The Bar Harbor Retirement Home for Famous Writers_And Their Muses

by Terri-Lynne Defino

  Midnight came and went. Tressa remained the life of the party. Good distraction there, too. No one was looking at Cecilia when his sister was around. Not that she wasn’t just as beautiful. In Aldo’s opinion, Tressa didn’t compare; but his sister was a dove among ravens, soon to vanish like Cinderella from the ball. Even Cecilia’s husband was taken with her. She’d been on his arm for a while and he seemed no worse for wear.

  On the patio, chatting with guys he once went to school with, Aldo waited for Cecilia to reappear, wearing the white fox fur he overheard her tell friends she needed to fetch in order to fend off the cold. They’d laughed and teased her vanity. One said something about Enzo spoiling her even worse than her daddy did.

  A glimpse of white caught his attention. Not a fur, but Tressa still on Enzo’s arm. Was something brewing there? He felt a heel even thinking the thought, but how advantageous such an affair would be. Could Tressa survive that fall from grace?

  Cecilia stepped through the French doors, wrapped in white fur, and all other thought was water through a sieve. The guys he barely remembered waylaid her from going back to the clutch of women waiting to get a look at the stole. They joked with her, put on a masculine show. Her smile was big and red and forced. Aldo could focus only on her deep laughter hitting him low in the groin. Lust saturated his pores, tweaked the glands in his jaw. Look at me, Cecilia. Just look at me. But she didn’t. Her gaze darted everywhere but never met his.

  “Looks like you got some competition, eh, Cecilia?” The man to his left jutted a chin in Tressa’s direction. “I seen her with Enzo inside, too.”

  “Be careful, Johnny.” Cecilia wagged a finger. “You know Al’s her brother, right?”

  “Oh, right. Sorry there, Al. I was just joking, anyway. Enzo’s a stand-up guy. Cecilia’s had his balls in her fist since they was kids, anyway.”

  “Is that so?” Aldo sipped his ice-watered bourbon. “How long have you two been together?”

  “Our parents made arrangements when we were children. We’ve been married about five years.”

  “Enzo’s been toes over tits for her since they was babies.” Another drunk jokester guffawed, pounding Aldo’s back. “But Cecilia was way too cool for him until—”

  “Hey, now, Louie.” Johnny grabbed his friend’s arm. “How’s about another drink? I’m bone-dry here.”

  Wise Johnny, probably more sober than he pretended, led Louie back inside by the arm. The other two followed, leaving Aldo and Cecilia as alone as one could get in a house so tightly packed with Christmas cheer.

  “Until?” Aldo prompted.

  Cecilia’s eyes remained on the door her alibi had gone through. “Until my father vanished and my arranged marriage got moved up.” She met his gaze, her eyes hard. “I didn’t have a choice. I think we’ve had this conversation before.”

  “Once upon a time, yes. We did.”

  “I can’t do this, Aldo.” She stomped her foot, hands fisted at her sides. “I can’t be out here alone with you. People will talk.”

  “Your lady friends are all right there.”

  “Watching every move I make. You have no idea how gossipy they are.”

  “Why do you care? You never did before.”

  “I have to now. There’s that choices thing again.”

  “You hide behind the limitations you obey.” Aldo sipped his drink.

  “You’re a man. Of course you think that.”

  “I don’t have as many choices as you seem to think I do. I never have. Especially where you’re concerned.”

  A tear rolled. Thank heavens. “What do you want, Aldo?”

  “You, Cecilia. Always and only you.”

  “Don’t say that.”

  “I love you.”

  “You can’t.”

  He laughed, head tilted back and belly churning. The women watching every move Cecilia made clutched together. Aldo lowered his voice. “I never thought I’d see you again, even when Tressa asked me to meet her here in Paterson. It’s a big city, and I’m no one. But here I am, at your father’s invitation. Morbidly ironic, isn’t it. But doesn’t it say something? About us? About fate?”

  “It can’t.”

  “It can. It does. Don’t throw this away.”

  “You did.”

