Painless (3 page)

Chapter 3

In the late afternoon, the hungry movers took a break for lunch. Billy sat with Carolyn at an umbrella-covered table on a wooden roof-porch that was built atop the cottage, while Chuck grilled deer meat from his last hunting trip. He went into great detail about how he defeated the deer in an epic one-on-one battle, leaving out the tiny detail that he possessed a high-powered shotgun and the deer was defenseless. It was reminiscent of when Billy tried to fight the Kleins, his former in-laws.

 Chuck described the taste as gamey, which Billy soon learned was another word for
pretty disgusting
. Losing interest in the food, Billy viewed the extensive grounds of Bevelyn Farms from their perch, and exclaimed with admiration, “This place is amazing.”

Chuck expounded that the main house had been a milking barn for cows. And back when the farm was originally converted to dairy, the cottage was built to be an icehouse to store the milk, which explained its thickly insulated walls and few windows. He went on to mention that when he and Beth moved in, the cottage still had an “ice chute” that jetted from what was now Billy’s loft bedroom. But they had it taken out when Carolyn began using it as a slide.

“The converted barn takes up seven-thousand square feet and uses over a thousand gallons of oil to heat the thing in the winter!” Chuck detailed.

Billy had trouble evoking sympathy for the filthy rich. “Why is it called Bevelyn Farms?”

“Beth’s grandmother, Beverly, was the owner. Years back, she divorced Beth’s grandfather because of,” he performed air-quotes with his hands, “her
good friend
, Evelyn. They bought the farm with Beverly’s divorce settlement, moved in together, and named it after themselves.”

Billy smiled with surprise. “Really?”

“Brokeback Mountain had nothing on Bevelyn Farms,” he said with a hearty chuckle. “When Beverly died last year, Evelyn decided she couldn’t bear to live here without Beverly, so it was willed to Beth. We couldn’t turn down a chance to raise Carolyn in a place like this.”

“Great Granny’s ‘going-away’ party is in two days,” Carolyn exclaimed.

Billy was confused. “I thought you said she died last year?”

Chuck interjected, “Beverly’s wishes were to have her ashes tossed into the Long Island Sound within forty-eight hours of her death. But Evelyn refused to part with her, and hijacked her to Florida, where she now lives. It took a year of heavy negotiations to get her to finally hand over the urn, so the ceremony is slated for Monday.”

“But you’ll be on your hunting trip.”

Chuck smiled wryly. “Funny how that worked out. But luckily you’ll be here to stand in for me.”

Billy knew beggars couldn’t be choosers, so he didn’t quibble. Instead, he turned his attention to Carolyn. She couldn’t eat solid food, so her lunch consisted of a bowl of barbecue sauce that she washed down with big gulps of strawberry milk. All Billy knew about the tongue injury was that it had something to do with the “incident” in which she was expelled from nursery school, creating the need for someone to watch her in the afternoons.

Neither father nor daughter seemed to want to talk about it, but Billy finally had to ask, “What happened to your tongue?”

“I bit it—they had to sew it back on,” she casually stated.

“You bit off your tongue?”

“I tried to trick the other kids in school that I was Dracula, and pretended I was gonna suck their blood. So I made blood go down my chin. But then everybody got mad.” She shrugged, looking perplexed. “I was just havin’ fun.”

Billy didn’t know what to say.
Biting off your tongue is fun?
But it did explain why she was no longer welcome in school.

She didn’t seem to want to dwell on the incident, and skillfully changed the subject, “Billy…last night…in my room…a big dragon was there.”

“Wow, that’s scary,” he played along.

“But he didn’t know that fireflies were hiding in there and they got in a big fight!”

The tale continued getting stranger, before Chuck stepped in. “Carolyn—what did your mother and I tell you about fibbing?”

Carolyn sighed. “I’m just not gonna apologize for havin’ a good imagination.”

The men couldn’t help but to laugh. Proud of herself for making a funny, Carolyn showed off her big toothless grin. But the gruesome tongue was still lurking in the shadows.

Chuck explained to Billy that Carolyn believes fireflies fight off dragons, and she makes him help her collect them each night before she goes to bed.

“I’ll bet a girl with such a good imagination likes movies. What’s your favorite movie, Carolyn? I’m guessing
Sleeping Beauty
or
Lion King
,” Billy said.

She pointed proudly at her shirt.
“Slap Shot!”
she shouted, followed by a pretty good imitation of the eccentric, optically challenged Hanson Brothers, who played hockey enforcers in the movie. “Put the foil on, coach.”

“You watch that movie?” Billy asked, surprised.
Slap Shot
was a 1970s cult-classic about a minor league hockey team called the Charlestown Chiefs, starring Paul Newman. Not exactly age appropriate.

