Everything She Ever Wanted (83 page)

lived without Tom, she seemed to be thriving.
 
When she left Hardwick

in 1984, she went to New Horizons, a halfway house for paroled females

in Atlanta, where counseling and training would prepare her to merge

gradually back into the world she had left in 1977.
 
Fans were mourning

Elvis Presley the summer Pat went to prison, and the world she returned

to had made Boy George a star.
 
Miniskirts and big hair were no longer

in style, astronauts were floating free in space, Ronald Reagan was

president, and, for the first time, a woman-Geraldine Ferraro-was

nominated for vice-president.

The romantic, Victorian world that Pat had always aspired to was

further away than ever.
 
But she was free-or almost-and her family

delighted in her return to Atlanta.
 
She could go on weekend passes

from the halfway house, and soon she would really be home, back with

Boppo and Papa.
 
Susan, Debbie, Ronnie, Boppothe whole family-believed

that Pat was on the brink of a wonderful new life.
 
Her involvement

with drugs was years behind her, and she was young enough to enjoy her

life.
 
She was still beautiful, albeit possessed of a more mature

beauty.
 
Even so, she looked far younger than her true age.

Pat habitually called her mother and daughters before 7:00

A.M. from New Horizons.
 
If they were a little grouchy at being

awakened, they immediately felt guilty; it meant so much to Pat to be

in daily touch with them.
 
It was such a luxury for her to be able to

call them whenever she wanted.
 
Susan, especially, devoted herself to

helping her mother readjust to the world.
 
She saw Pat as almost

childlike; she had been cut off from everyone and everything for so

long that she grabbed at life with both hands.

"I'd come get Mom at the halfway house and take her to the

Varsity-that's Atlanta's favorite place for hot dogs; they're real

greasy but they're so good-and she'd get chili dogs," Susan recalled.

"When she came to our house for supper, she liked to have me fix her

chicken cordon bleu, but even so she always wanted to stop and get a

Varsity hot dog on the way home!"

Although Susan and Bill Alford were living in Atlanta in 1984, Bill was

about to be transferred once again, the standard peripatetic pattern of

the young executive in America.
 
The Alfords were moving to Marion,

Indiana, in June, and Susan visited with her mother as much as possible

before they left.

As always, Pat was furious with Bill for agreeing to a transfer.
 
"How

can Bill do this to me?"
 
she implored.
 
But Pat had made an error in

judgment when she put Bill Alford in the category of men she could

manipulate.
 
She liked his strength and assumed she could harness it

just as she had leaned on Gil, Tom, and Papa.
 
Indeed, in times of

trouble she had often cried, "I want my Bill!"

But Pat took Bill Alford's good nature for weakness and never saw that

he could be pushed only as far as he was willing.
 
Thereafter, he was an

immovable object.

"Just when I finally get home," Pat complained to Susan.
 
the children

away from "How can Bill deliberately take you and me?"

Of course, he had no choice-save resigning.
 
In vain, Susan tried to

explain that.
 
She didn't tell her mother Bill preferred to have at

least a thousand miles between himself and Pat.
 
In the out to lunch

time they had left together, she took her mother and shopping as much

as possible.
 
Despite her huge appetite, Pat had lost a great deal of

weight since her release from Hardwick.
 
Susan took her to the Lenox

Square shopping mall in the Buckhead neighborhood and bought her all

new clothes.
 
Pat was thrilled.

"The last time I saw her before we moved," Susan remembered, "I took

her to the bus stop so she could go to work, and we both started to

cry.
 
She looked so lost.
 
I hated to leave her."

With the often inexplicable reasoning of the parole system, Pat, who

now called herself Pat Taylor, was assigned to work as a companion to

the elderly-a "sitter."
 
It had been stipulated in her parole papers

that She would work at the Fountainview Convalescent Home in Atlanta.

Apparently, no one had researched the crimes that had sent her to

prison in the first place.
 
She now cared for wealthy elderly people

who lived in their own apartments in the retirement center.
 
She helped

them bathe and eat and supervised their medications.
 
On occasion, she

even gave atients.
 
Her clients all spoke highly of insulin shots to

diabetic p her; she became like part of their own families.
 
She seemed

to have no emotional life of her own, although she later confessed pal

priest who had supervised to Susan her feelings for an Episco New

Horizons.
 
"He was probably the only man I could ever have really

loved," Pat said wistfully.
 
