Everything She Ever Wanted (86 page)

killed Susan after all, although Susan had had that one bad "sinking

spell" six months after his birth when she visited at Boppo's.
 
No one

had ever diagnosed what had caused her illness.

Susan and Bill were also pleased to learn that apparently both Pat and

Debbie had jobs they liked, working as nurse's aides for a wealthy

couple near the Peachtree Country Club.
 
That was good news.
 
Susan was

hardly worried when she got a phone call from Boppo- "do you know how

much "Susan," her grandmother asked, money your mother makes where

she's working?"

"No, she's never mentioned it."

"Well, Debbie says she makes a lot of money-that your mother is making

as much as,Bill does."

"Oh," Susan said.
 
"I don't think so.
 
You know how Mom exaggerates.

Debbie does too.
 
I'm just grateful they both have a job they like and

they can work together."

Pat did seem to be making a little more money than she had in the past

.

At that summer's Siler Family Reunion at White Lake, North Carolina,

she proudly announced that she was taking care of her mother and father

in "their old age.
 
I have a big glass jar and I keep it filled with

money.
 
Mother can reach in there anytime she wants and get erself a

handful of money."

Susan knew that was ridiculous.
 
Despite the fortune they had lost in

legal fees for Pat, Boppo and Papa were still supporting her mother.

The money she made she spent mostly on herself.
 
There was a money jar,

but Boppo dipped into it only to please Pat.
 
Susan tried not to borrow

trouble.
 
Her mother had a tendency to be grandiose and there was no

way that Pat could be supporting Boppo and Papa; maybe it made her

mother feel ts and cousins that she was.
 
Pat was important to tell all

the aun over fifty, and she had always been dependent on her parents.

If and fiftycent pieces in a jar for Boppo, she put some quarters what

real harm was there in that?

Pat also became suddenly generous with the rest of the family, giving

them little bits and pieces of jewelry and old books-the kind of things

she liked.

She gave her grandchildren funny oldfashioned toys that they soon

discarded for plastic fads from Toys "R" Us.
 
But her own collection of

treasures of another era was growing larger.
 
Besides her Victorian

cards and her dolls, she added another collection: antique hatpins.

She said the late Mrs. Mansfield had given her-and Debbie-so many

things they admired.

Through the fall and winter of 1987, Pat worked longer and longer hours

at the Crists.
 
She explained that Elizabeth Crist's health had begun

to fail too so there was a lot more work to do.
 
It no longer sounded

like the ideal job; Pat and Debbie both complained that the elderly

Crists were penny-pinchers, pointing out how "common" it was the way

they lined their garbage cans with newspapers instead of plastic trash

can liners.
 
They said they had no place to sleep except a lumpy little

couch.
 
Still, Pat and Debbie stayed on the job.

It was the longest-running job Pat had ever had.

It ended in mid-June of 1988.
 
Pat explained to her family that it was

unfortunate, but there had been a problem with the Crists' medical

insurance.

"The company just refused to pay for aides anymore," she said.
 
"So the

Crists couldn't keep us on."

Colonel Radcliffe turned seventy-five in July.
 
The whole family showed

up at a restaurant to honor Papa.
 
Pat had saved up to get him a

wonderful surprise, an eighteen-karat gold lapis stone ring.
 
He was

very pleased.
 
He held his hand up for Susan's camcorder and described

the ring, right down to the intricate carving beside the blue stone.

Papa didn't look seventy-five.
 
He barely looked sixty-fit and

handsome-as he posed for yet another group of happy family pictures

with Bill, Susan, Debbie, Pat, Sean, Courtney, Adam, Ronnie and

Ashlynne, and Boppo.
 
They toasted each other with iced tea in Mason

jars.
 
It was a happy night.

With no further practical nursing prospects in sight, Pat started her

own business in her parents' home in McDonough.
 
She called her

enterprise Patty's Play Pals and had business cards made up.
 
She sewed

doll clothes and worked on antique dolls, restoring them to their

original condition.
 
She was wonderfully clever with her dolls.
 
Boppo

and Papa gave her the room off their recreation room and it soon became

a "nursery" of sorts.

Dozens of dolls, their fixed eyes bright and staring, filled that

room.

Being there was like stepping back in time-to the 1930s and then

further and further back until this century seemed not to exist at

all.

