Читать книгу Betrayal In Blood - Michael Benson - Страница 17

CHAPTER 10

Tabby Gets Married and Moves Away

In 1993, Samantha Bassett graduated from Greenwood Central School. “There were twenty-four kids in my senior class,” she recalled. That fall she attended Graceland University, the Community of Christ–affiliated school in Lamoni, Iowa, where her dad had gone and where she had attended church get-togethers in the summer. As it turned out, though, Sam only lasted at Graceland for three weeks. She was terribly homesick, missed her boyfriend, and back to Greenwood she came.

Tabatha graduated from Greenwood Central School a year later, Class of ’94, and her senior class was no larger than Sam’s. Tabby had started life small, and she had stayed that way—even fully grown, she weighed barely one hundred pounds.

Tabby was one of the prettiest girls in town, with her honey-colored mullet. However, she did have flaws, most obvious of which were her crooked and discolored teeth. There hadn’t been enough money for braces, but she didn’t seem self-conscious about the imperfection. She still smiled with her lips apart, but photographs remember her as a young woman prettier with her mouth closed.

By the time Tabby finished school, she was already dating the man who was to become her first husband: Arnold Martin (pseudonym). He was a Canisteo kid, “about her age.” According to Samantha, “I think they met down at our neighbors. He used to go down there and hang out and that’s where they met.” Arnold was Tabby’s date for her senior prom.

Following graduation, during 1995 and 1996, Tabby worked for two years as a waitress at J.C.’s Café, which was just a little diner on the main street. “She didn’t have to wear a uniform or anything like that. She could wait tables in whatever she was wearing,” her sister remembered. While waitressing she studied to be a nursing assistant but flunked the test.

In August 1996, Tabby married Arnold at the Howard Community Center, in Howard, New York. Ginny was there for the wedding of her daughter. One guest brought a camcorder to the rehearsal, wedding, and reception. That video became the permanent record of the event.

The Howard Community Center was used for dances and meetings. It was a rectangular cinder block building, all right angles and white paint. At one end was a window in the wall that opened to the concession stand. Above the window was a sign with a Coca-Cola ad at the top, and listed up there was the extremely limited menu and prices. At dances and the like, you could get hot dogs, pop, chips, junk food.

The rehearsal for Tabby and Arnold’s wedding took place at 4:00 P.M., Saturday, August 24, 1996. There were lots of large windows and sun was streaming in. There were about twenty people there, dressed in sport shirts and jeans. Some were in shorts.

A majority of the people there were over weight—in sharp contrast to the slender young bride-to-be, in her loose-fitting dark shirt and tight white pants. For the rehearsal the community center was set up for that night’s dance. The dance floor had been cleared. All of the furniture, folding tables and chairs, had been pushed up against a wall.

Next to the concession stand was a white board, where management wrote, in black marker, an advertisement for whatever the next event to be held at the community center was going to be. For Tabby’s wedding rehearsal, the sign read, ROUND AND SQUARE DANCE BY THE STARLITE RAMBLERS ON AUG 24, 8-12.

Arnold looked tall and gangly standing next to Tabby. He was skinny, too. He was on the shaggy side, needed a haircut, but at first glance a decent sort of young man—the Greenwood equivalent of a catch. Befitting the bride-to-be, Tabby was the center of attention at all times. She gestured broadly. Like a stage actress, her facial expressions were slightly exaggerated. She was playing to the crowd, relishing her moment in the spotlight. In contrast, Arnold seemed slightly embarrassed, like he would have preferred to be in the parking lot with his best man and ushers—fairly typical for a bridegroom at his own tense-but-dull wedding rehearsal. Someone had given Tabby a small bouquet, a compact bunching of short-stemmed flowers. It was really unnecessary but something for her nervous hands to hold during the rehearsal ceremony.

The camcorder’s microphone couldn’t pick up intelligible voices, unless they were very close by, and the camera person chose to give the rehearsal ceremony some space, standing far to the side and at the back of the room. But the song after the ceremony—played and sung by a young man at a piano—came through, loud and clear. It was “Let It Be Me,” the beautiful Everly Brothers song, a sentimental favorite of the young couple.

