Mrs. Vanotti -- Part Five

I also do not know Mr. Vanotti’s involvement in all this, whether he even knew, or approved; especially of his wife's loaning my mother the $100. However, what I do know is that in all the years I knew and loved Mrs. Vanotti—as I said, she was our Grandmother surrogate--I never met or saw Mr. Vanotti, except for the charcoal self-portrait. I don’t remember him ever visiting the candy store. We never went to his and Mrs. Vanotti’s house. He never came to our house.

Years later my mother explained to me that soon after my mother’s purchase of the house, Mr. Vanotti had gotten into a car accident, which left him paralyzed and confined to a wheelchair. He immediately stopped all his art work, and become increasingly angry and bitter. He became a recluse and misanthrope.
Mrs. Vanotti sold the candy store soon after my mother bought the house, perhaps in conjunction with Mr. Vanotti’s accident, perhaps because Mrs. Vanotti was now charged with the responsibility of taking care of her now-demanding husband.
But these personal changes and events never interfered with my mother’s and Mrs. Vanotti’s continuing close relationship. They remained in constant contact, both during and after the end of the war, throughout the late forties and well into the decade of the fifties.

(...to be continued.)