The Bar Harbor Retirement Home for Famous Writers_And Their Muses

by Terri-Lynne Defino

  Maria hugged her tighter, and let her go. She sat opposite again, her hands bunched in her lap. “I married for that kind of love. Your father, my God. He tore up my soul. I knew about Trudy. Everyone did. She and I were friends when we were kids. But we all knew he’d marry me, just like his parents and mine wanted.

  “I tried to make him happy, to make him forget her, but he wouldn’t. Or he couldn’t. So I understand all sides of it, in my way. I’m not a stupid woman. I didn’t blame her or him or even myself. And I don’t blame you.”

  Tears pooled. Cecilia blinked them away. Maria thumbed them from her cheeks. “When your father vanished, I did my best for you. For all of you. I’m proud of that, even if . . .” Mama’s head bowed, but she looked Cecilia square in the eye when she spoke again. “I want to tell you something. Something very few people know about, and will never speak a word of.”

  “You don’t have to.”

  “I think I do. You are my daughter, a woman now. It involves you, so you should know.”

  “Mama, please—”

  “Just listen, Cecilia! For God’s sake, listen.”

  “I’m sorry.”

  Maria took a deep breath. “When your father vanished, I was afraid. For you, for the boys, and for myself. If I could have remarried quickly enough, I would have given you a few more years, but as it turned out, moving up the nuptials worked in your favor, eh?”

  “Mama, I—”

  “Hush, child. You willful thing. Let me speak.”

  Cecilia bit her lip. She nodded.

  “Your father turned up sooner than anyone knew,” Maria told her. “By who and where doesn’t matter. Women who stick together have power. Remember that, Ceci. Anyway, I managed to keep him there, out of sight, until it was safe. For you.”

  “I don’t know what—”

  “Oh, please, Cecilia.” Maria grimaced. “Don’t play stupid. I suspected you were pregnant before you went out with Enzo the first time. We’re the only two women in the house. It wasn’t hard to notice you skipped a period. Then Patsy was born with blond hair and blue eyes, and still I hoped I’d been wrong. But this Christmas . . . that Tressa woman. I wasn’t wrong, was I?”

  Cecilia’s chest ached. If she’d thought her heart broken before, she was horrifically mistaken. It had only been splintered, not shattered. The jagged pieces of it shredded her insides now. She dabbed her mouth, expecting to come away with bloody fingers, but found only cookie crumbs. “Enzo has known from the day she was born,” she whispered. “I asked him to make his choice, and he did.”

  “And so did you.”

  “I know.”

  “Does he know? This Al fellow?”

  “No.”

  “Then what are you doing?” Maria growled. “Why would you jeopardize everything for a fling gone cold five years ago?”

  “It never went cold, Mama.” Cecilia clutched her mother’s hands. “I love him.”

  “Love.” Maria chuffed. “It comes in all shapes and sizes, my girl. You love Enzo, don’t you?”

  Cecilia nodded.

  “That kind of love trumps the soul-ripping kind. Trust me on that. I’d take it a million times over.”

  “But . . . you love Daddy. You said you always did.”

  “Did,” Maria corrected. “He crushed it. He crushed me. When he vanished, I was scared but not heartbroken. I was actually . . .” She shrugged. “Hopeful. Maybe it was his brush with death. Maybe being in the water so long did something to his brain. He lost all memory of the time shortly before and after his dip in the river. I don’t know what it was, but he came back a different man and I thought, at last, I’d have what I always wanted. He sent Trudy away. He treated me with love and affection. But it was too late. That’s what happens to the soul-crushing kind of love when there’s too much hurt involved.”

  Cecilia tore free of her mother’s gaze. Everything she said made sense. And nothing. Sense married her to Enzo when it was Aldo she loved, when it was Aldo’s baby she carried. Sense made her a dutiful wife and mother when she’d never aspired to anything of the kind. She had dreams squelched as soon as she could dream them, because sense told her she’d never attain a single one of them. But that life made out of sense and duty gave her Frankie, too. And Enzo, whom she loved and had been happy with if not fulfilled until Aldo walked through the front door.

