Shot in the Heart - Mikal Gilmore [31]
THIS, THEN, IS HOW MY MOTHER MET MY FATHER:
It was summer, 1937. By this time, Bessie Brown was living alone in a small hotel room in downtown Salt Lake City. She made enough money to support herself with a little housework, and with part-time hand-modeling of jewelry for ads.
In those days, as today, Salt Lake City was the largest and liveliest city in Utah. Still, when it comes to Utah, lively is a relative term. There is more to do in Salt Lake than in much of the state, provided you do most of it before nightfall. When my mother lived there, as a twenty-four-year-old woman, she found the city’s streets impossibly wide and the blocks eternally long. Since she had little money, Bessie walked those streets every day. She would walk up to the old library, across from the county courthouse, and she would sit in its reading room, where she liked to pore over books about astrology and medical science, and other matters that she had learned little about back in Provo. Some days, she walked over to the city’s vast Liberty Park. She sat near its lake, watching couples ride in blithe circles in paddleboats, or she bought popcorn or bread slices and fed the ducks. She liked the ducks because they seemed to know their place. They would pay attention to you but never try to get too close.
Most of the city closed at dusk, and as the sun started to set, Bessie would walk the many blocks back to her hotel room. Sometimes she would have dinner with a girlfriend or take in a dance at a local ballroom, where touring big bands sometimes played.
Largely, though, this was a season of being alone. Bessie was a little wary of men after the debacle in California. She was in no hurry for true love, and unlike most young Mormon women, she was not anxious to find herself a husband.
One of Bessie’s best friends during this time was a woman named Anita, a waitress at a local seafood restaurant. Anita had just come out of a bad marriage and was a serious drinker, which made for natural limitations in the relationship. Bessie was no drinker—she didn’t like the dizzy, stupid feeling it gave her the one or two times she’d had a few drinks— but she also didn’t have much appetite for judging another person’s weaknesses. Anita wasn’t the most high-class person, but Bessie liked her just the same. Maybe she felt a little sorry for her.
One day, Bessie met Anita at the Utah Hotel, just off Temple Street, where Anita lived with her boyfriend, a man she called Daddy. The two women were supposed to go shopping, but Anita had already had a few drinks that morning—actually, one too many. “Look, Bessie,” she said. “Look at the typewriter my Daddy gave me.” Anita lifted the typewriter proudly, but it fell from her hands and broke on the floor. Just then, Daddy walked in. He was a well-dressed man, in his late forties—Bessie recognized his pride immediately—and he was not looking pleased. Anita tried to sputter an apology and an introduction to Bessie at the same time. Daddy glanced momentarily at Bessie and said: “Hello. I’m Frank Gilmore.” To Anita, he said: “I asked you not to touch my typewriter. Now you’ve broken it. This is it. Pack your things and leave.”
Bessie saw that this was no time to stick around. “I’ll talk to you later, Anita,” she said, and left. Bessie could hear Anita crying by the time she got to the elevator.
A FEW DAYS LATER, BESSIE WAS WALKING along Temple to the library when she ran into Frank Gilmore. He was standing in front of the Utah Hotel, wearing a brown sport coat and a string tie over a sky-blue shirt. A dirty-white fedora hat covered his slightly longish, graying hair. Bessie hadn’t heard from Anita since the scene in the hotel room and was a little concerned. “Hey,” she said, “did you and Anita ever make up?”
“No, no, no,” said Frank. “She’s probably got somebody else by now.” Frank looked at Bessie for