"A Second Chance At Forever" by Dave
Based upon the motion picture "Frequency".
Dedicated to the memory of Karen Anne Carpenter 1950-1983.
Foreword…
This is a work of pure fiction. It is meant in no way to impugn the memory of this beloved superstar, rather, it's in the realm of "what if", and is meant to tickle your imagination. Also, it's a rewrite of the story from my memory as I originally posted it on Rick Henry's "Carpenters Online" three years ago. Consequently, there will be things that I forget to include and things that weren't in the original.
Before May 29th, 2004, I had no interest in the Carpenters at all. I knew the ending of the story and nothing else. That night, I dreamt of Karen for the very first time. She was extremely angry at me, and I didn't understand why.
On June 8th, Venus transited the Sun, and as I watched it before beginning a drive to Columbus, something happened. I began to get this story, a story that would consume my thoughts until the complete story was posted on Carpenters Online. That would take until Friday, June11.
I deleted it in the fall of 2005 for one reason: I had come to believe that Richard was offended. Thanks to Tim, wj7, and Rick, I have attempted to re-create this dream.
When I wrote it the first time, I attempted to create a character, but the only way that the story would come out sounding right was to write it first-hand. As a result, there is a lot of my life in here, but you, the reader, are allowed to divine where fantasy ends and reality begins. That's what makes writing so much fun!
Enjoy, and wonder "what if"…
Chapter One: "Solitaire"
It was a hot July evening as I wheeled my company truck into the driveway. It was the eve of my 49th birthday, and I expected to observe it as I had observed most of them: alone.
I was married in 1979, but when the steel industry collapsed in 1982 my wife decided that she needed someone with a better revenue stream, so she took up with an old college boyfriend, left me and moved to Atlanta. The divorce was amicable, and so I was alone in the house. I'd found a job with Westinghouse, and had built a career as a field service engineer. I could fix most anything, yet love eluded me. I accepted the fact that I was obviously a "machine person" and not a "people person". Including a brief fling with an old high school flame in 1995, I'd rolled an "oh-fer". I was resigned to spending my life alone.
I grabbed a Corona, but instead of my usual Buffett buffet, I selected Karen's solo album as I plopped down into my ham shack chair, and powered up my station. The music played in the background as I tuned the bands, but the bands were quiet…everyone was out with their families.
Then the phone rang. It was Friday night, and this had to be work calling. I didn't want to go fix anyone's power plant, and I thought to let the machine grab it…until I noticed that the computer screen had no number information at all displayed. Every phone number displays something, and so with a bit of curiosity and a bit of knowing that I'd regret answering the phone, I picked up the receiver.
"Hello?" I cautiously answered. A woman's voice on the other end wanted to know if this was the number to complain about interference to one's TV. "No," I said, "you've got the wrong number." But something in my head made a match to the voice coming from my computer speakers, and I double-clutched and asked "Where are you calling from?", and like a true field service man, I asked "May I take your name?" I cringed in response to the answer…
"This is Miss Karen Carpenter, and I'd like to report a lot of interference to my television reception." Good thing I was sitting down! In the few seconds it took for me to digest this, she must have heard the song in the background, "If I Had You".
The tone of her voice changed. "Alright mister," she demanded, "just where in the hell did you get a copy of my solo album which was never released?! Did Tom give it to you? You are going to tell me right here and now how you got it, or else you're gonna be in real big trouble! What's your name, anyway? Who's your supervisor?"
It's amazing how many possible answers race through your mind in a few milliseconds. I could have easily told her to go ahead and do her worst, or that the album WAS released…in 1996…13 years after her death. No, that wouldn't work. Now, I was clearly in uncharted waters, but I'd seen this before in the movie "Frequency". I took a deep breath, and a leap of faith into the unknown…
She was quite skeptical, and rightly so, when I told her that I didn't know any "Tom". I asked her if she'd ever watched "The Twilight Zone" or "The Outer Limits" when she was a kid, and when she answered yes, I knew that I had a chance.
"Karen," I said, "my name's Dave and I'm in the year 2004."
"Yeah, right!" was her reply. "How big a fool do you take me for, and what's your REAL name?"
"OK, let's try it this way", I said. My date is July 23, 2004. What is your date? Humor me."
With a bit of trepidation, she replied "February 4, 1982."
(This plot device would show up in the movie "The Lake House" in 2006)
That date struck fear into my heart. I remembered all too well that same date a year later, and how the world seemed to have stopped turning. How I cried, and never understood why. The wheels in my head spun, and the next few words would be critical…
"Karen, can you believe in something that you don't understand?" I asked. "What do you mean?" she replied. While this was happening, I had slid over to my keyboard and had Googled her information, because all I knew was the basics. I also brought up a list of significant world events from 1982…things that hadn't happened yet from her perspective. I talked to her about anorexia, and what it does to one's body. I told her to see a cardiac specialist, and to have the doctor use an obstetrical ultrasound machine to profile her heart. She didn't seem to believe any of it, but I continued onward.
