Because You Loved Me

by M. William Phelps

  After Jeanne got off the telephone and told Nicole about the long-distance plan, Nicole had a fleeting moment, she said, of excitement. But her mother, she claimed, couldn’t leave it at that. She had to bring up what Nicole later called in her diary the “$ situation.”

  Part of Jeanne’s argument against Nicole going to live with Billy in Willimantic centered on the fact that they were children. Between them both, they couldn’t earn enough money to live on their own. Nicole had just started working. Billy was employed by McDonald’s, for crying out loud. By his own admission, he supported his mother and sisters. What was so hard to understand?

  “Me and Billy are gonna open a joint account to save up for our future,” Nicole told Jeanne. She had stopped them from opening the account before. There was no way she was going to do it again.

  This infuriated Jeanne. She was “disgusted.” (“She did that thing with her lip…when she gets angry,” Nicole wrote to Billy that night, describing the entire day.)

  “Don’t you dare!” Jeanne warned. “Don’t you dare send money down there. Have you learned anything from me?”

  Nicole said she wanted to “punch [her] mother in the face” after that. She was devastated. Once again, Jeanne wouldn’t listen. Not even for a moment. All Nicole wanted, she claimed, was someone to validate her feelings—which she was getting from Billy in a big way. She could call Billy and carry on about her life at home for an hour. Billy never judged, talked over her or even questioned what she said.

  “He would listen and listen and listen. That’s what I loved.”

  Instead of arguing with Jeanne, Nicole ran upstairs, as she had many times during the past year after a fight, and “blared Dookie,” a CD by the band Green Day. She put the speakers in a place where, no matter where Jeanne and Chris were in the house, they were forced to listen. It was her little way of showing how frustrated and upset she was over everything.

  While in her room, Nicole lay on her bed, stared at the ceiling and thought about the day’s events. Whatever serenity she had felt before the fight was overshadowed by her mother’s unwillingness to work with her on a way to involve Billy more in their lives. Everything seemed to bother Nicole now. On top of it all, she was upset that her so-called “best friend,” Cassidy Dion, hadn’t called her in four days.

  “…And she couldn’t even come over and it’s my birthday!”

  Bitch.

  What’s more, Nicole couldn’t call Billy because he had to get up at four the following morning and open the restaurant.

  She felt totally isolated. A prisoner in her own home. No one understood. Why couldn’t they see how happy Billy made her? Why couldn’t her mother listen?

  According to Nicole, another one of Jeanne’s favorite jabs was, “You’re an average teenage girl.” Nicole hated the way it sounded. She felt her mother said it only when she had no other argument. In her mind, she was “far from” your standard teenager.

  “I’m just not like anyone I know.”

  She felt “everyone is unique,” but saw herself as being so far removed from the majority that she couldn’t relate to anyone at school.

  “I can’t stand my life.”

  But Billy. Ah yes, Billy Sullivan. He was the “only person close to me.” She worried how life would be without him. If anything ever happened to Billy, Nicole believed her “mentality about everything would change.” She often daydreamed how things would be “if Billy died,” or something “really bad” happened to him.

  “I would not care about anything…. Billy is the only thing, idea, anything in my life, that keeps me alive.”

  As quickly as Nicole carried on about other people in her life, she had no trouble berating her own ideals, branding herself at times as “pathetic” for spewing such codependent thoughts. Still, in the same breath, she’d admit she couldn’t help it. She was “constantly thinking about how [in] 2 years” from then—what a lifetime it seemed—she was going to liberate herself from Jeanne and “live [on] Kathleen Drive, Willimantic, Connecticut, and how much happier I’ll be.” Knowing she and Billy were one day going to be “happy” for the first time in her short life was the “only thing keeping me alive.”

  Billy was Nicole’s total source of inspiration for getting through the day—the reason why she got up every morning and went to sleep at night, the sole source of her being. Without him, she often wrote, she would have given up long ago.

