The Bar Harbor Retirement Home for Famous Writers_And Their Muses

by Terri-Lynne Defino

  “Never saw a man chop an onion so fast without nicking himself.” Dooley’s big, dopey grin rarely faltered. Aldo liked that about him, even if some of the other fellas picked on that trait. The man wasn’t stupid, just perpetually cheerful.

  “It’s nothing,” Aldo said. “Mindless.”

  “It’s more than the chopping. You got a way with food. That’s what I heard.”

  “From?”

  “People.” Dooley leaned closer. “I heard Zigs say something about you getting bumped up to the officers’ mess.”

  “When’d you hear that?”

  “Today. Just a little while ago.”

  Pride warmed him through. Meals during boot camp were nothing to write home about, if he had a home to write to, but far better than Aldo had ever been able to provide for himself. It sparked something in him he’d never tapped before. His experience grilling dogs and frying potatoes at Falls View got him a foot into the culinary world the military might not be known for but ran on. He learned the basics, discovered a palate he’d never noticed before. A whole new world appeared on his horizon, not simply one of food, but of cuisine, because aboard the USS Greenwater, even the crew ate well.

  All these months hanging around the kitchens, lending a hand even when he wasn’t on shift, Aldo had taken pride in helping to prepare meals the men could look forward to. Imagining the culinary delights he’d be able to provide the officers tweaked the glands in his jaw. He wasn’t sure what the rungs on the ladder were just yet, but he did know the highest he could go was the White House, if he stayed with the military. Aldo hadn’t thought that far ahead. Join the navy, do his stint. From there, it had been a blurry thing that swirled around Cecilia. No more. She was part of the blur of his past now, leaving his future completely without focus.

  Until being in the kitchen.

  Aldo finished his shift amid daydreams of cooking for the president of the United States, opening a restaurant on the Mag Mile, in Manhattan, maybe even in Paris. He headed for the berthing compartment. Being tall got him stuck with the top rack, but he didn’t mind too much. At least no one had to climb past him to get to the floor. It did put him farthest from his gear stowed in the locker below, and Aldo didn’t trust Cavanaugh one little bit. Sneaky little runt was always somewhere he wasn’t supposed to be, usually with someone else’s stuff in his pockets.

  Checking his locker, he found everything where he’d left it. Not that he had much. Navy-issue socks, underwear, T-shirts, pants. A uniform, in case they ever got the promised shore leave that hadn’t happened yet. A copy of From Here to Eternity sent as a high school graduation gift by the cousin who was raising his sister but hadn’t wanted him. He’d tossed it in a drawer of his banged-up dresser in the tiny, lonely room he rented. Two years later, the movie came out. He took Cecilia to see it. One of their first dates. The scene with the kiss on the beach sparked their first kiss. It was for that and that alone he packed the book when he left Paterson. Aldo had no intention of ever reading it; he’d already seen the movie.

  He took the book from his locker, sat on Cavanaugh’s bunk, and thumbed through the pages. Stuck into the middle, a letter. Unopened, postmarked December 16, 1954. The letter caught up to him just before he left Illinois for the West Coast. It had seemed like kismet, the letter arriving when it did, and it was the only one he kept; the rest went in the garbage, unopened. Unread. Pulling the letter from the pages, he let the book fall back into his locker.

  The letter sat flat on his hand, pristine. A holy relic. A talisman as magical as King Arthur’s sword. The contents a mystery. Words of love or of anger. Maybe both. Until he opened it, the possibilities were endless, and far safer than knowing.

  “Off my bunk, you dumb Polack.” A small, quick hand snatched the letter. “What’s this? Letter from your mommy?”

  “Fuck you.” Aldo tried to snatch it back. “Give it now, or—”

  “Or what?”

  “I’ll smear your mick ass from here to the brig.”

  “That’ll get you bumped up to the officers’ mess.” Cavanaugh snickered. “Oh, sure it will. Pickin’ on a runt half your size. Might even be worth the ass-kicking.”

  Aldo halted midgrab. “What’d you hear?”

  “Same as everyone, you fuckin’ kiss-ass.”

  Aldo grabbed for the letter. Cavanaugh yanked it away. “Now let’s see what Dearest Mommy has to say.”