Pat seemed happiest in her doll room, or in the windowless closet

ad'oining I it that she turned into a stuffy little sewing room.

She sewed far into the night, her work area lit by a bare light bulb

swinging from an extension cord.

On weekends, Pat carefully packed up her Play Pals and drove to hobby

shows, swap meets, and flea markets.
 
"That made me sad," Susan

remembered.
 
"To See my mother at her age going around to flea markets with

her dolls.
 
I t seemed so humbling for her-almost worse than it was

when she was working at the pizza parlor.
 
She'd go to those tailgate

sales or swap meets and she was selling her doll things out of the

trunk of her car."

Although there were no more men in Pat's life, she made a very close

woman friend, a teacher named Miss Loretta.* Miss Loretta also

collected antique dolls and they had much in common.
 
They were both

plump, middle-aged women with one y lives and unfulfilled dreams.
 
Miss

Loretta had never been married.
 
ssive of Miss Loretta as she had Pat

rapidly became as posse once been of Hap Brown and Tom Allanson, and as

she still was of her mother.

She had never been able to hold lightly onto important people in her

life.
 
It was no different with Miss Loretta.
 
Pat clutched and

clung.

She could not bear for "her" people to have lives away from her; she

had to know about every detail of their activities.

Although some of Pat's exquisitely restored dolls sold for

hundreds-even thousands-of dollars, Patty's Play Pals wasn't another

job.
 
a consistent source of income, and Pat had to take She went to

work for the Golden Memories shop in Stockbridge, a pawnshop and

consignment store that sold old jewelry, small items, and just plain

junk that people .
 
brought in, keeping a percentage.
 
At least it was

more in keeping with Pat's interests right across the street, than

making pizza.
 
The pizza parlor was and she shuddered to think she had

ever worked there.
 
She made forty-five dollars a day at Golden

Memories.
 
At the end of each day, she would open the cash register by

punching the No Sale wn so heavy that it was key, and pay herself in

cash.
 
She had gro hard for her to be on her feet all day.
 
Pat bought

herself a folding chair at the Wal-Mart Drugstore and sat on that

between customers.
 
Golden Memories, he prob If Tom Allanson had walked

into ably wouldn't have recognized his former wife.
 
The frail and

beautiful southern belle had long since been buried under folds of

flesh.
 
Even the sweet voice that had once reduced him to tears was

vastly changed.
 
Pat either gave imperious commands or she sighed with

dull fatigue, her voice harsh and flat.

But, after fourteen years, Tom was still in prison.
 
And he was

married-at least common-law-to another woman.
 
Surprisingly, he held no

grudge against Pat.
 
He was not a man to hold grudges.

What might have been more devastating-if she had known about it was

that Tom never thought about Pat at all.

Once, in a moment of searing revelation, Margureitte Radcliffe had

confessed to Susan her own worst fear.
 
"I have nightmares about being

accused of a crime-falsely-and being sent to prison.
 
That's what I'm

most afraid of - " s though her Susan wasn't surprised.
 
Sometimes it

seemed a mother and grandmother shared one brain.
 
Although Boppo could

hold a stubborn grudge against even one of her own sisters, she had

always forgiven her daughter anything, and she had always absorbed

Pat's pain.
 
Of course Boppo feared the worst thing that had ever

happened to Pat.
 
Wherever Pat's emotions plunged, her mother's

followed.
 
She had practically gone to prison herself when Pat did.

Susan didn't confide her worst fear to Boppo-she didn't dare.
 
Boppo

would have been outraged.
 
"It wasn't a rational fear," Susan

admitted.

"At least I didn't think it was then.
 
I was afraid that Bill would

die, and my mother would move in and take over my house and my life.
 
I

could picture her locking the e-and not ever letting doors and not

letting anyone in to see m me out.
 
It was a suffocating feeling."

Bill Alford was transferred once again-this time back to the Atlanta

area.
 
The Alfords bought a lovely home in the Brookstone Country Club

area.
 
Sean was in high school; he had grown up to be a tall, extremely

handsome young man who often played golf with his father at the

Brookstone private golf course.
 
Courtney played golf too, the only

girl in her age category, and she took ballet lessons.
 
Adam was an

adorable little blue-eyed toddler.