Little Girl Blue (23 page)

Richard visited Maria at her apartment, where the two sat at the edge of her bed and discussed Karen's demands. Both in tears, they agreed the relationship must come to an end. “He had to do what he had to do,” Galeazzi recalls. “He made it understood that it was not in his power or in his best interest. I would have never pushed it, and that's why I left. I could have chosen one or the other, but I didn't because it would have been difficult for all three of us. I couldn't see myself just being his girlfriend either, so that's how it came to an end.” Galeazzi
returned to her job at the Magic Mirror in Downey, weighing in at a skeletal eighty-six pounds due to stress. “I lost so much weight because I was so nervous about it all.”

Replacing Galeazzi was Sandy Holland. According to Evelyn Wallace, Karen spelled out her expectations in no uncertain terms, instructing the new employee to keep her distance and stay out of her brother's bed. “If Richard wants his hair cut, cut it. But whatever you do,
don't
play around with him!”

T
O THE
outside world, Agnes Carpenter was an overprotective mother to both her children, but it was apparent to those within the Carpenter enclave that she played favorites. Evelyn Wallace recalls that when speaking of the two, Agnes always made reference to Richard before Karen. “From the time Karen was little, everything was ‘Richard, Richard, Richard.' It was always ‘Richard and Karen' and ‘if it wasn't for
Richard
, there wouldn't be a Karen,' so to speak. He was more important to Agnes than Karen.”

According to Wallace, Karen was well aware of her second-place ranking in the home and perhaps even felt it was justified. Agnes's adoration for her firstborn—to the point of idolization, according to some—was emulated and even proliferated by Karen. “She thought Richard was God,” Frenda Franklin recalls, “just like her mother thought he was God.” Tangible proof of Karen's adulation of her brother remains today in a poignant needlepoint message she crafted for him:
THERE IS NO K.C. WITHOUT R.C.

As Frenda explains, Agnes' inability to nurture and nourish her daughter with affection, as she did Richard, led to Karen's own inability to love herself. “[Karen's] relationship with her mother was so stilted that it caused such a great hurt inside her,” Franklin says. Of Agnes she laments, “I wanted her to be different with Karen. She just couldn't love her. It was not possible. I think in her own crazy way she did love her, but not like she loved Richard. If your own parent doesn't love you, you're going to walk around with a giant hole that's not ever going to get filled.”

In a 1973 concert review that criticized Richard's long hairstyle, a University of Montana columnist wrote, “
Whereas Richard may not
appear to be every father's favorite son, Karen is the kind of girl every mother could love.” This casual remark takes on a most ironic twist when paired with Sherwin Bash's observations of the real mother-daughter relationship he witnessed within the Carpenter family: “
I'm sure in her own
way Agnes loved Karen, but it wasn't something she was able to express,” he recalled. “I think eventually that was one of the most serious problems that Karen had. . . . Over the years, Karen Carpenter became beloved in the world as a very special artist, a very special voice, who reminded everybody of the daughter they wished they had. In her own home she never was told or maybe never even felt that existed from her own parents, especially her mother.”

K
AREN WAS
twenty-four and Richard approaching the age of twenty-eight when the two decided it was time to leave home. The dilemma was how to proceed without hurting their mother's feelings. They asked Sherwin Bash for advice. Bash had worked with hundreds of music artists, and in his opinion these siblings were immature. They lacked sophistication—not musically but in their personal lives. He wanted to see them take control of their lives, move out of their parents' house, and seek the independence of two millionaires in their twenties. “
Their inability to develop
,” said Bash, “was created by their inability to separate themselves from a dominating mother who they never wanted to offend and never wanted to hurt. . . . I think that severely stunted and damaged their growth.”

According to Evelyn Wallace, this was not the kids' first attempt at independence. The two had rented an apartment together in Bellflower for a brief spell. “That didn't last too long,” she explains. “Richard was expecting Karen to do all the cooking and the stuff his mother had done.” But Karen claimed to enjoy inventing new recipes and perfecting others. “
Cooking is an art
and a pleasure for me; I've always loved to cook, ever since I was a child,” she said in a 1971 press release entitled “Karen in the Kitchen: Who Says a Young Female Superstar Can't Be
a Top-Notch Cook?” She listed her favorite creations, which included pies, cookies, shrimp dishes, and “veal and eggplant concoctions.”

