Chapter 8 - Hidden Past

“Oh, Kenny! Tonight was wonderful! It all went so fast!” the thoroughly appreciative Angela exclaimed to Kenny.

Kenny had spared no expense in taking Angela to Point Pleasant, West Virginia, across the Ohio River from Gallipolis, to the Point Grille, reputedly the best restaurant in the tri-county area.

“I hope you don’t mind if I get a steak, Kenny,” Angela’s eyes had shone as she sought his permission.

“Whatever you want, princess! This is your sixteenth birthday, and I want you to get exactly what you want. You’re worth it and then some!” Kenny felt the eyes staring at the remarkably striking young lady he was escorting. He knew if they had been in Hollywood, the restaurant patrons would have felt certain she was an up-and-coming star.

“Is this one a good one?” Her eyes and voice had reflected innocence as she pointed to the filet mignon on the menu.

“That would be the best—my choice too.” Kenny tried to convey that he fully endorsed her selection. He wanted to treat her as a very special, extraordinary person. He would respect her fragile young psyche and never do anything to hurt her. He saw her as his princess, his china doll, and his long-term prize.

As they left the Point Grille, they were both full, she even a bit stuffed, and the evening air made her legs feel rubbery.

“Oh, Kenny. I feel wobbly,” she said honestly, and Kenny immediately put his arm around her to provide support.

“Don’t worry, princess, you can relax in the car and listen to your favorite music as we head back to Ohio. What time do you need to be home?”

“Kenny, I don’t want to go home! I don’t want this evening to end. I don’t want my birthday to end.”

He opened the door for her, helped her get settled in the car, and then went around the front of the car to his door, never taking his eyes off the sixteen-year-old he adored. He smoothly slid into the driver’s seat and asked, “Would you like to put the top down again?”

“Oh yes! I’ll do it. I can do it!” she reacted with youthful enthusiasm. She loved the way Kenny treated her as if she were an adult and encouraged her to do whatever she wanted to do. He never tried to force her to do anything she didn’t want to do and always responded to her as if she were the most important person in his world.

“Princess, open the glove compartment.”

“Okay!” Her enthusiasm became excitement when she saw a small pale-yellow box with a hand-tied red bow on top. She recognized the signature wrapping of Bailey’s, the finest jewelry store in Gallipolis.

“Oh my gosh, Kenny. What are you doing?”

“I’m giving you a present, a birthday present! I’m giving you something to remember this birthday by so you’ll never forget it.”

“My gosh, Kenny. You treat me like a queen—a princess I mean. Why do you like me—”

Angela was going to complete the question with the words so much, but the untaped yellow wrapping paper fell open, revealing the important, expensive-looking ruby-red box from Bailey’s. She opened it without delay and began to gasp and cry.

“Kenny! Oh, Kenny!” She awkwardly reached over and tried to hug his broad-shouldered frame.

“C’mon. Try it on,” Kenny encouraged, he himself fighting to keep the tears and his own excitement from showing.

After completing the hug and kissing him wetly on the cheek, Angela, without embarrassment, said, “Oh, please, Kenny. Help me.”

Kenny not so deftly scooped the sterling silver chain with the tiny diamond-veneered “A” pendant from its ruby home and asked Angela to turn and face away from him.

“I’m not very good at this, but I’ll try,” Kenny said as his big thumbs and fingers separated the clasp and reached over her head to pull the ends of the necklace together. Angela held her black hair up in her back, revealing a pure, sculpted neck that Kenny agonizingly refrained from kissing. Luckily, he fastened the clasp on the first try.

“Oh, let me see it, Kenny!” Angela exclaimed with delight as she eagerly pulled the car’s rearview mirror toward her.

It was still light enough on the warm midsummer evening for her to gasp again as she caught the glamour of the sparkling “A” looking back at her.

“Thank you! Thank you!” she kept saying as she hugged Kenny again. “This is the best birthday I’ve ever had and probably ever will have!”

She was crying when she kissed him again—this time, wetly on the mouth.

Chapter 7 - Hidden Past

“Let me take you to dinner to celebrate your sweet-sixteen birthday!” Kenny implored, having been trying to butter up Angela and helping her overcome her shyness for almost two years now.

“I don’t know, Kenny. If my mom ever finds out—”

“You can bring her with you,” Kenny lied, knowing that Angela would never want her run-down, overweight alcoholic mom to come with them. He actually sensed that the idea of going out on her sixteenth birthday with a dapper, successful man about town who also went to college had some intrigue, some appeal to the very striking, sexy without trying to be sexy teenager.

