The View from Prince Street

by Mary Ellen Taylor

  The Braddock Road exit directed me away from the traffic snarl and through a collection of stoplights past endless strip malls and housing developments. Finally, I was able to turn off a primary road onto a tree-lined side street that fed into the arched half-circle driveway of the assisted-living home.

  I parked my aunt Amelia’s 1989 Buick LeSabre. The car had been sitting in the garage for at least six months and I realized that if someone didn’t start driving it soon, the old gas would ruin the engine. So instead of driving my truck, I was driving Blue Betty, as Amelia called the car.

  I leashed Charlie and we both moved toward the plain brick building while I tried to be upbeat for Charlie and Amelia’s sake. “Grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change.” I repeated the AA mantra, realizing right now it was easier said than done.

  Accept what you cannot change, I thought, as I moved toward the front entrance. Charlie regarded me with so much trust that I pulled back my shoulders and dug deep for a smile. The daily visits didn’t last long, and though some might argue they were unnecessary, I refused to miss one, given the debt I owed the woman inside.

  Through the front doors, antiseptic smells mingled with a sickening sweet minty aroma that never failed to steal my appetite and challenge my resolve. They called it assisted living. This wasn’t a place of life, but of pending death. The people who lived here were too old or ill to live on their own. Some no longer dreamed of a bright future, but counted the days until the end.

  I paused at the nurses’ station and smiled at a middle-aged woman with thinning black hair and large glasses. Her name tag read Delores and I knew from past visits that she liked to bake chocolate chip cookies on Fridays, loved the romantic comedy Love, Actually, and had a wicked crush on the grandson of one of the center’s patients. She liked to share details of her life and might well have told me far more if I encouraged her. Conversations were meant to be a back-and-forth kind of event, much like a tennis match, but whenever she lobbed a ball of information my way, it never crossed back over the net. It was all I could do to talk at the weekly AA meetings, with little inclination to chat further.

  Tug on one thread of information and then, suddenly, the entire tapestry unraveled.

  I signed L. Smyth and dug my driver’s license out of my wallet. After a cursory check, Dolores smiled up at me. “Ms. Amelia is having a good day today. She’s sitting up in bed and more clearheaded than normal.”

  “Thanks.”

  “Hey, Charlie,” the nurse said, grinning.

  The dog’s ears perked up. Since I’d arrived, we were both trying to get the hang of this new routine.

  My aunt Amelia’s more lucid moments were a blessing and a curse. I enjoyed visiting when she remembered me and we could talk about her younger days living in Alexandria. She was born in 1942 and had been a babe in the city during World War II. She enjoyed talking about the city in the 1960s, when her parents moved the family to the Prince Street house. After a stint in New York trying to make it as a singer, she moved back to Alexandria and became a music teacher. She was twenty-six when she met Robert Murphy, the man she would marry. Two weeks ago she talked about her first dance with him, and tears glistened in her pale gray eyes. Her parents never knew how Amelia and Robert met, but they were thrilled that they made such a good match. Her eyes glistened with mischief as she said, “You know, Robert and I had sex on our second date. We were alive for each other.”

  “I never knew.” I tried to sound a little scandalized.

  “We Smyth women are good at keeping secrets, aren’t we, Lisa?”

  No truer words were spoken. We Smyth women were lip locked when it came to secrets.

  My worn brown cowboy boots, which I’d purchased from a street vendor in Nashville several years ago, clicked against the tiled floor in time with Charlie’s steady steps. I wore jeans and a loose-fitting black T-shirt that skimmed the top of my hips. Corded rope hemp bracelets, now a faded blue, wrapped around my wrist, and long silver earrings tangled in my shoulder-length blond hair. As I pushed open the door, a glimpse of my slightly yellowed fingertips had me self-conscious. No matter how much I scrubbed, I could never erase the silver nitrate stains that plagued wet-plate photographers. I’d chosen this antiquated, cumbersome, and time-consuming method of capturing photographic images as a teenager when I found a large bellows camera at an estate sale. My mother didn’t roll her eyes, but she clearly considered this one of my fads. I was drawn in by the camera and soon found a tripod on which to mount it and assembled the collection of chemicals to treat the eight-by-eight-inch glass negatives. My first attempts to re-create the black-and-white images, made popular during the Civil War by Matthew Brady, produced misty frayed photographs filled with technical flaws. As imperfect as my first efforts were, they offered a different perspective that fascinates me to this day.

