One Breath Away

by M. William Phelps

  Then Chris realized that Jennifer was actually trying to get him kicked out of the house. She wanted to rule the roost. If he was gone, she could have the run of the place while her mom worked.

  “You’re a racist!” Jennifer screamed at Chris.

  It was “just about every day,” Chris recalled.

  They continued to swear and yell at each other, never having a moment of peace.

  If what Chris had seen on Facebook wasn’t bad enough, he logged on to Jennifer’s Myspace pages and was horrified by what he saw there. How had she gone from such a little “sweet” girl to this “thug” wannabe, a “gangsta” chick who talked about hustling and guns and “makin’ money” on the street? It was beyond anything Chris could have comprehended in the years prior to the hiccup phase.

  He shook his head.

  Why isn’t Rachel seeing any of this?

  Rachel was, actually. Part of her, she said, didn’t want to accept how bad it was, while another part of her had been busy working and taking care of her parents, so it was easy to avoid—deny—the obvious and overlook all the outward signs that Jennifer’s life was crumbling.

  It went from Chris feeling as though he could maybe reach Jennifer and steer her back around to Jennifer hating him and everything he did. She had taken her entire life and pushed the blame on Chris. He was the fall guy for everything bad that had happened. There was nothing he could do or say that was going to change who she had become or where she was headed.

  “I would guess her promiscuity and acting out,” Ashley later commented, “was based in the fact that she was raped.” Ashley had been a witness to the rape and the threats made by the males. She felt Jennifer was locked emotionally back in that space where they had raped her repeatedly for “two years, at least.” Jennifer never grew beyond that innocent girl who was sexually assaulted and threatened. And here she was now, acting out on all of those feelings she had stuffed down so long ago.

  “She did get treatment,” Rachel said. “I did bring her to a therapist to deal with being raped.”

  “She dated only black guys, she told me,” Ashley later recalled, “because she did not trust white men after being raped by those two for all that time.”

  * * *

  Chris and Rachel had been slowly drifting to either side of the argument, holding ground, both unwilling to compromise. Chris had seen it coming. Most likely Rachel, too. And if one was to look at the situation objectively, it’s clear that Jennifer had a lot to do with the problems between Chris and Rachel, along with Rachel not being around because she had to work all the time to support the family financially.

  In his mind, that Facebook post was the “final straw” for Chris. He realized when he saw it that he and Jennifer had nothing left to say to each other. Their relationship had dissolved so completely that it could never, Chris surmised, be put back together. But he held on until the summer, hoping like hell something would change.

  Nothing did.

  “I’m leaving,” Chris said one day. He had thought long and hard about his decision. He needed a break from Jennifer and his marriage to Rachel, too. The separation would do everyone, Chris hoped, some good. He could not deal with what was going on inside the house any longer.

  Rachel cried. She had known for a while that a separation was inevitable.

  “It was very hard,” Rachel explained. “I was torn between the two. Jennifer wanted all my attention and I feel she would use me to get what she wanted, even if Chris had already said no. In return, it caused major friction between Chris and me. I felt with the way the two of them were at odds, I needed to compensate and give in more [to her]. Looking back, I’m still not sure where or when it started, but often wished it was different. It was very hard to be in the middle of two people you love who don’t get along.”

  This was a major decision on Chris’s part for a number of reasons. By this time, Chris had found a place for the family in Spring Hill, Florida, two hours north of St. Pete, just south of Gainesville, “in the country,” as Chris put it. The house there had four bedrooms. There was room for everyone. It was out of the city (“and away from the ghetto,” in Chris’s words), and so there was this one last chance to set Jennifer on the right path. Still in St. Pete, they had plans to move out to Spring Hill in the near future.

  Chris had friends and family in Tennessee. He would move there and see how things went. No promises. The only absolute was that he could no longer live in the same house with Jennifer, at least not under the terms they had been dealing with.

  “You really need to work things out with Jennifer” was a common comment from Rachel whenever they spoke on the phone after Chris moved out.

