Was it a new beginning? Can it be one when you are returning to the place you spent the first 17 years of your life? Kate Mangino arrived at her new house in Culver City with her son Wesley. She was moving back to California from Alabama. The house was a small, but clean stucco style painted white. She had grown up in Downey, California and had attended Downey High School as a teenager. No one would remember her though. She was a loner and was always alone. Although Downey had two famous alumni, Karen Carpenter, the lead singer of the Carpenters, and James Hetfield, the lead singer and guitarist of Metallica, the furthest Kate’s career went in music was that of a band geek. She was smart, however. Ferociously so. She was also a hard worker and got accepted to many colleges. She chose Alabama because she never really fit in to the easygoing lifestyle of Southern California.
She knew not to go to a school in the northeast because those people had a certain reputation. A rude one. So, she went to Alabama because she heard Southern people were nice. While they were nice, maybe a little too nice, Kate wasn’t like them either. All those sorority girls competing to see who could get the craziest each weekend. Why were they so loud?
After she finished college, she became a police officer. It’s what she always wanted to do. Her father had wanted her to be a lawyer, but she said no. Like they say, however, women tend to be attracted to men like their father, and Kate married an attorney, and she adopted his son he had from a previous marriage. Wesley was a fairly tall boy for his age. He was five feet ten at the young age of 13. He looked like he belonged in southern California.
As she was reflecting on her younger days Wesley was walking back towards Kate after carrying a box into their new house She was sitting in the moving van. Wesley was handsome, like his father. He was a blonde hair, blue eyed Italian whose roots could be traced back to northern Italy. Like many from the region, Wesley had Germanic features. Wesley’s grandparents were from the Trentin-Alto Adige region of northern Italy that once belonged to Austria. It also borders Switzerland.
After Wesley’ father divorced Kate, she took back her maiden name of Mangino and she and her former husband split custody of Wesley. She had loved Wesley for too long to ask herself why she would raise someone else’ child. As far as she was concerned, he was hers. Why did they get divorced? At the much too young age of 28, Kate Mangino got some bad news. She had cancer. She survived, but the treatments took a toll. Although she had breast reconstruction surgery, she never felt the same. She once saw a painter in a museum repainting a Picasso masterpiece, and it was good. But let’s be honest, it was no Picasso. It was the same with how she felt about herself.
Apparently, her husband felt the same way and left her. Although many people viewed it as cruel, Kate always said if he wants to go then, “I have to let him go.” Should she make a man stay who doesn’t want to? It wasn’t the way she was raised. Her brain was analytical by nature, and every situation was subject to the most strict reasoning. She didn’t have to force her emotions below the surface. Although she didn’t react like most women, she accepted who she was and her circumstances. Beyond the effects that cancer had on her body, Kate still felt attractive. She had dark brown hair and striking dark brown eyes. She was 5 feet 8 inches tall with a slim build. Sure, divorce was tough. but the worst of that part was over.
Besides, she had her son. She was worried about him though. By taking him out of school in one state and moving to a new school, she knew it had to be traumatic. At first, she thought he would lose all his current friends. But he never had any friends, really? He was like Kate when she was younger. She would pick him up from school and no one would smile or even nod his way as he walked to the car. It was like he was nonexistent, like a dead soul still wandering the earth looking for peace. She didn’t know what was worse, being bullied or not even being noticed. He would come home and then jump on his computer. Kate was so happy when he played online games with others. They were his only friends.
But then it happened. One day he came home with a black eye. It looked horrible. It wasn’t just black and blue under his left eye, it was swollen. When he first came home, the fight seemed to have energized him. He talked about it constantly. Some of the kids were cheering him on and he landed a great punch on the guy’s cheek. The guy had to put an ice pack on it all day, her son would boast. Although he looked horrible with a black eye, he seemed to like the attention. Sometimes he got sympathy. Other times, he got bullied even more because of it. But the sympathy subsided, and the bullying increased, and it started happening more and more. He couldn’t take it any longer. He said he wanted to move.
It wasn’t bad timing. Kate had hesitantly applied for a detective position in southern California, in a city close to where she had grown up. She had surprisingly gotten the position when he said he wanted to move. It seemed like fate. Although she made him finish out the school year, she always picked him up with her uniform on to discourage the bullies from harassing him. He still encountered harassment in the hallways, and during PE, but at least he wasn’t hit again since there was always a teacher close by.
They arrived in California as planned. They were moving the boxes inside. As she was carrying a box from her moving van into the bedroom, she heard piercing screams and crying. It sounded like a little girl, but it was her son. She quickly glanced out the window and could see him slapping at wasps or bees. He was running backwards and slapping them away. By the time he opened and slammed the door she could see at least a dozen stingers in him with one in his eye socket. Kate was horrified.
“What happened?”
“I’ve been stung. I went into that stupid shed, and they attacked me!” he was screaming. Kate ran over to the phone and dialed 911. It was only minutes, but it seemed like an eternity for the ambulance to get there.
The ambulance came and the paramedics gave him pain meds and drove him to the hospital. At the hospital, the doctors worked on him, and by the time she got into the hospital room, he had an eye patch on. The doctor reassured her that his eye would heal, and he would be alright. They talked for a while as she gently stroked his cheek. After he fell asleep, she sat in the chair and tried to get some rest as well. Her first day as a detective was tomorrow. She wondered if she should call in on her first day. The doctors said they would keep him one more night so she decided she should probably go in. Although she knew when she came out to California that she would have to leave him alone, she never dreamed she would have to leave him alone in a hospital room. Kate felt like a terrible mother and a horrible person, but they needed money. A tear fell down her cheek, just like it did when she was a little girl growing up in so called sunny, southern California. Should she have moved back to the place where she had grown up? Probably not. There were too many bad memories.