Kitty Genovese: A True Account of a Public Murder and Its Private Consequences (9 page)

No matter how hard he tried to remain a neutral peacemaker in his parents’ quarrels, no matter how much he did to show his love for both of them, helping out every night at his father’s repair shop or building a room for his mother in his own home, peace never settled upon the complicated union of Alphonso and Fannie Moseley. There were lulls in the drama, but these were temporary—brief respites heavy with an undercurrent of dread anticipation of the next blowout. There seemed to be no shelter from these tempests spawned by Al and Fannie, least of all for their son. Even in periods of relative calm, he knew full well it was only a matter of time before he’d once again be thrown asunder by the next parental cyclone sure to come whipping through.

Winston did not have the personality to lay down the law with his parents or extricate himself from their grasp, much as he may secretly have wished to. It was as if he, and now Bettye too, lived in a familial tornado alley with no means of escape.

Bettye certainly would have preferred to stay out of her in-laws’ marital discord, but it really wasn’t possible at times when her father-in-law was driving slowly back and forth in front of the house, waiting for his wife to emerge so he could confront her. Or with her mother-in-law hounding her husband, complaining to him that his father had once again brandished a gun, threatening to kill Fannie
and
her boyfriend.

The worst occasions, mercifully rare, were perhaps when Al and Fannie were in the house at the same time, presumably to visit their grandson, actually to snipe and spy on each other. Similar nastiness ensued when Fannie dropped in at Al’s shop, though why she ever chose to do so was anybody’s guess. Like two Siamese fighting fish in too small a tank—though their tank was none other than New York City—Alphonso and Fannie could not, would not stay away from each other, forever sparring and retreating, carping and charging, and God help any guppies who happened to be in the way.

Bettye may have wondered how two people of such quarrelsome and confrontational disposition had produced her gentle husband. It
was near impossible to imagine a man more placid or
less
confrontational than Winston. The difference in the marriages of the elder and younger Moseleys was striking. Winston and Bettye had never had a single loud fight, much less a violent one. Winston even showed infinite patience with the children, never raising his voice with them either, not even with his two older, more active boys on the occasions when he saw them. By this point in his life, Winston seldom voiced complaints about anything, not even about his warring parents.

But he brooded. Quite a lot.

Many times Bettye would find him sitting alone, silent, staring. When she asked him what he was doing—or, as she had asked more recently, what was wrong—he would reply only that he was thinking, offering nothing more.

Winston had always been a quiet, thoughtful type of person ever since Bettye had known him, and, according to his parents, ever since childhood. But lately Bettye had begun to worry. She detected changes in him, particularly over the last three months. Since around January, Bettye thought, Winston hadn’t quite been himself. The fact that he spent even more time deep in thought wouldn’t necessarily have aroused her concern—after all, he’d always been “moody,” according to both Fannie and Al—but there were other changes too.

The beer, for one thing—he’d been drinking quite a lot of it these past couple of months. The refrigerator was crammed so full of it there was barely room for food. Often in the evenings, from the time he returned from his father’s shop at around 9:00 p.m. until Bettye left for work, Winston would sit, drinking beer, thinking. About what, he never told her. “Just thinking,” he’d answer flatly. It seemed he always had a beer in his hand these days, drinking and brooding in his waking hours.

It wasn’t that he was getting drunk; on the contrary, his bearing never seemed to change. If Bettye hadn’t seen him drinking beer or had not seen the quantities of it he stocked in their refrigerator, she may never have known that he had had any alcohol. What bothered Bettye was the change. Why all of a sudden, over the past three months, had her husband begun drinking so much beer? And drinking alone—that was never a good sign.

Then there were the changes in his personal habits. Winston had always been a man who prized cleanliness. He kept himself well groomed and their home immaculately clean. He had been even more particular than Bettye about keeping the house absolutely spotless, frequently washing walls, organizing cabinets, insisting that things be kept in order. He was never critical of Bettye’s housekeeping, but he took it upon himself to do a good deal of cleaning, just to make extra sure that things were as tidy as could be. Unusual for a man, especially one who already worked two jobs, but this was the way Winston had always wanted it. His fastidiousness in the way he kept their home was perhaps a rebuke to the emotional messiness of his parents’ lives. But lately he hadn’t shown any concern for either his own appearance or for the housework. He seemed to care less and less about either. He didn’t even go to the barber anymore. When Bettye suggested he get a haircut, he asked her to cut his hair. He had
never
done that before, so particular was he about his hair. In the past two weeks Bettye had even had to remind him to take a bath. A dramatic change for a man who had previously been well groomed to a fault.

Bettye asked him what was wrong. Nothing, he’d tell her, when he answered at all. But of course she knew there must be some problem. Even Fannie, normally so consumed with her own affairs, had noticed something amiss with her son, but he wouldn’t tell her anything either. Bettye asked Alphonso if he knew what was bothering Winston, but he had no idea.

Bettye Moseley had gone so far as to speak with a doctor about these recent odd behaviors in her husband and had then spoken to Winston, expressing her concern for him, suggesting he go and get checked by a physician. To this, Winston replied that there were a lot of people sicker than him on the outside.

What did
that
mean?

He would not elaborate, he would not tell her what occupied his mind, and he would not see a doctor. So Bettye Moseley was left staring helplessly at the silent, impenetrable shell her husband had become, dutifully cleaning up the beer cans he left all over the once spotless house, and hoping that whatever was wrong would become right again.

