A Mother's Trial (9 page)

“No,” said Sara, stiff and still in her arms. “No,” she said again. “The nightmare is just beginning.”

Then she hesitated, breathed in deeply, and added, “Evelyn, Tia need not have died.”

And because it was exactly what she had realized, Evelyn could think of nothing to say.

THE FAMILY

1

In 1966, Winthrop College in Rock Hill, South Carolina, was still a women’s college. It was not a stately, tree-lined campus of the type that characterized many colleges in the area, but that didn’t matter to Steve. The important characteristic was statistical. There were five thousand women on campus.

Hell, it was going to be paradise, Steve thought. After Don, his friend from high school, had gotten him a blind date for the Valentine’s Day dance, the two of them had taken off in Steve’s ‘60 Nash Rambler for the hundred-mile drive from Williamston to Rock Hill without a moment’s hesitation. Don had arranged it perfectly, even picking up reduced rates at the Andrew Jackson Hotel in Rock Hill for the night.

The Lettermen were playing in person at the Winthrop dance, and if the date didn’t work out, Steve was certain he could find someone else out of those five thousand he could relate to, especially with the romantic three-part harmony those guys put out when they sang. There was no way this weekend could fail.

He was supposed to pick Priscilla up at her dorm—the same dorm where Don’s date lived, so he and Don went down there together. One after another the girls in their pastel ball gowns wafted down the staircase. They looked like fluffs of delicious cotton candy, Steve decided, and after each one he and Don traded notes.

“That’s the one,” Steve announced suddenly. “Man, just look at her. I’m going to marry that one!”

“You sucker, I think that’s actually your date, cuz there’s my Sandra pointing at her and waving. See her?”

Steve was bowled over. Priscilla was perfect—neat and shiny with a nice figure and big brown eyes.

“Where do you go to school?” Priscilla asked him, as they danced around amid the crepe-paper decor of the gym.

“Oh, I just finished out at Anderson Junior College—it’s a Baptist college.”

“The one near Greenville?”

“That’s it,” said Steve. “My folks live in Williamston right down the road. I wanted to go to a university and play some football, but my knee got torn up and that was the end of that career!” He laughed.

“So what are you going to do now?”

“I don’t know. My dad’s in the furniture business in Greenville, but I don’t think I want to go into that. Maybe some other business. I’m still looking,” said Steve. He didn’t mention that he was planning on looking after a stint in the U.S. Army. Some girls were funny about the army these days, he had discovered, now that the service meant Vietnam.

“What about you?” he asked her. “You going to settle down with a house full of kids and just look beautiful?” he flirted.

She looked serious. “Well, I do want children. But I want a career, too. I’m going to be a social worker. I’d like to work with children—I’ve been at a Y camp for years and was a counselor, and I really like kids. I’ll finish here next spring by doing four years in three, and I’m going to summer school this summer in Greensboro—that’s where I live. And then I want to go to either Berkeley or Columbia or Chicago for graduate school.”

Steve looked at her admiringly. “Hey, you sure do have it all planned out. Don’t your folks mind you going so far from home to school?”

Priscilla shrugged. “My father died when I was eleven, and my mother approves. She’s the adventuresome sort herself—went and taught school in Puerto Rico after she got out of college—that’s where she met my father. She knows I’ve got my mind set, anyway. She’s always laughing about how I always get what I want when I make up my mind.”

They danced several more dances, then Steve went for glasses of punch. The conversation was easy. Steve told Priscilla about growing up in Williamston, about the fishing and swimming and golf. Golf was big in Williamston. He told her about his family. Every Wednesday at twelve o’clock, the town closed down and his father always spent that afternoon with him, sometimes on the golf course, sometimes just talking or doing nothing. Steve’s older sister Betty had married and moved out in 1957—she was ten years older than Steve—so it had been like growing up an only child. My miracle baby, his mother had always called him. Steve never lacked for anything.