“She’s jailbait,” Carl, the manager, had told Kenny privately when he heard Kenny coming on to Angela.

“Yeah, but what a way to go to the slammer,” Kenny would react, rolling his eyes as though he were dreaming.

Kenny secretly had it figured out that if he could start taking her out, be her friend—like a brother—and eventually become her confidante, he could start teaching her about sexual favors and how to pleasure a man. No rush; he saw her as his long-term project. “Project Virgin” was how he thought of Angela in his mind.

One giant lever Kenny knew he could use with Angela was money. He had already trained her to accept small tips—$2 here, $4 there—for running errands and picking up food for him. Kenny knew he wasn’t rich, but he also knew that to Angela, he was.

And he knew she was poor. All the money she made at the store seemed to go for supporting her mother and her sister. Her sister seemed to be slow, maybe even retarded, but Kenny never asked. He sensed that Angela didn’t want to talk about her sister or her mom. Maybe she was ashamed of them; Kenny could see why.

Kenny’s heart pounded, and he felt a swelling in his silk boxers as Angela came into the store on that incredible Saturday that was her sixteenth birthday. She was all dressed up in a simple black dress with black flats. She was wearing a slightly tinted hose and had her hair pulled back with a black velvet ribbon. Her makeup was understated and perfect.

“Well?” Kenny asked, nervously begging God for the answer he received.

“I’ve decided you can take me out tonight,” the most popular girl of his fantasy life said as she sparkled.

Chapter 6 - Hidden Past

Junior high school in Gallipolis was hard work for Angela. Her mother continued in a cycle of depression, binge drinking, brief periods of euphoria, and then anger. The anger seemed directed at her deceased husband, at God, and at life in general. Sometimes she even got angry at her girls.

Angela, who—by almost anyone’s standards—was a very dedicated, hardworking daughter at age fourteen, began working at the same clothing store where her grandfather Capelli had worked. She rode her bike to run errands, take packages up Second Avenue to mail at the post office, and then pick up food and snacks for the clerks, the assistant manager, and the manager. She also cleaned the store three nights a week and rearranged the window displays at least once a month.

“Louie’s granddaughter has style. She has taste. She has an eye for what goes together and catches people’s attention as they look in the window,” the store manager told his best salesperson and assistant manager, Kenny Chessin.

“Yeah, and she’s mighty easy on the eyes too,” the twenty-one-year-old hotshot salesman and assistant manager retorted. Kenny was smooth and confident and hoped his part-time college career nearby at the University of Rio Grande would one day lead him to becoming a high school teacher or guidance counselor.

“You’re a dirty old man, and you’re barely old enough to drink,” the manager reacted with feigned disapproval.

“When they’re old enough to sprout, they’re old enough to sample,” Kenny leered, rolling his eyes. He tried to never let Angela know or be aware of his staring at her, imagining what she looked like naked, and vowing to himself that he would be the first man to show her what sex was all about.

“Well, let me know how the sampling goes, stud,” the manager said, and both men laughed loudly as if they had just see a funny pornographic scene.

Angela sensed that the cool, convertible-driving Kenny watched her whenever he thought he could do so without being noticed. She wasn’t sure about this man-woman thing, although she had read some pamphlets that had been passed out without explanation in eighth-grade health class. The pictures had shown diagrams of a man’s penis and a woman’s vagina, but no one had the nerve to ask questions.

Some of the athletes in high school asked her out, but she was basically afraid. She was afraid they might try to touch her breasts or try to get her to touch them. Her friend Sally, whose father was a minister, told her that sex was bad and was dirty unless a husband and wife did it together in an attempt to have children. Apparently, they could only have sex if they were trying to make a baby. But just exactly how the penis and vagina got together and created a pregnancy was not clear. Somehow, an egg got fertilized and became an embryo, a future person.

It didn’t seem like sex would be fun, but she guessed she would eventually find out. Her mom never dated after her dad died, and Angela didn’t have time for dating. Her mom, though, actually encouraged her to go out with boys. “Why don’t you go to the movies with Tom Fleming? His dad’s a doctor, so you know Tom will have money someday.”
Usually, Angela’s mom would go on to say, “You have to marry for money, Angie. Long after the love and the sex are gone, the money will still be there.”

