The Bar Harbor Retirement Home for Famous Writers_And Their Muses

by Terri-Lynne Defino

  The tearoom in Les Fontaines. Very European. Very high society. The sort of place Cecilia would never frequent, but one Enzo would have liked to. He’d been to Rome, London, Paris—the three musts for a young man attending Princeton. He’d spent three months of his senior year overseas with an exchange program few were chosen to take part in. He hadn’t wanted to go, hadn’t wanted to leave Cecilia and Patsy, but it was best, she insisted, for their family. It would open doors for him that might otherwise stay closed. His family, hers, could bully him into just about any job, school, program he wanted, but he’d earned this on his own. It would give him the respectability he longed for, that he wanted for Cecilia, too. Being a Giancami had its perks, but it definitely had its drawbacks, too.

  He hated lying to Cecilia. She’d been so on edge since the party. It was never easy going home for the holidays, the enforced proximity to their parents after having over an hour down the parkway between them. Add Aldo to the mix, the fear, the old feelings, the secrets kept too close, and he wasn’t sure who was keeping what from who anymore; the tension was like buttercream on a birthday cake.

  I know who Aldo is. It’ll be okay. It will be. I swear. He’d said the words to her, in his head, countless times over the last few days, while making love in her girlhood bedroom twice and three times a day. Enzo knew every reason for her impossible libido, and hoped the one he feared most was just his waking Neanderthal nudging him in the back.

  Enzo checked his watch. Nearly four o’clock. The tearoom was populated by women and little girls dressed in Christmas finery. He knew no one, and suspected no one here would know him. It didn’t matter. He was going to tell Cecilia he ran into Tressa in town and she asked him to have tea with her, as soon as he got back to her parents’ house. She hadn’t been home when he left. They seemed to cross paths quite a lot during the holidays. There were always old friends who desperately wanted to see her. The kids were being spoiled by their parents’ lack of attention and the abundance of grandparents. Things would settle down again, once they were home in Princeton. Self-delusion was never his strong suit, but Enzo Parisi was getting better at it every day.

  Heads turned to the foyer. Mothers leaned closer to daughters, glossy lips whispering behind manicured hands. Enzo rose from his chair so Tressa would see him. She waved and came his way. His breath caught. He had to concentrate hard to right it. Who knew “breathtaking” was more than a pretty word?

  “Good afternoon, Mr. Parisi.” She sat in the chair he held out for her. “It was so kind of you to join me.”

  “How could I refuse?”

  Her sweet smile bent a little wickedly. Oh, the power she wielded, so effortlessly. Enzo put a napkin in his lap in hopes of hiding the effect. He gestured to a waiter in a white tux. They ordered a pot Earl Grey and a tier of assorted cookies. After the waiter left them, Tressa leaned a little closer to whisper, “I’m so impressed you didn’t insist on coffee. So few men will take tea with a lady, as if tea somehow makes them less masculine.”

  “I spent a good amount of time in England.” He sipped the slightly too-hot tea. “I prefer it to coffee, if I’m being honest.”

  “And you are never anything but, I can tell.” Tressa dropped two sugar lumps into her cup, a third. “I know you suspect me of terrible things, but I promise you, I’ve only your family’s best interests at heart. My brother’s. Mine. Everyone’s.”

  Her kiss still lingered on his lips, the scent of her in his nostrils. Powdery, like flowers with an undercurrent of spice. He put his cup to his lips, but even that didn’t burn away the sensation just looking at her caused. Taking the fragile photo from the breast pocket of his suit, he forbade his hand to tremble. He slid it across the table to her.

  “I knew before you showed me this.”

  “But your wife doesn’t know you know.”

  He shook his head. “Does your brother know he’s her father?”

  Tressa waved a dismissive hand. “I love Aldo to the moon and back, but he’s an idiot. No, he doesn’t know. He doesn’t see what’s right in front of him. All he sees is Cecilia.”

  Bald truth. Right in the gut. Enzo wasn’t sure he could survive all this honesty. “Forgive my bluntness, but what do you want?”

