She Wanted It All - Kathryn Casey [19]
On the nine hundred mile trip to Austin, Celeste was exuberant. She always seemed excited about change, and this was no exception. They stopped at one convenience store after another, where she loaded up on junk food and Cokes. Munching away, Celeste coached the girls on what they were and weren’t supposed to tell Jimmy. “Remember when I was in Phoenix, and I had cancer and all my hair fell out?” she said.
The twins had no such memories but nodded in agreement.
That afternoon, with her mother in a good mood, they talked. “How did you take care of us and go to high school?” Kristina asked.
“I graduated two years early, so I was out of high school,” Celeste lied, then, continuing her tale, told them, “After you were born, I went to college.”
When Jennifer asked why she’d married Jimmy Martinez, Celeste laughed smugly.
“Because of his BMW,” she answered.
“He has a Pontiac and a truck,” Jen said.
Celeste giggled. “No, his big Mexican wiener.”
Driving into Austin on Interstate 35, as Celeste and the twins did that day, one can look toward the east, to valleys that dwindle off to a flat coastal plain. Looking west from I-35, the landscape beckons to the rugged Texas Hill Country.
Some say Austin’s main attribute is its quirkiness. At dusk on summer nights the city’s prime attraction is the exodus of more than one million Mexican free-tailed bats, the largest urban colony in the world, from under the Congress Avenue Bridge. For decades before the advent of skyscrapers, the city’s skyline was dominated by the Texas State Capitol’s dome and the University of Texas clock tower. It was there on August 1, 1966, that Charles Whitman climbed the stairway to the twenty-eighth floor and opened fire. The siege left sixteen dead and thirty injured. It was a rude entry into the chaos of the sixties for a gentle city that had always welcomed a healthy dose of wildness.
Austin is a city where tie-dye never went out of fashion, and local merchants ran a campaign to “Keep Austin Weird.” One year the roster of mayoral candidates boasted a thong-wearing cross-dresser and a former hit man. The mid-eighties brought an influx of high-tech companies led by Dell Computer, and the city grew and prospered, making the new Austin not only part cowgirl and part flower child, but part Silicon Valley yuppie.
From the beginning, the free-spirited city matched Celeste well. Jimmy rented a town house on a street full of such double houses. Of the three bedrooms, when they visited, Kris and Jen shared one, Celeste and Jimmy another, leaving the last to serve as Celeste’s closet. After years of frenetic shopping, she had 160 pairs of shoes and enough clothes to fill the room. Many remained unworn and price-tagged, making it resemble a small, private boutique.
Throughout the two weeks Jennifer and Kristina spent in Texas, Jimmy and Celeste fought often. One day, Celeste covered a wall writing “I hate Jimmy Martinez” with a felt-tip pen. During another argument, Celeste stabbed herself in the wrist with a scissors, shouting that she would kill herself, while Kristina sobbed.
One afternoon as the family drove on a freeway, Celeste threatened to jump from the car. The girls screamed as their mother threw open the front passenger door. Jimmy grabbed her arm and yanked her back in. Later, just as she had with Craig and Harald, Celeste called police and claimed Jimmy had hit her. As proof, she showed officers a bruised handprint on her left arm, not explaining that it came from her husband pulling her back into the car as she attempted to throw herself onto a busy highway. Jimmy was locked up overnight. When he threatened to end the marriage, Celeste went to a psychiatrist and was put on medication for depression. “She was better for a while,” he says. “She was trying.”
Meanwhile, Celeste begged the twins not to return to Washington. She pleaded with them to stay with her. Unswayed, Jennifer boarded a flight home; but Kristina couldn’t part from her mother. Craig pushed