Dedication
For William and Gioia
Contents
Cover
Title Page
Dedication
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
Chapter 25
Chapter 26
Chapter 27
Chapter 28
Chapter 29
Chapter 30
Chapter 31
Chapter 32
Chapter 33
Chapter 34
Chapter 35
Chapter 36
Chapter 37
Chapter 38
Chapter 39
Acknowledgments
About the Author
Reading Group Guide
Copyright
About the Publisher
Chapter 1
Bar Harbor, Maine
May 13, 1999
Today you’re a boy catching frogs in the marsh.
Tomorrow you’re an old man listening to stories
told by other old men. Life. It happens just like that.
—Cornelius Traegar
“I’m driving into oncoming traffic. My thinking is clear. I imagine every detail before it happens. Headlights kissing. Crash. Shatter. Metal twisting. Done. It’s quite vivid.”
Cecibel folded the bedsheets fresh from the line, just like Mrs. Peppernell liked them. The old woman’s vivid dreaming unsettled her, unsettled them both. So, too, did the new doctor drawing the recurring dream into the light. For Mrs. Peppernell, Cecibel would futz about the room, pretend to be diligently working. For her, Cecibel would do most anything.
“Done, you say? Do you die in your dream, Olivia?” Dr. Kintz’s pen paused. “Olivia?”
“I have asked you to call me Mrs. Peppernell.”
“We try to be a little less formal here.”
“Informality is for intimates. You are not my friend. You’re my shrink—”
“We don’t use that word, Olivia.”
“Mrs. Peppernell!” She slammed her knotty hand on the arm of her easy chair. “And don’t interrupt me, you impertinent boy.”
Setting the sheets into the hope chest, Cecibel tried to make eye contact and, failing that, let the lid slip just enough to make an audible click. Olivia’s gaze flicked her way. Their eyes met. Her wrinkled cheek twitched. “If you insist upon calling me Olivia,” Mrs. Peppernell said evenly, “I shall call you Richard. Or Dick, if that is your preference.”
“Would it make you happy to call me Richard?”
“It would make me happy if you would use the title I earned with sixty-two years of marriage. And it would make me even happier if you would stop speaking in the royal ‘we.’ Now go away, Dick. I am finished being monitored for today.”
Dr. Kintz heaved a sigh. Not the first psychiatrist to do so over Mrs. Peppernell. He would learn, or he would earn every lash of her wicked tongue. Tucking his pen into his pocket, his notebook under his arm, he leaned a little closer than experience would soon warn him against. “Forgive me, Mrs. Peppernell. Feel free to call me Richard, but please don’t call me Dick. We—you and I, not the royal ‘we’—can pick up on this conversation tomorrow, if you’re up to it.”
The old woman brushed imaginary lint from her impeccable trousers. “That would be agreeable, Dr. Kintz. Good day.”
“Good day.” He bowed his head. If he glanced Cecibel’s way, she didn’t know. She turned her face to the wall before he could. Then he was gone with a soft click of the door. Poor Dr. Kintz. Only a week in the Pen and he still had no idea what he was in for. Those who left made sure not to tell. Those who stayed knew better.
“Fetch my medicine, will you, dear?”
Cecibel lifted the lid of the cedar chest again. Once a place to store hopes for the future, it held only the past now. And sheets. And marijuana. The scent of it permeated everything. Moving aside the cotton—always cotton, never polyester—quilt awaiting winter, Cecibel pulled the baggie from its folds. “You’re running a bit low.”
“I’ll have more ready soon enough.” Olivia took the baggie from Cecibel’s outstretched hand. “The last crop is all but ready. Join me?”
“No, thank you, Mrs. Peppernell.”
“Don’t be silly, child.”
“Olivia,” Cecibel amended, smiling openly. The old woman never grimaced, never winced. Ghoulish is as ghoulish does. She’d said it without a trace of condescension or pity. Without apologizing afterward.
“Do you have a moment to walk me outside, dear?”
