When Chris learned Nicole was going to spend the weekend at Billy’s, he questioned Jeanne’s decision.
“You can’t be serious about allowing these two kids to spend the weekend together alone.”
“I am.”
Jeanne didn’t want to believe Nicole was going to do anything wrong. She trusted her to make the right decisions.
Since Nicole had been working, 50 percent of her paychecks had gone to Jeanne to pay off what were “astronomical” telephone bills. The other 50 percent, Chris found out, was going to be sent to Billy so they could open up a joint savings account. Jeanne flipped when she heard about the account. Unbeknownst to Jeanne, or anyone else, by that time, Billy and Nicole had their entire life together planned, right down to what a toaster oven, linens, food, and so on cost. Billy had made a list. Itemized everything they’d need and wrote the cost next to each item. He was compulsive like that. Lists and exact amounts were important to him.
Chris believed allowing Nicole to go to Connecticut on her own fueled their desire to begin their own life together. It gave them the opportunity to fantasize about it on an intimate level. It deepened their bond. But Jeanne, in doing what perhaps many parents in the same position might, decided that if she tried to keep Nicole from visiting Billy, it would only heighten her longing to be with him. Reverse psychology. Allow her the space to explore the relationship and maybe she’ll understand on her own terms that things were moving too fast.
That afternoon, Chris, Jeanne and Nicole took off for Worcester. Patricia and Billy were already there when they arrived.
“Bye, Mother,” said Nicole.
“Take care, honey. Call me if you…well, just call me if you need anything. I’ll see you tomorrow.”
While Nicole was in Willimantic, Billy’s sister oversaw a mock wedding for the two of them. Of course, with any marriage came a honeymoon and perhaps a sexual encounter. When she returned home, Nicole wrote about it. She said she was “extremely happy” about “what happened.” She was already counting the days until they could see each other again. For some reason, she believed their next meeting was forty-five days away. It was emotionally numbing to her when she thought about not being in Billy’s arms. She wanted to be excited about the next visit, yet it seemed so far away, she had a hard time looking forward to it.
“The only time I don’t feel like complete shit is when we’re on the phone.”
Confused is an understatement to describe how Nicole began to feel after Jeanne allowed that first weekend visit with Billy.
“…I feel so f- - -ed up inside.”
What’s more, “alone” became one of her favorite words to describe how she felt being away from Billy. Even Billy’s infallible weakness for flesh did nothing to curb Nicole’s obsession with him.
“When we got into arguments and whenever he cheated on me,” she said later, “it didn’t last. We made up right away. So by the time I went down there to see him (the second time), it wasn’t about him cheating on me—it was about me being excited to be with him.”
From that first weekend they spent together alone, Nicole was satisfied that whatever Billy did was good enough for her. The problem wasn’t in his behavior, she now believed, it was in the distance between them. Now she knew for certain she needed to convince her mother, working harder at it, that her happiness depended on how often she saw Billy, that her “existence” fell on it. She planned to “pretend to be upset,” she wrote to Billy, even if she wasn’t, anytime she was around her mother. In doing that, she hoped Jeanne would “see how I’m constantly unhappy” and change her mind about working something out to be able to see Billy more often. Her mother might understand then “how much I’d give or do just to be able to hug [Billy] every day.”
Billy was now “the most incredible man in the entire world.” “Amazing,” “loving,” “humble,” “sexy,” “determined.” Nicole was plagued by the notion that “you actually love me.”
Billy had turned what should have been a relationship deal breaker into a positive reflection of the love Nicole believed she felt for him. It was a major victory. By the time he finished writing a series of letters and working the telephone, Nicole’s responses depicted a young girl feeling as though she deserved to be cheated on. That she wasn’t good enough for him. She should be lucky to have him, regardless of what he did or said.
“You’re my world…,” wrote Nicole around this time. “I miss you, baby.” She signed the letter, “Love always, Nicole Sullivan.”
Writing back, Billy suggested a more complete name: “Nicole Patricia Sullivan.” In turn, he referred to Nicole from that point on as “beautiful,” “my love,” “my wife.” He sent her poetry and short love notes in the form of haiku, if his adolescent attempt at writing could be called such. He talked about bringing her photograph to school with him “to make me feel better.”
“You belong to me….”
If Nicole put herself down, Billy poured on the charm even thicker. Nicole never had a positive sense of self-worth. No confidence. She hated her body. Thought of herself, at times, as “uncaring,” “ugly,” “stupid.” When she’d banter on about her insecurities, Billy convinced her how wrong she was. He explained one day that her “smile brightened up the world.” Then, “You have a great body.”
“But I’m fat,” Nicole replied.
“You are not! You’re sexy.”