  Maria pushed to her feet and got the coffee. She poured two cups. Sugar and cream, they liked it the same way. Dark and rich, sweet and creamy. Setting a cup in front of Cecilia, Maria sat back down again. “It isn’t fair,” she said. “It never has been. Men rule this world, or think they do. The old saying about behind every great man is a great woman is true. A greater one, in fact, because she has to be smarter. Sometimes it all works out. We get to marry the men we love, or learn to love the men we marry. Life for women is all compromise, choosing the lesser of evils. As long as we’re quiet about it, we women can manipulate our lives to the best advantage. Know what your best advantage is, Cecilia. For yourself and for your children. My grandchildren, because they come from you no matter who their fathers are.”

  Sipping her coffee, Cecilia closed her eyes. Words scalded her mouth hotter than the liquid in her cup. Scream them? Or swallow them down? Her throat burned, her stomach. The pain mingled with the shards of her broken heart that cut deeper with every breath she took.

  Little feet thundered their way. Patsy threw herself into Cecilia’s lap, nearly spilling the coffee all over the place.

  “Can I have a cookie, too?”

  “Of course you can, baby,” Maria answered, and pushed the tin closer. Patsy took three, jamming one into her mouth before anyone could object. As if anyone would. No rules. Not for her. Not yet.

  Her baby. Her little girl. Already so bright and beautiful, believing the world was hers, and it was. Cecilia was like her, once upon a time. There’d never been any doubt in her mind that she was the center of the universe. But things changed, the way they’d been changing in little-girl lives for as long as history recorded such things. It wasn’t fair. It never would be. But it could be more fair, in the increments those powerful women sticking together made happen, or in the giant steps taken by a fearless woman walking alone.

  Chapter 36

  Paterson, New Jersey

  December 31, 1959

  Enzo

  He shook the whole walk home. How he had sat opposite Aldo Wronski a full hour, chitchatting amiably about things he would never remember crossing his lips, eluded him. Enzo had been waiting outside the hotel, just as he had been all the days since tea there with Tressa, to see Cecilia emerge hours after leaving her parents’ house. He never followed her. Not once. Yet he found himself there daily. Waiting. Cecilia had yet to disappoint.

  Fury wouldn’t come. Only fear. Maybe the fury would come later, if she didn’t leave him. Enzo hoped he’d be far too relieved, too happy and grateful, for that. Confusion refused to let him think straight, and if he couldn’t think straight, he wouldn’t act. Crimes of passion got dismissed as understandable, for being beyond one’s control, but the damage couldn’t be undone. Enzo Parisi was an intelligent man. A man who lived by reason and logic. A man who loved his wife. And yet he was a man, he’d discovered, as primal as any other he’d known, because what he wanted to do was wring Aldo Wronski’s neck and throw him at Cecilia’s feet. Instead he’d taken tea with him, like the gentleman he fancied himself to be.

  Trotting up the steps of his in-laws’ house, he held his breath. She’d be home by now, his wife. Probably getting Patsy to nap so she could stay up later that night. Aside from hired staff readying this and setting up that, the house was strangely quiet. No television or radio. No voices casually chatting. A vacuum, the soft whispers of staff trying to go unnoticed, and the ticking of the big clock in the foyer.

  Enzo took off his coat and hat and hung them in the closet. He took the steps two at a time and was outside the nursery door, hand on the knob, before thinking a coherent thought.
Cecilia’s deep voice, singing on the other side of the door, made him drop his hand to his side. He listened. He closed his eyes. He refused to weep. Men didn’t do such things, especially not Neanderthal cuckolds.

  He opened the door carefully, but it squeaked. Cecilia glanced over her shoulder, her hand on Patsy’s back never faltering in its rubbing. Their daughter lay on her tummy, golden curls splayed across her pillow. Enzo stayed where he was, and in a moment, Cecilia’s singing ceased. She kissed Patsy’s little cheek, brushed back her silky hair. Waving him ahead of her, she followed him out the door and closed it softly behind her.

  “How’s your mother today?” she asked in the hallway, arms crossed over her chest. Protecting. Protective.

  “She’s fine. Looking forward to tonight. How was your afternoon with the ladies?”

  “Fine.” She shrugged. “But it’ll be good to get home.”