When the ersatz check-your-watch ceremony was over, Arnold and Tabby did an about-face and headed toward the exit—he walking fast, she skipping. No one else moved from his or her place. Tabby flung her bouquet over her shoulder without looking back. The flowers soared up in a high arc and then came down with an echoing thud, in the center of the empty dance floor.

The tape goes all blue for a moment and then it is the next day, the real thing. The letters and numbers in the bottom right of the screen tell us that it is now Sunday, August 25, 1996, at one o’clock in the afternoon.

A four-tiered wedding cake rested on its stand in front of the concession stand window. Replacing the casually clad handful of people who had been at the rehearsal was a full house of sharply dressed folks for the actual wedding. There were maybe eighty people there, sitting in ten rows of eight chairs apiece.

And it must have been warm. Although no one was fanning himself or herself, it might have been a little late in the season for that, none of the men were wearing jackets. Arnold’s usher crew was wearing white shirts and clip-on ties. Those ushers were videotaped in action, helping little old ladies to their seats. They were taking their jobs seriously, obvious by their tightly erect posture. They were doing their best to demonstrate adequate gentlemanliness.

Actually, there were two men in the room with jackets on—the minister and the lanky groom, Arnold. The groom was wearing a white tuxedo jacket with tails over black pants. It might have been the same outfit he wore when he took Tabby to her prom.

The white board sign that had advertised the “Round and Square dance” now said, in a feminine hand, CONGRATULATIONS KITTEN AND CUDDLES. The bride had not yet entered, and the organ player was warming up the crowd with the theme from Gone with the Wind.

The ceremony began, Tabby entered from her hiding place behind the concession stand. On her left arm was her grandfather Carol, who was several inches shorter than she was. On her right arm was her father Leroy Bassett, who towered above her.

Tabby was dressed in a full wedding gown with veil. The dress was formfitting to her curvaceous figure. From the entrance on, the veil gave Tabby trouble. If the video was any indication, she was forced to spend much of the day doing everything with one hand because she was adjusting the veil with the other.

The camera person got in closer for the actual wedding ceremony than for the rehearsal. Because of the zoom, viewers of the tape could see Arnold and Tabby’s faces as they exchanged vows and gave each other rings. Again “Let It Be Me” was played. This time it turned into a sing-along. The bride sang along, too. Her eyes were closed as she tilted back her head to sing, appearing blissful through her parting veil.

The ceremony over, there was applause as Arnold kissed his bride and they headed to the back of the room for the reception line. This time Tabby did not skip. There would be no skipping in those sparkly white shoes with the extremely high heels.

The camera focused on Tabby’s face during the entire reception line. Everybody got a hug and a kiss. A woman came up from behind Tabby at one point and gave her some distressing news—perhaps Arnold was in the parking lot with his friends instead of wherever he was supposed to be. For a flashing instant, she was “Bride-zilla.” She wagged a finger and told that woman what to do in no uncertain terms. Then, flick, like the switch had been turned from off to on, Tabby met eyes with the next person in the reception line and her face lit up with a grin. She was hugging and kissing everyone again, seemingly mindless of whatever was upsetting her a moment before.

The tape then cut to the outside. The professional photographer was doing her job. The entire wedding party and close relatives had gathered in the sun. They lined up in various combinations, stood up straight, squinted into the sun, smiled, and the photographer took their picture.

Someone had apparently informed the best man and the ushers that they had to get through the photo session before they could remove their clip-on ties, and the thought of freeing themselves from that simulated noose had them antsy.

A photo of Arnold with the maid of honor, Samantha, and the other bridesmaids was taken, and then the photographer asked for a picture of just Tabatha with the best man and ushers. The men whooped and hollered and moved in to get a good spot near the bride.

“Come on, boys, you can all be huggin’ on me,” Tabby said. “I love the attention!”

