Shot in the Heart

by Mikal Gilmore

  On their second date, a night or two later, Frank took Bessie to a bar. Bessie didn’t drink, but Frank did. He began to talk a bit about his past. Not too much—just enough to let her know that he was a man who had led an interesting life.

  Apparently he had grown up around show business and had worked as a performer himself. In 1910—before Bessie had even been born— Frank had been a clown and tightrope walker in the Barnum & Bailey Circus, and he had gone by the name of Laffo the Clown. He would wobble his way across the tightrope humorously, like a drunk. Other times, Laffo would build a tower of precariously balanced chairs and then, in his drunken manner, scale the chairs to the top, where he’d do a handstand. One night, the real Laffo was really drunk. He got to the top of the chair pyramid and one of the chairs at the bottom slipped. Frank had taken many falls over the years and knew how to land and roll so as to avoid injury. But this night the liquor slowed his reflexes and he came down on his left leg and ruined his ankle. By the time the fracture had healed, the circus had found a new aerialist clown and Frank’s tightrope days were over. So he tried a new stint: lion tamer. He liked working with the big cats, he liked rubbing their fur and feeling their taut muscles. But when one nasty-tempered leopard took a swipe at him and left a scar across his cheek and forehead, Frank decided that the cats were undependable partners, and he left the circus.

  A few years later, Frank told Bessie, he moved to Los Angeles, where he worked in silent movies as a stuntman. He had been a stand-in for Harry Carey and Francis X. Bushman (“They were both sons-of-bitches,” Frank said), and he had also done some work for Hollywood’s first big cowboy hero, Tom Mix. He and Mix became good friends, Frank said, and good drinking pals. One night Frank was driving and Mix was drinking—or maybe it was the other way around. Anyway, whoever was driving piled the car into a pole in the Hollywood Hills. Mix escaped injury, but Frank ended up in the hospital. When he came to, he found his leg hurt again, and he also found he only had half his teeth left—the ones on the right side of his face. After that, Frank decided he had seen enough of Hollywood. He went on to other places and other things.

  If Bessie had been thinking about the stories Frank Gilmore told about himself, she might have noted a few things. For one, most of his tales ended in disaster, often brought on by drunkenness. She also might have noted that, since Frank was now about forty-seven, his tales only accounted for a small portion of his life, and they seemed to zigzag clear across the map of America. There was still a lot of Frank Gilmore’s past she knew nothing about, and that he seemed in no rush to fill in. Even at his most drunk, he only told so much about himself, and when he was sober, he told almost nothing. Or maybe Bessie did note his vagueness and felt relieved by it. After all those years of Mormon genealogy—all the family legends memorializing pioneer ancestors who probably, behind all the inflated and pious myths, were really hard-asses and sons-of-bitches— maybe Frank Gilmore’s reticence about his own history came as a welcome contrast.

  In any event, Frank was utterly unlike any other man Bessie had ever known. Clearly, he was an older man, but in some ways Bessie thought he was younger in spirit than she was. He had seen plenty of life—he was experienced and worldly—but at the same time, Bessie felt that Frank Gilmore was still searching the world to find his place in it. More than anything, she felt like searching the world with him.

  One night when they were coming out of a movie, Frank turned to Bessie and said: “Why don’t we go out to Sacramento? You can meet my mother and we can get married while we’re out there.”

  She noticed he didn’t exactly get down on his knees. Too vain a man for that. But she remembered the lesson of the candy pan. “Okay,” Bessie said. “That would be fine.”

  SO BESSIE WENT WITH FRANK TO SACRAMENTO, and it was one surprise after another. Soon as they hit town, Frank got them a room at the Semoh Hotel, across from one of the large city-center parks. He was anxious to go see his mother, who was staying at the Ladies’ Cottage—a rest home at the Sacramento County Hospital. On the way over, Frank explained a couple of things. His mother’s name was Fay Ingram. Like Frank, she had once worked in show business. The last time he saw her, she was married to a local psychologist, but Frank heard that he had since died.

  “How long has it been since you’ve seen her?” asked Bessie. “Eighteen years.” Again, he said it like there was no reason to explain or apologize.

  At the hospital’s gift shop, Frank bought a box of chocolates and some white roses, and then took Bessie with him up to Fay’s floor. He opened the door to his mother’s room, walked in and said, “Hey, lady, I’ve got a package for you.”

