Maude

  “I’ve already done it, and I’m not going back. I want him and Paul both out of here.”

  “What will he do? His pension isn’t enough for them to live on.”

  “He should have thought of that before he went messing around with Stella.”

  “What?” Gene shouted. He took a step backwards, staggering as if he had been struck.

  “Ask him about it,” was all I said.

  Gene stormed out of the room to the front porch. Through the open window, I could hear them talking, Gene’s voice loud and excited, George’s soft and ashamed.

  After a while Gene came inside and went up to his room. George walked by me without saying anything and went back down to the basement.

  Chapter 70

  Betty Sue came to help me with dinner, and the two of us carried on with our usual mealtime routine. I said nothing to her about the divorce.

  Gene left without eating and was gone until almost dark. When he came back, dinner was over. I’d made him up a plate and kept it warm in the oven. Gene waited until Betty Sue was finished helping with the clean-up and left for home before he talked to me.

  I was putting away the dishes. He sat at the kitchen table and I put his dinner in front of him. He stared down at the plate but made no move to eat.

  “I got an apartment for me and Dad. Unless you change your mind, we’ll move out tomorrow.”

  I didn’t answer him right away. I wasn’t surprised. I’d half expected that this was what he would do. He was my boy and had been from the beginning, but he loved his father as well.

  I asked him, “What are you going to do about Paul?”

  “I don’t care what happens to him. He’s not going with me.”

  A tear fell on my cheek. I was stuck with Paul. “I hate to see you move out, Gene, but I know you love your Dad. I won’t try to talk you out of it.”

  Gene shoved his plate away. His voice was so low, I could barely hear him. “Mom, he’s seventy-six years old, can’t you just forget it? He said he’d never go back over there again.”

  “If that was all there was to it, I would forget it, but there’s other things, things you don’t even know about.”

  “What things?”

  “Things that are between a husband and a wife, things that aren’t any of your business. I’m not going to change my mind, no matter what you say.”

  Gene went downstairs for a few minutes to talk to George and then back up to his room. The next morning, he and George carried out their clothes and moved to a small upstairs apartment a few blocks away.

  I wept from time to time over losing Gene. He was still angry with me and didn’t even come to visit for a while. I never wept for George. I didn’t miss him at all and seldom even thought about him.

  One afternoon, Donna came to see me, and we talked about the state of the family. When Gene called to tell her about his new address and the divorce, she’d accepted it matter-of-factly.

  Divorce was nothing new in her life, Evelyn was single again. After that, Donna went to Gene’s apartment to see him and her grandfather one time, to my house the next.

  After several months of going back and forth, she told me about stopping in at her father’s one afternoon. She played a few games of checkers with George, and Gene made their dinner in the tiny kitchen, canned tamales and Spanish rice. While they were eating, Donna said, “Grandma misses you, Daddy. I want you to go over there with me and see her tomorrow.”

  Gene looked at George, who nodded his head.

  “All right,” he said.

  The next day, she stopped by her father’s and the two of them walked to my house. Instead of just walking in, Donna stood behind Gene, and he knocked on the door. When I saw him standing there, I stopped in my tracks. Neither one of us moved until Donna stepped past him and pulled open the screen door, holding it for him until he came in.

  He wrapped his arms around me, and we held one another for a long time. We talked for several hours, and after that Gene came by once or twice a week.

  Chapter 71

  Gene renewed his courtship of Evelyn. He hoped the fact that he’d moved out of my house would help win her over, but his hope didn’t last very long. She married again, this time to someone named Gene Fredette, who’d served in the Marines and fought in Korea. He was a bartender at the corner bar she sometimes went to with her friends, and that was where she met him.

  A few months after that, my Gene began seeing a pretty neighbor named Helen. She was divorced and had a small son. I hoped he’d finally given up on his dream of winning Evelyn back, and found someone who would treat him right.

