“Mom, what’s going on? Slow down,” Emily said, trying to calm Gail. It sounded like Gail was outside somewhere.
Gail mentioned the hotel. She said she was walking home. Emily realized then that they had gone through with the meeting and something terrible had happened.
“I’ll be right there, Mom.”
Emily got her things together and took off.
“But I decided,” Emily said later, “right then and there, I was going to go to the hotel and have a confrontation in person with Donna.”
Emily was tired of this. Now her father and Donna were involving her mother. It was time, Emily figured, to get in Donna’s face and tell her to back the hell off.
From a pay phone near the hotel, Gail called her mother next. She was walking home, she explained. She had heard and seen enough. They left her in the lobby and took off together. How low. How pathetic. How mean. It appeared George and Donna had brought Gail to the hotel to humiliate her.
“I looked around the hotel grounds,” Gail explained, “but couldn’t find them. I’m walking home.”
“Honey . . . don’t. . . .” Dora was upset, unable to understand how George could do such a thing to a woman with whom he had spent his entire life.
Gail said she’d call later.
As she walked down the street away from the hotel, Gail heard a car pull up behind her.
And then another.
It was George in one; Donna was behind him.
“Gail . . . get in,” George said. He had driven all the way home, searched the house, and then backtracked. Donna followed in her car the entire way, not letting George out of her sight.
“Why?” Gail asked. She was visibly upset. She was hugging herself, a balled-up tissue in her hand, tears streaming down her face. “
Why,
George?”
“Just get in. Let’s talk.”
George convinced Gail to get in the car.
Gail sat. “I’ll be right back. Don’t leave.” George walked over to Donna, who was parked in back of his car, waiting.
He returned a moment later: “We have to follow Donna back so she gets there safely,” George explained to his wife.
Donna drove away. George followed. Gail didn’t say much during the ride. At one point George looked into the rearview mirror and noticed Donna’s car veering off the side of the road, stopping sharply as though she had crashed.
George pulled up alongside Donna’s car. He stopped and quickly got out.
Donna was slumped over.
“Hey,” George said, “you okay?”
“I must have passed out,” Donna said.
“Come with us,” George said. He helped Donna into his car and drove Gail home.
“What are you doing?” Gail asked as George packed an overnight bag inside the house. Donna waited outside in the car.
“I have to go stay with Donna tonight,” George said.
41
W
HILE EMILY WAS
home earlier that day, before this fiasco started, Donna called. Emily made note of the hotel name on the caller ID. Now back from what was supposed to be a quiet day with friends, upset that her mother sounded so in despair, Emily walked in and was met with a “crying and very upset” mother. Her father was “just sitting on the couch in ‘his own world,’” Emily said.
“Your father is leaving to go take care of Donna,” Gail explained. “Because,” obviously repeating what George had just told her, “‘she has no one else.’”
“What?” Emily asked.
“Yes. Donna’s going to have your father’s child! Oh, and she’s dying, too, Emily. She’ll be dead in a matter of months.”
Emily couldn’t believe it. George did not interrupt or butt in. So it must be true, Emily considered.
“Look, I cannot have Donna commit suicide and have that on my hands,” George finally said. “I won’t let it happen.”
Emily’s friend Andrea was with her. “I’m taking Andrea home,” Emily told her mother. “I’ll be back soon.”
By now, it was late evening. George had dropped Donna off at the hotel and had come back home for more clothes. Emily walked out the door with her friend and drove straight to Donna’s hotel. She parked and got out; together they approached the front-desk clerk.
“No, I can’t tell you which room she’s in,” the clerk explained.
“Call her and tell her I’m here,” Emily said.
The clerk handed Emily the phone.
“Emily?” Donna said, startled, but also cheery and elated, sounding as if they were old friends.
“Yes. I thought maybe you would want to meet me in person, so I came.”
“Oh, yes, yes,” Donna said. “But I just threw up all over the bathroom. I’m sick. I need some time to clean it up. Give me five minutes, then come up.” Donna never said where George was, but he was not there then.
