19 — The Social Whirl
October 18, 1938
"My parents expect you'll ask to marry me, you know."
Carmine, temporarily lost in a whirl of worry and waltz, suddenly felt his attention drawn back to his dancing partner.
"Hmm?"
Sadie, her large green eyes all a-shimmer, giggled.
"I was just commenting that my parents think you're interested in me. In fact, they rather hope you are."
"Oh, they aren't the only ones," Carmine sighed.
"I think my mother's already got the wedding and honeymoon entirely planned, and has picked names for at least three children."
Now they laughed together, but in an instant, Sadie was somber.
"You're not the marrying kind, are you?" she murmured.
"Well, I don't know that I'll never marry..."
"But you won't any time soon."
Carmine broke his gaze from Sadie's for a moment.
"Don't mean to disappoint you."
"Oh, I'm not disappointed. I'm in no rush to marry. It's Mother and Father who want to get me settled with a man as soon as possible. I think they're afraid I'll be like Cousin Jeanette. That I'll be a bit wild and cause scandals or something."
"Oh, now, you're far, far too well behaved to cause a scandal. Besides your cousin — I met her once, maybe at that garden party, end of last summer — seems a perfectly nice girl."
"She's wonderful, I think. But Mother and Father say she's fast, that she takes strings and strings of lovers, and that her politics... Well, she's not quite in line with their feelings."
In truth, Carmine had met Jeanette Stuart-Morency more than once. She was rather a fixture in certain social circles he also moved through. Yes, she was a bit brash, and a little bit of a Bolshevik, but she was quite settled near the Village, only one lover on the string. All in all, a charming girl.
"I think," Carmine said, "parents know less than they give themselves credit for."
The dance had ended, so Carmine released Sadie to go and chatter to some friend and made himself unobtrusive near a small fountain that was spurting rosé.
He did hate these social functions and parties Mama and Papa sent him as family envoy to. They did it, he knew, in the hope he'd at last meet a nice girl.
It was torture not to be able to tell them he'd already met a nice man instead.
While Renato and Dominic Tamburo had both married the daughters of close family friends, Carmine was being pushed to marry in a very different direction. He was to gain entrée for the Tamburo clan into a rarified new social sphere.
The Stuart-Morencys were old money and old society in many, many ways. They had alleged family connections to old Anglo-Scottish and French aristocracy, and had been, in some form or another, in the Americas since the 18th century. They were also, to their credit in the eyes of Carmine's parents, devoutly Catholic.
The fact that his parents still tried to exercise such control over him appalled Carmine. He was a grown man, living on his own. Granted, he worked in the family business, but that had always been expected. What he, at least as a child, had never expected was to feel such a desperate need to cut all ties to his family. Mama and Papa with their control, Renato with his ruthlessness masked under devoted filial deference, Dominic with his rage and violence...
The only reason Carmine had anything to do with his family at all was because of his care for Nunzia and Modesto. Now Nunzia was out of their parents' home as well, making some sort of life.
God help him, sometimes Carmine wanted to steal his little brother Modesto away and keep him from the fate of a Tamburo. Already at 13 the boy was showing signs of falling too well into Papa's lockstep. Carmine felt that old pull himself. Of course, he fought it. He could never bow to pressure and marry some poor, innocent girl. He'd never be able to love her in the way expected of a husband, and he'd break three different hearts in the attempt.
Shaking himself out of the dark thought, Carmine felt another infect him. He saw, among the other guests, Pietro Farino. For just a moment, their eyes met, and Carmine saw the derision in the other man's face.
The Farinos were, at the moment, causing trouble for the Tamburos — nothing big. Just annoyance. At least Papa and Renato had told him it was just annoyance. But suppose it were more? Suppose the Farinos were involved in Dom's little plot?
It'd be just like Dom to lie down with snakes in an effort to smite his own.
Posted Oct 19, 2019, 7:06 AM UTC · edited