Because You Loved Me

by M. William Phelps

  When he was released, Billy seemed a bit more calm. But was it really him, or the mixture of medications he was now on? Pat’s medicine cabinet at home was seemingly transformed into a pharmacy: There was Risperdal, Depakote, Ritalin and Prozac. Then lithium and BuSpar, Zoloft and Zyprexa. Prexadone. Clonidine and Elonzapene. Neurontin and Thorazine. Not all at the same time. But doctors worked to find the right cocktail that would allow Billy to live a somewhat “normal” life.

  During the spring of 1994, no sooner did it seem things were beginning to settle down when the mayhem started again. Billy was older and bigger. Even stronger. Pat had respite workers come to the apartment to help her with the kids. Billy went after them one day with a baseball bat and threatened to swing. After waving the bat near one of the workers’ heads, Billy charged at one of his sisters’ bicycles and demolished it in a fit of rage.

  Pat lost the state’s help after the incident.

  So Billy was sent back to Elmcrest for another thirty-day stay. After Pat brought him home and he continued the same behavior, she put him in Newington Children’s Hospital. He had become part of the psychiatric hospital revolving-door syndrome. Anything doctors tried was akin to putting a Band-Aid on a cut that required stitches. The bleeding slowed, but never stopped completely.

  When he got out of Newington, Billy started hitting his sisters and running away. By the time he turned eleven, in 1996, he had been admitted to two more hospitals for the same behavioral issues that had plagued him throughout the past six or more years. Counseling had an ambivalent effect; Billy was getting nothing out of it because he failed to participate, especially if Pat sat in on the session. On top of all that, Billy was now being disrespectful to his teachers, cursing and threatening them, starting fights with other students, getting expelled, throwing things at school officials and students.

  His life was out of control. He was an emotional Titanic. The slightest comment he didn’t agree with set Billy off into a fit. Some people were scared of him, while others felt sorry for him. Pat was frustrated and feared there was nothing anyone could do.

  So she petitioned the state of Connecticut for a probation officer. Billy had to meet with the guy twice a month and discuss his behavior. Now he was accountable, on some level, for everything he did.

  After that, Billy calmed down at school, but he was still acting out at home. With five kids and no child support, Pat contemplated going back to school herself so she could find a decent job and get off welfare. However, she couldn’t keep a babysitter long enough because Billy was so out of control.

  In March 1998, an incident took place that showed how deep-seated Billy’s problems were, and, more important, where his emotional problems were rooted. He was sitting in class one day when he looked out the window and saw a truck drive by the school. He knew his father worked for an appliance company as a truck driver. Billy believed his father still wanted to see him, but for some reason couldn’t. Or was being told to stay away.

  Staring out the window, watching the truck drive by the school, Billy got up from his desk and ran outside.

  “Dad,” he yelled, “Dad” as the truck drove away from the school.

  School officials were called. They went after Billy as he chased the truck. After catching up with him, they convinced Billy to return to school, where he started acting crazy, “kicking and screaming and yelling.” The school called the local hospital and had Billy committed.

  The hospital felt Billy was so out of control, so far removed from reality, that the nurse reportedly gave him a shot of Haldol, which, by its pharmaceutical name, Haloperidol, is often used to treat schizophrenia in children suffering from hallucinations, manic phases, outbursts of aggression, agitation, disorganized and chronic, psychotic thinking.

  Thus, Billy went through another phase of stays at psychiatric hospitals all over Connecticut. He was arrested twice during one stay for fighting. His longest residence turned out to be a year at Riverview Children’s Hospital in Middletown, Connecticut, about an hour’s drive from Willimantic, where Pat and her daughters were now living.

  Within five years, it seemed Pat was right back to where she had started, as far as Billy’s emotional well-being. One step forward turned into three steps back. Billy needed help. Desperately. But it was clear that no matter what type of help he received, none of it worked.

  With that, Pat threw up her hands. She had no idea what to do.

