The Bar Harbor Retirement Home for Famous Writers_And Their Muses

by Terri-Lynne Defino

  Enzo ran a finger along her bare shoulder. “I’ll fetch her myself and escort her up here, okay?”

  She nodded.

  “Are you ready to make your grand entrance, then? Everyone must be here by now.”

  Cecilia checked her watch. Seven o’clock on the dot. If she stretched it any further, Mama would lay an egg. “Vini, vidi, vici,” she said. “Help me with this, will you?”

  Enzo dropped the stole across her bare shoulders, kissing the curve of her neck. Warmth tickled, raced along her skin. She did love this man. She really did. They’d been happy, and he adored her beyond reason. What more could a girl ask for?

  The quiet upstairs gave way to the riot going on below. People. Everywhere, people. In the grand foyer and the ballroom, in the music room where a jazz singer crooned carols and the adjoining dining room where hired staff would be setting up the buffet. There were more people than there were tables and chairs, a circumstance that never deterred Dominic Giancami from inviting more people than the year prior. Since his brush with death, there was always room for more.

  Descending, on her husband’s arm, Cecilia kept their pace slow. Deliberate. Eyes turned to them. Fingers pointed. Enzo’s hand covered hers. A good hand. Square and strong but soft. No man of the trades, he was a college graduate, in the process of earning his doctorate. Any woman would be proud, and she was. So proud. Where had the skinny, gawky boy gone in the few years they’d been married? Cecilia once suspected he’d be a looker one day, but she’d never dared to hope for what she got. They made a striking pair, and she knew it even if he didn’t. Sophia Loren and Carlo Ponti, if Carlo had thick, black hair when he was twenty-four.

  Enzo nodded to those calling and waving Christmas cheer. The front door opened. Cecilia’s attention moved, along with everyone else’s, to the woman stepping over the threshold and shedding a stole. White ermine, no doubt about it. She handed it to the doorman.

  “Who’s that?” Enzo asked.

  “I have no idea,” Cecilia answered. Her brothers were falling over themselves to reach her, this vision in red satin. Fair skin, elegant in the way of Audrey Hepburn in Roman Holiday, hair the shade of pale champagne, whoever she was, she made Cecilia feel small and dumpy, even in her Marilyn Monroe dress. Especially so. Then her father was there, shoving Nicky and Joe off none too gently. Taking the goddess’s hand and drawing her farther into the foyer, he called out to the man still standing in the doorway waiting to come in.

  He stepped inside.

  He handed the doorman his overcoat and hat.

  He lifted his head.

  All the air in the room got sucked out the door, a wind tunnel pulling at her, making her continue descending the stairs suddenly like stepstones across a raging brook. To him. Older. Broader. A man. Her Aldo. Standing in the grand foyer of her family home wearing a tuxedo, greeting her father like he was an old friend despite the fact his gaze had not yet left hers.

  Cecilia’s whole body crackled and she shuddered. Enzo’s curiosity spared her his concern. She needed a moment to gather herself, though another thousand moments wouldn’t suffice, so she continued toward him and knew she’d been doing just that all these years.

  “Ah, there she is. My beautiful daughter.” Dominic drew her and Enzo over. “This here is Al DiViello and his sister, Theresa.”

  “Tressa.” The goddess spoke, her voice as velvet and sweet as a movie star’s. “Two syllables, not three.” And southern. More crackling recognition. Cecilia wanted to throw her arms around the woman for not being Aldo’s wife, for being the sister he once envied and missed instead. She wanted to throw herself back in time, back to that night Patsy was conceived, and change the course of everything. Ungrateful thing. Disloyal wife. And her little son sleeping innocently upstairs, oblivious to his mother’s banishing wishes.

  “Good to meet you, Al.” Enzo shook his hand. He bowed over Tressa’s. “And you, Miss DiViello.”

  “Such a gentleman,” Tressa cooed. “And your name is?”

  “Enzo Parisi, the son-in-law.”

  “What’sa matter, Ceci?” Cami guffawed. “Cat got your tongue?”

  Aldo’s steady gaze undid her. He took her hand and, as Enzo had done to Tressa, bowed over it. “Hello, Ceci . . . Mrs. Parisi.”

  His voice, like chocolate and cream and all things rich and delicious, trickled through her brain. Fingers caressed the underside of her palm where no one could see but she could feel. Cruel and wonderful.

