Yet Untitled. Welby Thomas Cox, Jr.
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connected to fluids intravenously. The stone apparently was passed… as did the pain, and after other test, CAT scans and x-ray Thad was sent home to recover from leg and knee trauma, broken elbows and severally bruised and broken ribs.
But then Eleanor, his wife of eighteen years noticed that Thad began telling outright fabrications over the most mundane questions. She watched him. Told him meaningless stories of the lives and asked innocent questions about his background to which he almost always made up a story she knew not to be true. When she was puzzled by the fabrication, Hamilton would only smile and say, “Sarah in the Sky. I don’t know why!”
Eleanor called Thad’s physician and related these perplexing experiences.
“We had the best man in the head injury business look at the CAT Scan, perhaps he missed something. Let’s get him in as soon as possible for another look,” Dr. Kara said.
Arrangements were made to get Thad back in to see Dr. Horton, a neurosurgeon. After speaking with Thad and Eleanor and revisiting the CAT scan he suggested that a new round of tests should be made and sent Thad to St. Joseph’s Hospital for another series. With the work-ups completed, Thad was told to go on home and the physician would call as soon as the outcome was analyzed.
The next day, Dr. Kara called and related the test results to Eleanor. He had suffered a severe head wound and was suffering from Post-Concussion Syndrome, a consequence of head trauma and sever bruising of the brain. The condition caused major reactions and swings in response to questions Thad would have dispatched easily prior to the accident. Dr. Horton and Dr. Kara both agreed that the malady would be remedied in time, and, that the thought process would be restored, they could hazard nothing more than a WAG, short in the engineering business Thad knew so well as, Wild Ass Guess. When would the head injury go away and the function of processing information once again be normal for Thad? That day would never come for him…instead of bemoaning the negative, Hamilton was retrospect…becoming far less apprehensive toward direction and adopting as his new life’s credo the words of Robert F. Kennedy… “Some people see things as they are, and wonder why…but I dream of things that never were…and ask…why not?”
Of course, the family was concerned and alarmed over the condition. Thad imagined that if the neighborhood children knew of his condition…they would have been certain to treat him in much the same way as Bo Radley, the challenged hero who lived next door to Scout in “To Kill a Mockingbird”. They would hang out to get a glimpse of the weirdo liar who lived at Shawnee Parkway. The house… the big old Italian Revival in stucco and tiled roof sitting across the parkway from the 700-acre park which he had purchased after his divorce from his first wife…Joanne, Mio’s mother! It was a beautiful place with a lovely veranda running across the front of the house and around one side. It had a carriage house connected off the other side and a beautiful garden courtyard complete with Italian statues of David, Neptune and Diana on pedestals as well as a lovely fountain in the corner with three cupids spilling cooling water into a recirculating pond. Thad had decided on the acquisition because it was convenient to the branch bank where he worked and, it served as the office for his Children’s Cosmapolis, a business he had started, as a side venture, and a place for his young daughter, Mio, as well as the hope that the venture might lead Hamilton to full time opportunity outside the bank someday.
He could utilize the carriage house as an office/studio apartment and there was a lovely little bedroom with a view for Mio when she was visiting. Thad was able to arrange a great mortgage with no cash at closing through the bank where he worked.
But the main reason for the purchase was the mood, which took Thad back to Italy where he had studied for a semester. Sitting there, at certain angles, he was again in the courtyard at Pistoria, having an espresso and watching with joy, the locals go about the morning routines as though he was part of the bench.
“Ah Aldo, Heh Antonio!”
Words moved Hamilton, especially Italian and this morning reminded him of those he had read which had been translated by a little known poet, “It must be morning there is crystal all around and everywhere the kind of optics which imbue the spirit and the mind with a special freshness, that’s above all genuine but I can always find comfort here in the early hours of waking, knowing that you are waiting, knowing that you will come running with eyes still moist from wanting. And even though I can’t touch you now, I can’t kiss your lips, I can, hold your mind!”
So lovely, that compelling feeling which drives a man and a woman, in any language… when they first learn to love. And now the morning sun had burned off the fog, which hung over the Tuscan valley moments before, like an old quilt historically chronicling the past and steadfastly holding on to the present. Thad knew this experience evoked something deep inside which gave him the sense of being a part of history, there when Hannibal marched through the countryside on his way to defeating Flaminio in 217 B.C., there, no more than 40 kilometers from Vinci, the birthplace of Leonardo. Thad fell in love with the light, as had DaVinci and all the other masters before and since, God given and inspired, how could no one paint he thought, or write? The light on the valley with the green sweep of the Apennines, as the forested slopes angled toward the valley, vineyards and olive orchards began, and the landscape of the artist and the poet meshing the mellow stone farmhouses dating to 500 A.D., their terra-cota roves solidifying each farm to the land. There was no dating this scene in Thad’s mind, a picture as complete and infinite as antiquity. Looking out, looking into the soul that is Italy! North, south, east and west was the essence and allure of the whole country.
Thad knew and felt the spirit, after several visits. He had been to the boot at Sicily, to the watery reaches of the Veneto, those revealing extremes of this country where he had taken Eleanor and they fell in love in Firenze, staying at the Kraft Hotel they were able to visit all the special sites, rest in the afternoon in the custom of the Italians and then dine at any one of the great restaurante where wonderful wine, crostini with chopped fresh tomatoes, a dish of potatoes, porcini mushrooms, big shrimp, mazzancolle followed by cicoria, maybe a mixed salad, always steaming and too much food. And in Verona, the Basilicata and Marche regions, Bellagio, Asola, Bologna, and more and more with the castle towns around Lago Trasimeno which could be seen from the hillside. It was all about the love affair that he had with his wife; she too felt the connection to history and to Thad. They were of a single mind and though she knew of his sorted romantic past she was secure that she knew his spirit and felt that his search was over. And she intended to see to it that he would have no need to search another!
This was the reason he loved the house. Whenever he was there somehow, he was transported back to the little villages in Italy, and it was his piece de resistance’. The main house was a three-story construction with access from the courtyard to two lower level studio apartments generally occupied by students from the medical school. It had been elegantly restored and tastefully converted from a single-family home into six apartments. The main floor with its magnificent stairwell and foyer formed the entrance to the first floor apartment that had a formal living room, dining room/study, bedroom with working fireplaces in all. A bath and small kitchen led out to a screened porch and into the gardened veranda. The second floor contained two large one-bedroom apartments, one of those in the rear of the house had a lovely screened in porch overlooking the garden. The third floor was an artist dream suite, a garret style studio complete with quasi-castle turrets, permitting the light to stream through in different shades as the time of day dictated. The windows contained leaded gothic panes creating the surreal effect of the Santa Maria Basilica in Florence, Italy but the light was that of Indianapolis, Indiana!
It was a great old house, which would have cost a couple of million to build in 1988, but in 1967 the house was on the block at a fire sale price of $ 95,000. Of course Thad had the bank inspectors look the house over carefully including structural, foundation, walls, leaks, had the plumbing inspected and the roof, to his delight was very expensive terra cota, no more than five years old and good for another forty years according to the roofer. The income from the apartments was more than sufficient to meet the debt service on a twenty-year loan at 5-½%, and the appraisal came in at $ 20,000.00 over the sales price. The carriage house wasn’t included in the income, so there was another bonus, free rent for the business and a place to live. It was a deal made in heaven.
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