Over the course of the night, she eventually let her guard down, and we talked like old friends…friends who never got the chance to meet, let alone know one another.
Time passed by so quickly, and soon the room would be illuminated by the dawn's first light. I noticed that as it was getting lighter, the amount of static on the phone was increasing, and surmised that this event would be over with the dawn of a new day…my birthday. As the connection degraded, I tearfully pleaded with her to believe me, to believe in this miracle, and to please, please, PLEASE have her heart examined and stop being anorexic. She had one year of life left, and it wasn't too late to stop this train from plunging into the abyss.
True to my guess, the sunrise caused the connection to end. We'd been on the phone for nearly nine hours, but it flashed by in an instant. My eyes began to fill with tears as her voice faded away. "Karen! Karen!" I yelled into the phone again and again, but there was no reply, only the static of the rising sun. I buried my face in my hands, and began to weep, afraid that I'd blown a chance to fix a very sad wrong for many, many people, but as I wept, I failed to notice all of the changes that were taking place around me. New furniture, paint, rugs, wall paintings, all began to take their places as if by magic, and it wasn't until I noticed a well-worn wedding band in the new groove in my left ring finger that I stopped crying…just in time to feel a woman's hand with a matching ring being placed gently upon my shoulder.
I turned to look at her. There she was, now 54 years old, with traces of gray in her hair, laugh lines, crow's feet, and all. She was very much alive. I stammered out
"K-k-Karen?! How could this be?!" She smiled and said "How much do you remember?" I thought about it, and said "I remember being alone because my wife left me in 1982…a year before we met? How did we meet? Why do I have two sets of memories?" She sat next to me, smiled, and said I have a story to tell you, one that I've had to wait 21 years to tell you. I know you like science fiction, well, you're living a tale. Don't ask me why, but I'll explain how it happened."
I said "Why am I so tired? I feel like I've been up all night." She smiled and said "You were. But there's one thing I absolutely *have* to tell you."
A bit wary, I said "What?"
She said "You HAVE to take a shower! Right now! You smell like you just got home from work!"
End of Chapter One.
Chapter Two: "Everything New is Old Again"
As I showered, I tried to find places for all of the new memories that were competing with the old for space. I'd hoped that the results wouldn't be as traumatic as in "The Butterfly Effect", and they weren't. Still, it was unbelievable that I should be married to this 1970s music icon, but a little voice in my head invoked an astrophysics saying, that being "fading stars need love, too." When I got out of the shower, she was nowhere around. I walked back into my ham shack, and although the equipment was the same, nothing else was. It was obviously a family room, although where were the kids? KIDS?! Yes, there were two, Karen Lynn, born in March of 1989, and Philip, born in May 1992. There on the mantel was a photo of the four of us seated on the front porch swing at the Field of Dreams when we went there in 2003. Karen Lynn, or KL as we called her, was wearing the uniform of her softball team. She was 14 then, I thought, and although she liked music, she would much rather play sports and take things apart to see how they worked. You could see her mother's influence, but she was a good six inches taller. Karen insisted that one of her children was going to have something to do with music, and so Philip had become a pretty fair violin player.
I found this photo album, and began to leaf through it until finally falling asleep. I would have this strangest dream, all about things that I'd never done and had no idea about, yet I had memories of them just the same.
Somewhere around 9, I was awakened by the smell of bacon and eggs, and I heard the kids whispering excitedly and Karen told them to go outside and clean the pool until she had breakfast ready. The kids were excited because today was my birthday, something I nearly forgot in the excitement. I drifted back to sleep…
Karen came downstairs silently, sat beside me, and ran her fingers through my short, graying hair. She originally didn't like my decision to wear my hair short, but she had to admit it to herself that it did look OK on me. She smiled as she thought about her "knight in shining armor", and when I awoke, I had expected everything to have just been a cruel dream, and once more I'd wake up alone. No, she was still there, and like Bill Murray's Phil Connors in "Groundhog Day" I asked "Why are you still here?" "Because you married me, silly!" was her nearly laughing answer. "I see that you still remember your favorite movie lines, so I suppose that your memory is mostly intact. That's the one thing we feared, because we couldn't talk about this with anyone lest they think that we were both out of our gourds."
"Who is 'we'?" I asked. "Richard and I, and our parents, are the only ones who know about this, and they're both passed on. Do you remember when Mom and Dad passed?" she asked, trying to see how much of my "new" life I remembered.
