Everything She Ever Wanted (49 page)

physical showed that her heart, lungs, blood, kidneys, and all other

systems were completely normal.
 
She had no blood clots.
 
Except for

the odd abscesses, she was in good health.

Pat received individual and group psychotherapy.
 
During her stay at

Metropolitan she demanded frequently to go to the Fulton County jail to

see her husband.
 
A week into her treatment she was allowed to visit

Tom with Boppo, and she "tolerated this short leave of absence well."

After twelve days in the clinic, Pat was discharged with a prescription

for fifty milligrams of Mellaril four times a day, the usual initial

dosage for treatment of borderline psychotic patients.
 
She was to be

followed as an outpatient and her doctors felt the chances were good

for "significant return of function."

Pat took the Mellaril for only a short time, but she doubled her intake

of her other prescriptions.
 
If the clinic doctors had picked up on her

growing dependence on sedative and painkilling drugs, they did not note

it in her records.

Once released from the Metropolitan Psychiatric Center, Pat seemed not

at all psychotic.
 
She didn't bother to continue psychiatric

counseling.
 
Her abscess had begun to heal while she was in the

hospital and, for a time, she looked much better.
 
But it was still

painful for her to walk up the long slope to visit Tom, so they worked

out a way to "be together" over the phone.

Besides sharing their love songs on the radio, they thumbed through the

7V Guide together and decided what they would watch.

That way, Pat explained, it would be almost as if they were really

together watching the same shows.
 
Pat quizzed Tom later to be sure he

had watched the shows they had selected.
 
Sometimes he had to fudge a

little; he couldn't always dictate which channel the jail TV would be

turned to.
 
Once he made the mistake of praising Farrah Fawcett

Majors's beauty when i she guested on her husband's show, The Six

Million Dollar Man.

"Tom!"
 
Pat sulked.
 
"I don't want to talk about her!
 
I want to talk

about us."

Summer came again to Atlanta.
 
Tom was still locked in the Fulton

County jail.
 
On July 8, 1975, exactly one year to the day oince his

arrival in that facility, his motion for a new trial, so long

postponed, was denied.
 
"Having given said amended motion due

consideration in the light of the arguments, the same is jwreby

overruled on each and every ground and a new trial is rued," Superior

Court Judge Charles Wofford decreed.

He also denied Tom's application for ball.

Pat had never hired a the* attorney.
 
Much to her chagrin, Ed Garland

assured Pat that he wasn't going to quit.
 
Getting Tom & new trial had

become a "personal vendetta" for him.
 
Having to deal with his client's

wife was a cross he bore stoically.

Tom wrote to his grandparents: I know the disappointing news of the

hearing was upsetting, but don't eat my steak.
 
I am going to be home

soon, and I can assure you I will devour it.
 
I am just so thankful

that my two women and you, Paw, are holding up out there for me.

I really have to commend Ma and Pat for being so strong.
 
It has been

so hard on both of them.
 
I guess it has been physical hardships on top

of all this mental strain that has been so rough.
 
I sure am glad you

and Ma love Pat and she loves the both of you so much.
 
I know she has

been a r al blessing and support to you and Ma.
 
She always seems to

gain strength from somewhere when Ma is upset and calms everything

down.
 
Paw, I really love that woman.
 
She is so wonderful.

In late July 1975, Pat Allanson called Bill Hamner, Paw Allanson's

attorney, and told him that the elder Allansons wished to add a second

codicil to their wills.
 
This codicil, dated August 1, removed Jean

Boggs completely as executor or trustee of her parents' wills, leaving

Pat and Tom Allanson as the sole executors.
 
If Tom were still

incarcerated at the time of the Allansons' deaths, then Pat alone would

distribute their assets.

Nona and Paw were deemed of sound mind, and they knew what they wanted

to do.
 
Nona was confined to bed much of the time, her speech was

garbled, and she had little use of one hand.
 
Paw took wonderful care

of her, lifting her tenderly and seeing that she was always well

groomed.
 
He was a good cook and in relatively good health for a man of

seventy-eight.
 
They could manage on their own, but they had come to

depend on Pat for backup.
 
Her presence was comforting.
 
Visits from

Pat and Debbie, and often Margureitte Radcliffe, brightened their

days.

