by Lauren Rowe
Frankly, I’ve been wringing my hands for months about this whole flower thing. About three weeks ago, before the trial had even started, I got the scare of my life when Kurtis’ attorney showed up during one of my visitations with Kurtis at the prison (because, to this day, I’m still Kurtis’ good and loyal wife), and Kurtis started yelling at his attorney to send subpoenas “to every goddamned florist in the greater Los Angeles area” and “track down whoever was sending those fucking flowers to Bettie.” Much to my relief, Kurtis’ attorney just rolled his eyes at the suggestion. “They’ve got DNA evidence, Kurtis. Don’t you understand?” the attorney said. “Hunting down every fucking flower shop in Los Angeles, just to possibly track down one of the many losers who sent Bettie a goddamned bouquet of flowers at one time or another isn’t where we should be spending our fucking time and your fucking money. The woman shook her tits for a living in a fucking strip club—”
“Gentlemen’s club,” Kurtis seethes.
“Whatever. She was bound to have ‘admirers.’ But none of them had Bettie’s DNA all over their shirt the night she was killed. None of them were seen going into her apartment a couple hours before she was found dead. Focus on what actually needs to be done here, Kurtis. We need to focus on ripping their experts new assholes, not figuring out who might have sent flowers to Bettie. All we’d be doing if we chase that rabbit is confirm you were consumed with jealousy—and that’s a very bad thing to confirm.” At that point in the conversation, Kurtis ran his hands through his hair and looked at me, sitting in the corner—and in that moment, the poor man looked so lost, so broken, I actually felt sorry for him.
Of course, it never even occurred to either one of those two geniuses that Bettie’s secret admirer was sitting a few feet away, painting her nails a sassy, bright red. I swear I’ve never been so thankful to have men assume I’m a complete dumbass in all my life.
And as sorry as I was feeling for Kurtis in that moment, it nonetheless made me snicker just a little bit to think the one thing Kurtis wanted to know more than life was just sitting there under his nose the whole time on his credit card bills. But Kurtis never once paid any mind to the flowers I’d charged to his credit card, any more than he paid attention to any of the other stuff I’d bought with that dang card—dresses, purses, shoes, books, manicures, makeup, lingerie, champagne, Otter Pops, Slurpees, car washes, hair appointments, a tiny leather jacket for Wilber, and whatnot. I reckon Kurtis was particularly primed to ignore those flower charges because our house was always filled with pretty bouquets, sometimes bought by Kurtis himself—or, I reckon, Mildred herself—and other times bought by me “from Kurtis.”
“You got me a whole mess of happy flowers again today, husband,” I used to say, pointing at some outrageously expensive arrangement I’d sent to myself.
“Wow. I have great taste in flowers, don’t I?” he’d say, laughing.
“You sure do. Thank you kindly.”
“My pleasure, baby. Whatever makes you happy.”
And now, finally, after all these months of worrying those dang flowers might come back to bite me in the ass during Kurtis’ trial, I can finally breathe a sigh of relief after hearing Mildred’s testimony. I didn’t know what Mildred was gonna say on the witness stand, and I’m about to flop out my chair with relief after hearing she didn’t chase down those dang flowers sent to Bettie any more than Kurtis’ high-priced lawyer did.
“Anything else?” the prosecutor asks Mildred on the witness stand.
“Anything else what?”
“Anything else Mr. Jackman might have said to you that expressed anger or upset toward Miss Franklin?”
“No. That’s it.” She glances at Kurtis, her expression once again full of remorse.
“Thank you. No further questions.”
Kurtis’ attorney stands up and proceeds to ask Mildred a bunch of questions, all of which are designed to allow Mildred to yammer about how generous and thoughtful Kurtis has been with her, which she does. For what seems like forever, Mildred goes on and on about Kurtis, making him sound like Santa Claus himself; and yet I reckon the woman’s not exaggerating any of it. Because if there’s one thing nice I can say about Kurtis Jackman, it’s that he truly is a generous and thoughtful man (unless, of course, the thing you’re wanting him to be generous and thoughtful about is making a Marilyn-Monroe-movie starring you).
