The Bar Harbor Retirement Home for Famous Writers_And Their Muses

by Terri-Lynne Defino

  No one seemed to see him. Only Tressa, who cocked her head to the side and winked before walking out the door with the secret he and she now shared. Close as a kiss, and just as dangerous. Theirs, and theirs alone, because he’d broken the first promise he made to her, but he’d never break the second.

  Chapter 26

  Bar Harbor, Maine

  July 16, 1999

  Spring is short. Summer, slightly longer.

  We linger long in autumn, but winter?

  Winter passes all too quickly into the night that never ends.

  —Cornelius Traegar

  Skipping dinner was never a good idea, not when one had an appetite like hers. Voracious, her mother used to say, happily doling out a second helping, or a third. Cecibel had always been solid but never chubby. An athlete who didn’t necessarily like sports, but was good at them. Like her dad. But Jennifer? She’d been small and curvy, like Mom. Prone to dramatics, like Mom. Cute little button of a girl, like Mom. Jen had always envied Cecibel’s statuesque beauty. Funny how that happened. Cecibel had secretly wished to be petite, to have a spattering of freckles across her nose and cheeks, along her arms and chest, to have the springy curls her older sister did. She never envied her drama, though. As a kid, Cecibel believed it was an act. A way to get Mom and Dad’s attention. To get what she wanted.

  But it wasn’t.

  Jen didn’t cry, she shrieked and shook. It took days to calm her. She felt the world more keenly, so deeply. Sunrise could make her weep. Or a piece of music. Or the perfect kiss. Boys didn’t break her heart; they shattered her soul. Disappointment over a failing grade or a favorite television program canceled put her in her room—shades closed, lights out, blanket over her head—keening for days. Puberty, the specialists said.

  But it wasn’t.

  Something had broken inside Jennifer Bringer, before she was ever born, and it never fully healed. It let in all the demons as well as every passing, mischievous fairy. Jen was the confetti at a parade, or she was a squall coming in off the ocean. It made her infuriatingly and alternately amazing, worrisome. It made her best loved. Losing her broke all of them in the same, unhealable way Jen had been. Cecibel most especially, most visibly, and most invisibly, too.

  “Hey, you’re early.” Fin flopped down into the Adirondack chair next to hers. He riffled around in his backpack. “Sal said you didn’t come in for dinner. I brought you this.”

  Cecibel took the thermos from him, unscrewed the cap. New England clam chowder. Her favorite. Dear Sal. Such friends, she had. Fin handed her a spoon.

  “Thanks. Mind if I eat this before we head down?”

  “Go ahead,” he said. “Want me to hold your book again?”

  The brown leather notebook on her lap still evidenced the water marks of its last stay in Fin’s backpack, but she couldn’t leave it on the chair. Switch’s chapter, still fresh, wandered about inside her head. Jennifer insinuated herself into the party, a witness to everything Cecibel read. Your friends understand what you never did. Some of us can’t be saved.

  “Sure, thanks.” She’d get the book to Olivia instead of putting it back while Alfonse had dinner, as she’d planned, giving her the blame she seemed to delight in taking. Cecibel didn’t remember actually taking it to begin with, only that Olivia had left with her, so maybe the sly old thing had swiped it after all.

  Spooning chowder was easier and less fraught with personal peril than eating a sandwich. Cecibel ate without feeling overly self-conscious. After so many years hiding the monster away, the recklessness of being free often took her by surprise, but she didn’t hide her away again. What was the point when everyone knew she was there?

  “So . . .”

  “Sew buttons,” she said around a mouthful of chowder. Bad idea.

  Fin handed her a napkin. “Funny. I was thinking, how about we watch a video back at my place after our walk?”

  “Video?”

  “You know. A movie. I just got the new Star Trek flick. Haven’t watched it yet.”

  Cecibel spooned more chowder into her mouth, chewed the tender bits of clam, potatoes, carrots. The food at the Pen tended to be a little bland, but the New England clam chowder was perfect.

  “Bel?”