  “I want what you want.” She covered his hand with hers. “I want my brother to go back to sea none the wiser. I want you to keep your lovely little family. It’s what’s best for the children, for you, and for Cecilia. And whether he believes it or not, it’s best for Aldo.”

  “Why?”

  “Because love doesn’t conquer all,” she practically spat. “Not their kind. More lust than love. Pinhole vision. They were children, after all, when Patsy was conceived.”

  “So was I.”

  Tressa leaned back a little in her chair. She picked up a cookie, took a tiny bite. “Oh, this is lovely.” Another. Red lips. Crumbs. He wanted to lick them clean. She took a sip of her tea, left lipstick on the rim. “When did you first know?” she asked. “It had to be before now.”

  “When Patsy was born blond and blue-eyed and far bigger than a premature baby could ever hope to be,” he answered. “I made a choice right then, Miss DiViello. I love my wife, regardless of who she loved before. And I have loved Patsy like my own. She is my own.”

  “And that,” she said, “is the sort of love that conquers all, Mr. Parisi. I don’t believe my brother is capable of such a thing. There will be no happily-ever-after for them, but there can be for you. It’s better he never knows.”

  “You don’t want your brother to know his child?”

  “He doesn’t want to know her,” Tressa said. “Aldo is very good at casting aside those things too difficult or painful. It’s how he survived when our family died and I was taken away.”

  Ah, more truth. Did she even know what she’d divulged?

  “Enzo.” She grabbed his hand again. “We can discuss this until the cows come home but we will get nothing but hurt from it. There isn’t the time for it to wind down to anything resembling comfortable. What it comes down to is this—I can help you keep your family intact. All I ask is that you let me know Patricia. She is the only real family I have left.”

  Enzo pulled his hand gently from hers. He leaned back in his chair. “What?”

  “Aldo has no use for me.” Tears welled but didn’t fall. She pointed to the flimsy photo. “I carried that around with me since I was a little girl. I never understood why he didn’t come for me when he turned eighteen, but I’ve come to understand, despite how much it hurts. He didn’t want me, just like my guardians didn’t want him. I accept that. It’s been too long, and he’s who he is. But Patricia is my niece. She looks like me. I can’t just let her go. So I will help you keep your family, if you let me into it.”

  “But how can you do that?”

  Tressa studied him a moment, eyes narrowed and fingers tapping. “Aldo will get a telegram telling him his dates have been changed and he’s required to report for duty on January second. He will go because he must or be arrested. He will also beg Cecilia to come with him. Once he’s gone, she will come to her senses. You will make sure she does. And believe me, it won’t be with threats and raging. It will be accomplished only with love and understanding. I promise you that.”

  “You expect too much from me. I’m a man, not a stone.”

  “A good man, who loves his wife even though she’s fucking my brother.”

  Enzo’s heart stilled in his chest. Strange, because he could hear it whooshing in his ears.

  Tressa leaned closer. “Do you want her still? If she’s fucking my brother right this moment, do you?”

  He couldn’t breathe. Dammit, his lungs wouldn’t inhale, exhale, not even to gasp.

  “Because if you don’t, say the word,” she whispered. “I’ll take you to my bed and provide all the vengeance your masculinity requires. Then you can confront them and tell them everything you know. I’ll stand beside you as you do. Let all our lives explode and hope the pieces are
salvageable in the end.”

  Enzo squeezed his eyes shut tight. The quiet tearoom susurration of ladies’ polite tea-chatter. Bend into it. Tea instead of coffee. London instead of Princeton. He could step out of his fractured life that moment, get almost any position he wanted in another world. Divorce from across the sea. No more rowdy guffawing at parties. No men belching or women chasing children, shouting at them to stop behaving like animals.

  No more Cecilia, Patsy, and Frankie.

  “What do I have to do?”

  “Keep secrets,” she told him. “Even from yourself.”

  “I don’t know if I can.”

  “I do.” She poured them both another cup of tea, pretty as you please and coolly. As if the earth were not careening out of its orbit, sending all and everyone flying into space. “I knew from the moment I met you that you are a man of extraordinary character and fortitude.” She set the teapot down. Stirred in three lumps. Took another cookie and bit. “I was not wrong.”

