by Greta Cribbs
Tolloch raised an eyebrow. “Can’t I?”
“Not if you continue on your current track.”
“I think I know my own mind better than anyone.”
“I don’t doubt that. What you don’t know is psychology. And I don’t even think you believe half the things you’re telling me.”
“You think I’m lying about my childhood?”
“I think you’re lying about the significance of your childhood.”
“How so?”
“You touched on it yourself when you said you haven’t stopped thinking about what happened when you were three.”
Tolloch leaned forward and rested his elbows on the table. “Very well, then. Read my mind. Tell me what I really think about that day.”
Meredith smiled. “You said you had no idea what you did wrong.”
“I didn’t.”
“Didn’t? Past tense? So you do know now?”
“I see I’ll have to watch my words carefully around you. You’re sharper than I realized.”
“Yes, women have, on occasion, been known to possess a fair degree of intelligence.”
“So if you had to guess, what would you say I did to make my mother so angry?”
“I don’t have to guess. You’ve already told me.”
“Have I?”
“Yes.”
He sat back in his chair again and crossed one leg over the other. “Let’s hear it, then.”
“What, according to you, did your mother fear above all other things?”
“Men.”
“And what are you?”
He smiled, lifted his chin, and regarded her with a sideways glance. “A man.”
“Exactly. And what do you think it was about men that she was so afraid of? What weapon were men, in her eyes, fond of using to keep women in their place, so to speak?”
“Sex, of course.”
“So when she caught you urinating in her front yard, what do you think she found most alarming?”
Tolloch looked down at his hands, then back up into Meredith’s eyes. “You’re pretty good.”
“Thank you.”
He sighed. “She was appalled by my public nudity.”
“She wasn’t appalled by it. She feared it. She feared your sexuality.”
“I was three years old.”
“But you weren’t going to stay three years old forever. You were going to grow into a man. One who had the power to hurt women. That’s what she saw when she looked at you.”
He shook his head and smiled again. “You are good, I’ll give you that.”
“Again, I thank you. But we’re not here to talk about me, so why don’t you continue with your story?”
***
Everly Jean Griffin, the only daughter of our charitable landlords, was the first woman in her family to attend college. Possibly even the first woman in all of Crimson Falls to pursue higher education. Her focus had been primarily on business courses, the plan being for her to eventually take over the running of the motel.
It was 1958 when she returned home with a degree in her hand, a smile on her face, and a spring in her step. I was twelve years old and when she rolled into the motel for her first day of work, clad in a red dress with white polka dots and a neckline that was just barely high enough to be considered respectable, I was sure she was the most beautiful thing I had ever seen.
I had been allowed out, so to speak, by that point. I had to go to school, after all. During my sixth grade year, with the return of Miss Everly Jean, I began to time my departure to coincide with her arrival at the motel to begin her workday. This slight shift in my routine resulted in me getting to school ten minutes earlier than usual, but that was fine. As long as my day began with a glimpse of the loveliest woman in Crimson Falls, all was right with the world.
And so, every morning, I pushed my red Roadmaster Flying Falcon, a birthday gift from Mrs. Griffin (since Mother never acknowledged my birthday), across the rough terrain that formed our front yard. I moved slowly, not wanting to arrive too early and be forced to loiter conspicuously on the roadside while I waited for the lovely Everly Jean to make her appearance. Inevitably, she would come, driving her father’s Buick (also a Roadmaster, a minor coincidence which delighted me to no end) and walk the long sidewalk to the motel office, looking every bit as beautiful as Marilyn Monroe in The Seven Year Itch.
One morning in mid-autumn (I’m sure you can guess at the exact date) she stepped out of that Buick wearing what, to my small-town eyes, seemed the most glamorous dress ever made. In reality it was little more than a house dress, comprised of yellow cotton fabric with tiny red flowers scattered across its surface, but the way it clung to Everly Jean’s figure, the way the full skirt swished back and forth when she walked, allowing the occasional glimpse of that forbidden territory above the knee, stirred within me a longing the likes of which I had never felt before. I was a twelve-year-old boy, after all, and I was going through what all boys go through when they become aware of girls for the first time. My immature mind found itself tossed here and there on a sea of unfamiliar sensations. Some emotional. Some physical.
Unable to tear my eyes away from the magnificence that stood before me, I dodged behind a tree and watched her, her hips shifting this way and that as she gracefully balanced on her red high heels, until she disappeared behind the office door. And still I remained there, obscured behind the tree, unable to move. Unable to step out into the light where people might see the very conspicuous evidence of my infatuation.
You see, when you’re a boy and you’ve been...um...aroused...by a member of the opposite sex, there is a certain physical response which can at times land you in a rather embarrassing predicament. Not that I fully understood what was happening at the time, of course. All I understood was that I did not want anyone to see me in such a state.
It did not occur to me that Mother might have seen from one of the motel’s bathroom windows as she stood up from scrubbing a toilet.
