At seven o’clock the next morning the doorbell rang.
“Sergeant Carroll,” the man said and handed her a card that read “John Carroll, Sergeant, Wyattsville Police Department.”
He was a tall man with a face that had a look of intensity etched on it. He removed his hat and gave a sympathetic nod.
“I’m sorry for your loss,” he said politely. Without a moment’s hesitation he added, “I regret having to intrude at a time like this, but we’re trying to find the person who shot your husband and hopefully you’ve got some information that can help us.”
Laura stood there with expressionless eyes and cheeks pale as milk. He too was a reality hard to accept. She looked at the card, read it letter by letter then held a shaky finger to her lips and made a whisper-thin shushing sound.
“Our daughter is only four, and I haven’t told her yet.”
She turned to Rose and said, “Mama, can you keep Christine busy for a while?”
Rose gave a nod; then Sergeant Carroll followed Laura back into the kitchen.
Once they settled at the table he said matter-of-factly, “This wasn’t a random break-in. Nothing was taken, and none of the other offices were disturbed. My belief is that the person who killed your husband came there looking for him.”
Laura looked at him with a bewildered expression. “Why?”
Sergeant Carroll shrugged.
“Once we know why, we can figure out who,” he said then asked if Franklin had any enemies.
“Franklin? No.” Laura absently folded and then unfolded a napkin that had been left on the table. “Everybody loved Franklin. He was kind, goodhearted, generous…” Her eyes welled with tears.
“I’m sorry,” Sergeant Carroll said, “I know this is tough.”
He hesitated a few moments before moving on to the next barrage of questions. He asked about Franklin’s friends, business associates and neighbors.
“What about his clients?” he said. “Did he ever talk about his clients? Did he ever mention someone blaming him for the money they’d lost in the market?”
The way he asked the question brought to mind that night four months earlier. Franklin had come in looking like he’d seen a ghost, and for a few weeks afterward he called home several times a day to check on them. But time passed, and the encounter was forgotten. Laura could even remember Franklin saying he’d obviously overreacted because it turned out to be nothing.
“Never heard from the guy again,” he’d said.
“There was this one incident last October…” She told the story of that night. “At the time Franklin thought the fellow could be dangerous, but then later on he said it was nothing.”
“Did he mention a name? Or what the guy looked like?”
Laura thought for a few minutes and while she could easily picture the look of concern on Franklin’s face, she couldn’t recall the man’s name.
“Do you think you’d know it if you heard it?”
She nodded. “I believe so.”
That afternoon Laura told Christine her daddy had gone to heaven. She didn’t share the awful truth of what happened; that was something she alone would live with. She held the child to her chest, and in a brokenhearted whisper created a fantasy claiming Franklin’s last words had been to say how much he loved her.
Christine pushed back and looked her mama in the face. “But isn’t Daddy coming back?”
Seeing the innocent look of her child’s face, Laura prayed for the strength to hold back her tears.
“I’m afraid not,” she said softly.
Christine’s eyes filled with tears. “I don’t want him to go to heaven.”
“I don’t want him to go either,” Laura replied.
“We could tell Daddy how much we love him so he won’t go to heaven.”
Laura gathered Christine into her arms and held her close.
“Daddy knows how much we love him, but he can’t come back,” she whispered.
* * *
The next day Sergeant Carroll returned with a list of Franklin’s clients. It was a list that stretched back to the day he’d joined the firm. He handed the list to Laura and waited as she looked through it.
Using her index finger she inched her way down the page, stopping on every name and trying to recall the sound of Franklin saying it. She hesitated for a moment at Gordon Edelman and then moved on. When she came to George Feldman, she could almost hear Franklin’s voice speaking the name.
“George Feldman,” she said. “That’s it.”
“Are you pretty certain?”
“I’m very certain,” Laura replied.
That afternoon Sergeant Carroll and two uniformed police officers knocked on George Feldman’s door. They banged on the door for a full ten minutes before Bertha Paulson hobbled across the street and said Missus Feldman had passed away two days earlier.
“What about George?” Sergeant Carroll asked. “Does he live with her?”
Bertha gave a disdainful look. “Sponges off of her is more like it.”
She went on to explain George was Anna Feldman’s son but hadn’t been seen around since his mama’s death. Sergeant Carroll eyed the foreclosure notice on the door and then gave the patrolmen an okay to break it down.
Laura Wilkes
It doesn’t matter that your heart is breaking, that your life will never be the same. When someone you love dies there are responsibilities, arrangements to be made, details to be taken care of. You feel dead inside, but still you go through the motions as if you are a puppet with some unseen hand pulling the strings. You do what you’re expected to do, even though inside you feel as though the earth has shifted beneath your feet. At the funeral parlor I thought, Surely hell itself is no worse than this.
People mean well, but they have no idea of what is going on inside my heart. They hug me and tell me how much Franklin will be missed. Do they think I don’t know that? They kneel, say a quick prayer, then move on. For me there is no moving on.
