Shot in the Heart by Mikal Gilmore Page A

said. “That would be fine.”
    S O B ESSIE WENT WITH F RANK TO S ACRAMENTO , 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,”