Shot in the Heart - Mikal Gilmore [45]
For all the running and the risks, Bessie would later describe these as the good days of their marriage, when it was just the two of them, drifting around like small-town criminals in the American West. “We got along fine together in those days, before we ever had any kids. Children weren’t something I ever really wanted or planned for; they were something Frank wanted. It was funny, he would want them, but then he would turn against them. And I, who had never wanted them, would fight to protect them. If only we had stayed that way forever, without kids.”
It was said to hurt us, and it did. We felt we were to blame for the hell of everything. In our own hearts, the childless family became the ideal family.
THE GOOD DAYS DIDN’T LAST THAT LONG. Only a few months, really. In early 1939, Bessie became pregnant. The two of them kept traveling for much of her term, and then when the baby was due they settled into a bungalow in the Glendale section of Los Angeles, where my oldest brother, Frank Harry Gilmore, Jr., was born. Contrary to what Bessie expected from Fay’s warnings, Frank appeared eager for fatherhood. He showed up at the hospital nervous and proud and a little drunk, dragging along some old friends of his. He did the whole routine—passed out cigars to everybody in sight, gave the doctor a bottle of whiskey with a ribbon around its neck, sweet-talked every nurse on the floor. First time my mother saw him holding Frank Jr., she thought she had never seen her husband look more pleased with himself, like holding this baby made him feel truly a man. Frank looked down at Frank Jr.’s face and turned to Bessie and said: “Here—I’ve given you a son to take care of you in your old age.”
One thing was for sure: Frank seemed to know exactly how to handle a baby. He had no misgivings about feeding or changing Frank Jr., or staying up with him late at night when he cried or was sick. Bessie later said it was one of her best memories of him, the way he would handle a baby. Frank would sit in a chair with his baby, cooing at it, talking tenderly to it, singing it a lullaby in his broken voice. Before long, the baby would curl up in Frank’s lap like a little kitten and fall asleep, safe in its father’s presence.
They stayed in Los Angeles for a few weeks, Frank looking after the baby and Bessie, then went up north to see Fay. Something about seeing Frank fuss over his new baby boy got to Robert, and the two began to argue more frequently. The arguments were almost never expressly about the lack of love that Frank had shown Robert. Instead, Robert began to suspect that his father had not been fair and loving enough to Robert’s mother, Nan, which brought out a nasty streak in Frank. He would say the worst things about his “ex-whore wife,” until Robert would walk out on the discussions, halfway to tears. Then Bessie and Frank would go at it. Bessie felt Frank was in the wrong, the way he demeaned the mother that Robert had never even got to know. Frank would say: “I know you’re soft for Robert, but you’d be better off if you learned to keep your mouth shut.”
“Well, Frank,” Bessie would say, “I’m too old to learn.”
Early the following year, Bessie became pregnant again, but this time the development didn’t seem to please Frank. In fact, he went on a drinking binge and checked into a hotel for a few days by himself, in nearby Oakland. When he came back, he was restive and irritable. He announced to Bessie that it was time for the two of them to travel again. Bessie wasn’t thrilled to hear the news. It was almost summer, she had a seven-month-old baby and was almost three months along with another. She didn’t look forward to driving all over the country under those conditions, and when she learned that this time they were heading for Alabama, she liked the idea even less. Didn’t see why they needed to go so damn far, just so Frank could run one of his silly scams. Something