There was little Bettye could do. Winston still went to work every day, both Raygram and his father’s shop; still behaved gently (if somewhat absently) with the children; still paid the bills, ate, drank, and slept. Technically he still functioned. But it was more like living with a docile zombie than a human being. Bettye could not figure out why these changes had come over her husband. While things between her in-laws were never good, they were at least at a low ebb, certainly better than the horrible time last summer, when everything seemed to be spiraling madly out of control.

Perhaps if Fannie and Al could forge some sort of lasting truce, they could all finally have some peace. Maybe if Fannie would move back to Pittsburgh, where she had lived during Winston’s teen years and still owned a home, there could be peace. It seemed there were as many maybes in their life as there were empty beer cans, with the maybes holding about as much promise as the hollow cans. Where was the hope for Fannie and Alphonso settling their differences or moving on? If the past were any indication, their battle could rage on for
another
three decades.

Unknown to any of the Moseleys at the moment, the war between Fannie and Alphonso would soon come to a permanent end. But neither they nor their son or his family would have peace.

Fannie Burks was twenty years old when she met Alphonso Moseley, also twenty, in New York in early 1935. She was pretty, gregarious, and pregnant by another man. Just the same, Alphonso was smitten with Fannie, perhaps also feeling protective of her, a young woman who had come to New York City from Michigan, pregnant and alone in the big city. Whatever her other problems, Fannie was a very bright and engaging girl, quite charming when she chose to be.

Alphonso had a more serious, reserved personality than his future wife, and that could have been part of the attraction for both of them. He seemed to find her enthusiasm intoxicating. As for Fannie, she may have been drawn to Al’s sober and responsible nature, not to mention his obvious interest in her. Al was a hard-working civil servant
employed by the New York City public transportation system. He manned a ticket booth at one of the city’s subway stations.

Fannie moved in with Al, and when she gave birth to a baby boy in Harlem Hospital on March 2, 1935, they decided to raise the boy as their son. They did not marry, however, until 1940. Nevertheless, they maintained a home together from before Winston’s birth until 1944, when he was nine years old. Those nine years would be remembered by their son forever after with great longing as the only happy time in his childhood, indeed the happiest time in his whole life.

His earliest memory was of an apartment on 145th Street and later, right before the end, on 124th Street. These were the years of an intact and reasonably happy family, at least from the young son’s point of view. Though Fannie and Al would both later claim their marriage was fraught with arguments from the beginning, the family lived together during these years. Both also recalled Winston Moseley as a quiet soul even then, a shy boy who did not misbehave or cause any fuss, a rather easy child to raise, with a calm demeanor and interests tending toward things of a more subdued nature. He did not make friends easily, always tending to be rather introverted and bashful, and was not someone who enjoyed groups of people. If he made a friend at all, he tended to prefer having just one rather than many.

Never a terribly active or athletic boy, his main interest in childhood was animals. He liked watching them, learning about them, caring for them. Early on he begged his parents not for a go-cart or a catcher’s mitt, but for pets. He would grow to love animals of all kinds, including mice, rabbits, insects, and especially dogs.

Though in adulthood he would claim no fondness for cats—capricious creatures prone to wander off, and they might suddenly scratch you no matter how well you treated them—one of his first pets was a kitten named Princess. Winston and his mother both doted on the fluffy little cat. When Princess disappeared from their apartment one day and could not be found, Fannie and Winston wept. Princess the kitten was the first female to suddenly walk out of Winston’s life, but she would hardly be the last.

Al and Fannie’s problems came to a head in early 1944. While there were a myriad of complaints, all of them basically stemmed from the same source: Fannie had never taken to monogamy, nor to the duties of motherhood really, at least not in a traditional sense. This caused a great strain on the marriage, Al being a conventional man who expected his wife to remain faithful to him and put their son’s needs ahead of her own whims. Suspicions became accusations that led to constant fights. Fannie’s attempts to hide her extramarital activities seemed feeble at best, and it seems Al tried to look the other way, at least for a time. But the fighting reached a fever pitch when Al, acting on his suspicions, rushed home on his lunch hour (which happened to be in the middle of the night, as he was working the 11:00 p.m. to 7:00 a.m. shift at the subway token booth) and found young Winston home alone. This happened more than once, continuing even after Al angrily confronted his wife about it. According to Al, it reached the point that Fannie was never there when he’d come to check. Fearing for the boy’s safety, he eventually installed a double lock on the front door, locking Winston inside when he left for work to keep him as safe as possible during the night.

Fannie meanwhile had grown as irritated with her husband’s attempts to control her as he was with her philandering. She could not seem to understand his point of view, or why he had to be so serious all the time. Life was for more than work or chores. Fannie was a grown woman and she worked too. Wasn’t she entitled to some freedom, a little fun? She always came home to him in the end, so what difference did it make?

Apparently it made a lot of difference to Al, and so came the fights, the recriminations, he venting his anger and hurt, Fannie reaching her wit’s end as Al nattered on about fidelity and motherly duty. The fights grew increasingly volatile and sometimes physical, though at that time such things were considered strictly family matters rather than situations for police intervention. No one yelled at or physically harmed Winston, but he overheard his parents’ virulent quarrels.

Alphonso could not reconcile himself to his wife’s behavior, but he would not leave her, nor did he want her to leave him. Both Al and
Fannie seemed to think they could be happy together. If only Fannie would stop running around with other men. If only Al would quit trying to control her and stop being so erratic, as she called it.

Very big “if onlys” to be sure, in which there seemed to be little room for compromise on either side.