  Fay was seated in a wheelchair, at a card table, working on a letter. She was a small lady in her late sixties, with cloudy-white hair and vivid blue eyes. Like Frank, she seemed both old and young at the same time, and like Frank, she immediately came off as imperial as hell. Fay glanced at the man who had just walked into her room, took off her reading glasses, and said, with little apparent emotion: “Where the hell have you been these last eighteen years?”

  Frank smiled and laid down the flowers and candy. “Oh, here and there,” he said.

  Fay saw Bessie. “And who’s this? Your new wife?”

  “She will be,” said Frank.

  Frank made arrangements to get Fay out of the Ladies’ Cottage. He rented her a handsome Victorian house on P Avenue, not far from his hotel, and he told her that, in time, he and Bessie would come and live there with her. In the process of moving Fay into her new home, Bessie learned something Frank hadn’t told her: Fay was a practicing psychic and fortune-teller, and to hear her tell it, she was a damn good one. She could get spirits to materialize, make noise, show their forms, and communicate to the living a comforting knowledge of the afterlife. Also, she knew how to reach a troubled spirit and help resolve its pain, so it would no longer be earthbound. “Promise me,” said Bessie, “that you won’t ever do any of that around me. I’ve had bad experience with spirits. They give me the creeps.”

  It turned out that Fay was also a licensed minister in the Spiritualist Church of California, which gave her the authority to perform marriages. She wanted to be the one to marry her son to his new bride. Bessie was a little uneasy with the idea. How would this look back home: bad Bess, married to a man twice her age by his witchy mother? Still, she didn’t want to hurt Fay’s feelings. She agreed to the idea and told herself that at the first opportunity she would get Frank to remarry her with a proper minister or justice of the peace. On Frank and Bessie’s second night in Sacramento, after settling Fay into her new residence, the old woman married her son and his new bride. Lit some candles, said a few words, offered an incantation, and that was it. No licenses, no blood tests, no papers. (I have never been able to find an official record of the marriage in Sacramento County, or any place else in California.)

  The two hadn’t been married but a few minutes when Fay turned to Frank and said: “You know, Robert’s living not far from here. He tried to find you once or twice over the years. I thought you would have asked about him by now.”

  Frank said nothing in reply. Instead, a bitter look crossed his face.

  “Who is Robert?” my mother asked.

  Frank and Fay exchanged a glare. After a moment, Frank said: “He’s my son.”

  “Your son?”

  “Yes, from an earlier marriage.” “How old is he?”

  Frank turned to Fay. “I don’t know, how old is he?” “Robert is now nineteen,” said Fay, showing all her lovely teeth in a big smile.

  “When did you last see him?” asked Bessie.

  “Well, about eighteen years ago. I brought him here after my marriage was over. That woman wasn’t fit to raise him. I asked Fay to look after him for a while.”

  “When it was obvious you weren’t coming back,” said Fay, “I adopted him. His name is now Robert Ingram.”

  Frank signaled that he’d had enough of the discussion. “Tell Robert where I’m staying,
” he told Fay. “Tell him to come by sometime.”

  Then Frank took his new bride back to the Semoh Hotel. The marriage had begun.

  SEVERAL HOURS LATER—AT ABOUT 4 A.M.—Frank and Bessie were enjoying the first sleep of their marriage when there was a knock at the door. Bessie felt Frank tense up beside her. “Who is it?” he said. “It’s Robert.”

  Frank seemed relieved, but also annoyed. “Goddamn, what are you doing here this time of the night?”

  Bessie said, “Oh, get up and let him in.”

  Frank got up, opened the door, and looked at his son. Bessie, lying in bed, looked at him at the same time. Robert had dark brown, curly hair and, like Fay and Frank, bright blue eyes. She thought to herself: This is the best-looking man I have ever seen in my life. This must be what Frank looked like twenty-five years ago. One handsome fellow.

  Frank said, “Well, let’s walk down to the park and get acquainted. We’ll wait out here in the hallway while Bessie gets dressed.”

  The three of them sat down on a bench in the park. The conversation was awkward at the start. Robert told Frank that he had run away once at age fourteen to find Frank and had been arrested and returned to Fay. Frank didn’t say anything in reply. After a bit, Robert turned to Bessie and said, “You remind me of my girlfriend. You have beautiful hair.” It was more of a compliment than she had ever got out of Frank. Bessie liked Robert right away.