Making it through school that day proved one of the most grueling experiences of my life. Though the girls in my class, with their sweaters and plaid skirts, with their tiny breasts just beginning to show signs of womanhood and their skinny legs looking anything but glamorous perched above brown loafers and white saddle oxfords, scarcely approached the level of loveliness I had just witnessed in Everly Jean, still at times a fold of fabric would turn up in just the right way and I would find myself trapped once again within the clutches of my own desire.
I spent that day with my jacket draped neatly over my lap and my awareness constantly on alert for anyone who might look at me closely enough to uncover my embarrassing secret. I ate lunch alone, but that was my typical routine. When your mother won’t let you attend birthday parties or go to the movies with other kids on a Saturday afternoon, you don’t tend to make a lot of friends.
(I had been to the movies a few times, however, having snitched some spare change from the money jar Mother kept in the kitchen. That’s how I managed to see The Seven Year Itch. But let’s get back to my struggles in the classroom, shall we?)
A couple of times I was overcome by the urge to escape to the bathroom and...well, we all know the kinds of things adolescent boys do by themselves in the bathroom.
When the dismissal bell finally rang at three o’clock, my feet could hardly pedal fast enough as I raced down the quaint streets of Crimson Falls.
On my approach to the motel, a pleasant surprise awaited me. There was Everly Jean, in all her yellow-cotton-clad glory, bending over to extract something from the trunk of the Buick. I don’t know what it was that she needed so urgently. I was scarcely in any state of mind to pay attention to those kinds of details, not while my mind was so full of much more pleasant ones.
My bicycle coasted across the parking lot and nearly collided with the side of the building, so distracted was I by the amazing view of the back of Everly Jean’s dress. The position of her body caused her skirt to lift just slightly in the
rear, allowing me a glimpse of the creases at the backs of her knees. I set a foot down on the gravelly drive to stop my bike and stared while once again all those feelings swirled inside me. The yearning grew to a nearly unbearable level and it was all I could do not to reach down and remedy the situation right then and there.
I stared until she finally had a grip on the Whatever It Was she needed from the trunk and moved to carry it into the motel office.
As she turned around, she saw me and smiled. “Hi, Duane!” she called, nodding her head since her hands were too occupied to allow her to wave.
If I had been raised to be a chivalrous young man, I would have offered to help her with her load, but my mother had never taken the time to teach me such things, so I merely stared back, scarce believing she had deigned to say “hi” to me. Me, of all people. What a lucky guy I was! Blessed, I might have said, if Mother had ever seen fit to take me within thirty feet of a church.
Everly Jean turned away from me and took the short trek up the sidewalk to the office door. When she had disappeared through it as she had that morning, and indeed every morning since her return, I, too, turned away and wheeled my bike across the lumpy ground toward my little house.
I did not see Mother peering through the windows at me. Did not even realize she was in the house until I opened the front door and felt her fist entwining itself into my hair.
“Get in here,” she whispered, pulling me into the house and kicking the door shut behind me.
“Ow! That hurts,” I said.
She slapped me hard across the jaw. “Don’t you dare talk to me like that. I am your mother.” Her grip on my hair became even tighter.
Tears stung my eyes, but I didn’t want her to see me cry so I blinked them back. “What did I do?”
“What did you do? What did you do?” She pushed me against the wall. Still holding my hair with one hand, she took the other and grabbed my jaw, squeezing hard enough to make me wince. “Do you think I didn’t see you out there? Do you think I don’t know what was going through your mind?”
“But...I...”
She tightened her grip even more and banged my head against the wall, causing me to bite down on my tongue. As the metallic taste of blood filled my mouth and the tears I had been trying to hold back finally spilled down my cheeks, she put her face very close to mine and looked into my eyes. She released her hand from my jaw and grabbed me in another, much more personal, place. A place I had been trying to conceal from the world for the majority of the day.
I place I would have done anything to conceal from my mother at that moment.
I wanted to try and get away from her, but she held me in such a way that I feared she would injure me, with the kind of injury only a boy can receive, if I made the slightest move, so I held very still.
Fire danced in her eyes as she said, “I don’t know what right you think you have to be looking at Miss Everly Jean that way, but I swear to God if you ever lay a finger on that sweet girl...” Her fingers clamped down on me slightly and I took in a sharp breath. “...I will make sure you never look at another girl that way again. Do you understand?”
I nodded, but she took her other hand and slammed my head against the wall again.
“I want to hear you say it. Do you understand?”
“I...uh...under...stand,” I said, gasping and trying desperately not to cry. It would not do for Mother to see me cry.
“Good.” Her grip loosened and she took a step away from me. “Now go get your homework done. And don’t even think about going outside for the rest of the day.”
“Yes, Mother.” My voice quivered and as I walked away from her I reached up to wipe my tears with a trembling hand.
“And for God’s sake quit your sniveling.”
“Yes, Mother,” I said again.
As I settled in to work on my grammar and arithmetic, the fear I had experienced at my mother’s hands slowly subsided, and anger came to take its place.