“I was probably a little spoiled,” he confided to Priscilla. “But my dad wasn’t getting too much intimacy from my mother; she’s been sick with one thing and another for years, so him and me are close. My sister, too. What about you?” Priscilla had an older sister she told him. But they had their differences. Louise had her nose in a book all the time, and couldn’t decide what to do with her life, though she was two years older than Priscilla. Steve could tell this irritated Priscilla.

“She’s so smart,” Priscilla said. “But she was always laying around the house and never did well in school. She started college and dropped out, then went to school for a while to be a dental technician and dropped out of that. Her laziness used to drive my stepfather crazy. They couldn’t stand each other, but I got along with him very well because I was always out and about and busy. He bought me a sewing machine when I asked him, and a car as soon as I got my license, and he used to take me and my friends out waterskiing, buy us all lunch.”

“It sounds pretty good,” Steve said.

“Yeah, but Chester and my mother didn’t get along after they got married,” she went on. “They had been college sweethearts, and they met again right after my father was killed down in Florida in a construction accident. They dated for a long time while he was trying to get a divorce from his first wife, but then when they got married, nothing was any good anymore—he used up her money for his things, and they fought. They separated in ‘63. She didn’t need Chester. She’s always been independent.”

“Wasn’t it awful hard after your father died?” Steve asked. He was charmed with this girl who laid it out as though they had been friends for a long time.

“Oh, yes. My parents hadn’t been together for a while—they had been having problems. He was on this job in Fort Lauderdale, and my mother had taken a job with the Methodist Children’s Home in Winston-Salem as a housemother, and we were living in the home, too, not in a separate apartment with her, but with the orphans. It was September and we were supposed to get together with my father for the first time in months at Christmas. He was going to stop drinking and go to AA, that was the arrangement, because things got bad when he was drunk—I know a couple of times he even hit my mother. But then he died instead. And there wasn’t even a funeral I could go to. Then Chester came into our lives and talked my mother into moving to Greensboro. So we’ve lived in North Carolina ever since. We had moved around so much before, following my father’s construction jobs; it was nice to finally stay somewhere for a while.”

“I’ve only lived three places in my whole life—counting the dorm—and they’re all within a few miles of each other. But I don’t feel like I’ve missed anything. I’d like to live around here all my life,” Steve said.

“I wouldn’t. I can’t stand small-town life,” said Priscilla. “I’m getting out and staying out.”

Man, this little lady was something else, Steve thought. She had so much get-up-and-go it took your breath away. She said she was involved in a model U.N. program—Steve had heard of it but never knew anybody actually doing it—and was on the school newspaper and in some honor societies. Steve had pulled down more Ds in his college career than he cared to remember, and he had spent an extra semester at college to bring his grades up to a more respectable position. Hell, he had to admit he hadn’t gone to college for the academic part—he had never been much of a student. He liked to party and date. But he had had a run-in with the school administration his second year at Anderson that had taught him something about responsibility and injustice. A panty raid and an argument with a proctor about getting up for church had resulted in Steve’s expulsion from the dorm. But he had stuck it out at college anyway—the other students had all supported him, so had his father—and he’d learned something valuable about what he labeled the “big people’s world”: You could get screwed, glued, and tattooed there as well as anyplace.

So now he was taking things more seriously. He had enlisted and basic training was due to start in a few weeks. But meantime he had a cute little date, and he was going to try all his moves with her.

He got nowhere. He took Priscilla out of the crowded gym and parked by a little lake where he tried everything he knew. But it was as though she had been briefed on every single move. He asked her to write her last name down. Eichholtz. It was some helluva name to spell. It was German for oak wood, she told him.

Hell, he was going to have to stay with this lady.

2

Travis Air Force Base was about forty-five minutes east of Berkeley on the way to Sacramento, and Priscilla was nervous that her tan suit would not survive the drive unwrinkled. When she got out of the car, she smoothed it down, then checked her makeup in the hand mirror from her purse.