Sherwin offered Karen and Richard his advice for officially moving out, but instead of confronting their mother and relocating, the two came up with a way they might evade the issue entirely. They bought their parents a modest 3,000-square-foot home with four bedrooms and three baths at 8341 Lubec Street in Downey, less than two miles from Newville. “
The expectation was that
their mother and father would move into this new house,” Bash said. “When they explained this to the mother, she absolutely refused to move out of this house. Not only did she refuse to move out, she couldn't understand why they would want to separate and be living in two different houses.”

Richard was never particularly fond of the Newville house and agreed that he and Karen would move to Lubec Street, while Agnes and Harold stayed at Newville. The decision to move in together seemed natural for Karen and Richard, whose careers came first. They were first and foremost a team and at this point saw no reason to live separately. “
If we don't see
each other, we talk at least twice a day,” Karen said in 1981. “We always have to know what the other one is doing. We're very nosy!”

To many on the outside looking in, siblings living together as adults seemed odd and prompted allegations of incest. Brian Southall, who joined A&M Records' London team in 1973, fought off reporters' questions about this brother-sister relationship that sometimes appeared a little too close. They were, after all, a duo that sang love songs. “
There were lots of suggestions
about their relationship,” Southall said in a 2004 interview. “There was always a worry about the questions that would come out. There were suggestions of an incestuous relationship and stuff like that, which was utter nonsense. But they
were
an odd couple.”

According to Karen, over the years and especially near the beginning of their careers, many people thought she and Richard were married. “
I remember once
when we were looking for an apartment in California, and the landlady asked if we had any kids. ‘No,' we said, telling the truth. ‘That's good,' she replied, ‘and I hope you haven't got
any pets either.' And the photographers were always asking us to kiss! Well, you might hold your brother's hand, but you don't kiss him unless it's a family reunion.”

Richard said, “
Maybe it would have been
easier if we
had
been man and wife,” with Karen adding, “
It's been a hell
of a battle. We were mistaken for a married couple for so long. How could anyone fail to recognize us as brother and sister? We're so alike. When we smile we could be Siamese twins.”

Unfortunately for the Carpenters, Southall was not present to screen a disastrous phone interview broadcast live on Toronto radio. “
We might as well
bring it out,” the deejay told Richard. “I've listened to the lyrics of your songs. I know that Karen's singing them to you. I know they're about incest. You want to talk about this?” Richard was so caught off guard that he tried to explain how that was untrue. “Absolutely not,” he said. “I don't even write all of those songs. They just happen to be love songs. Karen sings them. I sing and arrange. We happen to be brother and sister.” Surprisingly, Richard finished the interview, at which time he slammed down the receiver, vowing to never do another phone interview.

“
W
E
'
VE MADE
it a rule
that whoever we go out with must not interfere with our professional lives,” Karen explained in a 1976 interview. “I feel if Richard is going out with the wrong girl, I tell him. He needs someone who will give him a good home, security, and children—someone who will understand him because he's a special guy.”

Shortly after moving to Lubec Street, Richard began dating Randy Bash, Sherwin's twenty-one-year-old daughter. Some felt she was pushed by her father into dating Richard, but even Karen was fond of her at first and seemed to approve of the burgeoning relationship. But just three weeks in, Agnes chimed in with her critique, and Richard carelessly told Randy of his mother's dislike for her. By the time Randy joined the Carpenters on their European tour in February 1974, Richard was well aware that both his mother and sister had it in for her. Despite the young girl's attempts to be friendly and have lunch or go
shopping, Karen ignored and avoided Randy for the duration of the tour. “
Richard can have his girl
travel with him—she has no career,” Karen told the
Los Angeles Times
that year, her antipathy apparent. “But what about me? Is my guy supposed to lay around all day while we're on the road?”

Returning to Los Angeles, Karen was up in arms when Richard invited Randy to move in with them. “Randy came into the picture, and then all hell broke loose,” says Maria Galeazzi. “Then Karen didn't mind me as much as she did her because she picked up her bags and moved right in! It came back to bite her.” Karen told Richard she would not move the rest of her belongings out of Newville until “that girl” was no longer living under their roof.

After only a week of intense pressure from Karen, Richard told Randy she could not stay. Technically, it was both his and his sister's house, and they were obviously not going to agree on the matter. Although she packed her things and left, Randy continued to sleep there most every night. “She wasn't that particular in what, if anything, she ran around the house in,” recalls Evelyn Wallace. After failing to successfully evict Randy from Lubec Street, Karen made it clear to Richard she no longer wanted to wake up in her own house only to find his naked girlfriend had slept over again. She was moving back home to Newville.