Love Me To Death. Steve Jackson
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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.”
So, she thought, the first test I failed on our wedding night destroyed my marriage. She had never given him a reason not to trust her, had never been unfaithful. All she had done was fail tests she had been set up to fail. He’d said that he was sorry, but she’d always wonder what his real motive was. Was it because he really did love her at one time, or at least thought he did? Or did he call her to apologize as a way to hurt the woman who was yelling at him in Texas?
For three years, Wilson mourned the loss of her marriage. There were times when she wished he’d come back, not knowing if she’d have the strength to turn him away if he did. At the same time, whenever someone inquired about her past and she told them, she’d add, “If you ever run into a man named William Lee Neal, turn and walk the other way.”
It was a long time before she would trust another man enough to let him get close to her. She had a friend, Fred, who gradually let her know that he cared for her. He wasn’t overly romantic, nor did he live life on the edge. He was soft and gentle, shy and yet strong, a man who didn’t need to beat his chest. With him she felt safe and loved. They got married and had a daughter in 1989.
However, just because she was through with Bill Neal, it didn’t mean that he was through with her. Every now and then, there’d be a telephone call from him. Even if she moved, he found her. She got unlisted telephone numbers, changed them seven times over the next nine years, but still the phone would ring and it would be him. Finally, she quit trying to hide. He was going to find her if he wanted. More frightening, he seemed to know as much about her as ever. She’d get a new car and he’d call and tell her that he liked her choice. He was letting her know that he was still keeping tabs on her, still in control.
Meanwhile, Neal seemed to be going through some pretty rough times. He often sounded drunk when he called. He had a bad cough that never seemed to get better. She stayed close to his family, who kept her updated on what they knew of his whereabouts and activities, though he was secretive with them, too. His mother told her that she had scolded him “for losing the best thing you ever had,” and she continued to treat Wilson like a daughter.
Through them, Wilson learned that he’d married again, to another Karen—Karen Boxer. He’d apparently taken her, too, for her money, prompting calls to Wilson from police investigators looking for Neal. He’d divorced a third time and then married a fourth, this time a young stripper named Jennifer Tate.
Apparently, he was hanging out in Denver, Colorado, bars a lot, acting like something out of a Wild West show. He told her that he’d even legally changed his name to William “Cody” Neal, but that he was known in the bars and strip joints as Wild Bill Cody. She had to laugh at this latest reincarnation; he’d never been a cowboy, not a real one.
The calls stopped for a time. Then her parents died, first her dad and then her mother, and he called soon afterward. He was well aware that she stood to inherit a considerable amount of money, and now he wanted some of it. But her parents had put the money in a trust, and while she received lump sums from it on a regular basis—a fact he seemed to know—it was tough to put her hands on the kind of money he asked for. Otherwise, she would have still found it difficult to stand up to Neal and his stories. He’d try different tactics to get money out of her. Once it was that the Mafia was after him; he said that he owed the mob money and if he didn’t pay it back, a hit man was going to take him out. She was racked with guilt. God, if I don’t give him the money, he might die. But she didn’t give him the money, and he managed to stay alive. It didn’t stop him from trying a different story though.
Only once did she hear again from the man she had loved and married. His mother died in October 1995, and he called distraught and needing a sympathetic shoulder. He told Wilson that he loved her, that he had always loved her. She had to admit she felt the old twinge when he said that. No matter what he’d done to her, there was always that one last shred of some memory that he could use to make her cry.
She expressed her sympathy for his loss. She had truly loved his mom like her own. It was nice to be talking to plain old Bill, not some stranger who called himself Cody. But there was no going back, she told him. Maybe someday, when they were both sixty, she said, they’d meet again and talk about old times. Until then, she wished him the best of luck.
The last time she heard from Neal, he called out of the blue asking for money again. He said that he needed it so he could divorce his fourth wife, Jennifer. Once he had the divorce, he’d be free and hinted that maybe they should hook up again. She didn’t give him the money.
When she called one of his sisters, she learned that he had already divorced Jennifer Tate. He was just trying to con her again. This time Wilson pulled a con of her own. She told her new husband, Fred, that William Neal had died. She didn’t want to have to explain the real reason why a telephone call would put her in a bad mood. For her, Neal had told her his last lie and really was dead, at least to her heart.
Three
September 1992, Denver, Colorado
She was just eighteen-years-old and a topless dancer when he came into her life and swept her off her feet with his money and style. All the other dancers at the club wanted to be with the charming guy in the black cowboy hat, who spent lavishly to keep beautiful young women surrounding him at his table. He tipped everyone—the