Painless

by Derek Ciccone

  Her eyes opened for a brief moment, before drifting back into her soothing coma.

  Billy went to Plan B. He walked to the large drapes that acted as an impenetrable fort from the bright morning sunlight. He pulled them open in one sweeping motion. Sun barreled into the room and it sure didn’t look like a 40% chance of rain. Carolyn turned onto her stomach in disgust and planted her face into the pillow.

  “C’mon, sleepy head,” he said again.

  She defiantly pulled her pillow over her head.

  Still thinking about her tongue, a strange thought popped into his head. He remembered Chuck telling him how she never complained about the deep eye abrasion. He remembered her giggle after the heavy bookcase split her head open. Billy was numb on the inside, so maybe Carolyn was numb on the outside. His fiction-writing mind then ran wild. Could she be an alien? A superhero? Beth did refer to her as an angel. This girl couldn’t feel anything!

  He reached his hand to her small leg. Her head was still under the pillow. He pinched as hard as he could.

  Carolyn turned over immediately like she’d been shot. Her hair was a tangled mess and she rubbed sleep from her eyes.

  Billy laughed at his paranoia. She felt me, but I’m not gonna apologize for having a good imagination.

  “It’s about time, sleepyhead.”

  She rubbed more sleep out of her eyes. “Hey, I’m not a morning person.”

  Her clothing was laid out on a chair in orderly fashion. There was a pair of child-size jeans, mini-sneakers with flashing lights, and a light sweater that featured a large picture of a cow on the front. It was…

  “That’s ugly,” Carolyn said with a cringe.

  Billy agreed, but the note indicated that Evelyn had knitted the sweater for Carolyn’s birthday as part of the barnyard series she’d been creating. So there was no way around it, the sweater was mandatory.

  Carolyn negotiated to tie the sweater around her waist until the ceremony, and just wear a T-shirt during the day. She won the first battle in what Billy assumed would be many throughout the day. Her T-shirt of choice had a red maple leaf on the front with the caption, Canadian Kids R Cool. Billy then tried to help brush her tangled hair. Carolyn got frustrated with his ineptness, and asserted, “I’m a big girl,” before taking matters into her own hands. She clipped on a barrette and made herself look better than Billy ever could have.

  When she finished, a curious look formed on her face. She realized her normal morning pattern had been amended. Her face scrunched as she asked, “Where’s my mom?”

  “She’s at school.”

  Face scrunched again. “Where’s my dad?”

  “Hunting.”

  “It’s just you and me?”

  “Yes.”

  Glee swallowed up her scrunch. “We’re gonna haff fun!”

  They moved into the kitchen area. Carolyn sat in the breakfast nook and glugged down a glass of strawberry milk. She needed tongue-friendly food, so Billy made his morning special—Cream of Wheat with chocolate chips melted in. Carolyn wasn’t sure what to make of it, but followed Billy’s lead. She stirred it and the white Cream of Wheat turned chocolaty brown. He then made a moat around the outside and filled it with strawberry milk. The final touch was to sprinkle sugar on the center island like he was spreading fertilizer. He warned her it was hot, especially with her tongue recently sewn back together, but she threw caution to the wind and dug in. Billy burned his own tongue on it. With a half-smile, he shook his head at her fearlessness.

  Chapter 17

  After breakfast, an arduous ten-minute ordeal occurred where Billy attempted to strap Carolyn into her car seat in the back seat of the Cherokee. Strangely, the girl who bit off her tongue for kicks, kept repeating the mantra, “Safety first!” as he continued to struggle. When he mercifully got her strapped in, they headed into town.

  They found a parking place in New Canaan town center and walked the rest of the way. It was a quintessential New England village with brick-lined sidewalks, historic looking street lamps, and rows of quaint two-story brick buildings. Rugged trees were mixed in, providing country shade.