  “I know, Rachel.” Chris was terribly saddened by it all. He was torn and didn’t know what to do.

  It had been a month since Chris left. He’d had some time alone to think about the family situation with a more open and clear head. He liked the way he was feeling. A lot of that daily stress was gone. The constant bickering with Jennifer, yelling and screaming, and then the disagreements with Rachel when she got home—it all suddenly stopped.

  Jennifer did not want to move to Spring Hill. All of her “peeps,” her contacts, and, one could argue, her business were located in St. Pete, where her life had been. She would be bored in the country. That small-town girl from Vermont was gone. She was a city chick now. More than that, the plan was that Rachel would stay in St. Pete during the week with her parents, which would leave Chris (if he moved back) with all the kids, including Jennifer, and his brother, up there in Spring Hill. There was even talk of Jennifer going back to school after the move.

  With some downtime in Tennessee, Chris could clearly figure out what he wanted to do. That move they wanted to make to Spring Hill, if he decided to go back, was going to be mandatory. Everyone needed it. Everyone would benefit from it.

  “Just start talking to her,” Rachel pressed when she and Chris connected via phone one day. Chris had been gone almost two months by this point.

  Chris called and got Jennifer on the phone.

  “We need to break bread, Jennifer,” Chris said on that first day they had spoken in some time. “We really need to patch this up.” Chris explained that he wanted to work together with Jennifer, if not for their sake, for the rest of the kids and Rachel.

  Jennifer was quiet. Then: “Why would you ever come back?”

  Chris knew right there that nothing on Jennifer’s end had changed.

  “Jennifer could make me pretty speechless,” Chris said of those days. “And not many people have been able to do that with me. She was one of the best.”

  As Chris sat in Tennessee and thought about it, his mind went back to the feeling that it wasn’t as though he’d met Rachel when Jennifer was ten or a young teen; she was eighteen months old. For Jennifer, Chris was all she ever knew as a father figure. He had been in her life for fifteen years. Was the guy willing to throw all of it away?

  Jennifer and her biological father had grown closer. Rachel said that Jennifer never knew it then, but her biological father had spent time in prison for a major felony. Jennifer knew he had gone to prison, but she did not know the crime and wasn’t interested. All she wanted to do was start over with him. Yet, as Chris thought about it, he was totally taken aback by how quick Jennifer was to give the reins of her life to this man she never knew until he saw her on Today and then to treat him as a parental figure. Chris surmised it was likely because Jennifer’s biological father—someone Chris knew personally from his days in Vermont—was simply telling Jennifer everything she wanted to hear and siding with her on every level.

  Still, there was nothing he could do to stop it.

  After two months of living apart from his family, Chris felt for the sake of all the girls and Rachel, he needed to set aside his ego, any hurt feelings he still harbored, any concerns about the future, and try like hell to work things out with Jennifer.

  Rachel knew and understood how hard it was for Chris.r />
  “This family was fractured badly,” Chris said pointedly, “and I needed to repair it. I didn’t want to throw in the towel. I was prepared to go out of my way to be nice to Jennifer.”

  The guy loved his wife and kids and wasn’t going to give up.

  So he moved back. Chris made it clear that anything hurtful he had said to Jennifer, anything he had done that might have made her hate him, he was willing to change, and wanted to be a better father. Chris wanted things the way they were back before the hiccups, and back before Jennifer had become this person nobody seemed to know anymore.

  You look at photos of this family on vacation, on day trips to Disney, family outings, and you see one guy and a group of females standing, hugging, smiling, and loving one another. There’s not a spiteful gaze among them. Jennifer, in addition, was the one child smiling the brightest. She appeared so happy to be part of a family. In one photo of Jennifer and her sister Ashley, shot in 2006, they appear to be two harmless, young schoolgirls dressed in costumes, getting ready to celebrate one of the most popular kid holidays of the year: Halloween.

  Chris yearned for that innocence that had somehow been lost to be there when he returned.

