Love Me To Death. Steve Jackson
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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.
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.
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.
For the rest of October and November,