Girls of Tender Age: A Memoir Read online

  I follow Irene’s footsteps out of the store toward her home taking Sequin instead of Dart and then I come to the lot where a boat once sat on concrete blocks. The boat is gone and the house that stands there instead is thirty years newer than the rest of the houses on the street.

  I am compelled to walk through that yard and the one backing up to it from Coolidge Street. No one is about. I cross Coolidge and look at the numbers on the mailboxes. I go to Number 80 and peer down the driveway. There is no picket fence, no toolshed either.

  I walk down the driveway where Officer Proccacino parked his car and I look at the grassy area where Irene died. I mourn.

  Then I open the plastic bag of cilantro, hold it up to my face, breathe in the fragrance again, and leave, not tempted to go and check out my house at 75 Nilan Street. I thought I would, but I don’t.

  thirty-six

  THE NEXT DAY, I get the autopsy report in the mail.

  The autopsy, performed at Hartford Hospital by a pathologist named Dr. Perry Hough, begins with a list he’d typed on his Royal typewriter—a list full of typos and X-ed out misspelled words replaced with proper spellings, and drops of something. Sweat or tears, perhaps. The list describes the items of clothing taken from Irene’s body, an act that signals the beginning of an autopsy.

  red jacket with fake fur collar (small blood stain on shoulder)—label removed

  green slacks—Blue Bell, Girl’s Size medium

  yellow socks

  jersey—white with red and brown horizontal stripes, make—Flight Club, size small

  Memory cells activate. I hear Irene at the lunch table on our field trip saying, This is Fred’s old jersey I’m wearing. He gave me this, too . . . And then she fingered some sort of good-luck charm pinned to the shirt. Gail and I admire it. But I can’t remember exactly what it was.

  white undershirt, Wear-Rite Full Combed 12

  reddish-brown, Young Ann Sportmaker shoes with plaid laces

  Plaid shoelaces, all the rage. If we have new shoes they come with plaid laces. If they don’t, we beg our mothers (in my case, my father) to buy us a pair of laces and then we restring our shoes with them. Irene has plaid laces before all the other girls as a direct result of her mother’s affection for her.

  scarf—floral design of blue, yellow and white with a red border

  pink panties Wear-Rite, combed yarn, girl’s size 14, W. T. Grant Company

  green plastic change purse containing sixty-one cents; two quarters, one dime and one penny

  two brown barrettes, one pink barrette, six bobby pins

  good-luck charm, a penny set in a horseshoe, taken from shirt, secured with a safety pin

  Dr. Hough notes that it was necessary for him to cut the scarf out from where it was embedded in Irene’s neck; that her mother identified the scarf as Irene’s own; that she was told her ex-husband had agreed to identify the body; that she pointed out her husband hadn’t seen Irene since she was seven years old and that she would identify her daughter’s body. Which she did.

  ON JANUARY 17, 1954, five weeks after his crime, Robert Malm appears in court. He decides on a bench trial rather than a trial by jury. Such is almost always the choice when the testimony will include lurid details that might prejudice the jurors. Three Connecticut Supreme Court judges, who of course are professionals, will not allow lurid details to stand in the way of their seeking justice for the accused. The bench of three will both preside over Bob’s trial and decide his fate. The trio’s decision, though, does not have to be unanimous; two of the judges can find him guilty and that decision will stand. This is the trade-off.

  All trials have transcripts written by court reporters who, in the fifties, were called court stenographers. When I wrote my fifth novel, in order to develop the protagonist, I needed the transcript of O.J. Simpson’s trial. That’s when I found out that a trial transcript is copyrighted by the court reporter. The court reporter who transcribed O.J.’s trial will happily turn over a copy to whoever wants it for two dollars a page. (The transcript runs around five thousand pages so I depended on my fellow Hartfordite Dominick Dunne’s reporting instead.)

