The Bar Harbor Retirement Home for Famous Writers_And Their Muses

by Terri-Lynne Defino

  “You’re welcome. I’m happy to do it, and if you need to go back to see Dr. Marks again—”

  “About that.” She fidgeted. He waited. She said, “If it’s okay with you, I’ll skip the ride down to Portland and just talk to you now and then.”

  “What does Dr. Marks say about that?”

  “That she’s old and too much of my past.” Cecibel shrugged. “It was her suggestion, and I agreed. I mean, if you do.”

  “That would be fine with me.”

  “She’s going to send you a report or something, just to bring you up to speed in a more clinical way. I’m sure there will be some doctor-to-doctor things in there, too.”

  “Whatever you’re comfortable with. And Cecibel”—he stopped her from getting out of the car—“it doesn’t have to be a formal thing. It can just be friends, talking. You’re not a patient here. You know that, right?”

  “Do you?”

  He lowered his head. “I overreacted, and I’m sorry. All I knew was what I read.”

  “It’s okay. I’m glad you did, in a way.”

  He looked up.

  “If you hadn’t made a fuss about me and Fin leaving without signing out, I wouldn’t have gotten angry, or curious about why. It’s all good, Dr. . . . Richard.”

  “I’m glad.”

  Cecibel got out of the car, waving to Richard as he pulled away, recalling a snippet of dream and smiling. He’d let her out near the entrance closest to the kitchen. The obvious smells drifted out of the big windows—bread and meat, and the undercurrent of chicken broth that made its way into everything. Dinner was in full swing in the dining room by now. It was too late to make a tray for herself and vanish, but she was hungry just the same and, tonight, didn’t feel like vanishing anyway.

  Peeking into the dining room through the curtain, she spotted Switch, Judith, and Olivia at their accustomed table. No Alfonse. Her heart stitched. He’d gotten so much worse, so quickly. She’d been briefed on his condition and prognosis long before he ever set foot in the Pen. The reality then nebulous suddenly blared all too clearly. But the others in that most prestigious court, eating and laughing together, told her he was still alive if not well.

  She slipped in through the service entrance and went straight to the kitchen. Making herself a plate, she exchanged small pleasantries with the staff she’d always hurried past. No one shrank away from her anymore, at least not that she saw. It wasn’t easy, coming out of hiding, but it got easier day by day.

  Instead of taking her meal to her room, Cecibel sought out Sal. She’d been avoiding him since prying into a story he would willingly but never forcibly give. He, Fin, and she were of a kind; she’d always known. Misfits. Damaged. As similar as they were different. While Fin kept his head down and plodded on, while Cecibel hid herself away, Sal flaunted his fabulous self, defiant and proud and, at the end of the day, safe within the Pen.

  She found him in the laundry, pulling something full and fluffy from one of the huge dryers. Setting her dinner tray onto a folding table, she cleared her throat.

  Sal spun, silver-and-black-tipped fingernails pressed to his chest. “Girl, you nearly gave me a heart attack.”

  “Sorry. I tried not to scare you.”

  Embracing the garment, a white and red floral, he inhaled deeply. “Nothing like a pretty dress straight out of the dryer.” He shook it out, held it against him. “What do you think? Too Lucille Ball?”

  “Vintage.” Cecibel picked at the green beans on her plate. “I’ve never seen you wear anything so . . . so . . .”

  “Nonglittery?” Sal laughed. “I’m getting too old for all that sparkle.”

  “A girl is never too old for sparkle.”

  “If only the world believed that, too.”

  The dress swung back and forth on its wooden hanger. Sal was not small, and the dress had volume. Cecibel fingered the fabric, light and smooth. Cotton chintz, she thought, and wondered how in the world she’d know such a thing. A hazy memory—Mom, a yellow room, pins in her mouth, and dancing under a disco-ball sky—flittered like dappled sunlight.

  “Where’d you go, sugar?”

  “Huh? Oh, sorry.” Cecibel let go the dress, picked up a roll off her tray, and pulled it apart. “Very pretty. Special occasion?”

  “Do I need one?” Sal laughed. “No, not really. I just liked it. I found it at the thrift store downtown. It’s not easy finding anything in my size. I snapped it up, even though it was way too expensive for a thrift-store dress.”

