Mother's Keeper

"I have an idea," Joan said, smiling wickedly. "Let's forget school and play hooky today. Let's go on an adventure."

Lisa was wide awake now, clapping her hands. She loved adventures with Mom, and loved that her mother wasn't like the other moms she knew. They would never take their daughters out of school because they felt like it. But Lisa and her mom -- they had cake for breakfast that morning. Then they jumped in the car and drove to Cedar Point.

"Let's go on the big roller coasters," Lisa squealed, and they did. They sat in the front car, squeezing hands as the car rumbled up the tracks. They gasped for air, as if preparing for a long underwater dive, and as the car began to plummet, their hair flew behind them. After that, they had lunch: cotton candy and french fries.

That night, they stayed up late watching Johnny Carson. Lisa snuggled next to Joan in bed, and her mom kissed her head and laughed loudly. Cuddled there, Lisa felt a rush of love for her mother.

Even at eight, Lisa says, she knew this day hadn't been only about her. There was something not quite right with Mom, but whatever it was, smile-filled days like this seemed to make it disappear. It was then, Lisa says, that she vowed to do whatever she could to protect her mother. And earlier this year, when Mom and Daughter's lives went crashing down together in a crowded Cleveland courtroom, she kept that promise.

Joan Hoffmeister was just a kid when sparkling, flashy things took hold of her. Shiny pennies. Gaudy rings. Iridescent purses. She loved them all, but whenever her mother bought them, Joan fretted about losing them. So she hoarded every treasure, hiding them under her pillowcase and mattress. Eventually her mother, a devout Catholic housewife, asked about all the stuff stashed away in her daughter's room. "I like pretty things," Joan shrugged.

Her parents didn't know what to do with her. Kids like Joan -- troublesome, unpredictable, off -- were an embarrassment in their 1950s middle-class world. So they ignored the problem, prayed God would take care of it.

In 1959, Joan -- on Christmas break from her freshman year at Mercyhurst College -- met someone. Graham Hall, a former Rocky River High quarterback, was a midshipman at the U.S. Naval Academy. And he was smitten by her Barbie-doll features and Jane Fonda legs. He left for Annapolis after the break, but throughout the school year, the two exchanged long, soulful letters. Graham proposed at the Army-Navy football game his junior year. The day after he graduated, they married.

But the bliss didn't last. Graham was rigid and militaristic, Joan would later claim, and their relationship soured. (Graham wouldn't talk to Scene). And since she'd dropped out of college to marry him, she didn't know what to do with her days. So she spent her empty days meandering through the mall, waiting for something to catch her eye. Could be anything: a crystal ashtray. A porcelain-faced doll. A long, silky gown in Easter colors. Whatever it was -- whether she needed it or not -- she surreptitiously stuffed it in her bag.

At home, she hoarded her stolen treasures in the basement, wrapping them in tissue paper and hiding them in boxes. Over time, the boxes piled so high they blocked the windows. Graham, whose time was devoted to his family's lucrative printing business, was flummoxed by his wife's new hobby. Joan's whole life, it seemed, was stacked in her basement.

That changed, for a time, after Joan gave birth to her first daughter, in 1963. Lisa Marie was cuddly and precocious. Growing up, she worshiped her parents, especially her unpredictable mother. Some days, Lisa came home from school to find Mom's fingers covered in paint. Joan rushed her inside to show off the figures she'd hand-painted on the walls. They were house plans, her mother told her, for the castles they'd all live in one day. She encouraged Lisa to draw on the walls too. Then they ate ice cream for dinner.

But in a day, everything would change. Joan would spend all day in the kitchen, cleaning and organizing the kitchen's contents. If Lisa moved a can of peaches to a different shelf, Joan screamed like she'd been beaten. "I never knew which Mom I'd wake up to," Lisa says.