Authors: Steve Jackson
Love Me To Death (2 page)
“Where is she?” a deep, angry voice asked. It was Neal, but a Neal she had never heard before. She quaked in fear. Not seeing her, Neal went out onto the porch and smoked a cigarette as he paced back and forth. She was obediently waiting for him, hoping he’d calmed down, when he came back in. Indeed, he acted like nothing had happened as far as what he’d done to her. It was all her fault; she had gotten what she deserved and would have to deal with the consequences.
Most of what she suffered through was emotional abuse. If she was five minutes late coming home from work, he’d want to know “who you’ve been fucking.” If she went to the swimming pool and a man stopped to talk to her, he’d somehow know and accuse her of having an affair. He was constantly testing her, but also setting her up to fail the tests. Sometimes he wanted her to doll up when they went out for a night on the town dancing. But if another man so much as said, “Hi,” and she responded, Neal would grab her by the arm, hard enough to bruise, and escort her out. “See how you are?” he’d sneer.
He’d cuss her for the smallest infractions, but it wasn’t always just talk when he got angry. He’d slap her with an open hand or shove her roughly. He couldn’t trust her, he’d say. But he had a quotation, something he’d read: No matter what she had done wrong, or how far she had gone down the wrong road, she could always turn back. “Turn back,” he’d tell her after she’d been punished for some new transgression.
Life with Neal would always have its ups and downs. Most of the time, so long as she did what he said and followed his rules, he was sweet Bill. But break his rules and there’d be hell to pay. The way he controlled all aspects of her life was insidious. He told her how he wanted her to dress. How to wear her hair. What to cook and when to cook it. He moved her like a puppet, but blinded by love, she took it as concern for her well-being.
Of course, none of the same rules applied to him. He came and went as he pleased, and once he got settled in, always seemed to have plenty of cash, though his only job was as the apartment complex’s maintenance man. That job seemed to take him out of the apartment at all sorts of strange hours. He’d get a call and say that he had to go fix some woman’s toilet. Later he’d come back, snickering about how the tenant met him in a negligee. “She just wanted to get in my pants.” She never asked if he had let her; she always trusted him. But as far as he was concerned, she couldn’t be trusted, even though she was never unfaithful to him.
Then there was the day an envelope arrived at their home with a pair of panties and the photograph of a beautiful woman tucked inside. “I used to get that kind of shit all the time.” He shrugged. “It doesn’t mean anything.” Wilson wondered how the woman got their address, unless he told her.
She should have left him, but she was too close, too much in love, to understand how he was breaking down the tough, independent young woman she was when they had first met. He’d taken her away from an environment where she was secure—away from her parents, away from her job, away from her friends. She was dependent on him for everything. She had no family nearby, and he wouldn’t let her have friends. She was rarely allowed to go anywhere—except to work—without him. He demeaned her every chance he got, until her self-esteem had tumbled. She couldn’t leave, not when she thought that she was the one who had done wrong. If he was unhappy, then she was the one who was making him unhappy. She had to stay and make things right.
It’s what you do when you really love someone,
she told herself.
It’s what you do when you really love someone,
she told herself.
Wilson couldn’t figure out where Neal got his mean streak or his obsessive jealousy. His mother was as good as gold, a wonderful woman, beautiful inside and out. Mrs. Neal thought of her son as her golden child; he could do no wrong. She was the one who taught him how to act around a lady, how to be a gentleman and open doors, send flowers, write love poems.
While his mother doted on him, not everyone was fooled. Wilson’s mother had changed her original opinion of Neal. She told her daughter that there was something wrong with him. “I can’t put my finger on it,” she said. Maybe he was just
too
nice,
too
good to be true. Her parents’ misgivings were strong enough that they changed their will so that in the event of their deaths, and if their daughter split up from their son-in-law, he’d have a tough time getting his hands on her inheritance.
too
nice,
too
good to be true. Her parents’ misgivings were strong enough that they changed their will so that in the event of their deaths, and if their daughter split up from their son-in-law, he’d have a tough time getting his hands on her inheritance.