  Chapter 72

  One afternoon in August of 1962, Gene came to see me with bad news. He’d been at Receiving Hospital with his father all night.

  It seems that George decided to go to the corner store from his and Gene’s upstairs apartment while Gene was at work. Misjudging the first step of the long flight of stairs, he fell all the way to the bottom. He couldn’t get up, and he lay there for two hours before Gene came home from work and found him. Gene didn’t own a car, so he called the ambulance. The first time he called, it was around four o’clock in the afternoon, and they said they would be there as soon as possible.

  He walked to the corner and called them again every half-hour. He was told each time that they would be there as soon as they could so he didn’t call a cab. It was after eight that night before they showed up. George was taken to Detroit Receiving Hospital. He had shattered a hip. A few days later, he developed pneumonia.

  What was left of the family, Gene, Paul, Donna, and myself, gathered in the hospital. Totally unaware of what was happening, George thrashed around the bed, throwing off the blankets and pulling out his IV. They finally put restraints on him to keep him quiet.

  Betty Sue was so upset she was like a crazy person. She kept telling the nurses to take better care of her father and complaining about everything from the scratchy sheets to the bags on the IV pole not getting changed before they went empty.

  I finally told her she was doing more harm than good because the nurses were avoiding George so they wouldn’t have to listen to her. That calmed her down for a day, but on the next visit, she was at it again, shouting at the nurses, waving her arms, and complaining. She left the children with a neighbor and sat by George’s bed for hours, holding his hand.

  I was just about ready to go to bed when Betty Sue came to see me late that Saturday night.

  “Ellis has been gone almost two days,” she cried. “Paul came home without him hours ago. Come with me, Mom. I have to go look for him!”

  “No, you don’t. He’ll come home when he runs out of money.”

  “He might be sick.”

  “You think that every time he up and runs off.”

  “I know, but I have to go find him. Please come with me.”

  “Who’s with the children?”

  “Paul. He doesn’t know where Ellis went after he left him.”

  I sighed and shook my head. “All right, just a minute.”

  I picked up my purse, and joined my daughter. We made the usual rounds, asking first at the bars Ellis frequented most often. He and Paul had been to some of them the night before, but no one had seen Ellis. One bartender told her he’d left without Paul shortly before midnight the night before.

  At the next place one waitress knew Betty Sue. I waited while Betty Sue spoke with her.

  She smiled. “Hi, Louise. I’m looking for Ellis. Has he been here?”

  “Yeah, he was here last night. The bartender ran him out at closing time. He was pretty plastered.”

  “He didn’t come home. Where do you think he might have gone? Was he with anyone, maybe a woman?”

  “He was alone. Why don’t you go on home? He’ll show up sooner or later.”

  “I’m worried about him. What if he’s sick?”

  Louise put her tray on the bar and leaned toward Betty Sue. “If you don’t find him in one of the bars by two a.m., y
ou could check an after-hours place in an upstairs apartment on Hillger Street. Number 1912. Don’t let them know you got it from me.”

  “Thanks Louise.”

  We left the bar and headed down Jefferson. On the corner of St. Jean, we waited with a crowd of people for the light.

  It was long past my bedtime. I pulled on Betty Sue’s arm and said, “We aren’t going to find him tonight. Let’s go home. I have to get up in the morning, and you’ll want to go to the hospital to see your father.”

  She jerked away from me and spun around. “No! I have to find him. I need him.”

  She started crying. “Dad’s dying in that place. Everything they do just makes him worse. Ellis ought to be home with me, not out drinking.”

  She threw her arms up as if she were appealing to heaven. “I have to find him.”

  I tried to reason with her. “It’s not going to do us any good to go up and down looking for him.”

  The more I talked, the more emotional she became. She ranted, “Dad’s going to die, maybe tomorrow. Probably tomorrow. I have to find Ellis. I have to!”

