by Cara Bastone
The last time she was in his house she’d been so tightly strung. Nervous and off-kilter. She hadn’t expected Mary to be so pretty; she hadn’t wanted to butt in on his quasi-date with Serafine. She’d been worried about Matty. She just hadn’t gotten comfortable at all. But now, with Sebastian in the other room and nobody around but Matty, Via let her eyes take it all in.
It was a very warm space. Every wall was painted, all slate grays and a few accent walls of royal blue. There were countless picture frames, photos of Matty at every age, Seb in a few places. And a gorgeous blond woman who Via could only guess was Matty’s mom. Via made her way down the hallway toward the living room and paused to grin at a picture of a very young Seb and Tyler, not older than Matty, missing teeth and dirty, arms around each other’s shoulders.
The living room, with its plush couch and armchairs, had a big, colorful rug and a spray of toys that Matty had already hauled out of a big tin chest in the corner.
“You have a puzzle collection?”
“Yeah! I love puzzles. No, Crabby!” Matty attempted to box out his dog who was boisterously nuzzling at the boy’s hands. “Dad says I have to do them at the dinner table, though, or else the pieces end up mysteriously lost.”
Via grinned and took Crabby by the collar so that Matty could pass by unhindered. “Do you want a snack before dinner?”
It was only 4:30. She figured she had an hour before she had to start making dinner.
“Yeah.”
“Run that back, kid.” Sebastian’s voice came from over her shoulder and Matty froze in place, turning back to Via with a sheepish look on his face.
“Um. Yes, please, Miss DeRosa.”
She hid her smile. “You got it. Why don’t you get started on your puzzle and I’ll bring it to you, okay?”
He scampered into the dining room to start the puzzle, and she turned to Sebastian. Something went smooth and soft in her belly. He’d changed into jeans and a fresh T-shirt, and his face and hairline were damp from where he’d splashed water over them. He still looked like microwaved death, though.
“Sebastian, why don’t you go lie down?”
“I’m sick of my bedroom.” He took on an ornery, stubborn expression that was especially prevalent in elementary schools.
For the second time in as many minutes, Via hid her smile from a Dorner boy. “All right, well at least go and lie down on the living room couch.”
He looked for a second like he might argue with her, but it wasn’t long before he ambled into the other room.
Via kept an eye on Matty in the dining room as she slapped together some peanut butter crackers and a handful of grapes. “Matty,” she said in a warning tone, “does your dad let you climb all the way onto the table when you do your puzzles?”
“Sometimes!” he insisted with the defiance of a kid who got caught in wrongdoing. His neck went a little red and he slid back into his chair, eyeing the plate that Via set down. “Can I have water, too?”
Via grabbed him some and then went back into the kitchen, checking to make sure that they had everything she needed to make dinner for Matty. She noticed a few other things in the fridge and pulled them out.
She found a pot and the rest of the ingredients she needed and started chopping vegetables. It wasn’t twenty minutes before she had the soup on the stove and she washed her hands. Via and Matty got a good jump on the puzzle, working on it for half an hour before she had him washing his hands and helping her make his dinner. He carefully buttered the bread and laid out the cheese slices for the grilled cheese. And then he studiously stirred the cheese mixture for the mac and cheese.
She grinned at his solemn little face as he cooked. Like it was a science experiment that might explode out of the beaker if he put in one drop too much milk. She wondered if Sebastian ever had Matty cook with him.
“Do you cook very often?”
“No.” He shook his head. “Only sometimes with Grandma Sullivan.”
“I used to cook all the time when I was your age.”
“Really?”
“Yup. My parents were from Italy, and cooking and eating is a really big deal in their country. So even when I was a kid, I already knew how to make marinara sauce and pasta from scratch. All sorts of things. Stew and bread, all kinds of pastries.”
“Do you still cook?”
“Every day,” she told him. “I love it. It calms me down. I like to cook the way you like to do puzzles.”
