Because You Loved Me (17 page)

Just before Christmas, Jeanne and Nicole met Pat and Billy in Worcester. Billy was supposed to have his license by then, but he didn’t have enough money or a car. He needed to work more hours, he told Nicole.

“Soon,” he promised. “I’ll have it right after the holidays.”

Billy’s stay in Nashua during Christmas turned out to be inconsequential, at least from Jeanne and Chris’s perspective. He seemed like a good kid. Rather harmless. There was an eccentricity and independence about him, certainly. But he came across as quiet and reserved. He had issues. That much was clear. But it wasn’t anything to alarm Jeanne or Chris.

In February 2003, Nicole spent the weekend in Connecticut. Once again, the separation anxiety she experienced when they parted overtook her emotions. She cried during much of the two-hour trip home. If Jeanne had hoped the visits helped her daughter understand that a long-distance relationship was destined to fail, it wasn’t working.

When Nicole returned to Nashua, she had a fight over the telephone with her father, Anthony Kasinskas. After the call, she ran into the garage and screamed. “The whole world is against me.”

Drew had a punching bag hung from one of the rafters. Nicole gave it a good workout.

“My dad was awful,” she wrote to Billy that night.

The only flowering moment of what she described as “not the best day” came when she was able to call Billy and talk about it.

“No one ever listens to what I have to say, Billy—not even my mom. But
you
do.”

No matter what happened throughout her day, Nicole felt she could call Billy and tell him about it. She was under the impression everyone around her was “shutting her out” and excluding her from conversations about her life. The whispers between Jeanne and Chris. The private discussions. Nicole could almost feel the tension in the house, as if they were planning something behind her back.

Billy helped her cope. She “treasured” that about him. Still, it was clear that her low self-esteem drove the ebb and flow of her daily life.

“Without you, Billy, I’d feel as though I were nothing…. You are my motivation for
everything
.”

After the winter months broke and the chilly mornings of spring 2003 began, Nicole tried to come up with a way to convince Jeanne that life wasn’t worth living without Billy. For months, Billy and Nicole had gone over every scenario possible that could put them together. Nicole decided it was best if she just came out with it and explained to her mother that she and Billy decided she should move into his house in Connecticut. It was the only way. Who knew, maybe Jeanne, if she saw how weighed down her daughter was by the situation, would give in.

In a letter, Nicole explained to her mother that she was going to “put [it] as blatant as possible: I want to move in with Billy.”

Then she talked about how unhappy she was at home, the fact that she had no friends, and “well, we all know how
this
family life is.” As if rationalizing the situation somehow gave her the upper hand, she then wrote, “Think of it this way: there will be no more fights about using the phone line….” The phone bills would be “reduced greatly.”

Jeanne later explained to Chris what she was thinking as she read the letter.
OK, sure, move in with Billy so we can save some money on the phone bill.

“Is she really taking herself seriously, Chris?”

“Apparently she is, Jeannie.” Chris shook his head. He didn’t know what else to say.

As a consolation, Nicole promised she’d call home every day. The move, she explained, was going to actually strengthen their mother-daughter relationship.

“I don’t want to live here anymore.”

Nicole knew it hurt Jeanne to hear her speak with such candor, but it had to be said. Her life revolved around Billy. Nothing was going to change how she felt.

She further explained how writing the letter made her hands “shake”—not from the fear of punishment for expressing her feelings, but from how happy she could be if she and Billy were together. So close to fulfilling her dream, it was so within her reach, Nicole said she couldn’t stand it anymore. It was all she thought about. Every minute. Every day.

Nothing else mattered.

Ending the letter, Nicole put it all on Jeanne in one last effort: “My fate lies in your hands.
Please
let me be happy.”

According to Nicole, after Jeanne read the letter, she became angry. Nicole was upstairs in her room talking to Billy on the telephone when she heard her mother
thump
her way up the stairs.

“Shit, here she comes. I think that’s my mother, Billy. She read the letter.”

Nicole said Jeanne screamed at her: “You’re my child! You’re
not
leaving this house until you’re eighteen. And that is that!”

“Mom—”

“Are you out of your mind?”

Nicole sat and listened as Jeanne went up one side of her and down the other.

“Once you turn eighteen, young lady, you can do whatever you want. But for now, you’re mine until then.”