I thought about it, and replied "Dad died in 1993, a year after Philip was born, and Mom passed the year before my dad, 1996". I remembered how they loved having us out West when the kids were little, and once KL got old enough we let her spend her summers out on the Left Coast.
Then, the kids ran inside, hugging me and singing Happy Birthday. I let go of the strangeness, and embraced the familiarity, then the phone rang. Karen picked it up, and it was Richard and Mary chiming in. I heard Karen say "Oh yes, it all happened like we hoped it would. He's a bit confused, but I think that in time he'll be OK. Here, Dave, it's for you.
I put on my best Chris Farley voice, held my nose, and said "Hi, Richard". I didn't know that he'd put the phone on speaker, and my greeting was returned by a chorus of Happy Birthday from his family. I just smiled and drank it all in. He laughed, and said "I suppose you've got a bit of catching up to do, so enjoy the day, and we'll talk later this evening."
I hung the phone up, and Karen said "Let's go upstairs and eat. I've already fed the kids, and we can have a little quiet time to ourselves.
As I followed her, I noticed that although this was the same house I'd lived in, everything was different. Not radically so, like we were living in the lap of luxury, but that we were comfortable in this distinctly middle-class life.
End of Chapter Two.
Chapter Three: "From The Beginning"
It was now near 10AM, and I was hungry. Karen had saved me a plate of scrambled eggs and bacon, and I grabbed a cup of coffee as she microwaved my breakfast. As I ate, she began to explain, taking care to make sure that the kids were swimming in the pool.
"I've never told them", she said. "It wouldn't make sense to them anyway" then she thought aloud "nor would it to anyone else." I asked "How did you know…" my voice trailing away as she reached beneath the china cabinet and pulled out a shoebox of cassette tapes. "Richard and I had this phone recording setup where he'd play his instrumentals and I'd record them, overdub, and send it back to him. I just recorded the whole thing, and forgot about it until New Years Eve. Doggone if everything you'd mentioned didn't happen. So, I dragged out the tapes, and listened to them again. I listened to them over and over again, and once I figured out that you weren't trying to take advantage of me, I went to see my brother.
He was equally disbelieving at first, but then he said "This guy seems to want nothing more than for you to have your heart examined. He isn't asking you for money, or to do anything bizarre. No, I don't believe the bit about him being in the year 2004, with George Bush's kid being president, but none of that's important. You say that he gave you a medical procedure, too?" "He said something about using an ultrasound machine like doctors use to show expectant mothers their babies to examine my heart." Karen replied. Richard said "Well, the doctor's gonna think you're nuts, but what the hey." Richard had noticed that for nearly a year now, Karen's weight had slowly risen back to the 130-140 lb range, as was recommended by her physical therapist. She'd been on a normal regimen, not the exaggerated regimen anorexics embrace. She looked good, and felt good.
Friday, February 4th, 1983
9:15 AM
Her physician wondered why she was so concerned about her heart, and she explained how the anorexic lifestyle she'd been living for the past nine years had caused her body to consume all of its fat and had eaten into her muscles. The doctor asked her how she knew so much about eating disorders because it generally was not discussed much in the medical community. She smiled and said "I read a lot."
When she requested the ultrasound after passing all of her other tests, the doctor was a bit incredulous. At first he didn't want to do it, but a rather insistent Karen eventually got him to see things her way.
As she moved the transducer over her heart, the blood drained out of both of their faces as they surveyed a dark spot on her left ventricle. The doctor tried to make heads or tails of it, and finally said "If that's not an aneurysm, I'm a monkey's uncle!" He sprinted to the phone, and said "We've got an emergency here! We need an operating room STAT!"
He wheeled towards Karen, and said "We're gonna have to operate to save your life, Karen."
She fainted, and dropped the ultrasound transducer…
What seemed like an eternity later, she was being prepped for surgery. Richard had gone with Karen, and now he was going to bring Harold and Agnes to the hospital so that they'd be there when Karen awoke. But there was a problem.
After they'd anesthetized Karen, she flatlined! The aneurysm had burst, flooding her chest cavity with blood. Was history destined to repeat itself, despite the best efforts of someone who'd been given the brief ability to reach across time? Karen suddenly looked down upon herself on the operating room table, and felt sad. In the blink of an eye, she was blinking her eyes in the recovery room, and the nurse called for the surgeon.
"We almost lost you", he said. "If you hadn't shown me how to use that ultrasound machine, you certainly would have died when that aneurysm ruptured. You were in the best place possible when that happened. How did you know…?"
A tear trickled from Karen's eye as she mumbled something about "the future"…the surgeon would shrug his shoulders and chalk it up to the anesthetic wearing off. The media would report that the world had almost lost its beloved Karen Carpenter that morning as a consequence of nine years of anorexia. Talk shows would be flooded with women who have struggled with this and other eating disorders.
