The Bar Harbor Retirement Home for Famous Writers_And Their Muses

by Terri-Lynne Defino

  “Then why didn’t you say?”

  “I like to hear you argue.” He grinned. “I was dreaming about it. About Aldo and Cecilia.”

  “Don’t tell me. I’ll read it in a few days.”

  “I wasn’t going to.” He took the notebook from her and set it aside. “Did I hear Cecibel in here earlier?”

  “She said to tell you she’d stop by again a little later.”

  “Good, good.” Alfonse would try to stay awake, but he would be sleeping, and she would go away. Probably to be with Fin. He didn’t have to see them together to know when they were. “She’s changed since I first came here.”

  “Of course she has.” Olivia laughed softly. “What woman fails to be changed by the great Alfonse Carducci?”

  “It wasn’t me.”

  “Of course it was. Don’t be daft, Alfie.”

  “You give me far too much credit, but I won’t argue. I’m not up for it these days.”

  “I miss arguing with you.”

  He patted her hand. “We did have some fun, no?”

  “‘It was the best of times, it was the worst of times.’”

  “‘The age of wisdom’ . . .”

  “‘The age of foolishness’ . . .”

  He laughed softly. The only way he could. “Are we really going to do this, my sweet?”

  “Alfonse.” His name a breath on her lips, a sob in her throat. “I can’t bear it.”

  “You can. You will. Stay with me while I eat my meager rations, then leave me to write.”

  “I’ll get you something to drink.” Olivia darted to the sideboard, came back with a splash of purple, forbidden liquid in the bottom of a stemmed glass.

  “Livy, I can’t.”

  “What possible harm can it do now, Alfie?” She handed him the stem, stepped back.

  Alfonse brought the rim to his nose. The scent nearly made him weep. The tiniest taste of it on his tongue tipped him into it completely.

  “Where did this come from?”

  “Judith brought it.” Olivia shrugged. “She forgot you weren’t . . . well . . . anyway. We three had a glass earlier on. This is all that’s left.”

  “Thank you,” he said. “You’ve no idea . . .”

  “I might have some.” She sat again. “Is there anything else forbidden that I can sneak in here for you?”

  “Viagra?”

  Olivia snorted. “As if you need it. I’ve been here when you wake up, my dear.”

  “Some things never die.”

  “Perhaps we should have it bronze-cast and mounted on the wall in the library.”

  “You’d have to put in supports so the wall doesn’t crumble under the sheer enormity of it.”

  Now she laughed, husky and wicked. “I’ve personal experience enough to know it’s substantial, but not that big.”

  “You haven’t seen it in a while.”

  “Is that an invitation?”

  “Livy, please don’t tease me.”

  “I’m not teasing.”

  No. She was not. In the fiendish blue of her eyes, he saw her younger, wilder self. Of all the lovers Alfonse Carducci had, she was the least inhibited. He knew her past, her married life; it always astounded him, the madness with which she made love. Olivia reached for him, her gaze never leaving his. The zipper of his pants, undone. The fumbled folds of boxers, aside.

  “My heart,” he said, already out of breath. “I . . . I can’t.”

  “Then I won’t,” she said, still gently massaging. “Just relax, Alfonse. I promise not to kill you. Tonight, the forbidden gets tasted. Tomorrow is another day.”

  Olivia stopped before his heart rate rose enough to send the monitor always attached to his finger to beeping. Alfonse wanted her to continue. He wanted it so badly. But sometimes what one wanted was not for the best, or even for the worst, but definitely not wise.

  No awkward segue, no blushing. They were too old, too familiar, too beloved. He tucked himself in, zipped himself up, and ate the fruit and cheese Olivia had fetched him from the dining room. She checked her watch. “If I want dinner myself, I have to go.” Rising, she kissed his cheek. “I’ll see you tomorrow.”

  “Yes. Tomorrow. Thank you, Olivia.” He took her hand. “What would I do without you?”

  “You’ve done without me many years.” She smiled. “You’d do fine. It’s just nice for you to have me around again.”