  It was during the days following her birthday party that Nicole began to see her relationship with Billy as a sign from God. She thoroughly believed—or was blinded by the spin Billy put on just about everything he said—God had brought them together.

  “I think He knew our lives wouldn’t be absolute Heaven….”

  By introducing them, Nicole believed God had made her “life of hell” tolerable. It was His plan. She felt it in her heart. True soul mates.

  “I live my life for him,” Nicole wrote of Billy.

  She then listed the ways he had affected every moment of her day. She could be doing something around the house, or fighting with her mother. At her wretched, boring job. Talking to a friend. Or walking home from school. It was all about Billy. When she faced a situation, in a humorous twist on a popular Christian saying, Nicole asked herself not what would Jesus do, but instead, “What would Billy do?” Facing a dilemma at school, she asked herself, “What would Billy think of this? What would Billy say?” Her life centered around an eighteen-year-old who lived over one hundred miles away—a man she saw, with any luck, every three months.

  “What time does Billy get home from work?” she wrote in her journal once. “When can I stop crying?”

  In the house, when Nicole verbalized her feelings of unhappiness, Chris and Jeanne reminded her how lucky she was. She had a roof over her head. Food. Basic kid necessities a lot of other children in the world didn’t have. Jeanne worked hard to give Nicole and Drew the things they wanted. What did she really have to complain about? A boyfriend in another state? She was lucky to have a boyfriend. Even Jeanne’s friends told her: Nicole, just get through these years of being fifteen and sixteen. As you get older, you’ll understand how good you had it.

  It was that first love: how magic it seemed at the time. Nicole couldn’t get over it.

  “That’s all fine,” Nicole wrote, speaking of how those in her life told her to focus on being grateful, “but no one can see my life from my point of view.”

  There were “things,” Nicole promised, she was taking to her grave. She spoke of a time when she thought her life was “over.” She and Billy had “almost” split. She “kept asking” herself if there was a “point…of me living” without Billy. That night, when Nicole feared she had lost “the only person who ever cared,” she stayed in her room “for hours.” Tossing and turning, she couldn’t sleep. Through an endless well of tears, she “tried to find a purpose to me.” So she got up and put on a CD by Sugarcult, one of her favorite bands, specifically the song “Pretty Girl (The Way).” It described a girl in desperate need of the boy she thought she had lost: how he had taught her the meaning of love and made it possible.

  “I really just don’t know anything anymore,” wrote Nicole after writing out the lyrics of the song, “other than Billy. My only…[my] anything.”

  CHAPTER 43

  Jeanne Dominico was greatly admired by the community of Nashua. Whatever she did, Jeanne gave 100 percent of herself, despite the hardships she faced or how her relationship with Nicole fared. Time and again, the care Jeanne showered on the lives she touched inspired people, and made them understand that compassion mattered more than anything.

  “When Drew was in Little League,” remembered Chris McGowan, “she never missed a practice. I would tell her, ‘Let’s drop Drew off and go out for a bite to eat. Take some time for yourself, Jeannie.’ She wouldn’t hear of it. She stood there and watched every moment.”

  That selflessness, however, meant little to Nicole as she began to believe that no matter what s
he did, or the promises she made, none of it changed her mother’s mind regarding her moving into Billy’s house. And the more Jeanne and Nicole fought, the deeper the hate festered in Nicole.

  “I hate who you are,” she wrote of her mother in late June.

  She referred to the house in Nashua as a “war zone,” and believed her mother “stopped caring” about her feelings. Regarding Drew, Nicole viewed that relationship as unfulfilling and hopeless.

  “I could tell you I hate you…. I could put snakes in your room…. I could shit on your bed…kick your ass in front of your friends…make you bleed red.” She went on, talking about filling Drew’s room with dirt, “bashing in” his “TV,” and “showing you what it’s like to be me.” Yet, after ruminating on the notion of taking her anger out on her little brother, Nicole felt Drew wouldn’t “get it” or “care.” So in the end, even a display of outrage and violence was no longer an option.