  “You’re going to glitter it, aren’t you.”

  “You know me so well.” Sal hugged her around the waist, lifted her in the air. “So how’d it go with your old shrink?”

  Cecibel gagged on the bread. “How did you know? I only told . . . Olivia!”

  “She’s ridiculously easy to get talking once she’s had her medicine.”

  “I should have known better. Put me down.”

  Sal obliged. “It wouldn’t have been hard to figure out. You’ve been . . . different lately, and I don’t just mean that you’re showing that face of yours. So? Eat, and tell me what happened.”

  It didn’t take long. There wasn’t much really to tell. Keeping secrets, after all, was more about keeping them from oneself than the world that most likely guessed long ago. Or didn’t care. Sal had known a little about Jennifer, about the drugs and the chaos, that Cecibel had given up everything to help her, and failed. Not even the momentary suicide fantasy came as any shock, as of course, Cecibel should have known.

  “That’s why I’m here, you know,” Sal said when she’d finished. “I tried to kill myself, but only after a gang of stupid, silly boys tried to kill me first.”

  “Oh.” Cecibel hugged him. “I didn’t know that.”

  He poked her. “You didn’t read about it in my chart?”

  “That was temporary insanity,” she said. “I’m sorry. I really am. I only glanced at it. I didn’t dig. I wasn’t digging for you, at any rate.”

  “I know. But you know what, sugar? That hurts, too. You’ve never asked. After all these years, didn’t you ever wonder about me?”

  “Yes and no,” she answered. “I wondered, but only long enough to remind myself that I couldn’t ask when I didn’t want to tell, you know? I’m not as brave as you are.”

  “Brave?” Sal pressed hands to dimpled cheeks. “Yes, I suppose I am. Now, anyway. It gets easier, once you decide to be.” Sal pulled more clothes from the dryer. Scrubs. Underwear. Men’s clothes but for the floral chintz. “It’s not easy being who I am, especially in a small town. I’m from Camden. Did you know that?”

  Cecibel shook her head. Sal shrugged and went back to folding his clothes. “They beat me so bad, those boys. So bad. Raped me, too, can you believe that? All the while calling me a fag. I didn’t want to live in a world that let things like that happen. My mom and dad, my brothers, they acted like I got what I asked for. That if I’d just stop being queer everything would be fine. I tried. I even dated a girl for a little while. And then I tried to finish what those boys started. Dr. Traegar found me in the hospital in Rockport. Don’t ask me how. He never said and I was too grateful to push it. But he understood about boys like me. He understood that the world wasn’t ready for us. So he let me come here, made sure I’d never get kicked out.”

  “You knew all along?”

  “Of course.”

  “But Finlay doesn’t.”

  “I have no idea. You’ll have to ask him.”

  After I apologize. “We’re quite the trio.”

  “We’re a family, sugar lips. Us, the residents, even the nurses and doctors. Better than our own, who abandoned us.”

  “Not Fin’s mom.”

  “Didn’t she?” Sal flicked lint from his shirt. “I’ve never met her. She never comes here. He has to go to her, and only for special occasions.”

  “But she stayed here in Bar Harbor when it would have been easier for her to move away.”

  “I suppose you have
a point. What about you, baby girl? If we’re talking about deep stuff here, where’d your family go?”

  “Away.” The word came unbidden. She couldn’t take it back. Cecibel’s cheeks burned. The haze parting, parting, parting since finding those charts in the basement let in more light. Choices made. Tears cried. How long ago it had been. Back then, Cecibel believed it was all temporary. Back then, she still had hope that Jen would be okay. “Before Jen died. Long before. They couldn’t take it. I . . . I have a little brother.” Kenny. Holy shit, Kenny. She hadn’t thought of him in years. “Jen and I were in our twenties, grown women and already out of the house. He was only ten. When I told my parents I wouldn’t go with them, they accused me of doing . . . of being like Jen. They left. Last I heard, they were in South Carolina or something.”

  “Well, fuck them. Do they even know your sister died? That you nearly did?”

  No, they left me to take care of her and never looked back. “I’m sure they must know. And if they don’t, it’s because they don’t want to.”