"But of course, he wasn't free to love

me."
 
the halfway In November 1984, when Pat was released from house

and officially paroled, she was forty-seven years old.
 
She had "maxed

out."
 
Under Georgia sentencing guidelines, she had been incarcerated

as long as she legally could be.
 
The conditions of her parole dictated

that she report to a parole officer in jonesboro, Georgia, and live

with Boppo and Papa on Arrowhead Boulevard in Jonesboro.
 
But Pat told

her mother she wouldn't live in the Radcliffes' townhouse.
 
"There are

too many niggers around here," she said flatly.
 
"I won't live

here."

So the moved 'y to a little red brick house in the tiny hamlet of

McDonough, Georgia.
 
There was an upstairs room with a small bathroom

off of it, and that would be Pat's.
 
She was coming home at last.

Pat continued with her nursing job at Fountainview, and she I arranged

for her daughter Debbie to work the shifts preceding or following her

own.
 
Debbie had separated from and reconciled with her husband

innumerable times.
 
She was not yet thirty and Dawn was almost

fourteen.
 
Vaguely unhappy with her life, Debbie often came to visit

Susan and Bill in the lovely homes they owned far away from Atlanta,

and Susan listened sympathetically to her younger sister's litany of

troubles.
 
Debbie had missed her mother acutely while Pat was in

Hardwick, so she was happy they would now be working together.
 
Neither

Pat nor Debbie had any formal training as licensed practical nurses or

nursing assistants.
 
They were learning on the job.

Almost from the beginning there were certain problems with Pat's return

to her family.
 
Maybe they were inevitable.
 
For so long, the family

had believed that Pat's homecoming would be their happy ending after so

many years of bad times, but things didn't work out that way.
 
She

still threw tantrums to get what she wanted.
 
"I thought Pat would be

happy when she got out!"
 
Boppo cried out to Susan.
 
"She can never be

happy.
 
I've done everything I can do for her.
 
If there was something

else I could do, I would do it.
 
I just want to live my life now in

peace!"

First of all, there was Ashlynne, Ronnie's daughter.
 
In prison, Pat

had been annoyed to learn that her youngest granddaughter was living

with Boppo and Papa.
 
When she came home to live, she had to share her

mother with the child, and she resented it.
 
There was no question of

sending the little girl to her own mother; two-year-old Ashlynne had

been in terrible condition when Boppo started caring for her-unwashed,

with diapers unchanged for days, and with head lice.
 
Ronnie lived

nearby, but he had been married three or four times-no one was sure

just how many-and his life was too unstable to care for his daughter

properly.
 
Ashlynne needed Boppo, and as Boppo said so often, "How can

someone not love a child?"

Ashlynne wet the bed.
 
Every time she did, Pat removed another of her

toys and put it away in a closet.
 
Eventually, Ashlynne had no toys

left.
 
Pat bought Ashlynne clothes at garage sales-and there was

nothing wrong with that, except that she chose the most faded, most

threadbare dresses and little shirts on sale.
 
To her grandmother,

Ashlynne looked like a refugee.
 
Dressed by Whe in the rag ban Pat wasn't

looking, Boppo threw the used clothes g. Pat continually insisted that

Ashlynne should go home and live with Ronnie, that she had no business

at all taking up Boppo's time.
 
All the babies in the family seemed to

threaten Pat, as if she feared she would no longer be loved if there

were too many of them.

After she came home to McDonough?
 
Pat also became obressed about her

background, nagging at Boppo for proof of who she really was.
 
Boppo

threw up her hands and cried, "My are you digging up the past, Pat?

I've told you all I know."
 
Boppo would call Susan or Debbie and

agonize over the situation.
 
"Your mother is calling all of her aunts

and asking questions about her real father.
 
Now she doubts I'm her

real mother, and that Kent was her real brother.
 
All my life I've

loved your mother.
 
I just don't know what else I can do.
 
Will she

ever be happy?"

Susan tried to comfort her grandmother, but there was no softening

Boppo's despair at the turmoil in her home.
 
"Your Boppo's very tired,

Susan," she said softly.
 
"My body is worn )m just so tired.
 
I look in

the mirror, and I can't out, and I believe that old lady with the white

hair and lines on her face is me.
 
One thing I know for sure-your

grandfather and I have been through so much, but we love each other and

always have Boppo and Papa were old now, but with Pat back, their lives