“Are you finished?” asked Nicole.

“I was expecting that,” Nicole said later, telling jurors about her mother’s reaction to the letter. “I was, I guess, I was sad in a way. But it wasn’t surprising in the least. And I don’t know, to be honest, at that point, I don’t think I even wanted to leave my mom that bad yet.”

One of the reasons why Nicole’s life at home appeared so disenchanting was that she had set the bar of happiness out of reach. Nothing else, “except him,” she wrote in her journal the day after the argument, would suffice.

Nicole agreed later that, without realizing it, she had provoked most of the arguments with her mother.

“I always thought I was right. I always thought that everyone else was wrong and I was right. I thought I was so open-minded, but I was ignorant.”

Billy hadn’t helped matters. Around the same time, he reached out to Jeanne in a letter, again begging her to allow him to spend more time with Nicole. In a near scribble of words, Billy described a dream he’d had fifteen minutes before penning the latest missive to Jeanne. It was he and Nicole, of course, living together happily. Everyone in their lives was happy with the decision. But when he woke up and realized Nicole was “108 miles away,” he said he “nearly cried.”

A while later, Billy sent a second letter. In March, close to his eighteenth birthday, he said he wanted to drive up to New Hampshire and spend the weekend. He had just gotten his license. Things were going to be different now, he promised. He asked Jeanne for her permission—“please, please, please”—to see Nicole.

Jeanne laughed, Chris said, when she read the letter. “Give me a break.”

Then Billy had an idea. He had already discussed it with his mother, he wrote to Jeanne.

“I’d like Nicole to spend the summer down here.” In much larger penmanship, “
PLEASE
!” For two months while school was on summer hiatus. The time together could help them cope with having to live so far apart. He promised to treat Nicole with “all the respect in the world.” He said she would “never be depressed when she’s with me.” He encouraged Jeanne to call him if she had any questions, or wanted to discuss the matter (or the letter) further.

“Now he’s out of his mind,” Jeanne explained to Chris.

Then, addressing Nicole, “No way. Not a chance. Get it out of your mind.”

And so it seemed that whatever Billy and Nicole had asked for, they were laughed at and told no. To them, it was as if their love was some sort of a joke to everyone. Nobody saw how their lives revolved around each other. What else could they do? Whatever they said, any idea they mentioned, was quashed by Jeanne.

She just wasn’t “getting it.”

In May, celebrating the first anniversary of their relationship, Billy’s mother met Jeanne in Worcester, and Billy spent the weekend in Nashua. He had his license. But still no car.

When Billy left, Nicole fell into the deepest depression she had ever experienced. She was now entirely convinced that without Billy, life wasn’t worth living.

Speaking about the relationship at that point, Nicole later said, “It was intense. He was my world…. He led me to believe I was his world.”

For their one-year anniversary on May 13, Nicole sent Billy a Garfield card. She addressed it to “Billy, The Most Incredible Man Ever.” Despite how bad she viewed her life at home over the past year, Nicole claimed it was the “best year” of her life. Part of it was being able to plan out the rest of her life with Billy. She chastised the non-believers who claimed long-distance, teenage, Internet romances couldn’t work.

“The day I turn eighteen,” she promised, “and I’m there…permanently in Connecticut…. This is only the beginning.”

She thanked Billy and said she “love[d]” him “forever…Nicole Sullivan.”

It was vital to Billy that he plan out their lives on paper. Nicole guessed it was important because he had grown up so poor. Billy had expressed many times the desire not to repeat the cycle. Because of this, Billy badgered Nicole about what type of job she was going to get when they moved in together.

“I need to know,” Billy asked one day, “so I have a better idea of how much money we’ll make.”

“I don’t know, Billy.”

“Anything. Any random job. Come on.”

“I don’t know. Jesus.”

Billy got excited.

“Certain percentages will go into certain accounts.”

Nicole listened, but could have cared less about the future. She wanted to see Billy now. Tomorrow didn’t matter.

“We’ll have certificates of deposit. Stocks. And just everything.”

“Wow.” Nicole was being sarcastic.

Here was Billy talking about stocks and bonds, comforters and dishware, and Nicole was just concerned about spending more time with him. A simple visit. When would they see each other again?

