IT WAS A NIGHTMARE, pure and simple. From the minute we got the call, Earl and I barely slept or ate. The first thing we had to do was get to Susie, naturally, knowing what a state she’d be in. Imagine losing your husband to a vicious murderer when you’re a newlywed, just twenty-five years old. All I can say is, life can be very cruel. And that’s how it seemed even before they began trying to tie her in to the crime.
She was being very brave. That’s our Susie. And now, just because she’s strong enough as an individual that she doesn’t just fall apart, people say she doesn’t have any feelings or something. When they don’t know her like we do. They don’t know how she’s dying inside.
So she kept her chin up. That first night they had her on the news, it broke your heart. Her sitting there in my living room, holding on to that little dog. “If anybody out there has any information whatsoever that might assist us in finding the criminals who committed this heinous crime, I beg of them to contact the police,” she said. Her broadcasting training really came in handy, the way she knew to look right into the camera and all. She didn’t break down or anything. Just kept her dignity. Like I always used to tell her, “You never get a second chance to make a first impression.”
Strangers were calling us up, offering prayers, sympathy cards, and so forth. Flowers? We had so many flowers I used up every vase in the house and had to start putting them in Tupperware. I mean you could just feel it, everybody’s prayers were with Susie. “It’s a weird feeling, Mom,” she said to me. “Knowing that wherever I go now, people know who I am. They recognize me.” There was this one little boy that saw her in the supermarket who even asked her for her autograph. He said she was the first famous person he ever met. In spite of the tragedy, you had to get a kick out of that.
Those first couple days after the murder it was like we were going around in a fog, there was so much to do. People to contact. Media crawling all over the place. Susie said a lot of people in that situation resent the media for interfering in their grief, but being in that line herself she understood their point of view and she always tried to cooperate. I remember the day we were getting ready for Larry’s service, she even pointed out to Angela, his mom, how the striped blouse she was wearing was going to make these vibrating lines on people’s TV screens, and maybe something else would be better.
Susie herself looked just beautiful, of course, in a tragic kind of way. Who she reminded me of that day, if you want to know, was Jackie Kennedy after the President was shot. That same quiet dignity and class. She carried this one white rose. She asked the funeral director if Larry could be laid out holding their dog’s leash. Unfortunately it couldn’t be an open casket. The nature of his injuries and all.
Well, people were just wonderful at that point. And of course, though you’d never know it to see how they’re treating her now, the Marettos regarded Susie like their own daughter. So we were all together in our grief. Suzanne told Angela Larry was the only man she’d ever love so long as she lived. Angela told her at least she could take comfort knowing Larry had that one happy year of marriage before being taken away from us. Joe, the father, gave Suzanne Larry’s basketball ring from the year his team made it to the state finals. All those years he’d kept it, he said, but it seemed like Susie should have it now.
For days it was all you heard on the news. There were very few leads in the case since the burglars appeared to have worn gloves. There were no fingerprints. No tire tracks. Nobody in their condo development had seen a thing.
Eventually things quieted down. Suzanne wasn’t allowed to go back and stay in their home since it was still taped off as a crime scene. She couldn’t get her own clothes and makeup, which was hard for her. Not that those things are that important in and of themselves when you’ve lost a loved one. But I always feel it’s important to keep up appearances no matter what. If you start letting yourself go on the outside it works itself in to the point where you’re not keeping it together inside either. I mean, sometimes something as simple as a new hairdo can give me a boost when I’m feeling down. And here was my daughter, that had her husband brutally murdered, and she couldn’t even wear her own shade of lipstick. We had to go out and buy her all new clothes, toiletries, even underwear. And at a moment like that.