Anger at Mother? You would think so, wouldn’t you? After all, what right did she have to tell me who I could look at and how? What right did she have to assume I harbored anything but the most wholesome intentions toward Everly Jean?
But, no. I was not angry at Mother. I was angry at myself.
You must remember that I was twelve years old. I was only just entering that age when young people begin to question the rules around which their worlds are built. Part of me was still very much a child, clinging to the notion that Mother knew best and if any wrong had been done, I must be the culprit.
But how could I be at fault? I had not chosen to experience those feelings. I’d had no control whatsoever with regard to the thoughts dancing in my brain and the odd sensations surging through my body.
All the same, I had felt them. And what’s more, everything I had done that day had been for the purpose of making myself feel them. Had I not chosen to leave the house at just the time Everly Jean typically arrived at the motel? Had I not chosen to linger in the parking lot watching her struggle to lift her burden from the trunk of the car? Could I really say that my reaction, as well as Mother’s response to my reaction, was anything but the consequence of my own choice?
And so I resolved to push the feelings down. To deny their existence. If I ignored them long enough, they would simply go away.
Of course, as we all know, that is not quite the way things work in the real world.
Chapter Six
“Still think I’m trying to shift blame?”
Meredith sat back and swiped away a stray lock of hair that had fallen across her forehead. “I don’t doubt you had a troubled childhood, Mr. Tolloch. In fact, I’d wager that most men who find themselves in your current situation did. However, it’s a pretty big leap from growing up feeling unloved to murdering college students.”
“But if a person has never been taught how to love, what then?”
“There’s more to your story than that.”
Tolloch raised an eyebrow. “Oh?”
“You’ve been quoted as saying you felt your victims deserved to die.”
“I believe what I actually said was that they needed to be punished.”
“All right, punished. Why?”
“Why?”
“Your mother hurt you. Neglected you. Some might even say abused you. Yet three innocent co-eds deserved to be punished. For what?”
Tolloch looked down at his hands and did not respond right away. He pursed his lips and drew his eyebrows together, causing a deep crease to form on his forehead. He took in a breath, let it out, then looked up at Meredith again. “It’s what I believed at the time.”
“Believed?”
“Yes.”
“Are you saying you feel remorse for what you did?”
Again he paused before answering. When he finally did respond, his voice had a harsh, cold quality to it that caused the hair on the back of Meredith’s neck to stand up. “Some of it.”
“Some, but not all?”
He shook his head. “No. Not all.”
“So what part do you not regret?”
“I figured you would have guessed that already. You seem to know me so well.”
“I have my theories. But, as you are aware, I have this film crew with me, and they’re here to get your story in your words.”
“Well, then, I suppose we should get on with it.”
***
I turned fifteen having no understanding whatsoever of human sexuality. This was 1961, and such things were only beginning to be taught in certain schools, usually in much bigger and more important places than Crimson Falls. I had no idea what those feelings, and the physical responses that went along with them, meant, nor did I possess any awareness that other boys my age were going through much the same thing. All I had was Mother, assuring me that I was a very naughty boy indeed for thinking and feeling such things.
And at fifteen I still believed her.
It wasn’t until some time later that my worldview b
egan to shift.
Donna Marie Watson was, I suppose you could say, the catalyst for the change.
If Everly Jean was my first infatuation, then Donna Marie was my first love.
I know what you’re thinking and, yes, I am capable of love. Whether my definition of the term is the same as yours I can’t say for sure, never having felt love from anyone’s point of view but my own. But I know it was some version of love that I felt for Donna Marie back in 1961.
Had she been one of the flat-chested, knock-kneed girls I had ogled in the sixth grade? Probably. We had been in class together since grammar school. But my memory is somewhat fuzzy when it comes to the specifics of my early ogling experiences.
When ninth grade came along, I had become much more selective. And I selected Donna Marie.
There was nothing, really, that set her apart physically from the other girls. She did not possess the Marilyn Monroe curves that I had so admired on Everly Jean. Her hair was dishwater blond and her eyes gray with flecks of brown. Her lips were full but not pouty, her bosom sufficient but not ample. She was pretty, in an average sort of way, and that was the most that could be said about her.
And yet...
When I say my feelings for her went beyond mere infatuation, this is what I mean. Had she been one of those buxom beauties, of the Hollywood starlet type, then the whole affair could be easily dismissed as a surge of hormones. The attraction purely physical. But Donna Marie was different. What I felt when I was near her was different.
It began on the first day of ninth grade when I discovered that her locker was next to mine. We had just arrived in the morning, and I wanted to stow away all the books I would not be needing until after lunch. A group of girls blocked my way, Donna Marie among them.
It was well-known, had been well-known for quite a few years, that I was a hopeless loner with poor looks and even poorer social skills. That was quite sufficient reason for most people at school to avoid me, but of course there was the added fact that nearly everyone in town knew I had been born out of wedlock and didn’t even know the identity of my father. So the few kids at school who might have been brave enough to associate with me were strictly forbidden from doing so by supercilious parents who had convinced themselves they were only protecting their precious children by keeping them away from the likes of me.