  No matter how many times I coated the large glass negatives with the wet collodion mixture, sensitized the plates in silver nitrate, or stood with the large lens cap exposed while the camera slowly trapped the image on the glass, I was always amazed by the images that materialized in the final developing process. The textures, the lines, and the grains created depth.

  I tried art school for a couple of semesters after high school, but in the end I found the routine of college too limiting. At nineteen, feeling I was wasting my life, I hit the road in a beat-up truck with my photographic supplies.

  I’ve made a name for myself in photographic circles by using this particular camera, but artistic success has not garnered many financial rewards. Several grants, sales at several art galleries, and a showing at a museum in Arizona have earned enough to keep me going. But I’m still scrambling for the next photographic job to pay the rent.

  My gypsy life changed three months ago when I received a call from my aunt’s attorney. She’d suffered a bad fall. Broken hip. He had her dog but couldn’t keep the animal long term. I drove up from Florida and moved what little I had into her Prince Street house. When the doctors diagnosed her with early-onset Alzheimer’s disease, I throttled back on plans to drive to Maine and found this facility for her. Though expensive, it was one of the best.

  Aunt Amelia’s mind may have abandoned her, but her hip healed quickly and her heart was strong as ever. Her doctors expected she could live another decade. I accepted that her house would need to be sold and the money put in a trust to pay her bills. Like it or not, I was tethered to the area for now.

  Of all the places I ever toyed with living for more than a few weeks, Alexandria was not, nor would it ever be, on the list. My dreams always favored the Florida Keys, the desert southwest of the United States, and even Alaska. And yet, here I was.

  Charlie and I pushed through the door of her room and found her sitting up in the center of her hospital bed. Her thick white hair was brushed to a silken sheen that draped over thin shoulders. At seventy-four, she had smooth skin, though months in bed had robbed her of a pink glow, leaving her as pale as buttermilk. The only hint of color came from a soft blue nightgown I’d brought from her home last week and fingernails I’d painted bright red a few days ago.

  “Aunt Amelia,” I said. “You’re looking well.” I no longer burdened her with the job of remembering, which created stress for her and disappointment for me. But Charlie wagged his tail as he pulled me toward the bed.

  Each time I greet her, I casually hinted at the basic information to help jog her memory and not upset her, should she be having a bad day. That was what dementia had done to us. It stole real and insightful conversations we once had and replaced them with staged events. I loved my aunt, but we rarely connected anymore.

  She rubbed the dog’s head. “Charlie. How’s my big boy?”

  The dog licked her hand and wagged his tail, clearly thrilled to see her, as he was every time.

  “You remember me. I’m Lisa.”

  A silver brow arched, annoyed
, as she folded her hands over an old scrapbook in her lap. “I may have a bad hip, but I have not lost all my faculties. I know who you are . . . Lisa.”

  Grateful for this gift of time, I lowered my purse to the floor. I kissed her on the cheek before taking the seat next to her bed. Charlie settled on the floor and I fished a chew stick from my purse and gave it to him. “You know how it goes, some days are better and some are not as good. I like to play it safe.”

  “You’ve never played it safe in your life.”

  “Old dogs can learn new tricks,” I said.

  Amelia patted the spot beside her. “Charlie can get up here.”

  “The doctor says no. It’s too hard on your hip.”

  “My hip is fine.”

  “No, it’s not.”