“Of course.” Cecibel gave her arm. “You could do that here if you want to. No one would care.”
“What am I? A barbarian? Gentle people don’t smoke indoors. It’s rude.” Olivia leaned on her, light as breeze. The power of her wit, her words, those ice-chip blue eyes, did not extend to her physical form. Once, long ago, she’d been a driving force in literary New York, a crusader for women. Longer ago, she was what all debutantes skating the last sharp edge of Victorianism were—a wife, a mother, a homemaker. Before that, for so short a time, a gifted nurse who married a doctor and gave up her career. Longer still in the years beyond years, Olivia Peppernell née Stuart was a little girl from rural Connecticut, one with dreams of being an equestrian, a concert pianist, anything but what she became.
“How about the arbor?” Cecibel asked once they were outside. Mornings were chilly in Bar Harbor, whether June or September. “The sun hits it just right this time of day.”
“Lovely.”
An orderly and an old woman toddled across the green lawn, down the dirt track to the arbor overlooking the sea. Cecibel lifted the ruined side of her face to the sunshine, petitioning the gods of sunlight and warmth to undo what those of darkness had done. Deaf ears. Blind eyes. No compassion. Not for her.
“Have you heard anything more of our new resident?”
Cecibel gave her companion’s arm a little squeeze. “He’s supposed to arrive today. Did you know that?”
“I did, yes. But, why now? Is he ill or simply old? I thought I read something about a memoir in the making.”
Cecibel laughed softly. “Bar Harbor Home for the Elderly is a lovely place—”
“The Pen is east of nowhere,” Olivia corrected. “He belongs in New York. Or Paris. Or Rome. He must be losing his marbles and his handlers want it done out of sight.”
“His medical records are private.” Cecibel settled Olivia into an Adirondack chair, blocked the wind while the old woman lit her joint and inhaled. The scent conjured friends forgotten, better days, coaxed a rare smile. Sitting on the footstool at Olivia’s feet, Cecibel pulled her sweater tighter. “I read about the memoir, too.”
“It’ll be ghosted.” Another long drag. “I’m certain. None of us writes once we come here.”
“That’s not true. You do. All the time.”
“I scribble. That’s all any of us do. Our best writing has been done.”
“How do you know?”
Olivia patted Cecibel’s knee. Kindl
y and condescending. “Did you read Switch’s book yet?”
The Sleeper and the Slumber. Raymond Switcher’s last novel, published in 1976. Switch mostly painted now, images that reached nostalgically back to a childhood in New Hampshire that never actually existed, considering he’d lived his whole life in Philadelphia. Occasionally, he penned short stories for obscure literary journals no one read.
“I did,” Cecibel said. “Well, I haven’t finished yet. It’s wonderful.”
“The Times got it right for a change.” Olivia nodded. “It’s truly his best. Possibly because he was wise enough to end on a high note.”
“And what about you? What is your best work?”
The old woman’s medicine, the only one she would use, had relaxed her shoulders, the set of her jaw. She slumped a little in her chair, able to now that the ever-present pain in her back was eased. “If you go by what the critics and sales figures say, my greatest work was And the Ladies Sang. A good book. One I’m proud of, naturally. Nineteen eighty-four was a powerful time for women, and the book spoke to several generations fighting the good fight. But if you’re asking which book rests most kindly in my heart, it’s Green Apples for Stewart. Barely made the best-seller list, but”—she patted her thin chest—“it still pitter-patters my shriveled old heart.”
“That was your last novel, right?”
“Second to last.” Olivia inhaled, held it, exhaled slowly. “No one’s heard of my last one. I, unwisely, didn’t know enough to quit.”
“What’s the title?”
“Look it up in the library if you’re so curious. I’m tired now, dear. I think I shall nap in the sun for a while.” Olivia closed her eyes. The ocean breeze whiffled her spun-sugar hair. The perfect white, Cecibel thought, just as it had once been the perfect copper red. Book jacket photos had never done her beauty justice. Stiff. Posed. Untouchable. Unapproachable. Unlike the ones displayed in her rooms, those including old friends and lovers. Olivia in wilder times.