Billy put great value on the future. He thought about it all the time. Near the end of the school year, he received a letter from President Bush in response to a letter he wrote as part of a class assignment. Regardless of how Billy’s life turned out and the mental illnesses his doctors claimed he suffered from, Billy was smart, maybe even intelligent. His grades were well above passing, and in high school, he rarely got into trouble. He had even joined the bowling team one year.

Billy’s letter to President Bush and the White House’s response was printed in a special collection of essays written by Windham High School students titled “Hero in Town 2003.” An introductory note to the response Billy received from the White House praised his efforts in the community and dedication to “his family.” The magazine was developed by the school as a response to the
Hartford Courant
’s series of articles the previous year titled “Heroin Town,” which centered on the growing drug and prostitution problems infecting the region. The 136-page self-published magazinelike booklet had short biographies of those in Willimantic who stood out as concerned members of the community: coaches, business owners, neighbors, friends of the school who, the booklet stated, had helped make the town “a caring community of compassion and benevolence.”

Billy’s writing was featured on two separate pages. The first was a compassionate, well-written piece about his mother.

“After everything that has happened to me,” wrote Billy, explaining how his father had abandoned him and then his grandparents died and he developed “emotional troubles,” he claimed “one person has stood by me: my mom.”

He called Pat “a hero” after talking about the “sacrifices” she had made for the family, “thanking” her for all she had done in spite of life’s setbacks.

Billy said Pat had “told us about mistakes she made…in hopes we won’t repeat them.”

Farther along, Billy spoke of how “she sticks by her children at all costs,” then explained how “hard” she “tries” to “make the right decisions.”

It was apparent Billy loved his mother. He wasn’t concerned about the misfortunes they had faced together. He yearned for the perfect family unit. It was implicit in the tone he used in his writing at school, letters to Nicole and other girlfriends, and the remarks he later made. He had an inherent desire not to repeat the dysfunction he had witnessed growing up—and he was determined to see it through.

The editors of the booklet called Billy “heroic.” Mostly for his “concern” over, and “involvement” in, what was taking place on “the national front.” Billy had educated himself in politics. He had strong opinions about the world.

Signed by President Bush, a form letter was sent from the White House. It thanked Billy for writing and encouraged him to view his job as a student as one of the most valuable vocations in America: “Study hard, remember the values passed down from your parents and teachers, help others in the community, and make the right choices.”

Ending the letter, the White House offered a few Web sites to help Billy better understand the country and where it was headed.

“Set goals throughout your life. By striving for excellence in your endeavors you reflect the spirit of America…. Mr. Bush joins me in sending our best wishes. God bless you and God bless America.”

In “Hero in Town 2003,” Billy’s yearbook photograph appeared below a reproduction of the president’s stamped signature. In the photograph, Billy looked wide-eyed and manic. With his shaved head, thin lips and handsome manner, he appeared to be one more high-school student battling an acne problem. He did not smile.

Billy’s Kathleen Drive neighbors in Willimantic later spoke of Billy as a “good kid” who was always “polite and respectful.” Billy wasn’t an unruly child, parading the streets of his neighborhood like a hoodlum, on the lookout for trouble around every corner, egging houses at Halloween and wrapping trees with toilet paper. He kept to himself and, like many kids, did chores in the neighborhood for money: shoveling snow, cutting grass, weeding flower beds.

Most recalled Billy walking to work in his McDonald’s black slacks and white shirt. Some called him an “eager kid, friendly, but a little shy.”

At some point, Pat cosigned a loan for Billy and he bought a Chevy. He “loved” to just drive kids in the neighborhood and his sisters anywhere they wanted to go. He had even allowed his sisters, he explained later in a letter to a girlfriend, to drive his car in the parking lot of the local supermarket and had a ball scaring the hell out of them by “driving 90 miles an hour” on Route 6. It was a thrill for Billy to watch them grab the dashboard and scream, “Stop it, Billy. Slow down!”

From his letters to Nicole and other girlfriends, along with his behavior, it’s clear Billy Sullivan, during late spring 2003, led two vastly different lives: a well-mannered student dealing with emotional problems in a positive way, and a desperate lover trying to convince one of his girlfriends’ mothers that her daughter’s happiness depended on them spending more time together.