  Several people, including Betty Sue and myself, stepped off the curb, expecting the light to change in a few seconds. It finally turned green, and Betty Sue stepped out. She was a foot or so in front of me to my left…and then she wasn’t.

  The convertible that ran the light was going so fast it was only a blur. It grazed me and another woman, knocking us off our feet.

  It took me a minute to realize what had happened. I pulled myself to a sitting position. A man leaned over me and helped me to my feet. “Are you all right, lady?”

  I brushed the dirt off my dress. “I think so.”

  I looked myself over. My left arm and leg had scrapes from where I’d fallen onto the concrete, but other than that, I seemed all right.

  The group of people spoke angrily about the car. One man said, “I’m going to get the police.”

  I looked around for Betty Sue, but couldn’t find her. I circled the growing crowd of people several times, calling her name, but she wasn’t there.

  I looked down the street and saw the convertible coming back. There she was, sitting up in the back seat. Then, when the car stopped at the curb on the other side of the street, the young man in the passenger seat jumped out of the car. He ran toward us and started yelling, “I told him to stop! I told him! It isn’t my fault.”

  He went from one man in the crowd to another, grabbing them by their forearms and yelling how he didn’t do anything wrong. The driver just sat without moving.

  I limped over toward the car to see if Betty Sue was hurt and maybe needed an ambulance. She sat there, staring straight ahead. Before I could get to her, she fell over in the seat. A bunch of people crowded between us and gathered around the car. Then I heard a man say, “This lady’s dead!”

  I reeled to my left and a man caught me. “No!” I cried. “No!”

  The man holding me up had to put his arm around my waist and hold tight to keep me from falling. I tried to get to her, but I couldn’t even put one foot in front of the other.

  I thought they must be wrong. Betty Sue was knocked out, was all. I was sure she’d be all right in a minute. All those people should get away from her and let her have some air.

  I cried, “Get out of my way! Get out of my way! I’m her mother! I have to help her!”

  Someone held me back and half-dragged me to a bench on the sidewalk. A police car came and then an ambulance. The medics worked on her for a minute, then lifted her out of the car and put her on a gurney.

  It wasn’t until they pulled a sheet over her head that I realized the man was right. My daughter was dead. My head started swimming, and I fell over. The man who’d taken me to the bench yelled out, “Hey, doc, over here.”

  I remember someone putting a bottle of smelling salts to my nose. I didn’t pass out, but I stayed in a daze through the whole thing. The medic wanted to take me to the hospital, but I told him I wouldn’t go.

  The police station was right across the street. They asked me what happened, and I told them what I could. More squad cars came, and other police talked to the people in the crowd. I saw them take the two young men from the convertible away in handcuffs.

  I didn’t try to get up. I knew I wouldn’t be able to stand. Different people kept trying to help me. Someone brought me a glass of water and I took a few sips.

  Gene and Betty Sue and those grandbabies were the only things in this world that mattered to me, and now Betty Sue was gone.

  I didn’t understand how God could allow this to happen.

  Chapter 73

  A squad car brought me home. The police officers kept saying they should take me to the hospital, but I didn’t want to go. I knew there wasn’t anything a hospital or doctors could do to help me. I sent one of my boarders who was home to go to Betty Sue’s place and tell Paul to bring the children here if Ellis still wasn’t home.

  Paul came in and said Ellis had just walked in the door, and he wasn’t even drunk. “Go back and get him,” I said. “Betty Sue is dead.”

  Paul ran out and came back with Ellis and the children a few minutes later. If I had been able to stand, I would have gone to the kitchen and got the biggest knife in there and stabbed Ellis to death. I didn’t have the strength.

  I told Paul to go to Gene’s apartment to tell him what happened. I closed the blinds and lay down in my room to let myself cry. My head was hurting so bad I thought it might blow up.

  Gene arrived at my door only a few minutes later. He called the doctor, who came right away and gave me a shot of some kind. I slept most of the next few days.

