Everything She Ever Wanted (85 page)

on the expressway by setting cruise control once I got up to speed.
 
My

mother wouldn't hear of it - She told me, 'You can't eak."When she saw

was make it, Susie.

You're sick.
 
You're w p her hands and said, 'All right!
 
If you going

to go, she threw u ways said that.
 
She'd said want to kill yourself,

go ahead."
 
She al going ahead with my pregnancy with that when I told

her I was Adam."

Susan and the kids headed for Alabama, and they did all right sway.

The speed limit was sixty-five until she got on the expres miles per

our, and Susan had great difficulty getting past thirty-five.
 
Her foot

wouldn't press hard enough on the accelerator.
 
She tried to force her

foot down on the pedal.
 
"I finally S had to reach down and just take

my hand and mash my foot on the accelerator.
 
I thought we'd never get

home."

Susan's hands ached too.
 
For some time after she got home she had to

hold her hands together and squeeze them, rub her legs, and massage her

feet to get some relief.
 
It was the worst, ver had.
 
Her skin turned

gray and her bone-aching flu she had e r like two dead things.

eyes stared back at her from the mirro Time after time she told Bill,

"I just can't stand the pain in my feet.
 
I can hardly walk."

Susan's doctor tried one antibiotic after another, but she got worse.

Finally, he said she was probably overmedicated.
 
"I'm just taking you

off antibiotics entirely.
 
You've just got a really bad case of the

flu."

"But I had no energy," Susan recalled.
 
"I could hardly even get to the

doctor's office.
 
Bill was so worried.
 
He said, 'I've got to get you

well, 'cause you've got a six-month-old and two kids at home."

Finally, I gradually began to get better."

It took Susan about six weeks to get back on her feet.

Adam worried the Alfords too.
 
At two weeks, he had had unexplained

bleeding from the lower intestinal tract.
 
They were frightened that it

might be something really serious.
 
The doctors tested him for

everything under the sun and finally put him on a special formula.

That seemed to work, but he couldn't digest solid food until he was

almost a year old.
 
Since Debbie had also had bouts with bloody

colitis, the doctors suggested that Susan and Bill check their

families' medical histories to see if there were any other relatives

who had suffered from rectal bleeding.

"In 1987," Susan recalled, "I had two projects.
 
The first was to o

back through all our ancestors to see if any of them had ever had

anything like Adam did; the second was to write a book.

I wanted to write a really upbeat, inspirational book about my mother

and the family.
 
She had been through so much, and then all those years

in prison, and she had a good job, helping people, and she'd even

helped people in prison with the classes she taught.

The rest of us had suffered too; we were still emotionally exhausted

from those bad years.
 
I wanted to write a happy-ending kind of book

about a family that had triumphed over one member's mental illness and

drug addiction.
 
My family wasn't perfectnobody's is-and Lord knows we

certainly had our eccentricities, but I thought we had come through it

all just fine.

"I repressed my fears; I still ignored the warnings.
 
I just wanted so

much for us all to be all right."

Pat Taylor hit a bad patch .
 
in 1987.
 
After Mrs. Mansfield died, she

couldn't find another "sitting" job.
 
If she wanted to, Debbie .
 
. .

could always work as a receptionist In a doctor's office; she was young

and attractive with a terrific figure. It wasn't nearly so easy for

Pat.
 
She had only a tenth-grade education and she was fifty.
 
She had

put on so much weight that she looked her age and more.
 
Almost

overnight, she had gone from a slender, almost ethereal woman of a

certain age to a stolid, solid middleaged woman.
 
She still loved

exquisite period dresses with lace and hand stitching, and she had a

beautiful wedding gown, circa 1880, on a mannequin in her bedroom in

Papa and Boppo's house, a white ghost figure standing in a dark

corner.

The antique dress was about a size 8, and Pat wore a 22.
 
She reveled

in her costumes, but she could no longer squeeze into them.
 
If she

dreamed of romance and perfect love, she no longer spoke of it.

Way back in the days when Pat and her children, Susan, Debbie, and

Ronnie were living with Boppo and Papa, Pat had often accused her

parents of resenting the money they spent on her and her children.
 
"If

we're too much for you to support," she would cry, "I'll just go work

in a Waffle House!"
 
