Sempre (Forever) (44 page)

“I don’t know. I have no idea what was going on in my mom's head, but I'm sure she wouldn’t have been happy about what you’re doing to Haven.”

“You were young when she died, and frankly, your view of this is skewed. I’ve done a lot over the years that would disappoint your mother, but buying the girl isn't one of them.”

“Buying her? You think my mom would be okay with that? You’re sick!”

Vincent slammed his fist against the table. “Who are you to talk to me like that? Look how you’ve treated everyone!”

“And whose fucking fault is that, huh?” Carmine pushed his chair back as he stood up. “Whose fault is it that I’m so fucked up? Whose fault is it that I had to watch her die?”

Vincent glared at him. “Not mine.”

A voice cleared beside them as the manager approached. Others were staring, disturbed by the commotion. Vincent stood up and pulled some cash from his wallet, throwing it down on the table before walking out.

Not a word was spoken on the drive. When they reached the house, Carmine tried to get out, but Vincent stopped him.

“I had you do all it so you'd see what you were getting yourself into. She’s been cut off from everything, Carmine. In the confines of the house, maybe things are great, but that’s not the real world. On the off-chance you do get to be together, I figured it was better if you had experience dealing with that part of her. Because it’s going to be there every step of the way, and it’s all going to fall on your shoulders. You’ll have to lead her, because when you’re raised like she was, you don’t have the know-how to live any other way. I was trying to help you, not hurt you.”

Shocked, Carmine opened his mouth to speak, but his father continued before he could. “You think your mother would be disappointed I brought the girl into this house? I think you’re wrong. Would she like it? No. I don’t even like it. But I think your mother would’ve been disappointed had I thrown the child into the world blindly and expected her to survive. Had I enrolled her in school, do you really think she would’ve been fine? She knows what she knows, and that’s that. Society would’ve eaten her alive. Probably still will.”

Carmine had been focused on everything he thought his father was doing wrong and never even considered what might be helping Haven.

“She needs structure,” Vincent said. “She needs a semblance of her normal before she can be introduced to ours, because they’re two different things. You love her? Fine, love her. But don’t contradict me. This isn’t fun, Carmine. I’m not enjoying this, but I’m doing it and that should be enough to earn your respect. You have to stop acting like you’re powerful and wise, because you’re neither. You need to grasp that, son, or I’m going to lose you just like I lost your mother.”

Vincent got out, slamming the door so hard the windows vibrated.

Haven lay in the middle of Carmine’s bed, sprawled out on her back when he entered. He took off his coat and shoes before lying down beside her. Haven’s eyes fluttered open. She blinked a few times, smiling when they made eye contact.

“
La mia bella ragazza
,” he said. “Napping in the afternoon?”

“I ran out of stuff to do,” she said. “Everything’s clean.”

He sighed. “A nap actually sounds good right now.”

She eyed him curiously. “Bad day?”

“It was confusing, but I wouldn’t call it bad,” he said. “Any day that includes lying in bed with you,
tesoro
, can’t be bad.”

She smiled, running her fingertips across his lips. “I missed you.”

“
Mi sei mancata
,” he said. “That’s ‘I missed you’ in Italian.”

“Well,
mi sei mancata
, too.”

He laughed. “That’s all wrong. I’m a guy, so you say, ‘
mancato’
. You know, with an ‘o’ on the end and not an ‘a’.”

“
Mi sei mancato
,” she repeated.

“There you go! Watch out, look at my girl getting bilingual.”

*  *  *  *

Haven sat back on her knees, humming to herself as she surveyed the sparkling kitchen floor. She’d been scrubbing it for over an hour, getting the black scuff marks from the marble tile. Dr. DeMarco never spoke to her about cleaning. The rare occasions she got behind or forgot to do something, he always overlooked it. Sometimes she felt like she was living in another universe with how drastically things had changed in her life. She never imagined living an existence where she could throw down the broom and put the laundry on hold in order to catch a television program in the middle of the afternoon.

A lot of it had happened without her even realizing it. Before she’d come into the DeMarco house, she was constantly focused on tasks to stay out of trouble, but now it seemed she was thinking about herself more.