  Sal knew how much she loved it. Fin understood it was less perilous for her to eat. She’d snuck into the records room and pried into pasts that weren’t hers. She went on a date and kissed a man. Kissed Fin. Her friend who coaxed the monster out of her cage and didn’t shy away from her teeth. Cecibel had swiped the notebook from Alfonse—she remembered now, with clarity and not a shred of shame—who looked dead on and didn’t see the monster at all. She read Jennifer further out of her brain opening up and opening up, spilling its contents so long locked away. Something once shriveled like a seed had cracked when Alfonse Carducci arrived in the Pen. It had been silently, discreetly spreading green and growing fingers through Cecibel’s body so that now she could almost feel the leaves sprouting from her fingertips, toes, the top of her head. Coax it? Or force it back into its split casing?

  Screwing the cap onto the thermos—could she? would he?—Cecibel rose from the chair. “I have a better idea,” she said, and held out her hand to Fin.

  “Don’t close your eyes,” he’d whispered. No light but whatever scattered in through the open windows. No sound but for frogs and the occasional bird. And their lovemaking, the groans and moans of it. The sweet words. The caught breath. And through it Cecibel’s eyes stayed open. Fin’s, too, even when his body hitched and he thrust his last, pushing so deep inside her he pricked her soul and spilled her out. Cecibel the monster who’d never. Cecibel the princess fair who had and had and had. Puddling on the mattress beneath them both. For once and momentarily whole.

  “You are so beautiful.” He kissed her lips so tenderly, the corner that worked to the corner that didn’t.

  “Don’t say what isn’t true.”

  “But it is.”

  “No, it’s not.” She turned her head. “Don’t pretend, Fin. Not you. You’re the only one who sees me. You and maybe Olivia.”

  “I do see you, Bel.” He kissed her again. “I see this”—he touched her fair half—“and this.” He fingered her hair. “And this”—her breasts—“and this”—her abdomen—“and this”—between her legs slick with them. “I see this, too.” He traced her scars, her ruined ear. “It’s not beautiful, but it doesn’t make the rest of you ugly either. You could have it all fixed up tomorrow and I wouldn’t love you more. And if you never do, I won’t love you any less.”

  Cecibel’s heart stitched. “You . . . love me?”

  “Of course I do. Don’t you . . . do you? Love me?”

  A little boy wanting. A grown man needing. The monster and the murderer. What a pair they made.

  “I don’t know,” she said. “I don’t know if I’m capable.”

  “You are, but I won’t push it. I won’t push this.” He gestured to the bed. “Just don’t pull away from me.”

  “I won’t. I’ll try not to.”

  Fin sat up in bed, ruffled fingers through his hair. “It’s been a long time. For me, I mean.”

  Of course it had. Monster had never made love. Not once, until now. Had murderer? Caught up in epiphanic resolve, she hadn’t even thought. Thank goodness.

  He smiled a goofy, just-laid smile. “So . . . you want to watch Star Trek now?”

  Whatever her afterglow thoughts, Fin’s were of much lighter stuff. How did he do it? She would ask, one day. Not now, but soon. Another door opened. Another small and shriveled something cracked. “Set it up.” Cecibel tossed aside the sheets. “I’ll make popcorn.”

  Nights in July were often humid no matter how cool the breeze coming in off the ocean. Cecibel wasn’t overly fond of July. August was her favorite month, when it was still hot during the day but rarely humid, when nights chirped autumn sounds. Autumn scented. Autumn chilled. A little more than halfway through July, and she was ready for it to be over. Almo
st. When every passing day gave her one less with Alfonse, she wished it could stay July forever.

  Walking the grounds of the Pen alone—she’d asked Fin not to join her—gave her time between his bed and her own to gather perspective, let the world back in. The real world, and not the one she’d spent the last few hours in. But in those hours between one day and the next, perspective bent in fantastic ways, showed her is and might be were not entirely different things. Cecibel hummed, matching her tune to the see-see-saw of crickets and her step with moonlight patches wending through the leaves. It was no longer today, and not yet tomorrow. It was now and she was, for once, content.

  All doors were locked at that time of night. Cecibel had to swipe her electronic key. Again dark hallways of muted sunrise. Again the silence whispering. Tonight, it was a tranquil thing rather than a sinister one.

