About Charles Wolfegang Tuomi

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As a boy, I lived in a house in Milton, MA.

Our next door neighbors were a family of five whose last name was Bell.

Father, mom, one son, two daughters. They had moved to Milton from Virginia.

Patricia was the youngest of the two daughters, about five years older than I was, I think.

Every so often, I would be sent next door, or have a reason to go there.

Sometimes it was misdelivered mail,  Trick or treating. 

More often it was some fundraiser my school was making me beg people for.

It always seemed to be Patricia, Patty, who opened the door. A total, utter angel.

The First and Deepest Cut.

That door would open and I just wanted to walk inside and close it behind me and stay there forever.

The Bells were genuinely warm to me, and also very smart, and kind.

All of that felt in precious supply next door, where I lived.

Patty was a teenage girl and I was an awkward, gangly doofus, fatherless, confused, undiagnosed autistic with an intellect and imagination that was problematic in the sense that I inhabited a different world than everyone else around me, fumbling over my words to beg for money.

But Patty was genuinely inviting and kind. Not from being trained to be polite. She clearly just was that way. It was her. There was nothing formal or staged about any of it.

I wanted the Bells to adopt me, to escape the hell where I was and enter the heaven I saw when, on those occasions when my fundraising request required a bit of paperwork or finding payment, Patty would invite me into the front hallway to wait and even sometimes make small talk.

The best of many dreams that never came true.

Every story I have ever written is about Patricia Bell on some level. The deepest level, where the God stuff is.

Pretty Patty Bell.

Pretty Patty Bell in the heavenly hallway.

Pretty Patty Bell in the heavenly hallway is why Pretty Halle Berry references abound in my fiction.

Like Berries.

Patty Bell very closely resembled the actress Shari Headley, who starred in Coming to America, but Halle had a lot more roles to use and also reminded me a bit of someone else very special to me.

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