  “Hi,” she managed. “Welcome. Merry Christmas.” Her cheeks flamed. Aldo smiled. Cecilia was as his as she’d ever been.

  “Come on in out of the cold.” Cami shoved the door closed even though he’d hired a doorman to do so. “The missus is putting out the spread any second. You don’t want to miss a bite. I’m telling you, she’s the God’s-honest best cook in New Jersey.”

  “My brother’s a chef. He cooks for officers and dignitaries on a ship in the Mediterranean. Or, he will soon enough.” Tressa left Aldo’s arm for Cami’s. “Oh, listen to me, boasting. How unladylike of me. I’m just so proud of him.”

  “Yeah? Maybe he and Maria could have a cook-off or something.”

  “I’ll beat him, hands down.” Maria Giancami blew into the grand foyer, apron askew, hair falling in curly tendrils around her face, and Patsy on her hip. She handed her off to Enzo, who twirled her in his arms. Cecilia gasped. Oh, please. Oh, please no.

  “And who’s this little angel?” Tressa reached out for Patsy. Traitor child, she went to her like she’d known her all her life. “What’s your name, honey?”

  “Patsy. What’s yours?”

  “My name’s Tressa.”

  “You talk funny.”

  “Do I?” Tressa laughed. Even that was like music. “And here I was, thinking the same thing about you.”

  “Gramma, I’m hungry.”

  “I’ll take her, Maria,” Enzo said. “It was nice meeting you, Al. Tressa. Enjoy the party.” He kissed Cecilia’s cheek, whispering, “And I didn’t forget about the sitter. Just have fun. And get that girl away from your mother before she claws her eyes out.”

  Cecilia barely nodded, barely digested what he said. How could she when her head was ringing, when he held Aldo’s child in his arms and didn’t see the similarity to the man’s sister, who’d have her eyes clawed out if she didn’t let go of Daddy’s arm and fast?

  She took a deep breath. Her undergarments reminded her of their presence, of the fact she needed them to look half as good as Tressa, who probably wore nothing anywhere near as torturous under her red dress. Aldo’s sister. Patricia’s aunt. How could this be happening?

  Cecilia’s vision wavered. She put a hand to her head.

  “Are you okay?” A masculine voice not Daddy’s, not Enzo’s. One like chocolate coating her. Warm and sensuous.

  Cecilia dared look up, met his eyes. Eyes she’d been gazing into since the moment her daughter was born. Bad idea. Bad, bad idea. Everything about him screamed, Remember! Every cell in her body obeyed. The nose once too big, the cleft once too deep, the smile always and still crooked had settled themselves into the face of a man nowhere near as attractive as Enzo—my darling Enzo. Forgive me. Please! Forgive me—but infinitely more desired.

  “No,” she said. “Of course I’m not.”

  “I shouldn’t have come.”

  “Don’t go.” Had she screamed it? Inside her head, she had. No one seemed to be looking their way. Yet. “Fifteen minutes. Meet me outside behind the garage.”

  Cecilia didn’t wait for a response but made a show of excusing herself by telling Aldo to enjoy the party, and scurried off in any direction that wasn’t his. She was already sweltering in the fur stole but kept it with her anyway. In fifteen minutes, when everyone was busy eating and complimenting Mama on her culinary prowess, Cecilia would be out behind the garage in need of protection against the cold, a shield against the past.

  Mama usually made people go outside to smoke. She hated the smell and ho
w it made her lace curtains dingy. She especially hated cigar smoke—like rotten eggs burning in wet newspaper—but the Christmas party was the one exception she made. Guests dressed up in their finest shouldn’t have to go outside to smoke like dogs needing to take a piss. At least, that had been Daddy’s argument and, for once, he’d won.

  That’s how it was now. Whatever Maria Antonette Giancami wanted, she got, if it was in his power to give it. And Mama never asked for anything just to get her way. Wherever he’d been, whatever had happened to him, it changed them both so profoundly it made Cecilia weep to think about. It made it all the more important that she never disappoint them, that she live up to their expectations, their love, and the love they showered on her little family.

