The Bar Harbor Retirement Home for Famous Writers_And Their Muses

by Terri-Lynne Defino

  “Is it because of what I done?”

  Cecibel struggled back from old regrets. “Pardon? What?” She processed his words. Old gossip. Decades-old newspaper articles read on microfiche. Her face warmed. “Oh. That. No, of course not. You were a boy. That wasn’t your fault.”

  “Wasn’t my fault I bashed a man’s brains in?” He chuckled, rubbed a hand across the back of his neck. “I guess you’re right. It wasn’t my fault. Too bad the jury didn’t agree. But I’d do it again and pay twice the price, and that’s the absolute truth.”

  “Well, I don’t hold it against you. That man was a monster.” Takes one to know one.

  “I agree.” Finlay leaned against the counter. “So if that’s not it, why shouldn’t we be friends?”

  “We are.”

  “Then let’s go grab a beer.”

  “I don’t drink beer.”

  Another chuckle. “You don’t leave the property neither, much as I can tell.”

  “I do so.”

  “How about a walk on the beach? Tomorrow, after your shift. Sal tells me you get off at three.”

  Sal’s going to have a hard time telling anyone anything after I cut his tongue out. “I have to get this stuff back to the infirmary, Finlay—”

  “Fin,” he corrected. “If you don’t mind.”

  “Whatever. Fin. If you’ll excuse me.” Cecibel shouldered past him and hurried for the door.

  “Is it because of your face?”

  She stumbled on the stair, caught herself. Caught her breath.

  “I seen it,” Fin said more softly now. “It makes no nevermind to me. I’m not looking for anything, Bel. Just a friend. I swear. I’ll be on the beach at three thirty tomorrow. Come walk with me. Or don’t. I’ll understand.”

  Breath caught, face flaming, Cecibel flew the rest of the way down the steps—Bel, Bel! Stop! You’re killin’ me!—through the maintenance barn, across the lawn now evening-dewed, straight to her room without putting back the gauze, the ointment, the peroxide, or the splinter kit. Back pressed to the door, holding too many demons at bay, Cecibel wept hot and silent tears out the one eye that still worked properly, down the one cheek that still could feel them.

  Chapter 7

  Paterson, New Jersey

  Spring 1954

  Cecilia

  In March, when coy Winter lifted her skirt for Spring, Aldo informed her he’d joined the navy. Just like that. No warning. No discussion. Cecilia had told him he had all the choices in the world to make but one. She never expected this. If she had, she’d have forbidden it, too.

  “I have no family,” he said. “And I can’t flip burgers the rest of my life.”

  His couch smelled like his clothes—hot dog and burger grease. The scent would arouse her all her life. Cecilia used to keep perfume in her purse, to hide the condemning odor of him. Unnecessarily. As a kid always in trouble with the law, her father’d hung out at Falls View, too. He remembered it fondly enough to indulge her, as long as she didn’t get fat.

  “What about college?” she asked. “I could visit your dorm on weekends and holiday breaks. It would be so much fun.”

  “You need money to go to college. I can barely afford this room. It’s too late anyway. I can’t back out. I signed the papers. I leave in—”

  She covered his mouth, her Florida-tanned hand dark against his winter-pale skin. “You did this while I was away. You waited for me to leave, and you did this terrible thing.”

  Aldo pulled her hand away, gently. “It wasn’t like that, exactly.”

  “Then tell me what it was exactly like.”

  She waited while he fidgeted, while he fumbled with her hand. She waited for words that would make sense, and somehow lift the pain.

  “When you were away,” he said, “it was kind of exciting. At first, anyway. I marked the days on my calendar. Every red X meant one day down, one day closer to seeing you again.”

  A smile shivered to her lips. Cecilia snuggled into him.

  “After that first week, it stopped being exciting. The closer it got to you coming home, the more I understood the truth.”

  “What truth?”

  “That this is going to be my life,” he said. “Always waiting for you to come to me. I can’t ever go to you. Not for any reason. Ever. After you graduate, your family might send you to college, or they might marry you off, and the waiting is just going to get worse. Harder. This way, we’ll be waiting for each other, and when I come home again, I’ll be an officer if I work really hard. Maybe then, I’ll be good enough.”

