Everything She Ever Wanted (38 page)

the man, even though he had long since been convinced that Susan was

his own offspring.

That evening there was a terrible scene when Pat and Gil went out to

eat with her aunts at Sneads Ferry.
 
Hearin' that the captain still

found their niece fascinating, the aunts urged her to encourage his

interest.
 
In the long run, they advised, she would have a much more

solid future than with an enlisted man.
 
They dismissed the fact of her

marriage to the father of her three children with the wave of a hand.

If being married to an officer would make Pat happy, then that was what

they wanted for her.

Gil might as well have been invisible.

Pat was miserable.
 
She didn't like marriage, and she didn't like being

alone either.
 
She wasn't interested in the captain.
 
What she really

wanted was to be home with Boppo and Papa.

The Radcliffes left Germany and were reassigned to Fort McPherson,

their last duty station before the colonel's retirement.
 
They bought a

small house near Atlanta, but when they realized that Pat and the

children were again planning to move in with them, they knew it

wouldn't be nearly large enough.

They found a house in East Point that Margureitte fell in love with, a

low brick rambler with white shutters.
 
It was set far back from the

street-Dodson Drive-and the half acre of land that came with it was

dotted with pine and maple trees.
 
After all the years of fixing up and

making do with army housing, Margureitte at last had her own home.
 
She

would have been happy to live on Dodson Drive for the rest of her

life.

The house was lovely and the neighborhood was very

upper-middle-class.

Kent came to live with them, at least part of the time, and a familiar

pattern was soon reestablished.
 
Every time Pat and her children

appeared to stay with Boppo and Papa, Kent obligingly moved out of

their way.
 
Space was always maintained for Pat.

Kent loved Pat's kids, but he tried to avoid her.
 
If she had been

known to hurt her cousins' feelings, she invariably aimed directly at

Kent's very gut.
 
"He tried to stay away from her," Susan recalled.

"But she'd follow him from room to room, and if he went outside, she'd

find him there too.
 
I think she was trying to drive him out of the

house forever.
 
He was so kind and nice, and all my girlfriends had

crushes on him.
 
They were only about twelve, but they could see how

handsome he was and they just followed him around."

Pat had no women friends.
 
She had never really had girlfriends, and

she had never missed them.
 
She really didn't like women.
 
She had

Boppo and Papa, and she spent a lot of time with her daughters.
 
Susan

and Debbie's friends could not believe that Pat was a mother; she

looked like a teenager, and she was so pretty.
 
To young visitors, the

ambience at the Radcliffes' house seemed wonderful: the great-looking

uncle, the darling young mother, and the grandma and grandpa who were

so kind.
 
Susan and Debbie were the envy of their friends.

Both of Pat's daughters would remember her as a good mother.
 
She led a

Brownie troop and she delivered her children to Sunday school and

picked them up afterward.
 
She gave wonderful birthday parties, and she

loved to decorate the house for special occasions.
 
And, of course, she

sewed for them.
 
She often told them how wonderful they were, and that

they could achieve anything they wanted in the whole wide world.

The one thing Pat wouldn't allow was anyone interfering with her three

children.
 
No one could discipline them but her, not even Boppo.
 
Susan

and Debbie and Ronnie belonged to her and she would see to their

raising.
 
But Boppo belonged to her too, and she wasn't going to allow

anyone to interfere with that.
 
Subtly but steadily, Pat began to edge

Kent out.
 
"She set him up so many times," Susan recalled.
 
"If she

wanted him out of the house, she'd start a fight and then make it look

as though he was at fault.
 
Then Papa would say, 'Kent, why don't you

just leave?"

Kent knew all too well that his presence aggravated Pat.
 
His mother

seemed incapable of opposing her.
 
Margureitte was pulled in too many

directions, and she was not a woman comfortable with direct

confrontation.
 
She had other ways of letting her family know she was

unhappy.
 
She would slam the kitchen cupboard doors loudly and mutter

under her breath.
 
This never bothered Pat; it made Kent terribly ill

at ease.
 
Driven too far, Margureitte also had a histrionic side.
 