  George was seventy-seven and his injuries and the pneumonia were too much for him to survive. He died the next day, never knowing our precious daughter had gone first.

  Gene was devastated. Donna grieved. Paul wailed for his father. He sounded like a lost child.

  My heart was broken over Betty Sue. As far as George was concerned, I mourned for what should have been, but wasn’t.

  Paul lost what little spark of life he had and retreated into himself. He had no one to lean on now. I had no sympathy for him. His father and his brother Bud and now his sister were gone. Gene had erased him from his life.

  Donna had long ago forgiven him the fight that ended with her trip to the hospital, but she was off living her own life.

  Even though we had a TV, Paul spent hours each day sitting in a kitchen chair pulled up to the front window looking out at the traffic.

  Gene had to make arrangements for both funerals.

  Ellis was in a stupor of some kind. He kept saying, “It’s my fault, it’s my fault,” until I couldn’t stand it anymore, and I answered, “You’re right. It’s your fault. You killed her.” That finally shut him up.

  Betty Sue’s body was shown for one day at the funeral home, and she was buried at Forest Lawn, a short distance from where we buried Bud.

  The next day, there was a big article in both The Detroit News and The Free Press. The car that hit Betty Sue had sped away down Jefferson. Although his friend tried to persuade him, the young man driving it didn’t intend to stop. He was afraid he’d have to go to jail.

  When his passenger turned his head to look back, he saw Betty Sue sitting upright in the back seat.

  The passenger screamed then and insisted the driver stop and he pulled over. At first they thought she was alive and offered to take her to a hospital. When they realized she was dead, they turned the car around and took her back to the scene of the accident. They got there a minute or so after the police arrived

  Chapter 74

  I hadn’t so much as said hello to Stella since the divorce from George, but I remember her coming over every day to cook and take care of things. People from the church and other neighbors brought food, and that helped a lot.

  After a week, I tried to get myself back to some kind of routine. There were boarders to be fed and a big house to be cleaned, so the next Monday, I got up e
arly and went back to work. I was nearing eighty, and by the end of the week realized that without Betty Sue to help me, there was no way I could continue to care for a house filled with thirteen boarders and Paul.

  I hired a girl to help, but after only five days of shopping for groceries, cooking, and doing laundry, the girl quit. So did the next two. I finally had to admit it wasn’t going to work.

  I talked to my two favorite boarders, a Mr. Crider, who was my own age and a widower, and a nice young man from Kentucky named Doug. I felt a kinship with them because they had both been raised Holiness, even though they didn’t go to meetings anymore. They agreed they would move with us to a smaller house. I found a four bedroom place on Mack Avenue, next to St. Bernard’s Catholic Church. With my income cut quite a bit, I was barely able to make ends meet. Gene gave me a little money each week to help out.

  Mr. Crider had a car. I told him how I missed going to my own kind of church. From that time on, he drove me and Doug to the services every week.

  Ellis remarried only a few months after Betty Sue died and didn’t have time for Paul. Without a drinking buddy to pay for his beer, Paul remained sober.

  Chapter 75

  Donna graduated from Southeastern High School and began working at Michigan Bell as a long-distance operator. Gene and I were so proud of her. Now seventeen, she still lived with her grandmother Mayse and paid room and board. She was making her own way in the world.

  Shortly after her eighteenth birthday, Gene received a letter from the Friend of the Court. Evelyn was suing him for back child support. It seemed that when Donna was living with us during vacations and through some of her teen years, Gene had assumed it was all right for him to stop sending money.

  Donna took a day off work, and she and I went to court with him on the appointed morning. I told the judge how Gene had kept Donna during school vacations, and that she had lived in his home full time for two years.

  Donna told the judge that he’d been the one who took her to the dentist and the doctor, who bought her glasses and books, and gave her spending money and whatever money she needed for school. He’d been the one who bought her every stitch of clothing she’d ever worn.