Everything She Ever Wanted Page 3

  He wouldn’t subject Pat to that.

  And now that he was married to her, he saw that Pat was even more impetuous and sensitive to slight than he had realized. Her grandmother Siler had died the spring they married and the Siler clan gathered in North Carolina to bury her, most of them meeting Tom for the first time. There was a ruckus as the funeral procession was organized. Pat’s aunt Mary Adams and her husband, Charles, pulled their Cadillac just behind the hearse and waited for the procession to begin. But Pat had a fit. “Mama Siler would have wanted me to be first,” she sobbed. “I was her favorite. Tom, just you pull the truck in there—right there in front of the Cadillac.”

  Bewildered but obedient, Tom jockeyed the farm pickup with the round Kentwood emblem featuring a Morgan horse on the door into line, edging out the Cadillac. Nobody stopped him. He was fascinated to see the way the Silers parted the waters for his beloved.

  Pat calmed down some as they led the endless string of vehicles to the cemetery; her sobs halted and she sat up straight and almost proud. She explained to Tom how special she had always been to her grandmother, and he could see that everyone loved Pat, her folks, her daughters and Ronnie, his grandparents—everyone but his parents, who were as stubborn as hogs in a sweet corn patch.

  Pat was too smart not to realize that her in-laws wanted nothing to do with her. She was hurt and angry. It wasn't fair—she hadn’t done anything at all to harm them. Was it a crime for her to love their son more than life itself? She was six years older than Tom, but no one could consider that that was robbing the cradle. Why did Walter and Big Carolyn have to be so petty?

  Their relationship with his parents—or rather their lack of relationship—became a constant irritant to Pat. Although she and Tom still had wondrous, dreamy days in Kentwood, tiny fissures began to break through their seamless joy. Pat complained to anyone who would listen about Tom’s father and his ex-wife, Little Carolyn. She insisted they were somehow responsible for Tom’s losing his job at Ralston Purina: “Somebody called up and told them there was a countersuit [to the divorce] and they were going to put [Tom] in jail and all this, and Purina has a very strict law about that—so Tom lost his job . . .

  Furthermore, Pat felt Walter was making it his life’s mission to see that Tom never got a job again. “He has had several applications in for good jobs,” she said, “but each one his father has managed to put a kink in. Tom wanted to be on the mounted patrol, and his father stopped that too.”

  It may well have been true. Walter Allanson’s animosity toward his only child was as bitter as gall. He would not accept Tom’s divorce and remarriage, and Pat had a right to feel resentful. But Tom soon realized that his new wife was no peacemaker and that she had precious little tact. She was always on his side—and that was good— but she talked far too much and her comments got back to his father, and things only got worse.

  As the spring of 1974 edged toward full summer, Pat Allanson was a woman on fire. It was a side to her personality that Tom had never seen before. He had known her to be loving and passionate, wistful and sad, and as frightened as a child. He had not seen her rage. Instead of being content that she and Tom were finally man and wife and letting the rest of the world go by, she nagged at him constantly to “do something” about his father. “You call yourself a man?” she taunted Tom. “If you were a man, you wouldn’t let him treat us like he does!”

  Her tears hurt Tom far more than her words—it tore him up to see Pat cry—but he had never been able to win in confrontations with his father. He had no idea what Pat expected him to do. He wanted to run his own life, his own farm, and his own marriage—but Pat seemed to be in his face whichever way he turned. He couldn’t make her see that they didn’t need his father, or his father’s money.

  Pat persisted. She wanted Tom to work things out with his parents, and she demanded to be welcomed into his family—not to be treated like trash. They were insulting her and embarrassing her, not to mention her parents. Any husband who truly cared for her wouldn’t stand still for such treatment. Their marriage was only a little more than a month old, but their bliss was souring like apple cider turned to vinegar.

