None of it was enough to put enough distance between him and the man who had beaten him and never loved him.
In the end, he was in the same room with his father.
—
CLOSING: ONE DAY BEFORE HIS BIRTHDAY
On April 2, 1984, the day after Marvin Gaye died, he would have turned forty-five years old.
On that Tuesday morning, there was no birthday party on Gramercy Place. There was nothing.
The house was a crime scene. Gay Sr. was in custody. Alberta was alone. Frankie was alone. The family was shattered in ways it has never fully reassembled.
Across the country and around the world, radio stations played “What’s Going On” and “Sexual Healing” and “Mercy Mercy Me” and “I Heard It Through the Grapevine” in tribute. Fans gathered in clusters on street corners and in churches and in living rooms to listen and grieve.
Berry Gordy, the man who had built the machine that made Marvin Gaye’s commercial success possible and who had fought with him and tried to control him and eventually been overwhelmed by the sheer force of his talent—Berry Gordy said he had lost his brightest star.
Smokey Robinson said he had lost his brother.
The city of Washington, D.C., said it had lost its son.
And Frankie Gaye, kneeling on the floor of a bedroom in a house in West Adams, had simply lost his brother.
Marvin Pentz Gaye Jr. was born on April 2, 1939, in Washington, D.C.
He died on April 1, 1984, in Los Angeles, California, at 1:01 p.m.