  Enzo made no response but to stir sugar into his tea.

  “I didn’t come to Paterson with this plan, Mr. Parisi,” she said. “I didn’t know about you or Cecilia or any of it. All I wanted was to see my brother.”

  “And now?”

  “Now I know a terrible amount more, things I never wanted to. But there you have it. It’s up to those of stronger constitution to save the rest from themselves. What matters most is Patricia, and what’s best for her is you, her mother, her brother, and a happy life in Princeton.”

  “And Al . . . Aldo?”

  “As I said, what’s best for him is to continue on with his career. He’s sinfully good at what he does, I’ll have you know. It certainly wasn’t easy, securing him the position in the Mediterranean, but it was earned nonetheless.”

  “You got it for him?”

  “Little old me?” She chimed that perfect, southern-belle laughter, a dainty hand to her breast. “Didn’t I mention Daddy is an old navy man? I’m certain I did. I can’t even begin to tell you how many men are beholden to him for their very lives. The war, you know.” Tressa sipped her tea. “I don’t ask for much, and considering he really did owe Aldo for abandoning him to the orphanage, making the arrangements was just compensation. It took months to work out, but after all I’d dug up on my brother over the last year or so, I wanted him to have his dream come true. I still do. Getting his orders changed was far easier. Daddy had it done in a snap.”

  “You arranged all that. For a brother you say doesn’t want you.”

  Her lip trembled. She dabbed at her lips with a white linen napkin, leaving red kisses behind. “Things don’t always work out as we hope,” she said. “I can’t undo all his lonely years. I can’t go back and have a miserable life instead of my happy one, no matter how guilty it makes me feel, no matter how disappointing it is to be able to win over everyone but him. It was silly of me to think I could. But there’s time yet, once he goes back to sea.”

  Calm had settled over Enzo somewhere along the line of their conversation. He felt little rage against Cecilia or Aldo; more pity than anything else. To be young and impossibly in love, to have your lives dictated rather than chosen. He’d been promised at the age of twelve, to a girl he fell easily in love with. He grew up knowing he’d go to college, have a career that satisfied his soul. No one expected him to go into the “family business,” even if he’d have the power of that family behind him his life long.

  But . . .

  “Is she?” the Neanderthal asked.

  “Is who, what?”

  “My wife. Fucking your brother.”

  Tressa didn’t reach across the table this time, but under it to gently take his hand. “I honestly have no idea. Do you want to know? We could go down to his room right now, knock on the door, and see who answers. Just be certain of your choice before you make it.”

  “Choice.” He chuffed. “There isn’t one that doesn’t hurt like hell.”

  “Which hurts the least, in the long run?”

  Enzo squeezed her hand, didn’t let it go. Tressa squeezed back and did.

  “More tea?” she asked, the china pot balanced in her hands.

  Chapter 32

  Bar Harbor, Maine

  August 1, 1999

  Nighty-night, Rabbit.

  —Cornelius Traegar

  “What do you think, Alfonse?” Judi leaned close enough for him to smell the peppermint tea on her breath. “It’s your story, in the end.”

  “It’s ours.” He wheezed. Sweet breath. How many more did he have? Not many. Hopefully enough. “All of ours.”

  “But the way Raymond left it,” Olivia chimed in, “there’s no clear character it should go to next.”

  “That was the point,” Switch grumbled. “I’m the interloper here. I can’t make that decision. You two have to.”

  “But we said no planning.”

  “Then don’t plan. Toss a coin. Whoever wins the toss gets to decide.”

  Olivia and Switch argued back and forth. Once in a while, Judi’s voice would chirp a suggestion. All to the tune of the oxygen hiss and click. Eyes batting, breath slowing, slumber falling, Alfonse let them argue. In dreams forming, Aldo and Cecilia were tangled in hotel sheets, glistening and slick and barely sated. A knock at the door sent them both scrambling and in walked Tressa. No Enzo. No Cami or Nicky. Just Tressa in the doorway, glaring.

  Tell him I stopped by. I’ll check in on him later.

  He’ll be disappointed to have missed your visit.

  It’s better that he sleeps.

