The Rhoades family (Jocelyn’s foster/adoptive parents) presumably had a whole house, but that building was torn down a while back and there is a large community center in the place where several homes used to be. Suzanne’s building is still there. It’s a three-story simple apartment building, constructed in 1918. Each apartment would be about 650 square feet. Not a bad size for a single mother back in 1950. But the walk from the Rhoades family’s house to Suzanne’s down the block and across that wide street would not have been easy for a two-year-old. A more likely explanation is that Suzanne kept in contact with the adoptive parents of her daughter, and during Suzanne’s divorce from L. Harry Chappington, they found a nearby apartment where she could live. And the fact is that Jocelyn was much closer during her life to Suzanne than to Louisa.
Another person in the Rhoades family Suzanne talked about a lot was Carlotta Rhoades, whom Suzanne brought up at least three times, the woman who had been her best friend since Sue was 16, and for many years after. Carlotta was white and married Frank Rhoades, who was black, and they were related to Jocelyn. Claudia and Norman Rhoades adopted Jocelyn as a child and brought her into the family that had Frank as a 15-year-old son. It occurred to me that perhaps Frank was the father and that’s how Suzanne found the family, but I was never able to confirm that. I tried for months to track down Carlotta. Suzanne had thought she had perhaps moved to California. When I located another of Jocelyn’s relatives, he told me Carlotta had divorced Frank, moved to California, then died some years ago.
How was it Carlotta became a close friend when Suzanne (who was still Elmira) was in high school, in such a small town far away from Madison? I asked Suzanne if she met Carlotta in Boscobel? No, in Madison, Sue asserted. I tried to ask more about how she could have met Carlotta. Boscobel was a two-hour drive on narrow roads to Madison. How was a 16-year-old to travel there by herself? I think Suzanne realized at that moment she had told me too much. She and I had never talked about her being the actual birth mother of Jocelyn, but she had certainly told me many times about her “daughter.” After the gaffe about Carlotta, she looked at me funny and stammered a bit, knowing she had goofed. By telling me her friendship with Carlotta Rhoades started at age 16, she had essentially just admitted to the birth. How else in the world would those two find each other, especially considering Carlotta was four years younger? How do you explain a 16-year-old from the hinterlands of Boscobel becoming BFF with a 12-year-old in Madison?
Suzanne had told me that she lived with another family in order to attend high school in Boscobel. But maybe she was sent away to give birth. I tried several avenues to find Jocelyn’s birth certificate, but was unsuccessful.
* * *
Then I remembered that Suzanne had called me up one day in Madison, when I was nineteen. I remember the exact day and where I was sitting on my bed in the psych ward when they came to tell me there was a phone call. I’d been seeing a psychiatrist for several months, and it was the first time in my life that I was aware of my deep feelings and all the turbulence that was buried inside my psyche. I know that sounds impossible, but when you grow up in an alcoholic house with domestic violence and your only salvation from beatings is to keep your mouth shut, you learn to stuff your feelings. Working with the psychiatrist helped me begin to unlock emotions that had been crushed and exiled for nineteen years. One day it was so overwhelming that my doctor and I decided it would be good for me to spend some time in the hospital. Three days after I was admitted, the call came and I went to the beige wall phone in the hallway, just outside the room I shared with a willowy woman who believed she was Jesus Christ. There was Suzanne, calling me when I was struggling with my own sense of self and the dysfunctional dynamics of my family. To agree to admission to a psych unit meant I was pretty desperate to find a way to exist and perhaps succeed in the world.
And what does Suzanne want to say to me? “How are you doing, Dorothy? Just to let you know, I’ve struggled with emotional issues for years?” Nothing of the sort. She announced that my mother had had an illegitimate baby during high school, which is why she never graduated. The son’s name was Bob. I stood there with my jaw gaping, as Suzanne went on about how my mother’s aunt Lilly had adopted Bob and raised him as her own. So I had a half brother I not only had never met, but didn’t even know existed. A few weeks later I checked with my grandmother and my brother, who both knew about Bob, who evidently hated my mother for giving him up. My grandmother, ever wise, told me to wait until my mother died before I tried to contact him, because it would cause my mother too much pain.
