Everything She Ever Wanted (32 page)

always love her children to distraction, and when her mind was made up

she was resolute.
 
No one could legally force her to hand her infant

son over for adoption.
 
But she had to stay in Washington and work at

Florence Crittendon until she paid off her debt.
 
She carried bedpans

and changed sheets until her arms and feet ached-but she kept her

baby.

Although Margureitte gave her last name as "Vann" on Kent's birth

certificate, the line for a father's name was left blank.

On the line that asked "Legitimate?"
 
someone had crossed out "Yes" and

"Unknown," leaving "No."
 
When Margureitte returned to her family in

Warsaw, locals who saw the husky blond toddler marveled at his

resemblance to John Cam Prigeon and chortled knowingly, "There goes

little Cam."

Margureitte had few assets and no reason to think that her life would

be any easier in the future, but she was young and healthy and very

beautiful.
 
She was a sweet young woman but determined.
 
Wanting so

much to make a home for Kent and Patty, she vowed she would spend her

life "helping" her children, creating for them the most perfect of all

worlds.

She tried to be with them almost all the time, possibly to make up for

the early years when she was not with Patty.
 
They had never had an

opportunity to truly bond with each other.
 
She had handed her baby

daughter over to her mother, and that had hurt Margureitte even though

she idolized her mother.
 
In the world Margureitte grew up in, the

perfect woman was longsuffering, patient, soft-spoken, and lived a life

of gentle servitude to her family.
 
She sometimes wondered how her

mother managed, but vowed to emulate her.
 
Looking back over her years

as a mother, Margureitte would murmur, "We're on earth to do for our

childrento help them any way we can."
 
She half believed in

reincarnation and her own place in a stream of reborn souls.
 
"The

doctor I worked for for so many years always told me, 'You came back to

help someone."

At last disillusioned with her love life, Margureitte looked elsewhere

and, quite suddenly, her luck changed.
 
Just as the rest of the world

was gripped in the bleakness of World War II, Margureitte's world

blossomed.

Whether she met the man who would be her lifetime love in the romantic

way they recalled, or in the more mundane manner her sisters

remembered, didn't really matter.
 
Margureitte described meeting Second

Lieutenant Clifford Brown Radcliffe in 1942 at a party in Washington,

D.C. Her retelling of that encounter makes it as idyllic a meeting as

any starry-eyed schoolgirl might envision.

"That never happened," one sister snorted.
 
"Margureitte was working as

a waitress at the Lobster House near Fort Bragg in Fayetteville, and

Clifford came in, and that was it."

Whichever, their eyes did meet and lock across a crowded room.
 
It was

love at first sight.
 
The young army officer was a half-dozen years

older than Margureitte and very handsome with classically aquiline

features, dark hair and eyes.
 
In fact, he looked like the movie stars

who were portraying gallant army officers in films of the forties.
 
He

wasn't terribly tall, but at five feet ten inches, he was certainly

taller than Margureitte.

Clifford was from an old family in Westchester County, New York, whose

ancestors had come over on the Mayflower.
 
He had a deep and cultured

speaking voice and he gazed at her as if he were utterly fascinated.

As indeed he was.
 
He was not deterred by the fact that she had two

small children.
 
Not at all.
 
They were married on january 8, 1942, in

the Fort Bragg chapel, and Margureitte broke the news to her mother

that now she could raise her own babies.
 
She had a husband and they

planned to take both Kent and Patty with them wherever Clifford was

stationed.

When Cliff was transferred to Texas, it was time for Patty to leave

Mama Siler and be her real mother's little girl.
 
It was stunning

news.

Margureitte's sisters begged her not to do it.

"Don't hurt Mama like that-she has a bad heart," they cried.

"You'll kill her if you take that child away from her."

But Margureitte was obdurate.
 
She had worked and waited years for this

moment.
 
She and Clifford took the children with them when they left by

train for Clifford's duty station in Mineral Wells, Texas.
 
Patty was

five and a half and had very firm ideas of her own.
 
She turned up her

nose at everything on the menu in the dining car.
 
She wanted

pancakes.

She wouldn't eat anything else.
 
Margureitte was afraid Patty would

starve if she didn't relent.
 