“Yeah, but you can’t eat puzzles.” Matty cracked up at his own joke.
“And you can’t spread out macaroni and cheese all over your dining room table.”
He laughed harder. “Well, you could. But then Dad would get really frustrated and make me clean it up.”
She checked on Sebastian, who was snoozing on the couch, curled on his side with a blanket up to his shoulders.
She and Matty carefully shoved the jigsaw puzzle down to one end of the table and she sat with him while he ate. He really was a very competent conversationalist. He always had been, even when he was in her pre-K class, but it was easy to forget that he was just six years old. After dinner he brought his plate to the dishwasher, but he needed reminding to wash his hands and face.
“It’s not bedtime yet,” he told Via, just in case she got any crazy ideas.
She nodded solemnly. “Of course not. It’s only 6:30. But I think we should go easy on your dad. Do you ever play outside after dinner?”
“Yeah. Lots of times. But not really when it’s dark out.” He peered out the sliding porch doors and grimaced at the glowing blue twilight creeping over the trees.
“You can play a video game, buddy!” Sebastian called from the other room with a voice that sounded like he’d swallowed some rough grit sandpaper.
Matty was in the living room like a shot, and Via followed after. Sebastian was just pulling himself up to a sit and clicking on the lamp next to the couch.
“Can I use volume, Daddy?”
“Only if you wear the headphones.”
Matty was busy pressing buttons and plugging in jacks and putting disks in slots. He was a whir of digital-age action until he popped the giant headphones on, grabbed up the controller and plunked his butt down in front of the TV. Via was relieved to see that he was playing a soccer video game, not a fighting one.
“I can’t thank you enough,” Sebastian said, still lying partway down, his gray eyes squinting.
“I’m happy to do it.” She lingered in the doorway. She knew it was probably time to go home, but she found herself wanting to stay until Matty’s bedtime so that Seb wouldn’t have to worry about it.
“What smells so good?”
“I made you some Italian cabbage soup. My mother always made it when I was sick. It’ll keep for a few days so you can eat it whenever you want.”
Sebastian pushed off the blanket and moved to stand.
“Oh! You want some now?” she asked. “I’ll get it.”
“You don’t have to do that, Via.”
“No, no!” She waved her hands in the air and was already darting out of the living room toward the kitchen. “Let me! Please, it’s half the fun of making food for someone.”
She served him a bowl and filled up a tall glass of ice water. She figured he’d feel awkward if she didn’t take some for herself as well, so she put an identical serving on a tray and carried the whole thing out to the living room.
Sebastian’s eyes were closed when she stepped toward the couch but as soon as she set the food down, he was sitting back straight, scraping a hand over his face.
“Are you sure you’re up for eating?”
“Honestly, my throat is killing me, but I’m starving. I haven’t eaten since yesterday.”
She tsked and nudged his bowl forward. “I hope you don’t mind that I raided your kitchen to make all this.”
“Mind? Please. I’d been side-eyeing that cabbage since the weekend, trying to figure out what the hell I was going to do with it.”
She laughed. “You bought it without a recipe in mind?”
Sebastian shrugged, taking a bite of soup and wincing. “My throat,” he told her when he caught her eye. “Tastes so good, though. Yeah, I always try to buy a bunch of vegetables and then figure out what the heck to do with them. Cora used to do all the cooking, so I was pretty lost for a while after she passed. But I can make a fair stir-fry. Smoothies in the morning. Pancakes. Frittata. Tacos. Toward the end of the week, I’ll make a huge kitchen sink omelette and just toss in everything we have left.”
For some reason, that made Via smile around her soupspoon. “Smart.”
He shrugged again, and she could see how sick he really was, purple under his eyes and his face lined.
She glanced at Matty. “Can he hear us?”
Sebastian shook his head. “He’s dead to the world right now. Freaks me out sometimes. Like, I could get murdered by aliens and he wouldn’t even know.”