  Home. Enzo’s heart nearly burst from his chest. He took her into his arms. What was it he smelled in her hair? A familiar scent, but not hers. He closed his eyes, closed off his thoughts, and simply held her.

  “I love you,” she said.

  “I love you, too.”

  “No.” She pulled away. “I really, really love you.”

  He smiled. “So you said. You okay?”

  Another shrug. Enzo took her hand and led her away from the nursery door, into the room they shared while in this house. “Talk to me.”

  “There’s nothing to talk about. I love you. That’s all. You . . . you deserve better than me, is all.”

  “There is no better than you. Stop.”

  “You deserved someone who didn’t trick you into marrying her.”

  “Cecilia.”

  “No, listen to me. We never talked about it. Ever. We need to.”

  “No, we don’t.”

  “Maybe you don’t,” she insisted. “But I want you to know if ever you wanted to—”

  “Don’t say it, Cecilia.”

  “—be with someone else. If you fell in love for real—”

  “Stop it! Stop talking!”

  Cecilia’s mouth hung open. In all the years they’d been married, he’d never once raised his voice to her. Enzo pushed fingers through his hair, took her shoulders in his hands, grasped them a little too tightly. “I love you, Cecilia. I love our children and our life. What happened back then doesn’t matter.”

  “But it does.” A whisper. Her lips trembled. “I don’t know what’s wrong with me. I feel like two people and I don’t know how to become one. I’m not sure if I can.”

  He held her gaze a long time. Speaking words that could not be then unspoken held no appeal. Not to him, college-educated man of the world, but to the Neanderthal . . . “What’s happened this Christmas to make that so?”

  A tear rolled, then another. Cecilia blinked and broke eye contact. “It’s not just this Christmas,” she said. “It’s been always. From the time I was a little girl. There’s the mouthy, spoiled Cecilia who pushed but never went out of bounds, and then there’s the totally insane woman who wants to be traipsing across Australia making friends with the bushmen. One of me is so happy being your wife and the kids’ mother. But the other . . . she’s not happy and never has been. She’s trapped and about ready to start chewing off her own foot to get free.”

  Aldo. The hotel. Her trap sprung. Neanderthal shook her until her head snapped off her neck. Gentleman pulled her into his arms and kissed the top of her head. “I don’t want to be your trap.”

  “You’re not. I am. It’s me. All me. You’re perfect and always have been.”

  “I’m not.”

  Cecilia pulled away enough to look up into his face. She touched his cheek. “You are to me.”

  If he kissed her, he’d taste Wronski on her lips. Making love to her, he couldn’t even consider. His mind raced and raced, threatened to burst his heart for the pounding of it all. Letting her go, he stepped away. Enzo needed to think, but didn’t want to. Ever.

  “It’s going to get busy around here soon,” he said. “You need time to change and everything. I’m going to have a shower.”

  Yes, a shower. Wash all this off of him. He turned away without looking at her. In that pink-tiled bathroom, he stripped and got in the tub. Cold water braced, became warm, then hot. Enzo let the water pour over him until he could no longer stand it. Adjusting the temperature released those banging thoughts cold and heat had held at bay.

  If Cecilia didn’t leave him, how would he ever be with her again? Before suspicion was proved truth, he’d made love to her two and three times a day, he thought, to help her resist the pull into Aldo’s bed. Since then, he hadn’t been able to touch her in any intimate way. Knowing his hands had been on her, his cock in her, was too much for him. And if she became pregnant again . . .

  A great sob erupted from deep in his chest. Enzo sputtered, choking on it rather than letting it go. And failed. He wept as he hadn’t in all his life. Raising Patsy as his own had never been an issue. Raising another of Wronski’s offspring? Neanderthal wouldn’t do it. And yet, there was no way to know whose child she carried unless it was once again born too blond and blue-eyed to refute.

  If she carried any child at all, educated man said. After Frankie’s birth, the doctor had asked him for permission to prescribe a new form of birth control. A pill, of all things. Skepticism aside, Enzo had seen no reason not to try it. In all the months of their very active sex life, Cecilia hadn’t conceived. Maybe the damned thing worked after all.

  Please. Please work.

