Everything She Ever Wanted (43 page)

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We were on the back roads and the last thing I remember is going around

a curve and the steering wheel locking, and I couldn't do anything.
 
I

was going seventy-five miles an hour.
 
I remember waking up on top of

the hood on my back with my legs down over the steering wheel and my

seat belt was still hooked.

... My brother got thrown out of the car completely and his whole scalp

was pulled back from the glass.
 
He was in the front seat and he went

out, Dawn went under the dashboard, and my husband went from the

backseat into the dashboard.
 
. . . Finally someone saw my brother

walking around in a daze, but we were out there for six hours before

they found us.
 
They took us to two different hospitals.
 
. . . I broke

my back, and Gary broke his neck.
 
Dawn had a skull fracture.
 
I was in

the hospital in Florence for four weeks, and in another hospital at

home for three months after I had surgery to fuse my back in five

places.
 
They put in a metal rod.
 
I had three operations."

Susan and Bill were the first ones home from the reunion, and they

walked into their apartment to a ringing phone.
 
"I had to tell my

mother about the accident," Susan recalled.
 
"I told her that Debbie's

back was probably broken, and she snapped at me, 'I don't care about

Debbie!
 
I want to know about Ronnie........

That's the way she was.
 
Each of the three of us was indispensable to

her, but she took turns.
 
At the time of the accident, Debbie didn't

matter, but Ronnie did.
 
I have no idea why."

No one was ever really sure who had been driving.
 
Some family members

thought that Ronnie was, and that Debbie had lied to protect him.
 
They

were all lucky to survive the grinding crash.

After that, Pat's luck seemed to change.
 
Through her contacts in the

riding world, she met the man she had been looking for in the fall of

1972: the perfect lover.
 
Her choice might not have been every young

woman's dream; he was as old as Papa-but not nearly as handsome-and he

had gray hair, a florid complexion, and a chunky midsection.
 
Put him

up next to any one of the men in the horse show crowd and he would come

out a distant second as far as looks went.
 
But he had it in his power

to give Pat everything she craved.

Hap Brown* was a member of Governor Jimmy Carter's cabinet, the head of

one of the most important departments in the state of Georgia.
 
His

name was always in the paper, he sat at the governor's right hand, and

he kept a fine house back in his hometown as well as lavish lodgings in

Atlanta.
 
When Hap Brown walked into the Capitol building with its gold

leaf-covered dome, people lined up to talk to him and shake his hand.

He was known all over Atlanta-all over the state of Georgia, for that

matter.

When fifty-eight-year-old Hap Brown's eye fell on thirty-fiveyear-old

Pat Taylor, he was instantly captivated.
 
She was lush and beautiful,

but she moved with a certain class too.
 
Her voice was a soft drawl, a

young girl's sweet voice.
 
When she spoke to him, she looked directly

at him with her crystalline green eyes, and then, seeming suddenly

embarrassed, she looked down.
 
He liked her directness, and he liked

her shyness.

And she obviously liked him.
 
He sensed he could possess her if he

chose.
 
Hap knew he would have to be discreet-more than discreet.
 
He

was not only a member of Jimmy Carter's top staff, he was a married

man, and Jimmy Carter, his boss, was not the kind of governor who would

tolerate a member of his cabinet fooling around.
 
Even more critical,

the money in the Brown family came from Mrs. Brown's side.
 
Hap had

his salary and benefits, but Cordella* controlled their true wealth.

She would certainly look upon any intimate arrangement with Pat Taylor

with far more disfavor than even Governor Carter.

Hap Brown could not help himself.
 
He was soon completely smitten with

Pat.
 
She made him feel like a man twenty years younger.
 
She was the

most romantic woman he had ever met, and, at the same time, the most

sensuous.
 
She wrote him poems that were tender and symbolic, and then

made love to him like a brazen trollop.

Like all those who loved Pat, he was concerned about her well-being.

She seemed too delicate and too refined to have to go to work each day,

but she needed to work, so Hap created a little public relations job

for her.
 
She missed a lot of work.
 
She was often ill, sometimes

hospitalized, and he visited his pale, wan mistress, held her hand, and

promised her that he would take care of her, although she must

understand that their affair would be very, very private.