The bedsheet was now off the elephant, and now the world would know.
End of Chapter Three
Chapter Four: "The Rainbow Connection"
Saturday, February 5th, 1983
6:30 AM
"Miss Carpenter?" the nurse asked gently. "Time to give a blood sample."
The gentle beep of her cardiac monitor provided a background noise as the nurse took her sample. But Karen didn't mind, although she would've loved to have been able to get more than three hours of sleep between samplings. The smell of food awakened her, and she looked around to fuzzy images. Where was she? What were these things connected to her, and what a strange dream she'd had…a dream about dying?!
She attempted to sit up, and both Richard and Agnes said "Whoa there! You've got some recovering to do." Then she remembered. She looked at her brother, and he said with a smile "Looks like you've got a guardian angel out there."
As she ate, she said "Mom and Dad, why don't you two go home for a few hours? Richard will stay with me until you come back in the evening."
When they left, Richard closed the door so they could talk privately. Karen said "I have to find this "Dave" guy if it's the last thing I do." Richard sat down, and asked "What did he tell you about himself?" Karen said "Why don't you go over to my place and take the tapes home with you? Put on headphones so no one else will hear them."
After a peaceful night's sleep, Richard came in and sat down next to Karen. "I had to listen to parts of the tapes more than once to get the information, but it looks like this guy's maybe five years younger than you, he lives in Pittsburgh, and he's a ham radio operator. He's some kind of industrial service engineer…it's a given that he doesn't make very much money."
Karen glared back "He never asked anything about money! All he wanted was to save my life. I believed him, and now I'm gonna find him with or without you!"
Richard smiled, held up his hand, and said "Hold on. You're gonna undo everything here. I never said that I wouldn't help you, I was just setting the stage for the coup de gras."
"What's that?" Karen wondered.
"This." Richard held up a piece of paper, and said "According to Joe Walsh, this is where your 'angel' lives."
"How does Joe know?"
"Seems that radio hams have this directory called a Callbook. If you know someone's call letters, you can look them up and find out where they live. Hams use this to send each other reception reports."
"I'm not a ham, or anything like that", Karen protested. "I just can't start sending this guy letters out of the blue. He'll think I'm nuts!"
Richard said "I already thought of that. Joe says that if you're well enough to travel to Dayton, Ohio by the end of April, he'll arrange a meeting. They have this thing called a 'Hamvention' which is a perfect place to get together. "
Karen smiled and said "Looks like I'm going to have to learn about ham radio…"
On the flight to Dayton, Joe asked her why she wanted to meet some ham from Pittsburgh in Dayton. She looked out the window, thought about it, and said "He's an old friend."
End of Chapter Four.
Chapter Five: "Calling Occupants…"
Dave had gotten a QSL card from a WB6ACU in California in February of 1983. He couldn't remember working him, but he wanted to know if Dave was going to be at the Dayton Hamvention this year, and if so, could they get together for a few minutes. Joe said that he had something Dave would be interested in. Hams are very good at this sort of thing, and so a time and place was agreed upon.
For Dave, he had five hours of driving time to think about it. He was more in thought about work, and what bargains he might find at the Hamvention. He was waiting at the spot well before the time, being curious, when a man walked up to him and asked "Are you Dave?"
I was wearing a denim jacket and blue jeans, and as I turned around I said "Yep, and you must be Joe." I didn't notice his guest, and then he introduced us. "Dave," he said, "this is my friend Karen." Of course I had no idea as to who she was, and she stepped forward and said "It's a pleasure to meet you, Dave." I asked her if she was a ham too, as there aren't too many woman hams, and she said "No, but Joe here is teaching me a lot about it."
She was amazed at the anonymity the hamfest provided. Here, she was not the epicenter of the media circus, she was just a friend of another ham. Joe had explained how ham radio allows famous people the ability to be anonymous.
The three of us walked around together for the rest of the day, and I finally left to go home around 5 or so. Karen had done the majority of the talking, at one point she grasped my hand to keep from falling, and my instinctive reaction kept her from being hurt. She looked into my eyes, and that look kept rolling over and over in my mind as I drove the 250 miles to home. Who WAS she? Why was she acting like she was interested in me? I got a really good bargain on that all-mode transceiver in the back seat. Such were the things that occupied my mind on the drive home.
A week later, I received a letter from Karen. She thanked me for the good time she'd had at Dayton (things that only a radio geek could love!) and said that she'd gotten my address from Joe, and would I mind her writing to me? The wheels had been turning, and when I looked at her return address it clicked into place: she was none other than Karen Carpenter, the singer, and I'd wandered around the entire Hamvention totally blind! Sheesh! "What a geek she must think I am", I thought. So, I sat down at my desk, and composed myself before composing my reply.
