Painless (7 page)

Chapter 12

Billy moved toward the large party tent. The day remained cool, but the heat was dizzying inside the heavy Elmo costume, and he hadn’t even applied the head yet.

According to Chuck, the party was going to be modest compared to many of the over-the-top shindigs in their neighborhood, but would still be extravagant enough so the Whitcombs wouldn’t be sent to the social leper colony.

The theme was natural science and was coordinated with the New Canaan Nature Center. Carolyn initially wanted a princess party, but Chuck nixed it. Then she negotiated a hockey party, which gained Dad’s support, but was vetoed by Mom. Aunt Dana came up with the compromise plan of natural science, and since she was paying for it, natural science it was.

When Billy arrived at the tent, he was met by his towering yellow partner in crime—Big Bird. The beak came off, revealing Chuck.

“We’re really in the dog house, aren’t we, eh?” he said with a grin.

“Tell me about it,” Billy said, itching his body like he had a bad case of poison ivy.

“You make any good new memories last night?” Chuck asked, his grin turning sly.

“Just re-living bad ones,” Billy popped Chuck’s enthusiasm balloon.

Under the tent, cafeteria-style tables were waiting for the children, a triangular birthday hat marking each place. The rest of the essentials were all there—cups, plates, napkins, and candles—all had an animal theme.

As noon approached, boatloads of children began arriving with their pageant parents. Many attempted to dress in theme. Some wore cowboy hats, some wore safari outfits, while others wore science lab coats. It appeared the natural science theme had caused confusion. Like high school, they mingled in cliques. As did the parents.

The big adult topic of discussion was the execution of the Iranian hostages, but it didn’t seem to dampen anyone’s mood. Chuck began to point out the rich and the richer to Billy. He told Billy of one party last summer where the family set up amusement rides, including a roller coaster in their backyard. Another hired a famous pop star to perform.

The highlight of the party was a live animal show, where professionals from the nature center showed off unique birds, fuzzy mammals, and scaly reptiles. Carolyn almost started a riot when, upon viewing a particularly unattractive lizard, she shouted, “Dragon!” Like shouting fire in a theater, the four-year-olds scattered in panic. Eventually order was restored, and the live animal show continued for about an hour. A scavenger hunt killed another hour.

The party culminated with a barbecue under the big tent. The princess—wearing what she termed her “birthday dress” that she wore with sneakers and a fashionable bandage on her temple—then energetically opened an endless stream of gifts.

Billy momentarily looked away from the sadistic shredding of wrapping paper and noticed an over-dressed, leggy brunette prancing toward the party like she paid for it. Actually, she did. The long curls bouncing off her shoulders, along with her breezy attitude, made her seem younger than her thirty-five years. Her Manhattan-chic look included a stylish skirt, heels, and expensive Louis Vuitton handbag. Behind her, Dana dragged a shiny red bicycle with a large ribbon on it.

Billy met her halfway. She greeted him with, “There’s nothing hotter than a man in an Elmo costume.”

“Thanks for finding me a place I could afford,” he shot back with a playful grin.

“When
Ain’t No Senator’s Daughter
publishes, then this place will be referred to as your guest house,” Dana replied with her trademark enthusiasm. “And when the movie rights sell, then you’ll own a castle like that woman who wrote Harry Potter!”

“I thought the writer was supposed to be the
out there
one and the agent was the realist with the business head?”

“Why lower expectations? It’s going to be huge. A couple of publishers have already read it. They loved it.”

“Is it true you’ve never sold a book?”

“Don’t listen to the haters, Billy, it only takes one.”

“So that’s a no?”

“I never represented you before. No matter how good of an agent I am, I needed talent to sell. Now I got the talent.”

An off-key chorus of “Happy Birthday” in the distance directed Billy’s attention back toward the party. Beth stood to the side and took pictures of Carolyn, who hammed it up for the camera.

“So how are you and Beth getting along?” Dana asked, holding back a smile as if it were a sneeze.

“How could anyone not get along with Beth? She’s so easygoing. It’s been nothing but a pleasure,” he deadpanned.

“What do you expect from twins? We’re both twenty-five, you know.”

“Are you also anal, neurotic, generally uptight, and possibly insane?”