Emily hung up. She and Andrea walked up to Donna’s room.
“Emily, do you want me to come in there with you?” Andrea asked. Andrea was not a woman to mess with: She was five feet ten inches, husky, all business. “Come on, you shouldn’t be alone with that woman. She’s crazy.” Emily had confided in Andrea since it all began. Andrea knew the history here and how it could easily manifest into violence, once these two got together in the same room.
“You wait outside the door here,” Emily explained, “and if I scream, you come in.” Emily was going against her own advice here. She knew that anyone close to a situation, as she was in this particular case, could not be rational. (“Your instincts are down,” Emily said later. “You’re too entrenched. You’re not paying attention to the signals. I could not, at that point, sense the danger I was in, or the danger my family was in.”) They were dealing with a crazy, obsessive woman, capable of anything. Donna was desperate.
“Well,” Andrea said, “you’re in danger going in there.”
“No, I’m not.”
“Look, I am giving you fifteen minutes—then I’m coming in.”
Part of the visit for Emily was to find out if Donna was, in fact, pregnant. Emily believed in her ability to read people and the auras she sometimes saw hovering over and around a person—that dark cloud she had seen so many times over her father. If she could get in the same room with Donna, Emily convinced herself, she could read Donna. Emily had just finished reading a book about auras. According to the book, pregnant women “would have these stars around them,” Emily said. Emily wanted to see if Donna had those “stars” shrouding her. (“I did not believe Donna was pregnant,” Emily recalled. “I thought she was full of it and just, again, trying to manipulate my dad.”)
Donna opened the door.
(“It was really weird,” Emily said through tears, recalling this moment of her life. “She wanted to hug me. Donna, this woman who had destroyed our lives, she wanted to
hug
me.”) Emily was crying as she walked in. (“And here she is . . . the woman who has caused so much pain in your mother’s life, in
your
life, your
family’s
life. Here she is. And she’s so
ugly.
How is
this
the woman responsible for all of this pain and anguish?”)
Emily thought:
She’s not in as good a shape as my mother. Why did my dad throw us away for
her
? Why is she so much better than all of us?
As Emily looked around the room, she was immediately freaked out to see what could only be described as a “shrine Donna had built to my father” on the nightstand.
Cards.
Letters.
Photographs.
Candles.
All were arranged in some sort of homage to George, as if Donna were praying to it. It was strangely spiritual and yet oddly psychotic. One letter she had out on the table was more of a journal entry. It talked about how George had “cried several times” before he last left Florida. According to Donna’s written account, George said,
“I wish I was staying . . . I feel like I am deserting you.”
He placed his hand on Donna’s stomach and rubbed it gently:
“ I love you both—always.”
He called Florida his “real home.” That night, before George took off for Michigan, he paged Donna and said:
“I would rather be with you than anyone else in the world. I have been crying all day long missing you. You are so good to me. I don’t deserve you.”
Wow, my dad threw everything away for
this
woman?
Emily later pondered when she heard this statement.
Emily stared at Donna and looked at the shrine. To Emily, Donna was dumpy; she was the polar opposite to the woman Emily had envisioned. A man generally cheats with some hot young chick, living out a twisted sexual fantasy he would never dream of with his wife. But Donna was plain and unpleasant.
“Oh, you’re so pretty,” Donna said, trying to make it sound as if she meant it. “Sit down on the bed.... Sit down.” She patted the spot.
Emily didn’t know what to think.
“You must have heard by now,” Donna said, rubbing her stomach, “we’re pregnant.”
“We’re . . .”
Ouch.
It was hard for Emily to tell if there were stars hovering around her father’s mistress, because Emily was so upset and taken aback. Emotion got in the way of Emily’s “gift,” for lack of a better way to explain what was going on.
“Me and your father are going to have a baby,” Donna said, beaming. Then she dropped her voice down a pitch, almost to a whisper: “I’m dying, too.”