“It’s my favorite. But don’t worry, Billy, I cover my ears when they say the bad words,” she said, putting her tiny hands over her ears, peek-a-boo style.

He smiled. “You play hockey?”

“I play, but I’m not as good as my dad,” she said in her excited do-ra-mi cadence.

“You played professionally?” he asked Chuck

“He was a goony,” Carolyn blurted.

“A goony?”

She put her little dukes up like she was ready to spar a few rounds with Ali.

“Oh, like the enforcer,” Billy caught on. The goon’s job description has always been to protect his teammates, often by use of force. With Chuck’s size, Billy was sure he performed well in the role.

“Eighteen years in the minors and I have the aching joints to prove it,” Chuck added proudly.

 Billy was going to mention that he was once the star quarterback for Ohio State University and the MVP of the Rose Bowl, but he doubted Chuck would believe him, and besides, it seemed like a different lifetime. He chose to remain quiet while Chuck quizzed his daughter on the important elements of life.

 “What’s icing?”

 “When one team hits the puck out of their own zone and it crosses two lines.”

 “How many minutes do you get in the penalty box for high sticking?”

She stuck up two fingers like she was giving a peace sign.

 “That’s my girl, eh.”

Chapter 4

As they moved the final items, the sun began to sink behind the woodsy surroundings, turning the late afternoon into a Norman Rockwell painting. They first unloaded Billy’s computer stand and modest television. They saved the heavy bookcase for last.

 Billy and Chuck were struggling to set up the computer when they heard the crash. Billy was under the computer stand with a flashlight, trying to find the right plug for the USB attachment. He dropped the flashlight and banged his head.

 When he got outside, Chuck was already on the scene. There was no way to know why Carolyn tried to pull the bookcase off the back of the Cherokee by herself. There was also no way to know how she did it, but the rope used to secure it to the back of the truck was the probable culprit.

 The bookcase rested fiendishly on top of her, only her small head was visible. Blood flowed like Niagara Falls. Most troubling was that there was no scream—no sign of life. Billy stood motionless, staring at the bloody scene in front of him.

Chuck, kneeling by his daughter’s head, turned and shouted, “Billy!”

But Billy remained in a trance. They used to rave back in his quarterbacking days about how he always remained calm under the pressure. “Cool as a cucumber,” was the common term of praise. But right now Billy was cracking under the weight of the pressure like he was the one trapped under the heavy object.

 “Billy—c’mon!” Chuck shouted again.

 The light suddenly went on and Billy sprung into action, sprinting to the accident scene and helping to lift the bookcase off the little girl.

 Carolyn remained in a fetal position, the blood continuing to flow from her left temple, painting her once-white Charlestown Chiefs T-shirt a shade of crimson.

Chuck ripped off his shirt and held it over the gash.

 Billy was relieved to see her eyes open. She looked more stunned than anything else. Once it was determined that she was still in one piece, Chuck began the reprimanding. The parenting books might tell you to apply a calm approach, but it wasn’t their daughter who was almost the lead story on the local news.

 Once he made his point, he pulled her into his arms. As father and daughter embraced, Billy was drawn by a strange “what’s the big deal?” look on her bloodied face. Billy ran into the cottage and retrieved a wet cloth. He quickly returned and dabbed it on her wound. When he touched the raw cut she didn’t even flinch.

 “Are you okay, princess?” Chuck asked her as he inspected the wound.

 “I’m better than the bookcase,” she replied, viewing the multiple pieces that were strewn across the lawn like driftwood.

 “I thought I told you the heavy stuff was for grownups?”

 “But I…”

 “No buts, Carolyn, you need to listen to me,” Chuck again turned stern.

 “I just wanted to help,” she whimpered. Her face tensed, and then the tears began to flow.

 “What do you say to Billy?”

 “I’m sorry about the bookcase, Billy,” she sniffled.

 “I’m just glad you’re okay,” Billy said and again dabbed her wound. Still no flinch. “Didn’t it hurt?” he asked.

Carolyn looked up at him with a clueless daze, crocodile tears continuing to stream down her face.

 Beth arrived in hysterics. She grabbed Carolyn away from Chuck and inspected her head. The gash wasn’t pretty. A vein popped out of Beth’s forehead. “What happened?”

 “I broke Billy’s bookcase, but I’m gonna give him mine,” Carolyn said.

 Beth glared at the two men. “Where were you two?”

 “We were inside and…” Chuck ventured into the rough waters.

 “Inside?” she cut him off. “You left a three-year-old alone around heavy objects? Even for men, you two take the cake!”

 “I told her to leave the heavy stuff alone,” Chuck helplessly flailed.