“No, just twenty-five,” Dana said with an easy laugh, but her look then turned serious. “But do you know why she’s like that?”

“I’ve heard bits and pieces. She’s adopted, acquired some nasty abandonment issues, and then got dumped by the Boulangers.”

“She doesn’t just have abandonment issues, Billy,” Dana said. A wind picked up and she pushed her long locks out of her face. “She is the Abandoned Child.”

Chapter 13

Dana moved in like she was going to tell him a secret, even though nobody was within fifty yards of them.

“She wasn’t adopted through a traditional agency. My mother was picking up my father at the Greenwich train station on Christmas Day, almost twenty-one years ago. But what she found was a four-year-old girl wandering aimlessly along the train platform and crying.”

Billy gazed at the party in the distance. If what Dana said was true, then Beth was the same age as Carolyn when she was abandoned.

“My parents waited with Beth for her parents or guardian to show,” Dana continued. “Hours went by—nothing. So they brought her home. I was a freshman in high school at the time, and my friends and I went around Greenwich putting up flyers. Hours turned into days, and by the time we figured out nobody was coming for her, Mom and I had fallen in love with her. Everybody in the family was against keeping her, but my father could never say no to me, I was his little princess.”

Billy wasn’t surprised people like the Boulangers didn’t have to go through the proper channels to adopt the girl. He saw it firsthand with the Kleins, who never went through systems or waited in lines. But he remained skeptical of the story. “These people just ditched their kid at the train station and there were no witnesses?”

“None that we found. Beth was in therapy and hypnosis for years. For the most part, she could recall general emotions she felt, but not specifics like names or places. The majority opinion is the experience was so traumatic that she displaced the memories to a deep place where they could never be retrieved.

“The only tangible memories she had were that she came from ‘the place with the big buildings,’ which we confirmed when we found a train ticket in her pocket from Grand Central in New York. And the other was Nathan.”

“Nathan?”

“She claimed to have a brother named Nathan, who Beth described as having some sort of disfigurement. She remembers the other children mockingly calling him E.T. after the alien in the popular movie of the time. She thought their trip to New York had something to do with going to see a doctor for Nathan.”

“How many doctors could have treated a disfigured child named Nathan around Christmas time? Did you check every doctor in New York?”

The exhausted look on Dana’s face said this was not a new line of questioning. “Of course we did, and found nothing. The consensus of those with the fancy degrees was that Nathan was an imaginary friend that Beth made up to deal with the trauma. That she created his disfigurement and lack of acceptance, to play out the parallels of her actual existence. In other words, they didn’t believe there was a doctor.”

A great imagination, just like her daughter.
I’m not gonna apologize for having a great imagination.
On the surface it made sense. Imaginary friends were a common way for children to escape and reveal inner thoughts. Billy had his own imaginary friend as a child. But he could tell Dana wasn’t buying it.

“Even if Nathan is a figment of her imagination, which I doubt,” she said, “her recollection of the emotions from that day were too vivid, especially the way she talked about the scared look on her parents’ faces. A child always remembers the first time they see their parents truly scared.”

“Yet she doesn’t remember anything her parents said to her? No names, no description, no mention of where they were sending her? Just that they were scared?” It was still a little hard for Billy to believe.

Dana sighed. “Pretty much, except I guess there was some obscure law back then that a child had to be five-years-old to ride the train without supervision, because the only thing she remembered her mother telling her when she put her on that train was that she was four years old, but if anyone on the train asks, to tell them she is five.”

The recollection seemed to hit Dana like a tractor-trailer, her words now struggling to maneuver past the suddenly rugged terrain in the back of her throat. “That’s the only way we knew she was four years old. We created a birthday for her on Valentine’s Day because she brought us so much love. What kind of mother could have done such a thing to her child?”

“I often wished for a train that would take me away from my family. But in this case, the rich family rescued the abandoned girl. Sounds like a great rags to riches story. So how did it go so wrong?”

“My mom, who Beth called Mrs. B, would do anything for her. My father was always at the office and my brothers were off spreading their sense of entitlement. So it was just the three of us during my high school years. The Three Musketeers.