  Frank and Robert sat there, trying to get acquainted, but Frank acted like he was bored. As it grew light out, Robert asked Frank if he knew how he could find his mother.

  “No,” said Frank, “and I wouldn’t tell you if I did. She was no damn good.”

  That was the end of their first visit. It would never be a close relationship. Bessie suspected that Frank was making Robert continue the payment for whatever the boy’s mother had done, eighteen years before.

  AFTER THEIR FIRST FEW COMMUNICATIONS, IT WAS APPARENT that some old discomforts still lingered between Frank and Fay. It seemed to Bessie that Frank probably loved his mother a great deal—he spoke of her in the most praising and longing of terms—but when he was actually in Fay’s company, the climate could be tense and chilly. In turn, Fay often taunted her son with her coyness and with ceaseless demands. Also, Bessie noted, when the four of them—Frank and Bessie, Robert and Fay— were together and company would come over, Fay would always introduce Robert as her son, and Frank as simply Frank Gilmore. Fay seemed to save her real fondness for Robert and Bessie. About the only time the guard ever dropped between her and Frank was when the two of them would share a bottle of whiskey. This was something Bessie was learning about Frank: He could drink at great length, and when he did, he was an impressive drunk. He was funny and told colorful stories, and Bessie learned to keep her ears open when Frank and Fay drank together. She heard scandalous tales about show business and circus performers at those times. In particular, she heard a lot about the famous late magician and escape artist Harry Houdini. It was apparent that Fay had known him well—had, in fact, helped him at an early stage of his career—but felt wronged by something he had later done to her. Bessie figured it had something to do with Houdini’s expose of spiritualist charlatans. Whatever it was, Frank shared his mother’s hatred for the dead man. The two of them would get drunk and call Houdini the worst names. It was their strongest bond.

  FRANK AND BESSIE HADN’T BEEN MARRIED FOR LONG when Frank announced abruptly one day that he had to go out of town on some business and might be gone for a while. When Bessie asked him where he was going and what the business was, Frank acted too rushed to explain. “I owe a man some work,” was all he would say. “I want you to stay here and take care of Fay.”

  That was the first disappearance. Frank had simply packed a bag and was gone within the hour. Later departures would have less forewarning. Here was Bess, five hundred miles from home, looking after a nice but strange old woman whom she barely knew, and who had a penchant for bossing people around. Bessie had too much defiance in her to succumb to somebody else’s royal highness act. The first time Fay gave her a command, Bessie said, “Look, that might work with Frank and Robert, but it doesn’t wash with me. I know you’re in a wheelchair, but that doesn’t make me your servant.” Something about the remark seemed to draw Fay’s respect. After that, the two of them got along fine.

  Frank’s absence stretched on for a couple of weeks, and Bessie began to grow concerned. Also, a bit angry. She asked Fay if she knew where Frank had gone and how she might reach him. Fay studied Bessie with her sharp blue eyes as if she were appraising the young woman’s mettle. Then Fay said: “Tell me, Bessie how long was it you knew Frank before you decided to marry him?”

  Bessie got the hint. Maybe she should have learned a bit more about the man and his history before deciding to spend a life with him. Bessie explained that Frank had always been tight-lipped about his past, that it had even come as a surprise to learn he had a living mother. Fay just sat there, watching Bessie silently as she spoke, not volunteering anything. Bessie decided to take a more direct approach.

  “Tell me about Frank’s first wife,” she said. “Why did she give up Robert to him?”

  Bessie said it with such genuine innocence, it caught Fay off guard. “Frank’s first wife?” she said, laughing. “Oh, honey, he really hasn’t told you much, has he? As far as I can tell from my count, you are likely Frank’s sixth or seventh wife, but then you have to remember I lost track of him quite a few years ago, and he hasn’t really filled me in on all his in-betweens. Also, Robert wasn’t Frank’s first child—more like his fifth. Frank has left families scattered all over the nation.”