  They’ve already chosen him, she didn’t say. Long before I ever knew he existed. Probably even set the date.

  Cecilia burrowed deeper into him, her arm snaking about his waist. Aldo kissed the top of her head, the corner of her eye when she lifted her face. Sorrow pricked resignation into heat. They made love on his couch as they had dozens of times before, and only weeks left to add another dozen or so times more. Cecilia straddled him; he held her hips, eyes only slits, ecstasy burgeoning. She preferred being on top, it was true, giving him access to her breasts, being able to control him, herself. Everything. This time, it was different. She even hoped—stupid, foolish, insane—she’d get pregnant. But it hadn’t happened yet; it probably never would. Maybe she’d be lucky and turn out to be barren. No man would want her then. No man but Aldo.

  Three sharp bangs on the floor. Agnes, the aging waitress doomed forever to Aldo’s escaped fate, signaled for them to come down. She was the only one who knew, and Cecilia paid her to keep it that way, just like she paid for these rapped warnings. Aldo didn’t know. He thought she was an old romantic with a soft spot for him. Whatever softness Agnes once had leached out of her when, a decade ago, a Purple Heart and a U.S. flag were delivered to her door. That was all Cecilia knew. Husband? Son? She couldn’t tell, by the look of her. Agnes might be thirty, or sixty. Grief taxed a body far more than time.

  “I’ll go in through the back door,” Aldo said, tucking in his shirt. “You go over a few lots and come in from down the street, through the front.”

  “I know the drill.” She kissed him, lingered. “I love you.” And out she flew before she said anything about the navy or how little time they had left whether or not he had made that choice. Whether or not he knew.

  Her father sat hunched at the counter. Of course. Dominic Rafaele Tommaso Giancami. Cami to friends, family, and enemies in both camps. He allowed her afterschool visits to the hot dog joint of his youth, but checked on her from time to time, just in case. Trust, he always said, was something earned only after a lifetime of obedience and good choices. She was only sixteen, and had a long way to go.

  All shoulders, her father. Once upon a time, they were all muscle. Cecilia remembered riding on those shoulders, feeling like the princess she was born to be. He loved her then, she thought, when she was small and innocent and pure. Her hero. Her daddy. The love of her life. Until the advent of breasts and hips confirmed she was, after all, female and not to be trusted. A temptress. A slut. By virtue of body parts she had no idea what to do with, she’d been cast out. Planned for instead of played with. Punished whenever a man or boy whistled at her on the street.

  For a split moment, seeing her father through the window, the tiniest surge of that old love, that wish to please rose up. And then he turned and—maybe? Oh, maybe! But no. If anything surged in her father’s heart, it was squashed before he waved her inside.

  “Hey, Daddy.” She kissed his cheek. “What are you doing here?”

  “Just chattin’ with my old pal Agnes.” He jutted a thumb over his shoulder. “She says you’re usually here by now, already stuffing hot dogs down your throat with your friends. Where you been?”

  “I had to take a makeup test in history,” she lied, “from when we were away in Florida. I’m starving now. You going to stay and buy me a dog?”

  “No can do, kiddo.” He slid from the stool, his massive frame still muscular under all the cushion gained sinc
e youth. Tossing a couple dollars on the counter, he towered over her. “Half hour,” he said. “Then you’re home. Got me?”

  “I gotcha, Daddy.”

  “Good girl.” He kissed the top of her head, his attention already on something outside. All eyes followed him out the door. A collective exhale whispered mouth to mouth.

  Cecilia climbed onto the stool her father vacated. She added a fiver to the two bucks he left and slid it all to Agnes. “Thank you.”

  “You’re going to get yourself in trouble, Cecilia. Cami’d have me killed if he knew.”

  “Then he can’t know, right?”

  Agnes’s rounded shoulders drooped lower. She slid the money into her pocket and pushed through the swinging doors to the kitchen. Aldo emerged two heartbeats later with a hot dog all the way in its little paper sleeve. “On the house,” he whispered.