“I’ll sit with you,” Cecibel offered.
Olivia’s eyes, tiny slits made by slumber and cannabidiol, found hers. An old hand reached out, into the breeze-tossed tendrils of Cecibel’s hair, and fell again. “‘Lean out the window, Goldenhair,” she whispered. “I hear you singing, singing . . .’”
Her head lolled. Cecibel shrugged out of her sweater and gently covered her with it. Olivia Peppernell softly slept. Her face to the sun. Her dreams gently kept. What did she dream? Outside of twisted metal and headlights?
Such a life she’d lived. Famous. Infamous. So much glory. So much pain.
Hugging herself, Cecibel hurried back to the main building. “Mrs. Peppernell is napping in the arbor, Sal,” she told her fellow orderly behind the maintenance desk. “Could you please send someone to keep an eye on her, and help her back to her room when she wakes? I have to go finish getting Mr. Carducci’s room ready for him.”
“Sure thing, buttercup.” Sal chuffed, waving her away with his big sausage fingers. Pink nails, today. Subtle. For Sal. “Doubt she’ll be waking up anytime soon. You reek, girl.”
Cecibel sniffed at her hair, wrinkled her nose. “Oh. Okay, thanks. I have some perfume in my room.”
“It ain’t gonna help,” Sal called after her as she hurried away, head down and face burning. Dodging residents, doctors, nurses, and other orderlies all the way to her room. No one would accuse her of smoking up on the job—everyone knew about Olivia’s medicine—but it wasn’t acceptable for her to reek of marijuana either. She changed her clothes, sprayed her brush with rose perfume, and gave her hair a good brushing.
Long and golden and lovely. The only remnant of a beauty shredded and burned away nearly a dozen years before. Even that was flawed by a hairline slipped too far off her ruined face. While the rest of the staff at the Pen was required to bind their hair off their faces, she was not. A kindness to her. To everyone.
She rolled an elastic band onto her wrist and dashed out of the small space belonging to her and her alone within the grand beachside mansion now a home for the elderly. Once in Mr. Carducci’s room, she’d bind it back and work unencumbered. She could cut it, of course, to a length that would hide the worst of her scars and still be manageable. The last vestiges of vanity kept it long and always longer. Vanity she no longer had a right to.
Mr. Carducci’s suite of rooms smelled of pine cleaner and lemon wax, leather, and wood. Cecibel had worked hard to make it perfect for him. Just the right light in just the right crooks and corners for reading, sleeping, writing. Soft blankets, softer pillows, a desk in the window facing the sea, and a healthy stash of paper and pens and notebooks. Of course, he worked on a computer; all writers did these days. But there wasn’t one of them who didn’t get sentimental and dreamy at the sight of a blank page and a waiting pen.
When she was a young woman, whole and hale in her twenties, Carducci’s novels opened her dreams to places and people beyond her ken. After the accident, his words kept her company through the darkest of the dark, through the pain, through the chaos of thoughts. Cecibel hadn’t read anything of his in years—she was done dreaming and he was done writing—but for what he’d once obliviously given her, she owed him her best effort. For what he gave the world, he deserved to finish his own story in peace.
Alfonse Carducci was overdue. She’d been told to have all in ready by ten. Perhaps she’d gotten the day wrong. Or perhaps Dr. Kintz’s enthusiasm for so auspicious a resident kept the famous man in the office once belonging to Cornelius Traegar himself, and vacated by too many in the dozen years since his death. Old writers didn’t fade into that good night. Not those populating the Pen. Their wits got sharper while their bodies betrayed them, their tongues sharper still. Cecibel rarely kept up with their banter; her mind was not quick or mean enough. It was more often that later, alone in her room and trying to sleep but for dreams, she’d laugh aloud at a joke or gibe given and taken hours before.
