Everything She Ever Wanted (34 page)

and a new Cadillac every four years.
 
Eunice had beautiful things,

nicer than a lot of officers' wives.

Privately, Margureitte found it all a little vulgar, but there it

was.

Colonel and Mrs. Radcliffe accepted the inevitable.
 
It could have

been worse.
 
Eunice was very well thought of in enlisted circles, and

active in.
 
projects to benefit army dependents.

A wedding was hastily planned, to be held in the Fort McPherson chapel

on September 6, 1952.
 
"All they had in common was physical

attraction," Margureitte later commented ruefully.
 
"Pat was vastly

superior in IQ."
 
The colonel had wanted her to go to a fine school to

study art; she was so talented.
 
He felt Pat's future was ruined by

this unfortunate marriage.

Pat wore a white satin gown with a three-quarter-length skirt and an

off-the-shoulder neckline edged in net ruching.
 
A short veil fell from

her Juliet cap and she carried white orchids.
 
Her white satin pumps

matched her gown.
 
She looked lovely and at least twenty-two.
 
The

bridegroom was less regal in a suit two sizes too big for him, a white

carnation boutonniere, and saddle shoes-which he had forgotten to

change before the ceremony.
 
Gil looked like a kid dressed in his dad's

clothes.

The newlyweds had very little time together.
 
To support his growing

family, Gil-whom Eunice called Junior-enlisted in the army.
 
He was

sent almost immediately to Korea, and Pat moved back home with her

parents.
 
Nothing had really changed.
 
Margureitte and Clifford took

care of her, and she used her allotment check for things she wanted.

Of course, there was a baby on the way.
 
Pat was adamant that she

wouldn't go to an army hospital.
 
She didn't want to be on an assembly

line and have some doctor she didn't even know walk in at the last

minute to deliver her baby.
 
She had heard the army even made the new

mothers get up and take care of their own babies and eat their meals in

the cafeteria!
 
She saved her own money so she could have her baby in a

nice civilian hospital, Georgia Baptist.
 
Unfortunately, she thought

she was in labor twice and was rushed to the hospital each time.
 
As a

result, Pat had spent all her savings before she was really ready to

have her baby, so she ended up having to go to an army hospital

anyway.

When Pat went into actual labor on March 4, 1953, junior Taylor was far

away, but her mother and the colonel drove her to the hospital.
 
She

rolled in the backseat, sobbing about how cruel Gil was to put her

through such pain.
 
After assuring the doctors that she had extensive

nurse's training, Margureitte was allowed to be right there in the

delivery room with Pat.
 
It was, perhaps, the first time that

Margureitte was unable to absorb all her daughter's pain.

The child was finally born, a dark-haired baby girl.
 
Susan.

Her mother was sixteen, her grandmother thirty-four.
 
"How I loved that

baby," Margureitte recalled in a gentle, pained voice nearly four

decades later.
 
"I don't know what happened.
 
Susan just became pure

evil.
 
just evil.
 
Of course, I can't forgive that."

But the early affection between Susan and her grandmother was mutual.

For the first three decades of her life, Susan found Margureitte the

"sweetest, kindest person in my whole life.
 
I thought she was

perfect."

Unlike his sister, Kent was a diligent student and got excellent

grades.
 
He was thirteen when Pat and her baby returned from the

hospital.
 
He adored his little niece and gingerly held Susan, grinning

with delight at how small she was.
 
Pat let him play with the baby, but

she was vaguely annoyed whenever he was around.
 
Pat was a married

woman and a mother, only visiting in her parents' house, marking time

until Gil came home; it wasn't really her home anymore.
 
But she didn't

see it that way.
 
As always, she viewed her brother as the

interloper.

Kent's presence grated on Pat because he took so much of her mother's

time away from her and her baby.
 
If it weren't for him, things would

have been perfect.
 
Margureitte did the cooking and the housework and

rocked Susan when she was fussy.
 
It was almost as if Pat hadn't gotten

married at all, and she liked the cozy feeling of being a little girl

again.

When she became a grandmother, Margureitte took on another name.

Clifford still called her Margureitte or "Reit," or sometimes "Reichen"

with a German touch of endearment.
 
Her sisters continued to call her

Margureitte.
 