  CHAPTER 37

  Billy chose a name for the place he and “his goddess” lived: “Our Own Little World.” The atmosphere Jeanne created for Nicole at home, Billy described, was “Her Own Little World.” In Billy’s world, Nicole was, of course, queen; he, obviously, king. Although it was only the two of them in the fantasy, any outsider that stepped into his world had to unconditionally love them both. It was a prerequisite for, as Billy saw it, “the only world that mattered.”

  Some sort of childhood fairy tale. The more intimate Nicole and Billy became, the more genuine their fractured dreams of being together materialized. Billy wrote the story, titled “Heaven,” as part of an English class assignment at Windham High School (where he would have headed into his senior year during the fall of 2003—a year, he explained later, that would have been only six months long because he had earned enough credits to graduate early).

  For the most part, “Heaven” focused on a “beautiful girl” that had “changed [Billy’s] life.” It was a life, he said, cloaked in a “constant” state of “worry and fear,” much like what Pat had gone through for a decade or more. Nicole had walked into Billy’s world and put her mark on everything he did, making many of his “hopes and dreams…come true.” He described her as the person who was “always smiling when we are together.”

  According to Billy’s story, Nicole had the ability to “change your mood from depressed to happy” through the simple act of a smile. Even hearing her voice from so far away on the telephone was enough to make him “happy,” or so he claimed. When a person knows someone like that “perfect angel, nothing and nobody” can stand in your way or bring you “harm.” You have a shield around you. A coat of arms. There is no chance of affliction. Billy said the best days of his life were with Nicole—and they were ahead of them. Even if they had held each other in some sort of silent restfulness, well, it was enough for him. That’s all he needed.

  Near the conclusion of the story, Billy talked about spending the rest of his life with Nicole: “No one” could “stop” them. Friends. Family. Jobs. Jeanne. Nothing. They would marry one day; he was certain of it. They would even raise a few kids, but only “after we have [a] college education and…a good job.”

  CHAPTER 38

  Ten days before Halloween, on October 21, 2002, Billy and Nicole celebrated five months and eight days together. They hadn’t seen each other in quite a while. Nicole was upset over not knowing exactly when they’d see each other again.

  “I f- - -ing hate school,” she wrote.

  It wasn’t just the work or daily grind; it was the school itself. Now more than ever she wanted to move to Connecticut and live with Billy. New Hampshire offered her nothing. She had talked herself into going against Jeanne’s wishes, believing that life in Connecticut—regardless of the obstacles—was better than any life she could ever have in New Hampshire.

  Days later, Nicole mentioned to Billy the possibility of her mom taking a new job in Massachusetts. It was close to an hour’s drive away, she explained, which opened up the opportunity for them to move.

  “We’d be that much closer,” Nicole excitedly wrote.

  She talked of having new friends, “other than Cassidy,” and how nice it would be to live closer to Billy.

  “S- - -,” she said about the move, “I didn’t realize how good that really would be.”

  Soon after, Billy and Nicole got into a conversation on the telephone in which Billy said something about Nicole “not caring” about life in general, or their relationship. Billy didn’t like hearing things like
that, he said. It bothered him. He didn’t want Nicole to be down. It was wearing on him.

  Stay positive. Think good thoughts.

  “It hurt,” wrote Nicole, the next day, to hear Billy say she didn’t care.

  During the call, Billy had said, “I think I want to break up with you for a while.”

  It wasn’t working out quite as Billy had planned. The distance between them was too far. Nicole’s insecurities and low self-esteem were too much. He couldn’t handle the drama anymore.

  “I’m not sure about the relationship, Nicole,” Billy went on to say during the call. “If things don’t change, I don’t know, I’m ready to say good-bye.”

  She knew it was “obsession,” she wrote to him later that night, but at the same rate, she didn’t care. “You are my world, Billy.”

  The obsession she had displayed was frightening Billy. He didn’t want to be someone’s “world,” after all. It came with way too much pressure and responsibility.

