‘What? Oh, no. Sorry. I haven’t.’ She fell into step next to me. ‘Is it important?’
‘Not really.’
As we left the dining room I checked the clock on the wall. Had it really been an innocent consultation with the chef or was Masud justified in his concerns about his wife? Had Safa waited until her husband was busy at prayer before sneaking off to meet up with Raniero? It was a dangerous business, considering the bad blood between the two men.
‘I’m visiting Nancy today,’ I told Safa. ‘Do you still need her iPod?’
Taking my arm, Safa drew me gently into an alcove. ‘No, thank you, Hannah. I shouldn’t have anything more to do with that woman.’
I stared, stunned. ‘What possible reason …?’ I began, but then it dawned on me. ‘The woman has dementia, Safa. You can’t judge her based on what she was before she lost her marbles. As far as Nancy is concerned, Jerry is Frank.’
Safa frowned. ‘I wish I hadn’t seen what I saw, but I did, so there’s nothing to be done. I can’t rewind that tape.’
‘You could try.’
‘Impossible,’ she said. ‘Especially since somebody called our home from the Maryland Office of Health Care Quality asking for me.’
‘What?’
‘I’m supposed to report to the conference room for an interview sometime next week. Masud is not happy about that.’
I was wondering what on earth Masud had to be unhappy about. He wasn’t the person who accidently stumbled across two old folks having wild and wooly sex. But mostly I wondered who had tattled to the health care authorities about the relationship between Nancy and Jerry.
‘It’s so embarrassing,’ Safa continued. ‘Masud will have to come along while I talk to those men. I can’t be in a room alone with them.’
I thought about the glass-enclosed conference room situated just off the lobby with its inlaid walnut table, comfortable upholstered chairs, and gas log fireplace. ‘But you wouldn’t exactly be alone. Anyone passing by would be able to see what was going on inside,’ I pointed out. ‘What could be the harm in that?’
‘“Being alone with,”’ she drew quote marks in the air, ‘also includes situations where a man is conversing with a woman, even out in the open where they can be seen by other people, if their words cannot be heard.’
I silently counted to three, suppressing an exasperated sigh. Why did converts always seem so zealous, more zealous even than those born into the faith? ‘The interviewer is just as likely to be a woman,’ I said gently. ‘But in case it isn’t, would it be acceptable if a woman came along instead of your husband? If so, I will be happy to do it.’
Her face brightened. ‘Would you?’
‘Of course.’
‘I’m surprised they haven’t called you, too, Hannah.’
I shrugged. ‘It’s possible someone did, but I was out late babysitting my grandkids last night, so when I got home I fell right into bed without checking my messages.’ I patted my handbag. ‘Hold on.’
I scrabbled around in the murky depths of my bag until I found my iPhone. I switched it on and studied the display. ‘Darn, there is a message.’
‘You have the ringer turned off,’ Safa pointed out helpfully.
With an exasperated sigh, I switched the ringer back on, tapped the messages icon, put the phone to my ear and listened.
‘I’m to pop in for a chat with them, too,’ I told her after the message ended. ‘At my convenience, of course, but would tomorrow at one-thirty be OK? I’m to let the director know.’
‘I’m sure they’ll want to interview us separately,’ Safa said. She clouded up. ‘I guess I’ll need to find somebody else to accompany me.’
‘As if we’re going to put our heads together on a story,’ I huffed. Safa looked crestfallen so I added, thinking quickly, ‘I’ll ask my friend, Nadine. I’m sure she’ll be happy to do it.’
Since I had my cell phone in my hand, I called Naddie. She answered on the first ring. ‘No, no, not doing anything special, Hannah, just … Hate to confess that I’m wasting the morning watching a rerun of Masterchef.’
When Naddie readily agreed to chaperone Safa for her interview, if it came to that, I gave Safa a thumb’s up. Still, she didn’t smile.
‘Look,’ I said a few minutes later, taking pity. ‘Naddie, Izzy and I have a trip planned to the Baltimore Art Gallery this Thursday, then lunch at a little place around the corner afterwards. Would you like to come?’
Her remarkable eyes lit up. ‘Oh, yes! Can I let you know?’
I figured she’d have to ask Masud for permission, but what could go wrong with three women acting as chaperones? ‘Of course,’ I said. ‘Just call when you can.’