  Ouch. Right in the gizzards. Aldo rubbed away the too-real pain. “I didn’t mean to. I didn’t know. I thought I’d done something unspeakable.”

  “You didn’t trust me to love you enough.”

  “That’s not true.” He bowed his head. Was it, though? Things tamped down over years of ignoring they existed threatened to burrow up out of the ground again, right at his feet, swallow him up, and take her with him. The women had moved closer, close enough to hear their words instead of guess at them. Cecilia’s plastered-on smile could only last so long.

  “We can’t do this here, Cecilia.”

  “We can’t do this at all.”

  “But we have to.” He raised his head. “Don’t we? Can you just move on from here as if I never showed up again?”

  “Aldo, I . . .”

  Her hesitation gave him courage. “Please. Give me this. I’m begging you.”

  “Don’t beg.”

  “I’ll get down on my knees.”

  “Don’t.”

  No, not courage. Desperation. “I will unless you say you’ll meet me. Anywhere. Anytime. Just say the word and I’ll be there.”

  Tears trembled her forced smile, but Cecilia met his gaze dead-on. “Your sister is meeting my brother at Woolworth’s tomorrow. Two o’clock. Tell her you want to chaperone. I’ll tag along with Nicky. He won’t want me there any more than your sister will want you. We can take a table in the back. Watch over them like good siblings.”

  “Thank you.”

  “I’m going to show off for my friends now,” she said. “Don’t follow me.”

  He bowed like a gentleman and Cecilia was gone. Aldo lit a cigarette, blew a plume over his head. It was a start. But definitely not the finish.

  Cecilia loved him still, wanted him whether or not she loved her husband, too. He seemed a nice enough guy. Good-looking, tall and broad in the shoulder. Movie-star hair and teeth. Few partygoers had passed up the opportunity to sing his praises to the newcomer who hadn’t heard it all before. Yet, for all he knew, Enzo hadn’t wanted to marry Cecilia any more than she did him, despite what those assholes said to the contrary. The couple hadn’t spent even a few minutes together all night long. But that wink Cecilia tossed her husband when he left with Tressa on his arm—no jealousy there. Because she didn’t care if Enzo fucked Tressa? Or because she was that secure in his love?

  “Give that here.” Tressa came out of nowhere, snatched the cigarette from his fingers. She took a long drag, held it, let it go with a whoosh between smudged red lips. “We need to go.”

  “Need to?”

  “Yes.” She took another drag and offered it back.

  Aldo put up his hand, took his coat from her. In his periphery, Cecilia modeled her stole. “What’s wrong?”

  “Nothing. I’m just so tired. All these people, and they all want to chat with little old me. Please take me home.” She hooked an arm through his. Her fingers trembled against the wool of his jacket and her eyes were everywhere at once.

  “You okay?”

  “Of course. Can we go?”

  He was ready. Exhausted, in fact. He would see Cecilia tomorrow. It was long past midnight. Today. Sleep, a long hot shower, and the right words. Aldo needed all three before two o’clock.

  Chapter 30

  Paterson, New Jersey

  December 21, 1959

  (Afternoon)

  Cecilia

  “Your sister’s going with you, Dominic. That’s the end of it.”

  Cecilia’s heart hammered. What the hell was she doing? “If you insist, Mama.”

  “No fucking way.”

  “Watch your mouth.” Mama slapped Nicky upside the head. “That’s why you need a chaperone.”


  “I’d never talk like that in front of Tressa,” Nicky grumbled.

  “So she’s more a lady than me or your sister now, eh?”

  “Ma, come on.”

  Cecilia let them duke it out. In the end, no one refused Mama. She got her coat and hat from the closet in the hall, stood at the door, and waited. Nicky stormed toward her, grumbling under his breath.

  “What’d you go and do that for?”

  “Do what?”

  “Tell Ma a girl like Tressa would expect a chaperone.”

  “Because it’s true,” she lied. “She’s a southern girl, not one of the putan’ you usually go out with.”

  “She’s a woman, not a girl.”

  “And you’re not even out of high school. Don’t get your hopes up too high.”

