Shot in the Heart - Mikal Gilmore [43]
“If I thought it was any of your damn business,” Frank said, “I would have told you already. Maybe it’s better if you not know everything. Think of it that way.”
There was one thing, though, she had to know: Did he have other families in other places? Did he still see any of his other wives or support their children? “I can take a lot of things, but if you are still seeing other women, I’ll leave you.”
Frank laughed and lifted her chin tenderly. He looked into Bessie’s green eyes and said: “Believe me, you’re more than enough for me. Besides, a man would have to be a damn fool to have more than one wife at the same time. Hell, I’m not a Mormon. Don’t worry, I don’t see any of those other women anymore. Once in a while I get in touch and see one of the kids. That’s about it.”
Bessie didn’t know why, but she believed him.
FRANK SURE HAD MADE SOME MONEY while he was away, and he wasn’t shy about spending it. He took Bessie downtown, bought her new clothes and new rings, and gave Robert the money for a used Ford he had wanted. Then he paid up Fay’s rent for the next six months and gave her an envelope with some more cash and told her to use it to live on. He said he was feeling restless and wanted to take Bessie to see some of the country before they started having kids. Told Fay they’d be back in a few months. To Bessie, he explained that he didn’t feel like sticking around Fay’s supernatural antics. He had seen plenty of such stuff over the years, and he had nothing but contempt for all the fools who took her mumbo jumbo to heart. It was all a lot of bunco, he said. Fay installed switches under the table and carpet, he explained, that she could throw with her hands and feet and make things happen in the dark.
Bessie wasn’t so sure. She knew from her faith that there was only a thin veil that separated the living from the dead. The departed were always close by—closer than you might believe, Bessie said. Besides, how could Fay accomplish all those tricks when she was confined to a wheelchair?
Frank laughed. “She doesn’t need that damn thing,” he said. “It’s just part of the act. Plus, it’s a good way to get people to wait on her.”
Bessie decided Frank was kidding. She had seen how helpless Fay was in her chair, and she had seen how dead her legs were. There was little doubt that Fay was a paraplegic.
Anyway, Frank and Bessie moved on. Frank bought a new wood-paneled station wagon Pontiac—he would always have a great weakness for woodies—threw a few items in a couple of suitcases, and drove the two of them back to Utah. He wanted to collect some money that his employer at Utah Magazine still owed him, and Bessie thought it was time for her family to meet her husband. She had written them from Sacramento, telling them she had married. Her husband, she wrote, was a successful advertising salesman, and he had once worked in silent movies and the circus. She didn’t tell them any of the other stuff—for example, about his being almost twice her age or that he’d had a half dozen other wives and children. She figured she would keep that information to herself, for fear it would become neighborhood scuttlebutt. A couple of weeks later she got back a brief but pleasant letter from her mother. “We had been a little worried about you since you left Utah, but we were happy to receive your news,” Melissa wrote. “As you know, it is only through marriage that a woman can come into the full presence of God and the glory of the celestial kingdom, and we are glad that you have taken this important step. Please come and see us when you get back. We’d like to meet your Frank.”
Right from the start, the visit did not go well. Both Melissa and Will were upset to see Bess with a man so much older than she—a man only four years younger than her father. Melissa didn’t say as much to my mother’s face, but she let on to her sisters, and the word got back to Bessie. Also, there was something about Frank that just rubbed her parents the wrong way—it was as if they could smell criminal written all over him. Will, in particular, was