Via laughed and set her soup aside. Her stomach flipped. Hard.
“Everything all right?” he asked, his voice a little less gritty after the hot soup had loosened up his throat.
“Well, I just wanted to tell you something.” She plunged right in, even though she felt terribly awkward. “While Sadie and I were walking home, Matty told us about, ah, your dating life a bit.” She could feel her color rising. “And he mentioned that he didn’t understand why you couldn’t find someone who wanted to be a mother. And I told him that finding the right person was harder than it sounded and required a little magic. And I just wanted you to know that that was how I handled it, in case you want to talk to him more later. I just didn’t want him to tell you what I said and then feel super weird.”
She was sure her face was bright red by now as Sebastian stared at her, his spoon in the air. After a second, he took another bite of soup.
“As an education professional,” he asked carefully, “did you get the impression that he was talking about it because he feels confused and needed to run it past you?”
“Ah.” Via went even redder. “No. I think he’s pretty clear on most of it.”
“Then why was he talking about it?”
Oh God. Thanks, Sadie, you nosy ass! “Well, Sadie might have been fishing for some details on the Fabulous Mr. Dorner.”
He face-palmed. “Oh, for the love of God, tell me that nobody actually calls me that.”
“You can’t blame the flamingos for being curious about the lion.”
He laughed and then winced, bringing his hand to his throat. He set his soup aside and took a few grateful swigs of ice water. “Can I ask what Matty said?”
Via cleared her throat. “Just that you were always honest with him about your dates, where you were going and who you were going to see. And that you’d had to cancel a few dates because you were sick.”
Sebastian nodded and she wondered if it was the lighting or if his cheeks had gone a little pink. “Yeah.” He traced a hand over his hair. “I’m trying to get back out there.”
She started to tell him that he didn’t need to feel obligated to explain anything but then he just kept right on talking.
“It’s hard, you know? Being a single dad and, ah, a widower. Both things can kind of be conversation stoppers on a first date. I guess I’m sort of casting a wide net these days.”
Via knitted her brow and took a big gulp of her water. It made her so sad to think that Sebastian was spending time with women who pulled away from him because of who he was, his situation. What a bummer. She didn’t like the thought of him looking so hard for companionship and just getting lonelier in the process.
“No promising prospects?” she asked in a friendly way, although her voice sounded weirdly gruff to her own ears.
He shrugged and then looked up quickly. “I hope you don’t feel weird that Serafine and I aren’t a love match. We texted yesterday and both agreed.”
“Oh really?” Via felt a strange tug in her stomach. She had been worried about Fin and Sebastian dating, sure, but at least she’d known that Fin would be sweet to him. And that he would be respectful of Fin.
“Yeah. She’s lovely. And beautiful. But in the end, she’s just too young for me.”
Sebastian’s eyes were on the video game when he said it, and Via was glad, because his words jolted her. Too young? It had honestly not occurred to her that Sebastian would think of himself as significantly older than she and Fin. Sure, he was obviously very mature and in a very settled stage of his life. But just looking at him, he didn’t seem that old. Sure, he had some gray hairs, and no hint of boyishness at all.
Evan had wide shoulders but slim hips and always kept his face shaved smooth. Sebastian had the more gruff, substantial look of a man who was done growing. He was simply...adding. Muscle, mass, beard.
She thought he was probably in his late thirties. Or maybe early forties. She considered asking, but the words wouldn’t come. She took another gulp of ice water and let her eyes drift to the photos on the wall.
There was a series of photos of baby Matty squishing his cheek against the face of that same stunning woman in most of the other pictures. She looked like a Swedish princess. Long blond hair and sky blue eyes.
“What was your wife like?”
The question was a surprise to both of them. But Via asked it with the candor and matter-of-fact-ness that could only come from having lost people close to her as well. She knew what it was like to have people cringe away from your grief, your loss, and it had meant that she’d kept it bottled up for years longer than she should have. She hadn’t planned on asking him the question, but she didn’t particularly regret it once she had.