“My freshman year at Boston College, Beth and Mom were playing in the park—one of their favorite games was for Beth and Mom to chase each other’s shadows. They would run around for hours like school children.”

Dana’s face sunk. It was strange to see the normally carefree woman so stricken with angst. Billy put his red Elmo arm around her. It felt unwanted and awkward.

 “I always told her to slow down—she wasn’t a spring chicken anymore,” her voice trembled. “I got the call at school from one of my brothers. He was so cold when he delivered the news of her heart attack. He actually told me I shouldn’t come home until the funeral so that I could concentrate on my midterms.” A tear rolled down her perfectly made-up cheek and she angrily wiped it away, as if she refused to admit the past still got to her.

“Beth was lucky she ran into Mrs. B at the train station. She could’ve ended up with some lunatic,” Billy tried to console.

“Trust me, after my mother died, Beth ended up with a whole bunch of lunatics. I was off in college and my father remarried some plastic bimbo who couldn’t wait to get rid of her. They blamed Beth for everything, including my mother’s death. Beth did what any kid would do, she rebelled. She was only eight when Mom died, and by the time she got to high school she was a mess—the nose ring, purple hair, you name it. If it even resembled rebellion she would do it.”

Billy couldn’t visualize the ultra-conservative woman with purple hair. He viewed Beth in the distance and noticed she was actually smiling. She was snapping photos of a pack of energetic four-year-olds, who were hamming it up for the camera like a bunch of red carpet divas.

Dana fought back tears, contrasting from the festive party in the distance. “The rebellion continued to escalate and that’s when the self-mutilation started. My father tried to put her into an asylum. If it weren’t for me talking him out of it, she might be in some sanitarium wearing a straightjacket. Then ironically, my father had a stroke. We were forced to put him in a nursing home, which became the perfect opportunity for the others to cut Beth out of the family. Beverly and I paid for her college. But the drinking got bad. Thank God Chuck came along…”

As Dana’s voice trailed off, Billy noticed Chuck working the crowd in his Big Bird suit. Beth was at his side, giving off the appearance of contented motherhood. “She’s no barrel of laughs, but she seems like she got it together,” Billy commented.

“For the most part she has,” Dana said, “but the past is always lurking under the surface. I recently caught her searching for her birth parents. She said it was to learn her medical history for Carolyn’s sake, in case her fevers were related to what her brother had. But I know it’s about her making peace with the abandonment.”

Billy knew all too well about trying to make peace with the past. And when it came to a separation of a parent and child, he doubted such a thing was possible.

Chapter 14

Billy persuaded Dana to rejoin the party. Children’s laughter could be one of the world’s great medicines and he suspected Dana could use some.

As if using radar, Carolyn spotted their approach and made a mad dash toward them. “Aunt Dana! Aunt Dana!”

Dana picked up the little girl. “How is my beautiful niece?”

“I’m foe!”

“You’re almost as old as me.”

“How old are
you
, Aunt Dana?”

Her breezy laugh returned. “I’m forever twenty-nine.”

Carolyn looked at her with wonderment. “Wow, twenty-nine is really old.”

“I used to think so,” Dana said, her tears in the rear-view mirror. “So are you going to come visit me soon?”

“Will I get to ride the train?”

“That’s the best part,” Dana said cheerfully, before turning serious. “Let me see that tongue, sweetie.”

Carolyn proudly stuck it out, exposing the jagged black stitches. Dana cringed, but forced a comforting look. “Why did you do that?”

Carolyn was smart and likely realized the “having fun” answer led to further inquiry. She shrugged with contrived sadness, and replied, “It wasn’t my smartest move.”

“No it wasn’t, sweetie, no it wasn’t,” Dana said as she set the girl down.

 Carolyn then spotted the bike and began hopping up and down like she had to go the bathroom “Is that for me?”

“It sure is.”

Her mouth dropped open, forming an O, and her big saucer eyes expanded. “That’s a big girl bike!”

“A big girl bike for a big girl!”

Beth appeared out of nowhere, approaching her older sister. They seemed like they were backwards. Beth’s motherly aura made her seem like the thirty-five-year-old, while the aging-like-a-fine-wine Dana could’ve passed for twenty-five.

