Defiant Heart (5 page)

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The soft glow of twilight illuminated Elm Street as Marvella Wilson approached the house. She had opted to take a walk after dinner.

As usual, Claire dominated her thoughts.

Claire. Her miracle.

After two miscarriages, the doctors had said Marvella would never be able to carry a child to term. Then, against the odds, she’d had the little boy. The poor thing hadn’t lasted two hours. Always just “the little boy.” He never had a name. She and Ernest couldn’t bring themselves to give him one. It was just too hard.

They’d resigned themselves to being childless, so it came as a shock when, two weeks shy of Marvella’s fortieth birthday, old Doc Anderson announced, with more than just a little concern, that she was pregnant once again. It posed a terrible risk to her health, and Doc Anderson hinted at alternatives. But she and Ernest desperately wanted a child. And seven and a half months later, to the surprise of everyone, Claire came bounding into their world, vibrant, full of life, mischievous, curious, irrepressibly happy. A true blessing. Claire made up for all the pain, all the longing. She was a gift from God. She lifted the clouds and brought the sunshine.

And that man had no right to take her.

It was in the summer of 1919. Or was it 1920? So many years ago, now. Claire, a young woman, yes, but still a child in Marvella’s eyes, had been anxious to get out and “see the world.” Ernest, rest his soul, agreed that it might be a good thing for Claire to experience life outside of Jackson.

“She won’t be happy until she does,” he pointed out, always so pragmatic. “You know how she is. If we don’t let her go, she’s liable to up and go on her own.”

Of course, Ernest had been right. So, while Marvella argued against it, in her heart she’d known it was no use.

It was decided. Claire was to stay with Ernest’s cousin, Nancy. Widowed when her husband, who had shipped out to France with the 79th Infantry Division, had failed to return from the Argonne Forest, Nancy had converted her home on the south side of Chicago into a boarding house. She reported that there were jobs to be had at the Mercantile Exchange where two of her boarders were employed.

Claire had worked hard on her shorthand, and had spent hours on the old Munson typewriter that Ernest had found and restored. Countless evenings, after Marvella and Ernest went to bed, Claire sat at the dining room table banging away at the keys, the click-clacking producing a surprisingly comforting lullaby to which she and Ernest would nod off.

And so it was that, over twenty years ago now, Claire bid her goodbyes and boarded the train for Hammond, with connections to Chicago. Marvella’s last image of Claire had been a beaming face in the frame of the Pullman window, eyes bright with excitement and anticipation of the journey ahead.

Claire was a good correspondent, her letters full of details. On the weekends, Claire and her new friends would go to the White City Amusement Park, or they would hop the “L” and take it into the city. Or they would cram into a convertible owned by the brother of one of the other residents and head off to Clarendon or Wilson Avenue Beach. Each day brought new adventures, which Claire recounted with relish.

After a few weeks, references to “Frank” began to appear in the pages of Claire’s letters. Claire was effusive in her descriptions. Frank was so smart. Frank was so handsome. Frank was so witty. You should have heard Frank go on the other night.

“Who is this fellow Frank?” she asked Ernest one morning, peering over the pages of the letter that she was reading for the third time since it had arrived the afternoon before.

Ernest, who never spoke without first gathering his thoughts, paused in mid-bite, then deliberately finished chewing and swallowing his food before responding.

“Sounds to me like Claire’s got a beau,” he said in his laconic Midwestern drawl. “Don’t see anything wrong with that.”

“But do you think it’s proper for her to be running around Chicago with a man we’ve never met? And unchaperoned at that?”

With the hint of a smile tickling the corners of his mouth, Ernest raised one eyebrow and said, “Well, now, I don’t seem to recall you being too concerned about chaperones when you and I were courting. And, if I’m not mistaken, you were younger than Claire is now.”

Looking at him teasing her, with that twinkle in his eye, she softened for a moment. But then she raised her chin and squared her shoulders.

“That doesn’t change anything. I know you. I don’t know this Frank person. I think we have a right to be concerned.”

“We?”