  Carolyn struggled with the inclines of the rolling hills that made up New Canaan, but showed her usual determined grit as she fought to keep up with him. They passed antique stores, boutiques, coffee bars, and trendy bistros. When they passed firemen washing their trucks outside the firehouse, she negotiated to play on the fire trucks. Billy didn’t think it would be a good idea to be late for his first day of work, so she had to settle for a kid-sized, plastic fire-helmet offered by the firemen.

  They eventually arrived at the Shoreline Times, which occupied the second floor of a building on Cherry Street, squeezed between an old-fashioned-style bank and a cozy-looking spa called Aetheria.

  The Shoreline Times was a free local newspaper distributed in New Canaan and surrounding towns. Once a thriving gossip tabloid for the social elite, it was now often used for similar tasks as Hawk used it for. Not exactly the New York Times, but a job was a job. It published twice a week—Sunday and Wednesday—and Billy was to write a local human-interest story for each issue at little pay, and nothing resembling benefits. But he couldn’t complain, since he had no previous experience writing or reporting for a paper, and the only reason he got the job was because the editor owed Dana a favor. His first story was going to be on a local diner called Molly’s that was celebrating its 100th anniversary. But Billy had bigger plans for his second story. He planned on writing a retrospective on the Abandoned Girl, twenty years later.

  After a predictably bland lunch interview at Molly’s, Billy decided that his first step for the “Abandoned Girl Revisited” story would be to retrace Beth’s path that infamous Christmas Day. He and Carolyn would take the train to where it all began—an hour-long trip to Grand Central Terminal in New York. Carolyn celebrated the news of their train ride by letting out a loud, “Choo-choo!”

  As they waited for their train, Billy looked down at the small girl who kept fussily adjusting her toy firefighter helmet. He again wondered how anyone could abandon their four-year-old daughter.

  Billy wasn’t sure what his expectation was, but the trip into the city accomplished very little, at least in regards to Beth’s abandonment. But they did get a chance to visit Dana’s agency on Lexington Avenue, which was surprisingly busy for an agency that had never sold a book.

  Dana greeted Carolyn with an energetic hug, and exclaimed, “I love your hat.”

  Carolyn felt for her firefighter hat, as if she’d forgotten she was wearing it, and then began rambling about her day with Billy: Firefighters! Ice cream at Molly’s! Choo-choo train!

  When she finally ran out of breath, Dana turned to Billy. “I’ve been trying to write your bio. I can’t believe you kept this Amish Rifle stuff from me. Not to mention, you also held out on me with these children’s books Beth was raving about at the party.”

  That was the least of what he was holding back. “I thought I said I didn’t want to discuss my past.”

  “I know, I know. Something about a rear-view mirror, blah, blah, blah.”

  “I don’t see how my personal life has anything to do with whether I can sell books.”

  He was familiar with her marketing lecture that she always punctuated with, there’s a reason they call them starving artists!

  “I’m not going to discuss it with you—I’m going to discuss it with Carolyn. Did you know your friend Billy was a big football star?”

  “Wow!”

  “Did you know he stood up for his principles and left football to concentrate on his academics?”

  “Wow!”

  “I thought I said I didn’t want to talk about it, Dana!” Billy’s voice intensified.

  “C’mon, Billy, yesterday you were all about my family’s past, but you can’t spare a few details of your own?”

  “Life isn’t fair.”

  A smile broke out over Dana’s face. “Can you just tell me one thing and I promise I’l
l shut up?”

  “And that would be?”

  Still smiling, she asked, “I understand the rifle part was a metaphor for your strong arm, Mr. Amish Rifle. But are you really Amish?”

  “Actually Pennsylvania Dutch, but…”

  “That’s the same thing.”

  “It’s different.”

  “Did you ride around in one of those horse and buggies?

  “For your information, we had a station wagon and lived in an apartment building with electricity.”

  “You’re both silly,” Carolyn said.

  They all laughed.

  Dana took them out to lunch at a posh Manhattan eatery. They then traveled back together to New Canaan on the train for Beverly’s “going away” party. It was the same trip that Beth took alone when she was Carolyn’s age.

  When they got out at the New Canaan train station, the skies had turned threatening, looking like it was going to rain. Mother always knows best.

