Short Stories

<body topmargin=0 leftmargin=0 marginheight=0 marginwidth=0> <table cellpadding=0 cellspacing=0 border=0 height="100%"><tr> <td valign="top" width=168 BGCOLOR="#000000" TEXT="#F7F7FF" background="041a11c3.gif"> <div> From Around The World And Back Again</div> </td> <td valign="top" BGCOLOR="#000000" TEXT="#F7F7FF"> <div> <FONT SIZE="5" COLOR="#99CC00" FACE="Arial" ><B>John A. Mangini Jr.</B></FONT>     <FONT SIZE="1" COLOR="#CCCC66" FACE="Arial" >|   <A HREF="index.htm" TARGET="_top" TITLE="John A. Mangini Jr."><U><B>home</B></U></A></FONT></div> <div> <A HREF="id17.htm" TARGET="_top" TITLE="Poetry"><U>Poetry</U></A>   |   <A HREF="id18.htm" TARGET="_top" TITLE="Ordering Info"><U>Ordering Info</U></A>   |   <B>Short Stories</B>   |   <A HREF="id25.htm" TARGET="_top" TITLE="Contact Me"><U>Contact Me</U></A>   |   <A HREF="id26.htm" TARGET="_top" TITLE="Audio Readings"><U>Audio Readings</U></A></div> <div> <IMG SRC="040f4010.gif" border=0 width="500" height="1" ALIGN="BOTTOM" HSPACE="0" VSPACE="0"></div> <div> Short Stories</div> <bR> <bR> <div> <B>Auphaline</B></div> <bR> <div>      It was February, around the time of my birthday.  A usual cold and snowy Pennsylvania winter.  I received the call I had been dreading.  The call that said she knew she was dying and she wanted to see me.  A week before I had taken her for her bi-weekly blood transfusion.  She had leukemia, she was eighty two now, and her blood count was five.  The doctors said they didn’t know how she was still alive.  I suspect that if she had known she was dying, she would have.  I waited with her as she lied on that gurney nervously awaiting the next invasion.  She told me she wished I would never have to go through such a thing.  Funny, but I had just thought the same thing.  She told me it was painful and she didn’t want to go through it anymore.  She told me she’d rather die than live like that.</div> <bR> <div>      Auphaline had lived a sad life from the time she was a young girl.  Her mother had immigrated from Calabria in the early nineteen hundreds.  Her great grandparents had a boarding house.  That’s where her mother met her father.  Her mother was thirteen.  Her father was a border staying with the family while in Pennsylvania.  He made his living as an opera singer traveling the east.  Auphaline was one of thirteen children, would have been fourteen but one died at birth.  She married young and had three children, all boys.  Fourteen years later she gave birth to two girls back to back.  She got pregnant again the following year but had a miscarriage.  I suspect she was probably happy about that.  Auphaline’s husband Ralph was a popular barber in the small town were they lived.  It was green and full of rolling hills like the village in Italy they were from.  Ralph was as gregarious as Auphaline was solemn.  Shortly after the miscarriage, Ralph had a cerebral hemorrhage, lying on the couch, a vegetable, for a week before finally passing on.  The three boys were grown now and working in the barbershop, but Auphaline was left with the two little girls.  She didn’t drive and didn’t work, and Ralph had left her with no savings and didn’t believe in insurance.  They lived in a large white house on the hill.  These series of events had left Auphaline alone and struggling, and the pain proved too much for her.  Subsequently she became more and more depressed until finally she was committed to an insane asylum.  She remained in and out of mental institutions for the rest of her life, being continually re-committed by her family whenever she got too bad.  She must have had a hundred shock treatments, which may have erased the memory of what she had for breakfast those mornings, but not much else.</div> <bR> <div>      Growing up I never noticed anything different about her, but then when I was sixteen years old I witnessed it.  She stood in the kitchen of my aunt’s house holding a pair of scissors to her throat and attempting to strangle herself.  She was such a meek woman, where did this rage come from?  I was somehow never really the same after that.  This started a whole new series of doctors and hospitals.  I witnessed firsthand what my mother and aunt had grown up with.  See they were left to themselves in that big white house on the hill.  </div> <bR> <div>      The time was here.  I had to say goodbye.  What would I say to her?  She loved me, and I loved her.  I thought she deserved death because death had to be a better place for her.  After all, she had been haunted by demons tormenting her every minute of every day, not giving her a single moment’s peace or bliss or simple pleasure.  </div> <bR> <div>      I entered her hospital room and saw her lying on that bed, taking her last breaths.  My memories flashed before me to the happy times I spent with her when I was young.  When I would stay with her for weeks at a time in her high rise apartment, playing cards and shopping at the five and dime.  I only had kind thoughts of her.  When she saw me she began to cry.  Reaching out her arms she said “Johnny my beautiful grandson” and grabbed me with the strength of a hundred men.  She squeezed me harder and tighter than I had ever been squeezed.  “My grandson, my beautiful grandson” she cried.  I couldn’t speak.  She uttered unmercifully those words I had never heard her speak -- I love you.  Her skin pale as paste, bloodless.  She held me and rocked me and cried.  And I cried.  I have never cried that hard before or since.  I couldn’t breathe or think or move.  My life had paused for her departing memory.  “I’ll talk to God for you,” she said.  And the way she said it, I had no doubt.  After all, He owed her one.</div> <bR> <bR> <div> <B>The Halloween Incident</B></div> <bR> <div>      I was twelve, it was Halloween.  I needed a costume for a contest we were having at school, so I sought the help of my mother.  She thought long and hard and finally came to the enlightenment of a unique costume.  She would dress me up as a table, complete with all the fixings.  She got a large cardboard box, glued a plastic yellow flowered table cloth to it, added two sets of plates, and plastic forks and knives, then cut a hole in the top for my head.  Once I put it on, she felt there was something missing.  So she went into the kitchen and returned with a plastic bowl, some glue, a string and a handful of plastic flowers.  She glued the flowers to the bowl, then added the string.  “This is what we needed, we were missing a centerpiece,” she said and tied the bowl to my head, laughing all the while.  I had my reservations, but I was determined to win that contest.</div> <bR> <div>      The next morning I packed up my table in a large garbage bag and headed to school.  We were to parade around the neighborhood after lunch, so I was anxious all morning, eagerly awaiting the judges decision which I was certain would be in my favor.</div> <bR> <div>      Finally the time came for me to don this outrageous costume.  I just had to win, after all I was putting my reputation on the line.  I elicited the assistance of my teacher Mr. Delvechio.  He was a large man and as masculine as they came, but I didn’t have much choice since my arms were stuck inside the box.  I needed his help in placing the centerpiece on my head.  He laughed so hard he could barely perform this one measly task I had requested.  I felt like an idiot.  Finally, he placed the centerpiece on my head, tied the string around my chin and I was ready.  </div> <bR> <div>      We all paraded down the long hall and out the front door of the school.  We walked up the street parading on display for all of the stay-at-home moms in our neighborhood.  They were all pointing and laughing, and I was sure they were directing these gestures toward me, but I paid it no mind, after all I was going to win that prize.</div> <bR> <div>      Then, just as I was consoling myself with the thought of being voted best costume, I spotted little Jimmy Bardon.  He was dressed as Oscar the Grouch complete with a real metal garbage can.  I couldn’t believe it, I had dressed like a dork, and now I was in jeopardy of losing the contest to little Jimmy.  Well, it would be a close call, I figured.  The winner would probably be the one who stood-out the most, so I marched up the street like it was the Macy’s Day parade.  I was smiling and waving, making sure everyone noticed me.  </div> <bR> <div>      We proceeded up the street and around the corner to the next block.  Then, just as we began walking down the steep hill, little Jimmy Bardon tripped.  The weight of the garbage can proved too much for him.  He started rolling down the hill.  He rolled and rolled, out of control.  All the teachers were chasing after him in panic, but he was building-up speed, it was no use.  He rolled for two blocks before finally running into a telephone pole.  His garbage can had a huge dent.  All the teachers gathered around Jimmy hoping the poor little kid wasn’t dead.  Jimmy was crying one of those cries where no sound comes out.  Now this took the cake.  He was traumatized, and I was doomed.  How could I compete with that?</div> </td> </tr></table></body>