End of Chapter Five
Chapter Six: "Please, Mr. Postman"
We began corresponding, and exchanging letters every week or so. I would tell her about my work and life, and she would ask more questions. I told her that I had read about her brush with disaster in February, and that I was really glad that it all worked out OK. I told her that I thought her singing was beautiful. I tried really hard not to be overwhelmed by her fame, but when I went to Yugoslavia to work in August, she wanted to come along, and I said no. I felt that she was just having a bit of fun, and that she'd dump on me and have a good laugh about it, and so I stopped writing. After I didn't respond to two of her letters, she sent me this tear-stained letter…
"Dearest David;
Why have you stopped writing to me? What have I done that has so offended you? Please tell me so that I can at least say that I'm sorry for whatever it was. I have really enjoyed conversing with you for the past four months, and although I can understand why you didn't want me to come with you to Zagreb, please tell me why you won't write to me now.
I have never asked you this, but could I please have your phone number so that I can call you and we could talk about it?
Sincerely yours,
Karen Anne"
"I remember that!" I said. "I felt that you were having some fun at my expense, and tried to push you away." Then I felt bad, and she said "That was a long time ago. Do you remember what happened next?"
I stared past her for a few seconds, then said "I sent you my phone number, and you asked if I'd mind if you came here. That surprised the daylights out of me, and I was waiting at the airport when you came in on that red-eye. I was glad that I'd brought the company truck, because you sure brought a lot of stuff with you."
I remembered how happy she was to see me, and how she fell asleep with her head on my shoulder as I drove her to my house.
"What was the first thing I did when I woke up?" she asked, grinning.
"You chased me out of the house, and told me not to come back for a few hours. When I did, you'd cleaned the place up!"
She sighed, rolled her eyes towards the ceiling, and said "Men!"
"You moved in and took over!" I laughed as I said that. Well, it was true!
That evening, I introduced her to my parents over dinner, and the only negative thing Dad had to say was "She's short." That was as close to a blessing as anyone would ever get from my father, such was his devotion to dry humor.
End of Chapter Six
Chapter Seven: "Dancing on the Event Horizon"
September turned into October, and as the Thanksgiving holiday drew close, I had become quite comfortable with this match of seeming unequals. Karen seemed to relish taking care of me and "our" home (her hard work had changed it from a simple house), and I felt compelled to take the big chance again, and risk having my emotions shattered into a million pieces.
We enjoyed Thanksgiving at my parents' place, and as Karen was talking to her folks on the phone I prepared to push my plan into motion.
I walked into the living room with a bottle of wine and two glasses. She'd put the TV on to catch the end of the afternoon football game, and I watched my life pass before my eyes. I swallowed hard, and sat down next to her. She was engrossed in the game, as Dallas was clinging to a two-point lead with less than two minutes left, Washington had the ball, and had just crossed the 50 yard line.
It was, in a sense, a metaphorical moment.
She was oblivious as I dropped to my knee…
"Karen", I said, "I know that this may be sort of sudden, but you've really made a difference in my life."
She turned the TV off, and turned to look me in my eyes…
"Would you marry me, and make the rest of my life as joyful as these past months have been? I know that I…"
The rest was lost as she began crying tears of joy. I took her trembling hand, and slipped the ring on her finger, then nearly broke my leg as she pushed me backwards onto the floor, saying "yes", over and over again. We both knew about our first marriages, and here we were throwing all caution to the wind.
But that's what life, love, and marriages are all about, taking that leap of faith, and trusting in each other.
End of Chapter Seven
Chapter Eight: "Christmas with the Carpenters"
Karen was so excited! I had no idea what the background was, but she was way beyond happy. She'd called home as soon as she composed herself, and Harold and Agnes invited us to come out and spend the holidays with them.
I was overwhelmed, to say the least. The old "these people have money, and you're nothing" line showed up in my head, but I was able to squelch its insistent chanting. They let us stay in Karen's old room, which I thought meant that they trusted me, and the house was a happy place. One evening at dinner, Richard made a face at Karen, and she chased him around the house like a couple of kids, not the 30-somethings that they both were. Harold and Richard asked me to walk outside with them after dinner, while Karen and Agnes cleaned up. I cringed, figuring that the wheels were about to come off the wagon, but Harold looked up at me and said "You know, Dave, we haven't seen our Karen this happy in many, many years. Whatever it is you're doing, please keep doing it." Even Richard was smiling. Being around them showed me a completely different family than that which was portrayed by the media, and I said "Thanks, Mr. Carpenter." Then Harold said something that would banish forever all thoughts of not belonging.
