A Search for Frances Mcgrath: A Memoir

Contents

Chapter One 

Chapter Two 

Chapter Three 

Chapter Four 

Chapter Five 

Chapter Six 

Chapter Seven 

Chapter Eight 

Chapter Nine 

Chapter Ten 

Chapter Eleven 

Chapter Twelve

Chapter One 

Dorchester Child

Thought Scituate

Kidnap Victim

Frances McGrath, 10,

Daughter of Former

Councilor, Disappears

Special Dispatch to the Globe

Situate, June 11—F. McGrath, 10, of Dorchester, daughter of former Boston City councilor John H. McGrath, tonight was believed the first Kidnap-victim in this shore town’s 314 year history after a day of search by police, Coast Guardsmen, Boy Scouts, and citizenry following the child’s mysterious disappearance at 9:10 last night.

After 24 hours of dragging creeks, scouring marshes, woods and fields Police Chief Michael Stewart, who directed operations, declared all possibilities but kidnap are exhausted.

Last Seen In Bowling Alleys

Last seen at a bowling alley at 9:10 p.m. last night, Frances had been to confession with two sisters, Eleanor, 16, and Nancy, 14, at St. Mary’s Church, Situate Harbor. She went to a local drugstore with them, bought an ice cream cone, stepped into the bowling alleys, then dropped out of sight.

The town fire siren announced the girl’s disappearance at 8:30 this morning, with a 141 blast meaning missing child. During the day Coast Guardsmen from the Scituate station dragged the creek from the harbor to Third Cliff, searched along a seven mile beach front, and examined more than 230 boats at anchor in the harbor.

Coast Guard auxiliaries, Boy Scouts, and scores of citizens joined in the hunt.

Frances was well-dressed, her parents, who live at 11 Richardson St., Dorchester, and summer at Peggoty Beach here, said. She wore a wool suit and beret, both of chartreuse shade yellow, brown stockings and brown loafers.

Blue-eyed with light brown hair, she had freckles and dimples, and wore her hair in two shoulder-length pigtails.

The only road to Peggoty Beach from the harbor, where she was last seen, leads through treacherous marshes, but stout fences run along both sides of the highway.

Other children of former Councilor McGrath, whose ward was 16, are Marilyn, 19, John,7, and Mary Ann, 2.

Mrs. McGrath was prostrated last night. The missing girl was a student at St. Gregory’s Parochial School in Dorchester. Her father is now a School St. Boston, real estate and insurance broker. The child was a good swimmer her parents said.

The Boston Daily Globe, Monday,

June 12, 1944

The clapboards on the back wall of the glassed-in porch are white. From where I am outside the window looking in I can see that they haven’t been painted for a while because here and there the surface of the trim is bubbled and flaking off in bits of chalky pigment. There are cobwebs between the panes of the two windows centered in the wall. The wicker couch below those windows is also white, though both the clapboards and the sofa are bluing down in the afternoon light. The air is intensely still. The bamboo wind chimes in the nearer corner are motionless. I wonder if time has stopped, if I’m sealed inside one moment. I’ve been here before, I feel that, some time in the past I can’t quite identify. It’s like I’m wandering around in a memory of a memory of a memory, one of those mirror illusions, only a continual repetition of time fragments rather than images.

The couch is there and the wind chimes. Everything precisely as designated. The child is there too, both she and I travelers converging on this speck of existence, if either of us does exist. I know I don’t want to be here. I don’t want to look at this scene. I feel like I shouldn’t be required to do this. Pressing my hands against the outside of the window glass I struggle to keep my head averted.

We’re the same age, the child on the couch and I. We’re ten years old. On my birthday, on the sixteenth, I’ll be eleven. The child on the other side of the glass will never be. That’s why I try to keep my head turned away. I hate seeing that stillness on that couch, hate knowing what happened, what’s about to happen.

