brenner then recognized the voice and smile.

“Karen!” he said as he stood to hug her. “I'm so sorry. I didn't
recognize
you. You've lost a
lot
of weight.” She didn't reply to his observation but explained she was visiting friends in New York. “Great, well, let's have lunch sometime,” he said.

“That's about as stupid a thing to say to an anorexic as could be said—‘let's have lunch,'” Brenner says, “but I had no idea she had this disease. Ironically, it was the last time I ever saw her.”

Former Carpenters manager Sherwin Bash saw Karen in New York in mid-1982 as well. He was walking through Central Park South when he heard a familiar voice. “Shermine Bush!”

“
She would never call me
Sherwin Bash,” he explained. “It was always ‘Shermine Bush.'”

Bash turned around to see Karen running to meet him. “I took her in my arms and gave her a kiss,” he recalled. “She had her sweater and her jacket and everything on, and through it all I could feel the bones. She said she was doing fine and that she was at the point where she was well aware that she was a victim of anorexia. She said she was doing better and she was under a therapist's care.”

In her daily calls to both Frenda and Agnes, Karen reported on life in New York City and her recent visitors. Anticipating her daughter's
call, Agnes would always answer on the first or second ring. The two talked at length, but Karen rarely spoke with Harold. “Agnes never once asked Harold if he wanted to talk to Karen,” Evelyn Wallace recalls. “She just talked and talked and then—bang—she'd hang up the receiver.” On one occasion, Harold answered Karen's call from the office. “Well, just a minute, let me get your mother,” he said.

“Oh, no, no, no, Dad,” she replied. “You're the one I want to talk to. I
never
get to talk to you. Please stay on the line.”

Evelyn suggested Harold take the call in the privacy of the music room. She knew if Agnes discovered Karen was on the line she would surely take the phone away for herself. That afternoon, the two were finally able to enjoy a long-overdue conversation between father and daughter. “I think that she really loved her father,” Wallace says. “She didn't have to say anything, but you could tell when she was around him. She just had this happy look when she'd talk to him, and it was always with the sweetest voice. I know she thought the world of her dad, but with her mother, that was another story.”

According to Frenda, Harold did his best to compensate where Agnes was lacking. “He really, really, really loved her,” she says. “If she had never sung a note he loved her. Pudgy or whatever, he loved her.”