  Pat began to withdraw from Tom. The newlyweds already had fifteen-year-old Ronnie living with them, and now Pat started asking her daughters, Susan and Deborah, or other relatives to visit. Her aunt Alma Studdert and Alma’s granddaughter, Mary Jane Smith, were frequent overnight guests. Pat and Alma would rock for hours on the back porch glider and watch the sky turn dark over the fields of Kentwood when Alma thought Pat would have chosen to be in bed with her new husband. Pat’s daughters and relatives couldn’t help but notice that Pat was avoiding being alone with Tom. This struck them as decidedly odd since she and Tom were technically still on their honeymoon and should have been in the googly-eyed stage of marriage.

  Having family close by was not new for Pat; she had always needed them for security. But now that she had Tom to keep her safe, her relatives were puzzled by her obvious reluctance to be alone with him. Maybe she didn’t want to say something she would regret. She seemed quietly heartbroken, and, in spite of her beauty, her family knew that Pat had always required continual emotional support. Tom’s parents’ total rejection had crushed Pat. It had leached joy from her life, leaving her marriage flat and sere.

  CHAPTER 4

  ***

  Tom and Pat’s honeymoon was over far too soon, and the situation only grew worse when Pat’s mother, Margureitte, received an unexpected phone call at the office of the children’s dentist where she worked. It was from Walter Allanson himself. “Perhaps you have some influence with Tom,” he began without preamble. “Would you please tell him to stop doing the things he’s been doing—and to do what he’s supposed to do?”

  Margureitte Radcliffe was a woman who remembered long, complicated conversations verbatim. Her most common mien was one of indignation and shock over the behavior of less refined people, particularly those who misunderstood her daughter, Patricia. Pat could do no wrong in her mother’s eyes.

  And, ironically, Tom could do no right in his father’s.

  Her voice full of disbelief, Margureitte later described the bizarre conversation she had had with Walter Allanson. “He told me that Tommy had come into his ex wife’s apartment and put formaldehyde in some milk! [I said,] ‘Did you call the police?’ He said they did and they had it tested and there was formaldehyde in it. They were pouring the milk out into a glass for the little girl. He—Mr. Allanson—said, ‘Well, I’m sure Tom did it.’ ’’

  Margureitte was appalled. It didn’t make sense. It wasn’t like Tom to do such a thing. He loved his children. He would never have harmed them. Of course she told her daughter about the call, and when she heard about Walter Allanson’s accusations, Pat became almost unhinged with frustration. How could Tom allow anyone to lie about him that way? He was permitting his father and his ex-wife to ruin his reputation with vindictive lies.

  Margureitte Radcliffe decided she had had enough. She would not allow anyone to hurt Patricia this way. She spoke to Paw and Nona, Tom’s grandparents, about the trouble between Walter and Tom and Pat, but there was nothing they could do about it. They explained stoically that their son was a “cold person. He’s never been wrong in his life, never made a mistake in his life, and he’s never admitted he was sorry for anything—not since he was a child.”

  Never famous for minding her own business, Margureitte took it upon herself to straighten out her daughter’s new father-in-law. On Monday, June 21, 1974, she went to Walter Allanson’s law offices without an appointment and asked to be announced. Mary McBride was his receptionist; her granddaughter Becky had gone to school with Pat’s daughters and she asked how they were. Margureitte was shocked to realize that Mary didn’t even know that Tom and Pat were married. The Allansons were certainly ones for keeping secrets.

  When Walter got off the phone, Margureitte marched into his office, undeterred by his astonished stare. Her memory of their first
meeting remained crystalline in her mind ever after. “Mr. Allanson,” she said. “I didn’t want to come and see you, but I had to come . . . because I’ve tried to have you all meet us. I couldn’t believe all the things I’ve heard—that you were a stern man and a hard man—and I just can’t believe any father could be like that . . . Tommy’s not said anything, but I can see his heart has to be breaking inside from the attitude that you and his mother have with him . . .”

  Walter Allanson was hardly cowed by the indignant words of the woman before him. “Mrs. Radcliffe,” he said ominously, “Let me tell you something. I’m Scotch, I’m a strict disciplinarian, and I’m a stern man. I have schooled myself that when I’m finished with someone, I’m finished with them. I don’t have a son.”

  “Mr. Allanson,” Margureitte said, “you don’t mean that. Deep down inside you, this is some kind of front that you are putting on. Deep down inside you, you have to have some feeling.”