She

would drop to her knees, hold out her arms, and cry, "What about me?

Why doesn't anyone ever ask me what I want?"

Kent took every word to heart.
 
He would gladly have given her what she

wanted-if only he could have.
 
He knew, he told Susan, that if he could

just be as good and kind as Boppo was, he would be a better person.

Susan and Debbie believed it too.

Their grandmother was the most selfless person they had ever known.

Kent usually assumed that his departure would ease things in the house,

and so he would leave.
 
Kent could look out for himself, but Pat was so

helpless.
 
Boppo had to take care of Pat; anyone could see that.

Choices are like dominoes, one tumbling against the next and then the

next until events go out of human control.
 
Margureitte would never

really have dominion over her life again.
 
That her own choices had set

the scene for tragedy would never occur to her.
 
She would only cry out

again and again, "Why doesn't anyone ever ask me what I want?"

No one ever would.

In 1964, Kent had reestablished his relationship with Cindi Alan, and

this time their friendship had blossomed into a romance.

At twenty-five, Kent was probably happier than he had been since he

fell in love with Marianne in Germany.
 
Cindi was attractive and blond

and she always had a smile on her face.
 
They were not physically

intimate, but Kent believed they soon would be.
 
They had fun

together.

Cindi was so proud to be seen with Kent.
 
Her parents approved.
 
His

parents approved.

They didn't see each other as often as they would have liked.

Cindi worked in Alabama and Kent worked in Atlanta, but they wrote all

the time and exchanged photographs.
 
Kent sent her a picture of himself

pensively staring into the distance.
 
He had pasted the words "Love"

and "Future!"
 
over the snapshot.

In November of 1964, he sent a picture and wrote on the back, Cindi,

Your long slim "Echo" continues to look for that very special day!

The day of beginning our lives together-May it come soon and bring us

our happiness.

Loving you!

Kent Another time he wrote, "I am missing you very much, Cindi.

Hurry home-so I can smile again."

One weekend when they were together, they put ten dollars' worth of

quarters into a "Three Photos for a Dollar" booth and osed together,

with Cindi perched on Kent's lap.
 
The last picture was of a tender

kiss.

They talked about getting married and even planned on having a little

girl.
 
They would call her Jessica.
 
Sometimes when Kent wrote to

Cindi, he sent a message to "Jessica," their secret child of the

future.
 
"Jessica, I know you are somewhere waiting out there.

A local paper featured a picture of Kent and Cindi and her parents on

the society page.
 
The copy read, Cindi Alan of Birmingham, Alabama,

who has been visiting her parents, Lt.
 
Col. and Mrs. Bertram Allanson

in Atlanta, was invited by a reporter to pose for a picture.
 
She in

turn invited her date, Kent Radcliffe, to stand by her side.
 
Just as

the camera shutter snapped, she extended her hand, displaying a

handsome ring.

And that is how the Alans learned that their daughter was engaged!

It was the stuff that warms the hearts of society reporters, but things

were not exactly as they seemed.
 
Cindi wanted so much to love Kent

completely, and she did love him, but not in the way he needed.
 
She

had kept a secret side of her life away from him.

She thought she could make the relationship work and she tried, but she

couldn't.
 
Without telling Kent the real reason, she gently broke their

enLraLyement.
 
They were still friends and he still loved her.
 
He

tried pleading and he even got angry at her, but nothing worked.
 
He

could not understand how she could just walk away from everything they

had planned.
 
He was desolate.

Kent went to Houston to stay with his uncle Frazier-to get away and to

find a job he could lose himself in.
 
As always, Kent assumed it was

some defect in him that had made still another romance crumble.
 
He was

in as vulnerable a state as he could possibly be, but he was trying to

put the torn seams of his life back together when he received two oddly

urgent messages.
 
One was a phone call from a female voice he couldn't

place and the other was a letter.

The message was the same: "Get back on the bus and get back to

Atlanta."

Kent did not know who initiated the call and letter, but when he

returned to Atlanta, he walked into an onslaught of crushing news.
 
His

sister Pat told him an ugly, unbelievabl'e story.
 
If Kent had harbored