She Wanted It All - Kathryn Casey [13]
Those were happy times, and Jennifer cried at the thought of leaving her father to return to the chaos of her mother. In contrast, for Kristina every minute apart from Celeste filled her with pain. She was their mother’s favorite. Celeste whispered in her ear that she was special, that she was the daughter she truly loved. She called her in Washington State, urging her to hurry home. “Kristina was a little girl who wanted a mother,” says Lue. “Jennifer began pulling away, but Kristina couldn’t. When Celeste screamed, Jennifer was angry, but Kristina was devastated.”
At home, Kristina panicked every time Celeste seemed blue. She didn’t complain when Celeste kept them out of school, hauling them on shopping trips or running errands. “I knew she hated being alone,” says Kristina. “She just couldn’t stand it.”
From an early age, Kristina understood her mother had a sadness about her that never totally went away. As manic and happy as Celeste acted, it seemed a hollow ruse, as she quickly flipped back to depression and anger. She had children, a home, and a husband, but it wasn’t enough. Celeste filled every minute, planning weeks in advance: doctor appointments, movies, going out with friends. She shopped without regard, filling her closet with clothes she never wore.
The longer she and Harald lived together, the more erratic her behavior became. One weekend he arrived home to find a note saying she was visiting a friend. That night, two men from his unit came to the apartment to drink beer. An hour later Celeste burst in, angry that he wasn’t missing her. Harald and his friends sprinted for the door as beer bottles flew. “I stayed away for the night,” he says. “I knew the marriage was a mistake, but every time I tried to leave, Celeste went crazy.”
One time, she took a handful of pills; another, she stood next to a full bathtub with a hair dryer, threatening to step in and drop the hair dryer in the water. Their eyes wide with terror, the twins pleaded with her not to, and Harald agreed to stay if they saw a counselor. From that point on, while other little girls pondered friends and homework, Kristina worried about keeping her mother alive.
The sessions began as couples counseling, but within a few visits the therapist zeroed in on Celeste, suggesting her suicide threats needed intense treatment and checking her into the base hospital’s psychiatric unit. “I thought she was trying to get better,” says Harald. “At times, she could be loving, wonderful.”
By then Celeste had become a regular in the Phoenix court system. When Jennifer fell off of a swing set at school and broke her arm, she sued. She tried to sue again after she quit her job at Crystal Ice, saying one of the men in charge sexually harassed her. “The attorney refused the case,” says Lue. “The man she complained about seemed like a nice guy. But I believed Celeste.”
Lue always believed Celeste, even when her niece told her she shouldn’t; that she’d seen Celeste being manipulative and mean and that she wasn’t the woman Lue believed. Craig, too, warned Lue that Celeste could be dangerous, but Lue scoffed, “You don’t know the real Celeste.”
“I do, and someday you’ll meet her, too,” Craig countered. “Please, be careful.”
In 1989 the Air Force notified Harald he was being transferred to Kadena Air Force Base in Okinawa, Japan. Word came down that due to her hospitalization in the psychiatric unit, Celeste wouldn’t be allowed to go. Furious, she mounted a campaign, calling his superiors and arguing that they were being treated unfairly. She complained so vociferously that the transfer was eventually cancelled. “Tell your wife to stop calling,” Harald’s sergeant told him.
At home, their