Safa had taken three steps down the hallway when I stopped her. ‘Safa?’
‘Yes?’
‘Did you report the incident with Nancy and Jerry to the Office of Health Care Quality?’
She shook her head. ‘No. Why?’
‘Did you tell anyone else?’
‘Yes, Masud, of course. Didn’t you tell your husband?’
I had to confess that I had, via cell phone when he telephoned the previous evening from somewhere off the coast of Long Island. Paul had laughed it off, though, so I knew he hadn’t spilled the beans to the authorities. I wasn’t so sure about Masud …
Still, it was more than likely that Elaine had decided to play it safe and report the incident to Tyson Bennett, who would have had no choice but to take it up the chain of command. Rules were rules, I thought sourly. And sometimes, if you didn’t follow the rules, there were consequences.
Save us from intransigent bureaucrats, I thought as I waved Safa goodbye.
In the memory unit office I learned from Elaine Broening that Nancy Harper was in the art studio. ‘You should visit,’ she suggested. ‘There’s nothing childlike or primitive about Nancy’s work. It’s as if her fingers remember what her failing brain cannot.’
The art studio, I knew, was several doors down from the library, on the opposite side of the hallway. When I got there, the instructor welcomed me, introduced herself – an unnecessary formality since her nametag said ‘Mindy’ in black capital letters at least two inches high.
‘I’m assigned to Nancy today,’ I told her.
‘She’s at the table over by the window.’ Mindy pointed with clay-caked hands. ‘We’re working with clay,’ she told me unnecessarily. ‘Sculpting things from memory.’
Half-a-dozen seniors were hunched over lumps of clay at two long tables in the bright, cheerful room. The walls were decorated with residents’ art. On the worktable nearest me, a dog – or perhaps it was a cat – was emerging out of the shapeless lump in front of Chuck, the mustachioed guy who’d sat next to me at the lobby singfest. Next to Chuck sat Lillian, who I hadn’t seen since our adventure in the garden several days earlier.
I touched her shoulder. ‘Hello, Lillian.’
She looked up at me with no sign of recognition. ‘Hello. Is it time for lunch?’
‘Not yet,’ I told her. I indicated the block of clay she was pounding into submission with a loosely-balled fist. ‘That’s nice. What are you making?’
‘It’s Banjo,’ Lillian said, which didn’t exactly answer the question.
‘Who’s Banjo?’ I asked.
‘One of my babies. I have lots of babies.’
I figured I’d have to wait until all the clay that wasn’t Banjo was excised from the lump before I’d be able to determine what kind of baby Banjo was. ‘That’s nice,’ I said stupidly.
At the sound of my voice, Nancy looked up from her project and waved. An obelisk rose straight and true from the mound of white modeling clay in front of her.
‘Oh, look,’ I said, taking a few steps in her direction. ‘It’s the Washington Monu—’ I paused and caught my breath. Nancy had sculpted a fully erect penis, so perfectly rendered that it could have been cast from a mold. What I had taken for shrubbery at the base of the famous Washington landmark was, in
fact, an equally perfectly sculptured scrotum.
Nancy beamed then spread her clay-caked hands. ‘Tah dah!’
‘It’s, uh, very good,’ I said truthfully, thinking how fortunate it was that Safa Abaza hadn’t been assigned to work with Nancy today. ‘I didn’t realize what an artist you are.’
‘I like to draw, too,’ Nancy said, pinching a bit of clay off one side of her project and adding it to the other. She leaned back, closed an eye and considered the effect.
I felt my face flush. ‘That’s extraordinary,’ I said to Mindy, meaning it. ‘The detail!’
‘Indeed. It’s amazing what’s stored in the brain of even the most advanced dementia patient. An incredible wealth of memories can be unlocked with music or with art.’
‘Nancy’s certainly enjoying herself,’ I said. ‘Should I come back later?’
‘We’ll have her back in her room at around two.’
‘What are you going to do with Nancy’s sculpture?’ I whispered. I couldn’t imagine it would be going on display on the credenza in Tyson Bennett’s office or in the Calvert Colony gallery along with other examples of resident art.
‘We’ll dump the clay back in the tub,’ Mindy said. ‘By tomorrow she’ll have forgotten all about it.’