They embraced. “Thank you so much for helping us with the party. She loved it,” Beth said, her eyes welling with tears.

“Hey, it saved me a trip to Chuck E. Cheese,” Dana deflected.

“I don’t know how we can ever re-pay you. This meant so much to Carolyn.”

They hugged again. “You know I’d do anything for her—I love that kid.”

“But you’ve done so much beyond…”

Dana cut her off. “I can only buy so many pairs of shoes.”

As usual, they were heeled, leather, and expensive. Beth’s work boots were full of mud from the scavenger hunt. The contrast was as sharp as a blade.

“Mom—Aunt Dana got me a big girl bike,” Carolyn exploded.

“I know. What do you say, Carolyn?”

“I say let’s ride bikes!”

Beth’s head tilted in disappointment. Carolyn picked up on the error of her ways. “I say thank you, Aunt Dana?”

“Much better,” her mother said.

“So are you having fun at your party?” Dana asked the girl.

“Oh my gosh, we…” She thrust into a long tangent about animals, dragons, scavenger hunts, and strawberry milk. Then her cute cheeks drooped. “I just wish my dad was here.”

Moving behind her, still wearing the Big Bird costume, sans the head, Chuck swooped his daughter into his yellow-feathered arms.

The smile instantly returned to her face. “Daddy—you came!” She then viewed him up and down with a perplexed look. “You are wearing Big Bird’s clothes, you silly.”

As the party began to dwindle, they were approached by a portly man flanked by his equally portly kid. It took Billy a moment to recognize him; the night before was a little hazy. But then he placed him as the loud sports talk radio guy named Hawk.

Hawk hit Billy on the arm like they were long lost friends. “A different woman every time I see you, Harper.”

Billy smiled awkwardly.

“Hey, if this is your wife then I’m just kidding,” he said in Dana’s direction, laughing his obnoxious laugh.

Dana grinned sheepishly. “I’m not his wife or girlfriend, but I’m very interested in Billy’s other women.”

“Let’s just say I saw him at this Mexican joint last night and he likes the hot and spicy, and I ain’t talking about salsa, if you know what I mean.”

Dana’s brow crinkled. “You do know your child is standing right there, right?”

Hawk was oblivious. “Oh, I should have introduced you to my boy, Little Hawk. He’s as pissed as his old man that he’s missing the first week of the NFL season to look at some friggin animals.”

Suddenly Hawk began staring down Billy.

Billy felt uncomfortable. “What—you’ve never seen a grown man in an Elmo costume?”

“I swear I know you from somewhere. Harper,” he snapped his meaty fingers as if it was helping him to think. “Billy Harper, where do I know that name?”

“As far as I know, we met for the first time last night.”

He kept staring at Billy and then something clicked. “I knew it! The Amish Rifle—Ohio State—the comeback against Michigan—Rose Bowl MVP—quit like a little sissy.”

“My dad knows everything about sports,” Little Hawk said as he pulled candy from his goody bag and stuffed a handful into his mouth.

“That was a long time ago,” Billy said.

“The Amish Rifle?” Dana inquired with smiling interest.

“It’s a long story,” Billy answered.

“Lucky for you, sweetheart, Mr. Sports is here to explain it for you.”

“My dad knows everything about sports,” Little Hawk added, in case nobody heard him the first time.

Carolyn’s arrival ended the interrogation. “Billy, Aunt Dana—can you come watch me ride my big girl bike in the coldysack?”

“Why don’t you get your bike and race Carolyn,” Hawk told his son, flashing a competition glare.

Carolyn looked with annoyance at the pudgy child, seemingly remembering the “sand box incident.” “Are you gonna be mean to me?” she asked the boy.

“Nobody is going to be mean to you or I’ll have The Amish Rifle take care of them,” Dana interjected with a laugh.

“My kid ain’t afraid of anyone in no Elmo Suit!” Hawk growled.

Carolyn never met a challenge she didn’t like. “Then what are we waiting for? I’m not getting any younger!”

The Tour de Cul-de-sac ended with Little Hawk winning by default when Carolyn crashed to the pavement, badly scraping her elbows, and almost giving Beth a stroke. But Billy couldn’t help but to admire the fearlessness in the girl, who only cried because she wasn’t granted a rematch.

