The Wedding Gift (27 page)

Following which I had left
my brand new and newly bereaved husband to gallivant off to Miami
where I had indulged in wild spending sprees. With a straight face,
she said that when George tried to curb my excesses, that I, or the
defendant - which was me now I guessed - had no doubt, in a cocaine
induced rage, (obviously the police had found George’s little party
stash already), that I had attacked and killed him. She said that
doubtless poor George had been asleep during the initial assault
and that was why he had not been able to disarm me before he became
so weakened with blood loss that he was unable to save
himself.

During this fairy story,
Miz Willets sobbed real loudly the whole time and the judge just
looked at her, his face all sympathetic, but when Jessie, who was
in the courtroom along with Mama and Daddy, made a snorting sound,
the judge said “
Young lady, one more
outburst like that and you will be removed
immediately
.”

I looked at Jack hopefully
to see how he was going to fight all the horrible things that awful
D.A. had just said about me and my heart sunk down even further
when I saw that he looked as scared as I was.

Well, he did try, I’ll give
him that much. He told the judge that I was a young girl of
impeccable reputation, even the reigning Corn Princess. When Jack
said that, Miz Bethany made a rude noise, but the judge didn’t say
a word to her. Jack told the court that I had a spotless record,
had been born and raised right here in Dalton and had strong ties
to the community. In addition to all that, he said the evidence
against me was purely circumstantial. There was no motive, no
witnesses and I should not be held until the DNA came
back.

At that, the horrible D.A.
jumped up and said that while the evidence might be circumstantial
at the moment, there was no doubt in her mind that my DNA would be
all over that knife, and “
moreover, there
exists, Your Honor, about one hundred million motives for Leeann
Willets to kill George Willets. I am speaking of course of the
Willets' money. Your Honor, history has sadly taught us that it is
almost always the spouse in these cases. There were no signs of
forced entry and, if indeed, as the defendant claims, there was no
trouble in the house, then why did she flee the premises in her
nightgown?
”

Poor old Jack tried to
object, but Judge Styles said he had heard enough and that bail was
set at three hundred thousand dollars. I knew I was going up to
Maybeetle then. Oh, Mama and Daddy went to the bail bondsman of
course, but their house wasn’t accepted as collateral. I would
remain in prison until Jessie could get to that jewelry. I was
taken the sixty miles away in the back of Sherriff Riffler's car,
led into the huge dark grey building and then into small cell with
a window in the door. There was a thin, nasty looking mattress with
no sheet on it, and I was only given a paper gown and paper
slippers to wear on account of needing to be watched real close for
twenty four hours.

They said I was on
something called a suicide watch. It was the first thing I had
heard all day that made sense to me. To be strictly honest, at that
time, if I could have found a way, I might have done it … stepped
over to the other side and joined Robina as one of the angry
dead.

Lying on that hard bunk,
which smelled like another woman’s tears and worse, I did not see
one ray of hope that made me want to keep breathing. I guess there
are times when you are too sad for tears, and this was one of them.
Finally, though, my poor body, exhausted as it was, took over and I
fell asleep despite the filthy mattress and the bright lights
shining on me all night.

Chapter
37

She came to me then, in my
sleep. I don’t know why ...maybe I was beyond fear now, but she
didn’t frighten me. I was angry in my dream, if it was a dream. I
couldn’t tell who knew anymore what was real. I screamed at her,
asking her why, why had she done this to George, to me? What did
she want … why me?

Robina didn’t look like she
had before. She wasn’t decayed and disgusting. She was beautiful. I
saw then what people meant when they said she was the most
beautiful girl they had ever seen. Her eyes did not have things
moving in them now ...they were just huge, dark eyes, and she
looked sad.

She said that she had to
kill George, kill her child.

I asked her whose child?
What was she talking about - there were no children
anywhere.

She shook her head. Now she
was starting to look angry again. She told me that I had to
“
Come home now, Leeann, I have to show you
my pictures. You can’t see them here. It is too far away … you must
follow me
.” I felt that awful tug on my
body again, but I was made stronger now by anger and my lack of
fear. I fought her, and I won. I hated this cell, but I knew that
where she wanted to take me would be worse, and whatever her
‘”
pictures
” were,
God help me, I did not want to see them.

I felt the grip on my body
lessen, and then I heard her start to laugh. She said I would come;
that she could wait. I would come.

If I wanted to save my
child, I would come.