  “No, thanks. I’m going home.”

  His hand twitched, a thwarted reach for hers. “You mad?”

  “Yeah, I am,” she said, and left.

  Chapter 8

  Bar Harbor, Maine

  June 6, 1999

  Give Dinesen her sweat, tears, and sea; I’ll take bourbon, neat.

  —Cornelius Traegar

  It was late—nine o’clock. Gone were the days of deep-pocket slumber after champagne nights. Hours bent into one another now, some being dark and others light. All moments ticking by. Slowly. Relentless. Until the Cecibel-shaped story brought Alfonse Carducci back to life, and with him Olivia Peppernell, who sat beside him trembling, though she would deny it.

  He couldn’t speak for the labored beating of his heart no longer accustomed to the swell of joy. His words, and hers, embraced like the lovers they’d once been to create . . . what? Surely not the genius of their younger selves, but something else. The joy nearly tore his heart in two.

  “You’ve made a mistake.” Alfonse tapped a finger on the notebook. “You put them on a couch in an apartment above the hot dog place. Read my first paragraph. Go, go. Read it.”

  Olivia paged back in the notebook. She cursed under her breath. “Ah, I see. A simple fix. I’ll put them in Agnes’s car behind Falls View. She can slam the back door instead of rapping on the floor. Writing is rewriting, Alfie. You know that. Tell me honestly. What do you think?”

  “I like where you took it,” he said.

  “Give me more, Alfonse. These are the first real words I’ve written in years.”

  “You maintained the core voice while giving Cecilia her own.”

  “More.”

  “You made Aldo too articulate. He’s twenty and flipping burgers in 1950s New Jersey.”

  “Not going to college doesn’t mean he must be poorly spoken.”

  “He has no family, Livy. He’s a poor boy with little schooling. He will speak like other boys of his time and station, to survive if nothing else.”

  “Like you did?”

  Surprise warmed him through. Alfonse wagged a finger. “Touché, my dear. Touché.”

  “We’ll work out the kinks as we continue on.” Olivia placed the notebook on his desk. “No planning ahead. We work from whatever came before. Sudden inspiration, Alfie, like when we were young and had no idea all the ways we were doing it wrong. What do you think?”

  Bring it back when you’ve finished, he’d said, when he woke to her scribbling in the notebook no one was meant to see. The words had fallen from his mouth like Icarus from the heavens. Foolish. Reckless. Aflame. “I think you have shanghaied my manuscript.” He chuckled. “But there is magic here, no?”

  “Yes.”

  “And it is marvelous to be writing again.”

  “It is.”

  “But is it truly magic? Or are we old fools who don’t know the difference anymore?”

  Olivia patted his hand, leaned forward, and kissed his cheek. “Does it matter, Alfonse? We grasped for great literature and climbed those great heights. We weren’t just part of the literati, we were the Literati. But this? This is writing for the joy of it, nothing more. I’d forgotten how extraordinary that is.”

  “Acclaim exacts a price we never anticipated, eh? Way back in the beginning.”

  “It does, but it’s what we wanted. Then. Now, we have this.” Olivia rose slowly to her feet, her hand moving to though not reaching her back. There was a time he’d have leaped to his feet, assisted her to the door she headed for.

  “It’s your turn,” Olivia said from the threshold. “Shall we put a time limit on our contributions?”

  “One week,” Alfonse answered. “And if I expire before then—”

  “I’ll dig you up and prop you at your desk if you dare.”

  “Sorry to thwart your efforts, my dear, but I’m to be cremated.”

  “Nevertheless.” She grimaced at him, and closed the door.

  Under his palm, the smooth cover of the notebook warmed. Brown leather. Gilded edges. How many gifts he’d received of such quality. He’d always preferred a simple composition notebook—black and white—for that first stream-of-consciousness draft, before the typewriter snap and hum of the second. Third. Tenth.

  Alfonse thumbed through the pages already a mess of cross-outs and insertions. It would have to be keyed into the computer once the first draft was done. He no longer had the leisure to indulge in the comfort of old ways. For this part, though, this first draft, he’d make the sacrifice.