  Another kiss, this time on the lips, and Olivia left him alone in his suite. Evening light canted through high windows, spilled shadows in crooks and corners. Alfonse inhaled carefully, exhaled long and slow. He tipped the last drop of wine onto his tongue, savored the taste he’d not enjoyed in far too long. How simple life became when one was old and close to death. A splash of wine, an old woman’s hand on his cock, a little cheese and fruit made all right with the world. And maybe, if he were very, very lucky, Cecibel would come and bid him good night before slumber took him out of the running.

  He dug her copy of Night Wings on the Moon out of his seat cushions, fanned through the pages. How long had it been since that day she’d brought it to him? Less than three months, and how she’d changed. How everything had. It seemed like an eternity since he’d been wheeled out of the ambulance and to this room Cornelius left to him, only him. And yet hadn’t it only been hours ago they two had chased one another through the house like madmen?

  Alfonse flipped to the page Cecibel had, in furious sorrow, marked. The faded pencil, still indecipherable, beckoned. Find me, the words said, and you find her. Younger eyes, better light, he didn’t think either would make a difference.

  We fell free from on high, like dragons mating . . . ground came at us . . . didn’t care . . . I covered her eyes . . . I didn’t want to be saved, and so she couldn’t be either.

  A sister. One broken before Cecibel could save her. One who’d broken Cecibel completely in the end. Unintentionally. Which of them did this passage speak of? Who covered whose eyes? Who didn’t want to be saved?

  It didn’t matter, Alfonse realized. It spoke of both of them. To both of them. There were mysteries he’d never solve. This was one of them. He hadn’t the time to unravel it. He squinted hard, brought the paper pages as close to his eyes as he could before they blurred all over again. It was no use. The words she’d penciled were lost.

  Or were they?

  As he took a pencil from the drawer in his side table, his heart hammered harder than it had while Olivia fondled him. Boldly, so carefully, he erased what remained of the pencil marks. He just as carefully rubbed the graphite tip over the spot. Letters, long ago written and lost to searching fingers and sorrow were born all over again.

  Never again.

  Sweat beaded his brow, his upper lip. Never again to love. Never again to care. Never again to fail, to live, to survive, to hope. Everything and nothing and all things in between. Alfonse Carducci’s battered heart swelled in an almost pleasant, not painful way. Closing the book, he caught his breath that had gotten away from him just a little. He shoved Cecibel’s copy of Night Wings back down the side of his chair, into the cushions. Safe and hidden. For now.

  Words and emotions raw and flowing, Alfonse Carducci picked up the brown notebook full of his words, Olivia’s, Raymond Switcher’s. The story of Cecilia and Aldo, and then Enzo, too. And Tressa, of course. The scene brightened behind his eyes, in the gray matter still working just fine. Lovers in a hotel room. A telegram. A plan. And fates sealed.

  Chapter 33

  Portland, Maine

  August 3, 1999

  They say, “There’s always tomorrow,” but sometimes, tomorrow doesn’t come.

  —Cornelius Traegar

  “It was good of you to make the trip.” Dr. Marks, a shriveled old woman now, didn’t rise from her chair. Could she? How old she’d gotten in the years since their parting. Knobbed knuckles, lined face, white hair. But her eyes—gentle, brown, clear, and kind—hadn’t changed. Only Cecibel’s perspective had.

  “It’s
good to see you, Richard.”

  “Lovely to see you, too, Maybelle. It’s been too long.”

  “I wasn’t aware you two knew one another,” Cecibel snapped. She took a deep breath. “Sorry.”

  “No need to apologize,” Dr. Kintz told her. “This isn’t easy. Now that I’ve gotten you here, I’ll make myself scarce. You have my pager number when you’re ready to go.”

  Dr. Kintz, leaving? Of course he was leaving. They’d discussed it at length when she’d asked him, not Fin, to drive her down to Portland to see Dr. Marks. Fin didn’t even know she was going. She’d told only Olivia, so she could let Alfonse know why she wouldn’t be in to see him that day.

  The click of the door closing nicked a tiny hole in Cecibel’s stomach. She felt air squeaking in, bile leaking out. Silence filled the space Dr. Kintz left behind, a silence she remembered all too well. Some things never changed. Until they did.

  “I knew Cornelius a very long time.” Dr. Marks spoke first. “I helped him get certified, he helped me with my book. He was a literary agent before he became a doctor, did you know?”