 Beth looked indignant. “Oh, you told her? Well, that should’ve solved the problem. Have I mentioned that she’s three years old?!”

Carolyn tried to plead her case that she was almost four, but was ignored.

 Chuck attempted to make one last case, but received a strong, “I don’t want to hear it.” He wasn’t going to win this battle and wisely retreated.

 Beth then turned to Carolyn, and her tone calmed, “Why don’t we go get that cut cleaned up?”

 “Can I get a Big Bird Band-Aid?” Carolyn asked with surprising excitement. Her tears dried up like the Sahara.

 “We’ll see.”

 Beth held the little girl’s hand as they walked into the sunset. Carolyn held the rag over her gash with her free hand.

From a distance, Billy heard Carolyn’s joyful giggle. He couldn’t help thinking that something was off. And not just because she found joy in an accident that would’ve sent most kids to the emergency room. It was the unnaturalness of her reaction. It reminded him of a movie he once saw where an alien accidentally landed on Earth and tried to assimilate itself into society by pretending to be human.

But then Billy remembered it wasn’t an alien who fell to Earth in the movie—it was an angel.

Chapter 5

After a long day of moving furniture in the heat, Chuck suggested Mexican food, while Billy craved anything that would remove the gamey taste from his mouth. Chuck also conceded that there was a good possibility that Beth had locked him out of the house after the “bookcase incident.” So they passed over the New Canaan border into the neighboring city of Norwalk and ended up at a Mexican restaurant/bar called Durazzo’s.

They drove in Chuck’s Chevy Silverado pickup truck, which melded better in the more blue-collar Norwalk, although Chuck warned that Durazzo’s still attracted the New Canaan yuppie crowd on Saturday night. He explained that he wasn’t a fan of the place, but bartended there a couple nights a week and could eat and drink for free. He joked that it still might be too expensive on his budget.

Billy was caught off-guard. “What are you talking about?”

“To make a long story short, we have no money.”

Billy suddenly realized there might be some suspense to this story after all.

Chuck continued, “I don’t want to get into the messy details of how the Boulangers cut Beth out of their family. It took a lot of blood, sweat, and tears to get past, and now Beth is…” He paused, searching for the right word.

“Numb to it,” Billy filled in the blank. He’d become an expert on numbing the pain.

Chuck nodded. “That’s a good way to put it, and I hope she stays numb. But anyway, Beverly and Dana have been the only real family she’s had for as long as I’ve known her. Beverly left us this house, but she liked to live extravagantly, so the estate came with a lot of debt. And I’m not even going to get into what the housing market has done to the value. Dana has helped us out a ton, but we still struggle to survive each month.”

Billy realized there was a lot more to this story, but he of all people wasn’t going to dig into somebody’s past. “But if that’s the case, don’t you need the four grand you could get from renting the cottage?”

“I’m working two jobs. Laying floors during the day and bartending here at night. Beth went back to school and she can’t even take the classes she needs because we can’t afford a babysitter, and Carolyn getting kicked out of school sure didn’t help things. We only live in one part of the house because we can’t afford to heat or air-condition the rest of it. Our cars are in the shop every other week. And if you were wondering, that’s Dana’s BMW parked out front. She loaned it to us last week because the starter went in my truck. Yes, four grand a month would help a lot.”

“Then why even consider me?”

“You were the first person we interviewed who seemed like a real person. I could use the money, but given the choice, I’d choose for Carolyn to grow up around real people.”

“Maybe if my book ever gets published I could pay you back.”

“You do know that Dana has never sold a book, don’t you?” Chuck snickered.

That was news to Billy.

They passed through the crowded bar that featured a mariachi band, before exiting into a patio area. It was practically empty—most people not willing to take-on the record heat. A mister was trying to cool things down, but having little effect. They took a seat at a circular table with a yellow umbrella sponsored by José Cuervo tequila, one of Billy’s favorite numbing agents for the pain.

“She likes you, ya know,” Chuck said.

“Who?”

“Beth. If she didn’t, you wouldn’t be here.”

“She has an interesting way of showing it.” Billy said, eyeing Chuck suspiciously. “You’re telling me that Beth really wanted me to rent the cottage?”

Chuck grinned. “Not buying my ‘you’re the first real person’ story?”

“No offense, but I get the feeling that Beth gets the final word on all issues in the Whitcomb household. If Carolyn is the princess, then she’s the queen.”

“Carolyn and I did fight for you,” Chuck came clean, “but Beth might be the most overprotective parent on the planet—which I love her for—so despite her lip service, she had no plans of ever really hiring a babysitter for Carolyn. Mother Teresa could’ve showed up with references from the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, and she would’ve found fault. So the idea of leaving her daughter with a strange man with a vague past—no offense—would take a miracle to get approved.”

