Before He Wakes (8 page)

The Fords figured that Barbara had turned to her mother for help, as she usually did in times of trouble, and had gone back home to Durham. They knew that Barbara had conflicting emotions about her mother. Her mother always tried to control her life, she had told Larry, never would let her make her own decisions. Yet, while resentful, Barbara still seemed almost completely dependent on her.

The Fords were surprised when Larry told them that instead of going back to her mother, Barbara had moved into a small apartment on Lexington Avenue in High Point, not far from the bank where she worked. There had to be a reason for that, the Fords knew, and they would soon discover what it was.

If they had talked to any of Barbara’s coworkers, they could have learned the reason much earlier. His name was Gary Spangler*, and everybody at the bank knew that Barbara had had her eye on him since he had come to work in her department as a collector nearly a year earlier. He was twenty-four, two years younger than Barbara, good-looking, conservative, bright, serious-minded, a young man who clearly would go far. He also was, by his own later admission, naive about women and sex, making him vulnerable to Barbara’s bold forwardness and growing sexual abandon. People at the bank were gossiping about Barbara and Gary even before she left Larry, but after they learned of the separation, they had no doubt of her intention. The only speculation was about how long it would be before Gary moved in with her.

Despite his misgivings, Larry filed for a legal separation, and it was granted on November 21. Later, he would tell his mother that until the separation he really hadn’t known how much in debt they were. Bills he thought had long been paid actually never had been, he discovered. And there were bills he’d never even known about. Under the terms of the separation, Barbara got the 1970 Mustang that she always drove, Larry got the 1972 Datsun. She got the children’s furniture and half the rest. He got the bills, the house and the mortgage.

Barbara received full custody of the children. Larry promised to pay $175 a month in child support. He could see the children one weekend each month, for a month each summer and for one week during Christmas vacation, but he had to give Barbara a week’s notice before any visit.

Wanting to see their grandchildren and hoping to learn more about what was going on, the Fords dropped by Barbara’s apartment unannounced one weekday afternoon. Bryan, who soon would be six, answered the door. Jason was in his crib. The TV was playing. Bryan sat on the sofa with his grandparents to talk. His mother was there, Bryan said, motioning toward the bedroom, where the door was closed.

A long time passed before Barbara emerged, wearing a housecoat. The Fords had the feeling that someone else remained in the bedroom. Barbara explained that she had gotten sick at work and fainted; a friend from work had brought her home. The Fords were fairly certain who the friend was.

“I’m going to have a new daddy,” Bryan had told them a few minutes earlier.

At work, Barbara seemed giddy about her new romance, although her coworkers had no idea that she was thinking about marrying Gary. To her only female friend in the department, Barbara seemed to be pushing the relationship, while Gary was holding back, uncertain and reluctant. Nonetheless, he went with Barbara and the boys to Durham to meet her parents in December.

After Christmas, Barbara’s mood changed. It became clear in the office that her romance with Gary had cooled. Later, he would not admit that there had been a romance at all. He acknowledged going out with Barbara, visiting her apartment, having sex with her and going to meet her parents, but he called it “a casual relationship” that had lasted only a couple of months. Barbara, he said, was more involved than he.

Gary’s rejection was traumatic for Barbara, and on January 20, she wrote a letter to her boss at the bank. “Due to the personal problems concerning my separation, I feel it would be better for myself and my children to move and be near my parents for their help and support. My termination date will be Jan. 31, 1975. My work experience has been very enjoyable and rewarding. Thanks.”

In his report on Barbara’s resignation, her supervisor recorded that she had been a very good employee, capable, congenial, efficient, cooperative. “She is blessed with better than the average looks, personality and quick mind,” he wrote, noting that he would not hesitate to rehire her. She would not be leaving if not for her separation, which had not affected her work, he wrote, adding that she had simply decided that moving back to Durham would be the best thing for her and her children, especially in view of the fact that she recently had discovered that she was pregnant again.

Barbara’s supervisor had no way of knowing that she no longer could become pregnant. Why she told him that would be cause for wonder years later. Had she hoped that word would filter down to Gary, frightening him or causing him to come back to her? Was she losing her grip on reality, as she had when Larry had rejected her years earlier?

Before she left, Barbara tried to find a position with an NCNB branch in Durham, but none was available. However, she had no trouble getting rehired as a secretary at the Duke University Medical Center, where she had worked all through high school, and where her mother was still employed.

After she left, Larry’s mood dipped even lower. He threw himself ever harder into tae kwon do, each kick and blow striking out at his unhappiness. He didn’t talk about himself with his fellow students, and few of them were aware of his marriage problems. He trusted Lou Wagner, though, and had told him about the breakup. Wagner could tell that he was deeply troubled. Larry mentioned to him how much he missed Bryan, whom he had brought to class a few times, and Wagner knew that he wanted to get his family back together if only for his son’s sake.

Larry’s parents could offer little comfort for his distress and were reluctant to offer advice. But one cold Sunday, standing on his front porch as Larry was preparing to leave, Henry suggested that maybe it was better this way. Perhaps Larry should just let her go, start anew.

“With what she’s done,” Henry said, “you can get the boys and raise them yourself.”

Larry was silent for long moments, as if deep in thought.

“I can’t do it, Daddy,” he finally said. “The kids need their mother.”

His father never pressed him after that.

Soon afterward, Larry told his parents and Jane that he had gone to Durham to try to get Barbara to come back home. She had declined. She was getting settled in her new job. She had started going with her parents to their new church, Ebenezer Baptist, and was helping with youth activities. She didn’t want to come back to Randolph County and more strife. Strangely, though, she offered a compromise. They would remain apart. But Larry could take Bryan. She would keep Jason.