Why did Suzanne feel it her obligation, even her right, to impart such sensitive information to me? And why at that moment? She’d been with my uncle about five years by this time, and I’d been to their house countless weekends. Why choose a time I was at my most defenseless?
* * *
And so many years later, in a circular fashion, as a train whisked me from Washington, DC, back to New York, I tried to figure out if Suzanne had an illegitimate child while she was in high school. When I called Shannon to tell her what I’d found out about Jocelyn, she was, like me, incredulous—and thinking there was some mistake, or other explanation. Then I sent her the online links and she got it.
“You can’t make up this shit,” I said, thinking back to one of my writer friends, who advised me not to look up what actually happened, but rather to use my imagination.
“You’re right, Dorothy,” Shannon replied. “You can’t make up this shit.” And that became our motto from that time on, because the story kept getting weirder.
CHAPTER SIX
Organizational Chart #1
As I continued researching Suzanne and her various husbands, children, and assorted relatives, I found myself losing track of important details. Which husband was the doctoral student? Whose father was he? How many times did husband number one remarry? What were Suzanne’s brothers’ names? When was her second divorce? Her third?
In order to minimize the confusion, I developed a time line that started with Vernie and Suzanne’s births, in 1926 and 1928 respectively, up to the present. Suzanne’s history on its own was fascinating. Turned out she was born in Millville, Wisconsin, as Elmira Irene Brandon, which is obviously the reason why her daughter was now Louisa Elmira. But somewhere between her marriage to Mr. Chappington, when she was barely eighteen years old with one semester at the University of Wisconsin, and her divorce from him less than four years later (for “cruel and inhumane treatment”), she changed her first name to “Suzi” or more formally “Suzanne.” Daughter Louisa was born October 20, 1948. Then exactly one year after the divorce, the newspapers announced her “betrothment” to John M. Briggs, doctoral student. Two months later they were married. Son David was born January 11, 1953, and the divorce was granted in 1958 in Juárez, Mexico. At least the second marriage lasted a little longer than the first one. On June 27, 1959, she got married for the third time, to the father of her youngest son. And it wasn’t just the complicated marriages—I was collapsing under the weight of data from the endless certificates of birth, marriage, divorce, and death, and the countless real estate transactions I had gathered. I needed something more.
I needed some mechanism to compile the endless, complicated information and relationships. Yes, a spreadsheet (see table below).
Before I found many documents, there was some confusion about when Vernie and Suzanne started their affair. David had changed the narrative from Vernie being in their lives from ten years to seven, which seemed to negate Danny being Vernie’s natural child. I would affirm later from Louisa that she knew of their affair in 1962. And I also learned from two former colleagues at the Beloit Police Department that Vernie had resigned in 1962 because of some explosive family “impropriety,” which agreed with whispers I’d heard as a teenager that he was forced to leave his job because of an affair.
(Elmira) Suzanne Brandon Chappington Briggs Gast Stordock Aaronson’s Marriages
Suzanne’s marriage t
o Date of marriage Children born
L. Harry Chappington March 29, 1947 Louisa Elmira Chappington, October 20, 1948
John M. Briggs April 16, 1952 David John Briggs, January 11, 1953
Irving B. Gast June 27, 1959 Daniel Stuart Gast, September 16, 1960
La Verne G. Stordock No Wisconsin marriage record (see p.332) Vernie adopted Daniel Stuart Gast, date uncertain due to sealed adoption records
Ronald Myer Aaronson August 29, 1983 None; Ronald had 2 grown children from first of his three marriages
Shannon and I talked again when she was in Los Angeles visiting her mother. Our conversation was brief, which wasn’t normal. Several hours later I got an e-mail:
I am curious about this timing but did not want to ask because I am at Mother’s house and she was listening. She asked me why I keep pursuing this. “Just let it be,” she said. “It’s all in the past.”