  His bunkmate ripped the envelope. Aldo lunged. Cavanaugh was quick but small, and comparatively weak.

  “Get off!”

  “Give me the letter.” Straddling him, Aldo wrestled the no-longer-pristine letter from Cavanaugh’s fist. He pushed off and away, kneeing him in the chest for good measure.

  Cavanaugh scrambled for safety. “I’m reporting you!”

  “Make sure you suck Ensign Trotters’s dick after you’re done kissing his ass.”

  “Dumb Polack,” he grumbled, rubbing his chest. “Can’t take a fucking joke.”

  Aldo grabbed his parka and took Cecilia’s letter, and himself, above board. Cavanaugh wasn’t going to report him. The idiot was always in trouble; the less contact he had with his commanding officers, the better. Aldo didn’t put it past him to steal the letter in retaliation, read Cecilia’s words, and taunt him with them. That wasn’t going to happen either. He’d throw the thing overboard first.

  On deck, cold wind so stiff he had to shoulder through it, Aldo zipped his parka up as high as it would go. How could it be summer? He’d rarely experienced a winter so cold in New Jersey. He pulled gloves from his pocket and nearly lost the letter tucked in with them, nearly let it go. Watch it flutter. Consign it to the sea. That life was over—had it ever been real?—even though he would love her the rest of his life. He’d made his vow in kisses and sweat, sealed it in churning water and blood. Aldo wouldn’t break it even if he could. There had to be special places in hell for a man who could do that.

  Holding the letter up to the wind, Aldo watched it flutter and flap. His grip tightened. He couldn’t let it go. Cavanaugh had already ripped it open. The spell was broken. No longer a talisman of possibility, it was an old letter from a girl he’d loved, broken, and left. After killing her father. It was a sign. He had to read it now. Aldo would believe that the rest of his life.

  Tucking the gloves back into his pockets, he held the letter in his teeth. He moved to the lee side of the ship nevertheless buffeted by the constant arctic wind. Aldo fit his finger into the tear Cavanaugh had made. The breach. The desecration. He pulled it out again and opened Cecilia’s letter from the other side.

  My Aldo,

  I’ve given up hope that you’ll answer. There are a million dumb reasons I can make up to console or torture myself with, but the end-all-be-all is that you won’t. I don’t care. I love you anyway.

  How did everything get so fucked up? Dumb question. Things have been fucked up for me since I was born a girl. I’m sorry you fell for me and got fucked up, too. Maybe you figured that out. Maybe that’s why you don’t write me. Or maybe you’re really upset about me having to drop out of school to get married. There I go torturing myself.

  I hope you believe me when I say I don’t love Enzo. I’m fond of him. He’s a good man. At least my father didn’t promise me to an asshole like himself. We live in a little apartment off campus. Being away from my family is the only good thing right now. That, and the baby. Enzo will be good to me. He adores me. He’ll be a good father. I will still never love him. Not like me and you. If he and I are married fifty years, and have a dozen kids, I won’t.

  I love you, Aldo Wronski. I will love you every day for the rest of my life, but this is the last letter I can write to you. It’s too dangerous for you. For me. If anyone ever found out, Enzo’s heart would break, and I’m not so cold a bitch that I want that either.

  Someday, we’re going to see one another again. The last time can’t have been the last time. Me with my hair in pigtails, wearing flannel pj’s, the smell of your cologne on
my skin. I’ll see you, you’ll see me, and it’ll be like only a few minutes has passed. I believe that with all my heart.

  Yours eternally—Cecilia

  P.S.

  You were wearing a blue shirt. You’d done the buttons up wrong. I thought it was so cute, I didn’t correct you. And your hair was sticking up a little. Love-tossed is how I like to remember it. Forever, my Aldo.

  P.P.S.

  I bought Enzo that cologne for Christmas and make him wear it all the time even though he doesn’t really like it much. It’s wrong of me, but he doesn’t know. At night, in bed, I pretend he’s you. Forever and a day.