  “Of course,” Cecibel answered. “You can’t live in the Pen and not know that.”

  Dr. Marks chuckled softly. “I see the name still sticks. I always liked it.”

  “It fits.” Cecibel shrugged, and fell silent. The same diplomas on the wall, even more yellowed than they’d been, but different furniture. Softer chairs. Wood where there had been Formica and steel. Or maybe it was that perspective thing again.

  “I will get down to it,” Dr. Marks said. “Yes, Dr. Traegar and I made arrangements on your behalf. I knew about Finlay Pottinger, and what he’d done for him. I asked it of him for you as well.”

  “How did you know about Fin?”

  “The whole country knew about him.”

  “I mean the arrangement with Dr. Traegar.”

  “Friends talk.” Dr. Marks shrugged, a shoulder to her ear. “What does it matter? All that does is I asked and he agreed.”

  “What did you ask of him?”

  “You already know. Richard informed me. He said he did so with your permission.”

  “I want to hear it from you.” Cecibel’s fingers clenched into a fist. “You were the one who did the arranging.”

  Dr. Marks poured herself a glass of ice water from the sweating carafe on her desk, and one for Cecibel, pushed it to her. “I couldn’t do anything more for you here. You weren’t ready to leave, but you wouldn’t stay, and I felt forcing the issue would do more harm than good. I asked Cornelius if he would hire you, give you purpose in a place where you’d be safe.”

  “Like Fin.”

  “Yes and no. People will blame a victim, if given the chance. It’s far more comfortable to believe he was complicit in what happened. A bad choice made by a teenager versus a horrible thing done to a child.”

  “Protect Fin from society while protecting society from him. That’s what his chart said.”

  “You read it?”

  “So what if I did?” Cecibel grabbed the glass of water from the desk, spilling most of it. She wanted to hurl it at a wall. She wanted to scream. Mopping it up with a fistful of tissues, she breathed deeply through her nose. “Fin killed the guy who raped him and went to jail for it,” she said. “I tried to kill myself and my sister and got half my face ripped off instead. Charity cases. Murderer and monster. Things to be locked away.” Like Sal, dressing like a woman and singing show tunes.

  Cecibel tossed the soggy tissues into the waste bin. Dr. Marks folded her hands on the desk. Knuckles white. Kind eyes. Waiting for Cecibel to say more, which she never had. She kept it in. Or she told lies and half-truths. Made some things up because they were better, or worse, than reality. Some things never changed. Until they did.

  “But I didn’t kill her. Jen. I didn’t kill her. She was already dead. Jennifer was.” Her name, spoken aloud, cast its spell. If she closed her eyes, she’d see her there. “I found her on the playground, at the beach. She was already cold.” Eyes closed. Mouth open. “There was no one else around.” The surf hissing, gulls crying. Cecibel on her knees in the dark, in the damp sand. Shaking her sister. Shaking. “She died alone under the slide, staring up at graffiti and chewed gum.” She snatched a dry tissue from the box. “All I could think was to get her to the hospital. They’d brought her back before.” She blew her nose, the images in her head scattering, re-forming. Dragging Jen to the car, shoving her in. “I was driving so fast. I couldn’t even be sure where I was. She was in the car next to me, eyes closed and foam on her lips. It smelled so bad.” Egg farts. Cecibel choked on the laugh knotting in her gut. “So bad. I can still smell it sometimes. The poles kept whizzing by and whizzing by and the music was blasting. I tried so hard.” Damn you, Jennifer. Fuck you. Fuck you! “I thought I knew her every trick, every sign. But she was always a step ahead of me.”

  Arms wrapped around her waist, squeezed the air from her lungs. Cecibel doubled over, trapped the culprit, made her stop. “That curve, the other car.” Moonlight had been full. Bright. “I saw it. For one, tiny second I thought how easy it would be to just hit it”—headlights coming the other way, oblivious. Innocent—“to take us both someplace that had to be better than this one.” How easy. A relief. No more grief. No more anger. Gone, gone, gone. “Only for a second. That’s all it took. I pulled out of it too late.”

  She sat upright, unwrapped her arms from around her waist, took a deep breath. “Instead of dead, I got this.” She covered her ruined face with her palm. “But I’m not a murderer. It isn’t murder if she was already dead, no matter what I might have wanted for that second. Is it?”

