Everything She Ever Wanted (89 page)

bearing-down agony as if her extremities were caught in intractable

vises.

It was a familiar pain-not unlike what she had felt in the summer of

1987 when she had had such a terrible time driving home from Boppo's

house to Florence, A hands, kneading it was worse.
 
"I just had to keep

rubbinlgabmayma.
 
But this time, ' leaching out of them.
 
They hurt

them, trying to work that terrib so bad I'd wake up at night with the

pain."
 
stone from McDonough and announced Pat drove up to Brook that

she would take care of Susan.
 
"Mom wouldn't let me do bered.

"She took care of Adam, she anything," Susan remem and she tried to be

sure cooked for Bill and Courtney and Sean, up or tea and come and I

didn't get dehydrated.
 
She'd fix me so sit by me until she saw that I

was swallowing it.
 
I didn't now what I would do without her."
 
hey

made fun of Pat's Bill and Sean were hardly gratefu.
 
. T cooking;

worse than that, they made jokes (behind her back, of course) about

being afraid she would poison them.
 
it was an illkept secret that

Grandma Pat had been in prison for arsenic poisoning, and Bill and Sean

shared a certain perverse sense of humor.

"Mom was no star in the kitchen," Susan admitted.
 
"She tried, but-and

I hate to say it because it sounds mean-my mother is not known for her

cooking.
 
Sean and Bill wouldn't eat what she made.
 
Her 'famous tuna'

still had the oil in it and then she added mayonnaise besides.
 
She

never skimmed the grease off of spaghetti [sauce] or chill.
 
She liked

it that way, so she assumed everyone did."

Susan begged Sean and Bill to be more considerate of Pat.

But they just laughed and scraped their plates down the disposal when

Pat's back was turned.
 
Their eyes would meet, and, as if by

prearranged signal, the two of them would sneak out to eat in a

restaurant.

Susan appreciated having her mother there; she was so weak that she

could no longer take care of Adam or the house.
 
Her weight dropped by

twenty pounds or more.
 
At first, she only had dark circles under her

eyes, and then her eyes themselves appeared sunken in her skull.
 
She

had been ill before-those terrible six weeks in Alabama-but not as bad

as this.

Pat banned Bill and the children from Susan's room, warning them that

she was far too ill for company, but Sean was crafty at sneaking in to

see his mother.
 
"Mom," he asked her more than once, "do you think

maybe she's giving you something to make you sick?"

"Sean!"

"Well, she did it to people before.
 
She won't let us see you.
 
She's

down there banging pots and pans around like she's mad at somebody.

When is she going home?"

"I need her, Sean," Susan explained patiently.

"I wish she'd go home.
 
And I'm not going to eat what she cooks.

Neither is Dad."

Susan was too weak and sick to argue with him.
 
There were many nights

when Bill was out on the road and she needed another adult in the house

to help her care for the kids.
 
She was too weak and sick to realize

that she was actually living her own worst fear.
 
Her mother kept her

completely isolated most of the time.

Her mother had taken over her house.

No one came to visit Susan and she wondered why.
 
She didn't know that

Pat refused to answer the door, had drawn the drapes so that the house

looked deserted.
 
She passed on no phone messages to Susan.
 
"I found

out later," Susan recalled.
 
"My sisterin-law said she had come over

many times to see me, but no one came to the door."
 
it was Pat's

way.

She isolated people in her care.
 
She had kept jean away from Paw and

Nona, and Bobby Porter from Aunt Liz.

And now she had virtually locked Susan up in her own home, shutting her

off from everything outside her bedroom.

. . .

Christmas came and Susan was too sick to cook dinner.

Everyone went to Boppo and Papa's.
 
It was another holiday where

everyt@g seemed idyllic.
 
Pat had spent countless hours painting and

refurbishing an incredible dollhouse for Courtney.
 
Sean quickly dubbed

it "South Fork."
 
It had four tall columns on the veranda-wrapped with

red ribbons for a candy-cane Christmas lookadditions on each side of

the main house, lace curtains in all the windows, and black shutters.

It was the sort of thing Pat loved to work on.
 
Dolls and doilhouses,

little worlds of her own creation There was no dollhouse for Ashlynne,

which was unfortunate since the girls were almost the same age.