  Aldo crumbled the letter in a fist. Enzo? Married? Baby? A hole opened up under his feet. He hovered above it while the chasm deepened, swirled, threatened. She must have told him in prior letters. He imagined her on her wedding day, waiting for the priest to ask if anyone objected, waiting for Aldo to cry out “I do!” from the back of the church. She was pregnant, and that meant she’d been with another man. A man who was now her husband. A husband she would never love. Aldo was glad she married a good man who adored her even if his own heart was suddenly full of more holes than it had been before reading her words, before learning her truth. Whatever his hopes when he joined the navy, he’d blown it all to smithereens when he fought with Dominic Giancami and won.

  Cecilia was married.

  Cecilia was going to have a baby.

  Maybe it had already been born.

  Cecilia was lost to him forever, and had been since the day they met. Only now he knew it with a certainty those vague notions caught in that blur of his past never made clear.

  “I love you, Cecilia,” he said. “I will love you every day for the rest of my life.”

  And Aldo opened his fist. The arctic wind snatched Cecilia’s letter, lifted it up, tossed it about, took it away. Jamming his hands into his pockets, he made his way down to the galley. Zigs would know how to go about making it happen, and if he didn’t, he’d find out how. Tonight, Aldo was taking a step into a future suddenly as clear as the cloudless sky above his head, one in which Cecilia was the blur that might or might not ever come into focus again. Tonight, he was cooking for the captain.

  Chapter 15

  Bar Harbor, Maine

  June 21, 1999

  Is a kiss ever just a kiss?

  —Cornelius Traegar

  Alfonse paced outside Judi’s room, in his head, at any rate. In fact, he leaned against the door, head back and eyes closed, waiting. He’d shushed her when she’d tried to talk about the manuscript in the gathering room, reminded her it was a secret she couldn’t spill. It had been her idea to stroll from there to her room, farther than he’d walked since his episode—code word for dying and being brought back before he knew what a DNR order was—last winter.

  Judi hadn’t invited him in, but asked him to wait outside while she got the notebook for him. Alfonse found that strange, considering they were to discuss the manuscript she’d pleaded to be part of. There were no wingback chairs in this hallway. Perhaps the younger residents, those with fewer health problems, lived here. What remained of his machismo forbade him to ask if he could sit in her room a little while.

  “Alfonse?”

  He lifted his head. Switch’s broad grin appeared like Cheshire Cat’s, heralding the man forming around that single point of focus. Alfonse cleared his throat. “Hello, Raymond. How are you this afternoon?”

  “Right as rain. You’re not looking so good, though.”

  “An unfortunate and perpetual state of being, I’m afraid.”

  “You waiting for Judith?”

  Alfonse nodded. “She’s getting something for me. I didn’t know you lived in this wing.”

  “It isn’t as fancy as your place, but it’s quiet and close to the gardens.”

  “The Pen isn’t exactly a circus of noise and attractions. And, to be clear, no one’s place is as fancy as mine.” Alfonse chuckled, or attempted to. He wheezed instead. Lungs failed him. Lips tingled. His knees buckled.

  Grabbing Alfonse’s arm, Switch shoved open Judith’s door. “Judith, quick. He needs to sit.”

  She was already leaping up from her desk chair. “Oh, Alfonse. I’m so sorry. I’d forgotten you were waiting. Switch, put him in my chair. I’ll call a nurse to come with a wheelchair.”

  So much fuss. So humiliating. Emasculating. Dehumanizing. And yet he had no breath to protest, and more sense than to try. Judith got him water he couldn’t drink. Switch murmured into the phone. Alfonse closed his eyes. Sparkles crackled behind his lids. He smiled. It wasn’t a lack of oxygen; it was the sunshine on a summer day. It was magic. It was memory dancing in better times.

  “I’ve got him, Mr. Switcher, Ms. Arsenault.” Angelic voice. One that conjured sunlight on gold. Words whispered between his ears—In all his travels, across the world, he’d never seen a woman nearly as lovely as Cecilia in a lacy bathrobe, rollers in her hair and a dab of overlooked cold cream on her chin—and were already fading away.

  Plastic jammed up his nose, behind his ears. Oxygen hissed. Alfonse sipped at it, first, then took bigger drafts. He was in a wheelchair, though how he got there, he didn’t know. Someone had lifted him into it. Cecibel? Masculine pride could not accept that. It had to be Switch. He was older, but not old. Still mostly hale. Yes, Raymond eased him into the wheelchair. Alfonse could almost remember him doing so.