  “No, Mrs. Radcliffe, I do not . . . If Tommy would drop dead today, I would not go to his funeral, and if he was dying and would ever call me, I would not lift a finger to help him. In fact, I would do everything I can to ruin him.”

  “Mr. Allanson! Have you always felt this way about him?”

  “No. About a year ago, he changed. I think the boy has a tumor.”

  Margureitte drew herself up. “Well, if I thought a child of mine had a tumor, rather than accusing him of things, I think I’d do everything I could to persuade him to seek the proper medical advice.”

  “He won’t pay any attention to me,” Walter Allanson said. Then he mentioned the formaldehyde in the baby’s milk again, and added that Tom had also put sugar in the gas tank of his car on May 9.

  “That couldn’t be,” Margureitte countered. “Tom was in Stone Mountain getting married on that day; there were at least three hundred people at his wedding. Really and truly, Mr. Allanson, you must have something back in your cases and you should be looking there instead of thinking that everything that happens is Tommy’s fault.”

  “Well,” Allanson said, leaning across his desk and glaring at Margureitte, “I want to tell you what he did. Yesterday morning, sometime between nine a.m. and one-thirty p.m., someone broke into our house and stole three guns.”

  Walter Allanson wanted the weapons back and he instructed Margureitte to have Tom mail them to him. “He’s not to come and bring them to me, because I’ll kill him when I see him. If he doesn’t mail them to me, or the police department doesn’t make the case against him, then I’ll get him.”

  Margureitte blanched. “Mr. Allanson, you can’t mean that . . . Even though your son hasn’t done anything to you? If he came to you and said, ‘Dad, I don’t know what this is about, but can’t we sit down and talk it over and let bygones—let it be over with,’ Mr. Allanson . . . you couldn’t forgive your son?”

  “No. I’m finished. I don’t have a son. I don’t have a daughter-in-law either. Your daughter is not my daughter-in-law.”

  Her face stiff with horror, Margureitte Radcliffe left Walter Allanson’s office. Her visit had only made things worse. Everyone in the family felt it. The atmosphere at Kentwood in late June was thick with tension.

  Liz Price, an old friend of Tom’s and a horse show acquaintance of Pat’s, owned a farm seven miles south of Kentwood. Her daughter, Johnette, exercised their horses three or four days a week and occasionally rode the Morgans in shows. Liz was present when Tom walked into the kitchen one evening with an onion from the garden and presented it to Pat with a flourish. Liz was surprised to see Pat frown and brush his hand away fretfully. “She was always fussing at him,” Liz recalled.

  Pat’s daughter, Susan Alford, who was twenty-one that summer and often came out to Kentwood with her baby son, Sean, had always been able to gauge her mother’s moods; she saw that Pat was strung out to a fine thread. She picked at Tom for having no backbone. She demanded that he defend her honor, go to his parents and force them to welcome her into the family circle as his wife. Susan saw that Tom was so completely smitten with Pat that he would do anything to please her, at least anything within his power.

  But Tom knew he had no power at all with his father. He never had.

  Pat’s aunt Alma rocked on the porch glider one velvet night in June, but she couldn’t relax. “I can't put my finger on it,” she commented to Liz Price, “but something bad’s fixing to happen.

  ***

  On June 28, Pat was alone at Kentwood. Tom had gone over to Barnesville to shoe horses, and Ronnie had said he would be in Zebulon on a painting job. It was a glorious sunny day and Pat was finally feeling well enough to do a little more work around the place. She got out the riding mower to cut the grass. In a statement she later gave to a Pike County deputy, she described the terror she had endured that afternoon.

  “I was there by myself and we have a great big huge yard; we have fifty-something acres there . . . and I was cutting way up the very front part of the road—which is a long way from the house. I was on the small riding mower and I was just nonchalantly cutting around. I had just started cutting . . . and I saw a truck go by. It looked just like our truck, a blue camper truck. I knew it wasn’t ours because the camper top was off . . . You know how something just goes through your mind and it just sort of sticks? I went on around—it was a good acre—and there is a big tall hedgerow about fourteen feet high between our farm and the field next to us and . . . I could see the top of a camper. . . . I thought, Well, gee, that man must have had trouble with his truck. . . . And all of a sudden I got right at the end of the hedgerow where we have a great big tall tree. And there he stood. Sleeves rolled up, and he just dropped his pants . . . I didn’t know what to do. I slammed the brakes on the tractor and it seemed like I was frozen for an hour, but I know it wasn’t but a second.”