Shannon, who loved her mother fiercely and drove all the way from Eugene, Oregon, to Los Angeles every two months to be with her, looked at the elderly but still beautiful Jenylle and said, “He was my father, and no one can take that away.”
Mother said nothing and just walked away.
An affair fifty years ago. A murder forty-five years back. How is it that those long-ago acts still keep us from moving in ways we might have otherwise?
CHAPTER SEVEN
Shannon’s Road Trips
Vernie was indeed Shannon’s father, but the last few visits with him were not the kind anyone wants to look back on as the last connections. Instead they were the kind of interactions that stick in your memory like toast crumbs in honey. She told me in great detail about the family vacation they took in the spring of 1962, when she was fourteen, on a road trip to Texas to visit Uncle Don at one of his army assignments. It would be almost a year before she figured out why this family holiday turned out to be so unpleasant. The affair with Suzanne had already begun.
During the long trip Shannon wore her green plaid dress, with the bow at her collarbone, and sat in the backseat of the Chevy Bel Air red-and-white convertible, writing down the names of the states she spotted on license plates as they sped down the highways, and holding tight to the papers so they wouldn’t blow away. Each night at the hotel she’d unfold a four-by-five-foot map and make color-coded markings to show the change in percentage of out-of-state cars as they drove from Wisconsin to Texas.
“Look at how beautiful the apple blossoms are, darling,” her mother, ever gentle with the dark, wavy hair and that one strand of premature gray on the right side, said on the first day. She liked to comment on nature. Vernie just stared ahead at the endless road, which, by the time they were in Illinois, was flatter than a calico ribbon ironed hot. By the time Shannon had counted twenty-four state license plates, Jenylle had noted the geese flying north, farmers out plowing up their land, and several new houses being built where there used to be soybean fields.
“Jenylle, I can see all that without your help,” Vernie said in a way that made him seem to be controlling his emotions. Jenylle’s eyes looked down at nothing in particular, and it seemed as if she’d fallen off a wall and gotten the wind taken out of her, because she just took a few deep breaths and said quietly, “I’m just making conversation, Vernie.”
Her father said nothing, and neither of them talked much the rest of the way. Shannon didn’t remember them being like this before, ever. She was just a teenager and understandably didn’t comprehend how relationships are so fragile and how feelings can stay suppressed until they burst out and hurt a lot of people. All she knew then was that something had changed. Vernie and Jenylle didn’t have that easy way anymore. He wasn’t laughing and teasing her, and she didn’t pretend she wanted him to stop. He wasn’t singing “You Are My Sunshine” endlessly, until she laughingly begged him to switch to another song, as she took her left hand and lovingly stroked the right side of his head, the part that would get shot off eight years later.
Shannon says now that the Bel Air was her favorite car. Perhaps because it was the last vehicle they all rode in together, as a family.
* * *
Some months after the trip to Texas, Vernie left the police department and began doing consulting in Madison. In January 1963 he took the job at the Wisconsin Office of the Attorney General in Madison and he was only occasionally in Beloit. So Shannon was thrilled that he asked to take her to Madison one weekend in early 1964. At last, a chance to spend time with her father, whom she adored and missed terribly. What would they do? She kept wondering, and she imagined he had some great surprise in store. Maybe he’d take her inside the immense white marble Capitol Building, or ice-skating on the lake. He definitely was trying to make up for the awkward trip to Texas. She was sure of it. Next he’d make it up to Jenylle. After all, hadn’t all the relatives said, as far back as she could remember, what a great marriage her parents had, and how their house felt just like the Andersons’ in Father Knows Best on TV?
As the car drove down Highway 14, she looked over at her father, who was in his casual attire and that easy grin he did so well. Just then, Shannon noticed a green sign announcing STOUGHTON, WISCONSIN: HOME OF THE COFFEE BREAK, which, back when she was a teenager, didn’t mean much to her, except they were close to Madison.
“Mother showed me your report card,” Vernie said, looking over at her as they entered the outskirts of Madison. “Your grades are good, but you could try a little harder in math,” he said as he pulled on her hair, which she pretended to get upset with, and he egged her on more. See, he was back to his old self and everything would be just like it used to be, she thought.
