Chapter Five
Five
“I’d slit my wrists before I’d live anywhere this beige .” Grand dismisses the restrained elegance of the Covington Arms Senior Living Community with a flick of one of said wrists. “Everything here is beige. Including the residents.”
Her pronouncement complete (there is no more offensive word in my grandmother’s vocabulary than “beige”), she turns her back on the dining room’s grass cloth wallpaper, silk-covered dining chairs, and floor-to-ceiling casement windows, which frame an exquisite pond with a spraying fountain. A bricked walking path cuts through a beautifully arranged flower garden.
“Mother,” my mom says carefully with a nod toward the saleswoman conducting our tour. “This facility is beautiful. It has a fitness center, a state-of-the-art performance hall, a movie theater, tennis courts, and bicycle paths. It even has a clinic, and classes and guest speakers and organized travel. It’s owned and managed by the Ritz-Carlton and was featured in Architectural Digest. ”
Grand sniffs. “The apartments are the size of a postage stamp and there’s no closet space, let alone room for a studio. And I do not plan to paint in an arts and crafts room. Nor do I need a group bus or a social director, and I never would have come here today if you hadn’t forced me.”
My grandmother’s voice is strong, but I can feel her trembling next to me. I take her hand and squeeze it.
“Please don’t make a scene,” my mother says. “You know the house in Atlanta is much too big for you to keep up on your own.”
All our eyes tear up at the allusion to Grandpa Henry’s absence. He was the port to my grandmother’s storm. The soft to her loud. The rational to her instinctual. I’ve never seen such a clear example of opposites not only attracting but somehow converting all of that opposite energy into a cohesive unit.
“And since you’ve repeatedly refused to have live-in help or a driver, it only makes sense for you to be in a place where everything’s at your fingertips and you have people around you,” my mother continues. “If you insist on doing it in Florida, this is the perfect place. They provide a town car and driver, for God’s sake. You’re free to come and go at will. They could take you to visit Myra anytime you like.” She shoots me a look that demands backup. But I just can’t do it.
Grand’s eyes narrow to slits. Her cheeks redden. “And who took away my keys so I need a driver?” Grand’s tone is belligerent, her voice too loud for the main dining room of Covington Arms. Even those with hearing aids have given up all pretense of eating in order to focus on the conversation. I’m pretty sure the regular entertainment doesn’t come anywhere close to the show playing out in front of them. “For all I know, you’ve sold my car right out from under me.”
As we exit the dining room, one of three we’ve toured on the property, my mother draws a steadying breath. “You know very well the Cadillac is sitting in the garage back home. No one’s doing anything behind your back.” She glares at me.
I remain mute, unable to come up with an idea that would satisfy either of them.
“I’m perfectly capable of driving,” Grand hisses.
“ I’m not the one who hit all those parked cars and then talked their owners out of reporting it to their insurance companies,” my mother hisses back. “And I’m pretty sure I’m not the one stopped for going the wrong way on a one-way street. A street you’ve been driving your whole adult life, I might add.”
My mother takes another deep breath. The saleswoman is still trying to locate the smile she lost somewhere between “beige” and “size of a postage stamp.”
We pass the library, a cozy café, and the movie theater. Just beyond the theater a wall-hung television is set to a game show. But as we’re about to move on, the show is interrupted, and a shot of a newsroom takes over the screen. The shot zooms in on a reporter. A photo of “abstract artist Phillip Drake” appears behind the reporter’s shoulder with the headline Phillip Drake dead from cancer at 90. Some of his best-known works flash across the screen including his Missing Madonna , which disappeared more than sixty years ago. My grandmother gasps. When I take her hand, it’s shaking.
“Grand. Are you okay?”
She swallows. “Yes. Yes, of course.” She gathers herself, turns from the TV, and drops my hand. “ I’m fine.” She raises her chin and squares her shoulders, but I can feel her trembling beside me. “But this place is still beige.”
My mother takes another deep breath. One more and she’ll be hyperventilating.
“Covington Arms is one of the nicest retirement communities of its kind on the west coast of Florida.”
Grand turns on her heel and heads toward the entrance foyer, forcing my mother, me, and the no-longer-jovial saleswoman to follow. Our heels clack loudly on the marble floors.
