Chapter 7: The Extra Chair at the Dark Table
The doorbell rang and nobody moved to answer it.
I was sitting on the bottom step of the staircase with my legs tucked under my cream dress, watching my dad stand in the entryway with his phone still in his hand. Bianca was in the living room, on the far end of the couch away from the dark wooden table where the bowl was still sitting. Marcus stood by the doorway to the hall with his hands in his pockets. My dad had called someone after Emma left, and the house had gone quiet waiting for that bell.
My dad looked at me and then opened the front door.
My nonna Elena stood there. She was my dad's mom, and she wore a wool coat even inside houses and always smelled like coffee and hand cream. She didn't live with us but she had a key. That afternoon she didn't use it. She knocked, and when my dad opened the door she stepped in and hugged him once, hard.
I remembered her eyes going right past him to me on the stairs. She opened her arms and I got up and went to her. She smelled the same. She held me against her coat and her hand covered the back of my head.
"Hey, baby," she whispered to me. It was the first soft voice I'd heard in an hour.
My dad closed the door behind her. Marcus nodded at her but she didn't answer him. She walked with me into the living room, and that was when she saw it.
The stainless steel bowl was still on the dark mat on the dark wooden table. The light from the chandelier hit the rim. It had nothing in it. It was empty and clean and that made it worse. Elena stopped walking. Her hand tightened on my shoulder.
She didn't ask what it was. She looked at the table, then at Bianca on the couch in her pink satin robe with the lace trim, then back at the bowl. The red mark was still high on Bianca's left cheek. Elena's mouth pressed into a line.
"Vittorio," she said. It wasn't a question.
My dad was behind us. "On the floor. That's where she had her."
Elena nodded once. She didn't need more. She guided me to the armchair farthest from Bianca and sat me down and pulled the blanket from the back of it over my knees, even though I wasn't cold. That was her way of marking where I belonged.
My dad asked Marcus to step into the kitchen. Marcus didn't argue. He followed him out and I heard low voices from the hall. Elena stayed with me and Bianca. Bianca had pulled her robe tighter around her and her jeweled choker caught the light when she swallowed. She tried to sit straighter, like the robe was still something pretty and not something out of place.
Elena didn't look at her directly at first. She smoothed my hair.
"You sit there," Elena said to Bianca, not unkindly, but clearly. She pointed with her chin to the single chair by the window, away from the table and away from us. "Don't move from there while we talk."
Bianca got up slowly and carried her robe over to that chair. The satin made a soft sound. She sat with her hands folded in her lap and her knees together. In that chair, under the warm lamp light, the pink looked too bright. Too little-girl, too costume. Everyone else was in dark coats and suits, and she was alone in that color.
My dad came back in with Marcus behind him. Marcus wouldn't meet anyone's eyes. My dad pulled another chair out for Elena near me, but Elena stayed standing for a second longer.
"You're going to stay with Elena tonight," my dad said to me. He crouched so we were level. His neck tattoos showed above his black shirt collar, his gold chain shifted. His voice was even. "Just for tonight, so I can figure things out. You want that?"
I nodded. I didn't want to go upstairs past Bianca's room. I held onto Elena's coat sleeve.
He looked at Elena. "Can you take her? Just till morning."
"Of course," Elena said. She rested her hand on my head again. "I'll take her now if you want."
My dad nodded. He stood and looked toward Bianca in the window chair. He didn't raise his voice. "You stay in that chair. No one is going to hurt you. But you don't come near her again tonight. You understand?"
Bianca nodded once. Her eyes were wide and her cheek still showed that red. She didn't speak.
Marcus cleared his throat from the doorway. "Should I—" he started.
"You should sit down," Elena said, cutting him off without looking at him. "And wait till he tells you what he needs."
May you like
Marcus sat on the edge of the hallway bench and put his hands back in his pockets. The house that had always felt big and open with marble floors and cream walls suddenly felt divided into spots. My spot was with Elena by the armchair. Bianca's spot was alone by the window. Marcus's spot was the bench. And the bowl's spot was in the middle of the dark table where no one wanted to sit.
Elena helped me stand. She had my small coat over her arm already. She'd brought it without being asked. As we walked toward the entryway, I turned and saw the bowl one more time, still there, still empty, with my dad standing over it with his hand at his side, not touching it, letting it be seen.
