04.Die.My.Love.2007 (8 page)

There were other indications as 1998 drew to a close that all wasn’t well. By then Jocelyn was nine, Paxton six, and Callie three, but those who knew the Jablins sensed a distance in their relationship. “There was a coldness that kind of settled into the marriage,” remembers Loni. “You rarely saw Fred touch Piper, even on the shoulder.”

Of all the children, Jocelyn seemed to be the most disturbed by the family troubles. Over the years growing up on Hearthglow, the Jablins’ oldest had blossomed into a viva-cious and creative child, spunky and full of life. She led the other neighborhood children when they put on backyard plays, and spent hours laughing in the Fosters’ playroom, directing the younger children as they played games. Yet, as Piper deteriorated, she put more and more responsibility on Jocelyn, who was forced to take over the tasks her mother left undone. Some nights, Joce walked outside to the deck, where her mother sat drinking wine, to ask what frozen en-tree she should put in the oven for dinner.

A doctor who treated Piper saw something else in her.

He got the impression that she was on the lookout for a new man in her life. When Piper had an appointment, she fl irted with him, until he issued a standing order: From that point on, a female nurse was in the examination room with them at all times. “I had the feeling Piper would cross the line,”

says the physician. “I didn’t want her to have that opportunity.”

Meanwhile, in his classroom at the University of Richmond, Fred Jablin taught his students many concepts, including one he called “the Dance,” an analysis of the way people interact, the give and take between two people in a relationship, business or personal. Many had the feeling that all was not well in the Jablin marriage, that Fred and Piper’s “dance”

DIE, MY LOVE / 55

was winding tighter and tighter. When Joanne Ciulla and her husband went to dinner at the Jablins’, his strong reaction to Piper surprised her.

“I hope we don’t have to do anything else with them,”

Ciulla’s husband confided in her later. “That woman is frightening.”

6

Im a very complex person,” Piper told Dr. Steven Welton, a psychiatrist at Richmond’s Institute for Family Psychi-atry, on January 15, 1999. It was her first visit in what would become yet another cycle of therapy. The next two years in the Jablin marriage would be documented in the notes Welton wrote about their sessions together, painting a portrait of a woman consumed by her own wants and needs.

While Piper talked, Dr. Welton listened, interjecting questions. That first day, Piper talked of her childhood, saying her early years had been tumultuous and tainted by a family history of alcoholism. When asked to describe herself, she said she had a high IQ, 138, and a competitive, type-A personality. She said she drank wine daily, and told the psychiatrist that during college she had been diagnosed with attention deficit disorder. If she disclosed her other problem—the bulimia Fred would claim she had—Welton didn’t note it on her chart. Piper talked about her depression, her bouts with despair after the births of her children, and the blues that sent her to bed for days at a time, especially during the Christmas holidays, when what should have been a jolly season propelled her into melancholy.

When it came to her marriage, Piper described it as faltering. She saw Fred as uninvolved and disinterested and made no secret of what many had suspected in Virginia: that DIE, MY LOVE / 57

she’d been unfaithful to him. In fact at the time she began seeing Welton, Piper said she was involved in an affair with a younger man, one just in his twenties. Through it all, she remained so upbeat, Welton attempted to explain her demeanor in his rec ords: “There is an impression that her glib surface adaptability hides some clear struggles with sense of self, identity, and relationship problems.” Defi ning his goals for Piper, in addition to her current diagnoses of depression and attention deficit disorder, Welton noted that he’d consider alcohol abuse and a mood disorder. That fi rst session, he took her off the Ionamine for her ADD and put her on a more common drug for the disorder: 20 mg of Adderall.

At first, changing her medication appeared to work. At their next meeting, seven days later, Piper said the Adderall had been helpful, increasing her ability to focus, especially when playing tennis. By then she was also on the antidepressant Prozac, Welton noted, “as she had been more frantic and stressed than usual.” The physician set a follow- up for two weeks and noted his goal on her chart as determin-ing her best combination of medications.