  Court reporters, if they feel like it, can sell their transcripts; donate them to a law school; or they can just file them somewhere, whereupon their heirs will eventually throw them out. The trail to the court stenographer who owned the Malm transcript runs cold immediately. He or she is not named in the court records. I am bemoaning that fact to a lawyer friend of mine, who checks out a judicial Web site for me and learns that Robert Malm appealed his verdict.

  He says, Even though the trial transcript isn’t public record, the appeal rulings are.

  I ask him, Why is that?

  He says, Who the hell knows?

  Then he explains that the appeals panel needs the testimony from the original trial. Meaning that the court reporter chronicling Malm’s trial was required to turn over that portion of the original transcript containing the testimony of the witnesses—about 90 percent of the transcript.

  thirty-seven

  THE TRANSCRIPT of Robert Malm’s appeal hearing is 434 pages long, consisting almost entirely of the original testimony. Bob pleaded not guilty to the charge of murder since he never intended to kill Irene. He claimed he panicked when she said she would tell on him and so he choked her to make her understand she was not to tell. And then she seemed to die. Bob’s spin on murdering Irene was that it was sort of an inadvertent manslaughter.

  I stare down at the appeals transcript lying on my desk, not seeing it. Instead, I am seeing myself at nine years old sitting at the kitchen table reading about the trial of Bob Malm in the Hartford Times while my father broils a porterhouse steak. I believe my father canceled the newspaper-reading ban because, what with Tyler, he had so little energy to put up with my harassment. His batteries wore down. Children are always able to sense this vulnerability in a parent.

  He knows I won’t ask him what rape is, but he also knows our lives have changed and that I will probably ask him something. My being an obedient child and not asking why I can’t go to the movies is not the same thing as asking why my friend was murdered. He is willing to deal with this.

  His back is to me in the kitchen and I say, Dad, the paper says Irene winked at him.

  He doesn’t answer. I speak very calmly: But, Dad, she didn’t wink at him.

  He says, I know.

  After a little while I say, Irene wouldn’t wink at anybody.

  Not winking didn’t have to do with her being shy. It had to do with the fact that kids did not go around winking at adults. Unimaginable.

  My father says, Mickey, I’m busy here.

  I leave him be. I don’t bring up that there have been whispers at the school yard, where I hear the words, mature for her years. I hear the word reputation on the street. But I must tread gently.

  I say, Irene wouldn’t go with him unless he made her.

  I know, Mickey.

  The paper says she went with him . . . willingly.

  My father’s back stiffens. He says, That’s his lawyer talking. You’re too young to understand.

  I don’t ask any more questions because he’s annoyed and I can’t risk his taking the newspapers away again. He cuts out the eye of the porterhouse steak and puts it in my plate, the rest of the steak on his own. We will have baked potatoes and also a special treat—my father’s friend has come up from a stay in Florida and brought fresh radishes. I now connect this gift with the bedtime story my father chose to tell me the night before, “Nanette Visits the Château.” Nanette’s favorite meal is a slice of French bread, spread with butter and topped by a layer of sliced radishes. (People will say: Where does Yutchie get these stories he tells the kids? No one knows. I know. Out of thin air.)

  At the start of our dinner, my father wields the bread knife.

  Mickey, he says, this is Italian bread, not frog. But it’s the same thing only bigger.

  He unwraps a small block of butter: And this is frog butter
, got it special.

  He spreads the frog butter on the bread. He says, The frogs don’t put any salt in their butter.

  He holds up the bunch of radishes and I watch him slice them. He lays the dazzling white, moist, red-bordered radishes on the buttered bread. He passes me Nanette’s favorite meal. Crunchy, chewy, creamy, all at once. We knock off the entire loaf of bread plus all the radishes that my father’s friend told him he should toss into his next salad. My father warns, Now leave enough room for your steak.

  But I am not able to leave room for the steak though I stuff it down anyway.

  A few evenings later while he is frying chicken wings, I say, Kathy Delaney is in the paper, Dad. She had to go to court.

  My father comes and looks over my shoulder while he breaks up a head of iceberg lettuce.

