She Wanted It All - Kathryn Casey [8]
If Celeste came to motherhood reluctantly, Craig’s world revolved around the twins, giving them baths, feeding them, becoming both mother and father. Years later, when he and Celeste fought over the girls in court, he’d write an account of his life with her for the judge. “If I knew then what I know now, I would have written her off and raised the girls by myself,” he wrote. “But I was young and ignorant, and I thought I was in love.”
In Celeste’s version, Craig was an abusive man who stalked and even raped her. There was no doubt that he had a temper. He would later admit that, saying, “I did a lot of things that I regret.” When she took off with a new man, he fought to get her back. Once, he broke into a house where she and a boyfriend were staying. Another time he stood outside a window, pointing a gun at Celeste and a lover in bed. There were police reports, restraining orders, and Craig spent a four-month stint in jail for brandishing a firearm. That time, he’d later claim, Celeste took his money and left with one of his fellow inmates, a man he introduced her to in the jail visiting room. When the affairs ended, Craig took her back. “I don’t know if I was lonely or naive,” he later wrote, “but I moved right back in with her… She stayed out all night. We had violent confrontations … She called the cops with wild stories and, because of my record, they believed her.”
At one point she claimed that Craig put cat feces in her mouth as she slept. Another time she charged that he broke her arm. Did it happen? Later, many would be skeptical. “She was always bragging about how she had a high pain tolerance,” says Kristina. “When I was little, I remember seeing her slam her arm in a car door on purpose, until it broke. I don’t know if that’s the time she said my dad did it. But I never saw him hit her.”
One thing stood out: Craig felt powerless with Celeste, sucked into her world of chaos. To explain why she didn’t enjoy sex with him, she talked of the sexual abuse she claimed she suffered at her father’s hand. At their apartment, Gail once saw a hole punched in the wall. Inside, Craig had scrawled: No Sex! Yet, at the same time she rebuffed her husband, Celeste seemed driven by lust, jumping in bed with man after man. The message for Craig must have been that she was interested in sex, just not with him.
His mother, Cherie, spent enough time with Celeste to understand what kind of woman her son had married. One day a friend called to say she saw Celeste in the registrar’s office of a business college she was attending, demanding a tuition refund past the cutoff date. When the clerk refused, Celeste cried and said she had a good reason for not attending classes. “One of my twin daughters died,” she said.
The friend was distraught, calling Cherie with condolences over the death of her grandchild. Cherie knew it wasn’t true. “I wasn’t surprised,” she says. “Money meant more to Celeste than anything, even her own children.”
Eighteen months after they married, on May 18, 1982, Craig and Celeste divorced. Celeste was granted custody of the year-old twins, with Craig having a share of holidays, vacations, and weekends. He was ordered to pay $300 a month in child support, and Celeste was given their 1962 VW, a share of the furniture, her personal items and clothing. A $1,400 tax refund and money from the sale of Craig’s 1974 Honda motorcycle were to be used to pay off bills, including $28 for a diaper service and three doctor bills. Both parties were ordered to restrain from harassing the other.
But rather than an ending, the divorce represented little more than an intermission.
“I hooked up with Celeste again after she left Craig,” says Gail. “She was living with a woman with a bunch of kids on welfare. Celeste was on welfare, too, and working as a waitress at a pizza place. She asked if I wanted to live with her, and we got an apartment together. At first, it was fun. Then things got crazy. When I left, I fled for my life.”
Years later Gail would remember