  And yet there she was, in the burlap-covered rose garden behind the garage, shivering in the white fox stole that had cost a fortune, though nothing even close to the ermine Tressa wore. The young woman had said something about Aldo cooking for officers and dignitaries on a ship in the Mediterranean; had he struck it rich? Did that happen in the navy? No, that couldn’t be it. He’d only been serving for five years, in any case. Maybe he’d married well. A general’s daughter. Did they have generals in the navy? Cecilia had no idea. Or maybe Aldo was a criminal, like her father no matter how kind he’d become. Could that be why he went by the name Al DiViello? Was it a gangster name? Or a name to hide his criminal activities?

  “I knew you’d be even more beautiful than I remembered.”

  Cecilia spun, nearly turning an ankle in her stiletto pumps. Oh, how exquisite he was, standing in the scant light of moon, stars, and Christmas lights trimming the garage. He came closer, his shoulders dipping, and Cecilia felt his embrace before he took her into his arms.

  He buried his face in her hair. “You smell the same.” And he kissed her lips, her cheeks, her throat, her lips again.

  The years careened backward and she was seventeen again, making love in a rented room in Motel on the Mountain, saying good-bye, still full of hope that everything would work out. Somehow. Cecilia wept but she met him kiss for kiss. “You taste the same.”

  Aldo pulled back, grinned that lopsided grin, and bent his head to hers. The raw desperation lingered underneath the slow, deliberate teasing of lips and tongues, tempered but not tamed. His hands slid down her back, pressed her hips to his. She felt him, familiar and foreign, swell against her.

  “I’ve been playing it out in my head all day, and it happened just like I imagined.” He took her face in his hands, and suddenly let them fall. “This is so fucked up. You have no idea.”

  “What are you doing here?”

  Stepping away from her, he pulled a cigarette case from his tuxedo jacket, offered her one. He lit his, hers. “Where do I start?” He exhaled a plume of smoke. “When your father knocked me down today and insisted I come to the party so he could make it up to me? Or back in 1954 when he tried to kill me but I killed him instead?”

  Cecilia stood over her son’s crib, her hand on his little back. Gentle rise, whispering fall. Up. Down. Sweet and astounding. Tiny as he’d been at birth, he was a chubby baby now. Healthy. He’d turned over early, and even showed signs of walking already.

  She remembered Patricia at ten months old, could conjure it as if it were just last week. Unlike Frankie’s smattering of duck fuzz, she had so much hair by then. Long. Thick. Wavy, but not curly. Just like Tressa’s. Patsy’s sweet disposition finally made sense, too. Tressa enchanted. Everyone. Even Cecilia. Even her father, so devoted to her mother. It had been because of her that Daddy’d invited Aldo after knocking him down. It had been because of her Aldo was in Paterson again to begin with. It was because of her Cecilia’s life was suddenly coming apart at the seams, even if she was the only one who knew it.

  The undigested, indigestible truths Aldo told still whirred above her head, just out of reach. She still had no idea where Daddy had been all those weeks, probably never would. But others did. Would any of them know the part Aldo played? Did Daddy? Was the cordial manner an act to lure him close enough to kill? Cecilia shook that off as quickly as it came at her. The answer was unequivocally no. Dominic Giancami lacked the sophistication. He’d always been brute force, not calculated wise guy. A man, then and now, quite capable of killing Aldo for fucking his daughter.

  What would she have done back then? If Aldo came to her and confessed what had happened? What would have become of him? Even through the whirring confusion, Cecilia knew someone would have ended up dead. Or worse. Enzo’s wife, Patricia and Frankie’s mother, understood that everything had turned out in the best way possible, for everyone concerned. And still she stood over her infant son’s crib reliving forbidden kisses, and wishing . . .

  “There you are.” Enzo closed the door quietly and came to stand beside her. “I saw the sitter downstairs.”

  “I thought she’d like to get some food before it was all gone. Besides, I needed a breather.”

  He put his arm around her shoulders. Cecilia leaned into him. Enzo smelled like Aldo, like the cologne she bought every Christmas and put in her husband’s stocking. Or was it Aldo who smelled like Enzo now? Tears stung.

  “He sure is beautiful, isn’t he?” Enzo whispered.

  Cecilia nodded.

  “Sleeps like a log.”

  “Thank goodness. We got lucky with both of them.”

  “We certainly did.”

  Had he paused too long? Cecilia’s heart stuttered. Her fried nerves sizzled and fizzed. She tried to breathe normally, told herself there was no way he could possibly know. It was those fried nerves, the stuttering pulse making her sense a pause that meant something ominous.