"Just call me Dad, Dave."
That simple statement, and having Karen wake me up at 4 AM on Christmas morning, would be the best "presents" I could ask for, until it was our children's turn.
End of Chapter Eight
Chapter Nine: "Because We Are In Love"
Karen had decided to have the wedding in our church here in Pittsburgh, mostly to avoid the media circus. She was enjoying the ability to live anonymously here, with maybe once a month someone at the grocery store asking "Aren't you…?"
For me, the year crawled slowly towards our November date, but for Karen, there was nowhere near enough time! Suddenly, it was The Big Day!
Compared to her first wedding, it was quite simple. No songs to sing, but I insisted on "We've Only Just Begun" as our wedding dance song. Everyone had fun, and in a whirlwind rush it was over, and we were on our honeymoon, something that I would say had never ended.
I looked across the table with a look of bewilderment. "So, the only reason you married me was because my "future self" saved your life?" I asked. She looked at me, and said "I only planned to thank you at the Hamvention, but when you saved me from falling I think that's when I felt something more." She gave me a strange look, and smiled as she said "There are things that we women pick up on, you know."
It was my turn to roll my eyes, and say "Women!"
It was now nearly noon, and she said "Let's go sit outside and watch the kids swim." I thought that it was a great idea, especially if I could grab some shut-eye in the sun. We changed into our swimming clothes, and headed outside. We took turns rubbing sunblock on one another, and before I drifted off I looked around, and marveled at my family and how happy they were. Karen asked "Is everything OK, Dave?"
I turned towards the wonderful woman on the lounge chair next to me, looked at her over my sunglasses, smiled, and said "Couldn't be better."
End of Chapter Nine.
Chapter Ten: "Carpenters Forever".
The day after New Years Day 1985, Karen asked me if I knew how to set up and operate recording equipment. I said "I'll bet that the both of us can figure it out. Why?" "Richard has some ideas for a new album, and believe it or not, I've actually written a song about us."
"Us?!" I asked.
"Yes, 'us'", she said. I call it "A Second Chance at Forever", and would you like to hear it?"
"Sure", I replied, and took a seat, my favorite ham shack chair.
(Unfortunately, I deleted the song that I'd written as well, but it was nice.)
When she finished, she smiled and asked "How'd you like it?"
I said "That's really beautiful" with a huge smile, and a tear in my eye.
She looked askance and said "You're not just saying that, are you?"
I remembered what she'd told me about her solo album, and how hurt she was and answered "No, really, it's great. I think that you should record it."
Her face brightened considerably, and she said "OK. Richard is sending some recording equipment for us to set up. Would you mind setting it up here, in your ham radio shack?"
"No", I said, "this would be the perfect place for it."
She said "If the acoustics don't work out, we'll get it remodeled." This raised a look of alarm in my eyes. We'd never argued over money, but I insisted that she bank hers and that we live off mine until I retired. But when she moved in and took over, she insisted on running the family finances, and if it made her happy, I was all for it.
Big boxes spewed forth from UPS trucks over the next few days, and I was surrounded by instruction and assembly manuals! She was able to fill in the blanks for me, and in about a week everything was ready to go. She didn't like the rug and the uncovered walls, and so she brought a contractor in to remodel what would be her studio, and one day our family room.
I had to learn how to use these new things called "compact discs". Smaller than eight-tracks, but bigger than cassettes, they were rapidly replacing magnetic tapes, and Richard was right at the forefront. He and John had been writing and recording instrumental tracks, and when he had them close to how he wanted them he'd send them to us and Karen would record her vocals over the instrumentals, then we'd FedEx them to Richard.
He and Karen settled on 14 songs for their new album, tentatively titled "Carpenters Forever".
Karen insisted that "Second Chance" be the first release, and I drove her to the airport so that she could fly to California to record the album. She was silent as we drove, consumed by thoughts. "Hey, are you alright?" I asked. She looked back, smiled, and said "You realize that this is the first time we've been apart in nearly two years?" I said "I know, and I'll miss you. But I know that this is your work, and besides, you never complain when I go out of town for a few days."
She smiled back and said "But I sleep with something of yours when you're gone." I said "Well, if that's the secret, I'll just have to sleep on your side of the bed!"
She laughed, and said "You can snore to your heart's content while I'm gone."
"Yeah, and I can leave the seat up too!" I chortled.
"Don't get into any bad habits!" she replied.
I walked her to the gate, and saw her wave goodbye from the plane's window. My truck was strangely empty now, a feeling I'd forgotten. It was springtime, and she'd miss the lilacs…and the tree pollen that gave her sinuses fits!