And that was something she’d never been allowed to do before.

She stood up, catching a glimpse of something when she turned around. Dr. DeMarco stood in the doorway, watching her silently. “Hello, sir. I didn’t realize you were here.”

“I have the day off.”

“Oh.” It was nearly noon, and she hadn’t even realized someone was home. “Are you hungry, sir?”

He nodded. “You can make some lunch,
dolcezza
. We'll watch TV while we eat.”

She blinked a few times when he walked out.
We
?

After making some chicken salad sandwiches and distractedly throwing together two Cherry Cokes, Haven headed into the family room. Dr. DeMarco was lounging in a chair with his legs stretched out in front of him, his smile falling when he took his lunch.

She sat down on the couch and picked at her sandwich as he took a sip of his drink. “Can I ask you something, child?”

“Yes, sir.”

He pulled a cherry out of his soda. “Did you start making these on your own, or did my son ask you to?”

“I made it on my own. I just… wanted to be nice.”

“Interesting.”

“Is there something wrong with that?” she asked.

“No, I was just curious. I'm curious about a lot, actually. Like, how did you know to use the special cleaner on my windows?”

Her brow furrowed. “It was written on the bottle.”

“So you’re admitting you could read then?”

Her blatant mistake stunned her. She nodded, afraid to speak.

“I already knew it at the time, but I was surprised you’d slip up on your first day. You aren't as slick as you think you are.”

A queasy feeling overtook her. She set her sandwich down. “How did you know I could read?”

“I discovered it years ago on a trip to Blackburn. You had a book. Had I not known, though, you would’ve given yourself away. The moment your illiteracy was mentioned, you looked left. That’s your tell. When you’re hiding something, you look to the left.”

Haven said nothing, forcing herself to look straight ahead.

*  *  *  *

Mrs. Chavis stood at the blackboard, her hands clasped in front of her as her gaze scanned the class. “Today we’re going to discuss something that has baffled people since the turn of time. Poets and scholars have been dissecting it for centuries, but no one can agree on a single answer. Can anyone guess what that question is?”

A barrage of questions was shouted out at once: “How many licks does it take to get to the center of a tootsie pop?” “If Superman could stop bullets, why did he always duck when someone threw a gun?” “If you choke a Smurf, what color does it turn?” “Do penguins have knees?” “Why’s it called Rhode Island when it’s not an island?” “How much wood could a woodchuck chuck if…?”

Mrs. Chavis held up her hand to silence the class. “Enough. Those are indeed great questions, but that’s not what I’m talking about. We’re going to discuss love. More importantly, what is it?”

There was a collective groan throughout the room as Carmine rolled his eyes. He started doodling in the margins of his copy of
La Vita Nuova
, already counting down the minutes until lunch.

“Who wants to tell me what love means to them?” Mr. Chavis asked. “Graham?”

Graham started stammering. “Uh, I don’t know. I guess it’s when you’re attracted to a girl. They turn you on, so you want them.”

“That’s lust, idiot,” Kayla called out. “Love is when you really know someone, like way deep down, and you like everything about them.”

“It’s a feeling you get when you trust someone,” another girl said. “It’s being devoted to them and only them.”

“Yeah, love is when you always want to be with the person,” Lisa said. “You want to go everywhere they go and do everything they do. You’d follow them anywhere.”

“That’s not love, Lisa,” Carmine said. “That’s called stalking.”

His response was met with laughter from his classmates, but Mrs. Chavis didn’t appear amused. “Tell me, Mr. DeMarco. What’s love to you?”

He shook his head. “I pass.”

“It’s not up for negotiation. Participation is 25% of your grade.”

He glared at his teacher. “I think it’s ridiculous you’re even trying to define it like it’s something material you can just go find if you want it. People use the word too loosely as it is. They say they love this and they love that, when they don’t. They just like the shi— uh, stuff. Love is something that changes you, and if you really loved all the crap you say you love, you’d never know who you were because you’d constantly be changing. Once you love, you love forever. You can’t help it.”

Graham snickered. “Told you he’d grow a vag.”

