Maude
Page 33
Epilogue
from
Donna
The morning after the funeral, someone (one of my maternal aunts, I think) drove me back to my grandmother’s house on the way to the airport. There were three things I wanted from her personal belongings. Holding Melanie, my aunt waited in the car while I went in the house. My uncle Paul was waiting at the door, his face torn up. “They came yesterday and took all her things,” he told me.
“Who?” I asked.
“Ellis and his wife.”
Betty Sue’s husband had more nerve than I realized.
I looked around the living room. The furniture was there, but all the knick-knacks, the doilies, everything that could be carried away in a car, were missing.
I went to my grandmother’s bedroom. The big family Bible, the thing I wanted most, was gone from the dresser. Except for a few wire hangers, the closet was empty. The navy blue, mirrored tray that sat on the dresser and held her Evening in Paris cologne was gone. I opened the dresser drawers one at a time, from top to bottom. They were all empty.
I almost asked Paul why he didn’t stop them, call the police, do something, but I remembered the power Ellis had always had over him. He would have been as helpless as a child.
He gave me Ellis’s address. It was just around the corner. I rang the bell, and Ellis’s new wife answered with Betty Sue’s little girl perched on her hip. Tommy and Terry clung to her skirt. The boys shied away when I went to hug them. They didn’t remember me.
“There are only three things of my grandmother’s I want,” I told her.
“What are you talking about? I don’t have anything of your grandmother’s.”
“Paul told me you came last night and took her clothes and all her other things. I don’t care about most of that, but I want the Bible, the photo albums, and the nightgown that was wrapped in tissue in the bottom drawer.”
“I don’t have any of that.”
“Where are they, then?”
“I don’t know, ask Ellis.”
“Where is he?”
“He’s gone drinking. Maybe you can find him in one of the bars on Jefferson.”
I knew it was useless to ask her to let me come in and look for what I wanted. I didn’t have time to go from bar to bar, looking for Ellis the way my Aunt Betty Sue had done so many times.
“I can’t. I have to catch a plane. Tell him I’ll pay him for them if he’ll send them to me.”
I took a piece of paper from my purse, scribbled my address and telephone number on it, and handed it to her. I returned to the car, knowing I would probably never hear from Ellis again, and I didn’t.
Melanie sat on my lap and sang and watched the trees and buildings as we rode to the airport. I didn’t want to upset her, so I held back my tears.
The money my grandmother deposited into her account became part of her estate. It was divided four ways. Paul received one thousand dollars, Ellis’ children split another thousand, and I was given one thousand. I don’t know what happened to the rest of it.
Paul called me about a month later. His money was gone, and he wanted to come live with my family in Kansas. I told him that wasn’t possible. I heard a few years later that he’d been murdered on the streets of Detroit.
I could have asked my Aunt Fredia who my real father was, and she would have told me the truth. I didn’t care. I already had the best daddy in the world.
Although my father kept a Kodak Brownie handy and loved snapping pictures, I don’t have many of my childhood or my father’s family. There are no mementoes, nothing that would be considered a keepsake.
I didn’t realize until I started writing this story that my grandmother, Nola Maude Clayborn Connor Foley, had already given me the most important thing of all. Those long ago nights we shared her bed, she gave me her incredible life.
THE END
Grandma Maude and Donna
Gene 1962
Baby Donna 1943
Evelyn 1940
The Detroit News, August 6, 1962
A young Detroit motorist struck a woman pedestrian whose body was catapulted into the rear seat of his top-down convertible, then carried the woman around for 20 minutes before surrendering, police charged today.
Held in Police Headquarters jail is Gary D. Paves, 21, of 2170 Lakewood. He is charged with leaving the scene of the fatal accident late last night.
DEAD ON ARRIVAL
Mrs. Betty Sue Marshall, 39, of 2651 Lycaste, the mother of four, was dead on arrival at Receiving Hospital at midnight.
Ordered to report to Accident Prevention Bureau officers today for further questioning was a passenger in Paves’ car, Wilbur D. Moughler, 22, of 1101 Lakeview, who told police the accident was unavoidable, and that he persuaded Paves to return to the scene and surrender.
The accident occurred at 11:30 P.M. at the northwest corner of Jefferson east and St. Jean, across the street from the Jefferson police precinct station.
GIVES CHASE
A witness, Joseph Booker, 1545 Defer, told officers he heard the impact of the car striking Mrs. Marshall and saw the car speed away. “I jumped into my own car and gave chase,” he said, “but I lost them in traffic.”
Police said no officers saw the accident because the precinct station was changing shifts at the time.
They said Moughler told them that Paves drove for three or four miles, changing direction frequently, before he returned to the scene and surrendered at Jefferson Station. “As soon as we hit her I screamed at Paves to stop,” Moughler told police, “but he kept on, and it took me some time to argue him into going back.”
Jefferson Station officers rushed Mrs. Marshall to Receiving Hospital in an ambulance to no avail. An autopsy was scheduled today.
Police said other witnesses told them Mrs. Marshall was staggering in the middle of the street and waving her arms and was narrowly missed by several other automobiles before Paves’ car struck her.
Police said that Paves, a gas station mechanic who is unmarried, was incoherent when first questioned. All he would say, according to detectives, was that he did not see Mrs. Marshall and did not know he hit her or that her body was in his car until he was a mile or two from the police station.
Later, police said, Paves insisted that he only drove around the corner, where his car stalled, and that he did not know Mrs. Marshall’s body was in his car until it stalled. Then, officers said Paves told them, he returned to the scene.
Paves also told police that he and Moughler had dropped off two girlfriends just prior to the accident after drinking a beer apiece in a tavern.
Mrs. Marshall’s husband, Ellis T., 37, said earlier yesterday she had visited her father, George Foley, 79, who is seriously ill in Receiving Hospital.
Afterward, her husband said, she visited a tavern near the accident scene to chat with a friend who works as a waitress there.
“It is a terrible tragedy,” said Marshall, who works at the Fleetwood plant of General Motors’ Fisher Body Division.
“I haven’t told our children yet. I know I will have to tell them sometime today, but I just can’t think how to do it.”
The children are Thomas, 7; Terry, 5; Patricia, 4, and Linda, 1.
Other Books by Donna Mabry
The Alexandra Merritt Mysteries:
The Last Two Aces in Las Vegas
The Las Vegas Desert Flower
The Las Vegas Special
Rough Ride in Vegas
M.I.A. Las Vegas
Lost Luggage
Thrillers:
The Right Society
The Other Hand
Deadly Ambition
The Manhattan Stories:
Jessica
Pillsbury Crossing
The Cabin
Kimimela (Soon to be published)
Comedy:
Conversations with Skip