No, this sex business didn’t sound like much fun, but maybe if the man had money, it would help take one’s mind off the sex.

Chapter 5 - Hidden Past

Angela Marie Capelli was born in Appalachia, along the Ohio River in Gallipolis, Ohio. Her parents had mixed feelings about having a baby as neither was certain they could afford a third mouth to feed. Once her mom held little Angela, she knew she would find a way to support her and possibly give her some of the things she had never had.

Angela’s father worked on a riverboat that transported barges, mostly filled with coal, down the Ohio River to the Mississippi. His typical work pattern of thirty days on and thirty days off tragically ended when he fell from one of the barges into the river, likely destroyed by the propellers of the giant diesel engines.
Angela’s mom, pregnant with Angela’s soon-to-be sister Katherine, sank into a deep hole of depression, and began to reverse roles with her six-year-old firstborn.

“Mommy doesn’t feel good … Can you be an angel and fix your own dinner tonight?”

Later on, “Could you be Mommy’s little helper and change the baby’s diaper? And see if you can be a big girl and get her bottle ready.”

Angela always obliged and always tried to do whatever her mom asked her to do. She did her homework when she could get to it, with cooking and junior-mommy work being top priorities.

She missed her dad so much. She lay in bed at night and remembered his strong, black-haired arms lifting her high and hugging her. “Daddy’s little princess, that’s what you are! No matter how many kids I have, you will always be my number one!”

She cried and muffled the noise. She did not want her mom to hear because it would just make her sadder. Mommy had lost her husband and was now what they call a widow, like a spider or something. Angela did not want to be a burden to her mom or cause her to feel any worse than she already did.

Angela Marie was a beautiful young girl with dark hair, dark eyes, and a dazzling smile. Her flashing eyes and friendliness conveyed to others that she was cheerful, always in a good mood, and fundamentally a happy, normal child.

But beneath her outward persona was sadness, a worrisome inner world of fear and dread, fear that she would never have a future with fun and opportunities and dread that her mom’s life would end as abruptly and tragically as her dad’s had ended.

“Mommy, you really need to be more careful. Last night, after Katherine and I went to bed, I heard you fall against the kitchen table. I was afraid to get up out of bed, afraid you would be mad at me. Did you have another dizzy spell?”

By now, the serious-for-her-ten-years Angela knew the spells were brought on by alcohol consumption, frequent and heavy consumption. She knew her mom had been something of a drinker for a long time. With some self-prodding, she could remember good moods and loud laughter spiraling into angry shouting and arguing, back when her dad was still alive.
Both her parents had looked forward to his thirty days off and were primed to party when he came into the house from the shipyard. Sometimes they would stay up all night the first night he came home, drinking, talking, and playing Italian opera music loudly.

Angela’s father was Italian, his own father having come directly from the old country in time to enter first grade at Gallipolis City Schools. This grandfather, whom Angela never knew, began school, unable to speak a word of English. But he got by; he did okay as some of the students befriended him and helped him learn.

Angela’s father told the story more than once, of what a great country America was and what a special community Gallipolis was. “My dad couldn’t speak a lick of English, but the people here accepted him anyway and took him under their wing. We owe a lot to the people here. I’m just sorry Papa never lived long enough to enjoy his golden years with the people he grew up with.”

Very unfortunately, Mr. Capelli Sr., Angela’s grandfather, was driving home from the clothing store on Second Avenue where he worked as a clerk during the day and a tailor at night. It had been just after Thanksgiving, and the Christmas rush was beginning, even in Gallipolis. Mr. Capelli had sold three suits that day and had worked late into the night, trying to complete what were extensive alterations.

As he drove by Miletti’s, a run-down little bar at the lower end of town, he thought momentarily about stopping in to have a quick beer and maybe a hot dog. Miletti’s hot dogs were famous for their chili sauce, and people came several miles to eat the chili dogs and take a pint or even a quart of the spicy condiment home.

Mr. Capelli Sr. hesitated, started to slow down to turn right into Miletti’s cramped little parking lot but looked at his watch and saw it was eleven thirty, and slowly reaccelerated.

In a flash, his life was gone. A young man named Jimmy Bateman, fairly inebriated, was leaving the parking lot, saw the lumbering old station wagon slow down, and then gunned his engine to launch onto Garfield Street. In a sickening split second, Jimmy realized the station wagon was not going to pull in but, instead, was going to continue southward toward Lower River Road.

