Everything She Ever Wanted (87 page)

Pat was still working at the Golden Memories consignment store, and she

kept her doll business going, sewing far into the night as she had done

at Hardwick.
 
She visited Susan's new house often and complained how

she hated having to work all the time.

"I just want time to spend with my grandchildren," she sighed.
 
"I

can't stand working anymore.
 
It's just too hard."
 
Locked up in

prison, Pat had missed most of the growing-up years of her older

grandchildren.
 
But she seemed to dote on all of them, with one

exception.
 
She still had no affinity for Ronnie's daughter, Ashlynne,

and argued peevishly that the child had no business living with Boppo

and Papa.
 
Boppo ignored her complaints.

Ashlynne was going to stay living with them, and that was that.

Ashlynne was the only thing Boppo defied her daughter about.
 
"I think

Boppo loved Ashlynne the way she once loved Mom," Susan later mused.

"And my mother knew it.

When Adam had his tonsils out in November 1988, his grandma Pat was

right there with him, holding him and promising him ice cream.
 
She sat

beside his bed in the hospital whenever Susan had to step away for a

moment or two.
 
Susan's eyes misted when she thought how happy she was

that her mother was able to be with them again.

She hadn't made much progress on her book about her mother.

With all the moving and resettling, she found it difficult to get

going.
 
She had sent for as many family birth and death certificates as

she could track down.
 
She knew now how hard Boppo's teenage years had

been, and about her three early and difficult pregnancies.
 
She

verified what she had always really known-that her uncle Kent had been

a suicide.
 
She found no medical records of other relatives with a

history of rectal bleeding, but that didn't seem so important.
 
Adam

had outgrown that frightening symptom.

Bill Alford was working as a vice president in upper manageinent in a

company that seemed as solid as the marble in Stone Mountain.
 
But then

came a buy-out.
 
just before Christmas, 1988, he suddenly lost his

job.

Susan and Bill had already invited the whole family for Christmas

dinner, and they never let on what they were going through.

Photographs taken of that day's celebration gave no hint that anything

was wrong: four generations of a truly beautiful family, bowing their

heads before Christmas dinner.

"It was rough," Susan remembered.
 
"But we made it.
 
Nobody knew what

had happened.
 
Bill got another Job.
 
.
 
I worked two part-time jobs."

substitute teacher.
 
She During the day, Susan was on call as a

lementary to high school-particutaught at every level from e gs she

worked in store larly special education classes.
 
Evenin , security for

department stores, Macy's and then Sears.
 
She grew adept at changing

her appearance by wearing wigs and dark glasses.

She wasn't very big, but she was fast and had a good eye for telltale

movements on the part of ((shoppers."
 
Working with male security

officers, she chased scores of shoplifters and edits were in caught

them in the parking lots.
 
Susan's college cr ; she didn't have a

degree, but she criminology and psychology

still hoped to get one.
 
Her mother thought policemen were low-class: "They're so stupid,

they couldn't find work anywhere else," Pat often said.
 
But Susan

seriously considered a career in law enforcement.

Bill's new job looked promising and they breathed a sigh of relief.

Like so many couples in their thirties, they were living well, perhaps

too well.
 
The Brookstone house was as nice as, or nicer than, their

home in Florence, and the mortgage payments were hefty.
 
Their children

were used to having extrasg and Bill and Susan were happy that they

could still provide them.
 
Sean got his own truck on his seventeenth

birthday-not a brand-new truck, but one that any seventeen-year-old boy

would be thrilled with.
 
Bill and Susan decorated it with banners and

balloons.

Even though Susan was now working hard herself, it still hurt her to

see her mother sitting on the wobbly folding chair at Golden

Memories.

Debbie was working as an office manager and nurse for Dr. Francisco

Villanueva.* Susan wondered sometimes why Pat and Debbie didn't go back

to their nurse's aide Jobs.
 
Pat could certainly have made more money

doing that, but neither of them seemed interested in returning to that

career.

Pat became obsessed with worry about her future ' re.
 
What would

become of her?
 
She asked Bill to promise her that she would never be

alone.

If he and Susan assured her that they would build a little house for

her in back of their house, and take care of her when she got too old

to work, she would feel so much better.
 