  Chapter 18

  A boat had been chartered to take Beverly out to her final resting place. A party at sea was to follow, which according to Dana, would mimic the way her grandmother had lived: crammed with friends, a flowing stream of alcohol, and no expense spared.

  Billy chauffeured Dana and Carolyn to the Norwalk Cove Marina, where the boat was to be launched. Carolyn requested he put on the radio and he obliged. He twisted the knob, old-school style—only the am radio worked in the Cherokee. He stopped on a station where a loud political talk show host was screeching about the Iran hostages. Should have gone in! The president committed treason by not doing so!

  Dana made a face.

  “He’s loud,” Carolyn said from her car seat in the back, putting her hands over her ears.

  Billy agreed, and maneuvered down the dial. Then a familiar voice sprung out at them.

  “Hey, that’s Hawk,” Carolyn cheerfully said. “Can we listen to it?”

  Billy didn’t want to. “I thought you didn’t like Hawk?”

  “I don’t, but I really like hockey,” she said in her do-ra-mi style. “Hawk talks about hockey a lot.”

  She was once again emulating her dad, and again got her way.

  With a crackle of static, Hawk’s booming vocals filled the Cherokee, “Welcome back for the last half hour of the Hawk on Sports show. Before I get back to the Yankee game from last night, I got a good story for you, Art.”

  Art’s job description seemed to be to agree with Hawk at all times and laugh at his attempts at humor. He also sounded like he might’ve had one too many cocktails before the show.

  “What’s that Hawk?”

  “I’m at a birthday party Sunday afternoon at my neighbor’s house.”

  “You were at a birthday party on the opening week of NFL?”

  “Don’t even go there, Art,” Hawk said and boomed a laugh. “Thank God for TiVo. Anyway, I run into this guy who I recognize, but can’t place him. Finally it hits me like a ton of bricks. Who you think it is?”

  “Not a real man. A real man would be home in his recliner with a beer and a remote, watching the NFL package.”

  “You’re cruising for a bruising, Art,” Hawk said and laughed again, “It was Billy Harper. You know, the Amish Rifle.”

  “Ohio State Billy Harper? The guy who led the comeback against Michigan like a hundred years ago?”

  Billy tried to change the station, but Dana grabbed his hand, suddenly interested.

  “The one and only,” Hawk continued. Billy could feel him smirking right through the radio.

  “Remember when he quit the next year because he was so interested in his education and that evil university—you know, the one paying for his fifty-thousand-dollar a year education with his football scholarship—was keeping little Billy from doing his biology homework?”

  “I do.”

  “You would guess such an educated man would be running a major corporation or curing a disease, right? What do you think Billy Harper is doing with himself these days?”

  Art laughed. “This must be good.”

  “Billy Harper, the one-time Rose Bowl MVP, was dressed in an Elmo costume working the party.”

  “Ouch,” Art said like it physically pained him.

  Billy felt Dana’s grip loosen on his hand. Probably to allow him to turn the station and maintain the little dignity he had left. But that’s when Art said it.

  “Wow, the last I heard that name was when we used to do that feature called Arrested Athlete of the Day. If I recall correctly, he beat his wife up real good. Pretty ugly stuff.”

  “I forgot about that,” Hawk recalled, his tone glazed with epiphany. “If half these athletes could hit the ball as good as they hit their wives, they’d be in the Hall of Fame.”

  “And then when we tried to get his mug shot to put up on the website for our Hall of Shame the next day, the police acted like I was crazy. No mug shot, no police report, nothing. It was if it never happened,” Art said.

  “Typical pampered athlete using his fame and privilege to cover things up. If that was you or I, Art, we’d be auditioning to be somebody’s girlfriend up at Rikers Island.”

  Art continued with his inebriated laughter. “Maybe it wasn’t an Elmo suit. Maybe it was a prison jumpsuit and the party was his community service.”

  They both had a good laugh at Billy’s expense, before moving on to yelling about the Yankees. Billy flipped off the radio so hard he thought he broke the knob.