Even Wilson was beginning to realize that he was a natural con artist. Not just the way he could insinuate himself into any conversation, be whatever someone wanted him to be at the moment, but in little everyday ways, too. For instance, if he was hungry and lacked cash, he’d go into a McDonald’s and complain that a cheeseburger had been left out of his order and get one for free. But these were idiosyncrasies, she told herself, not something to get alarmed at.
One day one of her rings was missing when she went to look for it. The ring was a family heirloom, and she asked him repeatedly about it. Finally, he admitted that he’d taken it to a jeweler “to have it cleaned.” He got it back but the initials had been ground off. The jeweler had “overcleaned” it, he said. It was obvious that the jeweler had been planning on selling the ring, but still she didn’t want to admit to herself that her husband was conning her, too.
As that first year of marriage passed, the “other” William Neal was revealing himself more and more often. The comments that he made about other women in passing had continued and, if anything, were more vehement, louder, until she was worried that the women might hear. But he wouldn’t stop, and if she wasn’t careful, the comments were directed at her as well.
The sex began to change, too. When they were dating, their lovemaking was always pleasurable and mutually satisfying. He was always into experiments, such as body painting and photographs, but after they got to Texas, it started getting kinkier, more aggressive. Then it was “pain is good,” and “it hurts when it’s good.” It wasn’t lovemaking anymore. It was hard, angry, absentminded, almost as if she weren’t a participant, or it didn’t matter who was there as his partner. They had sex when he wanted, and how he wanted it. At times he would cuss her for being “a slut,” slap her around, and then want to go to bed to “make up.”
After a year, he decided they were going to leave Texas, which was fine with her. Neither of them liked the weather or the surroundings. They talked about using the money that they’d saved, mostly from her job, to travel up and down the East Coast looking for the next place to live.
Wilson was excited, not only for the adventure, but because she thought it might be what she and Neal needed to get their marriage back on track. Maybe if their life weren’t so ordinary and stressful, they could recapture the magic. However, she should have known that nothing was going to change when he insisted before they left Texas that she be rebaptized “to cleanse your soul.”
They drove a van to visit relatives and look for a place to settle down again. They stayed in Hohenwald, Tennessee, for several weeks, then moved on to New York, Vermont, and Virginia. They finally settled on Antioch, Tennessee, about fifteen minutes from Nashville. She loved it there; it was like a dream come true. Once before, when she was seventeen, she’d taken a trip down a river near Antioch; when she’d returned home, she’d told a friend that someday she’d return to Tennessee and live in a log cabin.
However, Wilson and Neal settled into a low-rent apartment, not a cabin. Then the tests and accusations resumed. They’d only been there a couple of months when Neal said that his mother had decided to move out of her home and into an apartment. He said that he had to go down and help her fix up her place to sell. He figured that he’d be gone about three weeks.
Three weeks turned into ten, and then into three months. Wilson had to take a second job and then a third to keep their place without any financial help from her husband. Neal had all kinds of excuses for why he didn’t come home: his mom’s place needed more work than he’d expected; then his mom’s new place needed even more work. When he called, he sounded distant. She’d talk to his mother and ask her if he was all right. “Oh, honey, don’t you worry about Bill, he’s just fine” was the standard reply.
Wilson had no idea what could be taking him so long, but he sure seemed aware of her every move. He knew if she came home late from work. He knew if she had a bottle of beer in her hand when she answered the door. No sooner would she walk in than the telephone would ring. It would be him wanting to know where she’d been and with whom. It was eight months before he came back to Tennessee. That lasted about two weeks. Then he left a seven-page letter, front and back, listing her faults-—the number one being that she couldn’t be trusted. He thought that she was perfect when he married her, but she wasn’t and he was sorry but he couldn’t deal with it. He asked for a divorce.
She was stunned and heartbroken. Marriage was supposed to be forever, like her parents’. The next day, she was talking to the couple across the hallway when they made a startling admission. She’d just told the woman that Neal had left her when the other woman said that she’d thought Neal was a little weird. But that hadn’t prevented her or her husband from keeping a journal, at his request, of Wilson’s comings and goings. The woman even showed it to her—a steno pad with notations about the company she kept, her comings and goings, even what she had in her hands as she stood out in the hallway.