Donna must have realized she wasn’t getting through to Emily. Emily wasn’t saying much. She wasn’t running into Donna’s arms, throwing herself at the woman, looking to work things out. Emily came across as a daughter there to defend her mother. After all, when it came down to it, Gail had done
nothing
wrong. This entire affair—the entire dynamic now playing out in this hotel room—was George’s doing. Emily was there to protect her mother’s soul, to tell the woman who had destroyed their lives—not taking any of the blame away from her father—to stay the hell away from all of them. Baby or no baby . . . back off!
“Look,” Donna said, resurrecting that earlier argument she laid on Gail, “your mother has had your father long enough! It’s my turn now. You and your brother and mother never truly appreciated your father, anyway. But I—I . . . damn it,
I
”
—
Donna pointed at herself in a spate of fury—“
I
know him better than
any
of you!”
Donna paced, breathing heavily.
Emily sat, listening to what was turning into one of Donna’s infamous rants.
“Your father loves me more than
any
of you—get that through your heads. Look!” Donna pointed toward the shrine. “Read those cards. Read those letters he wrote to me. Look,” Donna screamed, “
read
them!” She picked up a card and shoved it in Emily’s face. “You can see that he loves me more than
any
of you! Not your mother. He loves
me,
Emily. He doesn’t love you, Emily. He loves
me.
”
Emily was crying. She picked up the card. It was her father’s handwriting, all right.
Heavens no . . . Dad?
(“And I had
never,
” Emily recalled later, giving into an onslaught of tears while reliving the memory for me, “seen my father write those types of words to my mother.” That was what hurt the most. “He never told us
any
of those things. Why is he giving these expressions of love to
her
? Why is she more worthy than the rest of us?”)
What has my mother gone through?
Emily thought as Donna forced more cards and letters on her.
What had my mom gone through—not only in this same room, with this same woman—hours ago, but all this time?
The thought of how much pain her mother had endured at the hands of this woman consumed Emily. She was ready to confront Donna.
“You cannot keep
doing
this,” Emily said, standing. “We want to have a family. It cannot keep going on as this, back and forth. Can you
please
just stay out of our lives!”
“Don’t worry,” Donna said. “I’m going to be dead soon. You can have your father back after I’m dead.”
There was a knock on the door. Andrea’s muffled voice interrupted from behind it. “What’s going on? Come on, Emily, you need to get home. Open this door!”
“Please stay here with me tonight,” Donna asked.
“What?”
“Please. We can talk some more. I’ll give you a ride home in the morning. Let your girlfriend take your car home. Please, please stay.”
Strange
, Emily thought,
she claimed to be throwing up earlier and sick to her stomach, but she wants me to stay here?
“Uh . . .
no,
Donna. I don’t think so.”
Emily walked toward the door. (“[The meeting] didn’t really help,” Emily later remarked. “There are never really good enough answers to what I went through. I could not believe that I had finally met this person. . . .”) She was drained.
George and Gail had been waiting for Emily back home. George had packed more of his belongings and was ready to leave, but he didn’t want to go anywhere until he knew Emily was home, maybe more for Gail’s sake. By now, it was late into the night. Emily walked in. George was sitting on the couch, with his head in his hands.
“Where were you?” Gail asked. “We were worried.”
“I went to see Donna.”
“You
what
?” both Gail and George said, almost together.
Emily looked at her dad. “And there was that black cloud over his head. It was back.”
42
G
AIL FULTON HAD TRIED
slashing her wrists the night before George left, but George grabbed the knife out of her hands and scolded her, “What are you doing?”
Emily couldn’t believe it had come to this.
Gail said she took a bottle of Tylenol, but the pills hadn’t done anything.
“So these acts could have been to get my dad’s attention that night,” Emily explained, “but my mom talked about [suicide] a lot when my dad was
not
there.”
Perhaps after that run-in with Donna and a husband who wanted her, essentially, to take care of his lover’s baby after his lover croaked, Gail decided it was too much.