  “I’m fine,” he managed to whisper. “Please. I’m fine.”

  “You will be in a moment.” Cecibel squatted down in front of his chair. Back was the side ponytail veiling her monster half, but she smiled. Truly smiled. “I’m . . . we’re not ready to let you go just yet. Take easy breaths. Let me know when you’re feeling better and I’ll take you back to your rooms.”

  “I feel awful.” Judi spoke in soft tones behind him. “I completely forgot he was waiting.”

  “It’s okay, Judith,” Switch answered in tones just as soft. “We all forget sometimes.”

  “You’re kind.” She sniffed, and sniffed again.

  If he opened his eyes, Alfonse was certain he’d see Raymond Switcher taking Judith Arsenault into his ropy arms, soothing her. No jealousy. Not the kind he might have once felt seeing another man embrace his once-lover. More like envy. Alfonse could no more take a woman into his arms to soothe than he could to love. “Cecibel?”

  “Yes, Alfonse?”

  Alfonse. Not Mr. Carducci. Heart, no! Don’t pound so. “I’d like to go back now.”

  “I’m so sorry, Alfonse.” Judi hugged him from behind. “I’m so sorry.”

  “Don’t fret, darling.” Alfonse patted her hand, brought it to his lips, and kissed it. “I’ll see you at dinner.”

  “Of course. Oh, just a moment, Cecibel.” Judi darted to her desk and grabbed the brown notebook. She whispered into his ear, “Outstanding, my friend. We need better detail on navy life. The military is something you simply cannot get wrong. I’ll make some notes.”

  He only nodded. The story wasn’t about being in the navy. It was about love, the kind reserved for Gatsby and Daisy, for Tristan and Isolde. Forever and tragic and flawed from the start. He’d tell her, but Judith wouldn’t listen. She didn’t create, she perfected. In all his years writing, Alfonse never got used to his vision being altered, even when it was for the better.

  “I’ll walk with you.” Switch’s gentle voice replaced Judi’s in his ear. “Okay?”

  “I’d like that.” Though he wouldn’t. He knew what they were up to. Cecibel was on duty, and no one wanted him to be alone or, worse, left with the nurses who’d fuss so. What he needed was to sleep, and yet it was the last thing in the world he wanted to spend any of his precious time doing.

  “Where would you like to be?” Cecibel asked as she wheeled him into his suite.

  “Jamaica?” he answered. “Saint Martin?”

  “Very funny.” She squeezed his shoulder. “How about there, in the sunshine? Close enough?”

  Alfonse nodde
d. Cecibel wheeled him closer to the windows. She took the leather notebook from his hands and set it onto his desk. “Can I get you gentlemen something?”

  “I see an electric kettle there.” Switch pointed to the contraption on Alfonse’s sideboard. “And all the fixings for something warm to drink. Looks like we’re all set.”

  “All right, then. Alfonse, I’ll see you later.”

  He closed his eyes rather than watch her go. It pained him, somehow, since he kissed her days ago, since she kissed him in kind. There’d been a shift he couldn’t explain. Or, perhaps, it was the lack of a shift that perplexed him. His muse, his fair monster, altered his world, and her unchanged manner toward him seemed to suggest he had not altered hers. Vanity had ever been a close companion, as had foolishness and recklessness. And yet, having her rescue him from Judi’s room left him bereft of even the semblance of what he’d once been, what he still was, sometimes, inside his head.

  “She’s a good one, isn’t she?” Switch was already at the electric kettle, filling it from the bar faucet. “Good girl.”

  “She’s a woman, Switch.”

  He picked up his head, smiling. “Ah, so now I’m Switch. Why do you call me Raymond most of the time?”

  Alfonse shrugged. “In public, out of respect.”

  “Well, thank you for that.” He plugged in the kettle. “You want tea?”

  “Tea, tea, and more tea. I’m fucking tired of tea. Why is it we’re made to drink it so much?”

  Switch chuckled. “Because we can’t drink booze. We’re old men, Alfie.”

  Alfie and Switch. Once young writers, then giants, now not so much at all. “Remember the days of Long Island iced teas over hors d’oeuvres and Manhattans with steak, followed by port and cigars?”