  The water cooled. Enzo turned it off. He rested his head to the tile and breathed. His whole body hurt, inside and out. He wished they’d never come to Paterson for the holidays, that Tressa hadn’t asked Aldo to meet him here, now, of all places on the planet.

  Wishing is as good as regret. His grandmother, finger wagging, used to tell him that. Only what was, what would be, mattered. He was in Paterson, with his wife and children, her lover, and her lover’s sister. Where would they be next week? In two weeks? That, he could affect.

  Cecilia said she was two women. Enzo knew, at the wise age of twenty-four, he was two men. He understood the dichotomy of being. Neanderthal wanted to beat the living shit out of Aldo, take Cecilia and his kids, and disappear from the face of the earth until it was all forgotten, but Neanderthal was stupid. All brute rage and no reason. Enzo hadn’t even known of his existence until this Christmas, but he knew the wild woman trying to chew off her own foot to free herself would fight back. Tressa was right. Understanding. Patience. If his wife left him, it wasn’t going to be because he chased her away.

  And if she stayed . . .

  There were, if possible, even more people in the house for New Year’s Eve than there had been for the Christmas party. Every room was hot and stank of sweat, alcohol, and the food being offered by waiters dressed in white tuxedos just like in the tearoom at Les Fontaines. Enzo didn’t need that reminder, but there it was. Unavoidable.

  Nine o’clock. Tressa and Aldo hadn’t arrived yet. Nicky paced the foyer, bumping into people and making a general nuisance of himself. And then there she was, Tressa DiViello, taking off her white ermine stole and handing it to the doorman. She sparkled. The blue beads of her gown caught every light in the house. Not slinky, but formfitting, it embraced every curve of her, a jealous lover unwilling to share.

  Nicky stopped dead in his tracks, mouth agape. “I just died and went to heaven.”

  “Don’t be silly.” Tressa took his offered arm. “I’m sorry to be so late. My brother had a small problem he had to take care of. He’ll be right in.” She turned her disastrously beautiful gaze to Enzo. “Hello, Mr. Parisi. Happy New Year.”

  “Miss DiViello.” He bowed his head. “You look lovely this evening.”

  She ran a hand across her abdomen, flat but luscious. “Why, thank you. A girl likes to hear such things.”

  “He just beat me to it,” Nicky stammered. “You look gorgeous. Like a living doll. An
angel.”

  “Thank you, Dominic.” But her eyes were still on Enzo and he couldn’t look away.

  If ever you wanted to be with someone else . . .

  And he did. Neanderthal wanted Tressa, knew he could have her. All he had to do was take her hand from Nicky’s arm.

  “Oh, here he is,” Tressa said.

  Aldo Wronski walked through the door, handed his hat and coat to the doorman. He patted his jacket pocket; relief eased the worry in his face. He offered his hand to Nicky, then Enzo without flinching. “Hey again,” he said to Enzo. “Long time no see, eh?”

  “Yes.”

  “Sorry I made us so late. My orders were changed and I had some scrambling to do.”

  Orders changed? So Tressa had actually done it. Enzo’s heart stuttered.

  “Thank goodness my brother has no real attachments here.” Tressa laughed sweetly. “Other than me, of course.”

  “I really wanted to spend a few weeks with you,” Aldo told her.

  “Some things can’t be helped. But you will write to me, and I’ll write to you. When school lets out for the summer, maybe I’ll join you in the Mediterranean if you can manage some leave.”

  “What do you mean?” Nicky butted in. “School? Summer? Ain’t you staying here in Paterson anymore?”

  “It was never Paterson, Dominic. I told you that. Remember?”

  He blew a breath through his lips. “New York, Paterson, what does it matter? Same difference. I thought you was staying up north.”

  “I never said I wasn’t,” she said. “We can discuss this at a later date. I’m not too much of a lady to admit I’m starving. Lead me to food, Dominic.”

  “You got it.”

  Enzo stood his ground, his insides battling. Aldo didn’t try to get around him. Maybe if they stood there long enough, something would happen. Anything. But nothing did, and Enzo couldn’t take it any longer. “So you have to ship out?”

  “Yes. Tomorrow.”

  “And you just found out?”

  “A few days ago. I’ve been busy. Tressa, you know . . . she likes to be entertained.”