  Carolyn didn’t even know his last name was Harper, so she didn’t associate the two. But Dana was another story. She pulled away from Billy so sharply he thought she might leap right out the door.

  Billy wasn’t going to defend himself, even though Dana’s silence wasn’t of the innocent until proven guilty variety. He was determined to leave the past where he felt it belonged.

  Carolyn was anything but silent when they arrived at the marina. She barricaded herself in the backseat and loudly announced that she didn’t want to go. Her mood had done a complete nosedive.

  “C’mon, Carolyn, we have to say goodbye to Great Granny,” Dana said.

  “I don’t wanna go!”

  “Why not?”

  Billy thought he knew. He was pretty sure they had underestimated her, and she really did understand what was said on the radio.

  She mustered a sad shrug. “I don’t know.”

  “Is it because you miss your Great Granny?”

  She shrugged again. “I don’t think so.”

  Dana smiled at her. “You know when somebody dies they go to heaven. It’s a really nice place.”

  She laughed, which surprised Billy. “No you don’t, you go to Sesame Street.”

  “Who taught you that?” Dana asked with a quizzical look.

  “My dad.”

  Then in a complete mood reversal she began singing, Sunny Day, sweeping the clouds away. On my way to where the air is sweet. Can you tell me how to get, how to get to Sesame Street.

  When she finished, they discovered the real reason she didn’t want to attend. She didn’t want to wear the mandatory cow sweater. But she eventually compromised, after negotiating a return trip to Molly’s the next day for an ice cream with extra sprinkles.

  Billy let out a sigh of relief, even though he knew it was only a temporary reprieve.

  Chapter 19

  Beth met them on the promenade deck of the boat that advertised itself as the only authentic side-wheeler in the northeast. She was predictably skeptical that Carolyn would make it through the day in one piece. When Carolyn ran to her, Beth instinctively felt her head for a fever she didn’t have.

  Beth met Dana with a hug and a peck on the cheek. She greeted Billy warmly, but he knew the minute she and Dana talked, he might as well pack his stuff. He would move out before he’d ever re-live the past by defending himself.

  Evelyn met them with a glass of champagne in one hand and the urn in the other, her wild orange hair blowing in the wind. She was overly tanned, having moved to Florida with
Beverly’s remains. She kept telling Beth that Beverly had left important items for her that she planned to bring with her on her next trip up from Florida. Beth’s look said they couldn’t be that important if Evelyn had waited a year to give them to her.

  Despite a steady rain, the ceremony went off without a hitch, with the one exception that the stiff wind blew Beverly’s ashes back onto the boat after they were finally tossed from over the water. But since the inebriated Evelyn kept referring to Billy as Chuck for the entire night, he doubted that she noticed.

  As the rest of the week sped by, Billy continued to be surprised that A) he still lived on the Whitcomb’s property, B) he was still Carolyn’s babysitter, and C) Chuck hadn’t returned home to shoot him.

  He couldn’t imagine Dana not telling Beth what she heard on the radio. And he expected Beth’s reaction to be swift and unforgiving; to the point that he’d be begging Chuck for a mercy shot.

  Billy would spend the mornings working on his writing—coming up with ideas for his second novel, along with the next installment of Peanut Butter & Jelly. Then midday, he and Carolyn would work in the yard. She especially liked riding around with him on the tractor, cutting the lawn. He also got his bike out of the mothballs and they would ride around the cul-de-sac. He used the evenings to write his articles for the Shoreline Times.

  Billy continued writing the retrospective article on Beth without her authorization, figuring he had nothing to lose. He used Dana as his source, also without permission. He was sure he’d soon be looking for a new agent, also.

  Chuck was to return Friday night. Billy figured that’s when the guillotine would drop on his rental agreement, and perhaps his neck. But regardless, he still had a Friday deadline for the Sunday edition. He finished the article on Molly’s by Wednesday, but had yet to finish the retrospective on the abandoned girl. He wanted it to be the best thing he’d ever written. He sat at his laptop—a Dana Boulanger charitable contribution—finishing the final paragraphs.