It was about that time that Melody had what she’d describe as an even stranger than usual conversation with her neighbor. One morning when Piper dropped in for coffee, Melody was griping about her husband, Pete, nothing serious, just the minor annoyances of everyday married life.

Piper chimed in, complaining about Fred. Then Piper announced that
she’d
found a way to eliminate such aggrava-tions. “You should put Pete on Prozac. I’ve got Fred taking it, because I think he’s depressed,” she said. “He doesn’t know. I’ve been slipping it in his coffee.”

Years later Piper would contradict Melody Foster’s recollection, claiming that Fred had been prescribed the antidepressant by Tina’s second husband, Howard Praver, a Houston gynecologist. Praver, however, would deny that he ever treated 58 / Kathryn Casey

Fred as a patient and say he never wrote a prescription for him. “Fred didn’t need Prozac. He was one of the most level-headed, laid- back people I’d ever met,” he says. “I had no reason to treat him for depression.”

At the time Piper told Melody about the Prozac-laced coffee, Mel was stunned, not knowing what to say, wondering if Piper had just made it up to shock her. Or perhaps, she thought, it was a product of what she increasingly viewed as Piper’s disturbed mind. Mel quickly changed the subject, thinking there were some things she’d rather not know.

Piper’s therapy with Welton continued throughout that winter and spring. At times she talked about a relationship with yet a third man—beyond Fred and her twenty- something lover—this time a nonsexual liaison with a man she described as “a match for her intellectually.”

In March, Piper missed all her appointments with the psychiatrist, and didn’t show up until early April. She seemed sanguine then, saying her mood had been stable.

During the session, she claimed she’d cut off the relationship with her young lover when she discovered he was having an affair with one of her friends. Perhaps having the younger man out of her life forced her to focus, at least briefly, on her marriage. Piper is “now debating about the value of her relationship with her husband,” Welton wrote.

“In general, she feels stuck with inertia on her part. Suggest need her marital Rx to work on issues with husband.”

In hindsight it seems that summers were usually more tranquil times in the Jablin house hold. Piper enjoyed her trips home to the Rountree family reunions on the Texas beach. Fred still rarely went, but he didn’t interfere with Piper attending and taking the children. And in summer, without classes to teach, he was able to spend more time with her. Piper seemed to require that: Fred’s constant attention. She only seemed happy with the marriage when he focused on her and the family. As soon as his thoughts strayed DIE, MY LOVE / 59

back to work, Fred would later say, Piper grew discontent.

The summer of 1999 started out well. They spent time at the beach house and the neighborhood pool. But their usual hiatus of marital woes was interrupted by a discovery: When Fred decided to buy a car, a new Ford Explorer, the fi nance company ran a credit check. In the process, Fred discovered that during the three years Piper had overseen the family fi -

nances, she’d racked up $32,000 in credit card debt. Fred was furious, and worried. “It’s just more proof of Piper’s instability,” he told one friend. “I can’t believe she’s doing these things.”

A careful man, Fred

couldn’t tolerate owing so much

money. After coming to grips with the initial shock, he transferred all the debt onto his own credit cards. His plan was to take charge of the family finances and to begin paying the debt off. To ensure that it didn’t happen again, he took away Piper’s credit cards, leaving her with only one that carried a $500 maximum. Finally, he announced an end to his wife’s way of life. No longer would Piper be free to spend her days as she pleased, playing tennis while he worked and others cared for the children and the house.

Fred told Piper that he expected her to work, to help pay off the bills.

It wasn’t just lip service. Fred took action.

Determined that she’d find a position, he networked and quickly found a retiring Richmond attorney who needed someone to take over his practice. There was a problem, however: Piper had never been licensed to work as an attorney in Virginia. When she’d first arrived, she could have petitioned the state bar for reciprocity, basically asking Virginia to grant her a license based on her Texas license and experience. But she never applied, and that grace period lapsed. Unlicensed, Piper could legally work only under another lawyer’s supervision. When she told Mel about the work she’d taken on, however, it sounded as if—Virginia law license or not—Piper was 60 / Kathryn Casey

doing her own work. As usual, she wasn’t letting details—this time even breaking the law—get in the way of what she wanted.