  As far as Jeanne was concerned, in one diary entry, Nicole spoke of how she wanted to “grind” her mother’s “face in the dirt…. She’s the f- - -ing bitch….”

  When Nicole felt she had exhausted all of her potential, she made up her mind. Speaking of her relationship with Billy, she wrote quite chillingly, “We’re going to do this…. We’re going to make it clear to the world that we need only ourselves….”

  In Nicole’s view, Jeanne had exposed a nerve. And there was nothing she could do to convince Jeanne that Billy was her life.

  Or was there?

  CHAPTER 44

  In the letters he wrote to Nicole, Billy Sullivan never shared the specifics of how badly twisted his mind had become over the years, especially when he wasn’t taking his medication regularly. Shortly before he met Nicole, Billy was involved in two “domestic” episodes with family members that spoke directly to the “ailments” and mental disorders he suffered from. The first took place in April 2001. Willimantic police were dispatched to Billy’s home under a report of a “young man threatening suicide.”

  “What’s going on?” the officer asked Pat upon arrival. She looked distraught. At the end of what had been a long day.

  “My son and I were arguing,” Pat explained. “My son stopped taking his medication a while back and [became] abusive toward other members of this family.”

  Billy was beating on his little sisters. When Pat confronted him about it, he told her, “I’m going to get into trouble with the police and have them shoot me—suicide by cop!”

  “Ma’am, any idea where he is?”

  “Probably down the corner.”

  The officer eventually located Billy outside the local supermarket a few blocks away. He explained that beating on his little sisters, or anyone for that matter, was not going to get him anywhere.

  Billy must have indicated he wasn’t well, or Pat must have given police permission, because Billy was transported from the supermarket parking lot to the local emergency room for psychiatric evaluation.

  Several months later, Willimantic police were again back at the house responding to another one of Billy’s fits.

  “What’s going on now, Ms. Sullivan?”

  “I told Billy he couldn’t use the phone anymore. He started yelling and screaming at me and his sisters, and even threw a dish at the wall and ran into his youngest sister.”

  “Where is he?”

  “He took off on foot, probably down to the end of the street. He stopped taking his medication again.”

  “What’s he taking?”

  “Lithium.”

  Police scoured the area for Billy but couldn’t find him.

  After returning to the house, the officer said, “If he comes home, call us.

  Then, a little over a month after Billy met Nicole, an incident took place that seemed to qualify a later notion that Billy’s problems with anger and anxiety had escalated over time.

  “When Billy doesn’t take his medication,” Pat explained to police as they stood in her living room on June 18, 2002, near midnight, trying to understand what had happened earlier, “he becomes verbally and sometimes physically abusive toward his sisters.”

  On that day, Billy argued with one of his sisters. While they were shouting at each other, he pushed her.

  “What happened?” an officer asked Billy’s sister, who was sitting on the couch.

  “Billy got upset when I asked him about a phone call he was having. He pushed me.” According to a police report of the incident, Billy’s sister then stood up and showed the officer “red marks” on her lower back.

  “OK. Where is he?”

  “Probably down the street.”

  The officer found Billy at the local supermarket. He was standing by the front doors.

  “Fighting with your sisters again, Billy?”

  “She attacked me first,” said Billy.

  The officer got out of his car.

  “It was self-defense, man, come on.”

  “Listen, Billy,” said the officer, “you need to take your medication regularly. Obviously, not doing so results in some type of altercation with members of your household.”

  Billy listened.

  “Come on, get in. I’ll take you home.”

  As they drove up the block toward Billy’s house, the policeman spoke. “Any further incidents and someone is going to get arrested,” the officer warned.

  “I know,” said Billy. He seemed apologetic and concerned about his behavior. It wasn’t that he wanted to hurt anyone, Billy explained, but he had a hard time controlling himself when the situation got out of hand.