“Yes. Our daughter…
your
daughter, is gallivanting around the city with a man we know nothing about. We’ve never met him. We don’t know anything about his family. He could be married, for heaven’s sake.”

Ernest looked at her for a moment, then nodded with exaggerated solemnity. “If it’s gotten to the point that gallivanting is involved…”

“Ernest.”

He knew that tone and raised his hands in mock surrender.

“I’ll send a wire to Nancy and ask her if she can tell us something about this gentleman.”

The letter from Nancy arrived a week later. As Ernest handed her the envelope, she saw that it had been opened. She looked closely at Ernest’s face to see if it betrayed any emotion, but he was as unreadable as always.

She carried the envelope into the parlor, sat, and retrieved the single sheet of paper.

“Dear Ernie and Marvella,” Nancy began. “I hope this letter finds you well. Words cannot express what a joy it has been having Claire here. She is a wonderful young woman, and you have every right to be proud of her.

“You have asked about Frank. He and Claire have become quite close, and they make a handsome couple. Now, because you have inquired, I feel it is my duty to be as forthcoming as I can. First, let me tell you that Frank is an extremely polite young man. He is quiet at first, but when he lets his guard down, he can be very funny. He is intelligent without being overbearing. He has been studying law in New York, and I understand he has only one more semester before he will graduate. About his family, I don’t know much. His sister, Rachel, has been a boarder with me for the past two years, and I have had no complaints with her.

“Now,” she continued, “I will tell you one thing that you must know. I mention this not because I find it to be an issue myself, but only because I think you would consider it important and would want to know.”

Marvella felt a chill, and her grip on the page tightened.

“Frank is of the Semitic race. You would not know it to look at him. His features are a little dark, but he appears normal to me. His sister, by the way, is quite fair, and I had no idea she was a Jewess until she mentioned it last Christmas. Now, as I say, I have no objections to this type of thing. But I know that it can be a problem for others…”

She allowed the letter to fall into her lap.

After a moment, Ernest crossed the room and gently retrieved the sheet of paper. Taking a seat across from her on the divan, he fixed her with a level gaze. They sat that way for at least a minute, neither saying anything, the stillness broken only by the rhythmic tick-tock of the pendulum clock.

Ernest cleared his throat, but, before he could speak, she interjected.

“Don’t you start with me, Ernest Wilson. You know that Jew murdered my father and stole his farm.”

Ernest sighed and looked away for a moment. When he looked back, there was a sadness in his eyes.

“Nobody murdered your father. He died in his sleep.”

“He died because of what that man did to him.”

She and Ernest had been married for less than a year when they learned that her father had borrowed money from a man named Goldman. To secure repayment, her father had pledged his farm as collateral. When Goldman foreclosed on the mortgage, it left her father homeless. A broken man, he died just six months later.

“Your father didn’t have to take out that loan,” Earnest said, softly. “It was his choice. Then we had three straight drought years. Who could have predicted that?”

“He was an honest man. He would have paid it back.”

Nodding, Ernest said, “He was an honest man. And yes, I believe he would have moved heaven and earth to pay it back. But Mr. Goldman was being threatened with foreclosure on his own farm. He was within his rights…”

“No! That farm was my father’s life. And that man took it from him.”

Ernest ran a calloused hand through his graying hair, then rubbed his chin.

“Ok,” he said, in a placating tone. “That’s in the past. Let’s focus on now.”

“Yes, let’s,” Marvella said. “We need to nip this thing in the bud. I will not have Claire consorting with Jews. She’s a good girl.”

She looked at Ernest, sitting there on the divan, elbows on his knees, a sad expression on his face. Ernest. Always so forgiving. So trusting. Bless his heart, sometimes so foolish.

“I didn’t make the world the way it is,” she said with finality, closing off the conversation. “I’ll do what I have to do to protect my daughter.”

That evening, she had written to Claire. She had not minced words. Marvella was not one to do that. Claire was to stop seeing Frank. She had a reputation to maintain. It was for Claire’s own good. The issue was not open for discussion. If Claire refused, she would no longer be welcome in Marvella’s home. She would no longer be her daughter.

There had been no reply from Claire.