  Fay went on to tell her about Frank’s marriage to Robert’s mother, but Bessie was dazed enough only to remember a few particulars. The woman’s name was Nan, and Frank had married her about 1919, in Chicago. She was a real beauty, Fay had heard, and she came from a prominent Illinois Mormon family. She might not have married Frank, but he got her in trouble, and even though Frank was not a Mormon, Nan’s parents insisted she marry him to try to make up for her sin. For a time, Frank—who had been raised a staunch Catholic by Fay—even thought about converting to Mormonism. He occasionally went to Sunday School with Nan, and even read that god-awful Book of Mormon, said Fay. In 1920, Frank and Nan had a son and named him Robert. Frank loved the boy, Fay said, but only because he loved the mother so much. Fay had never known a woman to get to her son like Nan. His letters were filled with praise and hope.

  Then, the letters stopped coming. Fay wrote to his Illinois address, but the letters were returned. One day a few months later, there was Frank at her door, with Robert, not even a year old. Frank was a mess. Hadn’t shaved in days, been drinking, and needed to borrow some money. Seemed he owed a man who helped him get to Sacramento. Then Frank told Fay the story. He came home early one day from his job as a newspaper ad salesman and found his beautiful Nan in bed with a church elder. He beat the man up bad—Frank was a mean fighter; he could knock a man across a room easily—and then he took the baby Robert and walked out on his home. That was the last that Frank or the boy would ever see of Nan. Brought the child to Fay. That was his punishment on his wife. For that matter, Fay was a bit surprised to see Frank show up years later with Bessie, another Mormon woman. “Last time I saw him,” she said, “he had a powerful hatred for the Mormons.”

  But, asked Bessie, didn’t the police ever try to find Frank and Robert? Didn’t they know where Fay lived?

  “No,” said Fay, “I don’t think so. You see, he didn’t use the name Frank Gilmore during that marriage, so they didn’t really know who to look for. Hell, Frank’s lived under more names than he’s had wives. In fact,” added Fay, smiling, “I do believe that you may be the only woman he has ever married under the name he was raised with. Though, I might add, Gilmore isn’t his real name either.”

  “What is his real name?”

  Fay studied Bessie’s face for many moments before answering. “Weiss,” she said f
inally. “But don’t ever tell anybody I told you that. Don’t even tell Frank.”

  Now the questions poured out of Bessie. Who had been Frank’s other wives? And what were these other names that he used? Where did they come from, and why did he use them? Fay’s face shut down momentarily as Bessie rattled off her questions. The old woman was aware she might be on the verge of saying too much. “I’ll tell you a few things,” she said. “I figure you’re entitled to that much. But there are some things about Frank’s life and affairs that I will never tell you, no matter how much you want to know. You’ll have to get those secrets from your husband.”

  Fay was willing to let Bessie in on some of Frank’s other names—she figured the couple would be living under those names soon enough anyway. Frank, she said, had made equal use of such forenames as Frank, Francis, Franklin, Harry, and Walter. His last names had included Ingram, Seville, Sullivan, Lancton, LaFoe, Collier, and Coffman; he had even sometimes used his real name of Weiss, though Fay had always discouraged that. As to why he had chosen the other names, Bessie would have to ask Frank. And then there were the wives and the children. Frank’s first son, called Christopher, had been born in Baltimore, in 1914 (a year after Bessie). He was born illegitimate—as far as Fay knew, Frank’s only illegitimate child—and had been adopted by a good Baltimore family. Even though the boy was adopted, Frank still kept contact with him over the years and so did Fay. Christopher now worked in show business and wrote Fay occasionally. He had even come to visit her. It was through Christopher, she said, that she managed to keep loose track of Frank in the years after he abandoned Robert.

  A couple of years after Christopher’s birth, Frank had a brief, stormy courtship with a famous opera singer in New York, which resulted in a briefer, stormier marriage, and a fast, nasty annulment. Then there had been the marriage to Nan, and after Frank showed up with Robert, he stopped contacting Fay. A few years later she learned from Christopher that, in 1928, under the name Walter Coffman, Frank had married a seventeen-year-old woman named Barbara Solomon, in Greenville, Alabama. They’d had two children, a boy and a girl. After that, Fay thought there might have been a family in Seattle, under the name Lancton, and probably at least one or two childless marriages. As far as she knew, Frank always legitimately married and divorced the women—Robert’s mother, Nan, being a possible exception in the divorce department. At the same time, since he never married any two women under the same name, Fay wasn’t sure what difference all the niceties made, though they seemed to matter to Frank.