The window feels cold against my palms. I want to smash it and crawl through and shake the sleeping figure until she wakes up. I want to drag her out of there, to run together until we’re too far away for anyone to catch. I want to hold hands and spin around and around—London Bridge is falling down, falling down, falling down, my fair lady…I want to play Statues. If you move even one finger you’re it. I want to tumble and laugh and share birthday cakes, dressed in party hats and dribbles of fresh made ice cream. The paper said she likes ice cream.

Get up! I shout and pound with the flats of my hands. Get up! I feel my lips move, my tongue, but the sound bounces against the glass and slides down like drops of rain.

The blanket is up over the child, across her shoulders and chin. Not far enough. I can still see the strip of white tape pressed in against her mouth. I can still see her past and the mindless sadness of her future. My own lashes are muddied with salt, tears that seem only to impose. It’s the child’s pain not mine. She is not me. I am not her.

There are changes in the light inside the windows, moments when the darkness intensifies as if someone is crossing past. And it seems there’s someone inside the doorway. I can see him in the shadows, his body only shapes of darkness, his face a disarray of grays turned away. But I know he isn’t a friend and he isn’t a brother. He’ll soon rotate inside that doorway, turn mechanically like an automaton, and walk toward us, the child hidden under the blanket and me. He’ll turn and walk toward us and the child will die, and all my nightmares will go on and on.

I try to stop him. I pound on the glass, pound against my own fear. Stop!

God! I sit bolt upright, sweat-drenched and shaking. It’s happening again, ancient terrors curdling up in my sleep, haunts that I fled from years ago. I thought all that old stuff had been defused and packed away for good. All the talking, sifting through fears and feelings, all the digging around inside my head has apparently ripped open old scars.

Vivian will love that, I think. They were festering, she’ll say. Letting in a little light is a breakthrough, she’ll say, as if remembering, reliving, re-dying is such a good thing. Put it in your safe place, she’ll say, until we can take it out and deal with it without pain. I grip the cold brass headboard. No place is that safe, I think. There’ll never be a place that safe!

The reflection of the bedside lamp in the mirror across the room is too bright. It adds intensity to the thunder rumbling just over my left eye. My cheek is beginning to twitch, that old familiar aftershock. I dangle my legs, press my feet down on the cool solid floor. Doubling at the waist, I lean my elbows on my knees, cover my face with trembling hands and begin to cry. It starts slowly, drops of moisture building on my lids—hands—cheeks, gentle at first, a comforting spring rain, cleansing and distancing until I remember. Then I cry torrentially, embarrassed at the guttural sound and the total loss of control. There’s nothing else.

I always sit on the couch along the outer wall of Vivian’s office, though I’m never satisfied that being in that position in the room works for me. For some reason that spot makes me feel I’m looking into the room rather than sitting in it. Once I casually mentioned that problem and Vivian jumped on it as if it were the most significant thing said to date. And, admittedly, there are coincidences, though that’s all, coincidences.

Vivian is interesting. Her perpetual calm often makes her seem a shadowy form mingling with all the other shadows hovering around me. Sometimes, in fact, she fades down to a point where she seems diminishingly oppressive, quite a feat considering her ample size, and enough to make me consider taking a break.

I’m fine, I say. I just need to quit all this self-indulgent bullshit and get on with my life, as if at my age I have such a lot of life left or, for that matter, anything better to do with it.

Vivian, always alert, quickly jots that information in her notebook and then looks up from under the dark fringe of hair that covers the furrows I know are crisscrossing her brow. Are you? she asks as simply as that, letting me know exactly what she considers bullshit. And she’s right. But sometimes saying, the hell with it, seems closer to survival than all the confrontational garbage sorting. I am, after all, a functional, hardworking human being. Well, maybe not entirely functional but hardworking, nonetheless, and analysis seems too much like whining—except on mornings after nights like last night when I can’t raise my cup of hot chocolate to my mouth without sloshing. And if I believed in vampires, which of course I occasionally do, I’d know I am one because my chest feels like there’s a wooden stake driven through it. My heart must have sidestepped. I have that talent.

