Whatever Mother Says... by Wensley Clarkson

Author:Wensley Clarkson [Clarkson, Wensley]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781466873469
Publisher: St. Martin's Press
Published: 0101-01-01T00:00:00+00:00

Fourteen

The emotional development of children is intimately connected to the safety and nurturance provided by their environment.

Bessel Van Der Kolk, Harvard Medical School psychiatrist

By December of 1992, Theresa Cross was lapping up her new life in Salt Lake City with relish. All those memories of what happened back in Sacramento had been neatly filed away. She was now the loving, caring nurse to elderly Alice Sullivan, and the added bonus was Alice’s family, who all readily accepted Theresa Cross into their lives and homes. Later, they used words like “good” and “kind” to describe the woman whom her daughter Terry claims is one of the most cold-blooded mothers in criminal history.

“Theresa was a great person. My mother just loved her. Everybody in the family loved her,” recalled Bud Sullivan, Alice’s son.

That affection toward Theresa Cross came to a pleasant head at Christmastime that year. Bud and his sister Pat insisted that she be involved in every aspect of the yuletide festivities. The contrast between the punishments she inflicted so horrifically on her children that most of them have blocked Christmas out of their minds completely, and life in Salt Lake City that year could not be greater.

Christmas Eve at Alice Sullivan’s neat single-story corner house on 1504 South 600 East was, according to family tradition, when the presents were handed out among twenty-five of the closest family members.

Over the years, Bud Sullivan—with all his years’ experience as an executive at the First Interstate Bank, Utah—had devised a sensible system so that no one in the family had to buy gifts for everyone because that would be ludicrously expensive. Instead, the entire family wrote their names on a piece of paper and dropped it into a hat and drew just one name out at a time, so that no one had to purchase more than one present. Naturally, Theresa was included in that.

She sat with the four generations of Sullivans around Alice’s vast Christmas tree, flowing with lights and decorations, savoring every moment. Who knows if she even once considered the plight of her surviving children scattered around the country, suffering endless nightmares of the dreadful injuries she allegedly inflicted on them?

On Christmas Day itself, the Sullivans reconvened back at Alice’s house for Christmas dinner. Theresa Cross could not believe her luck. The holiday celebrations were continuing, and the family had insisted she stay involved throughout.

Dinner that day consisted of a huge turkey cooked to perfection at Alice’s daughter Pat’s home just around the corner. Everything else—salads, turkey dressing, apple and pumpkin pies, all the vegetables—were prepared by Theresa Cross in Alice’s kitchen. Her own children recalled that mealtimes at home in Sacramento usually consisted of microwave fast food … if they were lucky.

The Christmas celebrations that day were rounded off with a bourbon toast for all the adults, including Theresa. Bud Sullivan was impressed that the warm and caring lady looking after his mother only drank alcohol very occasionally. And she had to be forced to accept a drink that day.

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