Were it not for Christine, I would have jumped into that grave right alongside Franklin. I tell people I have to be strong for her, but the truth is she gives me purpose enough to keep on breathing. Without her I don’t know if I could go on.
Louise Wilkes, Franklin’s mama, came to the funeral. She didn’t come to our wedding, but she came to the funeral. The poor woman looks almost as dead as her son. I can’t help but wonder if her heart hurts as much as mine. I look at Christine and know how I would feel if something happened to her. Missus Wilkes sat beside me at the services, and we held hands. Her fingers were as cold and bony as my own. I wanted to shake her and say, It’s too late for showing Franklin you care; you should have done it years ago instead of worrying about your own hurt feelings, but I didn’t have the heart. Adding that misery to what she already has won’t do a thing but cause more heartache, and God know there’s been enough of that already.
She asked if Christine and I needed anything; I said no, we’ll be fine. The truth is I don’t know what we need or don’t need. I can’t think about tomorrow because I can’t move beyond the minute I’m standing in.
I try to remember things I’m supposed to do, but all I can think about is Franklin. You might think I’d remember the moments of passion and big events like our wedding, but it’s the small everyday things that are stuck in my head. I remember how he walked the floor with Christine when she was teething, and how some nights when I didn’t hear him come in he’d sneak up behind me and kiss the back of my neck. Yesterday I was standing at the sink washing out the coffee pot and started thinking how he’d never again kiss the back of my neck. I began bawling like a baby. How can I not?
Being left behind is in many ways worse than being dead. Thank God for Christine; she’s my reason to go on living.
The Years That Followed
After the funeral Laura and Christine settled into a new normal. Emory and Rose begged them to come live at their house, but Laura refused.
“This is our home,” s
he said. “It’s the home Franklin made for us, and if I leave here it would be like leaving him behind. As long as we’re here, I know he’ll be watching over us.”
In an odd way this was true for despite the hard times that came to much of the country, Franklin had left them provided for. Two years earlier he’d paid off the mortgage, so the house was free and clear. With the money he’d transferred into the bank and a double indemnity life insurance policy for $5,000, they didn’t have to make a lot of lifestyle changes. It was nearly four months before Laura could sort out what they had and didn’t have, and when she finally did it was with the help of Emory.
“If you’re careful with your money, you’ll be okay,” he said, “and if things get too tight your mama and I will be here to help out.”
From the time he’d made his vow to Franklin, there was not a single day when Emory didn’t stop by to check on Laura and Christine. No matter the time, he’d pop in on his way home from work.
“You need anything fixed?” he’d ask. “Leaky faucet? Loose doorknob? Squeaky hinge?”
Emory was also the one who time and time again called Sergeant Carroll to inquire how the investigation was going.
Within days of the murder, George Feldman was identified as the shooter. The fingerprints he’d left on the doorknob confirmed it, but by then he was long gone. There was no trace of him. Flyers were sent to every state in the union, but George had vanished. He never returned to his mama’s house and, as far as they could tell, never again worked as a welder. He was a man who seemed to have no friends and no ties. There was no one to suspect of hiding him and only a handful of people to question about his possible whereabouts.
It was the height of the Depression, and like thousands of others George Feldman simply disappeared into the crowds of unemployed men living in the cardboard houses alongside railroad tracks in one town or another. Men such as that had only a first name or a nickname like Slim, Rusty or Blackie.
That first month when it still seemed possible they’d find George, Emory offered a $100 reward for information leading to his arrest but still there was nothing. On Saturdays he would drive from town to town dropping off copies of the flyers at the police stations and tacking flyers to the walls of the post offices, but in all that time there was never a single sighting of the man.
Every time Sergeant Carroll reported there was still no break in the case, Emory waited until the time was right then told Laura.
“I’m sorry,” he’d say then segue into a suggestion about one thing or another that needed to be fixed.
“There’s a loose brick in the walkway,” he’d claim and ask if it was a good day for fixing it.
On days when he could find absolutely nothing to be done, he’d drop down on the sofa and spend an hour talking about some inconsequential thing that drew Laura’s mind away from the heartache she was feeling. Every Saturday morning he mowed the lawn then sat at the kitchen table drinking coffee.
During the day Rose came. She was there most every day, and as the days turned into weeks and the weeks into months she taught Laura the things her mama had once taught her.
She’d show up with a bushel basket of peaches and say, “I was all set to make some peach jam and I got to thinking, ‘This is something I ought to teach Laura how to do.’”
They’d spend an entire day cooking and canning then deliver jars of the homemade jam to friends and neighbors.
Laura could get through the days, but the nights were almost unbearable. For hours on end she’d lie awake feeling the emptiness of her bed. At times she tried to imagine the sound of Franklin breathing or the touch of his hand. For over a month she took his bathrobe and placed it beside her in the bed because it still had the smell of his skin. On the worst nights she remembered him ashen and cold, which is how he came to her in her dreams.