Jimmy’s hot Camaro broadsided Mr. Capelli’s Buick, pushing it head-on into a pickup truck operated by Marvin Wheeler. The stars were horribly misaligned that December night, and neither Mr. Capelli nor Mr. Wheeler ever knew what hit them. They were pronounced dead at the scene by the emergency medical team from Holzer Hospital.

Jimmy Bateman was unscratched and unhurt physically, but he never recovered from the trauma of that night. He was completely cooperative, sobbing, and agreed to be tested for his blood-alcohol content. “I did it. I’m guilty. I know I’m a DUI! I don’t feel drunk, but I know I am!” he confessed between hysterical outcries. The police officer on duty cited him for reckless operation and for driving under the influence of alcohol.

Mr. Capelli Sr.’s life ended prematurely and tragically with alcohol being a major contributing factor. Two years later, when Angela’s father’s life ended in the Ohio River, it was strongly rumored that alcohol was a big factor, that he had been drunk when he fell.

Angela was twelve when she heard that rumor.

Chapter 4 - Hidden Past

In the waning hours of darkness, Austin drifted into a light sleep. Having resolved that for the time being, he would not bring up the encounter with Fredrik Werner with Angela, not until he found out what this Rosen woman wanted.

Angela never had the good fortune of falling asleep. She knew Austin was awake for a long time, probably mulling over and over the Fredrik Werner exchange.

She hoped Austin would never ask about it, never bring it up. If he did, she had no idea how she would handle it.

She could tell the truth, or she could lie. Maybe she could tell some of the truth but hide parts of it. Austin already knew quite a bit about Kenny, who had been her first and only real boyfriend, but Austin didn’t know the kind of hold Kenny had had over her. Nor did he know the kinds of things Kenny had expected her to do.

Angela totally loved Austin. He had been a savior, having helped her start over with a new life. He knew he had helped her improve her life—he just didn’t know how bad it had been or how deeply the shame from her life before him permeated her soul.

Angela finally decided that if Austin asked her about why someone had called her Marie, she would tell him part of the truth. She would hide those pieces of the past that could be most damaging to Samantha and to their three lives together as a family.

Chapter 2 - Hidden Past

Angela Morris flushed, tried to mask her humiliation and discomfort, and reacted with all the casualness she could muster. “Pardon me? No, my name is Angela. Angela Morris.”

Joan rushed into the gap, saying, “You know, Fredrik, I’ve told you about Angela—she’s my new very good friend. She lives in the Mediterranean and is an excellent golfer.”

“And I’m Angela’s husband Austin. You must be Joan.” The confident man had lost some of his poise, but no one seemed to notice.

Joan was so pleased, so nearly exuberant that she had found a woman with a nice husband whom Fredrik seemed to like. The two men had been talking for quite a while, she had observed.

Socializing and building a social life was not easy. Joan wanted to be social, to gain acceptance in this society she and her husband had become part of, but Fredrik didn’t seem particularly interested. So many times she and Fredrik had met another couple, had tried to build a friendship, but efforts (mostly hers) had quietly fizzled. Both the other husband and wife had liked Joan, but they didn’t care much for Fredrik; too straitlaced, too serious, and not much fun.

Perhaps this time, things would be different. She was so hopeful, she readily forgot Fredrik’s calling Angela by the wrong name. It was not unusual for Fredrik to make some sort of faux pas.

But the three other folks did not forget. Austin, being the kind, considerate, mostly forgiving gentleman that he was, did not want to make an issue out of it. In fact, he did not even mention it to Angela that night as she laid her head on his shoulder while the limo sped north on Livingston toward their majestic home in Mediterra. He wasn’t sure if he would ever mention it.

Angela was desperately trying to cover her fear, which felt like terror, as she thought about the awkward moment she was called Marie. She hadn’t been called that in a long time, another lifetime ago in fact. She prayed to God that Austin hadn’t quite heard it.

Please, God, don’t let Austin find out about me, about my past. I’ve changed, you know that! I never wanted to live my past life the way I did. I promised that if I could ever escape that life, I would never go back. Please, God, let me keep what I have. Let me be forgiven!

* * *

Fredrik’s steel-trap mind was very sharp. He never forgot a face and rarely forgot a name, particularly if the two belonged to a beautiful woman and especially if the beautiful woman was one with whom he had gone to bed. This was one time he was glad his wife Joan was not especially detailed; she may have perceived that he had called her new friend Marie, but she would forget.