“The only way you’ll get me in a place like this is to drag in my dead body and prop it in a chair.” Grand halts in front of a love seat just inside the front doors. “Like they’ve done to this poor soul.” She jabs a finger toward a wispy-haired woman slumped in the corner of a love seat. The woman’s hair does, in fact, blend with her face and clothing as well as the brocade back of the padded seat. Her blue-veined eyelids, which provide the only hint of color, are closed.
“That’s Mrs. Finklestein,” the saleswoman snaps. “She’s one of our friendliest and most active residents.”
“I can see that,” Grand says.
Despite the decibel level at which she’s being discussed, Mrs. Finklestein doesn’t budge.
“All those water aerobics classes and bingo games must have tired her out.” Grand leans closer as if examining a specimen at the zoo and raises her voice even further. “Or maybe she’s got her hearing aid turned off!”
“Mother!” I can tell that all my mother wants now is to get out of this place before something happens. “I think we should—”
“I’m sure she’s just resting her eyes.” Our tour guide reaches out a hand toward the woman’s shoulder. “Mrs. Finklestein?” The saleswoman’s hand makes contact with the closest bony shoulder. She prods gently. “Mrs. Finklestein? It’s me, Margaret. Are you okay?”
The answer, apparently, is no. Because instead of responding, Mrs. Finklestein folds in half and slides in a boneless heap onto the shiny beige floor.
· · ·
There’s shouting. A crowd forms. We stand in the midst of it as the wail of a siren (my second in less than twenty-four hours) draws closer. We watch the paramedics kneel beside Mrs. Finklestein. When they take her away, there’s no need for a siren.
Badly shaken, we leave Covington Arms and stop for lunch at Athenian Garden, an old-school been-around-forever Greek restaurant back in St. Petersburg. This is the second time in that same twenty-four hours that I intend, make that need, to drink. The second time I’ve contemplated death. The second time someone tries to talk me out of drinking “so soon after rehab.”
“I do not belong in a place like that Buffington Arms,” Grand says for what might be the tenth time.
“Covington, not Buffington. And it’s a beautiful, well-run place. And safe.” My mother’s reply is automatic.
“There are people dropping dead in the foyer,” Grand points out. “When you’ve lost your husband and your friends have started dying off, the last thing you want to do is greet the Grim Reaper among strangers.”
“Oh, Mother.”
Grand takes a long sip of her Chardonnay. I tell myself there must be some way to reach a compromise, but that’s not a word my mother or grandmother has ever embraced.
“I just want you to be safe,” my mother says. “You have high blood pressure, brittle bones, and”—she hesitates—“and you’re taking medication for your memory. The doctors told you to stop driving, yet you completely ignore their advice. You’re just lucky you haven’t killed yourself or anyone else.”
Grand puts down her glass and considers my mother. “I am not going out like Mrs. Finklestein,” she says quietly. “I intend to live the rest of whatever life I have left. In a place of my choosing.”
“I’m not trying to run your life. I’m just trying to be here for you. Like Daddy would have wanted.”
I know I’m not the only one wishing Grandpa Henry were here right now. His name and his memory somehow take the edge off, but when my mother gives me “the look” that tells me I’m now supposed to help her convince Grand that this is the place for her, I just can’t do it.
“I appreciate your concern, Natalie,” Grand says. “But make no mistake. I intend to drop dead in front of a canvas in my own home studio. Not in the lobby of a senior living community.” She takes a long gulp of her wine for emphasis. “In fact, I guess this is as good a time as any to tell you that I’ve already bought a smaller home.”
“Oh. That’s…I mean…” My mother attempts to regroup. “What?”
“I’ve already bought a new home.” Grand’s smile is triumphant. “Right on Treasure Island. So I guess you can go ahead and put my house in Atlanta on the market.”
“But how…why…” It’s deer-in-the-headlights time—a look I never expected to see on my mom’s face.
“But what could you have bought without so much as a conversation?”
“Natalie, darling, there was nothing to converse about. You’re in real estate. You more than anyone know how emotional home purchases can be. When a place is right, it’s right. And the place I bought is absolutely perfect. It spoke to me.”
I want to ask her what it said, but I suspect this would push my mother all the way over the edge. “Where is it, Grand? Can we go see it?”
“Of course. I’ve been dying to show it to you.”
Mom sighs.
“It’s a totally renovated three-bedroom town house—with an elevator and a perfect space for a studio—right on the water in the building next to Myra’s.”
My mother’s face goes white, so I’m very careful to keep the fist bump I’m itching to give Grand to myself.