Sebastian cocked his head to one side and pulled the blanket back over his lap. Via tossed him a pillow and he jammed it behind his head as he shimmied down to a half sit. The soup had given him a little color back but she could still see the fatigue in his eyes.
“Cora was...very intense. Very particular. The only one like her. She had this feeling about her. Like licking a battery.” He sort of laughed to himself. “She was loud and crass and people had very specific reactions to her. You were either laughing the second she came into the room or groaning. For instance, Ty never really warmed to her. She stressed him out. But Mary and she were best friends. Mary thought she was the funniest person alive.”
Sebastian stretched out on the couch, and his feet came within six inches of Via’s leg. He stared at the ceiling as he talked. “To Cora, the world was very A plus B. She liked things to fall in an order. A line. She liked controlling whatever she could control. Especially for Matty and for me. I hated that part when she was alive and missed it so bad when she was gone.”
He brushed the back of his hand over his eyes and something came wildly loose inside of Via when she realized that he was crying.
“But she was also really fun,” he continued. “It was like she spent so much time inside the lines that like once every two months she just had to cut loose and lose her mind. She’d party hard, not drinking, but like, at a water park or bowling or wherever. A one-woman party.” He wiped his eyes again. “She loved peanuts.”
Via felt something inside of her fold over, once and then twice. She kept waiting for him to describe Cora physically. She’d obviously been so gorgeous. But he didn’t. He spoke about her as a person. A mother. A wife. And it touched Via. She felt tender, both with affection for Sebastian and, surprisingly, sadness that she hadn’t known this woman.
“She was such a good mom. Honestly, it kind of surprised me. Because she was such a harsh lady. She didn’t suffer any fools. She didn’t bother with whiners of any kind. But she was so sweet with Matty. Rigid. Lots of rules. But so sweet. They had such a good thing going. He was lucky to h
ave her. Some people go their entire lives without getting loved that hard. And he had it for the first three and a half years of his life.”
“She died in a car accident?” Via asked, though she already knew it was the case. Just like her parents. She wondered for a second if Seb hated the phrase car accident as much as she did. Something about the word accident made it all seem so whoopsy daisy. Like they weren’t people alive and well with lives and kids one second and then dead on the blacktop the next second.
She felt so small there on the couch with a hand-knit afghan over her lap. Like a child snuggled in for a scary story. She wanted to be able to comfort this man who was sitting there, looking so tired. So dreadfully sick. So sad he couldn’t quite control the words coming out of his mouth.
“Yeah. Drunk driver. A college kid. He was all right, but his life was over, too. I met him once. Last year. He’s doing time for manslaughter. I visited him in prison and wished I hadn’t. He lost everything that day. Matty and I? We still have each other. But that kid’s life is just over.”
“Daddy, can I play one more?” Matty was turning around and pulling the giant headphones to one side. He looked like Princess Leia.
“No, it’s time to start getting ready for bed.”
Matty looked for a second like he was going to argue but he glanced over at Via, all tucked in on the couch, and he obviously scented an opportunity. “Can Miss DeRosa put me to bed tonight? Since you’re sick, Daddy?” The second half of his statement proved just how much of a smooth talker this kid was.
“I’m sure Miss DeRosa has places to be,” Sebastian said.
“Of course I can,” Via said at the same time. She turned to Sebastian. “Really. I’d love to. You rest.”
She didn’t mind a bedtime story with a sweet, sleepy kid, but she was also very appreciative of a moment to gather her wits. That thing that had folded inside her stomach wasn’t unfolding. If anything it was stubbornly pulling denser and denser. Watching him talk about Cora had been a moment filled with motion and transition. It was almost as if he knew she had put him in a certain box and he’d stubbornly picked himself up and plunked right down into another.