  Before heading back, Chris asked Rachel to make sure Jennifer understood that she should be willing to change, too. There had to be some compromise between them.

  “She will, Chris. . . . Just come home.”

  Chris thought about it and decided it was time to reunite with his family.

  CHAPTER 46

  JENNIFER AND ASHLEY were at home, sitting on Jennifer’s bed, talking. A few of their siblings were in the room, too. They had moved to Spring Hill by this point, a big, old house Rachel and Chris had rented. Jennifer hated being there. She was so far away from the life she had built in St. Pete. She felt as though she was entirely out of touch with everything she wanted and that they had brought her out to Spring Hill as a way to tame her and keep her from her friends. As for school, Jennifer enrolled in the local high school. Yet, no sooner had she started than Rachel received a letter from the assistant principal. Jennifer had been “referred” to the vice principal for poor attendance, low grade point average, and/or insufficient credits. It was clear from the letter that Jennifer was not going to school, and the principal wanted to know if she was quitting. If so, Jennifer needed to file a Declaration of Intent to Terminate School Enrollment form. She couldn’t abandon the responsibility of attending every day. There was also some mention in the letter whether Jennifer had been “identified with a disability” and needed an “Individual Education Plan.”

  Ashley had sat and watched her sister give up on school, but also be in so much pain as she held her stomach, cried out for Rachel, and hiccupped incessantly during those weeks when Jennifer’s entire world was her condition. It was agonizing for Ashley to sit by and watch her sister, whom she considered to be her best friend, hurt so much and also quit school—which was what Jennifer ultimately decided. They were so close in age that they got along like twins.

  As Jennifer stopped hiccupping, was diagnosed with Tourette’s, and began taking medications, Ashley saw a new personality emerge for her sister on some days. It depended upon which medications Jennifer was on. It was strange. Jennifer was not herself.

  “What’s going on with you?” Ashley asked one day as they sat chatting.

  “I see a family . . . ,” Jennifer said. “A husband, wife, two small kids.”

  Ashley wondered what Jennifer was talking about. Jennifer was staring at the wall inside the room.

  “The family is all bloody,” Jennifer added. “The walls are all bloody.”

  When Ashley later talked about this incident, she spoke of how Jennifer appeared to be “delusional” on that day. Yet, as they researched things more, Ashley claimed, “Come to find out, the house [we rented] was [supposedly] haunted. A family had died in the house. A mother had put her kids inside a car inside the garage with the car turned on. The mother then shot the husband and shot herself.”

  CHAPTER 47

  RACHEL HAD KEPT as close an eye as she could on Jennifer while Chris had been away. During that time, she’d noticed some of the changes in the girl were not entirely rooted in her fragile ego, her attitude, and overall outlook on life. Something was up with Jennifer beyond all of that. By then, Rachel had heard about the “bloody wall” conversation and how Jennifer had thought she’d seen the ghosts of a family that allegedly had been slaughtered inside the rented home.

  “You okay?” Rachel asked Jennifer one afternoon.

  “I’m seeing things . . . hearing voices. . . .”

  It was the medication, Rachel knew.

  Jennifer was scared. The medication had changed her so much. On some days, she couldn’t function. It’s unclear if Jennifer was also using other drugs along with the prescribed medications. Nonetheless, the meds were doing a number on her psyche.

  Rachel took some time off from work and brought Jennifer to a hospital in St. Pete, and then found a facility closer to their home in Spring Hill. They checked her into the psychiatric ward for evaluation. It was the first time Rachel felt that Jennifer might be having a nervous breakdown.

  “She wasn’t there very long,” Rachel explained, “maybe four days or so, but the medicines that they had put her on in the months prior had made her not only gain so much weight, but messed with her mind. It was such a rough time mentally for Jennifer.”

  She seemed to be losing her mind.

  Rachel said she often wondered if the medication kept Jennifer from focusing on her school work as she was being tutored, so Jennifer decided to take the easy road of quitting school altogether.

  “I don’t know how she ever made it through that time in her life because of those medications,” Rachel concluded. “The hiccups, her problems with Chris, the meds, I don’t know how she did it.”