After that last shot of Tabby and the boys, the photographer said, “That’s it,” indicating that she had all of the photos she needed.

“All right!” exclaimed the groom’s buddies, and off came the clip-on ties.

Then everyone, except for the camera person, left. The bride stood alone in the sunshine for a moment. She looked at the camera and slowly stuck out her unusually long tongue. She didn’t stick it out in the conventional “fresh” manner, though. Bridal Tabby unfurled her tongue, stretching it at the roots. Speaking only of the action as a physical anomaly, and without religious symbolism, one could call the movement of Tabby’s tongue serpentine. Her lips were parted as she wagged her tongue, as if she were doing a dead-on impression of Gene Simmons, the lead singer for the rock group Kiss. She retracted the tongue with a grin and the scene ended.

Then the videotape took us back inside, where the band, a quartet, had set up—drums, guitar, bass, and vocal. The singer was a woman, the others men. They were all in their forties. Perhaps they were the Starlite Ramblers. The guitar player stepped up to the mike and without introducing himself or the band, everyone already knew who they were, he said that Arnold had a request for the first number. For the first dance the bride and groom would dance to the Spencer Davis Group classic “Gimme Some Lovin’.”

As soon as the song started, the newlyweds stepped lively onto the dance floor and began to dance rock style, without touching. And the many overweight spectators sat and applauded mildly. With that, the camera person put the camera away, thinking perhaps that the time for recording was through and the time for partying had begun.

When Tabby and Arnold were first married, Arnold was still studying engineering at Alfred. Soon after, he took a job at a processed-food manufacturer in Avon, New York, a town in Monroe County, just south of Rochester.

The Bassetts did not like the idea of Tabby moving away, but if she had to go someplace, they were glad it was to the Rochester area, because there was a Community of Christ branch there.

Vivian Bryant, the minister there, was a friend of Essie’s, going back a long time. The Bryants would look after Tabby in the big city. Now a new congregation would get to hear Tabby’s beautiful singing voice during Sunday services.

According to Tabatha’s aunt Lorraine Warriner, Tabby was eager to leave little Greenwood and move to the big city. “She wasn’t a small-town girl,” Lorraine said. “She liked the excitement of having more things to do.”

Tabby’s grandmother and sister disagreed. They didn’t believe that Tabby was overly restless living in the Southern Tier. She went to Rochester because her husband got a job there, it was as simple as that.

While Tabby was getting married to her high-school sweetheart at the Howard Community Center during August 1996, the Rochester branch of the Cleveland-based franchise Hyatt Legal Services discontinued operations.

Out of a job, Kevin Bryant went into private practice and opened up his own office in the Rochester suburb of Greece, which butts up against the northwest side of the city. Kevin C. Bryant Law Offices was located on Ridge Road West.

When Kevin learned that Tabatha Bryant, the pretty blonde he remembered from summer church get-togethers, was moving to Avis Street in Rochester with her young husband, he did one step better than look after her. He gave her a job. Not long after moving to Monroe County, Tabby was gainfully employed as a secretary at the Greece law offices of Kevin C. Bryant, Esq.

At Kevin’s office, Tabatha worked on wills, real estate closings, bankruptcies, civil lawsuits, misdemeanor criminal cases. The law office was an exciting world. Some of Kevin’s clients were well-known, some famous, and some notorious. There were prostitutes and pimps and gangsters, who all led wild lives. It wasn’t long before Tabby realized she was happier in her work world in Greece with Kevin than she was in her domestic world with Arnold in Avon. She loved going to work. She dreaded going home.

Tabby and Arnold Martin had only been married for about a year when trouble brewed. They fought. When Tabby complained to her grandmother about Arnold, she always made it clear that her husband was not physically abusing her. It was verbal abuse. They were arguing. A lot. And she’d had enough.

Tabby asked Kevin to handle her divorce for her, and he agreed happily to get her a divorce-lawyer who could do the job quickly.

Arnold Martin, now without a wife, eventually left his job in Avon, New York, and moved back to the Southern Tier to do computer work at a hospital.