There were errands to run and things difficult for Paw to do.
 
It was

hard for Pat too.

Her abscess was getting worse again.

Pat had long since stopped taking the Mellaril, although she was

receiving fifty milligrams of Demerol four times a day for the pain

from her abscess.

Demerol is a narcotic drug, and two hundred milligrams a day is a high

dosage for anyone to take regularly.
 
Demerol is not routinely

prescribed, anyway, for more than ten days for an outpatient.

To her doctors' consternation, Pat's abscess grew larger, deeper, and

more purulent during the summer.
 
They could find no reason for this,

save the possibility that she was simply a 14 poor healer."
 
Pat had to

use a wheelchair now when she came to visit Tom, and the jail

authorities allowed them to visit downstairs in the lawyers' cubicles

to save her the agonizing trip to the regular visiting area.

In September, Pat's abscess became an out-of-control volcano.
 
It was

as big as a fist, extending three or four inches down into her right

buttock.
 
The odor from the wound was nauseatingly putrid.
 
She was in

constant danger of going into septic shock from blood poisoning.

On September 12, Pat went to the Bolton Road Hospital in Atlanta.
 
She

complained of severe radiating pain and was no longer able to walk.

When physicians lifted the dressing from the open wound, they gasped.

The thing seemed to have a life of its own.
 
How could this slender

woman have stood the pain of such an angry-looking pus-filled lesion?

Pat was admitted to the hospital at once.
 
She would undoubtedly need

surgical intervention if she was to survive.
 
For years Pat had

complained to everyone who would listen that she was a sick woman, a

woman who was not long for this world.

And now that might be true.
 
The doctors at Bolton were puzzled as to

the cause of such a deep festering wound, especially when their patient

had been taking four capsules a day of the potent antibiotic Keflex.

Pat was released from the hospital but only on a temporary basis; she

was readmitted pending surgery two weeks later.
 
During this period she

sometimes appeared delusional.

She became fixated on religion.
 
Lying in her bed in her filmy

negligees, she would often rise up suddenly, point her finger at

whoever was visiting, and cry out, "May the Lord have mercy on your

soul!"
 
Other than that bizarre affectation, she seemed relatively

stable mentally.
 
Susan and Debbie, who were often at her bedside,

grimly compared their mother to Regan in The Exorcist.

" Pat had harassed Eastern Airlines until Susan was transferred f@from

Newark, New jersey, "for compassionate reasons."
 
She needed all of her

family nearby.

One evening that September, Susan was on call for Eastern, and she

planned to stay the night Alt the Tell Road farm because it was much

closer to the Hartsfield-Atlanta Airport than the Alfords' home in

Marietta.
 
She carried with her the uniform of an Eastern flight

attendant-a blue skirt, blue and white plaid blouse, and fitted red

vest with Id buttons and wings over her left breast.

"They called me in the afternoon for a flight," Susan recalled.
 
"And,

out of the blue, my mother decided she didn't want me to go.
 
I had my

uniform on and I was trying to get out the door when she came after me

with her crutch.

People never realized it, but my mother was physically very, very

strong.
 
She would get right up in your face, so close that it seemed

like she could walk right through you.
 
She had me backed up in a

corner, poking her crutch in my stomach, when Boppo showed up.
 
Papa

had called her.
 
Boppo could control Mom.

Boppo almost never got angry, but this was one of the times she did.

Mom let me go, but she'd accomplished what she wanted.
 
She wanted

Boppo to come home from work-and Boppo was there.
 
I missed my flight,

but I managed to make the next one and wasn't disciplined.

Susan recalled that her mother's behavior that summer became

increasingly assaultive.
 
Pat turned on her stepfather often.
 
She

never drew blood, but it was a frightening time.
 
The only person who

had any control over her was her mother; Margurif need be, Margureitte

could eitte could stare Pat down.
 
And, draw on a few histrionics

herself.

"If you keep this up, Pat, I'll kill myself......... Boppo would cry.

It was her final weapon.
 
That threat always worked.
 
Emotions were so

chaotic among the Radcliffe women that suicide threats were

omnipresent.
 
And they were all given to sporadic bouts of melancholy:

Susan, Debbie, Pat, of course, and eventually even Boppo Thorazine, a