  “It wouldn’t be permanent,” suggested Billy.

  Nicole felt her “heart had been ripped out” when Billy expressed a desire to take some time off. She didn’t “see a point to [her] life anymore.” She described Billy as her “backbone,” “my heart,” and “air.”

  It was clear Billy was concerned about Nicole’s recent behavior. He feared she was fanatical in an eerie way, and it scared him. He swore he didn’t want that type of power over another person and explained it was turning bizarre for him. Nicole admitted that what had started for her as “love” had indeed turned into an obsession, and even if Billy didn’t “return” that love, she said, she’d still love him back. It didn’t matter how he felt. He couldn’t get rid of her.

  She begged Billy for forgiveness and promised she’d work harder at making the relationship what he wanted it to be.

  “I just hope you feel the same way.”

  It didn’t take Billy long to get over whatever bothered him—and perhaps it was a plan of his to further control Nicole. Nonetheless, a week after he and Nicole had had a major blowout, Billy sat in class on November 13, 2002, and wrote her a poem titled “Keeper of My Heart.”

  It wasn’t Keats or Emerson, but it explained how Billy felt about the person he described as “the most beautiful girl” he had ever seen, “the keeper of my world.”

  He further expressed a loneliness he felt for life in general and how Nicole filled that solitary void. He wrote how comfortable he was with Nicole and then mentioned their future: “Five years from” that “moment” he promised they’d “still be together.” And people would “wonder” how their love had survived for so long.

  They’d show everyone. What they had, Billy was certain, was not puppy love—and everyone would soon know it.

  CHAPTER 39

  As Thanksgiving 2002 approached, Billy and Nicole realized they had made it through what had been the roughest, most emotionally trying, period of their relationship. Despite almost losing him, Nicole’s obsession with Billy grew. She felt closer to Billy now than she ever had. And as she fell deeper, Nicole developed a sizable resentment for her mother that blossomed into pure hatred. The problems she had with Billy, she was convinced, weren’t her own doing: It was all Jeanne’s fault. If her mother could just understand how much Billy meant to her, if she could give in and allow them to be together the way they wanted, then everything would be all right.

  Billy accepted the way Nicole felt. Obsession. Love. Companionship. Long-distance affair. Whatever it was, he promised he was now in it for the long haul.

  In Nashua that year, early November was gloomy and “dark.” It rained for a few days and Nicole convinced herself that the weather was an abstract response to her feelings. The heavens were speaking to her through the conditions outside. Everything seemed to mesh. Karma. Fate. Whatever you want to call it. One feeling fed off the next. Her surroundings set the tone and atmosphere of her life.

  One afternoon, while sitting in class staring out the window, Nicole observed that the trees had lost their leaves. There was no wind, she noted. Everything appeared “still” and “just looks dead.”

  Perfect. That’s how her soul felt, too.

  Anything Nicole wrote in her journal centered around Billy and the fact that they were apart more than they were together. She yearned to “be with [him] all the time.” As she put her feelings down on paper, however, it became apparent that the “chances of that happening” were so far removed from reality that she should at least try to let it go. Any time away from Billy—even if she was in school counting the hours until she could run home and call him—was “suffering.” She found it “sad” that she didn’t have anything else to “cling” to besides Billy. But she didn’t care. She spoke of the last time they were together, “when you were holding onto me,” which made her feel “safe,” as they slept together in each other’s arms at Billy’s house.

  Pure ecstasy and bliss.

  Whatever Billy hand-fed Nicole had worked. She admitted that she felt nothing toward anyone else. She “hated” it, she claimed, but didn’t “have a choice in the matter.” She understood her life was “being planned out for me without my consent.” She had no control over the choices other people made for her. The “world” didn’t “care how” she “felt.”

  Jeanne didn’t take the job in Massachusetts, and it hurt Nicole to think that she wasn’t moving closer to Connecticut. There was no way, she said, she could be happy in life without Billy. Jeanne not taking the job was just one more defeat in a long list.

