Running Through the Sprinklers

Mamie and Bessie were separated in age by twelve years but tied closely together by the bonds of common tragedy.  They lost their husbands within a year of each other.  Nobody in Mamie’s family shed any tears when Angelo Gatto popped off with a heart attack.

“I don’t know why Mamie had to marry a wop,” was her Uncle Henry Bosworth’s observation.  “We’ve been pure Anglo for six generations and now we’ve got a fat Italian in the family.”

Katherine Bosworth was a big, good natured woman and got along fine with Gatto and all his Italian friends.  “I think Angelo’s in the Mafia, Henry,” she said, “so you better leave him alone.”

The last Bosworth sibling, Buster, also lived in the State Street house when Mamie got married, but was in DePaul Sanitarium when Angelo died.

Buster had long spells when he was completely lucid, but most of the time he gave people the impression that he was as crazy as a bed bug, which he actually wasn’t.  Everybody liked Buster and forgave him for being so consistently vulgar.  “Mamie got her big tits from Katherine,” he announced to Angelo and his Italian friends as they ate spaghetti at the reception dinner, and later he got leave from DePaul to tell a collected group at the funeral, “Mamie fucked that poor dago to death.  He died in the saddle trying to satisfy the horny woman.”

There’s not much to tell about Bessie’s divorce.  It took her husband, Bruce Owens, almost three years to convince himself he wasn’t ever going to get any of the Bosworth money. He sold drilling mud for an oilfield supply company and didn’t ask Bessie to go with him when he moved to Houston to be closer to his customers.