  So far away, those voices lovely and familiar. But Alfonse couldn’t place them. They were part of a too-distant future he couldn’t guess at yet. Cornelius called him from the kitchen, if a kitchen indeed it was. Gutted but for the hearth and the iron pegs along the stone wall no man could remove without dynamite. Alfonse stuck his head inside, laughing to see his love covered in soot and spiderwebs. He’d never seen a hair on Cornelius’s head out of place until Bar Harbor. Until this house.

  “I need another bucket of water.” He kicked the bucket that sloshed soapy water onto his shoe. “Make that a whole lake.”

  Alfonse stepped carefully into the kitchen, took Cornelius into his arms. “Why not hire someone to do this?”

  “I’d rather spend the money on the renovation than the cleanup.” Cornelius spun away from him. “Keep your hands to yourself, young man. I’m working, and I’m dirty.”

  “I like dirty.”

  “Oh?” Cornelius raised an eyebrow, his grin turning wicked. “And how do you feel about wet, Alfonse? Do you like it wet and dirty?”

  Alfonse jerked Cornelius back into his arms. “You know how I like—”

  A wet rag in his face, being squeezed over his head, and Cornelius escaping him to dart across the room. Alfonse picked up the bucket of filthy, soapy water and chased. They slung disgusting things at one another, laughing and dodging and cursing. And when they were out of ammunition, they made love like wild men on the kitchen floor, kissing and clawing and promising things neither one of them could ever hold true. Dreams out of their reach—marriage, children, a home for all—because they were men and not even in the remotest reaches of Maine was such a thing allowed.

  On the cold stone floor, wet and streaked with soot, Alfonse held his lover close, felt their hearts beating chest to chest, echoing one another and not in sync. Sticks and bits of cobwebs stuck out of Cornelius’s blond curls. A bruise purpled on his freckled shoulder, evidence of their roughhousing that gave rise to more games of chase and catch during those days in the abandoned mansion.

  “I love you,” he said. “Let’s never leave this place.”

  “Don’t be daft.” Cornelius shoved him off. “You’re young and handsome. A rising literary star. You have places to go, people to meet.”

  “I sold a single novel.”

  “The first of many.” He pulled his dirty shirt back on, his pants. “This is my business, Alfie. I know a star when I see one.”


  “Is that why you love me?” Alfonse rose to his feet, naked as the day he was born. “Please say no, even if it’s a lie.”

  “You know it’s not. I’ll love you even when we are old queens griping at one another about who left his wet shoes in the foyer.”

  “Do you promise?” Alfonse grabbed his wrist, pulled him close again. Cornelius didn’t look at him until Alfonse took his face into his hands. “Forever?”

  So blue, those eyes. Like the hydrangea growing wild in the storm-ruined gardens. Alfonse had lost himself in them once and hadn’t found his way back out again. His family would never understand. Neither would the friends they had back in New York. Friends who saw them as mentor and protégé. Cornelius had laid claim to many of those in his forty-some-odd years. Alfonse hadn’t been the first, but he would be the last.

  Dusk had settled over the ocean by the time Alfonse woke. Olivia sat nearby, her chair tipped to the last rays of sunlight, reading through the notebook nearly filled. Beside him, a plate of fruit and cheese and bread. Alfonse shouldered higher in his chair.

  “I thought you might be hungry when you woke.”

  “Did I miss dinner?”

  “Not yet. I didn’t think you’d want to go down tonight. Shall I get your chariot?”

  “No, no.” He waved her back into her chair. “This will do fine. Thank you, Olivia.”

  She pulled her chair closer. “Well, thank you for not doing another sex scene.” She patted the book. “I get so bored of them.”

  “There was no need. We’d seen them at it before. Nothing has changed.”

  “And isn’t that the whole point?”

  Alfonse tapped the side of his nose. “I knew you’d get it.”

  Clutching the notebook to her chest, Olivia rose from the chair. She sat on the edge of his armrest, her arm going around his shoulders and her head resting on top of his. “I’ve read it several times while you were sleeping,” she said. “I think it’s Aldo’s time to speak.”

  “I do, too.”