‘Damn shame,’ I said. ‘She’s extraordinarily talented.’
Mindy shrugged. ‘Yeah, well … what can you do?’ She wiped her hands on her apron. ‘You should see her drawings, Hannah. Trees, leaves, flowers … absolutely perfect, too, like illustrations in those old botanical textbooks. We hold on to those, however,’ she assured me with a smile. ‘You’ll probably find the folder in her room.’
I eased toward the door and paused for a final look. Chuck’s sculpture was definitely a cat, while Lillian’s Banjo was still a mystery. As I watched, Nancy moistened her fingers then moved them up and down along the shaft of her ‘monument,’ smiling, stroking, smoothing – making it perfect.
Several hours later, with quiet poise and grace, Nancy showed me around her room. She could have been Marjorie Merryweather Post giving me a personal tour of her beloved Hillwood, if Marjorie had completely forgotten what her collections of Wedgwood, Bleu Celeste, and Fabergé Easter eggs were all about, that is.
In the comfortably furnished room, Nancy was surrounded by relics of her past – not souvenirs or mementoes as those words imply a memory, but by keepsakes that had lost all meaning for her. I noticed a photograph of a German shepherd, head cocked, tongue lolling; a sampler, cross-stitched with flowers and the words, ‘Home is where the heart is,’ and a stuffed giraffe, three feet tall.
‘These are my favorites,’ Nancy said, running her fingers along the spines of a shelf of classic novels – Anna Karenina, Madame Bovary, Jane Eyre, Pride and Prejudice, Rebecca, To Kill a Mockingbird, The Diary of a Young Girl – but I had the feeling that if I were to ask Nancy who Anne Frank was she would have drawn a blank.
I wondered if I should be reading to her from one of these classics, but just as I reached up for DuMaurier’s Rebecca, Nancy said, ‘Please sit down.’ She indicated one of two Queen Anne chairs that flanked a picture window, facing out. ‘I like my garden,’ Nancy told me as she took the opposite chair.
Like all the rooms on the south side of Blackwalnut Hall, Nancy’s overlooked the fabulous and appropriately named Tranquility Garden. It wasn’t walled like the ‘secret’ garden at the far end of the memory unit’s hallway, but much larger, laid out behind the building Japanese-style, where residents could meditate, relax, rest or even recline on one of the wooden benches.
A dense bamboo hedge separated the garden from the parking lot on one side, while the other side was open to a field that would someday turn into a golf course. From this elevation it was easy to pick out the vine arbors and pergolas that were spaced at irregular intervals along the serpentine paths. Several varieties of fern grew in clumps near a foot bridge that arched over a miniature stream which ended in a pond, covered with water lilies. Here and there, sculptures peeked out from nooks and crannies in the foliage, and at the far end stood an enclosed pavilion where residents could seek shelter should there be a sudden shower.
I knew at once where I would like to take Nancy: the meditation labyrinth, marked out in stone pavers in a circle not far from the lily pond. But she seemed to be having a more lucid day, so I decided to consult her about it. ‘What would you like to do today, Nancy?’
‘Where’s Frank?’ she asked.
‘He went to the doctor,’ I told her. I saw her face start to crumple so I quickly added, ‘He’s fine, he just needs a checkup,’ although I had absolutely no idea why the doctor needed to see him.
‘OK,’ she said, as if she had actually taken it in. ‘I’d like to walk, then. Out there.’ She stabbed her finger at the window. ‘In the garden.’
If was a perfect day, unusual for Annapolis in August, when the sun could be so brutal that if the temperature dropped below ninety-five degrees, it felt a bit chilly.
I accompanied Nancy through the lobby, out of the double doors and onto the brick path that led to the Tranquility Garden. Although Nancy had forgotten she had a husband, when it came to flowers her mind was a steel trap. Sunflowers, hibiscus and pansies; mums wearing their fall colors of red, orange and gold. She pointed them out to me by their scientific names: Helianthus annuus, Viola tricolor hortensis.
‘Chrysanthemum comes from the Greek,’ she said. ‘Did you know that? It means “golden flower.”’
I was marveling at the intricacies of the human brain as I led her over the foot bridge, where I stopped so quickly that she barged into me. ‘Do watch where you’re going!’ she snapped.
I took her hand. ‘Look, Nancy!’