When morning finally arrived, she’d wake so weary she could barely hold her eyelids open. On those days it was Christine who gave her reason for living. Although stones of sorrow weighed heavily in her heart, the love of her child enabled her to move through the day.
At times the sorrow was so huge it threatened to suffocate her. During the day she pushed it back and allowed it to surface only at night when she was alone in the room she and Franklin shared. That was the one place where there was no comfort, no hiding from the truth, no distraction to turn her thoughts away. Franklin was gone, and in her half-empty bed there could be no denying it.
* * *
A year later when Christine started kindergarten, Laura took out the camera and snapped photos of her in the new pinafore dress Rose had stitched. Click, click, click. After only three shots the roll of film in the camera whirred to the end.
That afternoon Laura dropped the film off at the drugstore to be processed. Five days later she picked up the pictures, and when she pulled them from the envelope there was Franklin smiling back at her. He was standing beside Christine as she rode the white horse on the carousel in Richmond. That afternoon of such great happiness was now a lifetime away.
Laura left the store, crossed the street and sat on the bus stop bench. One by one she went through the photos. Franklin smiling. Christine waving. The two of them laughing together. She could almost hear Franklin’s voice in her ear.
I’m still with you, he said.
For over a year she’d remembered only the sadness of losing him but seeing him like that, she began to remember the happiness of having him. That evening she built a fire in the fireplace with rolled newspapers, kindling and then the logs angled just so. It was the way Franklin did it. After the fire was lit, she cuddled beside her daughter on the sofa.
She pulled the pictures from the envelope and showed them to Christine.
“Do you remember this day?”
Christine nodded, and her mouth curled into a grin.
One by one Laura leafed through the photos, lingering over each shot, reminding her daughter of the things they’d done. How they had taken tea in the grand salon of the Algonquin Hotel. How on several occasions they’d strolled Gerard Street and browsed the shops.
“Do you remember when Daddy caught the brass ring for you?”
Christine nodded. “He gave it to me so I could ride the white horse.”
Laura smiled. “That’s right. He did it because he loves you.”
“Can he still love me even if he’s in heaven?”
“Absolutely!” Laura answered. “He still loves both of us. And do you know what he told me today?”
Christine gave a puzzled look and shook her head.
“He wants us to always remember how much he loves us.”
“Does Daddy have a telephone in heaven?”
“No telephone, but if you close your eyes and remember how good it felt when Daddy hugged you, he’ll send a thought to the inside of your head. Then you’ll be able to hear him whispering about how much he loves you.”
Christine gave a wide smile showing where her front tooth was missing.
The next day Laura took the film back to the drugstore and ordered five enlargements of her favorite shot: the one where Franklin’s face was nuzzled next to Christine’s. They were wearing the same broad grins. She bought frames for four of the pictures. One she sent to Franklin’s mama; another went to her parents. One was set on Christine’s nightstand, and the fourth was placed on the living room mantle.
The fifth unframed picture she placed in the empty spot beside her in the bed. She carefully tucked it under his pillow and kept it there for all the years of her life. On nights when the loneliness threatened to overcome her, she’d pull the picture from beneath the pillow and talk to it.
“I’m missing you terribly tonight,” she’d say, then tell him of her day. After a while she’d feel the warmth of him. He was not there, but he was somewhere close by.
Throughout that long winter, Laura lit the fireplace every night. With Christine cuddled close, she told tales of the memories she had stored in her head. She told of their wedding
day, trips to Richmond, the morning of Christine’s birth and thousands of other small moments. Although you might think after a while she’d run out of things to tell about, she never did. And so it was that Christine came to know her daddy almost as well as she would have if he’d been alive.
* * *
Although Laura was only 23 when she lost Franklin, she never fell in love again. When Rose, Emory or one of her friends suggested this fellow or that one was a gentleman worth meeting, Laura simply shook her head and said she was still in love with Franklin.
“But Franklin has been gone for well over a year,” her friend, Elaine, said once.
“He’s not gone,” Laura replied. “He’s still with me.”
And it was true. With her memories and stories Laura kept Franklin alive, not only for herself but also for Christine. Not once did she even consider dating.
William Bennett, the good-looking mailman with a friendly smile and easy-going manner, brought letters and packages to the Wilkes house six days a week. At most places he’d simply stuff the letters into the box and move on, but at Laura’s house he’d stop and ring the doorbell even on days when there was no mail.
“Nothing today,” he’d say and then stand at the door chatting about one thing or another. Laura welcomed the few minutes of distraction, and on days when it was bitter cold or blowing snow she would invite him in for a cup of coffee or just to warm himself for a few minutes. When he asked her out to dinner, though, she offered only an apology.
“I don’t date,” she said. “I hope I haven’t given you the impression that—”
“Not at all,” William said. “Not at all.”
Two weeks later on a Tuesday morning there was four inches of snow, but when William handed Laura the mail she simply thanked him and closed the door.
Piece by Piece
Beyond the Carousel Page 8