Shot in the Heart - Mikal Gilmore [152]
Later, shortly before the time my mother would arrive home from work, the door opened again, and it was Frank. He said he had gone for a long walk. He walked past the restaurant where our mother was working, and he saw her in there, busing dishes, looking half-crippled, and he knew he couldn’t leave her behind. He went in and said hello to her, told her he was back. She was happy and she cried, he said.
Frank had a bag of groceries with him. He was going to fix us dinner.
“Let me help you,” I said. “It’s good to have you home.”
A WHILE BACK, FRANK AND I TALKED ABOUT THAT NIGHT. Frank, I could see, still hurt over what had happened. “It bothered me because a brother would do that,” he said. “Here I am, back after having that fucked-up two years of my life and I don’t even have any money to go out and get drunk.
“I already felt like such a loser, coming home. And then, discovering that betrayal—I was pretty sour on life for a long time after that.”
Did he ever ask Gaylen about it?
“Oh yeah, a few years later. He admitted to doing it. Said he had no idea if I’d ever be coming back home. Couldn’t see letting the money sit there, going to waste.”
I asked: Did Gaylen ever pay him back?
Frank laughed a pleasureless laugh. “Are you kidding? We’re talking about Gaylen and Gary. They never paid anything back to anybody. Well, I guess Gary did, at the very end. I think then he was trying to pay everything back.”
FRANK GOT A JOB DOING CUSTODIAL WORK AND BEGAN HELPING my mother pay the bills and keep the mortgage current. He also devoted himself to keeping the yard in shape. He still had dreams of getting his own apartment and having his own family, but he resigned himself to putting that off for a while, until my mother felt secure with her home.
One day Frank met a young Chinese woman at his church. They started dating, and she invited him over to meet her parents. He went over a few times and had dinner. He liked the woman a lot, he realized. He was feeling serious about her.
Frank thought he should return the young woman’s courtesy and bring her over to meet his family. I wasn’t there the day he brought his girlfriend to the house, but my mother was. Frank opened the front door and escorted the woman into our home. My mother was sitting in her customary spot in the kitchen.
“Mom,” Frank said, “I have somebody here I’d like you to meet.”
My mother turned around, saw the young Chinese woman standing in her kitchen, and her face turned red. “Get that whore out of my house!” my mother yelled at Frank.
Frank stood there, staring at my mother. He was shocked beyond words. After an awkward, silent moment, he said: “But, Mom …”
“You heard me. Get her out of here, and don’t ever bring her back.”
By the time Frank and the woman got outside, the woman was crying. “I’m sorry,” Frank said. “I don’t know what to say. She can be a little crazy at times. She’s been worried about a lot of stuff recently.”
The woman wiped her tears and said it was okay, she understood.
That night, Frank went back home and said to my mother: “That’s it. I’ve tried to help you, but you can’t be helped. I can’t believe you would do something like that.”
“I’m sorry,” my mother said. “She’s probably a very nice woman, but at the same time, I know the kind of woman you tend to like—you know, sluts. When I saw her standing there, I thought she was probably just somebody you’d found on the street.”
Frank told my mother he was moving out. She begged him to stay. “I’ll be lost without you. I can’t run this place without you.”
Frank said he would stay for a month or two and help her make the financial transition. As it worked out, he ended up staying forever.
I knew nothing about this incident until a couple of years ago, when Frank told me. I asked him what had happened with him and the woman. “She was polite about it,” he said. “She was real nice. But what Mom did created an awful memory between us. In effect, it really killed the relationship.
“I think Mom accomplished exactly what she wanted