Patty got her flapjacks.
 
That was all

she ate for the entire trip across America.
 
And for weeks after.

She still cried for "Mama."

Back home in Siler City, Mama Siler was inconsolable.
 
They had taken

her baby away.
 
She lay in bed for days, mourning her loss.
 
But she

didn't die; she lived for many decades more.
 
Margureitte now had her

little daughter back and, if she was sometimes willful, the young

mother would blame Mama Siler for that.

"It wasn't natural for my mother to be so obsessed with Patty.

Although Patty and Kent were only two years apart in age, they were

vastly different in temperament.
 
Patty was stubborn and spoiled

rotten, used to having her own way.
 
Everyone in her small world had

always catered to her.
 
First her grandmother and her aunts, and now

her mother.
 
It was hard not to.
 
She was such a dainty, beautiful

child.
 
Her mother liked to use a southern expression to describe her:

"Patty's so pretty she can't whistle."

When she was happy, her laughter was like bells.
 
When she cried, she

could break your heart.
 
It was impossible to say no to Patty.

Kent was a sensitive, studious boy.
 
He was blond as a Scandinavian and

his big cars stuck out.
 
He was never cute-his bone structure was too

rough-hewn-but he was an endearing little boy whose gaze was straight

on.
 
He willingly took a backseat to his sister.

Patty had scant patience with her little brother.
 
In her mind, she was

meant to be an only child, and she grew cranky when attention moved

away from her.
 
Those first five years in Mama Siler's house had ruined

her for sharing.
 
She needed her spotlight, and she felt cold without

it.
 
She looked upon her brother as an interloper.
 
It was more than

the normal sibling infighting.
 
She hated him," one relative said

flatly.
 
"She always wanted him gone."

He almost went.
 
Kent, who had been born perfect, contracted

irneningitis shortly after the family arrived in Mineral Wells.
 
The

army base was in the grip of a massive epidemic.
 
Kent's fever raged

above 105 degrees for days and he came very, very close to dying.
 
When

he finally recovered, the doctors told Margureitte that he was almost

totally deaf.
 
After that, Kent always wore hearing aids, but he became

adept at reading lips.
 
People could not sense how profoundly deaf he

was unless they turned away as they spoke to him.
 
Then he was lost.

Margureitte and Clifford Radcliffe let Patty and Kent grow up believing

that he was their natural father.
 
He had accepted her children so

readily that it seemed the reasonable thing to do.
 
After all,

Margureitte was Patty and Kent's mother, and Clifford was the only

father they had ever known.
 
There was no point in bringing up Patty

and Kent's real father.
 
It would only confuse them.

4f, When "Daddy Cliff" was away in the war, Margureitte often took the

children and stayed near his family in Mamaroneck in Westchester

County, New York.
 
Her in-laws accepted her only grudgingly, not

pleased to have their son marry a woman they thought was divorced, but

they eventually admitted she was a gracious and refined young woman who

took marvelous care of her children.
 
She was an utterly devoted

mother.
 
It is quite 'possible that they, too, believed Clifford was

Patty and Kent's natural father; they often remarked on certain

physical traits the children shared with their son.

The children were all any grandparents could ask for.

Patty always looked perfect, like a child in the society pages in her

starched pinafores and black patent-leather Mary Janes or in a ,bowler

hat and fitted coat.
 
His mother put Kent in the proper clothing too.

Photos show him with a Buster Brown haircut grimacing into the camera

as he wore a tailored tweed coat and i a matching Eton cap.
 
His knobby

knees look ridiculous above long dark stockings.
 
He wasn't a boy meant

to be dressed up like a fancy pants kid, and he looks uncomfortable and

self-conscious.

Kent idolized his stepfather.
 
Although he was a rather smallboned man,

he was larger than life to Kent.
 
Clifford was often far away fighting

a war, and when he was home he was an awesome figure in his impeccable

uniform, an austere-even cold-man who had little patience with small

boys.
 
Clifford Radcliffe's own father had been just such a cold man'

and generation unto generation it had continued.

Clifford did enjoy little girls because they could be dressed up as

pretty as dolls and carried around.
 
He remonstrated with his wife if

their clothes weren't perfect and clean; he hated to find tears or