  “It’s just not possible.”

  Over and over, Nicole mused over their last visit, describing not how lucky they were to be able to see each other, but how much the separation hurt. She and Billy were hugging. Both had tears, she said, running “down [their] cheeks.” Billy looked into her eyes, “I love you so much, Nicole.”

  “I love you, too, Billy.”

  It was as if she had sat down to write a summary for a teenage love story. So powerful was the pain, Nicole alleged, she said she could feel her heart “hurt.” As she looked out the window that last time they parted and the car drove “farther and farther away,” she realized neither of them could stop the pain. It was out of their control entirely. She could still smell him on her clothes during the drive home and it “killed” her “because you’re not here and I’m not there….”

  During the first week of December, Nicole said, she felt “indebted” to Billy for the “happiest” she’d ever been. Knowing he pledged to spend the “rest of his life” with her made her “speechless.” She was “alive” for the first time. Thinking about it gave her a “warm and fuzzy” feeling. It was the “sweet things” Billy said to her over the telephone. She had never experienced that type of “true love.” Billy, she insisted, had the “power to change anyone’s mood.” He was unselfish in the way he allowed her to talk without asking for anything in return.

  “You just give and give and…”

  Billy had made such a powerful impact on Nicole’s everyday existence she offered to “give” her “life” in turn for his happiness. Even if “they,” explained Nicole—meaning Jeanne and Chris—kept them apart, it wouldn’t change anything. She’d wait until she was eighteen and then run away with Billy anywhere he wanted to go.

  “Love will prevail over everything.”

  She signed the letter, “Love always, your wife, Nicole Sullivan.” As a postscript, Nicole explained a daydream she had. Her family had “lots of money.” She didn’t “have to go to school anymore.” Her mother had agreed to let her move into Billy’s house. She called it “the perfect life.” But as the bell rang and she came out of it, reality saddened her. She couldn’t understand how she had “lived” years without Billy. It just didn’t seem possible to have a life without him.

  The next visit was planned for December 27. Several weeks prior, Nicole started counting down the days. “Twenty-four…left,” she wrote on December 3. Pat was supposed to drive Billy to Worcester. Bil
ly was going to spend the weekend in Nashua. Nicole was excited to show him her home. She was even going to start a babysitting job at Donna Shepard’s “soon,” she said, which was going to help her earn enough money to buy the love of her life a Christmas present.

  The following day, after announcing only “twenty-three days left,” Nicole promised Billy they’d play “doctor” when they were together again in Nashua. She joked about needing treatment because she was so “sick” of “school.” It was going to be hard to have sex, she explained, at her house, but she promised to find a way. “It’s just whether or not you want it to happen.”

  Then, explaining how bored she was with school, “CUM and save me! Or just cum inside me.” Her way of lightening the mood, apparently.

  By the second week of December, Nicole was back to her old self again. Depressed and lonely. Nobody, she complained in a letter, “not even Cassidy,” knew or cared how helpless she felt without Billy. No one could relate. Even so, within the confines of self-pity and desperation she was falling back into, there were moments of positive reflection. She realized, for example, that her mother “understood sometimes” that she was going through a rough period. She also noted that what Pat and Jeanne had done—meeting each other in Worcester—was a move in the right direction—that Jeanne was, in a way, not totally giving up on Nicole’s love for Billy and need to see him. Yet, as quickly as she acknowledged her mother’s quasi-acceptance of the relationship, she dressed her sentiments in self-centeredness.

  “I’d kill to be able to move down there….”

  Trying to rationalize a potential move to Connecticut, Nicole told Billy she’d get a job after moving into his house. She’d help clean the house, too. Do errands. Even treat Pat and Billy’s sisters with respect (something Billy, in his letters, viewed as inflexible, a deal breaker). Whatever it took, Nicole was prepared to do it. Her mother, she kept insisting, was their biggest obstacle. Jeanne needed more convincing. They needed to work harder on Jeanne.