Hearing Mildred talk about all the nice things Kurtis has done for her over the ten years she’s worked for him, including putting Mildred’s momma into a convalescent home on his dime (something that’s news to me) makes me think about all the nice things Kurtis has done for me, too—like the time he surprised me with a fountain with naked ladies and cherubs and even a little cupid with wings. And the time he blindfolded me and brought me out to the driveway and gave me a fancy hot rod with a big red bow on it.
I look down at the humongous diamond ring on my finger, and just for a minute, I actually feel kind of sad things have worked out the way they have. Honestly, as I’m sitting here right now, I kind of wish maybe there’d been a way for me to just walk away from Kurtis and let bygones be bygones. But I reckon that’s a crazy thought.
Finally, Mr. Blowhard is all done with poor Mildred, and she’s allowed to slink off the hot seat, clutching her belly and looking as green as a tree frog as she does. As she’s leaving the witness stand, I steal another quick glance at the jury. And, truth be told, a small piece of me feels a little bit sad to observe that, despite all the nice things Mildred just said about Kurtis, each and every one of them looks ready to relieve my husband of his treasured balls.
Now, Bettie’s next-door neighbor in the apartment complex, a waitress, gets up on the witness stand. “Kathleen Wardenberg,” she replies when asked her name.
“Ms. Wardenberg, did you notice anything unusual with respect to Bettie’s apartment during the night of February fourth or the early morning hours of February fifth?” the prosecutor asks.
“Well, I was just coming up the walk from work and I saw him.” She points at Kurtis. “He was banging on her door, yelling for her to let him in. He looked agitated, I’d say. I saw Bettie open her door and tell him to ‘shut the fuck up,’ and he went inside.”
“Did you observe anything else that night with respect to Ms. Franklin?”
“Right after he went in there, I heard yelling coming from inside her apartment. Later, after it had quieted down, I was worried about her, so I went to check on her.” Kathleen starts to cry. After grabbing a tissue and wiping her eyes, she explains how she was the unlucky one to find Bettie’s mangled body—and oh my, it sure sounds like this poor girl discovered a gruesome scene.
Even as the jurors listen to Kathleen, I can feel them watching me. I reckon they’re dying to know if it’s dawning on me yet that, hey, I might be married to a merciless killer? I give them nothing, except that occasionally—and only occasionally—I try to look like a lost puppy (a Chanel suit-and diamond-cross-wearing, blonde bombshell of a lost puppy). It’s not hard to do, actually—I reckon now and again sitting here in this trial, letting my mind wander, I might feel kind of like a lost-puppy for real.
Now it’s Detective Randall’s turn to sit on the witness stand. Wow, this detective’s a good lookin’ man—a different breed from the yahoo-detective with bushy eyebrows from Mother’s trial.
The prosecutor holds up a clear plastic bag with a blue shirt inside.
“Yes, that’s the shirt we retrieved from the defendant’s home at the time of arrest,” Detective Randall confirms. “We found it on the bedroom floor, adjacent to where the defendant was passed out... It was visibly splattered with blood just below the shoulder area, as these pictures demonstrate.”
I must admit I feel kinda proud of myself about this one. It’s amazing how much a girl can arrange in the forty-five seconds between when she hears the police at the door and when she opens it.
Next, the prosecutor holds up a clear bag with a pill bottle inside.
&
nbsp; “Yes, that’s a pill bottle prescribed to Kurtis Jackman,” Detective Randall explains. “We found it in Elizabeth Franklin’s apartment.”
Good ol’ Wesley. When I asked him to plant Kurtis’ pill bottle in Bettie’s apartment several hours before my “kill her or don’t come home!” speech to Kurtis, Wesley was Johnny-on-the-spot. But that’s Wesley for you. Loyal as the day is long.
The next witness is a forensic expert who works in the police lab.
“What were your findings, if any, regarding the blue shirt found at the scene?” the prosecutor asks, holding up the bag with Kurtis’ shirt inside.