  Cecibel tore at the snotty tissue in her hand. Dr. Marks rose from her chair, after all. Hands clasped behind her back, she came to the other side of the desk and leaned against it. “There has never been any question about the cause of Jennifer’s death,” she said. “The autopsy report is clear, and you were never charged with any sort of manslaughter. You were told, but you never heard, or elected not to listen. I have the report in the file, if you wish to see it.”

  Of course there was a report. Like there were charts hidden away in an antiquated record-keeping system in the basement of an old mansion.

  “Whatever your intentions toward yourself or your sister are lost, to you and to me. There’s no way to know what went on in your mind during the extreme duress of those moments. Your memory can’t be trusted, and shouldn’t be. Whatever the truth was no longer matters. Only the present matters, now.” Dr. Marks tucked white hair behind her ears. She leaned closer to Cecibel. “You survived. You fought your way back when you could well have succumbed to your injuries. And now you’re here, face uncovered, where it all began. Why do you think that’s so?”

  Rumbling vibrated the chair under her, the floor at her feet. Cecibel glanced out the window, but no thunderclouds darkened the sky. She bit her lips closed. Dr. Marks only smiled. Some things never changed, until they did. “I didn’t make arrangements with Dr. Traegar because I thought you were a suicidal murderer who needed to be locked away, Cecibel. I did that because you did. You needed a place to heal. A safe place where you could take as long as you needed and never be turned out. You earned a living. You made a life. I took the chance that you would because I believed you were a fighter. And you are.”

  Why didn’t you tell me all those years ago? I did.

  Why didn’t you make me listen? I tried.

  Why couldn’t I save her?

  “Now, then.” Dr. Marks pushed away from the desk. “I’m going to give you a few moments to yourself. Then we will continue this, if you wish.”

  Drained. Sad. Relieved. Free. From secrets that were no secrets at all, only ones she’d kept from herself. The pain of it all was exquisite. “Thank you.”

  Her smile, so kind, deepened the lines of her face. “Would you like a cup of coffee? I might be able to scare us up a few cookies, too.”

  “Sure. That’d be great. I’m really hun
gry all of a sudden.”

  Dr. Marks patted her shoulder. Cecibel closed her eyes. A phantom kiss, a tender gesture, ghosted across her brow, but the doctor was already out the door, the soft click nicking closed that tiny hole earlier pricked. No more squeaking air or leaking bile. The specters of memories left unremembered so long fluttering about the room, trying to settle into new, untried places, had no way back inside. Not even Jen. Beautiful, troubled, beloved Jen, whom Cecibel hadn’t been able to save no matter how hard she tried.

  Cecibel dreamed.

  She and Fin were walking on the beach, collecting sea glass. He found a blue one, like her eyes. Holding it up to moonlight, she watched tiny images play across the surface—Jennifer running, Alfonse and Olivia dancing, Cecilia and Aldo kissing.

  Cecibel dropped the smooth shard in the surf and watched it roll back into the ocean. On the cresting waves, Jennifer ran, Alfonse and Olivia danced, Cecilia and Aldo kissed. Waving, waving, she waved them out to sea, where from the water a giant clamshell rose. Venus lifted her face to the moon. Golden hair cascading, salt water streaming, her face was whole and lovely and sad. Dr. Marks offered her a hand, assisted her off her precarious perch and onto the shifting, still-warm shore. The wind kicked up, a storm came in, and on it galloped braying hounds. From the moon, an arrow twanged. It cut a path through storm and sea and sand, through Jen and Olivia, Alfonse and the rest, collecting them all on its shaft, and fell, inert, at Venus’s feet.

  “Miss Bringer.” A howling dog. “Cecibel. Wake up. We’re back.”

  Wiping the drool from her cheek, Cecibel shouldered upright. Dr. Kintz took his hand from her shoulder.

  “Sorry. Did I sleep the whole three hours home?”

  “Most of them.” He smiled kindly. “You woke up a few times.”

  “What terrible company I am.”

  “Believe me, it was nice to have so much time all to myself without having to talk. Sometimes I feel like that’s all I do.”

  “Well, you are a psychiatrist.” She laughed because he did, waited for it to fade. “Thanks for today.”