We talked every day, and I could tell that it was wearing on her. Richard was his usual fussy self, insisting on "perfection" from his studio musicians and Karen, and more than once she'd stormed out of the studio after Richard critiqued her performance. But there was other trouble brewing.
A video had to be filmed for the first song, and when Richard called to tell me that he believed that Karen was slipping backwards into anorexia, he was not happy. He'd asked her about the laxatives he'd found in her room, and she exploded on him. So, he wisely left it up to me, the reason that she'd foregone this disease for the past three years, although I didn't know it.
She was tired when I picked her up at the airport, and slept most of the way home. What raised the red flag was when she didn't want to be hugged or even touched at the airport. Richard had told me what to look for, and darned if he wasn't right. But there were other changes as well, and it all came to a head one evening.
We were sitting on the couch watching the evening news. Karen was wearing a bathrobe, kind of unusual considering that it was warm and the windows were open. She was staring blankly at the TV. I'd noticed that she was dressing and undressing in the bathroom, another item that Richard had warned me about. Like him, I had been finding laxatives and Karen wasn't eating with me anymore…she always said that she'd eaten before I got home.
I said "Karen, why don't you come over here, and lay on me?" She liked to use my body as a recliner, and there was fire in her eyes as she turned to me and said "What, do I look like the freakin' cat?!"
She proceeded to call me a stupid millhunky who'd never make a million dollars in his lifetime. She crushed me flat like an empty soda can. I was devastated! As I turned to go upstairs, I said "If you really feel that way, why the hell did you involve yourself with my life anyway?"
All of the negativity and paranoia I'd ever felt came rushing back, and I began crying. I was totally unprepared for the world of the anorexic, and as I cried I wished that none of this had ever happened, that she'd go back to her own world. After a while, I heard the toilet being flushed, and the hinges on the bedroom door creaked as she tentatively pushed the door open.
"Hey," she said softly, "wanna talk?" I turned towards her, and said "Not if you're gonna rip my heart out and throw it on the floor like you just did."
She apologized, and explained why she did what she'd done. She asked if I could ever forgive her, and I said that I could. I said "None of this means anything if you're not here. You dodged a bullet once, and I don't think that I could stand to lose you."
We made up, and that would be the final time anorexia would be a part of her life.
End of Chapter Ten
Chapter Eleven: "Road Ode".
Karen and Richard were making the talk show circuit, and Karen would always be questioned about why she married someone like me. After she said "Because he's good to me" enough times, the media let her alone, and the question never came up again. I wasn't much of an interview, and so the private life of Karen Carpenter was replaced by younger gossip prospects. The tour began in early June, and although they didn't play the grueling schedules that marked their earlier days, I could hear the fatigue in Karen's voice every night. She had a home now, and someone who loved her waiting there to talk to her every night after the show. I didn't mind even when they were doing the West Coast and Japan…I'd just grab some sleep whenever I could, and have the phone at arm's reach.
Her song was doing well, in fact better than expected, and a Hollywood screenwriter wanted to know if he could write a story around the song. It never got past the paperback stage, but she was OK with that.
The tour ended just before Christmas, and as she arrived from Japan I was there waiting for her with my truck. Tired and jet-lagged, she fell asleep as soon as I got her in the seat! I carried her upstairs, pulled the covers over her, and went to unload the truck. She was now 35, and the strain of the tour threatened to overwhelm her. But she had eaten well, reminding me that "when you lose, you win".
I never really understood it, but if it helped her hang on, then it was all OK.
The next morning, she was drinking her coffee and eating an English muffin I'd made for her. She was mumbling something about starting our family, and I attributed it to jet lag. But she looked me in the eyes, and said "I'm done with touring, and maybe with music. I hated it when I was young, and it nearly cost me my life. I want to have children with you, and live to see them grow."
I said "Does Richard know about how you feel?" "He's the one who suggested it, after getting 'Montezuma's Revenge' in Mexico City" she said. With a wry grin, she said "He'd forgotten how *wonderful* touring can be…" I said, "Well, if you really feel that way, and if you really want to do this, then you know that I'm ready too."
End of Chapter Eleven
Chapter Twelve: "Anorexia's Legacy".
Having kids wasn't easy, and she was becoming frustrated. It was 1988, and after many tries the doctors determined that her reproductive system had been damaged by the years of anorexia. In vitro fertilization was tried, and Karen Lynn was born on March 26, 1989, a healthy girl who obviously had her mother's lungs. Karen recorded an album titled "Love Songs and Lullabies", and when it failed to chart, she said "What do they know from good stuff anyway?" It would be her last recording. She had her daughter now, and when Philip came along (she insisted!) she was happy again. Now life was like she always wanted it to be, and when computers and the Internet came along, she embraced the technology, and created a website where those suffering from eating disorders could share their stories. I never understood her fascination with computers, but she knew more about it than I could imagine. I always wondered why.