  “Come here.” Sal opened his arms, pulled her to him when she got close enough. He smelled of laundry soap and a little like marijuana. Cecibel let him hold her, stiffly at first, and then she was weeping, buried deep into his softness. Mom and chintz and the high school gym bedazzled by the rented disco ball. Her date—what was his name?—Steven. Maybe it was Tom. Whoever he was, he’d been lost to a past Cecibel traded in for Jennifer. Like Kenny. Her own little brother. Mom and Dad, she couldn’t feel sorry about. They’d not only given up on Jen, they’d given up on her, too. All the reasons that might be so didn’t matter, right that moment, only that they had.

  Rubbing her back, Sal crooned sweetly, softly. Familiar tune. Familiar words. “‘It’s raining men, hallelujah. It’s raining men, amen.’”

  Cecibel choked on her own laugh. “Are you kidding me?”

  “Sorry, sugar. It’s my new song. I’m performing this weekend.” He pulled back just enough to look at her. “You want to come?”

  She wiped her cheeks dry, sniffed back tears. Family. He was her family. Part of it, anyway. Cecibel smiled openly, gruesomely, and Sal didn’t even flinch. “Sure. I’d love to.”

  “Oh, girl! It’s going to be a time! Maybe we can get Finlay to come, too. And Dr. Dick.”

  “Don’t call him that.” She nudged his plush belly. “He’s a good guy.”

  “I suppose. Oh!” He gripped her shoulders. “Mrs. Peppernell. Can you even imagine? She’d love it. Wispy Flicker’s got herself a new audience!”

  Almost nine, and still Cecibel had not come to him. Olivia said she would. Then again, Olivia had been mightily stoned when she came to fetch the notebook. She’d have done anything to make him feel better, including pry into his pants when they were alone and her inhibitions were nil. The first time had been nice. The second, too. The rest? Not so much. The sensation he’d spent his life pursuing frightened Alfonse now. If an orgasm was going to kill him, he had a better scenario in mind than Olivia’s old, beloved, familiar hands on him.

  How he dreamed! Dreams that threatened the beeping monitor and came close—but never too close, after all—to shaming him in waking hours. He’d become the quintessential dirty old man, lusting after a young woman dazzled enough by fame to indulge romantic fantasies of what might have been were he younger, she older, and they’d met in some New York club instead of a home for elderly writers going quietly into that good night.

  He got into his pajamas without calling for the nurse. Sitting on the edge of his bed, winded yet feeling quite accomplished, he reached to switch off the bedside lamp; a soft knock at his door halted him. His heart stitched. His groin twitched. Alfonse sat up straighter. “Come in, Cecibel.”

  And of course it was she, slipping in out of the night from wherever she’d been. Portland, Olivia said, visiting with her old psychiatrist. The implications of that were too much for him, especially when his heart was already pounding so.

  “You were about to go to sleep,” she said.

  “Bed,” he told her. “Not sleep. I mostly just lie here . . .” conjuring exquisite, dastardly dreams. “I’m glad you came to see me.”

  “Don’t get up.” She stopped him from rising. “I’ll pull a chair over. I won’t stay long.”

  He did as she asked and got into bed. She propped him up, covered his legs. Old. Feeble. Pathetic. How had this happened? He’d never meant to grow old. Not ever. He was supposed to die in some spectacular way, worthy of newspaper articles full of speculation and gossip, tributes to his never-ending joie de vivre. Instead, Cecibel sat beside him like a dutiful granddaughter, concerned and fussing. Exquisite dreams morphed into impotent fury, setting his heart thumping more rapidly than it did when Olivia had her hands on him. He couldn’t die this way. Not Alfonse Carducci. If he ever imagined dying in bed, it was with a bullet in him and an angry lover looming, or a lover’s spouse. Not this way. Please, God, not this way.

  “You’ve gone very quiet.”

  “Just feeling sorry for myself,” he mumbled. “It will pass.” And so will I.

  “What can I do?”

  Take off your clothes and get into bed with me. Let me touch you. Touch me. Selfish, selfish man. Hadn’t he always been? He would die, sent into oblivion with a smile on his face. Cecibel would be his lover and his killer, all in one act of love. Scandal. Exactly what he wished for. But not for her. She’d had enough, that much he knew, even if he didn’t know exactly what form it took.

