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 conditions 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.’