Larry said no. He wanted his family whole. He came home convinced that it was mainly Barbara’s mother who stood in his way. “These things happen, Larry,” he said she had told him, as if everything had been settled. There was a smugness about her, he thought, a sense of victory that Barbara was now back under her control and could be set again upon the right path.

Although he had entered his marriage reluctantly, Larry turned around to become its proponent. He was willing to forgive Barbara’s infidelities and overlook their mistakes. If both were willing to change their attitudes and work at it, he was certain that they could make a go of the marriage and provide a stable and happy family life for Bryan and Jason, and he didn’t intend to give up until his family was reunited. He kept trying, and in March Barbara gave in and agreed to try a reconciliation.

It was quickly clear to Larry’s family that Larry had not been the only one to suffer from the troubles in his family.

“The biggest change was in Bryan,” Jane later recalled. “He was so sad. The look in his eyes was just a haunted look. I’d never seen that in a child before.”

If Larry thought that reuniting his family would bring them happiness, he was mistaken. Barbara’s compulsions would continue to grow and would make their next break permanent.

6

The pattern that had emerged in Barbara’s life would be evident later. She had to push the boundaries, one way or the other. When she was not having affairs, she was spending money. When she was not spending, she was having affairs. Soon after she moved back to Randolph County to try to salvage her marriage, she resumed spending.

Larry’s family marveled at the things Barbara bought and wondered how she could keep doing it. She made only $175 a week at the job she took as a customer service representative at a newly formed company in High Point that supplied upholstery fabric to furniture manufacturers. And Larry wasn’t making all that much more. How were they going to pay for everything when their budget was already stretched to the breaking point?

“If they’d been millionaires, it wouldn’t have been enough,” Larry’s brother Ronnie said years later.

Barbara’s new boss could have told them how she was able to get away with it to some extent. She had made it clear to him that she was the boss at home and controlled the finances.

If Larry was distressed by Barbara’s spending at this time, he didn’t show it. He seemed relieved just to have his family back together, and he was trying hard to keep the peace and make the marriage work. Although his parents no longer trusted Barbara because of the pain she had caused Larry, they suppressed their feelings for his sake. They still went for visits to their son’s house. Larry, Barbara and the children still came for Doris’s Sunday dinners. But Larry’s siblings started to avoid them. They not only resented Barbara for the way she had treated their brother, they didn’t like the way she looked down on them and their parents. And they didn’t want to hear Barbara bragging about the new things she had bought.

Barbara became friends with Shirley Gilbert* at work, and Shirley visited at her house on several occasions, once going for a cookout. She got the impression that Barbara and Larry had a good relationship, and they both were clearly devoted to the children. Later, though, Barbara began telling her about a woman with whom Larry worked, implying that he had had an affair with her. Shirley was surprised. Larry just didn’t seem the type to do that.

Although she couldn’t have known, Barbara’s implication of an affair by Larry was justification for further sexual adventures of her own. Barbara restrained herself for more than a year after going back to Larry, but in March 1976, she found new opportunity. She left her job at the fabric company and became a receptionist for a big manufacturing company, a job that paid only $25 more per month. But she had been promised, she said, that this was only a foot in the door, and greater things were to come.

Larry remained in his office manager’s job and continued his martial arts classes. He was now a red belt, helping Lou Wagner teach beginners and volunteering his time at the Boys Club in High Point, where he took Bryan for activities.

Bryan was now a first-grader at Trindale Elementary School and had formed a close friendship with another boy from his neighborhood, Locke Monroe. Bryan had started going to Sunday school with his new friend, and Barbara had gotten to know Locke’s mother, Brenda, because of their children. She invited Barbara and Larry to join Bryan at church one Sunday. They accepted and soon began attending services regularly at Cedarcrest Friends Meeting, only a few miles south of their house. Larry’s parents were pleased when they learned that Larry and Barbara had turned to the Quaker faith that had been their own heritage. Maybe this was indeed a new start for both of them. Maybe this was what they had needed to strengthen their marriage.

Barbara’s promise of bigger things to come at work was fulfilled when she became secretary to the company president, Daniel Morefield. He was a self-made millionaire. A man of great confidence and a personable nature, he harbored high political ambitions. Married, with children, he also had been involved in a long-term off-and-on affair with a younger woman, Susan Deaton*.

Although her promotion didn’t bring much more money, Barbara celebrated by trading in her Mustang for a new Ford LTD. Her new job required her to attend business meetings with her boss, travel that sometimes took her away on weekends. She frequently returned with expensive items that she showed off to her in-laws—gifts from business associates, she said; it was the way business was done nowadays. But the Fords had seen such gifts before, and they doubted that they had anything to do with business. Barbara, they feared, was returning to the old habits that had hurt Larry so much.

Not long after Barbara went to work for Daniel Morefield, Susan Deaton sensed that he had turned cool toward her. He didn’t call anymore. When she called him, he couldn’t talk, couldn’t find time for her. Finally he told her that so many things were going on that he wouldn’t be able to see her again for a while. Susan was angry and hurt.

“I knew he was having an affair with Barbara,” she said years later. “I just
knew
it, woman’s intuition.”

Susan had developed a close friend at Morefield’s company, and she called her about it. The whole plant was swirling with gossip about Barbara and her boss, her friend reported, and everybody was certain that something was going on between them. Barbara seemed to go out of her way to make it obvious.

Susan confirmed the affair in her own mind later when she saw Barbara and Morefield leaving a convention together arm in arm.

In August 1977, however, Barbara left her job abruptly. As soon as Susan heard about it, she called her friend at the company. The word was that the gossip about Barbara and Morefield had finally reached his wife.