Steve had been stationed in Okinawa—with a tour of duty in Vietnam—for sixteen months; Priscilla had not seen him in a year. Priscilla smiled at the memory of their reunion at last year’s Valentine’s Day dance at Winthrop, exactly a year after she had met Steve.

Her roommate and suite mates had been in on the secret, as had the housemother, but they had kept the surprise, and when she had walked downstairs the night of the dance to find Steve there, she had practically died. He was supposed to be overseas. They had fallen into each others’ arms, laughing and crying, hugging and dancing around each other like a couple of crazy puppies. She had been so worried about him, but he looked fine. Maybe it was just the uniform, but he acted more like a man that weekend, too. Not that he didn’t try some more of those childish moves on her, Priscilla remembered.

“I’m just trying to keep in practice,” he kidded her.

“Forget it, boy! None of that. You know I’m saving it for marriage. The army couldn’t have addled your brains that much!”

He’d cocked his head and put on a little-boy look of disappointment, but he didn’t really push her on it—he knew how she felt.

Priscilla wasn’t quite the same small-town puritan she had been a year ago, however. Seven months in Berkeley had left their mark. Her last year at Winthrop had been packed with commitments. She had held the presidency of both the statewide Sociological Association of South Carolina College Students and Alpha Kappa Delta—the national honor society for sociology students. She had worked on the Winthrop newspaper and involved herself with a program for helping mentally retarded children. In her spare time she had studied, well aware that in order to qualify for the financial aid she needed to attend graduate school, her grades had to be top-notch.

Berkeley admitted her on a full HEW scholarship covering all her fees plus a stipend of $200 a month the first year of graduate school and $220 the second. Last May, following graduation from Winthrop—completed in the three years she had scheduled for it—she and two friends had driven across the country.

She had found herself a studio apartment in Berkeley, at the outer radius of what she calculated to be a walkable distance to the campus, for $75 a month. Days of looking had left her feet sore, and although she hated the place when she first saw it, she took it eventually out of desperation. At the time she hadn’t noticed its lack of heat. She did see the hippie children playing on the block, and their disheveled appearance shocked her. But soon she was accustomed to them, adjusting to Berkeley’s casual approach to childrearing.

Next Priscilla had pursued a job, finding work as a sales clerk at the PX on Treasure Island under the Bay Bridge. But once she started school in September the commute became impossible, so she accepted part-time work at Capwell's Department Store in El Cerrito working nights. She also joined and became secretary of the Associated Students of the School of Social Welfare, and along with her classes, she started her field placement work at a research project in Richmond working with disturbed children twice a week.

She started dating. She had always intended to flap her wings, and she’d informed Steve of this in advance. He was in the army, she said. This was a perfect time to test what they had.

She genuinely liked Steve. He attracted her physically. More, they shared an interest in children and strong family life and a commitment to openness in a relationship. As an adolescent, Priscilla had become deeply involved in church activities; for a time she expected to work as a missionary for the Methodist Church. Steve had been strongly affected by his family minister, and both Steve and Priscilla still attended church. Then, too, Steve was romantic, and Priscilla found that appealing. On one of their first dates, Steve had learned it was Priscilla’s birthday and had brought her some candy and taken her to see a movie. Afterward he had driven them to a park complete with pond and ducks; they had walked around holding hands, pretending they were in a movie of their own.

But Priscilla wasn’t sure she approved of Steve Phillips. His enlistment at a time when most of her friends were hunting deferments was an embarrassment. He certainly didn’t fit her picture of an ideal mate. He wasn’t educated and in fact expressed no interest in becoming so. To Priscilla, education was paramount: the only way to get ahead. Her mother was educated; her friends were all college students. Greensboro boasted several colleges, both black and white, and its population was principally middle-and upper-middle class. Priscilla accepted but one road and its first stop was a college education that prepared you for an appropriate career. But Steve didn’t think that way. Then, too, it worried Priscilla that Steve didn’t seem to have any goals, no plans beyond the army. More problematical still, he preferred life in a small town.