  One thing was clear, however: Jennifer Mee was ill-equipped to go off on her own and begin a life away from the family. As it was, she was barely home, anyway, often staying with friends, at motels, or finding somewhere to crash for the night. And yet, that’s what Jennifer was thinking about as the summer of 2009 progressed and she prepared to celebrate her eighteenth birthday with word that Chris was coming home.

  CHAPTER 48

  FROM THE MOMENT he walked in the door and set his suitcases on the floor inside the living room, greeting most everyone with hugs and saying, “I missed you so much,” Chris realized nothing had changed where Jennifer was concerned—but had perhaps even gotten worse.

  Jennifer gave him the cold shoulder. She was not happy Chris was back.

  “Hope beyond hope” was what Chris had as he stepped back into the family fold. He wanted to “fix things” with Jennifer, Chris explained later on.

  That wasn’t going to be the case, however.

  From the onset, Chris felt Jennifer did not want him there. And, indeed, for the lifestyle Jennifer had gotten used to since Chris had left, his presence was a direct threat to her freedom and ability to be able to come and go as she pleased and do whatever she wanted. Jennifer could get things over on Rachel, because Rachel had spent a lot of time outside the home. While Chris had been gone, Rachel watched the kids on most nights (when she didn’t stay at her parents’ house), while Chris’s brother helped out when Rachel wasn’t around. For Jennifer, doing her thing was easy. But Jennifer knew she could not get anything over on Chris. Her lifestyle had changed a bit after they moved north, but she was still hanging with the same people and doing drugs and involved in the “gangsta” lifestyle back in St. Pete.

  What played a major role in the demise of the family the first time was that “Jennifer never did anything insulting to me in Rachel’s presence,” Chris explained. “That played a big part in all of this.”

  When Rachel was in the house, it was “Hi, Dad! How’s it going? I love you.”

  Chris would roll his eyes. He couldn’t get Rachel to understand that it was all an act. To Rachel, “Jennifer was try
ing . . .”

  When Rachel wasn’t around, Jennifer would tell Chris, “Look, you do your thing and I’ll do mine.” She drew a clear line: “Stay the hell out of my way. I’ll stay out of yours.”

  That worked out well for Jennifer . . . until it backfired one afternoon. Jennifer was in the living room. She didn’t realize Rachel was home. Jennifer and Chris got into it.

  “Look, you’re not going to school,” Chris said. He was appalled that nothing had changed since his departure. “You’re not doing much of anything to help out around here. You’re not doing your chores. I don’t know what to do with you! You need to at least do your chores.”

  “You go fuck yourself,” Jennifer said spitefully. “I’m not doing any of that.”

  Rachel was in the other room. She heard it.

  “Excuse me?” Rachel said, walking into the living room.

  Jennifer turned white, the blood draining from her face. Her “sweet girl” image had been exposed for what it was: a farce.

  Jennifer took off.

  Rachel and Chris talked. Afterward, Rachel called Jennifer and explained. It was hard for Rachel to accept that it had come to this, but she had to do it. “You have to move out,” Rachel told Jennifer.

  Jennifer was seventeen, just about to turn eighteen.

  “Fine! I don’t want to be here, anyway,” Jennifer said.

  * * *

  As Rachel thought about it later, she realized that when they asked Jennifer to leave, Jennifer felt the leash Rachel had kept on all the girls being so short, so taut, that it contributed to Jennifer wanting to cut that cord and go out on her own. Rachel was constantly asking Jennifer, and all the girls, actually: Where were they going? Who were they going to be with? What time they’d be home?

  “All of what Jennifer did then,” Rachel said, “she was looking for the attention I wasn’t giving her. I needed to work my butt off to pay the bills.” It wasn’t an excuse, Rachel suggested, it was a necessity in order for the family to survive. “Chris was unavailable for Jennifer, partly because there were five kids he had to spread his attention out to and she was being extremely rebellious. . . .”