  “Says you.” He grabbed his coat from the closet. “You just make yourself scarce, y’hear?”

  “I’ll sit all the way in the back and sip my coffee and eat my pie. You’ll never know I’m there.”

  Nicky halted, one arm in and one arm out of his jacket. “Oh, so that’s it.”

  The burn worked up from her neck to her cheeks. “What?”

  “Where’s Enzo?”

  “He took the kids to his mother’s. Why?”

  Nicky finished putting on his coat, opened the door, and gestured her through. Cecilia took careful steps to keep from stumbling, thankful for the bracing cold of December air.

  “Need a little time off, is that it?”

  She pulled her gloves on, her relief exhaled in a cloud swirling around her head. “Maybe.”

  “Why didn’t you just say so? I’d have covered for you. You want to go shopping or something?”

  “You’re trying to get rid of me.”

  He laughed. “Ain’t that been what I been trying to do the last half hour?”

  “Isn’t,” she corrected. “You sound like a hoodlum.”

  “Yeah, yeah. You want to walk or drive?”

  “Let’s walk. Parking downtown is a nightmare.”

  Hands in pockets, jiggling coins as he walked, Nicky looked like every picture Cecilia ever saw of their father at that age. When had her little brother grown so broad? So handsome? No wonder Tressa was taken with him.

  It was only a quarter to two when they reached Woolworth’s. The place was packed with last-minute Christmas shoppers resting up. Nicky didn’t hesitate, but skipped past the head of the line and to a table in the window. The two young ladies sitting there, chatting over cups of hot cocoa overflowing with whipped cream, looked up when he approached. Blushing smiles became furrowed brows. Nicky reached into his pocket and slapped two bills on the table. A moment later, the two women hurried past, already putting on their coats. Nicky waved a waitress over.

  “. . . can’t just do that, sir,” the waitress was saying when Cecilia reached him. “There’s a whole line of people ahead of you.”

  “Sure I can. I just did. You got a problem with that you can call my office and lodge a complaint.” He flipped a business card between two fingers. The waitress took it, her eyes nearly bulging out of her face before she scurried off. Yes, indeed. Just like their father.

  “That was efficient.”

  “Man’s gotta do what a man’s gotta do. Now scram, sis.”

  “Where am I supposed to go?”

  “You said you’d make yourself scarce.”

  “But there isn’t a table to be had.”

  “That neat trick I did worked once. It won’t work twice. Besides, I just slugged down two twenties to get this table. I’m almost tapped out. Got any cash?”

  “Dominic Marcello Tommaso Giancami, you evil thing.” But she took a twenty from her wallet and handed it to him. What was she going to do now? Go home, Cecilia. Go to your husband and children at his mother’s. “Where shall I meet you? And when?”

  “You don’t have to, Cici.” Oh, it was Cici now. “Ma’ll get over it.”

  “I’d rather not hear it, thank you very much, especially since I instigated the whole thing. Where and when?”

  “Back here. Four o’clock.”

  Cecilia tugged on his lapel, kissed his cheek. “Behave.”

  Ducking through the crowd lined up at the door, Cecilia told herself she’d agreed to meet Aldo only to talk. To put a period on that part of her life. She wasn’t doing anything wrong. No matter the circumstances, they’d both made their choices. Her reaction to Aldo the night before had been raw instinct, muscle memory, shock. She’d had the night to sleep on it, beside her husband, who adored her. They’d made love so loudly Mama banged on the wall to shush them, and giggled into the pillows when the bedsprings in her parents’ room started to squeal in turn. Cecilia had fallen asleep in Enzo’s arms, content in the knowledge she’d stand Aldo up, that she couldn’t betray the life she’d made when he vanished from it five years ago.

  But she’d woken crying softly, out of dreams of Aldo holding Patsy tenderly and close. Cecilia knew before slumber fully faded that she’d meet him, that she owed him something for the secret she’d never share. A proper good-bye. They both deserved one. It didn’t even feel like a lie.