Then I woke up. I was
drenched in sweat and sick like I always was after seeing her. What
in the name of God was she talking about, what pictures, and what
child? There was no child ... my baby was dead, and then I thought
of Donny. My God, was it possible, just one time, and so soon after
my miscarriage? Even if it was possible, it was too early to know,
unless … unless the dead were given the power to see further and to
know more.

I know it was crazy but,
instead of fear, or even anger, at Robina, I just felt this instant
of the wildest, sweetest joy, right there in that filthy cell -
facing life in prison, I felt only joy. Because what if it was true
and I was carrying his baby?

I sat up grinning like a
fool. Well, if it was true, then I was going to fight this bogus
charge with everything I had, fight and get out of here and live
out all my life as proud and happy a woman as Oklahoma would ever
see. Even without the one man I loved, it might just turn out okay,
because this way I would always have him, in his baby.

Crazy or not, I knew it was
true. She was telling the truth ... I was pregnant and, damn it, it
was going to be a boy too. I vowed right then to fight off Robina
and the Willets and anyone else who tried to hurt me or my baby.
And then I realized that, oh shit, if it was true (and I knew it
was) that this was all the motive the state and Miz Willets would
ever need to fry me. They would say I had cheated on George (true)
and then killed him (not true) when he found out.

I knew I needed to get the
hell out of here before anyone found out I was pregnant, and for
that I needed Jessie. I didn’t even have to stand in line at the
pay phone the next morning to call her, because right after
breakfast, which was some horrible slop that I forced myself to eat
anyway for Donny Junior’s sake, they came to get me, saying I had a
visitor. They took me to this little room divided by plastic, and
there she was - Jessie. Oh I was pitifully glad to see her. It
seemed already like a hundred years since I had last seen
her.

She looked horrible though,
and I had to tell her so.

She was still Jessie all
right, because she laid right into me, saying that while I
obviously got my ten winks last night, that she had been up reading
those journals and trying to be a good cat burglar all on my
account. And that also, thanks to me, she hadn’t gotten a hell of a
lot of sleep the night before last either.

I acted all humble and told
her I knew that was true, and what would I do without her? She said
probably rot in jail, but don’t worry about it. She told me that I
looked like shit too and was it horrible in here? I said hell yes,
but still better than staying in Robina's house, even though she
had gotten to me here too.

Jess was all agog at the
dream, and then she kept at me till I finally promised her that the
next time Robina tried to show me her G.D. pictures, I would go. I
gave in and said “
Yes, okay Jess, I’ll
take a little ride on up into Nightmare County if you’ll just shut
up for ten seconds and tell me about the jewelry
.”

Her face got all downcast
as she told me that last night after two a.m., she and
“
her crime partner
” tried to get in the house, but that Miz Willets must have
known I would be after that jewelry because there were guards
posted all around the house.

I started to cry then. I
couldn’t help it. I knew Jess had tried but, without the jewelry,
how was I going to make bail? I couldn’t stand it in here, I
couldn’t.

Jess scowled at me and said
to stop being such a pussy, that I was getting out of here, and
today. She told me that while she was visiting me, her
“
partner
” was down
to the courthouse with the bail bondsman making my bail right now.
Jess said she figured in about an hour they’d be driving me home to
Dalton. I would be on an ankle monitor but, she said,
“
It beats the shit out of this place,
right? And shit, I cannot wait to hear what Miz Willets has to say
when she finds out you are going home!
”

I was in shock, happy
shock, but I had to ask Jess if she had a head injury or had sold
Mark, or something? No one we knew had ten percent of three hundred
thousand dollars or, for that matter, ten percent of five thousand
dollars.

She started grinning then,
and said that maybe we did know someone; someone who owned a paid
off eighteen wheeler, and had used it for collateral.

My heart stopped.
“
Donny? Donny did this? How? And why,
Jess?
”

She was grinning like the
Cheshire cat, I swear. “
Well yeah, it sure
was Donny. As to how, well after we saw the guards last night, we
realized we needed money some other way. That’s when he came up
with the idea of putting his rig up. As to why, well shoot, I don’t
know. Why would that old boy want to help you get out of jail? Why
do you think, Leeann?
”

I was grinning now too. I
didn’t give one damn about anything I had gone through. Donny was
saving me and that could only mean one thing. I still didn’t
understand the part where Jess talked about last night. She told me
then that, right after court, she had driven to Donny and Carlene’s
house. Jessie had marched right in and “
ignored that ole crack whore wife of his
” and told him what had happened.