Vivian’s room isn’t large, certainly not roomy enough to easily accommodate the grand piano and chests as well as the conversationally arranged grouping of chairs, couch and coffee table. But it suffices in a comforting way. She sits in her usual spot with her back to the bookcases. Beyond her shoulder I can read titles. I should have them all memorized considering the hours spent staring at their varicolored book spines.

I wonder if Vivian plays the piano. Even though she’s visually more like a Wagnerian contralto I imagine her sitting there, running her chunky fingers along the keys. She’d play light numbers, I think, soft running sounds.

On one shelf behind her there’s a stuffed animal, a lion perhaps, or a cat with a fluffy ruff. I decide it’s a hand puppet and imagine Vivian using it to communicate with reluctant children. Now tell Mister Lion what did the bad man do to you?

He raped me, Mister Lion, and strangled me, and buried me in the woods. That’s what the child in my nightmare would say. How do you feel about that, Mister Lion?

I have to get my head together, get my whole life together. Damn Vivian. She must have a hard time keeping her satisfaction from showing, I think, and know that’s definitely in my head. It has nothing really to do with Vivian. As a matter of fact, it’s a stupid thought. She’s a totally feeling person. I know that, but I fantasize about what she would say if she weren’t so straight and practicing such professional detachment. Thought you could survive without me, did you? Tough luck! Or something even more celebrational—Hello Annie! Yes, hello, Annie! It’s so nice to have you back where you belong. You look like hell, Annie! You’re not well, Annie! You’re not smiling, you’re not sleeping, you’re not going strong…

But Vivian, of course, doesn’t say anything at all. I’m sure she doesn’t even think it. She just closes the double doors to insure our privacy. Then she presses her opulence into the facing chair and leans in to pour herself coffee from a carafe on the table.

For you? she asks.

Nothing, thanks. I’m wired enough.

Tell me about it. She adds cream and leans back and stirs, the spoon making a soothing, scraping sound against the inside of the cup. I try to think of what that sound means to me. Everything means something. I live in a world that demands that constant interpretation. Even the trees hover like skinny Vivians, like swaying patient specters. She would love that thought, I’m sure. She could add another patio or wing onto her house courtesy of my peculiar world. The truth is, I don’t pay

her enough to add one concrete step let alone a patio, and I seem to thrive these days on her unruffled strength.

Are you sure I can’t get you something?

Nothing, I repeat. I had a bad dream. You know I never dream, or at least, except for a few times I’ve already mentioned, I never remember them. I think I just don’t let myself. Dream, I mean.

Would you like to tell me about it?

I’m shaky—afraid to sleep. Stupid isn’t it?

Vivian makes notes. Not stupid. The mind knows what it can handle and what it can’t.

Right now it can’t handle anything. I thought… God, what did I think?

What did you think? she urges.

I thought all of this was dealt with, that it was old hat. God knows I’ve spent half my life retelling that experience. I certainly haven’t hidden it in the back of my psyche anywhere. I don’t know why it’s become so damned confrontational right now.

What’s been going on, Annie?

What do you mean, going on? Nothing. You know my life.

I do know your life. What’s been going on, Annie?

I thought everything was fine. A little stressed with the job thing. A little social envy. I manage to laugh.

Tell me about the dream.

The dream. I take a breath. I was there looking through the window of that porch, the same scene. My God, Vivian, how many times have I talked about it? I think my brain is a cracked record. The needle keeps slipping back into the same groove.

What does that feel like?

You always ask questions like that. You really like pushing me to the edge. I know that isn’t true. I’m being bitchy again. I’m angry and acting like Vivian is the bad guy. No, maybe it is true, a method she uses to get to the core of things. I feel lousy. It’s scary as hell. I feel like I’ll end up a raving, sleep deprived lunatic or a Zombie.

Why do you think this is all resurfacing?

I don’t know why! Because I sassed my mother? That would be a treat, these days. I haven’t had a conversation with my mother for two years. She always was like one of those angel/demon cherubs hovering just beyond the edges of my life. Or maybe God just likes to see me squirm, an extended test.

The sarcasm is wasted on Vivian. I sense she has an ability to filter all the deeper meanings out, discarding all the apron wringing crap.