But soon tiny Susan would call her "Boppo."

The colonel was called "Papa."
 
Boppo and Papa fell easily into the

role of matriarch and patriarch of an expanding family.

It became them, and they seemed transformed overnight from youth to

late middle age even though they still made a handsome pair.

They would have been happy to stay on permanent assignment at Fort

McPherson in Atlanta.

Pat liked everything about the home Margureitte and the colonel made.

No matter how many times they were reassigned by the army, Margureitte

always managed to decorate with taste and elan.

Sometimes they lived in big old barrackslike barns, and sometimes on

bases where the officers' housing was splendid.
 
The Radcliffes had

collected exquisite pieces in their travels around the worldfine china,

paintings, objets dart, Japanese screens, silver tea sets, thick rugs,

and gleaming furniture.
 
Later, when the colonel's mother passed away,

her full china closets and family heirlooms came to the Radcliffes.

Margureitte had vowed to live graciously a long time back, and she had

succeeded.
 
Wives of younger officers saw her charm and poise as a goal

to aim for.
 
Why wouldn't Pat want to live in her family home, instead

of in a cramped apartment or some tinny trailer somewhere?
 
She had

grown up with the very best.
 
She had been groomed her whole life for

elegance.
 
Moreover, she had been imbued with the absolute belief that

she was special.
 
She was, after all, a colonel's only daughter.

And Kent-as far as he knew-was a colonel's son.
 
There was nothing he

wanted more than to enlist one day in the army himself.

He thought that would please his father.

Kent shot up like a young sapling in his mid-teens.
 
Almost overnight,

he went from being a little blond boy to an awkward, acne-scarred

teenager.
 
With his thick glasses and the burr haircut that accentuated

his protruding ears, his appearance gave scant promise of the

good-looking man he would become.
 
He competed on the swimming team in

high school; he had the wide shoulders and flexible muscles for it.
 
He

was much taller then the colonel, but he still looked to Cliff for

approval.

He rarely got it.

After a year, Gil Taylor came home from Korea unscathed and reclaimed

his family.
 
He moved Pat and Susan to Shirley, Massachusetts, to his

next post.
 
There, they lived in a minuscule apartment, and Pat seemed

to enjoy playing at being a housewife.

Like most young service families, they had almost nothing in the way of

furniture or possessions: a cheap orange and avocado upholstered couch

with maple-stained arms, triangular Formica end tables, and Melmac

dinnerware.

Gil had filled out.
 
He was tanned and muscular and probably thirty

pounds heavier than the skinny kid Pat had married, an attractive

man.

Pat soon became pregnant again.
 
On June 14, 1955-just over two years

after Susan was born-she gave birth to a second daughter, Deborah

Dawn.

Boppo and Papa were stationed in Gary, Indiana, and Margureitte worried

herself sick about how her little girl was doing.

Pat was only seventeen, with two babies to take care of; it seemed she

faced one traumatic situation after another.
 
She had always had a

flair for the dramatic; she experienced no emotion moderately.
 
If she

and Gil ran low on food toward the end of the month, she translated

their predicament into abject poverty and called home for help.
 
There

were many "emergencies," like the time Pat was "overcome" by paint

fumes when she tried to brighten up her apartment.
 
She wrote her

mother that they didn't have enough to eat-that sometimes it got so bad

they had to scavenge for windfalls in apple orchards.
 
"If we can

afford meat at all, it's only a half pound of hamburger or one pork

chop.
 
. . . If there's one piece of bread, the kids get it."
 
That

just tore Margureitte up inside, the thought that her daughter and the

babies might be hungry.

It seemed as though Boppo was constantly burning up the highways

between Gary, Indiana, and Shirley, Massachusetts.
 
She was horrified

on her first visit to see where Pat and Gil were living; their

apartment was in a building whose other residents looked highly

suspicious to her.
 
She reported to the colonel, "Cliff, I believe

they're living in a whorehouse.
 
It's not a fit place for them."

She had returned home alone only reluctantly that time.
 
But then Pat

called and said she had almost choked to death on a pork chop-served at

one of her "single pork chop" meals-and Margureitte drove all night to

get to her.
 
This time she insisted that Pat and the babies must come

back to Indiana with her, and Gil let them go.
 
Margureitte told her