  Pat told the deputy the most shocking part of her ordeal. She recognized the man. She had seen him for years around East Point, and lately his picture had been in all the papers and on political signs. The man who had exposed himself to her was Walter Allanson, her husband’s father!

  “I was sure it was him. The only thing that threw me off—there was a cigar in the man’s mouth . . . I had never seen his daddy smoke a cigar. I have never seen him with anything except a cigarette in his mouth . . . I slammed the tractor into third gear. It doesn’t go very fast. I headed across to go to the neighbors next door, and there were no cars over there, so I headed back up my long, winding driveway and another acre to get back to the house. I ran straight into the house.”

  Tom always kept his “shoeing book” right there in the house so that Pat would know exactly where he was all the time in case she had a “sinking spell.” Pat hadn’t called the sheriff first; she called Tom. She was in such a panic that he could barely understand her, but then she blurted out that his father had stood right out there in their hedgerow and exposed his penis to her. Tom could scarcely take in what she was saying, but one thing was certain—she was hysterical. “He said, ‘Shug, for crying out loud, stop and hang up the phone and call the sheriff!’ ”

  And Pat had done just that. The sheriff told her he was on his way, and before Pat could dial again, the phone rang. It was Ronnie, calling from Atlanta, where he was visiting Margureitte. She was so frightened that she really wasn’t sure where Ronnie was, she told the sheriff later. She had thought he was in Zebulon painting a house.

  But then, who knew where Ronnie was half the time? He and his friend, Cecil “Rocky” Kenway—who often stayed at Kentwood with him—were like most teenagers, taking off for God knows where whenever they pleased.

  Ronnie told his mother that he had had a sudden pre-sentiment about her. “Mom, I don’t know why—I just wanted to call and see if everything's all right.”

  Pat began to tell her son what had happened, when Ronnie stopped her and said, “Mother, are the doors locked?”

  “Oh, my God, I don’t know. Wait a minute. I'll call you back.”

  She set the phone
down and ran to lock all the doors in the house, but then she was struck with a terrible thought: Oh my God, what if I've locked him in the house with me? He could have come up the hedgerow that lines the back of the house . . .

  Ronnie held on the line until Pike County’s chief deputy sheriff, Billy Riggins, raced the two and a half miles from the courthouse in Zebulon to Kentwood. Riggins found an attractive but hysterical woman standing at the kitchen phone, clutching an unloaded .22 rifle. Since Riggins didn’t know it was unloaded, he gingerly removed the gun from her grip and she handed the phone to him. “Please talk to my son and reassure him that you’re here with me.”

  After Riggins spoke to Ronnie and hung up the phone, he was assaulted with a torrent of words as Pat told him how horrified she had been to see her own father-in-law standing there in the hedgerow waving his private parts at her. “I've been ill,” she told Sheriff Riggins. “I have a lot of trouble with blood clotting, and what have you, and I have to have oxygen. I have high blood pressure and all from an accident I was in—I just got out of the hospital. This was the first day I felt well enough to mow.

  “My son said for me to ask you to load the gun for me, so I’ll have something to protect myself after you leave —at least until my husband gets home.”

  “Where are the shells for this .22?” Riggins asked.

  “I don’t know.’’

  Tom called back just then and told Riggins where the keys to the gun cabinet were. The deputy chambered the rounds and showed Pat how to shoot the gun. She wasn’t unknowledgeable about guns. She could load and shoot a .22 rifle, and she had used a much more powerful gun when she went deer hunting with Tom the previous fall. But she was apparently too frightened to think straight, and her hands shook.

  Riggins noted that she also seemed terribly embarrassed, and, hell, what woman wouldn’t be? It was a humiliating thing to have to turn in your own kin for showing off his privates. It wasn’t natural.