Claire and Frank had been married and living in New York for a year before Marvella learned of it. She’d suspected both, but had no details and had sought none. She’d known that Ernest kept in touch with them. That couldn’t be helped. But he’d known better than to speak of it.

In October 1929, just days before the crash that marked the beginning of the Great Depression, Ernest had boarded a train for New York. He told Marvella he was going to visit an old relative from his side of the family who was ill, and she allowed that fiction to go unchallenged. He returned a month later with first hand stories of chaos and panic on Wall Street and in the other cities where the train had stopped and taken on passengers.

On his first night back, Ernest went into the basement and retrieved the bottle of Jack Daniel’s that he had hidden years before on the eve of Prohibition. As he carried it out to his workshop, he said to her, “You should know that you have two beautiful grandsons.”

By the morning, the bottle was empty, and Ernest had nothing more to say about New York.

In early 1934, Ernest began experiencing chest pains. Marvella accompanied him to the regional hospital in Terre Haute, where they saw a heart specialist who gave them the bad news. Always able to fix everything, Ernest had finally found something he couldn’t repair. On the evening of February first, Ernest went to bed, and, in the morning, he did not wake up.

With Ernest gone, there had been a terrible emptiness in Marvella’s life. Though she tried hard not to dwell on it, Claire was never far from her thoughts. How, she would ask herself, could that man have taken her daughter and left her now so utterly alone?

Indeed, that had been the very question she was asking herself on the morning the telegram arrived. The message had been to the point: “Regret to report on 5 May Frank Claire and Sanford Meyer killed in automobile crash Glen Cove stop Request you contact Nassau County Police re Jonathon Meyer.”

She had sought the assistance of Tom Anderson, old Doc Anderson’s son, and the lawyer who’d helped put their affairs in order before Ernest had died. Anderson tracked down the details regarding the accident that had taken the lives of Marvella’s daughter, son-in-law and eldest grandchild. Her other grandchild, sixteen-year-old Jonathon Meyer, had been the only one to survive the crash.

“You are his only living relative,” Anderson had explained to her. “Perhaps,” he had said gently, “you should take responsibility for the boy.”

They’d been sitting around her dining room table. Reverend Mayfield had accompanied Anderson to lend support.

“That can’t be,” she said. “What about Frank’s family? I know he has a sister.”

Consulting his notes, Anderson said, “He had a sister. Rachel Meyer. Unfortunately, she died of tuberculosis in 1925. His parents are also both deceased.”

She sat back, contemplating a spot on the far wall.

“I can’t do it,” she announced after a moment. “Look at me. I’m eighty years old.”

“Marvella, you’re the most spry eighty-year-old I’ve ever known,” Reverend Mayfield said. “We’re not talking about something that’s going to last forever. The boy will be an adult soon enough. He just needs a guardian for a couple of years.”

Turning toward him, she said, “There’s more to it than that.”

“What is it?” he asked, cocking his head.

Suddenly, she had trouble meeting the reverend’s eyes. Unable to find the words to explain her unwillingness to take in the young man, she allowed the question to hang there. And now, on this fine summer evening, it was still hanging there, unanswered.

Today, for the first time since his arrival in Jackson, her grandson had missed the evening meal. She wasn’t exactly sure how to feel about that.

On the one hand, of course, she was put out that she’d made a meal for the boy, and he had not told her he wouldn’t be eating with her. That was simply rude. But, she had to admit, it was also unusual. Say what she would about everything else, he had generally made an effort to be polite.

On the other hand, though, at least for one evening, she had been spared the discomfiting silence and the awkward role playing that accompanied their meals together. Yet, even that was oddly unsatisfying, and it troubled her in a way that she could not readily identify.

She reached the stoop and slowly climbed the steps to the front porch, pausing at the top. She seemed a little more tired these days. Simple activities took a toll that she didn’t remember. Must be the heat, she decided.

As she entered the kitchen, she noticed an envelope on the counter. Looking inside, she saw that it contained money, a little over eight dollars. She turned the envelope over in her hands. It had no writing, and there was no accompanying note.