she was cold and forbidding, a woman who erected an unbreachable wall around her home and kept the world at a distance, who considered herself and her daughter superior to the common herd, those inferiors not worth associating with. In the glimpses they caught of her, she was cruel and abusive, to them, to everyone and especially to her daughter. They likened her to the Wicked Witch of the West and, indeed, said that she had told them she was a witch, and many believed it.
To her husbands and the men in her life, she was bright and domineering, taking orders from no one, giving orders to everyone, manipulating them and the world to her whims and desires, abusive and scathing in word and deed, rigid, impossible to live with.
To her daughter, she was the mother who taught her to sew and crochet and knit, to cook and bake, to make strawberry jam. She was the mother who shared her dreams and fantasies. She was the mother who put in her hands the violin, the instrument that became the center of her life, and who sacrificed so that she could learn to play. But she was also the mother who rarely, if ever, showed affection, let alone love, the mother who abused her physically and emotionally from the time she was a baby, the mother who manipulated her without end to her bidding. At home as much as at the office, Joyce was a mother who was intolerant of any mistakes, real or imagined, a mother who filled her daughter with tales that left her uncertain about herself, left her in terror. Joyce isolated Karin from much of the world, trapped her in a home and a life that was unendurable and from which there seemed no escape.
And there was something else, something many did not fully realize until after her death. She was an inveterate liar. Her second husband, Michael Aparo, later called her pathological, a woman who invented so many stories it was often impossible to ferret out the truth, and perhaps it came to a point where she herself did not know where the truth lay.
She was born Joyce Cantone in 1939, the youngest child of a lower-middle-class Italian family, several years between her and her brothers and sisters, some adults by the time she was born. She grew up in a cramped second-floor tenement apartment in the Italian south end of Hartford. It was not a happy home. Her father, she told a college friend, was a day laborer and a heavy drinker, a man who more often than not arrived home drunk and, when drunk, vented his fury and frustration on everyone, beating her mother and then turning on her brothers, sisters and herself. The situation was intolerable and did not change for the better as the years passed. She kept trying to persuade her mother to leave her father, she said, but they were practicing and deeply devout Catholics, and that was something that just wasnât done.
Then her mother met a man. They fell in love, and he promised to marry her if somehow she could free herself from her husband. âJoyce said her mother went to see a priest,â her friend Carol Parkola remembers, âand then the priest came over to the apartment with an altar boy and spread incense all around and explained that he was going to cleanse the apartment, and all this would get rid of the evil spirits and all the evil that was involved with leaving her husband. Well, Joyce said she got so mad she opened the door and she took the priestâs hat and she threw it down the stairs and told him to go chase it. She just didnât take to the church telling her what to do or how to do things.â Her father, she said, later died as a result of his alcoholism.
That was one story. There were others. Her father, Joyce later was to tell other acquaintances, as well as repeat often to her daughter, had been a brilliant and sensitive man, a man with outstanding musical talent, a superb pianist who should have been destined for the concert stage. His dream had been to become a conductor, and as a young man he had shown considerable promise
To her husbands and the men in her life, she was bright and domineering, taking orders from no one, giving orders to everyone, manipulating them and the world to her whims and desires, abusive and scathing in word and deed, rigid, impossible to live with.
To her daughter, she was the mother who taught her to sew and crochet and knit, to cook and bake, to make strawberry jam. She was the mother who shared her dreams and fantasies. She was the mother who put in her hands the violin, the instrument that became the center of her life, and who sacrificed so that she could learn to play. But she was also the mother who rarely, if ever, showed affection, let alone love, the mother who abused her physically and emotionally from the time she was a baby, the mother who manipulated her without end to her bidding. At home as much as at the office, Joyce was a mother who was intolerant of any mistakes, real or imagined, a mother who filled her daughter with tales that left her uncertain about herself, left her in terror. Joyce isolated Karin from much of the world, trapped her in a home and a life that was unendurable and from which there seemed no escape.
And there was something else, something many did not fully realize until after her death. She was an inveterate liar. Her second husband, Michael Aparo, later called her pathological, a woman who invented so many stories it was often impossible to ferret out the truth, and perhaps it came to a point where she herself did not know where the truth lay.
She was born Joyce Cantone in 1939, the youngest child of a lower-middle-class Italian family, several years between her and her brothers and sisters, some adults by the time she was born. She grew up in a cramped second-floor tenement apartment in the Italian south end of Hartford. It was not a happy home. Her father, she told a college friend, was a day laborer and a heavy drinker, a man who more often than not arrived home drunk and, when drunk, vented his fury and frustration on everyone, beating her mother and then turning on her brothers, sisters and herself. The situation was intolerable and did not change for the better as the years passed. She kept trying to persuade her mother to leave her father, she said, but they were practicing and deeply devout Catholics, and that was something that just wasnât done.
Then her mother met a man. They fell in love, and he promised to marry her if somehow she could free herself from her husband. âJoyce said her mother went to see a priest,â her friend Carol Parkola remembers, âand then the priest came over to the apartment with an altar boy and spread incense all around and explained that he was going to cleanse the apartment, and all this would get rid of the evil spirits and all the evil that was involved with leaving her husband. Well, Joyce said she got so mad she opened the door and she took the priestâs hat and she threw it down the stairs and told him to go chase it. She just didnât take to the church telling her what to do or how to do things.â Her father, she said, later died as a result of his alcoholism.
That was one story. There were others. Her father, Joyce later was to tell other acquaintances, as well as repeat often to her daughter, had been a brilliant and sensitive man, a man with outstanding musical talent, a superb pianist who should have been destined for the concert stage. His dream had been to become a conductor, and as a young man he had shown considerable promise
Similar Books