  A gentle knock sent Enzo to the nursery door. The young lady they’d hired to watch over their son slipped into the room, a big piece of chocolate cake in one hand, a book in the other. “Thank you,” she whispered. “I really appreciate it, but I got all I want from the party. Too much noise for me.”

  “Understood.” Enzo chuckled softly. Easy and unaffected. Dear Enzo. He, too, would rather be cloistered in the nursery with a book and a piece of chocolate cake. Of course he didn’t suspect a thing. His love for her, for their children, prohibited anything so base. Cecilia sucked down his calm, let it fill her. Or tried.

  Enzo waved her away from the crib and together they left the nursery. At the top of the stairs, Cecilia grasped the railing, halting in her tracks. What little composure she’d gathered already seeped out of her ears, her pores. He was still down there. She could hear Tressa’s musical laughter even over all the unruly Jersey Italians. Or maybe she was just tuned in to it.

  “Something wrong?”

  Cecilia caught Enzo’s face in her hands and pulled him to her lips. Soft. Familiar. Yes, get the taste of Aldo out of her mouth. Longer, more sensually. Enzo was quick to arouse, and thankfully quick to soothe. She unbuckled his belt, undid the button and zipper, and slipped her hand inside. Enzo pressed her up against the wall. Cecilia let him feel her curves, savor the tender places behind her ear, her throat, between her pushed-up breasts. His breathing hitched. His muscles jerked. He leaned more heavily against her and relaxed. Cecilia bit her lip to keep from crying.

  “You’re something else.” Hot breath on her neck. Enzo stood straighter, handed her his handkerchief, and tucked himself in. “What was that for?”

  “Do I need a reason?” She cleaned her hand. “I like to live a little dangerously.”

  “You used to.” Enzo took her tenderly into his arms. She tried not to flinch. If he noticed, he didn’t show it. “It’s been a while.”

  “We have sex all the time.”

  “But not like that.” He sniffed at her lips, grinning. “You been drinking?”

  Cecilia managed a small, nervous giggle. “Only a little.”

  “I’ve missed this, and didn’t even know it until just now.”

  “A hand job in the hallway?”

  “No.” Enzo kissed her as tenderly as he held her. “Your wild side.”<
br />
  Cecilia lowered her lashes. Oh, darling, don’t miss that girl. She’s up to no good. “Maybe you’ll get lucky again later on, if the party doesn’t go too late.”

  “I got lucky when I was a dopey twelve-year-old. Luckiest guy in the world.”

  She balled the sticky handkerchief in her fist and stepped out of his arms. “Go on down, darling,” she said. “I want to change my shoes. These are killing me.”

  “I can wait.”

  “Don’t be silly. Go. I might be a few minutes. You’ve shifted things a bit. I have to make some lady adjustments, too.”

  Enzo waved over his shoulder.

  “Put a cannoli aside for me,” she called after him.

  Slumped against the wall, she kicked off her heels, wiggled feeling back into her toes. What a mess. What a thrilling mess. All because a young woman wanted to see the brother she hadn’t in far too many years.

  Aldo’s hands and lips and tongue chased Enzo’s over her body; or did Enzo’s chase Aldo’s? Cecilia closed her eyes and conjured the two, one on either side of her, worshiping her in such different ways. Aldo’s intensity. Enzo’s tenderness. One made the Cecilia behind her eyes cry out, the other made her softly moan. Why could she not have them both? Was it so wrong? Really?

  She thought of Trudy, suddenly, wondered what had become of her after Daddy banished her from their lives. What had changed him? How had he let go of that love he’d fallen into—if rumor had it right—before marrying Mama? She couldn’t ask him. Ever. Couldn’t ask her mother. She was on her own.

  Cecilia went to the room that used to be hers in the house on Derrom Avenue, into the bathroom still with pink tiles and lace curtains. She rinsed the handkerchief in the sink, hung it on the towel bar to dry. Something was awake in her now, something that had been sleeping since Patricia was born and Enzo made his choice. It was yawning and stretching and bearing its sharp teeth. And it would not go back to sleep again. Not even if Aldo left before she returned to the party and she never saw him again. Cecilia wouldn’t let it, because Enzo wasn’t the only one who missed her wild side, and she hadn’t known until it walked through the front door.