“So who was the miracle-worker working on my behalf?”

“There is one person outside of myself that Beth would trust Carolyn’s life with, and that’s Dana. And after the bookcase debacle, she might be the only one left on that list. Beth might not always approve of her choice in boyfriends, but the only reason you’re here is because Dana went to bat for you,
big-time.
” Chuck’s face turned rigid. “So don’t you do anything to harm that trust. Understood?”

Billy swallowed hard as he nodded. “So what makes Beth so overprotective of Carolyn?”

Chuck’s face remained deathly serious. “Beth has abandonment issues from her family and sometimes overcompensates with Carolyn.”

“What I’ve learned from my experiences with the rich and fabulous, is that Beth and Carolyn will probably be better off without them.”

Chuck sighed. “I wish it were that simple. You see, Beth wasn’t a blood Boulanger. She was adopted. Then when her adopted mother died,
that
family turned on her. So she felt abandoned by two families—birth
and
adopted. She never wants Carolyn to feel that, so she grips a little too hard sometimes.”

Billy was again surprised, but covered it with a smile. “I guess she picked the wrong kid to be overprotective of. Carolyn is fearless. She pulled a bookcase on her head and didn’t even miss a beat. Not to mention, she bit off her tongue to get some laughs from her classmates. Even Ashton Kutcher wouldn’t go that far to pull off a prank.”

Chuck laughed with admiration. “We call her the Boo-Boo Machine. I’m sure you saw the burns on her hands.”

Billy nodded.

“They’re from last Fourth of July when she grabbed the barbecue. But that was nothing compared to the first week we moved in here, last winter, when she did a full sprint into the wall and knocked out her teeth.”

“I noticed some nasty scars on her arms, also.”

“You should’ve seen the suspicious looks we got the last time we brought her to the emergency room.”

“Did it surprise you that she didn’t even scream when she pulled that bookcase on her head?” Billy couldn’t get it out of his head.

“She was more scared than anything. You see it all the time when kids crash their bikes. They seem fine, but then they realize what happened and go into a delayed cry.”

Billy wasn’t buying that one—the bookcase would’ve hurt an elephant—but he played along with a smile, “And they say I’m hardheaded.”

“What can I say, she’s tough as nails. A couple of months ago these older brats in the neighborhood conned her into playing in their sandbox. To make a long story short, they shoved sand into her eyes and mouth. The sand caused an abrasion on her cornea. She never complained, but her vision seemed off, so we brought her to the eye doctor. The doctor was astonished at her pain tolerance for such a deep cut.”

“Sounds like she takes after her dad.”

Chuck sadly shook his head. “Except my wife has succeeded in turning her into a girl. Do you know what she asked for her birthday?”

“She told me—a big girl bike.”

“Besides that.”

“I don’t know, what?”

“A dress and a Barbie doll!”

Billy chuckled. “You’ve definitely lost her.”

“I’m not dead yet, she’s still the best street hockey player in the neighborhood.”

“Speaking of which, is
Slap Shot
really her favorite movie?”

Chuck’s Hulk-like chest shot out with pride. “There’s not even a close second. She can recite every line.”

“She’s very bright for her age. Maybe that’s why she has trouble in school. I once read that Einstein was so bored with school he became disruptive and got kicked out.”

“She can tell you all the planets in the Milky Way and interesting facts about them at age four. I’m thirty-five and all I know are a few Uranus jokes and that Pluto was a dog. She takes after her mother.”

“You said Beth is going back to school. What’s she studying?”

“Her adopted mother, Mrs. B, was a political science professor at Siena College up near Albany, before the Boulangers moved to Greenwich. And Beth wants to follow in her footsteps. She attended Siena also—at the same time I was playing hockey up there, which is how we met—but had to leave when Carolyn came along and never finished. And like Mrs. B, she’s a political junkie, so don’t bring up the situation in Iran unless you’re ready for a fight.”

“The situation in Iran?”

Chuck looked at Billy as if he were a space alien. “The hostages...like on then news every night. Are you really that out of it?”

Billy shook his head. “I guess I am. The only Iran hostages I ever heard of were from back during the Carter Administration. Are these some sort of retro hostages from the past?”

Chuck’s gaze turned troubled. “Hostage from the past. That’s an interesting way to put it, because the past happens to be holding my wife hostage. She blames it every time Carolyn has an incident in school or gets a fever.”

“I’ve found that if you live in the past it will suck the life out of you,” Billy spoke from experience. “And never look in the rear-view mirror because the past will always be gaining on you.”

Then Billy looked up to see his past walking directly toward them.