She always agreed and Hap felt safe, pleased that he had found himself

a woman both sultry and sensible.
 
Hap's government position meant they

could be together almost all the time.
 
He had meetings to go to,

political functions, reasons that he couldn't get home in the evenings

or on weekends.
 
He and Pat dined out often.
 
His wife was a comforting

hour's commute away from Atlanta and it was highly unlikely that they

would run into her or any hometown friends.

Since Pat had no office skills and precious little formal education,

there wasn't much that she could do for the Department of Energy, but

there was a lot she could do for the department head.
 
She and Hap took

long lunches and whole days off together, driving around the

countryside, watching the verdant vegetation of summer change to gold

and orange in autumn.

Hap sent Pat flowers-roses.
 
She adored roses.
 
He bought her a gold

cameo pendant and she began to collect cameos.
 
She treasured each of

his gifts.
 
"She told me they would go out to the country and have a

picnic by a stream," Susan remembered.

"He'd put his head in her lap while she read Victorian poems to him.
 
I

think she really loved Hap, and she used to tell me that he was going

to 'come for her' one day, and she'd be waiting for him.
 
It was as if

she expected him to come riding up and sweep her into his arms."

Pat seemed to be truly devoted to Hap Brown.
 
If he was not exactly a

knight in shining armor riding to her rescue, maybe she saw him as a

father figure who would care for her always.
 
She wanted so much to be

the one and only woman in Hap Brown's life.

And sometimes, she seemed to be.
 
Hap looked at her with eyes poleaxed

by love.
 
Although he insisted on discretion, she suspected a lot of

people knew about them.
 
She saw the lifted eyebrows in the office when

she slipped away to meet him.
 
She didn't care.
 
The sooner his wife

faced the truth the better.

Then Hap would be free to come for her.

Hap Brown quickly realized he would get only the frostiest welcome at

the house on Tell Road.
 
Margureitte was outspoken in her disapproval

of the relationship.
 
The Radcliffes were too proper to confront him

directly, and if they had, Pat would have thrown the tantrum to end all

tantrums.
 
But the message was there: We do not approve.

Pat took instead to entertaining her married lover at Susan and Bill's

apartment.
 
She had used the apartment before to meet other married

men, but she prevailed upon Susan to serve drinks and appetizers and to

"be nice to Hap."
 
Susan saw that Hap was "courting" her mother in the

old-fashioned sense of the word.
 
He was gallant and kind and

generous.

But he was still married, and he seemed in no hurry to change that

arrangement.

Pat made no secret of her intentions.
 
Susan remembered her mother

pleading, "Take me home, Hap.
 
Take me home to North Carolina."

"She wanted to go back with the aunts and back where Grandma Siler

was," Susan sighed.
 
"Hap couldn't just leave and take her there, and

they'd fight and she'd cry."

Pat enlisted Susan's aid in her campaign to capture Hap, suggesting

that she call Hap "Dad."
 
Susan balked at that, and Pat countered,

"Well, at least you could say, 'When are you going to marry my mom and

be our father?"

" Susan already had a father, but she finally got up the nerve to blurt

out, "I hear you-all are getting married?"

Hap froze as he reached for an appetizer, drew back his hand, and

stared at the floor.
 
He was clearly embarrassed, and for once the

voluble politician could find no words.
 
The minutes that followed were

awkward.
 
Pat looked away and bit her lip, disappointed and

frustrated.

Susan was mortified.
 
She could see that Hap Brown had no

intention-ever-of marrying her mother.

For all the power Hap had, he was alarmed by Pat's growing

possessiveness.
 
He tried to deflect her single-minded thrust toward

his divorce and remarriage to her.
 
He put himself out time and again

for her and her family.
 
He did his best to help Bill Alford stay in

the army when a sweeping reduction in forces hit Fort McPherson.
 
But

Bill wasn't regular army, and even Hap's senator friends couldn't buck

the trend.
 
Bill left the service in August of 1973 and went to college

while Susan managed Colonel Alan's horse farm in Riverdale-the same

Colonel Alan who had once posed so proudly for an article about his

daughter's engagement to Susan's uncle, Kent Radcliffe.

Over Margureitte's objections, Hap took Pat along on a business trip to