Debbie was ready to get out. And she did. She attracted men easily—she was cute, with her dusty blond hair, green eyes, and thin, womanly body. She’s five feet, two inches tall and back then weighed barely a hundred pounds. It’s too bad she always thought she was ugly. More proof that she wasn’t: she got asked out on dates often, despite being allowed only one date per weekend. Men liked her soft, gentle voice, a voice that was understanding and submissive. That voice could be both quietly disagreeable and flirty. She was feisty and vulnerable wrapped into a kind package. It was no accident that she ended up with my father.
They met when she was eighteen. He was twenty-three, and they both worked at General American Life Insurance in St. Louis. She was a transcriber and copy girl, and he, Thomas Lannert, was on his way to becoming an actuary. My father was sitting with his work buddy when he first saw her across the company cafeteria. He nudged his friend and said, “That’s the woman I’m going to marry.” After that, he never stopped believing that my mother was beautiful. He used to sit me on his lap and get wistful talking about her. He probably told me the story of meeting her a hundred times. Forever in his mind, other women would pale in comparison to Debbie.
The way she tells the story about the day they met is a bit different: she certainly saw Tom wave at her that day at work, but she smiled back because she thought his friend was cute.
In her eyes, Tom was just okay at first. He wore these baggy flannel pants with pleats in the front. He was distinguished and handsome, but Debbie thought he really needed to learn how to dress. His clothes were put together, but in an old-man kind of way. He always wore a mustache, too, which made him look even older—much older than the mere five years that separated them.
He’d often come by her desk in the copy room and ask her to copy pages for him. He’d also dictate letters to clients and bring them over to Debbie on little red disks for transcription. She’d call him on the company phone when his documents were ready. One day, he asked her if she’d like to have a cup of coffee.
Debbie said no. First of all, she was in the middle of a transcription. And second, she just didn’t drink coffee. Five minutes later, my mother told a coworker what had happened. Her friend nudged her, saying, “Maybe you could have said you’d like some hot chocolate some other time.” Then it dawned on Debbie that he seemed nice. But then again, she just didn’t drink coffee. And what about those ugly pants?
My dad never took no for an answer.
He asked her out a second time, and she told him, “I have a previous commitment.” Debbie explained that she had a date with a boy on Friday, and she just couldn’t commit to anything on Saturday. It was all true—she just didn’t tell him that she had to get special permission from her parents to go out twice on a single weekend. She didn’t even know if her parents would allow it if she asked. Debbie told Tom she’d let him know. It turned out that her parents did allow the date, and my parents went to dinner that Saturday evening in August of 1970. She found out he’d already been in the Marines, that his brother had died a few years back, and that he had gone to Tahiti after college graduation. She was impressed. And he was handsome, with deep, shocking blue eyes.
They had been together just three months when Tom asked her to marry him. Debbie had wanted to wait—to get to know him a little better. But he kept pushing the issue. He said he had to get married quickly because he was trying to get his fellowship in the Society of Actuaries. That meant he’d be able to get his license and practice. The society offered the test only every six months, and he had just failed one. He told Debbie he just couldn’t keep going on like this because he had to study so much. Flirting with her and worrying about her made him too distracted to pass. He needed to focus for three to four hours every night. He just couldn’t afford to fail the next test, he told Debbie. If he failed, it would be her fault, and he had a whole career riding on this.
So they had to get married. Debbie said they could tie the knot in June of 1971. Tom said it had to be that November. She thought they would end up married anyway, so she obliged; their anniversary date was November 27, 1970.
Debbie believed she was in love with him. After all, Tom didn’t seem to be anything like Richard Paulson; he was a heck of a lot nicer. Her dad was a country man with backward beliefs and a vicious mean streak; Tom was worldly and smart. He was sweet about things. He had the kind of charisma that could make a person think the sky was not blue but fluorescent pink. Best of all, he knew what he wanted to do with his life. Tom Lannert was more determined and ambitious than any man she’d ever met.