It was only an idle threat.
 
Then.
 
For Pat, a job

at the Waffle House was the most desperate strait in which an

upperclass woman could find herself.
 
Twenty years later in 1987, she

was forced to take a job as an assistant manager at a Pizza Hut up I-7S

in Stockbridge.
 
She told her children that she would earn close to

twenty thousand dollars a year, if you included benefits.

How she hated it.
 
If anything, it was far worse than a Waffle House.

The steel bowls of pizza dough were heavy and hurt her back.
 
The smell

of tomato sauce and oregano clung to her auburn hair and seeped into

her very skin.
 
She couldn't get along with the younger managers and

the other workers.

Life didn't seem fair to Pat.
 
Susan had a fine house and a good

husband, Debbie was tanned and wild and sexy as Pat had once been, and

Boppo had a man who loved her beyond reason.
 
But Pat?

Pat had nothing.
 
She had no love, no future, no money, and she had

lost the only home she ever wanted.
 
She had become fascinated with

antique dolls and wanted to collect them.
 
And then she wanted to own

real antique carousel horses.
 
She wanted to be a true southern lady.

There were so many things she wanted.
 
Somehow, there had to be a way

to get them.

"Pat didn't want to go to work for the Crists, you know," Margureitte

Radcliffe recalled.
 
"I believe it was their son who called her-because

she had such wonderful references from her looking after other elderly

people-and he just pleaded with her, begged her, to take care of his

parents.
 
A very fine old family.
 
Very, very wealthy."

Pat resigned from the Pizza Hut, glad to be rid of the smell of tomato

sauce and oregano (despite what her mother later said), and went to

work for Elizabeth and James Crist.

The Crists had lived for decades in a mansion on a huge, rambling

spread of manicured grounds on Nancy Creek Road near Atlanta's

Peachtree Country Club.

Once, a long time ago, Pat Taylor had designed the kind of estate she

wanted, but all her efforts to make it come to life had fallen short.

Her dream plantation was very like the Crists' estate.
 
Their home was

built of pale green wood siding, three stories high, with wings,

dormers, bay windows, a "Florida room.

" The main house had maids' quarters and an attached garage with room

for four cars, and the grounds featured a pond, a pool, a barbecue

area, and every other possible nicety for gracious living.
 
The mansion

was set at least five hundred feet back from Nancy Creek I Road.
 
A

circular driveway led through the pine trees, oak trees, holly bushes,

and huge rhododendrons that sheltered the vast green stretch of lawn.

The view from the rear of the house was into private woods.
 
The Crists

were, indeed, "very, very wealthy."

In the spring of 1987 the Crists found they needed assistance.
 
James

Crist suffered from Parkinson's disease.
 
Betty Crist called a friend

of hers who worked at the Peachtree Plaza and asked if she had any

suggestions.
 
"Yes," the woman answered.
 
"There's a woman named

Patricia Taylor who's supposed to be awfully good."
 
Armed with Pat

Taylor's phone number at the Radcliffes', Betty Crist called her and

arranged an interview.
 
The buxom applicant seemed competent and

intelligent.
 
She had a certain air of quiet good breeding about her,

and seemed unimpressed by the plush surroundings of the Crists' home.

Pat Taylor was hired.
 
She would receive, as a beginning salary, ten

dollars an hour and meals.
 
She began working for the Crists on May 1,

1987.
 
Debbie soon joined her, working the night shift.

The Crists had two sons and a daughter and they agreed that Pat Taylor

seemed to be the perfect solution to their father's health care.
 
He

would be able to stay in the house on Nancy Creek Road and wouldn't

have to go into a nursing home.

Elizabeth Crist was seventy-six, a cheerful, healthy, and intelligent

woman.
 
She needed no care at all herself-but she had a bad knee and

had suffered herniated spinal disks in the past so she couldn't lift

her husband.

They had been married a very long time and loved each other

devotedly.

Having Pat on duty would allow Betty to be with her husband for company

in the days he had left.

Susan and Bill Alford were still living in Florence, Alabama, in 1987,

and they breathed a sigh of relief when there was a period of respite

from the family problems that usually bubbled up out of Georgia.
 
Pat

seemed to adore Adam and grudgingly agreed that childbirth hadn't