Courtney thanked her grandmother politely, but she was a little girl

far more interested in sports than in dolihouses and miniature

furniture.

As they sat down to eat, Adam's "Grandma Pat" moved his highchair four

feet back from the table so that he was sitting against the wall, his

view of the family blocked by an antique china cabinet.
 
Susan could

see he was about to cry, his face bereft at being banished.
 
She nudged

Bill and he moved Adam back.
  
The food was wonderful and

Susan tried to eat, but she felt
 
queasy after a few bites.
 
At home later, Bill

took a picture of her sitting in an easy chair in her nightgown.
 
She

looked like death itself, her eyes sunken, her skin the color of thin

parchment.

Susan hadn't been able to take care of Adam for a month, and in the

months ahead she felt no better.
 
Her hands hurt so badly that she

could scarcely use them.
 
Bill insisted that there had to be something

more wrong with her than the flu.
 
On January 19, 1990, he took her to

the emergency room at Kennestone Hospital in Marietta for testing.
 
Her

doctor had no idea why she was so sick, but he listed a tentative

diagnosis: ".079-9: Viral Syndrome."
 
urinalysis A complete blood

count, a sputum culture, and a yielded no information.
 
Susan was

dehydrated from vomiting; she was given intravenous fluids to stabilize

her condition and then released.
 
Bill wanted more testing.
 
He wanted

hair and nail clipping analysis; he wanted testing for arsenic.
 
Susan

absolutely refused.
 
"I couldn't even think of that.
 
I would not

believe that my mother would do that to me.
 
Not deliberately.

That was too awful to contemplate."

Pat continued to care for Susan.
 
She wasn't living with the Alfords in

their home in the Brookstone Country Club but she might as well have

been; she was there almost all the time.
 
Susan was grateful; she

didn't know what she would have done without her mother.
 
She began to

wonder if she had hepatitis or mononucleosis-or even cancer.
 
She had

been sick for three months and she just wasn't getting any better.

Adam was such a chunk of a toddler that she wasn't sure she could lift

him.
 
Her mother wouldn't even let her try.
 
Pat was very, very firm

about that.

She would not let Susan go near the baby.

Adam missed his mother.
 
And Susan missed him so much she could hardly

stand it.
 
One night as her mother moved quietly around her bed, Adam

woke up and Susan could hear him down the hall, crying.
 
He played for

a while in his crib, and then he started to cry again.

"Mom," Susan begged.
 
"I've got to go reassure him."

Pat glared at her daughter, exasperated.
 
"Do you want to kill him

too?

Is that what you want?"

Susan got out of bed and braced herself by holding on to furniture as

she moved toward the hall.

'Go back to bed!"
 
Pat ordered.
 
"I'll take care of him."

"Mom," Susan said, "he just wants to see me.
 
I've got to go in there

and see him."

"You want to put double work on me, taking care of two of you?
 
How

much more am I supposed to take?"

Susan gave up.
 
She crawled back into bed, but she could still hear her

little boy down the hall.
 
She waited until her mother was in the other

end of the house, then she crept down the hall to Adam's room and

picked him up.
 
"He was so happy to see me.
 
He put his little arms

around me, and he just patted my face and looked at me.
 
I think he

thought I'd gone away forever."

Susan didn't hear a sound beyond Adam's joyful noises; she was so happy

to be holding him again, and he was chuckling with glee to see his own

mother.
 
"I didn't hear a movement," she said, "but I half turned and

she was there-just staring at me.
 
I don't know why, but it frightened

me.
 
I jumped a foot and I said, 'Mom!
 
You scared me half to death!"

"What are you doing up?"
 
Pat asked co d y.

"Mom, he just misses me.
 
I've got to hold him."

"Go ahead, if you want to kill yourself and kill him.

I've already got you I to look after.
 
Nobody eve r thinks of me."
 
I

Susan lowered Adam into his crib and walked slowly back to bed.
 
The

house was warm, but she felt chilled.
 
Why hadn't her mother said

something instead of standing in the doorway so quietly, staring at

her?
 
Her expression had been so awful, so full of hate.
 
Evil.
 
For