  Kathy says she didn’t know Irene was under the boat.

  He goes back to the sink to wash the lettuce leaves while I go on reading. Then I say, Kathy says she saw a boy twirling a girl.

  My father comes back again. Where does it say that?

  I point to the line. He reads it. I hear him take in a breath. I cannot picture the murderer twirling Irene. Twirling to me is dancing the polka.

  Dad, it says the courtroom was silenced by what Kathy said.

  My father sighs. Mickey, what Kathy saw was little Irene trying to get away from the man.

  And now he takes the paper away from me.

  It is Kathy Delaney—not one other person—who insinuates into the trial proceedings that Irene didn’t go willingly with Bob, that she didn’t wink at him, that she didn’t make conversation with him, that she didn’t go along with having sex with him. In fact, even though Kathy thought she was seeing Brenda and Charlie, her observation demonstrates that Irene tried to escape Bob’s clutches. Irene was in fact, tortured for half an hour as she was dragged along, shoved under a boat, pushed across backyards and down driveways, pulled over fences, hauled across streets and through hedges, all the while strangling on Bob’s hold on her scarf, as he tightened it up here, loosened it there, keeping her alive and ensnared until he finally tied his sailor’s knot.

  THE THREE-MAN judicial bench finds Robert Nelson Malm guilty of murder in the first degree just two months and twelve days after he killed Irene. Bob is sentenced to be executed. Then he is remanded to prison . . . where you shall be safely kept until the twelfth day of July 1955, whereupon the punishment of death shall be inflicted upon you.

  The day after Malm is charged and sentenced to die, he files his appeal with the Connecticut Supreme Court of Errors maintaining his innocence. When the appeal is filed, the first job of the clerk of the Superior Court is to deem Bob’s court-appointed attorney, James D. Cosgrove, of sufficient financial responsibility to pay the costs of the foregoing appeal and acknowledge being bound to the state of Connecticut in that action.

  Attorney Cosgrove is in recognizance of those costs. He writes a check for a sum of $150.

  thirty-eight

  I READ THE HUNDREDS of pages of testimony. Kathy Delaney is on the stand for over an hour. She is not allowed to sit during her testimony because she will not be visible from the defense and prosecution tables. Kathy says that on the evening of December 9 she saw a boy twirling a girl. At no point does she ever say that she thought the boy and girl were Brenda and Charlie. She says boy and girl. Incredibly, James Cosgrove doesn’t ask her in his cross if the boy and girl might have been someone other than Irene and Robert Malm.

  Bob’s lawyer exhibits tunnel vision—he focuses on Irene’s willingness to accommodate Bob and that his client had no plan to kill her. Cosgrove can save Bob from the death penalty if he can establish that his killing her was an accident—that there existed no intent.

  The final defense witness will be Bob himself. The corresponding Hartford Courant article describes Cosgrove’s frustration with Malm’s decision to take the stand. But Bob insists and such is his right. Cosgrove will do his best to lead Bob through his misfortune.

  Bob swears on the Bible that he will tell the truth.

  Cosgrove calls him Robert, as in: Well, Robert, I would like to ask you this . . .

  And so, Cosgrove, via a large map of my neighborhood set on an easel, prompts Bob to describe his trip to Fox’s; to the Allyn Street Theater; to the White Tower; and his aimless walk through city streets “in the general direction of a route to Newington.” He describes turning right onto New Britain Avenue from Hillside Avenue. He doesn’t say he stopped there in order to catch the bus back to Newington. Presumably, he meant to walk nine miles on a drizzly night growing chillier as a cold front moved in.

  Attorney Cosgrove brings him to Coolidge Street in front of St. Lawrence O’Toole’s Church.

  Q. Now, Robert, at that time were you alone?

  A. Yes, I had been alone all day.

  Q. Was anybody with you?

  A. No, up to that time after leaving New Britain Avenue I had only seen one person.

  Q. Where did you see that person?

  A. Well, I don’t know the names of the streets . . . I don’t know where he came from but it was either a soldier or a Marine. I couldn’t tell which. There was a uniform on him, that’s all I noticed. He was heading toward New Britain Avenue.