Jess said that he had been
the one to insist that he go with her to Willets House and, when
that hadn’t worked out, he had put his rig up, and here they
were.

Well I told Jessie I loved
her, and she being Jessie said “
Blah blah,
blah. There is no time for this shit because I need to tell you
right now, Leeann, before Donny gets back, what I found in the
journals. When you hear this, you’re gonna feel as bad for Robina
as I do. And you’re gonna want to help her too
.”

I didn’t know about that,
but I told her to start talking and I would reserve judgment until
I heard the story.

PART III

Chapter
38

This is Robina’s story, as
told to me by Jessie. I have decided to just write it down in her
words, leaving out all my ‘Oh my God’s and other interruptions,
because they made Jess so damn mad that she said if I asked her one
more stupid ass question that she couldn’t answer, she wasn’t going
to say another word to me.

So here it is - Robina’s
tale in Jessie’s own words:

“
She wasn’t a thing like
we thought she was, Leeann. She was just a kid when she met Roger.
She was working at the bookstore at Yale and doing something called
monitoring classes, which I guess is where you can sit in on the
class but you don’t get any credit for it. To make extra money she
was an artist’s model too for some of the students. She had moved
to Cambridge from some teeny little state I ain’t ever heard of
called Rhode Island and I guess her parents were both teachers who
had died in a car accident a few months before. So she didn’t have
any people or any money either, I guess. Anyway one day in the
bookstore, she met Roger. She said he was the handsomest boy she
had ever seen and she had never heard a drawl before and she loved
it … said it reminded her of somebody called Tennessee Williams,
whoever the hell that is. He asked her out for coffee and, before
you know it, they were lovers living together in a little bitty
apartment he had off campus. The way she writes it was that she
knew Roger was from some real rich, but horrible, family that
didn’t understand him. He had told her that he was going to be a
great architect one day and they would live in New York City. Hell,
she goes on for about ten pages about their little dream life of
this loft in the village they would have. It was boring as hell.
Anyway, of course, she gets pregnant instead, and pretty soon old
Roger is failing his classes on account of having to work as a
bartender at night. And then she starts writing about how he is
starting to drink a little. Well hell, I could see the writing on
the wall already! But ole Robina sure couldn’t … no, she loved
Roger with a capital L, and even though he didn’t marry her till
she was eight months along, why she was thrilled to pieces. So now
it’s her and Roger Dodger and their little baby girl, who she had
named Emily after, I guess, some friend of hers who she wrote a lot
about named Emily Dickinson. I tell you, Leeann, these Yankee girls
don’t have the brains God gave a fly because things were going
downhill pretty fast between her and Roger, and she just would not
see it. Here she is writing about opening letters from Yale saying
they were going to drop him from the enrolled lists and him coming
home later and later at night, even on nights he wasn’t working,
and always yelling at her to “shut the damn baby up.” But did she
see that he didn’t want to be there? Hell no, she just makes all
these excuses for him. It’s all ‘He’s an artist, he’s never had to
worry about money before, he can’t study in their tiny place with a
new baby’ etc.. Shit, she just didn’t want to believe she had
backed a losing horse in him. So what does she do instead of
running for the hills? Well hell, she comes up pregnant again. And
so within two years she’s got herself two babies. This one was a
boy, which Roger insisted on naming Dalton, after his home town.
Maybe that should have given her a clue on where things were
heading but, instead, she just writes how southern and romantic she
thought the name was. Then the diaries go on for a while about how
much she loves Roger and her babies and how she is starting to
paint again while they nap. She prattles on about how maybe, when
they move to New York, she can take some art classes once Roger is
established. You almost have to cry reading this stuff because you
know none of it’s ever going to happen for her. It's like I wanted
to go back in time, and yell at her ‘Get out while you still can -
there’s no New York’. Hell I woulda told her, you just don’t want
to follow where he’s going to take you, but you can't, you know?
Well, of course, Roger finally gets kicked out of Yale for good
which I could sure see coming, but I guess she couldn’t or
wouldn’t. Then he wracks up a couple of arrests for drunk driving
... the last one totals their car, and naturally he blames
everything on her for trapping him into marriage. And you can tell
from the writing by now that even poor dumb Robina is beginning to
lose a little faith in Roger. Then she writes about how he got a
letter from his mama, and that the letter told him how his daddy
had died and that his mama will forgive him for breaking her heart