Susan saw that her mother

wasn't as strong as she pretended to be.
 
She realized that she could

not survive if Boppo weren't around, and Boppo and Papa were growing

older.
 
Pat needed protection and care, and the Alfords promised her

that she didn't have to worry; they would take care of her.

Pat told them she was worried about Sean and Courtney too.
 
She urged

them to rewrite their wills and name her as the children's guardian and

as executor of their wills if anything tragic should happen to both of

them.
 
She apologized for the 3,ears of chaos.
 
"I understand why you

couldn't put me in your wills before-I wasn't myself, I was sick-but

that's different now.
 
I suppose you have Boppo and Papa in there to

take care of the children?"

Susan half nodded.
 
Actually, she and Bill had listed his brother and

sister-in-law-her family was always in such upheaval-but she didn't

want to hurt her mother's feelings.

"Well," Pat hurried on, "just change that and put my name first.

They're getting older, and it would be such a mess if I wasn't listed

first.
 
Put me down, then Boppo, then Papa."

Pat brought up the subject of the Alfords'wills often, but Bill always

managed to steer her away from the topic.

Sometimes, Pat talked about her own death-as if it were imminent.
 
She

bought herself a plot up in North Carolina where Grandma and Grandpa

Siler-and Kent-were buried.
 
She asked Susan if she might have the

full-cut turquoise maternity dress that Susan had worn when she was

pregnant with Adam.
 
Of course Susan gave it to her mother.
 
It had fit

her loosely when she was nine months pregnant; it just fit Pat, who had

now gained over a hundred pounds.

"There," Pat said.
 
"Now I have my marrying and my burying dress.

Whatever happens to me, I'm ready."

Susan bit her lip.
 
It was sad to see her mother settling for so little

in life.
 
There would be no "marrying" for Pat-not anymore; she never

went anywhere, except with Miss Loretta or to visit family.

. . .

In February 1989, Pat's aunt Liz Porter in North Carolina wasn't

feeling well, and Pat insisted on going up to take care of her.
 
Aunt

Liz had always been her willowy, beautiful aunt, the sweet aunt who

couldn't balance a checkbook to save her life.
 
She had raised her son,

Bobby, alone after her husband disappeared into the woods - Until the

mid- 1980s, Liz was .
 
a strikingly attractive woman.
 
But she was well

into her seventies now and quite frail.

Pat moved in to care for Aunt Liz-just in time, she soon said, because

her patient grew frailer rapidly.
 
Liz had been ambulatory, but she

became so weak that she could no longer walk.
 
Pat rented a wheelchair

and tenderly pushed her aunt around.

in She explained to Liz's doctor that she was well experienced dealing

with the losses that accompanied advancing age.

Pat took complete care of Aunt Liz for six weeks, virtual y shutting

her off from the rest of the world.
 
She explained to her cousin Bobby

and his wife, Charlotte, that his mother was far too ill to have

visitors.
 
She discouraged them from coming by so often, assuring Liz's

family that she would recover much sooner if she could only have

complete rest and quiet.
 
Pat was her aunt's only care giver and

companion.
 
She also advised Liz on her legal affairs and urged her to

have a proper will drawn up.

For a while, it seemed that Elizabeth Porter would not survive.
 
Her

physician was appalled at how rapidly his patient was degenerating.

When Pat returned to Boppo and Papa's, it seemed likely that she would

not see her aunt alive again.

Pat complained to her mother that no one even thanked her for the

tender care she had given her aunt.
 
Boppo was insulted by their lack

of appreciation.

"Your mother," she told Susan and Debbie, "has always been especially

kind to elderly people, children, and animals.
 
Everything your mother

does is always taken the wrong way by her cousins, and I don't know

why.
 
If it was anyone else saying or doing it, it would be perfectly

all rightbut not with your mother.
 
Your poor mother had to leave all

upset, and drive all the way back.

I'm shocked at how her cousins treated her, and all she wanted to do

was help.
 
Your mother works harder than anyone I know, always busy

with something in her hand, up all hours of the night sewing-" Susan

couldn't see how her mother's sewing all night could have helped-or