CHAPTER 35
William “Billy” Joseph Sullivan Jr. was born on March 24, 1985, at 5:25 P.M. According to Billy, he weighed five pounds five ounces. He spent his formative years in Willimantic, a town located in the northeastern section of Connecticut, which has developed a reputation over the past two decades for its seemingly endless supply of heroin. Called “Heroin Town” by the state’s largest daily newspaper, the Hartford Courant, in a series of articles that sparked outrage from locals and public officials, while preaching to the choir of community members who believed their town was beyond repair, Willimantic is surrounded by some of the most expensive and beautiful real estate Connecticut has to offer. Billy lived on Kathleen Drive, just off Route 6, heading into downtown from Route 32, where the University of Connecticut is a mere fifteen-minute drive in the opposite direction. In a rather cute little ranch-style home set on a postage-stamp piece of property overlooking the city, Billy shared the 1,200-square-foot house—a dream of his mother’s, he called it—with his four younger sisters, two of whom are twins, and his mother, Patricia, a woman Billy called, in a school essay he wrote titled “What My Mother Means to Me,” the “base of the family,” a “superhero.”
So proud of his mother’s integrity and will to make the family work as a unit despite a life of adversity, Billy stood up for Pat at every opportunity. He viewed the woman as a fighter and survivor.
By her own admission, Pat Sullivan hadn’t been a good mother. Not even close. When she was pregnant with Billy, “I drank every day and smoked cigarettes,” she said later in court. At least a six-pack of beer, sometimes more, every day. Because of the drinking and smoking, Billy was born four weeks premature. He was “very small.” From his first moments outside the womb, Pat added, little Billy had trouble breathing, had turned bubble gum red because of problems ingesting oxygen and spent several postbirth days in an incubator.
Pat was living in Norwich, Connecticut, then, with a son from a previous relationship, and Billy’s father, William Sullivan Sr. Norwich is located east of Willimantic, a twenty-minute ride. Situated at the point where the Shetucket River and the Thames River meet, some of Norwich is seedy and run-down, even though a massive revitalization project is in the works. Weeks-old Billy, William Sr., Pat and Pat’s son lived in an apartment complex downtown. Pat said William drank every day, in excess of a six-pack of beer or more. When he got drunk, she claimed, he was violent.
One night, Pat recalled, she was carrying eighteen-month-old Billy in one arm while arguing with William over having his daughters from a previous relationship stay at the
apartment. It was too small a place for everyone. Pat had an infant. Priorities, man. Think about the kids.
Both had been drinking heavily that day. As Pat went for the door, William screamed at her.
“Come back here….”
Pat walked toward the door without responding, but when she turned around, William snuck up from behind and punched her in the face, she said “barely…hitting Billy.”
Blood poured down Pat’s forehead. William had opened a gash above her eye. Little Billy screamed as the blood spewing from Pat’s head washed over him.
It hadn’t been the first time William struck Pat, causing injury, she later claimed. He also liked to push her around and shove her into walls and doors.
After doctors put seventeen stitches in her head, Pat called the police and had William arrested. She couldn’t take it anymore. Getting drunk together and arguing was one thing; but violence was behavior she couldn’t put up with. Not with little kids in the house.
After having William arrested, Pat took off and moved into an apartment in town owned by his parents. It was above a Laundromat many of the local welfare mothers in the neighborhood frequented. By then, Billy was suffering from nightmares brought on, Pat believed, by the violent episodes he had witnessed in his young life—a continuation of the dysfunction. A cycle. Billy was constantly waking up screaming. Not being able to breathe. He developed a severe allergy to milk products and had bouts with “projectile vomiting. He wasn’t eating the way like he should,” Pat commented later.
Then asthma kicked in. By the time he was two-and-a-half, Billy had been to the emergency room five or six times.
A few days after settling into the new apartment, William called to see how they were doing. Pat said she had some news.
“I’m pregnant.”
They talked and decided to stop drinking so they could live together in somewhat of a normal environment. Pat stopped four months after learning she was pregnant. William, though, couldn’t. He continued drinking, she said, and started to hit her again.
Over the next two years, Pat said, she began to notice a remarkable change in Billy.
“As a baby, he was very excitable. Loud noises, like motorcycles going by…would always startle him…. He became very hyperactive as a toddler.”
William’s parents eventually evicted them after a problem with one of Pat’s son’s friends staying at the apartment.
With nowhere to go, according to Pat, they moved into what she described as a “welfare motel” in Groton, Connecticut, just east of Norwich.
One day, Pat, Billy and her older son drove to Norwich from Groton. It was about two months after they had moved into the welfare motel. Norwich was one of the only places in the area where Pat could do laundry. William was upstairs, above the Laundromat, visiting his parents. Pat dropped little Billy off so he could spend some time with his dad while she took care of the laundry. Her older son went to Willimantic to take his driver’s license test.
While Pat was folding laundry, she heard on the radio that “there was a fire, a big fire in Groton.”
From the pay telephone in the Laundromat, Pat called upstairs to ask William if he’d heard anything about the fire. She was worried the welfare motel they lived in might be burning down.
“Have you heard?” asked Pat.
“No.”
Pat explained what was going on.
“I’m going down there to see,” said William.
When Pat finished folding the laundry and her son returned from the Department of Motor Vehicles, she went upstairs to grab Billy and head back home. She had no idea William had done it, but he had taken Billy with him to go check out the fire in Groton.
Much of the motel had burned. William was there with Billy watching the entire tragedy unfold. Pat didn’t see Billy until later that night.
“He was really scared because he didn’t know if any of his friends were in the fire,” Pat recalled.
