Summary
In September 1959 Pina’s got only one thing on her mind at the elite Albert Academy: four years of blissful rooming with her heartthrob Katie, pursuing their taboo relationship of the previous summer—only one thing until Pina stumbles over the lecherous Head Mistress Craney, lurking in the hall. Pina and Katie become obsessed with the bloodcurdling game of cat and mouse Craney is craftily staging in every nook and cranny, from the fire escape to the bedclothes. Aided by quirky roommates, Pina struggles to elude Craney’s clutches and her sinister machinations when Craney calls Pina’s bluff in a salacious duel of wills. Must Pina submit?
Will the scorned and unrequited Head Mistress expose Pina to her parents, and the eventuality of shock therapy?
Who will banish whom?
Love and Lechery at Albert Academy
love and lechery at albert Academy
dolores Maggiore
Sapphire Books
Salinas, california
Love and Lechery at Albert Academy
Copyright © 2018 by Dolores Maggiore. All rights reserved.
ISBN - 978-1-948232-03-6
This is a work of fiction - names, characters, places, and incidents are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons living or dead, business, events or locales is entirely coincidental.
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, distributed, or transmitted in any form or by any means, including photocopying, recording, or other electronic or mechanical methods, without written permission of the publisher.
Editor - Kaycee Hawn
Book Design - LJ Reynolds
Cover Design - Treehouse Studio
Sapphire Books Publishing, LLC
P.O. Box 8142
Salinas, CA 93912
www.sapphirebooks.com
Printed in the United States of America
First Edition – June 2018
This and other Sapphire Books titles can be found at
www.sapphirebooks.com
Dedication
To my wife Terrie, for her belief in me and in this work…and for her enduring patience.
Acknowledgments
To Chris Svendsen and Schileen of Sapphire Books, for championing this project and to all the warm, beautiful women writers in the Sapphire family. And to my editor, Kaycee Hawn, my book designer, Lori Reynolds, and my cover designer, Ann McMan.
To Emily Whitman for her inspiration and to the women in our class who evolved into my fantastic critique group. Thank you Leann Elwood McLellan, Kylie Schachte, Elena Wiesenthal, Mary Rose, Suzanne Frank, and Lori Ubell. And another shout out to my Borrego Springs critique group. Thank you, all.
I owe a debt of gratitude for this book, my story, to my sweetheart Katie and her parents, Doc McGuilvry and Joe Gallo. Thank you for your love and belief in me.
And especially to my parents, Giusy and Sebastian Mazzini, for having the courage to stand tall for things they never thought they’d believe in. Well, the newspaper article by me, Pina Mazzini, and Joe Gallo already told so much: about the threats and the fear, the stalking and the spying. It had all happened before and was about to happen to me.
I wasn’t always who I am now. So she could have taken me, she who will be nameless here. Shame could have cowed me into her clutches.
And so, I finally dedicate this book to any among you who did succumb and as a warning to others: may courage and goodness guide you to love yourself and the ones you choose.
PINA MAZZINI, December 1959.
Chapter One
Scout’s Honor?
“Homosexuals in Scouts Uniforms!
“Crap, Katie, did you see this headline?” I whispered as we slid into our row.
“Shush, that lady just threw you a look.”
It stared up at us from our newfound seat—a full-page, black and white picture of a purposely limp-wristed Boy Scout leader in the New York Daily News dated September 20, 1959. I checked out our fellow passengers. Was anyone looking at us funny? Katie and I quietly swept the paper onto the floor and sank low in our phony leather seats aboard the plane for Andover, our future home at Albert Academy.
The pilot came on the loudspeaker to tell us we were next in line for takeoff. We did a slow pan of our immediate surroundings. By now, we were convinced no one had noticed us and we didn’t have a neon “queer” sign on our foreheads. We snatched the small newspaper from the floor, and stashed it in the seatback pocket before anyone could spot it, even the stewardess. Katie and I felt more invisible now and even dared to hold hands under the thin blanket the stewardess had just given us, excited over our first takeoff together.