In early August, Piper didn’t seem particularly worried.

She told Dr. Welton that the summer had been a good one, and she seemed excited about working again. “She’s struggling and trying to define some goals for herself,” he wrote.

The idea of setting long-term goals frightened her, Welton suggested, surmising that the central issue could be her reluctance to take the next step, to come to terms with the need for her to take her law boards to gain licensing.

In late September, Fred was back in the classroom teaching at UR, and the old Piper returned, a woman easily overwhelmed and sullen. She complained to Welton that four-year-old Callie didn’t like her day care and was acting up, and that Fred wasn’t devoting the time to her and the children that he had over his summer vacation. Piper referred to it as Fred

“avoiding his responsibilities” at home.

“Very angry with husband and feels hopeless that he will take responsibility,” Weldon wrote on her chart.

That fall, she continued to practice law, but after a client complained, the Virginia State Bar sent Piper a letter, questioning her lack of a license. Piper responded by fi ling a formal application for reciprocity, claiming she was still within the grace period because she’d continued to work for Texas clients while living in Virginia. The clients Piper listed were her family members, including Tina and her clinic. To bolster her claim, Piper asked Mel to sign a form stating that she was aware of Piper’s continued legal career.

“But I don’t have any knowledge of your doing any legal work since you moved to Virginia,” Melody told her.

“It’s only a formality,” Piper assured her, giving her the form on which she’d already written what she wanted Mel to say.

After Piper left, Mel took the form and wrote across it: “I DIE, MY LOVE / 61

was given this but I have no knowledge of what’s stated here.” She then signed and mailed it. Weeks later, when Piper tried to put an ad offering her services as an attorney in the Kingsley directory, Mel called the neighborhood association president and told her that Piper wasn’t licensed.

They didn’t run the ad.

Mel wasn’t surprised by Piper’s actions. Years earlier, when Mel had complained about being bored at continuing education classes, required by the state, Piper told her to simply lie on the paper, sending in the forms saying she’d attended the sessions when she hadn’t. “I told her it wasn’t ethical and that I didn’t want to risk losing my law license,”

says Mel. “Piper told me that’s what she used to do, and that I’d never get caught.”

It undoubtedly didn’t help Piper’s appeal for reciprocity that she showed up at the state licensing board offi ce to turn in her paperwork wearing a gold bikini under a sheer cover-up. Not long after, her petition was denied. From that point on, the only way Piper Rountree could be licensed to practice law in Virginia was to pass the state’s written bar exam.

By December 1999, Piper was on Adderall for her ADD, as well as antidepressants and an antianxiety drug, Xanax.

In an attempt to ease her through what was becoming an increasingly difficult period, Fred paid $3,000 for a University of Richmond Law School review course to help her pass the Virginia bar exam. To free her from responsibilities while she studied, he hired a full-time housekeeper. For years he’d been propping her up, hiring help, pitching in to do what she seemed unwilling or unable to do. On her last session with Welton for the year, Piper seemed happy that Fred had taken over most of her duties with the children.

Welton noted her progress toward her goals: “looks positive at this point.”

Just after the first of the year, in January 2000, Piper began 62 / Kathryn Casey

the UR review course. With the other students, she talked as if it were a formality, that with her experience, including time as a Texas prosecutor, she had no fears of failure. Instead of following the lectures and highlighting details to study, Piper sat in the back row of the auditorium with a sketchbook, drawing.

Outside the classroom, she concentrated not on preparing for the exam but continuing to enjoy her life. Even with the law boards lurking, Fred would later say he rarely saw her study. Despite everything he’d been through with her, however, Fred remained optimistic. For the week after the exam, he booked a three-day, spring-break trip for the two of them to the Bahamas. It was to be a celebration, to commemorate her passing. Perhaps he also saw the time together as an opportunity to rewind and get to know each other again, to mend the deep cracks developing in their increasingly tenu-ous relationship.

Despite his plans for a victory celebration, in March, when the results were posted, Piper had failed.