“An A-minus is a perfectly acceptable grade in geometry,” she responded with a smile to let him know she was in on the teasing.
“Oh, sorry, if I thought it was such highfalutin math, I wouldn’t have said anything.” He let go of her hair, but he tried to tickle her and get her to laugh. Maybe he didn’t realize she wasn’t ten years old anymore, but Shannon didn’t care, just as long as she had her father back.
“Okay. I’m proud of my daughter. So shoot me!” he said with his famous Jerry Lewis grin. At the time neither one of them knew how prophetic that statement would turn out to be.
Vernie pulled into a Howard Johnson’s parking lot and they had the Friday Fish Fry, plus some of the restaurant’s twenty-eight flavors of ice cream; Shannon was feeling pretty good. That is, until Vernie got her suitcase out of the trunk and led her to one of the motel rooms. Were they staying here? she wondered. Where was his suitcase? He opened the door to room 32-B and led Shannon inside, turning on the lights and showing her where the solitary bathroom and lonely towels were, and how to work the TV.
“But, Father, w-what . . . w-where . . . ?” she stammered. It was completely out of character for him to just dump her someplace. Why wasn’t he taking her to his apartment? He told Shannon he’d be back at eight in the morning; then he looked at her with the same stare as when she was in the hospital having her appendix out, as if he was never going to see her again. She spent the night alone and confused, barely able to sleep. Who was this man who looked like her father?
* * *
“Princess!” he shouted through the door the next day at 7:58 A.M. He knocked as if Shannon were two hundred feet away and could barely hear. She pulled the door handle and there he was, smiling and hugging her until she thought he would crush her. “C’mon, I’m gonna take you for your favorite pancakes and then I’ve got a surprise for you.”
“What surprise?” she asked. She smelled the Old Spice he used after shaving. She wondered if her mother missed that aroma, too.
“If I tell you, knucklehead,” he said while he picked up her suitcase and led her to the car, “it wouldn’t be a secret, now, would it?” Then she saw that smile, the one that always made her heart expand, the smile that was him, filled with so much joy and love and hope. Maybe he had found a house for the three of them in Madison, so they’d all be together again. That must be the surprise. She
was sure.
After the most delicious plate of chocolate chip pancakes she’d ever tasted, Vernie started driving out of town. Okay, she thought, so they’d be in a suburb or something.
“You’re gonna love this place, Princess. Really love it.” He was talking a mile a minute as he pulled out a cigarette and almost dropped it before he could light it. Why was he so nervous? Then they suddenly went from endless dried-up cornfields, with the brown stubs of the stalks sticking out here and there under the snow, to a small town with a sign that read OREGON, WISCONSIN, POPULATION 4,302. They were traveling down Main Street and Shannon saw one gorgeous old Victorian home after another. She wasn’t sure if Mother loved these old homes, but thought she would get used to it, and make it as wonderful a place to live as they had in Beloit.
“This village was settled in the 1840s, and there’s so many wonderful houses here. It’s beautiful—and away from all the hubbub of Madison,” her father said, pulling into the driveway of an unusually enormous mansion.
She was about to ask if Mother had seen this yet, as such a house might be too much for her. Their house in Beloit was a ranch-style home with three bedrooms and one bath, all on one floor, and Shannon knew how fastidious her mother was about having everything in the correct place. The house Vernie was showing her looked like it had at least six bedrooms, with three stories and a huge cellar with a big bulkhead door, the kind from The Wizard of Oz, where they had to go underground before the cyclone hit. Just when she was going to ask him where her bedroom was, he jumped out, ran around the other side of the car, and opened Shannon’s door, escorting her to the back porch.
As they got to the top step, there was a thin woman, with a blond beehive hairdo, inside. She was dressed in a red cashmere sweater and pencil skirt, with high-heeled shoes and had a strange faraway look in her eyes. This was probably the owner of the house they were about to buy.
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