  Before she became sick, Amelia had been a straight shooter and didn’t appreciate being treated like a fool. In one of her rare lucid moments after she was hospitalized, she made me promise never to treat her like a child, but rather like a grown woman with a lifetime of experiences. I agreed, thinking then that we’d have more good times than bad. No sugarcoating or baby talk for Amelia. Straight talk, hard news and politics, which always made for good arguments, weren’t off limits. But the better days were now rare and in the last couple of weeks had whittled down to hours.

  Amelia wagged a manicured finger, the vibrant red drawing attention to her pale skin. “Ha, you don’t know old. What are you, sixteen?”

  Tension rippled up my back as I braced for the light in her to vanish. “I’m thirty-four, Amelia.”

  Hearing the concern spike in my tone, her head cocked. “I’m teasing, Lisa. I was there the day you were born. Your mother, my sister-in-law, Monica, was in labor for twenty hours. After it was all over, she looked like she’d been hit by a beer truck when she laid you in my arms. It was hot that July day. Bright sun.” A brow arched. “I’m still here.”

  “Just checking. You do fade in and out.”

  Her lips curled into a snarl. “I would rather have cancer than this. At least cancer is up front and in your face. And you have your mind. When your mind is gone, you’ve lost yourself.”

  I leaned closer, studied her, and nodded. “You have it right. Let’s not waste time worrying about it.”

  She gave a small shrug. “I want you to know, I’m never so lost that I don’t know my favorite niece. Even when you can’t see that, I’m there.”

  Sadness swirled like a maelstrom, but I swerved clear. “I’m your only niece, Amelia. Reaching favorite status isn’t a huge feat.”

  “Simply because you have no competition doesn’t mean you get to be favorite. It’s a compliment.”

  I dug a small bag of cookies from my purse. Carefully, I unsealed the Union Street Bakery medallion and opened the top, allowing the soft scents of brown sugar, chocolate, and cinnamon to waft. Charlie looked up from his chew stick, expectant. As pet owners went, I probably didn’t win gold stars for all the table scraps I gave him. “Do me a favor and don’t out me to the doctor about the sugar again. Last time when you faded, you went on and on about how good the cookies were. The doc gave me a lecture last week about the evils of sugar.”

  “Can’t say I won’t spill the beans again. You know I get lost and forget. So you might be facing the doctor again before the day is out.”

  I gave her one brown sugar cookie and kept the second one for myself. I broke it and gave half to Charlie. “If I have to be arrested for a crime, it might as well involve sweets.”

  Amelia bit into the tip of the cookie, closing her eyes as she savored the sweetness. “If chocolate is wrong, then I’ll choose never to be right.”

  “Don’t tell on me.” I laughed, glad that the woman I’d loved since I was a child was here with me today. Tomorrow, an hour from now, she might be gone again, but for now, she was present. “Daisy and Rachel asked me to say hi. They worry about you.”

  “I do enjoy those girls. How is that bakery doing?”

  “They’re hanging tough. Only open two days a week. They’re becoming the queens of the online baking world.”

  “I was really worried that the bakery would close when their parents retired. I’m glad they’re still there.” She studied the cookie. “So much of what I used to love is vanishing, and I don’t want to lose the bakery as well.”

  “Business is booming.”

  “Do the sisters have any gossip for you? Those girls always had the pulse of the town.”

  I bit into the cookie. “You know me, I’m not the gossip type. I never linger long.”

  “Even if you don’t like gossip, do it for me. How is Daisy’s baby?” Amelia asked.

  “Walter is fat and happy and Rachel’s twin girls are entering the second grade soon.”

  “Now if we can just get Rachel married off.”

  “She looks pretty happy to me,” I said.

  “You said her French baker moved back to France.”

  “You remember? I’m impressed. On your game today.”

  Satisfaction coaxed a small smile. “What’s happening in town is far more interesting than the social calendar of this place. Honestly, Lisa, if I hear one more old lady bitch about a bad hip, I might break her good one.”

