Getting Old is the Best Revenge by Rita Lakin Page B

feel sorry for. I was it." She leans back on her pillow, exhausted from the effort. "Did I deserve to have to sneak around to visit your babies, my niece and my nephews?"
    Elio says, "I brought our children together with their aunt years ago. It was the right thing to do."
    "Traitor!" Angelina cries.
    "Lunatic! You had no right to deprive them."
    Elio turns to us snoops, frozen in place, mouths open in amazement, and pleads his case. He gestures toward Connie.
    "My sister-in-law gets sick. She's all alone in the world. She asks me to help. Is it so terrible? I buy a few groceries, cook her a little broth sometimes. So I'm twenty minutes late getting home. Maybe thirty. Is that a federal crime? Can I tell her what's going on? No. She'd cut my head off."
    He whirls toward Angelina. "You think I'm cheating on you? Did I ever cheat on you in fifty years?"
    Angelina folds her arms and turns away with a lofty shrug.
    Josie puts her arm around her dad. "I come over and help Auntie Connie take a bath."
    "My job is to take out the garbage for her," adds Frankie.
    "I drive my aunt to the doctor," says Joey, the youngest, proudly. Angelina looks at all the shining faces sending love toward Connie.
    For a moment, there is silence. All eyes again are on Angelina. Her face contorts. Eyes narrow. Mouth a thin, tight line. Her hands clench and her body seems to lift from the very floor.
    Suddenly there is a bloodcurdling wail. Angelina covers her mouth, trying to hold back her hiccupping sobs. She abandons her walker and runs to the bed, scrambling to find a way through all the tubes and bedclothes to reach her sister.
    "Connie," she blubbers, hugging her as hard as she can. "I'm an idiot! I shoulda had my head examined years ago."
    Connie, using what little strength she has, hugs her back. "Angelina," she bawls, "I shoulda broke down the door and made you talk to me."
    "I shoulda got down on my hands and knees and begged you to come back in my life!"
    "All those years. What I went through. I had to hide in the back of the church for the baptisms and the confirmations. I had to miss every celebration. Christmas. Easter. We had to exchange gifts behind your back. I missed how we always went shopping together. The cooking together. But most of all I missed my sister."
    " Mamma mia, I missed you every day."
    "Me, too."
    Now there's a lot of blubbering going on around the room. And hugging. Everyone talking at once.
    I beckon the girls. Time to leave. Nobody notices us walk out.
    When we reach the front yard, Ida, Evvie, Sophie, Bella, and I are also hugging and blubbering.
    "Italians are so emotional," Bella says.

    21

    Death by Pirate

    T he yearly Orphans' Play Day, held by the ex
    clusive Sarasota Springs Women's Club, was a major social charity event. This year the women had chosen Happyland Fantasy Park as their destination. This colorful amusement park was a great favorite of the orphans. The girls, from eight to twelve years old, excitedly walked in pairs, each line of six following its own individual leader.
    Photographers clicked after them everywhere they went.
    The Pink Poodle group was led by wealthy socialite Elizabeth Hoyle Johnson. At fifty-nine she was still considered a beauty. Her platinum blond hair was styled forever the day she had her first sight of Kim Novak in Hitchcock's film V ertigo. She was dressed in a luscious pink backless sundress with matching straw hat and white strappy sandals. Pink was her girls' color, so it was hers, as well. Her girls were all dressed in brand-new rayon dresses and matching ballerina slippers, a gift from the charity.
    They were babbling happily away as they skipped from ride to ride, every spot a photo opportunity. Girls eating pink cotton candy. Girls screaming with pleasure as they rode the Fantasy Chip and Dip ride. Mrs. Johnson was a good sport: she went on the rides with them and pretended to be frightened, too. But she only went on the gentle ones. Her severe asthma kept her away