That last thought doesn’t even sound like me. I’m really not that tough. I need to lighten up. I think it’s because I’ve been seeing you, I say as straightforward as I can. And digging into all that old stuff.

Maybe you even have it backward.

You mean I’ve been seeing you because…

…There’s stuff there that needs resolving.

I suppose, I answer, weary of the jargon. Lives are like that. I just don’t see how that incident needs any more attention at all. I’ve already given it an immeasurable amount of time, especially since I seem to have based half of everything I believe on that one experience. If I get any closer I’ll be reliving it, and what’ll that change? Would that little girl suddenly be alive, as if the things that had happened to her never happened at all? Would she be sixty-nine years old with half a dozen kids and a dozen grandchildren, and great grandchildren—a super matriarch?

Maybe, Vivian replies.

Trust me, she wouldn’t! I sit fully upright, stretch my shoulders and back. Sometimes I think I can walk around in Vivian’s head. The child on the porch is not me, Vivian, I say.

She smiles this time and I’m not sure. Tell me the whole thing again, she requests.

I walked down along the beach to the post office.

Were you alone?

There it is, the crux, at least for me in the retelling. The question is exactly how honest I need to be, and if I am will anyone actually believe me. I know my mother never did, and I suppose no one else did either. It seems believing me when I mention Caron has always been hard for people, especially my mother.

Of course working with Vivian will be wasted effort unless I’m completely candid. And she’s already dealt with Caron. She doesn’t even try to push my buttons where he’s concerned. And he definitely was there on that walk along the beach.

Some kids have invisible playmates. Caron was my companion when I was a kid only he wasn’t exactly a playmate. He was more like a mentor or a guide who’s protected me since I was a toddler and fell into a pool of water in a wooded area by my childhood home. That accident affected me in several ways. One, it triggered an out-of-body experience—oxygen deprivation some people would say. And, even more important, it gave me Caron. Only when I was a kid he didn’t have a name. He was just my friend.

I think about the day when I first went to look through those windows on that porch, that event that’s been haunting me ever since. A child was missing. I don’t even remember her name. 1944 was a long time ago and I was just a kid. All the hoopla in the papers, on the radio. I even remember seeing the child’s face and the sheriff on television that day. Don’t ask me how I remember that. The fact is, if there was television in 1944, and there was, it wasn’t used in homes until about 1946. I’ll need to figure that one out.

My parents left me home while they made a visit to my grandmother that afternoon. I’m still not clear why I was left home. I had always believed it was to keep an eye on my kid brother who was just a baby then, but I’ll need to check that out too. I was only ten but more than moderately dependable, and bright—a fact to which Vivian alludes periodically as though that might explain all things.

That day I had settled in the dining room for the duration of my parents’ absence. I had propped pillows behind my back to lean more comfortably against the wall below the dining room windows, and stacked toast on a saucer beside me. That way I could read and snack without anyone creeping around outside seeing me. I didn’t usually hide in my own house like that. In fact, I was a very aggressive youngster in most situations. But all the talk about missing little girls and possible ‘sex fiends’ had taken its toll. I had no idea what it was that caused sex fiends to kidnap little girls or what they did to them once they managed to get one. In those days, fifty years ago, adults muted their voices no matter what the subject when kids were in the vicinity.

The child had disappeared a day and a half earlier. She had been going home from church and then simply was gone. Everyone was looking, the Boy Scouts, the State Guard, the Coast Guard, everyone. I remember she lived in a small town near my own. She was the only thing we heard or thought about. Stay away from strangers! we were told. Don’t go out after dark! If a car pulls up, run!

What would you do, we kids asked each other. I’d bite him, one of my classmates offered. My mother gave me this hatpin, another child showed us. Anyone bothers me, I’ll stick them good. She was Irish. All Irish mothers had hatpins to hold their hats and veils on when they went to mass.

The missing girl was Catholic too, a fact I read in the paper. In fact, she had been to confession. I wondered if her mother had a hatpin, if she had given one to her daughter to hold on her hat. I knew that was dumb even as I thought it. Kids don’t run around all the