Everything She Ever Wanted (41 page)

wife what she wanted.
 
Pat had always dreamed of a house finer than any

house a Siler had yet known.
 
Hell, she still wanted her Tara.
 
She

always had and she always would, and if he ever hoped to get her out of

her mama's house, he was going to have to find a way to give her what

she demanded.

They went out driving in the country looking for likely properties.

Finally, they found some land for sale on Tell Road.

They could have missed the place so easily; it was west of East Point

in the Ben Hill district, beyond No Name Road, and deadended at the

Atlanta city limits.
 
It didn't look like city at all.
 
It was deep

country with thick trees up to the road and wetlands that some

homeowners had dammed up into algae-covered ponds.
 
The piece for sale

was way back in, past a log cabin-like place inhabited by a maiden lady

of indeterminate age named Fanny Kate Cash, who had lived there all of

her life.
 
It was ]Panny Kate who was selling off the back piece of

land.

There was no house, no road, nothing but trees.
 
But Pat wanted it.

Here they would build their mansion and create a wonderful riding ring

for horse shows.
 
She would give riding lessons to help meet their

bills.
 
She assured her husband that the spread at 4189 Tell Road

S.W.

would be known in horse i'l show circles all over the South.

Gil had to work three jobs to pay for it: his regular army assignments,

of course, and then as a caterer loading meals on airplanes and for the

J. C. Penney Company.
 
He had always had dark circles under his eyes,

but now they turned almost black.
 
Fearing the pace was going to

outright kill him, he tried to explain to Pat, "Honey, I can't make

it.

I'm only getting four hours to sleep at night."

She shook her head impatiently.
 
"Sure you can.
 
You just have to try

harder."

He did-and they bought the Tell Road property.
 
They cleared and graded

a spot for a riding ring and put up bleachers, bright lights, and

fences.
 
However, the mansion Pat visualized was far beyond their

means; that would have to wait.
 
In the meantime, they found two houses

that were being sold dirt cheap because they had to be moved.
 
One was

white and one was red brick, and they were eased precariously down Tell

Road on flatbed trucks, past Fanny Kate Cash's place and up to a knoll

back in the woods.

They soon learned that putting the two houses together would be far

more costly than to simply build a house on their land.
 
It didn't help

that Pat insisted on the very best in lighting fixtures, flooring, and

fancy trim.
 
When Pat wanted to pave the long gravel driveway, even

Boppo threw her hands up and said, "Good Lord!
 
Your mother's lost her

mind!
 
Does she have any idea what that would cost?"

The road stayed gravel, but Gil had masons lay a red brick foundation

under the white frame house and he built a long veranda that faced out

on the show ring.
 
They planted boxwood shrubs out in front and hung

black shutters like the ones found on the best homes in Atlanta.
 
It

wasn't enough.
 
When it was done, they could see that they didn't have

the mansion that Pat had pictured.
 
All they had was a mishmash that

just looked like two houses stuck together.
 
Worse, they had two

mortgages they couldn't keep up with and they were about to go bankrupt

and lose it all.

Pat went to her mother and stepfather in tears.
 
They had to help

her.

As usual, she blamed Gil for their troubles; he didn't know a damn

thing about building and she should have realized that, but it was too

late now.
 
She promised Boppo and Papa that she would take care of them

in their "golden years" if they would only help her save the Tell Road

place.

Of course, her parents said they would help her as they always had, and

the malignant money drain began.
 
In the end, it seemed the only way

Margureitte and the colonel could come up with enough money to bail Pat

and Gil out would be to sell their Dodson Drive house and move into the

Tell Road place with them.
 
It would be a profound loss for

Margureitte.
 
She didn't want to leave her elegant home to move into a

half-finished, jerry-built excuse for a house that was so far out in

the boondocks that it took almost an hour just to get to a grocery

store.
 
She didn't want to leave the lovely neighborhood just off

Headland Drive and have afternoon tea with Fanny K. Cash.
 
"I just want

to live in my own house," she wailed, "and have my grandchildren come

to see me like other grandmothers do.
 
I don't want to move."

But she finally acceded to Pat's pleas.
 
She wanted Pat to be happy.

How could she deny her daughter her dream?

"My mother always used guilt on my grandmother," Susan remembered.