  “Tell me something, Cecibel. Anything.”

  “About?”

  “Oh, I don’t know. Tell me a funny story about Olivia before I came here. There must be thousands.”

  “At least that many.” Cecibel laughed softly. “If I tell you one, will you tell me one?”

  “I might be persuaded.”

  Slipping her arm through his, she rested her head to his shoulder. Alfonse kissed her temple before he could think better of the idea, but Cecibel only snuggled in closer. “I guess it was back in 1996. Switch had just moved in a little while before that and hadn’t started growing for her yet. She used to have this guy from town deliver her weed . . .”

  Olivia and her provider, the new product he introduced with a free sample and his company while she partook. The hilarity of hearing her explain, in her imperious way, why there was a naked man locked in her bathroom when the nurses came to investigate the banging. Alfonse countered with the night they broke into a restaurant in Greenwich Village back in 1971, made themselves a meal, and drank three bottles of the house wine. She’d been furious when he told her he went back the next day and paid for what they’d taken, let the owners take a picture, and promised to sign it when it was developed. At least he hadn’t told them of her involvement, which she’d thanked him for, especially when the photo hit the front page of the Village Voice, and yet remained insulted by the omission to this day.

  Back and forth they traded stories safely about Olivia. Cecibel’s head on his shoulder, her arm through his. Pillow talk of a different kind. Somewhere between one story and the next, Cecibel had shifted onto the bed beside him and Alfonse found it comforting rather than arousing. That alone should have infuriated him all over again, that the one-and-only Alfonse Carducci could have a woman in his bed and feel only contentment. But it didn’t. Not this time.

  He went with it. Took it a step further. He loved Cecibel, for sure and certain. But not the way he’d loved Cornelius, or Olivia, or any of the dozens of lovers he no longer remembered but loved in their moments. Once he set aside erotic dreaming that left him almost-shamed and breathless, what was left behind?

  Love. Pure and simple. It had never been either for him. Always complicated. Always conflicted. Always creased covers and dog-eared pages. This love was the pristine kind, the cherished kind held above the everyday. She was more important. Her wants. Her needs. He’d never wanted children. He’d been too selfish all his life. But, from the very start, not with Cecibel. Never with Cecibel.
Her best interests trumped every selfish impulse Alfonse had.

  Earlier anger made a play for his attention, tried to trick him back into the safe, the comfortable habit of an ego dying a harder death than his body. Pulling forward the new sensation, he felt it swell in him and swell in him until it was let the tears fall or his heart burst.

  “I thought she’d drown, but she managed to get back to the beach before—”

  “Cecibel?”

  She lifted her head—“What’s wrong?”—and looked at the clock. “Oh, crap. It’s after ten. Here I am blathering on about Olivia. You’re probably exhausted.”

  “Not at all. I interrupted your story. Forgive me.”

  “Why are you crying? Should I get a doctor?”

  Alfonse gently pressed her head back to his shoulder. All the wicked, impossible dreams of the past weeks were melting like sugar in hot water. He let them go. Sadly. Regretfully. Resignedly. Was this evolution? Did he still have it in him, after all this time?

  “I want to tell you a story,” he said. “One I’ve only told one other person in my whole life.”

  “Cornelius?” His name from her lips brought a smile to his.

  “Yes, Cornelius. I told him everything, once. Then nothing at all. But it’s not about him. It’s about when I was a boy, back in Italy.”

  “Oh. Okay.”

  “I was a boy like any other boy. I played soccer with my friends, caused a ruckus wherever I went, and came home dirty for dinner every night. But I also wasn’t like the other boys, and I didn’t know why until I was eleven.”

  “What happened when you were eleven?”

  “I fell hopelessly in love with a childhood pal. Someone I’d known since the cradle.”

  “That might do it.” Cecibel laughed softly.

  “His name was Roberto. I loved him as only a child can love that very first time. It was very confusing for me. I didn’t understand how I could be a boy, but wanted to kiss him, to see him naked, to touch him. Another boy. I’d never heard of such a thing. I knew better than to ask my family. I chased the girls, all the while wishing it was Roberto I got caught kissing under the bridge.