  * * *

  Finlay sat alone on the beach, leaning back on his arms, face to the sun. Four days he’d done so. Possibly three. It’d rained the day prior and Cecibel hadn’t gone out to the arbor to spy on him. What he was waiting for, she wasn’t exactly sure, considering she hadn’t shown up that first requested day. He’d seen her in the arbor; that she knew because he waved. Cecibel hadn’t waved back—I’m not looking for anything, Bel. Just a friend—but kept her arms crossed, as they were now.

  Warm sunshine on her skin, the cold breeze lifting the weight of her hair from her neck, the wish for freedom pricked tears that dried instantly. She remembered this feeling already bunching her muscles, shrinking her around the tiny ball living in the pit of her. To live unafraid would be astonishing, peculiar, and impossible. To live unafraid meant to die.

  “‘When last the winds of heaven were unbound—’”

  Cecibel spun to Olivia’s voice, automatically plastering what hair she could gather to her face.

  “‘Oh, ye! who have your eyeballs vexed and tired’”—Olivia gently pried Cecibel’s hair from her fist—“‘feast them upon the wideness of the sea.’” The old woman smiled. “Keats.”

  Cecibel fought the urge to cover herself. Tears burned. She looked away. “I was just going inside.”

  “Sit with me.” Olivia held up a joint. “You’re off duty, if you want to . . .”

  “No, thanks. But I’ll sit with you.” Cecibel took the spot beside Olivia, in a double Adirondack chair, positioning herself strategically.

  Cupping, lighting, expertise years in the making, Olivia took a pull. “I’ve noticed you out here the last few days.”

  “The weather’s been pretty nice. Not yesterday, though.”

  “Not yesterday,” she said on the exhale. “I also noticed Finlay down on the beach.”

  “It’s a free country.”

  “Just making observations.” Olivia smoked in silence. Swift inhale. Long exhale. Over. And again. Hypnotic, like the tumble and crash of the sea. Cecibel slumped lower in the chair. Legs outstretched, leaning, leaning. Her head came to rest on Olivia’s shoulder and she let it stay. Small comfort, sincerely given. Hard to accept. Fear wormed, even now, even with this old woman Cecibel loved so very much. “He asked me to walk with him.”

  “Oh? And you said no?”

  “I just didn’t show up.”

  “And now he waits every day.”

  Cecibel nodded.

  “Why don’t you walk with him?”

  “What’s the point?”

  “Friendship.”

  “I have
friends. I have you.”

  “I won’t live forever, my dear.”

  “There’s Alfonse, too.”

  “Who won’t live out the year.”

  “What about Sal? He’s my friend.”

  “A good one, yes. A gay man. And old people. Safely dissimilar, these friends of yours.” Olivia slid her arm around Cecibel’s shoulders, stroked her upper arm with fingers like lioness claws. Gentle. Fierce. “I have a secret,” Olivia said. “Want to hear it?”

  “Is it something you should tell?”

  “Of course not. Then it wouldn’t be a secret.” Olivia chuckled. “Do you want to know or not?”

  Cecibel wriggled against her. “Spill it.”

  Olivia took another long drag, a couple little sips, and stubbed the joint out. “Alfonse and I are writing. Together.”

  Cecibel jerked upright. “Really? What are you writing? What’s it about? Will you publish it?”

  “Hush, child. It’s only just begun and there’s no telling how far it will go, but it’s . . . it’s astonishing is what it is.”

  Cecibel’s heart thumped. “Can I read it?”

  “Oh, I don’t know. Alfonse would never allow it, even if it’s you. But . . .”

  “But?”

  Olivia squeezed her arm. “If you happened to find a brown, leather notebook with gilded edges on my desk or his, I can’t be responsible for what you do with it. He has it now. It’s his turn to create. Just make sure you put it back the way you got it. Exactly.”

  “Olivia! You’re wicked.”

  “I’m nothing of the kind.” She winked, looked beyond Cecibel and back again. “Finlay’s coming. Stay.” Olivia grabbed Cecibel before she could bolt. “I’ll be with you. All right?”