In the days that followed, Pat noticed a notable change in her young son’s demeanor. Billy was having even more trouble sleeping. He had constant nightmares and what he described to doctors as “death thoughts.”
He was four years old, explained Pat, and distinctively recounting thoughts he was having about being killed. It seemed odd. He was so young.
Pat put him in therapy months later after several episodes at home that proved Billy needed professional help in dealing with what had been a chaotic early life. Since Billy had been born, Pat had two daughters. One afternoon, as she was in another section of the motel room, Billy took a pair of scissors and cut off all of his sister’s hair. She was two years old. Then on another occasion, he took a tube of toothpaste and covered his other sister with it.
After a year of intense counseling with United Services in Norwich, Billy started sleeping better. His behavior toned down a bit and he stopped acting out against his sisters. He even seemed more social and calm.
So Pat took him out of therapy.
CHAPTER 36
According to Patricia Sullivan, Billy was six years old when he first mentioned a desire to commit suicide. They were driving through downtown Norwich one afternoon. At the heart of Norwich’s revitalization project over the past two decades is the city’s prized marina, where yachts and speedboats, fishing boats and Jet Skis, hang out for much of the spring and summer. It is a bustling area of the city, with perfectly manicured parks and docks. Businesses in the region thrive during summer months when beachgoers and gamblers heading to nearby Misquamicut State Beach, thirty minutes away in Westerly, Rhode Island, and Foxwoods Casino, ten minutes away in Ledyard, Connecticut, pass through.
Pat had finally dredged up the nerve to divorce William by then. It should have been done a long time ago. But she found the strength, somehow, to go through with it, and pledged to raise her kids in a healthy environment by herself. It was hard, she said, because although William was abusive and sometimes arrogant, little Billy had bonded with his father. They were close. During the months before the divorce, William had been moving in and out of the apartment and contaminating the home with the same abusive behavior he had in the past. Billy may have loved his father, but he was obviously harboring a lot of hatred, anger and emotion toward the behavior he had witnessed. It was best to get William out of his life.
No sooner was William gone for good, then Billy started acting out all over again, Pat claimed. He began “out of control behavior and violence and throwing things and hitting things and people.”
As Pat and little Billy headed across the bridge near the marina in downtown Norwich that afternoon, Billy sat contentedly in his booster chair in the backseat. While crossing the bridge, Billy pointed to the water below.
“I’m going to kill myself over there!” he said.
“Really?” Pat responded. She didn’t want to overreact, she claimed, and startle her son by announcing how odd it was that he had said such a thing. Instead, she asked, “And how are you going to do that, Billy?”
“I’m going to go up on the biggest rock and jump into the river because I don’t know how to swim.”
“Is that so?”
“The river will take me away.”
“Billy?”
“Mommy…”
“Billy, why would you want to do that?”
Billy didn’t answer. Pat later said she was “shocked” by the comment—but it proved to her that Billy needed to return to counseling immediately.
From the time Billy started kindergarten, problems followed him. Not with the curriculum or teachers, but with breaking away from the family and being able to sit still long enough to learn anything. He had trouble making friends in and out of school.
By the time he was seven years old, Billy had gone through kindergarten twice. He had four sisters by then to contend with, and Pat had moved the family into an apartment complex in Norwich.
Billy’s sisters often had sleepovers with the neighborhood girls. On one occasion, one of the girls’ brothers
asked if he could spend the night, too.
“So I allowed him to do that,” Pat said later. It might be good for Billy to interact with another boy.
As the kids played the following morning, they made tents out of blankets in an upstairs bedroom. The girls were in one tent, and Billy and the boy were in another.
Pat went upstairs every so often to check on the kids. During one trip, she noticed Billy’s face was flushed and rosy red, as if he had been running around.
“What’s going on, Billy?” asked Pat.
Billy shrugged. He wouldn’t answer.
Pat didn’t think anything of it. Just a bunch of children having fun with their imaginations, running wild, as kids often do.
A few weeks later, while Billy was in therapy, Pat said she “found out…that [he claimed he] had been molested by that boy” in the tent.
From there, Pat noticed a deeper change in Billy’s psyche. His normal antics of acting out turned more risky. He was “jumping off roofs, jumping out of trees, just in general doing very dangerous things.”
Then Pat’s oldest son moved out. Billy was devastated. He was close to his half brother and looked up to him. Here was another male leaving Billy’s life. Was it something he did? Something he said?
Kids tend to blame themselves.
Sometime later, Billy’s grandmother died. Then a friend Billy had played kickball with in the neighborhood was killed after a truck sitting on a car lift fell on him. Billy was in Elmcrest at the time, a nearby psychiatric hospital. Pat told him about the accident there, which she said was the best place to break the news. When Billy heard, he said, “I will see him and hear him and talk to him again.”
Pat took it as another sign that Billy was planning to commit suicide. He was eight years old. He stayed at Elmcrest for thirty days. Pat said he was calling the house and acting out on the phone. His anger over being taken away from the family got worse. The hospital had to routinely restrain him at times and, she added, often “put [him] in one of those little rubber rooms.”
Because You Loved Me Page 15