He was a heck of a lot better than what she had grown up with. She couldn’t take the fights, housework, drinking, and abuse at home. She had wanted out of her dad’s house since she was thirteen. When she found an educated boyfriend, she wrote to her cousin in Mississippi that Tom was her “knight in shining armor.”
Her knight was in love with her. But Debbie hadn’t fallen madly, head-over-heels for him like so many other women had. Naturally, the more she held back, the more he wanted her. She didn’t mind giving him a hard time. For one, she wanted him to wear different clothes. And she didn’t like any drinking; she wanted a man who could provide for his family. She voiced her opinion as needed—in her soft, gentle voice. That soft voice meant business.
Her one dream in life was for joy. She hoped to get married and have children and live happily ever after, like in a fairy tale. She admired Tom’s intellect and drive; he was looking at five years of difficult actuarial tests. My mother did everything a dutiful wife should do. She picked out stylish suits and took those suits to the dry cleaners. She did their grocery shopping, laundry, and every other chore while Tom pored over math equations. He’d come home from work to their two-bedroom apartment in St. Louis, eat dinner, then sit at his desk to study. Tom would disappear into a world of statistics and financial theory. All she had to do was chores. She quickly became lonely—and bored. When she complained, he told her she should go back to school. At the time, she wasn’t interested. She said studying wasn’t easy for her like it was for him. Maybe she’d attend college later. In the meantime, there was something else she wanted.
She wanted a baby.
He told her okay. But he pointed out that he had never wanted kids until he met Debbie. He would oblige for her. He reminded her that she was lucky she had said yes to that second date. He said he wouldn’t have asked for a third.
Defying her childhood doctor’s predictions, my mother had me without complications. She was twenty-one years old when I was born in May of 1972. I was going to be called Lisa Marie, but the Presleys got to that name first. My mom had been lobbying for the name Casey, but my dad said no—I was a baby and not a dog. He really liked the tough, troubled male actor Stacy Keach, but he saw the name
Stacy
as too masculine. It was Grandma Lannert who suggested Stacey with an
e
. She said the prettiest girl in her school went by that name. So the matter was settled. If I’d been a boy, I would’ve been Scott Thomas.
Even after she got her wish for a baby, my mom was always yearning for something more, never quite knowing what that something was. That yearning was apparent to me from the time I could remember, but only in a foggy little-kid kind of way. I sensed one thing instinctively: Tom loved her more than she loved him.
When I was young, she was a great mom, but I don’t think my parents ever had a great marriage. In the beginning, they had stretches where they got along. But they bickered from as far back as I can remember. She was usually upset because he was gone so much, and they fought about his drinking, which continued despite her earlier insistence. I found it all very confusing.
I saw her cook, clean, shop, and do all the typical domestic chores. She didn’t go out and party or run around with her friends. She wasn’t unhappy then, but she wasn’t completely satisfied either. She loved learning, and she liked teaching, too. She taught me the ABCs by age two. She showed me how to write my telephone number and name by age three. I could read before age four. My early education was thanks to her dedication. During her years of being a housewife, Mom made baby books for me, and later for my younger sister, Christy. She took us to those baby swimming classes. I have memories of a water-skiing trip with her when I was four, and Christy was almost three. When I see the photos, I barely recognize us because we look so happy. Momma—that’s what I called her—taught us how to be tough and stand up for ourselves. She always said, “Anything boys can do, girls can do better.” We had all of her attention in the early years. I wish we could have frozen time and just stayed in that place forever.
My dad, Thomas Lannert, was twenty-six when I was born. He was five feet nine and trim then, though he’d balloon up to three hundred pounds and then back to normal as I grew up. He was strong and in good shape. He was handsome, with a prominent nose and strong chin. He had a warm laugh and was bursting with charm. He wore his sandy brown hair with side chops in the 1980s. He had beautiful blue eyes that could melt or destroy me—it was his choice. He was the fun parent who would throw us way up in the air and catch us when we came back down. He would hold me on his lap for hours—late into the night—just talking and watching TV and being silly. We stayed up late together even when I was really little. He held me all the time when he finished work or studying.