  When they arrived at Billy’s, the officer followed him inside, where he stood and watched Billy take his medication.

  “Someone’s going to get arrested,” the officer told all of them, “if we have to keep coming back here.”

  CHAPTER 45

  Billy planned on surprising Nicole with a visit.

  “That was always her dream,” he later told police, “for me to just show up.” To further convince Nicole that the weekend was going to be just like the others, on Thursday, July 31, Billy called her.

  “We were supposed to meet in Worcester like we usually did,” Nicole remembered later.

  Instead of Jeanne and Pat meeting in Worcester, however, on August 1, 2003, Billy pulled into Nicole’s driveway in his new car.

  Nicole wasn’t all that surprised. Billy had slipped the night before and told her that he had purchased a black car. So as soon as the car pulled into the driveway, Nicole knew it was Billy.

  “Billy!” screamed Nicole from her bedroom, running down the stairs. “Oh my God, Billy’s here…Billy’s here,” she kept shouting, flinging the door open, running out into the driveway and jumping into his arms.

  Billy smiled. He felt good about the unexpected visit. Meeting in Worcester like two adolescent kids was in the past. Anytime he had off, Billy could drive up north himself. They could see each other more often.

  Maybe it was all going to work out?

  A dream come true. Nicole believed having Billy spend the week was going to convince Jeanne he was a “great guy” and they could build a wonderful life together. Later, Billy claimed it was Jeanne’s idea from the start.

  “My girlfriend’s mother,” he wrote to a pen pal, “was the one who invited me to New Hampshire.” He continued, saying he had always gotten along with “my girlfriends’ mothers because I always treated their daughters with respect,” before admitting, “[but if] they only knew” what went on “when the bedroom doors shut.”

  Billy liked Jeanne, he said.

  “But we had our differences. And I kind of like…tend to, uh, push them to the side.”

  He was convinced Jeanne wanted him to move to New Hampshire if he was serious about Nicole. Chris later said that was untrue.

  Billy never considered it. He had responsibilities back home, mainly his mother and sisters. He was the man of the house. They counted on him. Living in Nashua was out of the question.

  Obviously, Nicole was excit
ed about seeing Billy. As usual, they had been arguing, mostly over not seeing each other enough.

  “I was miserable without him,” Nicole said later. “And knowing that he was so far away made it that much worse. I couldn’t function normally without him.”

  After Billy got out of his car and exchanged greetings with Nicole, she helped him get settled inside the house. Jeanne’s best friend, Amanda Kane, had purchased a house, and had been moving in over the past few days.

  “We’re going to help Amanda unpack tomorrow,” Nicole told Billy as she showed him around her house. “I was there this morning.”

  Amanda had moved everything into the house, but had boxes piled up all over the place. Being Drew’s godmother, she was also close to Nicole. Whenever Nicole talked about Billy, she seemed excited and happy. Amanda had heard so much about him, she wanted to meet him simply because she knew how happy he had made Nicole.

  “Sounds good,” said Billy.

  Later that night, after Chris and Jeanne got home, Amanda called. She was exhausted and hungry. She had been moving and unpacking all day.

  “Jeanne, can you and Chris bring by something to eat?”

  “Of course, Amanda,” said Jeanne.

  Chris and Jeanne took off and left Billy and Nicole at the house by themselves. Jeanne warned Nicole several times that she didn’t want Billy in her room. Nicole had painted a huge mural on the ceiling of her room, “Nicole and Billy Forever,” and had what was a shrine of photographs of him all over the place.

  The next morning, Saturday, August 2, when everyone woke up, there was Nicole sleeping on the floor next to Billy, who was on the couch. Nicole had taken pillows from one of the other couches and made a bed on the floor. Billy, Chris said later, had his hand resting on Nicole’s head, as if she was on a leash.