Carmine stuck his middle finger up and waited for Mrs. Chavis to yell at them, but she just stood at the front of the classroom, gaping at him. “I think Dante would agree with you. Even though Beatrice married someone else and died young, Dante loved her his entire life. The love was a part of him, because to him, Beatrice was ideal. He barely knew her, had only met her twice, but yet he truly claimed to love her. Can anyone tell me why?”

No one spoke up. Carmine sighed exasperatedly. This lesson was becoming frustrating to sit through. “Because he really loved the person she made him. It has just as much to do with how he felt as it did with who she was.”

“You’re right,” Mrs. Chavis said. “Dante said of her, ‘she has ineffable courtesy, is my beatitude, the destroyer of all vices and the queen of virtue, salvation.’ To him, she was his savior, the epitome of good. She rid him of his evil, made him feel worthwhile. That, we could argue, may be what he loved most of all.”

Chapter 29

Carmine paced the foyer, the sound of his feet against the wooden floor echoing through the downstairs. The sun hadn’t even risen and he was already so worried he couldn’t stand still. He glanced at his bare wrist for what had to be the tenth time and groaned. He’d gotten dressed in such a rush that he forgot to put on his watch.

After what seemed like another hour to him, although it was only a few minutes, he finally heard the car pull up outside. He swung open the front door so forcefully he was surprised he didn’t rip it from the hinges. “You’re late.”

Dia pushed him out of the way and stepped into the house. ”I’m early, Carmine. You told me six. It's 5:45.”

His brow furrowed. “It’s not even six yet?”

“No, it’s not.” She handed him a piece of paper. “Relax, it’s going to go fine.”

“You’re sure? I mean, it’s enough, isn’t it?” he asked. Dia raised her eyebrows, her expression causing his foolish panic to surge. “Christ, it’s too much. I’m going overboard.”

“She’s going to love it, Carmine.”

“I’ve never done any of this before,” he said. “I don’t know what the hell I’m doing.”

“I know. It’s all very sweet of you. I’m more than happy to help.”

“Thank you,” he said. “I’ll get some cash in town and pay you for your freelancing.”

She laughed. “No need to. This one’s on me. I’m kind of looking forward to hanging out with her today.”

“No shit? You actually want to socialize with a girl in my life?”

Dia rolled her eyes. “It’s not my fault you used to only bring people like Moanin’ Lisa around.”

The roads were fairly deserted that early in the morning, so Carmine made it to Blue Ridge Parkway in record time. When he reached the shopping center, he pulled out the list Dia gave him and glanced through it. A few of the items seemed like a waste to him, but Dia had assured him she knew what she was doing.

He wandered through some shops for a while and found a decent basket at an antique store to cross ‘picnic basket’ off his list. He didn’t know what kind of basket it was, or if there was even a difference. He agonized over it for far too long before asking the saleslady, but she just looked at him like he was speaking a foreign language.

After paying, he glanced back through his list and froze when he saw ‘picnic blanket’. He glared at the word ‘picnic’, wishing he was taking her to a restaurant instead.

He imagined some red and white checkered blanket like he saw on cartoons growing up, vaguely remembering one about an anteater with the ants carrying the food away. Just thinking about it stressed him out even more—he hadn’t even thought about bugs.

Glancing back through the list, he grabbed his phone to call Dia when he didn’t see anything to ward off pests.

Her voice was tentative as she answered. “Yeah?”

“What the fuck am I supposed to do when ants try to steal our food, Dia?” She didn’t respond for a second but finally laughed, which stirred up his anger. This was
serious
. “I don’t find anything funny. And what the hell is a picnic blanket?”

Dia continued to laugh, so he hung up. She wasn’t helping at all.

Before he could put the phone back into his pocket, it started ringing. He answered it with a groan. “You wanna laugh some more?”

Dia snorted, trying to contain herself. “You’re getting worked up over nothing. Bugs won’t be a problem. And a picnic blanket is just a blanket,
any
blanket.”

He hung up without saying a word and walked into a store, determined to buy the first blanket he saw, and shook his head when the red-and-white checker pattern caught his eye.