  The soldier Bob passed was in all likelihood Private John Williams, who would have made a good witness if he hadn’t been so drunk that upon reading the account of the murder became convinced he was the one who had committed it.

  Q. And as you turned onto Broadview Terrace toward Sequin Street, did you have occasion to see anybody?

  A. Well, while I was on that corner I could hear—well, I just got the idea that it was kids somewhere. I didn’t have any idea where they were. I could hear them and I started down that street and well, I don’t have any actual memory of ever noticing anybody on the street until I started to cross it. That was the first that I ever noticed anybody on the other side.

  Q. And as you started to cross the street did you see somebody?

  A. Yes.

  Q. And who was that person?

  A. Well, I didn’t—Of course, I had no way of knowing then, but I know now that it was Irene, or whatever the name is.

  Q. Did you call over to her?

  A. Well, I don’t want to give the wrong impression of her . . . but I don’t want to make it seem like the girl brought any of this on herself . . . as I was crossing the street she said Hello, so I said Hello back and walked over to her.

  Then Bob describes chatting with Irene, how she didn’t bring upon herself what was to follow, but that she was the one who approached him, not vice versa. So, so slick. He tells the court how he and Irene hid under a boat, and then he suggested they duck the crowd. So they went off to find a more private spot whereupon he led her across yards and a street, boosted her up over a fence more or less hiding from the other kids, and helped her over another fence until they got to the toolshed.

  Bob states: She said, Don’t take my clothes off here, and the word here was in there . . . After taking them—not all her clothes, but most of them—off—I am not sure whether I sat down on the ground, or whether she did first, but we both got on her coat on the ground and well, I think I kissed her a couple of times . . .

  Then I guess I had my hands on her body . . . I don’t remember anything about the panties everybody has been testifying to, but she—I remember her saying something about them, they were muddy or something . . .

  She put her slacks back on and I tried to shake out her coat a little bit for her. I helped her with her coat, and as I put it on, I tried to brush it off a little bit on the back for her. Up to that time I had never seen any scarf. She threw it around her neck and put an overhand knot in it . . .

  I had my hands on her shoulders trying to clean her coat and I don’t remember exactly what she said, but she said something about she was going to be sure and tell her mother when she got home . . .

  My hands were on her shoulders and I just grabbed hold of the two
ends of the scarf and I threw another knot in and jerked it up tight, but at the time I was kind of confused. I couldn’t tell whether she was fainting or was pulling away from me, or what. But she just fell down to the ground and I knelt down and looked at her . . .

  I got the impression she was dead. She just didn’t look right in some way—I can’t place it . . .

  I got back up and I took a couple of steps and jumped over the fence that was there and left.

  ATTORNEY COSGROVE should have stopped right there. But he will go along with his client to further demonstrate that Irene’s death was brought on by some incomprehensible phenomenon having nothing to do with his client’s intentions or actions.

  Q. Well, Robert, as of the time you met Irene on Sequin Street, when you first joined her, do you recall touching her at all?

  A. Well, it wasn’t on the street actually. When we started in off the street, as best as I can remember, I had my hand on her shoulder. It might have been her upper arm . . . I was guiding her like you do with a woman, and while we were at the boat, as I indicated to the police, when we were crouched down, I had my arm across her shoulders, and well—other than helping her across the fences and when we were running across the backyard, and when we thought the kids were coming after us again—I think it was her elbow I had hold of; it could have been some other part of her arm, but I am pretty sure it was her elbow. Outside of those times there, I had no physical contact with her at all until it was behind the shed.

  And now Cosgrove attempts to show that Bob’s ejaculation was yet one more mysterious phenomenon that he had no control over.

  Q. And while you were laying there on the ground or while you were there . . . I will withdraw that. While you and Irene were in the rear of what we now know as number 80 Coolidge Street, did you have a discharge?