My mom had the kind of intelligence that comes from years of being in charge of her own large—and largely dysfunctional—family. My dad was just plain smart. He made high grades at Missouri State University and was a proud alumnus. He liked to watch Mizzou football games and root for the Tigers. He studied math and decided he’d use it for an actuarial career. An actuary uses complicated math to predict good and bad outcomes, mostly bad. Actuaries help companies save money by figuring out their risks. For example, does it cost more to deal with the risk or to prevent the risk in the first place? Most actuaries, including my father, work for insurance companies. For instance, they compute how many people are likely to die, called mortality tables, or how many houses are likely to burn down in a given time frame. The work is more complicated than that, of course, but he always had a job with good pay. He easily tackled math that was too challenging for most people. He seemed to like his work, but despite his success, this wasn’t the career path he had planned.
He wanted to fly planes and helicopters, but he had a condition called night blindness. He would never be allowed to man an aircraft, and he was always resentful of that fact. At age eighteen, he wanted to be like his older brother and join the military. Tom chose the Marines. His brother Bill, the uncle I never met, was in the air force. They both wanted to serve their country during the Vietnam War. They hoped to protect our freedom, show their patriotism, and play with guns. But things went badly. While on active duty, Uncle Bill was swimming recreationally and suffered an aneurysm. He was in a coma for seventy-two days. The family stood by his bedside all that time, completely devastated. No amount of praying could help Bill. He didn’t make it.
My father was still in basic training, and he really didn’t want to be there. He was discovering that the military wasn’t everything he thought it would be. He just didn’t like living by other people’s rules. As he prepared for Bill’s funeral, he decided he wouldn’t go back to basic training.
The funeral was not without drama. The whole family was there. After the burial, my paternal grandmother, Una Mae Lannert, uttered these words to Tom: “Bill was always your father’s favorite son.”
Maybe she hadn’t meant to be evil, but her words planted evil seeds in him. I believe she just wanted Tom to love her more than he loved his dad. My grandparents’ marriage was deeply troubled. I can only guess that these were not the first unhealthy, unloving words my grandmother said to my dad. And it wasn’t the first time Tom felt completely let down by his father.
As far back as I remember, my grandfather, Ken Lannert, was a nice, loving man. Like Mae, he grew up in Eminence, Missouri, a southern town with fewer than five hundred people. He was an only child, and short, but he was not poor. Quite the contrary—he was a brilliant, educated man from a decent background.
Mae was several years older than Ken, and she was several inches taller. At age twenty-four, Mae married Ken after his mother passed away. Grandma Lannert once told my mother that she married Ken because she felt sorry for him. She pitied him for losing his mom and for being so short. But Mae also radically changed her quality of life when she married Kenneth Lannert. She had grown up the oldest of eight kids in a two-room cabin with a dirt floor. Once she married my grandfather, she became well-to-do. As a young woman, she wore tasteful yet saucy black dresses. She was always stylish, and her hair was always done. She even got herself the most popular house of the time. It was common back then for couples to buy kit homes from stores like Sears and Roebuck and build their own dwellings. Mae and Ken spent $12,000 for their red brick cottage and settled in a nice St. Louis neighborhood called St. John. They finished it by 1941 or 1942. I stayed in that house many times; it was a place I loved dearly.
In that home, my grandparents’ marriage was rife with sadness and problems. Their first child, Mary, arrived with the umbilical cord wrapped around her neck twice. If the death of their daughter wasn’t heartbreaking enough, Mae couldn’t hide her feelings—or lack thereof—for Ken. She told my mother she had never been in love with him.
She gave him a hard time about his job, though it provided them with money. Ken was an engineer. He designed assembly line machines for Hostess and other big companies. He traveled every Sunday through Friday evening, as he had to be on site while his creations were being built, used, and serviced. In the limited time he was home, he headed into the basement to tinker. He made transmitters and radios and other gadgets in the basement of the brick house he built himself. He smoked pipes filled with cherry tobacco.