Nestled in a clump of cattails at the edge of the pond, turned slightly on its side, was a weather-worn rowboat filled with multi-colored glass balls of varying sizes: exercise balls, beach balls, soccer and tennis balls. There were hundreds of them. To our right, a patch of purple reeds made entirely of blown glass shot like enormous needles from a driftwood log covered with moss. Further along, hand-blown flowers edged the walk, each reflecting the other in a shimmery mix of tendrils, buds and fronds. Shells and sea stars were strewn along the ground at their glassy roots. From a branch overhead hung clusters of glass icicles, tinkling in the gentle breeze like temple bells. Dale Chihuly, I thought, or an artist very much like him. Paul had been right when he said that Calvert Colony had deep pockets.
‘An exotic species,’ Nancy commented, bending at the waist for a closer look at an orange glass flower, its petals as abundant and twisted as a Medusa.
She’d made a joke! I stared for a moment in surprise.
‘You’re looking at me like I live here,’ she said.
Oh, dear, I thought. One step forward and two steps back.
We made a complete circuit of the garden then paused to rest on a stone bench in a cherry tree grove that would, come spring, blossom in pink, heart-stopping splendor. The marble felt deliciously cool under the thin cloth of my slacks. I leaned back and said, ‘Ah … I could sit here all day.’
Nancy fussed with the buttons on her blouse and looked from side to side as if she were expecting somebody. ‘People do,’ she said.
‘Do what?’ I asked. ‘Sit here all day?’
‘Yes. I see them from my window.’
I turned to look at Blackwalnut Hall. Banks of picture windows winked at me like two dozen eyes. ‘Who do you see?’
She smiled slyly. ‘Frank. And me.’
‘That’s nice,’ I said.
‘Where is Frank?’ she asked again, and once again I explained about the doctor.
‘OK,’ she said, then screwed her face into a frown. ‘Can we go for a walk now? You said we were going for a walk.’
ELEVEN
‘I declare that it is far from my idea to encourage anything like a state art. Art belongs to the domain of the individual. The state has only one duty: not to undermine art, to provide humane condit
ions for artists, to encourage them from the artistic and national point of view.’
Benedito Mussolini, Speech at the Opening Exhibit of
Il Novecento Italiano, Milan, 1923.
‘BAG’ read the blue-and-white buttons we pinned on our lapels. Someone had not been thinking ahead when they named it the Baltimore Art Gallery.
The eclectic collection was housed in a former high school on Guilford Avenue, not far from Penn Station, in an area called Greenmount West that was emerging, slowly but steadily, from the rubble of the Baltimore riots of 1968. Did you watch the HBO drama, The Wire? Then you’ve been to Greenmount West.
Recently designated as a Maryland Arts and Entertainment District, the area had experienced a renaissance of theaters, cafes, and restaurants as well as an explosion of space for artists to live and work in the sprawling former Crown Cork and Seal factory. Nevertheless, the streets could be a bit dicey, so I was glad I had my posse with me.
‘Elevator or stairs?’ I asked my friends as we entered the spacious lobby of the museum and showed our passes to the attendant.
‘Oh, stairs,’ Izzy said. ‘I need the exercise.’
‘“The new Italian Renaissance,”’ I read aloud from the exhibit brochure as we climbed the marble staircase to the gallery, ‘“was described by Margherita Sarfatti as a ritorno al mestiere, or a return to craft.”’
‘Sarfatti was Mussolini’s mistress,’ Izzy informed us. ‘Awkward for him, because she was Jewish. She ended up fleeing to Argentina, but she returned to Italy sometime after the war and became an influential art critic.’
‘Susan Sarandon played her in the movie,’ Naddie added.
‘What movie?’ Safa wanted to know.
‘Cradle Will Rock.’
I paused on the landing. ‘When I die, please note I want Susan Sarandon to play me in the movie.’
I started up the next flight. ‘Where was I? Uh … “This classicizing moment gave birth to renewed interest in Italian Renaissance painters such as Fra Angelico and Piero della Francesca” blah blah blah … “and demonstrates the power of the neoclassical paradigm for postwar Italian modernists” … and so on and so on.’ I closed the brochure and used it to fan myself. ‘Whenever I get to the word “paradigm” my brain shuts down.’
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