Following the party, at Beth’s request, Billy retrieved one of his latest versions of
Peanut Butter & Jelly
and met Carolyn in her room for a bedtime story. Her room really was fit for a princess. The cavernous area looked like an airplane hanger, taking up the entire top floor of the barn, about the size of a football field. The roof was twenty feet high and secured by large timber beams. Back in the day, it was used to store bales of hay.

Despite its grandiosity, the room was set up like a typical little girl’s room. It was filled with dolls, including mop-topped replicas of the Hanson Brothers from
Slap Shot
fame. Beside them sat half the population of Sesame Street. Beside her bed were pictures of Chuck in his hockey days, along with Carolyn’s hockey stick that she had named Mr. Stick, and her fish, which keeping with the hockey theme, was named Puck. Chuck had told Billy that the independent Carolyn would begin each night in the lonely warehouse of a room, before finding an excuse to slide into bed with him and Beth during the night.

In the story, the school bully was picking on the quiet Peanut Butter and stole her lunch money. Jelly designed a gimmicky plan to set up the bully so he would be caught by the teacher. After the bully got escorted to the principal’s office, both girls got a lecture about not taking the law into their own hands. A lesson learned. Then, later that night while they are lying side by side in their twin beds, they realized they had learned another lesson about sticking up for each other. Jelly then put an exclamation point on the story when she exclaimed, “We will always stick together!” To which Peanut Butter replied, “Stick together!” before the lights went out.

The story enthralled Carolyn. Billy shut the book and put on his reporter hat, still bothered by the “incidents” surrounding her.

“You know you aren’t going to school tomorrow, right?”

“I know.”

“Do you know why?”

“Because I made my tongue bleed?” she answered in the form of a question, as if she wasn’t sure.

“And you thought that was fun?”

“It was at first, but then everybody got mad at me.”

“Is it fun when everybody’s mad at you?”

She went into pouting mode, whimpering, “No, that’s no fun at all.”

Billy started reading another
Peanut Butter & Jelly
story, hoping to cut any potential crying off at the pass. The moral of this one was not talking to strangers. Midway through the story, Carolyn took the conversation in a completely different direction.

“Will Peanut Butter and Jelly help us if Osama Banana comes to get us?”

Billy was caught off guard. “What?”

“Osama Banana.”

“Do you mean Osama Bin Laden?” he asked, confused. Terrorism was the last topic he was prepared to discuss with her.

“You say banana funny,” she said with a laugh.

“Where’d you learn about Osama…Banana?”

“I saw it on TV this morning when I was getting ready for my party. He had a really big beard and they said he knocked down a big building.”

Billy forgot it was September 11, an infamous day of remembrance.

“Is he like a dragon?” she asked. “He looked
real
mean!”

“Nobody’s going to get you,” he said, sadly thinking that her worst enemy was herself. He was afraid the only dragon was the one inside of her.

“Promise?”

He grabbed her tiny hand and looked into her hazel ovals, trying to avoid viewing the gruesome mouth area. “I’ll keep the bad people away from you on one condition.”

She sighed dramatically. “I promise to eat all my vegetables.”

Billy smiled. “No, you promise to stop hurting yourself.”

She again looked mystified. So Billy rephrased, “Stop making boo-boos and blood. It makes your mom and dad sad.”

“I promise,” she said, then climbed up on Billy like he were a jungle gym and hugged him around his neck. Emotions rushed back that he hadn’t felt in a long time. “We will always stick together,” she said.

Billy choked back his emotions. “Stick together.”

Carolyn then pulled away, a fun-loving look spreading across her face. “Let’s pretend we’re dragons.”

They made odd sounds, pretending to shoot fire. Their laughter echoed through the cavernous room.

“You be a girl dragon,” Carolyn then said.

“I’m not going to be a girl dragon.”

“Girl dragon!”

“No.”

“Girl dragon!”

“No.”

“You’re funny, Billy,” she said and laughed her contagious laugh. It seemed like all was well in the world once again.

But like many of the other numbing agents he’d tried, Billy knew the pain was still lurking. He couldn’t help but think that something was wrong with Carolyn Whitcomb.