  There were times when I wondered how Amelia and I could have been genetically linked. She was as outgoing as I was introverted. And yet, we always got along and were a good match for each other. “Margaret is working for Shire Architectural Salvage now,” I said. “I didn’t realize it at the time, but she and her business partner, Addie, cleaned out your basement about a month ago.”

  At the mention of the basement, her head cocked. “You had the basement cleaned out?”

  I shouldn’t have mentioned the basement. The last time we had this discussion, I explained that her attorney had suggested we sell the Prince Street house. Big mistake. The idea of giving up her home upset her terribly. She still clung to the notion that she would return one day.

  But Amelia would never be able to move back to the Prince Street house, and we needed the money to pay for her care.

  “I told you.” I kept my voice relaxed. “I had it tidied up. It was getting a bit cluttered.”

  She relaxed a fraction. “It was chock-full, to the rafters. There were items in that basement that dated back hundreds of years. I bet Margaret enjoyed finding all that history.”

  “She loved it. She squealed every time she discovered a new detail. It was like a kid opening gifts on Christmas morning.”

  “The girl loves history.” She plucked a stray thread off her blanket. “I wish she could get as excited about the present.”

  “She’s a free spirit,” I said.

  “Margaret McCrae flitters from place to place. Frustrates Daisy, who says her sister has never stayed in one job long enough to get settled.”

  Like me, she was unable to put down roots. “Margaret flitters more than I do?”

  Amelia immediately shook her head. “No, you’re different. You’re a photographer and you travel the world to work on your art. Margaret can’t hold on to the present for long enough.”

  My aunt described what I did in such a purposeful, nice way. The truth was, I was a gypsy, unable to stay anywhere for an extended period of time. “Margaret McCrae and Addie Morgan get on well.”

  “I don’t know Addie well. Her aunt Grace is a good woman.” She straightened her shoulders, proud of her clarity. “You know the Shires, the Smyths, and the McDonalds go back centuries.”

  “I know we’ve been here forever, but I never really gave it much thought.” I nearly failed history in high school.

  “Colonial times, from what my mother used to say. You know, a Captain Smyth built our house on Prince Street.”

  I resisted rolling my eyes. I’d heard the story about the Scottish captain who built the lovely brick home overlooking the Potomac River
for his young bride so many times. I hated hearing about it as much as she loved telling the story. “I bet it’s a great story.”

  She nibbled her cookie. “Don’t patronize me, Lisa. You hate the story.”

  I laughed. “Busted.”

  “I might be forgetful, but I’m not that forgetful, Miss I-got-a-D-minus-in-history.”

  “Fine.”

  Her expression grew serious. “I don’t know how long all this clarity will last. Each time, I feel I’m back for good. It isn’t true, is it?”

  “I’m sorry.”

  Nodding, she set her cookie on her top sheet. “Look in the nightstand. There’s a book.”

  I handed the last of my cookie to Charlie and after wiping my hands on my jeans, opened the bedside table. Inside was an old scrapbook covered in silk fabric that had once been a pale green but was now faded to a dull gray. The binding along the spine was torn in spots, but enough of the fasteners remained to hold together the dozens of yellowed pages.

  She held out her hands. “May I look at it?”

  Carefully, I laid it on her lap. She traced a large M embossed on the front of the book, and her frown deepened as she searched for the memory that skittered out of reach. “I didn’t know this book existed until I was thirty years old. I wasn’t who I thought I was.” She closed her eyes and nibbled her bottom lip, choking back tears.

  “Can I see it?”

  She leaned forward and looked at me. “Sure, dear.”

  Carefully, I slid the silk book away from her fragile hands, which were knotted with arthritis. I brushed off the cookie crumbs and opened the cover. Inside it read, Baby’s First Year. “It’s a baby book. Is it yours?”

  “I believe it is,” she said, smoothing her hand over the first page. The yellowed page creaked as we turned it to the title page. In a thick bold handwriting, it read: Amelia Elizabeth McDonald. Born July 1, 1942, 6:24 P.M. Six pounds, six ounces.