Everything She Ever Wanted (51 page)

called me yesterday morning to tell me.

She was hysterical -she couldn't tell me anything.
 
. . . I told her to

stay calm."

Pat had been confined either to bed or to a wheelchair, but with the

news of Paw's coronary she was suddenly up and about.

Almost miraculously, she was able to drive again.
 
She needed a cane to

walk, but she was in the hospital visiting Paw, seeing to Nona in the

rest home and then in South Fulton where she had been placed

temporarily, and generally taking over all their affairs.

She refused to let their own daughter, Jean Boggs, have any say in

their care.

On February 4, 1976, there was a third and final codicil to the elder

Allansons' wills.
 
This time, the codicil was far more intricate, but

when the details were winnowed out, their daughter jean Boggs had been

completely excluded from inheriting, and Tom had become his

grandparents' principal heir.
 
If Tom should predecease Pat, she, as

his wife, would inherit almost everything the Allansons owned.

When it was decided that Paw could go home, it was Pat who insisted on

being there for Paw and Nona almost every day.
 
She was the liaison

between Paw and his attorney.
 
She was the only one who could translate

Nona's garbled speech.
 
Pat Allanson was the indispensable woman.

It looked as though Tom was going to Jackson Prison and there wasn't a

thing in the world to stop it.
 
Even though his case was being appealed

to the Supreme Court, he would have to !await the justices' decision in

prison.
 
Pat had warned him that he might have to go to Reidsville

Prison, "where men died all the time."
 
In comparison, Jackson

Diagnostic Center was preferable by far.

Pat's whole when had become one of bitter acceptance.
 
She bombarded

Tom with negative thoughts.
 
They both might as well be dead.
 
Every

time he tried to inject hope into their phone conversations, she

deflected it.
 
"I'm trying to explain to you that I don't have anything

to live for," she sighed.

"Oh you don't?"

"That's what I can't make you understand."

"You know better, Shug," Tom said, trying to soothe her.

"You just said you've been trying to find something that is important

to keep me interested in doing something," she replied softly.
 
"But

don't you understand the only thing that is important to me is you?"

"I know, darling-but I can't come home right now.
 
So what am I gonna

do in the meantime?"

"You can't come home period," she countered.

"You really know that is true, don't you?"

"All I know 's that you've been sentenced to two life sentences and

that is a fact," Pat said, her voice suddenly harsh.

see you want to argue about this, and we're not ever gonna get

anywhere."
 
Tom's voice dropped hopelessly.

"I don't have any reason to live," Pat said.
 
"You are the only reason

I have to live.
 
You said life is being concerned with the things that

we can feel and touch.
 
We can't feel or touch or see each other."

"Pat, you know what I'm talking about-" "It's nice to hear you talk

about things that you know we can never do," Pat whispered

sarcastically.
 
"Like going to other countries or different places.

.

. . I have a right to tell you how I feel."

"Every conversation, every letter, you talk about the very same

thing-about you not wanting to get well, not wanting to live."
 
Tom's

voice wasn't angry; he was pleading with his wife to keep trying.

"Are you telling me that you are with me and taking care of me and

looking after me and all that?"
 
Pat began to sob.
 
"I just know I

can't feel you because I can't touch you.
 
You act like I can feel

you-but I can't.
 
I know you love me and 'that's all that matters."

See, Tom-you talk about our life later, but that's going to be your

life."

"You agree with the part when I said that you're young and still

living?"

"Will you talk that way fifteen years from now?"

"Pat.
 
You'll be here thirty years from now."

"Not without you, I can't.
 
Oh, I can do anything with you, but I can't

exist without you."

Behind Tom, the sounds of caged men reverberated against the walls.
 
It

took tremendous effort for him to maintain a calm voice, as if he were

talking to a child, willing her to live.

"How am I going to support myself?"
 
Pat cried.
 
"How am I going to

live?"

Tom was finally defeated.
 
"I don't know."

It was true, he didn't.
 
He was locked up, with no real hope of being

outside prison walls for the next decade.
 
Tom tried to tell Pat she

could get her horse business back together again.

She was still living with her parents; she had a roof over her head and

food to eat.
 
She wasn't a destitute teenager.
 
She was almost

thirty-nine, and her parents still stood firmly behind her.

"You know you are going to prison, Tom," she accused, as if he were

choosing to be in prison.

I'm coming home," he promised.

"You may be home in ten or twelve years, Tom but you won't be coming

home to me."

I'm coming home to you.
 
I just hope you'll be there."

One theme and one theme alone began to emerge when Pat talked with her

husband as he waited to go on the chain to Jackson Prison.
 
Tom was

going away and it would kill her.
 
He might as well accept it; she

could not live without him.
 
If he @,over wanted to be with her again,

and he assured her he did, it would have to be in some other, better

world.
 
In death, they might be together; in life, they no longer had

any hope at all.

"Shug, you don't know what happens after we die, and neither do I," Tom

argued.

She blamed herself.
 
"I wish you could understand how terrible I feel

because you're there and I know it is my fault."

Pat had never before alluded to the possibility that she had any fault

in Tom's alleged crimes-not in their private conversations; certainly

not to Tom's attorneys.
 
But Tom wouldn't let her think about feeling

guilty.
 
He didn't blame her for any of this.
 
He had hope for his

appeal.

"Our lives are dwindling away," Pat cried.
 
She told him that she was

fighting his own lawyers to try to keep him close to her.

"Pat, you're not physically able to do that."

"It's the most important thing in our lives.
 
Tom, what good is it if

you're gone?"

"Don't you think I'm ever coming home?
 
.
 
. . I'm coming home to you,

Pat.
 
I promise you.
 
. . . We'll start over and we'll make it okay."

"I won't even be walking by the time you come home.
 
I won't be much

good for anything but companionship."

You're good for everything.
 
You're good for being my wife, you're good

for being my Pat.
 
You're my lover.
 
You're my super kind of woman.

.

. . Age doesn't have a thing to do with it.

. . . It doesn't make any difference as far as my love goes whether

you're in a wheelchair or you're up running around."

"Are you going to be able to say that twelve years from now?"
 
sure

am.

"I won't live that long in a wheelchair."

Pat always used the wheelchair when she visited Tom, even though she

could have gotten by with a cane.
 
The wheelchair meant they would be

allowed to meet in the attorneys' cubicles on the second floor, where

they could have some contact.
 
Tom didn't realize that Pat could get

around just fine with a cane, or that she had no trouble driving her

own car.

During her visits, Pat continued to chip away at Tom's belief in the

future.
 
When he was down, she pulled him further into the pit of

despair.
 
Again and again she told him her own death was imminent.
 
She

talked of their perfect love, now broken and hopeless with prison bars

about to separate them.
 
There was only one way they would ever be

together.
 
They would both have to be dead.
 
Man and the law were going

to keep them apart.

Tom didn't really take her seriously; it sounded like more of her

depression.

Pat had always been consumed with an almost unnatural curiosity about

what jail was like for Tom.
 
She questioned him continually about what

he thought, who shared his cell, what they talked about, and she

focused most intently on humiliations he might have suffered,

reinforcing those embarrassments in the process.
 
Even locked away from

her, he had no privacy with his own thoughts.
 
To his chagrin, she

asked him if he masturbated, phrasing it obliquely: "Do you do-you

know-what men do in prison when they're locked away from their women?

You know what I mean?"
 
"Pat!"
 
Tom barked into the phone.
 
"No.

Don't ask things like that.

Pat quizzed him about "the chain," and about the strip searches he

would endure, commenting how humiliating they would be for him.
 
She