"She would start an argument by saying, 'Mother, why did you go off and

leave me all alone with Mama Siler?
 
Who was my father?
 
Didn't you

love me?
 
Why did you leave me?"
 
And Boppo would say, 'I had no other

choice,'but it hurt Boppo.
 
I always remember my grandmother

saying-even when I was a grown-up: 'Why can't your mother be happy?"

The Dodson Drive house was snapped up as soon as the Radcliffes put it

on the market.
 
They wondered if they should have listed it at a higher

price.
 
Boppo and Papa moved out to Tell Road and into Ronnie's

bedroom, sharing the rest of the unfinished tacked-together house with

Pat, Gil, Susan, Debbie and Debbie's boyfriend, Gary Cole, and

Ronnie.

It was crowded and uncomfortable.
 
Once more Pat was living with her

parents, although she felt it was time for her daughters to grow up.

She could hardly wait for them to leave home.

Debbie competed in her last horse show in Hickory, North Carolina, in

the late summer of 1970.
 
She was fifteen years old and she was four

months pregnant.
 
"I won," she recalled, "and that was my last show."

She married Gary, a husky blond laborer who was just seventeen, and

they found a place of their own.

Susan was determined to graduate from high school; she would be the

first girl in her immediate family to do so.
 
The move to Teil Road

meant she had to go to summer school if she hoped to graduate early

from Headland High School.
 
Susan was shy, but she set certain

standards that no one could talk her out of.
 
She was not going to

marry anyone until she had a high school diploma, and she wasn't going

to be pregnant at her wedding.
 
Furthermore, she was truly going to

flout tradition by le until her e' hteenth birthday in March 1971.

staying sing ig Susan graduated from Headland in October of 1970 and

went to work at the PX at Fort Mac to help the family budget.
 
She

attended a dance at the fort one night in 1970 with her girlfriend,

Sonia Salo.
 
"I met this guy I thought was a maniac," she remembered,

smiling.
 
"He was good-looking all right, but he was dancing with

another girl, and he kept turning her around and winking at me and

making faces behind her back.
 
He was a show-off and a wild dancer

too.

I finally asked Sonja what on earth was wrong with him, and she laughed

and said, 'Oh, he's okay.
 
That's just Bill Alford.
 
He always acts

like that."

Alford, a first lieutenant, left a note on Susan's car a few days later

and they met at Sonja Salo's apartment, which was in the building where

he lived.
 
Reluctantly, Susan agreed to go out with him.
 
He was six

years older than she was, and he was far too much of an extrovert for

the shy, soft-spoken Susan.
 
Still, his exuberance was contagious, and

in spite of herself, she was soon utterly captivated by the brash young

lieutenant.

So was her mother.
 
Pat took one look at George L. "Bill" Alford and

decided he was perfect for Susan.
 
"My mother was the matchmaker,"

Susan recalled.
 
"She said if she was younger, she'd take him

herself.

I believe that-but I also think she was clearing the decks.
 
When we

came home from ourfit'st date, I was mortified to hear her ask Bill if

he'd given me an engagement ring!
 
She wanted us all out of the house

and on our own.
 
She had plans."

On November 6, 1970, Fort McPherson photographers took a picture of

Miss Susan Taylor and Colonel John H. Calloway, the base commander, as

they pinned the insignia of Bill Alford's new rank on his uniform.
 
He

was Captain Alford now.
 
Pat was pleased.

An army captain, still in his early twenties and already on his way up,

would make a fine husband for Susan.

They were married on March 27, 1971, in the Fort McPherson chapel, the

same chapel where Susan's mother and father had been married eighteen

and a half years earlier.
 
Pat had been pregnant with Susan then.

Susan and Bill had a beautiful wedding.
 
The groom and the father of

the bride were in full-dress uniform; Susan wore a white dress with a

long veil edged in lace, purchased at Rich's Department Store, and she

carried white roses and stephanotis clustered around a huge white

orchid.
 
Everyone smiled happily for the photographers with the

exception of Margureitte.
 
Her face was fixed in the familiar crystal

gaze of the Siler sisters.
 
Perhaps she knew what was about to

happen.

"My reception was a disaster," Susan recalled many years later.
 
"My