“My testing concluded with one-hundred-percent certainty,” the expert responds, “that the small splatter of blood around the shoulder area belonged to Elizabeth Franklin.”
“And did you make any other findings regarding the blue shirt?”
“Yes. Kurtis Jackman’s DNA and hair were all over it. And there was also one long, black hair found on the shirt, as well, that did not belong to the defendant.”
“Were you able to determine who the hair belonged to?” the prosecutor asks.
To whom, I think. Were you able to determine to whom the hair belonged? I haven’t even been to law school and I know that’s right.
“The long black hair belonged to Elizabeth Franklin, without a doubt.”
It sure did. And it was so generous of Bettie to leave so many useful hair specimens lying around my house—on the couch, in the shower drain, in my bed. I look at the jury. If there were any holdouts on sending my husband to the Big House before now, there aren’t any more.
As the trial unfolds day after day, detectives and lab technicians and neighbors and strippers and porn queens parade onto the witness stand in an endless stream, each of them efficiently pounding yet another nail into Kurtis’ oversized coffin.
But the most interesting thing of all is how the trial begins to take on a life of its own in the media, separate and apart from the pesky question of Kurtis’ guilt or innocence. The accused is a porn king! His lawyer is a media whore! The prosecutor is a working stiff! The dead girl was the spitting image of Bettie Page! The world wants more, more, more—and, by golly, they always get it.
And guess what’s at the eye of this media storm, week after glorious week? A strikingly beautiful blonde who dresses like a movie star and appears to be the dead girl’s polar opposite in every way. Week after week, I sit in that courtroom looking loyal and beautiful, and, increasingly, if only slightly, unsure of my husband’s innocence. And the world eats me up like a biscuit smothered in gravy.
It’s hard to pin down exactly what’s so alluring about me, but multiple writers and TV personalities try their best to explain it. One influential TV host comments that, in her opinion, I’ve managed to “float unscathed above the prurient fray.” I like that one, even if I have to look up “prurient” in the dictionary when I first hear it.
Another pundit offers, “She’s a nice girl swept up into a maelstrom of seediness and exploitation—a small town girl (with perfect skin), who followed her star to Hollywood only to find herself the embodiment of the American Dream gone haywire.” That one gets picked up by all major media outlets from around the globe, and, over time, becomes somewhat of a calling card for me: I’m The American Dream Gone Haywire.
A common dialogue about me on talk shows goes something like this:
“She must have done porn—she’s married to Kurtis Jackman, after all.”
“No, by all accounts, she hasn’t. In fact, from what Kurtis Jackman himself has bragged about, she was his virgin bride.”
“Aw, come on,” someone always says. “There’s got to be a hidden Buttercup porno in a vault somewhere.”
The world can’t get enough of me, and the media is all too happy to keep feeding the beast. On any given day during the four-week trial, you can turn on your TV set and see me leaving or entering the courthouse, hounded by an army of photographers. Or video of me standing on the courthouse steps, thanking the world for their “love and support.” If you like the late-night talk shows, well, you can get your fill of trial-related jokes during one host or another’s opening monologue any night of the week (though never at my expense). And, of course, all you have to do to see my boobies flapping in the wind is flip the channels at any given time and you’d probably get an eyeful of them in my good-girl pictures (my prurient parts appropriately blacked-out for television).
Shoot, last week, there was even a Barbara Walters’ primetime special about a list of ten fascinating people, and guess what? I was number seven on the list! Good ol’ Barbara figured out my real name, I reckon from my marriage license (which initially made me shit a brick when I first found out about it); but, as it turned out, my hard life in Texas just made me all the more “fascinating.”
“Buttercup never knew her father,” Barbara erroneously reported in the short piece (though I really can’t blame her, seeing as how Daddy was never listed on my birth certificate and Momma apparently refused to be interviewed, thank the Lord). “Buttercup’s mother went to prison for killing the boyfriend who’d savagely abused her, and fifteen-year-old Charlene McEntire found herself adrift in the Texas foster care system.”