The propjet picked up speed. As it lunged forward, we were thrown back, pinned against the backrests, while our insides were sucked forward. I squeezed Katie’s hand when it seemed the plane and our insides had to burst. Katie’s languid look matched the feelings in my girl parts, a feeling I hadn’t known until now. I thought I’d scream with the exhilarating thrust of the plane taking flight.
Going faster or further was no longer possible. How long could it be? My flesh was being stripped away. My mind’s eye, my “me,” we were bursting forth from flesh and bones. One final breath, and then, no more…
Was I still alive? I needed to see and opened my eyes. We were aloft. I sighed as I tried to catch my breath.
I stared at Katie, my mouth open. She flushed, giving me a look that hinted I had just seen her naked and learned her secret. She moved her hand to my thigh, and we both sobbed with joy in silence.
“Remember,” she whispered, “what I told you about church, about communion? Like being with you, well, it was like being ‘one’ in communion. Now…it was like that now.”
“Mmm. Like leaving my body—a holy feeling. Like I just took off and travelled in your eyes and with your eyes.” I closed mine to hold onto the feeling of so much light and lightness inside of me.
Katie’s head found my waiting shoulder. I let myself melt into her. I felt joined to her in a way I never knew. The silence between us was almost sacred.
We had travelled a long way since the beginning of summer 1959. We had aged well beyond our sixteen years. Well, I was almost sixteen. Our story, the one about me—Pina Mazzini—and Katie McGuilvry went back seven summers, seven playful summers in Maine. And then, a month ago, we crossed over a bridge, a kind of love suspension bridge.
We held our breaths a long, scary time. And finally, here we were, in love, heading off to four years rooming together at Albert. Here in the very real present, feeling like we had just made love, although we hadn’t—yet. There would be plenty of time for that. And we had to remind ourselves of the ugliness in that newspaper article. In lots of people. And be careful.
Katie broke the silence first. She whispered, “I felt like you were touching me all over.”
“Shush,” I said. “I just want the moment to go on and on.” She lifted her head off my shoulder. Her gaze just lingered on me. I smiled and pushed her stray dark hairs behind her ear. She caught my hand, checked and double-checked for wandering glances, and pulled the blanket over it as she touched her lips to each fingertip.
“I’m so happy,” she said.
I was still too excited, and I knew I couldn’t say and do to Katie what I wanted, so I pulled out the News and folded it within the pages of my book. Flashing it just an instant at Katie, I scrunched up my face and, just above a whisper, asked, “Did you really think all homosexuals abused children? That newspaper is so wrong.”
“I don’t know,” said Katie, frowning and switching gears. “Not my father and Joe, but I went bonkers when we first saw
them kiss. I imagined all sorts of stuff, like they’d fire him as a doctor, like we’d be poor. I was just so ashamed of him. You know, I had to figure out a bunch of things this summer.”
I patted her on the hand. “Jeez! I almost forgot. It was so sudden, losing your mom and then finding out about your dad. About the rest, about us, that was strange. If I was a queer, did that mean I was a lecher? I didn’t want to be arrested or sent for shock treatments. You know they do that.”
I made a face as if I was drooling. Katie smiled as she shook her head. I got even quieter, “I was petrified you’d reject me.”
“Glad you got up the courage to tell me,” she said. “I didn’t make it easy for you. I mean, I was so confused, and scared. Would I look different, and what if other kids found out?”
“Hey, c’mere.” I pulled her over to me discretely. “You’re my dream girl, but for real.”
Katie’s eyes lit up with her excitement, heightened by the early afternoon sun refracted by the porthole.
“You know, Pina, you could take a short nap and maybe dream one of your special dreams. Just look into your crystal dream to see what’s waiting for us at Albert,” she teased.
Wow. I hadn’t thought about the gift of psychic dreaming I inherited from my grandmother. What would those visions tell me now? Didn’t even know if I wanted them anymore—my special powers to see the future. Well, maybe they would come in handy in the beginning of Albert. Everything would be new to me at this old, fancy school. I could feel myself wrinkling up my face. “Do you think they’ll be snobby?” I asked Katie.