and all if he will just come on home now … come on home and take
his rightful place as the head of Willets Oil, and be a leader in
the community. Hell, have you ever heard such a pile of shit in
your life, Leeann? Of course he friggin’ jumps at it. No more Yale
dropout, drunken loser bartender for Roger. Oh, hell no, he is
heading on home to Dalton to be Prince Roger again! Only problem is
I guess he had never told his folks that he had gotten married. Oh,
and that there were a couple of kids to boot. Now, reading this
part of her diary, well you kind of have to draw your own
conclusions, sort of read between the lines here. See, I think what
happened next is that Roger actually took off and just left Robina
and the babies in Massachusetts and went on home to mama, hoping
that maybe they would just disappear. I say this because her
writing gets real vague around that time … kinda like maybe she
didn’t want to face facts, you know? It's all how Roger had left
for home in Oklahoma to get things ready for her and the children,
but it doesn’t wash because during that time she also writes about
having to go on food stamps and rental assistance, so that’s why I
think he had just left her high and dry; and the way she got to
Dalton also tells me that because her next entry is like five
months later, and she is writing it from the Greyhound bus, saying
that she and the children are on their way to Dalton to ‘surprise
Roger’. I know this is real sad and shit, but hell, Leeann, you
kind of have to laugh when you think about how surprised old Roger,
and his mama too, must have been when this real pretty, but no
doubt raggedy looking girl, and two little babies get off at the
bus stop and wander around town asking if anyone knows where they
can find Roger Willets. Unfortunately for us, she didn’t write
about what a pretty scene that must of been when she finally found
him, but she did write about how his mama, Miz Evelyn, nearly had a
heart attack, and how she tried to get her and them babies to step
right back on that damn bus. But I guess Miz Evelyn, who by the
way, Leeann, from what I have read, could have eaten ole Miz
Bethany for lunch, softened up when she got a long look at little
Dalton there, who apparently was the spit of Roger. So the next
thing that happened is that Robina is living in Willets House with
Roger, the kids and her mama-in-law, and baby brother George, when
he is not up at the junior college in OKC. Now is when you start to
see how maybe the poor girl went insane, because she writes all
these pages about how lost she is and how ugly and barren Dalton
is. She’s starting to talk more about how much she feels out of
place in that house. She wrote that every time she walked into a
room, Miz Evelyn followed her until she went back and hid in the
bedroom she shared with Roger. And ole Roger himself, well she
wrote that he was ‘like a ghost’. I don’t know exactly what she
meant by that, except that maybe it's just that if he wasn’t at
work down to Willets Petroleum then he was off golfing, or
drinking, or I guess just about anywhere but that house. And then,
when he was there, he was always irritable with her, saying that
she was upsetting his mama. Apparently when Roger did show up, old
Miz Evelyn would be lying in wait for him to tell him some story
about Robina, and Robina wrote that Roger always took his mama’s
side against her. So you could tell she was sort of starting to let
go of her ideas of ever getting Roger to New York and maybe just
letting go of the whole ‘Roger is a great guy’ idea. Who knows,
maybe she would have tried to get on with her life somewhere else,
but she came up pregnant again, and this time it was bad. She was
sick the whole time. Roger was mean to her on account of her not
feeling up to sex, and her mama-in-law sort of took over her kids.
When they would come up to see her in her bedroom, she said they
were starting to talk like us, you know, without accents, and maybe
weren’t so nice to her either. She wrote that Miz Evelyn had stolen
their affection and all sorts of depressing things, like she had
just got real morbid during that pregnancy. After the baby was
born, this time a little girl, Miz Evelyn picked out her name,
Savannah, because that’s where she had been born. But then it
looked like things might start to get better for Robina. Miz Evelyn
announced she was sick of all the noise and confusion from the
kids, so she was building herself a new house up to the golf
course. When it got finished, she and George, your George’s daddy
that is, moved into it, leaving the big house to Roger and Robina.
And for awhile it did sound like she got happier. She redecorated a
few rooms and had the pool put in, and maybe Roger was being a good
boy then because she started writing all this mushy crap about how
much she still loved him and that if he needed Oklahoma to feel
like a man, then she would make the best of it. She had her man and
her babies, and she even started a little reading group, though
none of the ladies wanted to read the classics, she said. Yeah,
well no shit, huh, Leeann? Who wants to read that crap once you get