Wilson asked why they’d done this. The couple shrugged. Neal had befriended them but mentioned that she couldn’t be trusted. So they’d agreed to spy when he asked them to keep tabs on her for him.
Two weeks after he left, he was back. He said that he loved her and wanted to make it work. She agreed. After all, she was a young woman desperately trying to salvage her marriage. She had wed for better or for worse, in sickness and in health, “till death do us part.” She believed in those vows and was willing to try again.
Neal had a new plan for them. She came home one day in October 1985 to find that he’d sold all of their belongings, most of which were hers. He’d gotten rid of her climbing gear and camping equipment—thousands of dollars’ worth of hightech gear—for a fraction of what it was worth. He’d sold all of her pots and pans for $7, had gotten rid of several antiques given to her by her mother, and had given away a lot of what he couldn’t sell. All she had left were a few clothes, a fifteen-inch television, and the backpack and tent she kept in her car. It was all part of a grand idea, he told her as she walked around the empty apartment in disbelief. They were going to start fresh, live in their van for a few months to save money, and then head to Colorado.
Wilson perked up at that; they’d talked about living in Colorado practically ever since they’d started going out. It was
the dream.
She didn’t care about all her stuff—not much anyway—she could always get more. She cared about being with Neal, especially if they were going to Colorado. But they never left.
the dream.
She didn’t care about all her stuff—not much anyway—she could always get more. She cared about being with Neal, especially if they were going to Colorado. But they never left.
For the rest of October and November, they lived in the van, parked in a friend’s driveway. He forbade her to go into the friend’s house, except to use the rest room. She was working as a secretary and had to get herself looking presentable every morning in the cramped quarters of the van so she could go to work while he did nothing all day.
On December 1, he announced that there was a change in plans. He said that it wasn’t working out. She had until January 1 to get out of the van. That’s how she learned that he was divorcing her. She panicked. She had a good job, but she was going to have to find a place to live without Neal, her once-perfect man.
At the time, she couldn’t understand the timing. It was only later that she realized that selling her possessions, and pocketing the money, was his way of trying to strip her of every last thing financially and emotionally. He thought that he’d force her out of Tennessee and back home to her parents. It became clear when she received the divorce papers and saw that he’d filed them before they even moved into the van that this had been his plan all along. He had never intended to go to Colorado, or anywhere else, with her.
His plan to destroy her might have worked following their first year of marriage. But there was one thing his being gone for eight months had done for her. Almost without realizing it, she had begun to take back control of her life. She was self-sufficient, paying the bills, going out with friends. Now she resolved to stay put, finding an apartment and moving in with her few possessions.
The divorce was final a few days after Christmas, 1985. The last time that she ever saw him, he found her in a girlfriend’s apartment across the hall from where she lived. He demanded that the other woman leave so he could talk to his ex-wife. The other woman told him what he could do with such an order, so Wilson led him back to her place.
Even though they were divorced, he was still the same accusatory Neal. He saw that she had purchased a water bed and wanted to know why she needed it. She told him that she needed a place to sleep, “and what business is it of yours?” Finally, he got down to the business that he’d come to discuss: he wanted her to leave town; she was cramping his style.
Wilson refused; she had little else, but she had herself back. She said that she wasn’t budging. If anyone was leaving, it would have to be him. He stormed out, parting with one chilling prediction: “I’m going to fuck over every woman in my path. You all ain’t nothing but a bunch of whores.”
She didn’t hear from him again until March. He called her from Texas and, more shocking than anything he’d done to date, apologized. All that time he was in Texas, he said, he’d been living with another woman . . . apparently the same woman she could now hear yelling at him in the background. “The divorce wasn’t your fault,” he said. But the apology was only halfhearted and it was clear he really did blame her. “You know I put you on a pedestal. . . . You were my perfect little bird,” he said. “Then when I found out you weren’t perfect, I didn’t know what to do. I couldn’t trust you.”
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