Katie looked as if she was reading a mystery on my face. “You nervous?”
“I guess.”
“You used to think I’d be stuck-up too.” Katie gave me a soft nudge. “And, you were right!” She giggled.
The pilot announced over the somewhat scratchy PA system that we would be landing in ten minutes. We cleared cookie crumbs off our laps, smoothed our cadet blue crew necks, and shifted around in our semi-flare skirts. Leaning over, Katie whispered in my ear, “This is it. Remember I love you.”
I didn’t know if landing in a propjet would be as stimulating as taking off, but I prepared. I fixed my sexiest look on Katie. At first, her deep blue eyes seemed like big ocean waves of question marks. Then, her lips turned upwards in an all-too-knowing smile. She mumbled, “You devil, you!”
I grabbed her hand and said, “Wait till we have our own room…”
After a few unexpected bumps, we came to an abrupt halt. The landing had come and gone. Both of us flared our noses. “That’s it?” We had been hoping for something more rousing, like our takeoff. I whispered to Katie that I was still excited that way. Our giggles seemed complicit.
After walking down a set of rickety metal steps, we spotted a man on the ground in a shiny black cotton suit jacket holding a sign. He escorted us to a limousine marked Albert Academy, white with bold, black lettering, ”Where today’s girls become tomorrow’s women.”
Sealed in our glassed-in back seat, we rode mostly in silence through the farmland dotted with hints of green going burnt sienna. My comment about the fall foliage got a quiet nod from Katie. Each of us seemed to be preparing for the next step in our schooling and our relationship.
Wow! Every day, every night with Katie in our own room. I wondered if Katie was thinking the way I was. Would we be found out? Could we make our friendship last? I’d die if we lost that. Would she still think I was cool? Man, I had to stop and just focus on the scenery and Katie’s closeness.
The landscape mesmerized me and formed an impressionistic painting of Katie’s features in greens and rusts. Her dark, Breck-girl hair became wavy hills; her watery dark blue eyes, starry nights.
Who would know I was a charity case? Well, I wasn’t, but Katie’s dad, Doc, was paying my way. Everyone reassured me he had the money, and anyway, I’d be good for Katie. My mother made sure my clothes were up to snuff, and my aunts and Joe’s father had started a special bank account for me. Hmm! Who would we say Joe Gallo was at parent weekends?
My parents, Barney and Giusy Mazzini, could dress up nicely, and my father was good at hi-brow stuff. Katie’s dad, Dr. Ron McGuilvry, well, he was Doc—well connected and influential in the Ivy League world. So, how to explain Joe? We couldn’t very well say, “Oh yeah, Joe Gallo, Doc’s boyfriend.”
Almost on cue, Katie patted my arm and said, “We’ll be just fine.” Easy for her to say. I was so glad I could take refuge in our room together. I could handle most things for a time, but then I needed a good, familiar hiding place.
Was Katie hiding now? “Hey, Katie!” I broke through her mirror-like gaze. “What’cha thinking?” I poked her with my elbow.
“Huh? Oh, nothing. Well, these are really, really smart girls and rich, really rich.”
“And you’re not? Rich, I mean.”
“Thanks,” she said. “Notice you didn’t say ‘smart.’”
“Katie.” I tried to be quiet. “Cool it! You know you’re smart.”
“Yeah, yeah. I know, ‘smart, just distracted.’”
I reminded her of times she was more focused than I was when we were figuring out the mystery at Camp Minnetonka this summer. I went on to praise her scientific mind and her determination. Then, I stopped and said, “You know this is bull—! Oops! Can I curse at school?”
Katie pulled an exasperated face. “They’ll probably be so sophisticated and use fancy curses like…I don’t know.”
“Like drat and bloody,” I said.
She sighed and admitted that she had some intelligence, but that she was a bit intimidated too.
“Aha!” I said. “We’re in good company.”