  Cecilia and Aldo and Enzo and Tressa walked alongside her, before her, behind her. She felt them there, escaped from the book in her arms. Guiding. Protecting. Speaking their secrets. In her mind’s eye, she was Tressa, though not as clever or strong-minded. Who’d created her? Alfonse, she was almost certain but only almost. He made her into his vision of Cecibel, the woman he saw and not the woman she actually was. It was why she loved him, she realized. Her ugliness, her inadequacies did not exist for him. In his eyes, she was the Cecibel she might have been in another version of her life. A fantasy. His. Hers. Only real so long as he was living.

  Standing outside his suite, Cecibel didn’t remember getting there, didn’t remember taking her electronic key coded to every door in the place out of her pocket again. Emergency use only. She swiped the key.

  It was quiet, and dark of course. The plush carpeting swallowed any footfall that might have squeaked her intrusion. She only wanted to put the notebook back where she’d swiped it from. No harm. No foul. At least, she told herself those lies.

  Cecibel set it down on the coffee table, Alfonse’s nighttime view capturing her. The expanse of lawn a negative cast in shades of blue and darker blue. The sea beyond the dunes. The moonglade cutting a silver path upon it. She closed her eyes and heard the rushing hiss, the roll, the boom. Even during those hospital years, Cecibel had never left the sea. It crashed into every day of her life, from babyhood to this moment in Alfonse’s silent room.

  As she tiptoed back to the door, the mechanical hiss of an oxygen tank halted her midway. The door to Alfonse’s bedroom was ajar, the sound coming from there. Of course. He required oxygen while he slept. Soon, around the clock.

  He slept on his back, propped up almost to sitting, his head lolled to one side. The oxygen tubes in his nose hooked over his ears and down his chest. Cecibel crept nearer, so close she could see his eyes slumber-fluttering. What did a man like Alfonse Carducci dream? She wished she could see. Instead, she would read. Every word he wrote, even those painful to her now. Cecibel made that pact, standing over the man sleeping.

  Her heart stitched. I’ve never been in love. She loved Alfonse impossibly, ridiculously, truly. Did she love Fin? After a lifetime without even the hint of so deep an emotion, Cecibel was awash in too many kinds to name. Love for Olivia. For Sal and Judi and Stitch. Love for Fin, carnal and honest. Love for Alfonse, a fantasy for them both. And Jennifer. How she loved her sister whom she’d long ago banished from thought.

  Alfonse took a deeper breath. Eyes fluttered opened to slits. Cecibel stood perfectly still. You’re dreaming, she told him, thought to thought. Dreaming, Alfonse. Dreaming. He reached for her. Cecibel did not move. His fingers jerked. His hand stilled. He reached again. She edged close enough for him to touch her, or push her away.

  Alfonse touched her. Through her shirt, then under it. Cecibel gasped but silently. She wore nothing underneath. Fingers that had undone a million buttons flipped open three of hers, then four. He sat up, swung his legs over the side of his bed. Opening her shirt, he buried his face between her breasts. Cecibel arched to him, to his touch, to his mouth and tongue and teeth. The rest of her buttons came undone. He pushed the shirt from her shoulders. It fluttered to the floor. Alfonse sat back, ran his hands up the curve of her waist, to breasts glistening with his spit. His breathing came in ragged, impassioned gasps. On the monitor, his heart rate stuttered. Any moment, the alarm would sound and break the fantastic hours between today and tomorrow like an egg.

  Cecibel blinked. Stepped back, and away. Alfonse lay sleeping peacefully, tubes hissing up his nose, hand twitching at his side. The monitor blinking steadily. She snatched her shirt from the floor, a foreign thing in her hand. Puzzling and alarming. All things were possible in dreams.

  She dashed from his room as silently as she’d come, out the window, not the door. Dropping to the ground, she listened for any sign she’d been seen. Silent night. Holy night. She ran topless—sea air and humid July salting her skin—to the beach, where she kicked off her shoes, her shorts, and dove into the rumbling sea. Cecibel washed the fantasy from her skin. The reality of Finlay, too. They were men, and she loved them, but she was not theirs. She was no one’s. Only hers. Belonging to someone else had never been a good fit for her.