free of high school is what I say? I’ll tell you, though, that poor
girl never could catch a break for long because, hell, if she
didn’t get pregnant again, and she got real sick again, this time
with something called gestational diabetes. I don’t know what that
is, but she was a mess - bed rest, the whole nine yards. She wrote
that she fainted during the wedding ceremony of George and his
beautiful bride Bethany, ha. Anyhow, I guess on top of everything
else, she got kind of fat this time around which, seeing as how she
had about a kid a year, couldn’t have been much of a surprise. Oh,
but ole Roger hated it, and made fun of her all the time, and I
think that’s maybe when he started hitting her, too. She doesn’t
say right out that he hit her, but she does mention going to see
Doc Miller - our Doc Miller’s daddy - all the time for a broken
collarbone, fractured wrist, the kind of stuff that you and I know
you don’t get from opening up a can of Chef Boyardee for the kids,
right? She had the baby, another boy, Ryder. Then she writes about
starving herself down so she’ll be pretty again for Roger, which
just made me sick. But anyway, I guess it didn’t work, because no
matter how miserable Roger had acted before about being married, he
always liked to have sex … but not now. She writes these real
embarrassing things about trying to get him into the sack, but he
wasn’t having it, and he wasn’t coming home again either. She knew
then that there was someone else, and not just a one night stand
this time. She started getting kind of obsessed about it, why I
don’t know, because Roger was a platinum asshole, but this girl was
definitely one of those sad sack, stand by your man types. She
loved him, she wanted him, and now she was getting jealous, and
that made her start to change. Before this, she used to write some
cute little things her kids had said and done, but now it was all
about Roger … when he was gone, what time he came back, how he
smelled like soap from a fresh shower; how when she called him at
work or went by, he was never there. She even wrote about hiring a
private detective. Of course, and this is so pathetic, turns out
she didn’t have any money. She had an account at the Piggly for
groceries, and one at Peddy J’s for gas, but if she wanted anything
else, even money for clothes, she had to go begging Roger like a
dog. Me, I’d have killed him long before, but hell Yankee women are
spineless I guess. So the journal whines on and on about Roger’s
friggin’ affair, and how mean he is and I guess the years pass
anyway. And somewhere in those years he must have given her a mercy
pump or two because she gets knocked up again. Maybe she didn’t
know what was causing it, huh? Sorry, I know it’s disrespectful to
make fun of dead people but, really, you got to wonder - five kids?
Now when she tells old Roger Dodger, I guess he was pretty unhappy
too, because he told her to get rid of it, which she wouldn’t
because it was a sin, which is pretty ironic in view of later
events. But, anyway, she has the kid, and then falls into that post
partum depression. You know, like Brooke Shields did? And, hell, by
now her writing is all crazy, all about God, and hearing someone
walking around the house in the afternoon, and her things getting
moved. People calling her and hanging up and, if you ask me, this
was all in her head because I don’t think until she started
haunting the house herself that there was a ghost. But she was sure
someone was trying to send her off her rocker, ‘Gaslight’ her is
how she put it. One day her tires were slashed, and Roger accused
her of doing it herself, and who knows, huh? So that’s it. Her last
entry was the day it happened. She wrote ‘I hear her downstairs;
she is here now. I will go now and confront the fiend who is
sleeping with my husband and sneaking into my house’. I think by
then she was a total loon and that she probably heard and imagined
that stuff, ‘cause really, Leeann, who in the hell in this town
would have been so nuts as to be sneaking into Willets House and
moving her stuff and all? I think maybe she went down and mistook
her own kids for this imaginary woman, or something. Hell, I don’t
know for sure - hey, maybe I’m wrong - maybe the ‘fiend’ was my own
mama, huh? Can’t you just see old Susan/Delilah sneaking around
Willets House? Hey, maybe she heard they had a big liquor cabinet,
that would do the trick. Anyway, that’s what I think happened.
Roger must have come home, seen what she had done, and she killed
him too. Then maybe she realized what she had done, and killed
herself. I know she wrote that shit about not me and stuff, but
Mark says that is called a dissociative state, which is when you
are sort of out of your body and don’t know what you are doing, and
you might blame what happens on other people. Sounds farfetched I
know, but we are talking about a woman who killed six people and
then herself here. But I still want you to let her show you her
damn pictures next time because I think they may hold the key to
why she is still so pissed after all these years. So what do you
think? It’s okay, you can talk now