A predisposition to believe the worst about the intentions of her offspring was at the core of the principals Patsy Ann Steen Taylor Perry Roche used to guide her actions as a parent. The principals, on the whole, were generally regarded as sound, being firmly based on her upbringing in the Lutheran church. What Patsy Ann lacked was a basic understanding for the human inclination to adapt to any circumstance in order to achieve what was desired, regardless of the obstacles placed in, or naturally occurring along, its path. Patsy Ann herself was not immune to her own desire, and consequently navigated the dark waters of her own childhood to suit her inner most needs. It was these desires, for instance, that made Patsy Ann the subject of gossip and speculation among her fellow residents at The Sons of Norway Assisted Living Facility in Bradenton, Florida, during the last three years of her life.
“Tell me again, dear, you have three children?” asked the wheelchair-bound Mrs. Anderson whose false teeth clicked when she talked.
Patsy Ann nodded, “Yes, that’s right.”
“From three separate marriages?”
“Yes, that’s right.”
Patsy Ann held the statistically improbable distinction of having had three children, one by each of three different husbands, each child born ten years after the next, each on the same day of the year—June 30, exactly halfway through the years of 1958, 1968, and 1978—each a girl.
“And what are their names again, dear?” Mrs. Anderson, click click, inquired. Patsy Ann tried to remember how many times Mrs. Anderson had asked this same series of questions over the past three years but as she could only recall that the questions had been asked and not the number of times, she let her momentary annoyance pass and answered them without malice.
“The oldest is Elizabeth because, at the time of her birth, I adored Elizabeth Taylor. My middle daughter is Katherine Carrie. After Katherine Hepburn. I thought about naming her Barbra, after Streisand, because ‘Funny Girl’ was my favorite movie in 1968, but Streisand is Jewish, and my mother and father would never have approved of that.” Mrs. Anderson nodded her head in understanding. “And there’s my youngest, Shirley Faye, because I couldn’t decide between Shirley MacLaine and Faye Dunaway. But, we ended up just calling her Faye after Shirley started talking about all those strange previous lives she thought she’d lived.” Patsy Ann pressed her lips disapprovingly together before concluding, “Ridiculous.”
“And the husbands?” prompted Mrs. Olson whose voice could only be heard when she placed a pneumatic larynx up to her throat. The arthritis in her right hand made depressing the “on” button difficult.
Patsy Ann narrowed her eyes at Mrs. Olson whose electronically produced voice grated on her nerves and said, “That’s a topic I do not discuss.”
The topic she referred to was the bad luck of having been widowed three times. Bad luck, or what her own mother referred to as “unpleasant matters,” was strictly forbidden for discussion during the course of her lifetime.
The lesson had been learned early upon the death of Patsy Ann’s grandfather, on her father’s side. Bumpa Steen died when the cirrhosis in his liver made its further functioning impossible. They laid his body out on the dining room table in the small alcove area off the parlor where the light from the bay windows shone in “like the very angels in heaven were having a peak inside,” said Patsy Ann’s grandmother.
“Why did he die?” little Patsy Ann asked. There were a dozen answers that could have been given to a child but the one she got was, “Hush up now. He died and that’s all there is to it. This is an unpleasant matter,” said her mother, “and no one is to discuss it. Ever.”
As to having the unpleasant matter of three dead husbands, Patsy Ann Steen Taylor Perry Roche had no intentions of letting anyone, least of all the residents of The Sons of Norway Assisted Living Facility, know the finer details of their unfortunate passings.
“I feel just terrible about it,” began Mrs. Olson who fumbled with the switch on her pneumatic larynx and had to pause in her train of thought to find the button, “but of my three boys and daughter,” she paused again for an intake of breath, “I have a favorite.” She eyed Mrs. Anderson who seemed to grip the arms of her wheelchair a little tighter at the thought of Mrs. Olson’s impending confession. Patsy Ann waited patiently while Mrs. Olson enjoyed what she imagined was a suspenseful moment. “It’s my daughter,” she rasped. The heads of her small audience nodded their acknowledgment. “Do you have a favorite among your girls?” she asked Patsy Ann.
Patsy Ann did have a favorite, but not in the way she thought Mrs. Olson meant. Katherine Carrie, her middle daughter, was singled out in her mind, receiving much closer scrutiny over the years, because from the moment of her birth, Patsy Ann thought her sneaky. At just six hours old, Katherine Carrie’s beady little dark blue eyes peered back at her in a way Patsy Ann felt was a challenge. “Just see if you can catch me,” they said to her. And, from that moment on, Patsy Ann was determined to catch Katherine Carrie misbehaving in order to “break her of any bad habits that might lead her to experiment, if not fully engage, in undesirable activities of any kind.” To Patsy Ann, even those dark little baby eyes betrayed Katherine Carrie’s inborn tendency to “take the wrong road” as she often defined it to herself.
Patsy Ann knew what she was talking about, too, because she herself had flirted with dangerous thoughts and downright sinful doings. When Katherine Carrie was four years old, Patsy Ann warned her, “There’s nothing you can do, nothing you can think of to do, that I haven’t already done or thought of doing. So don’t try anything with me. I’ll catch you at it and you’ll pay the price.” The gauntlet had been thrown down and although Katherine Carrie never deliberately went out of her way to see what kind of trouble she could get away with, she had a keen grasp of those things her mother would not approve of and honed her skills in the art of lying and deception in order to do precisely what she wished without getting caught. And thus, a predisposition to believe the worst about the intentions of her own offspring was at the core of the principals Katherine Carrie Perry Thomas Stevenson Lombardi used to guide her actions as a parent as she raised her four children from three different fathers.
Copyright DJ Anderson, 2015