  Trudging naked out of the water, Cecibel slicked the hair back from her face. Hiding had never been a good fit either. Dr. Marks had been right about that, about so many things. Wrong about so many others. Maybe it was time to talk to someone. Dr. Kintz welcomed her. Anytime, he said. But she needed to know something first, and now was as good a time as any. Better, in fact, than cruel morning and all its revealing light.

  Air-dried and damp-dressed, Cecibel left her feet bare and her hair slicked back. She walked all the way to Dr. Kintz’s carriage house near the entrance of the property. It took only four good knocks to get a response. The click of locks unlocking, a muffled “Just a moment.” And then, “Cecibel. Miss Bringer. Is . . . What’s wrong? Why are you all wet?”

  “Am I an employee or a resident here?”

  Dr. Kintz pulled his robe closed tighter. “What was that?”

  “Am I an employee or a resident? It’s a simple question.”

  His hair stuck up in all directions. Running a nervous hand through it only made it worse. His chin shadowed, his nightwear disheveled, fumbling for words, he cut a tempting figure for a woman newly flayed to the possibility of men. Something like power rippled through Cecibel. She smiled her gruesome, unmasked smile.

  He stood aside. “You’d better come in, Miss Bringer,” he said. “I’ll make us a drink.”

  Chapter 27

  Bar Harbor, Maine

  July 20, 1999

  To die, to sleep—

  To sleep, perchance to dream-ay, there’s the rub,

  For in this sleep of death what dreams may come

  When we have shuffled off this mortal coil.

  —Cornelius Traegar

  (People will tell you it’s Shakespeare. They’re lying. It was Cornelius.)

  Alfonse set down his pen, flexed his fingers. Only three days working, and he was nearly done with his chapter. It poured out of him like lava, charred the book around the edges. Shorter. Necessarily so. Tension building, events spilling, emotions running over. His tightly wound chapter would spark Olivia and Switch to do the same. The pattern was innate. The story might not go exactly where he wished it to, but Alfonse wasn’t entirely sure of his desires on that count anyway. He was content with the established pattern, and the rush of adrenaline rising with the story arc.

  Tipping his head back against his comfortable chair, Alfonse closed his eyes. Sunshine warmed him through; he was always cold these days, unless sitting in the sun, where recollected dreams flickered behind his lids and reminded him of what it was to be a man. He could still feel the softness of her body, taste the salt of her skin. Cecibel of his dreams, their nightly sexcapades his body would never tolerate. Innocent, he told himself. He was an old man so near to dying he could smell it like tar melting on a summer day. He tasted its metallic tang in everything he ate or drank. What happened while he slept was his a
nd his alone, not under his control at all.

  Such lies, when one thought of little else through waking hours, replayed it on the page. He’d woken, every day of the past four, to his heart monitor emitting that threatening beep, and an erection. A real one, and not the smashing effort that had passed for one the last decade of his life. What a fine way to go, he decided. Cecibel riding him like he was fifty again. Long hair tickling. Breasts bouncing. Head back and lips parted, her hands pressed to his chest. The explosion in his groin would burst his heart, his lungs, but what glory it would be, and worth the days it might cost him. Because Alfonse was down to days, he knew. Two. Twenty. Forty-six. Nothing one could count in months anymore. Maybe he’d see August come and mostly go. He’d probably not see September—oh, glorious month. For that he was sorry.

  And the story wasn’t even close to finished.

  Smoothing his hand over the water-stained cover—he didn’t believe Olivia’s confession that she’d gotten caught in the rain—Alfonse pleaded with his heart. Keep going, old man. Give me a little more time. Olivia would get the notebook next, several days earlier than anticipated. Then Enzo’s voice had to echo out of the Christmas party before too much time had passed. Even with the heightened pace, Alfonse could conceivably not get the notebook back for a couple of weeks. He could well be dead by then.

  Switch’s interference had complicated the simple, desperate tale of lovers—thank all the gods in every heaven. Whatever his, and then Olivia’s, first intentions, the magic had taken over. Weave the threads, overlap them here, combine them there, create a tapestry worth marveling over. He could no more forbid himself that than he could command his heart to continue beating.

  “Hello, hello!” Judith’s singsong preceded her. She didn’t wait to be asked inside but fluttered into the room. “Were you writing? I can come back later.”