We saw that we were approaching the Academy grounds. An imposing, red brick building, maybe from the last century, and a huge gate loomed up almost out of nowhere, Marmot Memorial Gate, according to our 1959-1960 Manual. We had also seen photos of Albert’s beautiful architecture, but now the heaviness of the buildings towered over the otherwise inviting short-mowed, circular green lawns in their midst.
As the plush limousine inched forward, crunching the gravel between the gate, these main halls, Damper, Albert, McKuen, made their full appearance. They were a complex of medieval-military-like fortresses—for our protection or our confinement? My rush to explore my relationship with Katie, more intimately, and in our own room, momentarily shielded me from sensing any deeper secrets held in the interiors of these brick and mortar giants.
“Wow!” was Katie’s only comment as she turned to focus on me. Her earlier, lurid look still undressed me, but there was a new wonderment to it. I held the look for an instant, mumbling, “You said we’d be fine, right?” and pulled her out of the car as we exited in front of our dorm.
A figure cloaked in a black academic gown pointed in silence a long, arthritic finger to the name Smythe Hall cut into the stone above the formal entrance. We turned to thank him? Her? It had disappeared.
Chapter Two
The Dorm
With suitcases bumping and bluing our knees, we struggled up two flights of stairs to our room. We could hardly walk straight on the waxed oak floors. Our leaden Samsonites, and our dizzying anticipation of promised sexual rapture, made for a wild sashay down the hall.
The corridor was long and dark, too long, too dark—and silent. I realized most everyone would arrive the next day, and our excitement effervesced. Katie and I slid and toppled over on each other. We kissed and giggled, pulling each other up only to tumble again.
A light came on. Not a sound. We must have accidentally touched a button. Feeling as if we were the only beings on this bridge to heaven, our soon-to-be ecstasy, all precaution vanished.
As if by magic, our room number appeared before a third or fourth tumble. Our final tumble would certainly be magical.
I let Katie open the paneled door. We almost fell in. I dropped the suitcase and wrapped my arms around her. As we fell onto the bed, coats hardly unbuttoned, Katie screamed. Th
is was no cry of ecstatic passion. I watched as she pulled a travel iron out from under her back.
Our eyes met as if we had just encountered the equation for relativity. What happened to our energy? What was the matter? It was only then we also noticed the suitcase lying open on the other side of the bed. Not one of ours.
Could it be? I quickly checked the door. Katie’s name was definitely there. Beneath it, my blurred vision took in another bit of foreign matter: a name, not a Sicilian-American name, not mine. The ugly truth slapped me in the face: Katie and I were not roommates.
Holding the iron and tripping over the alien suitcase, Katie ran to join me at the door. Once again, we attempted to decipher what now appeared to be hieroglyphics on the nameplate: Dorotea Cabanus.
Katie’s usual gentle and caressing touch met the door in a tight-fisted slam. I caught the other fist before Katie did serious damage to herself or the door, or woke the dead, or the living. I whispered, “There’s got to be some mistake.”
Just as quickly Katie blurted out, “Dorothy Cabanus, she’s the mistake!”
As if on cue, a closet door in the room burst open and a black-headed, frizzy-coiffed giant-like creature holding huge bras and underpants projected herself mid-room, almost singing in her un-American accent, “Mistake? No. I’m Dorotea. So pleased to make your acquaintance! Wait, please, I must turn up my hearing aid.”
Our manners, or rather, our curiosity took precedence over our dismay and disgust. Who the heck was this, and what had she been doing in the closet? I shot Katie a look. My raised eyebrow silently asked, “How much did she hear or see?”
Katie recovered more graciously than I did. I still wore a knitted brow. Katie would read it as, “Later, we’ll sort this out later.” For now, Katie was effusive in response to Dorotea’s “Ach! Wunderbar! We will be, how does one say, room companions? And such a wonderful room, mit two big beds, each with big window.”
Dorotea spoke even louder and waved her flesh-dangling arm in a wide arc, showcasing the room.
Love and Lechery at Albert Academy Page 1