It was right then in the piece that Mrs. Clements’ smiling face appeared on-camera, looking mighty excited to be getting her fifteen minutes of fame. “Oh goodness, yes, Charlene was just the sweetest little thing you ever did see—just always had her nose in a book. Well-mannered, quiet, helpful ’round the house, just as shy as can be—goodness, she hardly ever said a word to anybody. She was just a fine, young, God-fearing girl. And, goodness, she was the prettiest little thing you ever did see, too; I used to tell her all the time, ‘One day, Charlene, you’re gonna have the world at your feet.’” At this point in the interview, Mrs. Clements furrowed her brow and looked mighty perturbed. “I must say, it broke my heart to discover she’d posed for those nudie pictures in that awful magazine, but knowing Charlene the way I do, I can tell you with one hundred-percent certainty that man forced her to do it.”
At the end of the piece, Barbara looked straight into the camera and this is what she said: “When you look past the blonde hair and pin-up-girl body, past the salaciousness and titillation swirling around her, what do you see when you look at Buttercup Bouvier? Well, I’ll tell you what I see: a little girl named Charlene McEntire who, after being dealt a horrible hand in life, picked herself up and reinvented herself, all in the name of pursuing her dreams. God speed, Buttercup.”
Well, gosh. That was awfully nice of Barbara to say, wasn’t it?
Barbara’s piece about me being “fascinating” sure did make people like me a whole lot, or maybe just pity me. But either way, it was a good thing. But even better was how people felt about me after an article about the trial came out in a respected news magazine. “She’s been studying acting intensely for over a year at the most prestigious acting school in Los Angeles,” the article said about me (and, of course, I was over the moon to find out my acting school is considered “prestigious”). “Her instructor, an industry veteran with an impressive list of acting credits, said the following about her: ‘She’s a true natural.’”
Lord have mercy. Turn out the lights. That’s what you call a game-changer, folks. When my instructor previously uttered those very same words to me in private, he made me believe in myself when I needed it most—something I’ll be grateful for ’til the day I die. But when my instructor said those magical words to the entire population of planet earth in a respected news magazine, well, that saint of a man did something more than make people like or pity me. He made people believe in me the way he did—gosh dang it, he made them respect me. Without even one ejaculation, that man changed the entire trajectory of my life.
Before that article, I was already a bona fide international celebrity, thanks to the trial, but after my acting instructor’s quote hit newsstands, I became a damned fine actress in the eyes of the world, too—a real student of
acting who’s working hard to learn her craft. On a dime, I became a respected and serious actress, and it was a dang dream come true.
Well, after that, I could do no wrong. I became a big ol’ slice of cherry pie a la mode. Beef brisket at the barbeque. The jangle in everyone’s spurs. Even now, three weeks since Kurtis’ trial ended, the world still can’t get enough of me. My face is splattered on the cover of at least one entertainment rag a day, and sometimes even two or three. Even before I’ve decided which talent agency in Hollywood may have the honor of representing me, movie scripts are already pouring in, including lots and lots where they’d even let me talk. I’m the world’s beloved “Buttercup”—no last name even required. Yes, sir, I’m a gen-u-ine star.
I know things with Kurtis had their ups and downs—and, yes, my husband hit me and lied to me and cheated on me with his whore. But at the end of the day, I feel nothing but good feelings and gratitude toward the man. Because, despite the zigzagging way we got here, my husband did, in fact, deliver on his promise to me: he made me a star. And that’s why I reckon I’ll always feel a special kind of affection for Kurtis, regardless of all the bad blood I might have felt for him before. All’s well that ends well.
Actually, I’m feeling so much affection for Kurtis lately, seeing as how everything’s worked out so darned well, a small part of me is even sorry that jury decided to send him up the river. Of course, I know that’s just the romantic in me talking—or maybe finally getting to be with Wesley out in the open has turned my heart good and pure and soft all the livelong day. But, really, in my deepest heart, I know that Kurtis getting shipped off to prison for the rest of his life is the only way his story could properly end. He did do the crime, after all; so I reckon he’s got to do the time. That’s just a little thing called justice, which is something I couldn’t interfere with even if I wanted to—and something any Texan will tell you should always get served.