Years passed, and our children grew. KL loved to play baseball in the street, carrying on the tomboy that her mother had once been. She was good in math and science, and liked to take things apart to see how they worked. It was during a tour of the Kennedy Space Center in 2004, for our 20th anniversary, that something clicked as she stood inside a Space Shuttle engine. She ratcheted her schoolwork up from honors to high honors, and began to take a great interest in space science.
Philip was the musician, taking to the violin at an early age. Around here, Karen went by my last name, and no one was the wiser as to who she was. We could attend all of his school concerts with ease, and we never missed any of them. Kennywood Park was only a few miles away, and Karen was able to enjoy all of the rides…until she got past 55 and couldn't ride them anymore. She was sad, but I held her in my arms and said "I'll be more than happy to just walk around the park with you". We both wept…as another part of our lives came to an end.
End of Chapter 12
Chapter Thirteen: "Is There A Heaven?"
There are a million moments that go to make up a life, and all too often we don't realize them until they're gone, and it's too late. The kids grew up, and created lives of their own. Karen stayed close to Richard, as Mary passed in 2028 and Richard followed her a year later. Karen went to church every day, and there we were, two old people, who still thought of themselves as young lovers. I suppose that it's really all in our hearts.
It was July 23rd, 2035. Karen was 85, and I was just about to turn 80. The kids would be coming in with the grandchildren tomorrow to celebrate my birthday, but it was not to be.
As Karen slept, she dreamt that she could hear her mother's voice…calling "Karen honey, time to come home" She hadn't heard that since she was a child in New Haven, but…suddenly, she was able to see her body, and her beloved husband sleeping unaware only a few feet away. She reached out to him, and for a second he dreamt of seeing his beloved Karen flying away. He woke with a start, and turned over…but it was too late. She was gone. He held her close, tears saturating her gray hair, crying in vain. This time there would be no miracle reversal of time, of lives, of fates. It was simply her time…this time.
Philip and KL stayed in the house with Dad, but they were unprepared themselves for what was about to come…
Karen was not happy. God tried to console her, and he showed her a blackboard with pink and blue lines on it. Both lines had gray ends to them, and she asked "What is this?"
God said "These are the lifelines of you and your husband. You can place your finger anywhere on the lines, and see the events of that moment." Karen could see that the lines traveled parallel, then bent towards each other, then intertwined. Pointing to the gray lines, she asked "What are these?" God said "These are the lines of lives that would have been if 'someone' hadn't intervened."
"Intervened? What do you mean?" she asked. "Go ahead, put your finger here" He said, pointing to a spot on her gray line. She did, and began to cry, as she watched her mother crying over her lifeless body in her closet on that February morning. She pulled back in tears. Pointing to Dave's line, He said "Now here…" She did as she was told, and could see Dave pleading with her at the end of their fateful telephone conversation…only to see him fall dead of a heart attack. Both of their lives ended sadly, alone.
Karen began crying again, overwhelmed by the thoughts of the lives that they somehow avoided. God said "I know that you miss your David so very much, and how much you love him." He looked at the blackboard, and said "His time is just about up anyhow. Why don't you go get him?"
That was all Karen needed to hear. There was a brilliant flash of light as she achieved, then exceeded the speed of light to get where she wanted to be…warp engines are no match for an angel's wings, especially when she's in love.
The night after they buried Karen, Dave was alone in the bedroom. KL and Philip were downstairs watching TV, and there was this huge emptiness in Dave's heart and soul. It felt like his reason for living had been ripped from him. He remembered what his beloved Karen had told him about how she slept with something of his when he was away from home, and so he dug into the closet and spread Karen's wedding gown out on the bed. He held their wedding picture close to his chest, and silently cried himself to sleep. How ironic that she be taken away on the eve of his 80th birthday when she was "given" to him on the eve of his 49th birthday. There was never enough time…
Dave dreamt about a light…darned kids, turning the hall light on when he was asleep. He could swear that he heard Karen's voice, faint at first, growing louder. Then she was there, looking as young and beautiful as he remembered her. She smiled and said "Take my hand", and as Dave did she pulled him from his body. She jumped up, kissed him, and said "Oh David, I missed you too much! Please don't be angry with me!"
Dave smiled and said "I've never been angry at or with you in my life. I'm not going to start now."
Remembering his favorite movie, he asked "Is there a Heaven?" Karen smiled, held out her hand, and said "Come home with me and find out."
And they walked into the light to begin eternity together…the end of one journey is often the beginning of another.
KL looked into Dad's room, and when she saw him, she called for Philip. The smile on Dad's face told them everything they needed to know…Dad was happy because he was with Mom.
The End.