  She saw Tressa coming a block away, not because of her fair hair and white coat, but because heads turned like startled flamingos as she passed. She walked alone, head up, smile in place, her heels clicking staccato on the sidewalk. No Aldo. Not beside her or behind her. Cecilia’s stomach lurched. She ducked into a doorway before Tressa could spot her, stayed there until she saw Nicky stand, take his date’s coat, and hold out her chair.

  “Boo.”

  Cecilia swallowed a scream. Hand on hat, she spun to face him. “Don’t do that!”

  “I couldn’t help myself.” He took her hand from her hat. She thought he’d kiss it, but he shook it like a gentleman meeting a female acquaintance in the street. “Why are you hiding?”

  “I’m not.”

  “Skulking in doorways must be the new fashionable thing to do, then.”

  Cecilia yanked her hand away. “There isn’t a table to be had,” she said. “The wait list is at least an hour long.”

  “How’d your brother get the spot in the window?”

  “Never mind. Why didn’t you come with your sister?”

  Aldo shrugged. “She wouldn’t let me. She called me a Neanderthal for assuming she needed a chaperone and forbade me to tag along. So I followed.”

  “My brother gave me the boot, too.” She laughed softly. It wasn’t supposed to be so easy, being in his company. “Problem is, being distant chaperones for our siblings gave me a good reason for being alone with a man who is neither my husband nor an old friend. What now?”

  Aldo leaned against the doorway, his smile slow and his eyes suggesting things turning Cecilia’s insides to mush. Or maybe she was imagining it. No, she didn’t think so.

  “How about a movie?” he asked. “We could sit in the back and . . . talk.”

  Dozens of movies flashed through her like silent films, movies they paid to see then didn’t watch from the back of the theater where no one else did either.

  “Too public.” She cleared the huskiness from her voice. Call it a day, Cecilia. “Any other ideas?”

  “Anywhere we go will be public. Except . . .”

  “Except?”

  Again that slow grin. Goddammit. He put a hand in his pocket, pulled out a key. Aldo pressed it into her hand. “Les Fontaines,” he said. “Fifteen minutes.”

  She tried to give him back the key. He closed her fingers around it.

  “Fifteen minutes,” he said again. “If you don’t come, I’ll tell the desk clerk I lost my key and that will be that.”

  “I can’t, Aldo.”

  “Yes, you can.” Tipping his hat, Aldo left her standing in the doorway near the Woolworth’s where her brother and his sister sat chatting over coffee and pie. A few blocks away, her husband visited with his mother, her children playing with all the Christmas toys they’d already collected from family and friends, t
oo many to bring back home again. Home. Princeton. She’d been happy there, her little family, her whole world. She would be again, once Aldo went back to sea.

  Heading home—Mama would rage but it was the least of every other evil—Cecilia gripped the key in her gloved hand. On the corner, a mailbox. She halted abruptly in front of it; a woman behind her almost knocked her down. The edges of the key dug ridges into the leather glove encasing her palm. Cecilia pulled down the slot. How many letters had she dropped in boxes all over her city, five years ago when Aldo vanished without a word? How many times did she beg Agnes for letters that never came? The agony of that time welled up, threatened to pull a sob from her. You hide behind the limitations you obey. She hid then. She was hiding now. What choice did she have? What choice had she ever had?

  The slot slammed shut. Cecilia fled. She didn’t think. If she did, she couldn’t do it, and she had to. She had to. How many blocks to safety? She hadn’t run so far in years. Breathless, she stumbled to the service entrance, unwilling to come across another living soul. Pressed up against the door, Cecilia fumbled with the key. Just today. Just this once. I swear it.

  The door opened, and she fell into the always-and-forever arms that caught her, pulled her close.

  Chapter 31

  Paterson, New Jersey

  December 23, 1959

  Enzo

  If he didn’t know what he knew, Enzo would never have agreed to meet her. But he did, and she’d asked. No, she’d threatened. Sweetly. If he wanted this blip in his life to remain a blip, he’d meet with her. Tressa looked like a mild-mannered princess from every fairy tale he’d ever heard, but looks could be deceiving; in her case, they were outright lies.