One last swipe along the polished wood of the bookshelf, and Cecibel called her job done. Tucking the rag in her back pocket, she scanned the titles there. Mr. Carducci’s books, of course. Every one. And Olivia Peppernell’s. Raymond Switcher’s, even those that didn’t make it to the best-seller list. Many of the residents, past and present, were represented upon those shelves. Authors. Editors. Illustrators. Cover designers. It was the only necessary requirement to apply for residency in the Bar Harbor Home for the Elderly—they had to have been in publishing. Cornelius Traegar’s will stipulated this one condition be kept, and it had been for more than fifty years.
Cecibel pulled a book—Wicked Tongues—and took it to the window. She flipped to the back cover. Alfonse Carducci, there a man in his fifties, smiled the half smile of an attractive, talented, successful man fully aware of his charms. The perfect smattering of white flecked his temples. And though the photo was in black and white, she knew his eyes were amber, like a lion’s. Cecibel remembered clearly, from an interview he did with Johnny Carson, the silky-deep tone of his voice, the Italian accent never lost though he’d lived his adult life in the United States. How enamored she had been of him during his heyday, of this man in his prime in every sense of the word. Now she stood in this window of his new residence, holding her favorite of his books in her hand, and the twittering, teenage lust chased her across the years.
“Ah, good afternoon, Cecibel,” Dr. Kintz called from the entrance. “I see we caught you—”
Spinning to the shelf, pulling the elastic band from her hair, she nearly tripped over her own feet. She pushed the book back into its space, smoothed the hair over her face, and hurried toward the door. A hand caught hers before she could make her getaway.
“No need to hurry off.” The voice, still silky-deep, was only slightly less robust.
Cecibel turned her face to the doorjamb. “I was just finishing up and . . . and . . . I’m sorry. Good afternoon, gentlemen.”
She didn’t rip her hand from his. Alfonse Carducci simply let her go. Their voices c
arried after her, Dr. Kintz’s the louder. “The residents love her, but she’s shy. She was in an accident, you see, and . . .”
Cecibel ran full pelt, oblivious to where she was going or how fast. Away. Where she didn’t have to hear the pity in Dr. Kintz’s voice. Or worse, in Alfonse Carducci’s.
“Whoa! Hey, hold on now.”
Hands gripped her arms, steadied her. Cecibel instinctively turned her face from the voice familiar enough to know doing so wasn’t entirely necessary. Finlay Pottinger had been working the Pen longer than she herself, and had as much to hide.
“You all right? Seen a ghost?”
“No. I’m fine. Thank you, Finlay.”
He let her go, bent to pick up a bouquet of flowers tied up in a bit of twine, and held them out to her. “Happy birthday.”
So close, a flicked glance was all she’d hazard. She liked Finlay too well to offer a full-on view. Taking the flowers from his hand, she brought them to her nose and inhaled. “Thank you, Finlay. How did you know?”
“Your birthday?” He chuffed. “It’s not a secret, is it?”
“No, but I’ve never celebrated it here.”
“Ain’t it time you did? Thirty-five is kind of a big year.”
“No bigger than any other.” She started away.
“Cecibel?”
And stopped.
“I thought maybe you’d like to do something, seein’s it’s your birthday and all. Maybe go into town for a burger and fries? What do you think?”
“No, thank you, Finlay. See you.” Her heart pounded so loud in her ears she could scarcely hear her own words. Or the mingled garbling that might have been his response. Or the wind. Or anything at all.
Chapter 2
Bar Harbor, Maine
May 15, 1999
If at first you don’t succeed, get a ghostwriter to do it for you.
—Cornelius Traegar
“You have to open your door sooner or later, Alfie. You know better than to hope I’ll just go away.”
Money, fame, and respect bought many things. None of it, gleaned over a lifetime of achievement, would spare him Olivia Peppernell indefinitely. Two days of him hiding away in his very comfortable, well-appointed suite in the Bar Harbor Home for the Elderly seemed to be her limit.
The Bar Harbor Retirement Home for Famous Writers_And Their Muses Page 1