quad. People seemed to have golf carts to haul their groceries from the parking lot to the entrances to their buildings and generally to get around the complex.
“What’s that?” Jane pointed to a medium-sized building, more institutional looking than the rest of the complex. It sat a ways down a narrow paved roadway between the golf course and the woods.
“The long-term care facility,” Regina said quickly, as though she preferred to talk about anything else. “And of course, we do all the maintenance for your unit,” Regina prattled on, keeping to her script. “No more cleaning gutters or shoveling snow.”
The more Regina talked, the more appealing Jane found the whole idea of living in a place like Walden Spring. Like most houses in Cambridge, hers had no garage, and for close to forty winters she’d scraped ice off a succession of cars and dug them out of snowdrifts.
Why am I so determined to keep my house, Jane wondered. It was too big, now, certainly. Perhaps it had always been too big, even when three of them lived there. After her husband left, all she could think was, I must keep the house, I must keep the house, I must keep the house. Of course, she wanted Jonathan to stay in the same school, keeping his life as stable as she could while his parents’ problems swirled around him like flakes in a shaken snow globe. And Jane’s friends, her bridge group, lived nearby. What would have become of her in those first terrifying months without their support, their humor, their love? And during all the years that followed.
They had almost reached the clubhouse, Regina chattering the whole time about the “amenables.” The clubhouse was built on a slope, so they entered on the second floor. A balcony overlooked the tables of the empty dining hall. From below came the tinkle of glasses and cutlery and the aroma of lunch being prepared. A two-story wall of windows faced the golf course. There were no white tablecloths, no formal place settings on the tables. Perhaps that was reserved for dinner, or a mere fantasy for the Walden Spring website.
Three doorways, widely spaced, ran along the back wall of the balcony. Regina guided Jane to the first one. Inside, music boomed from an iPod dock. A group of fit-looking women and men who had left fifty-five years well behind were doing the Funky Chicken. There were some scary spandex costumes along with some nearly see-through yoga pants in that room. The woman who was leading didn’t look any younger than the group at large.
“Very impressive,” Jane commented. Cambridge was a walking city, and she relied on that, plus her garden work, for exercise.
In the next room, classical music played softly and a dozen or so people wearing smocks stood at easels painting a fruit bowl that stood on a center table. It seemed like a happy, focused group. A familiar-looking woman with a head full of lavender ringlets and bright blue eyes smiled from behind the easel nearest the door. Jane smiled back tentatively. The face seemed familiar, but Jane couldn’t place her.
The third room had two billiards tables and a poker table in its center, and flat-screen TVs hooked to video consoles were along one wall. A group of men, most wearing black leather jackets, were hanging out. Two played pool while six others played cards. In the corner, a man dressed entirely in black—jeans, T-shirt, and leather jacket—hung his head out the window.
“Mike! Mike!” Regina’s tone was sharp. “See that sign? NO SMOKING. How many times do we have to tell you? And Leon in here with his oxygen. You could get us all killed!”
Mike threw his butt out the window and turned to look at the interlopers. His gray hair was greased back. “Sorry, ma’am,” he mumbled. Someone at the poker table laughed.
“Let’s go see the dining room.” Regina led Jane down a flight of stairs and unlocked the door to the dining hall with a keycard. “Lunch is cafeteria-style, dinner is table service. Stay if you like.” Her look conveyed this wasn’t a good idea and she wouldn’t have left Jane there if Paul hadn’t insisted. Regina handed over a brochure and a business card.
“Who comes to the dining room?” Jane asked. “Every unit you showed me had a huge kitchen.”
Regina laughed. “People think they’ll use those kitchens, but they never do. The single people like to have company for meals, and the married women. . . they’re just so thrilled not to have to come up with something for dinner for the millionth night of their lives. Everybody basically eats all their meals here at the clubhouse.”
On some silent cue, a sound like a stampede of sensible shoes filled the hallway behind the door.
“Gotta run!” Regina sprinted out the door that led to the golf course at the same moment a man dressed in white unlocked the main door and the hordes descended.
* * *
The dining hall was in chaos. All Walden Spring arrived at once, some aided by canes and some by walkers or wheelchairs. The first group through the main door was a gaggle of deeply tanned, hard-haired women. It looked as if they had looted a Lilly Pulitzer resort wear store and then dressed in everything they’d stolen. The similarity of cut and color in their clothes gave the effect of a uniform.
At the same moment, three golf carts pulled up to the outside door. The men in the carts jumped out and entered the cafeteria, mixing with the Lilly Pulitzer group, plaid pants clashing with the signature bright pinks and greens of the Pulitzer dresses. Somehow, they all ended up at the front of the line, and the other residents queued behind them. The artists whom Jane had seen earlier came in chattering with the dancers in their neon spandex. The leather jacket crew followed on their heels.
Jane stood for a few moments taking it all in, then dumped the brochure Regina had given her in the trash and got into the endless line.
By the time she had lunch on her tray, everyone was seated. Jane stood in the center of the room, considering what to do. She could sit at a table by herself, but that wouldn’t help her find whatever it was Paul Peavey wanted her to discover. She was looking around when someone called “Yoo-hoo!” over the din. The lavender-ringleted woman from the art room. “Jane! Come sit with us,” she called.
Evangeline Murray, that’s who the striking woman was. She and Irma Brittleson were great friends, and Jane had met Evangeline a few times in casual gatherings at Irma’s house. She must have been the person Irma was visiting when she’d recommended Jane to Paul Peavey.
Jane made her way to the pushed-together tables in the corner of the cafeteria, where the be-smocked artists and the spandex-covered dancers were eating and laughing.
“Are you considering Walden Spring?” Evangeline asked after Jane sat and introductions had been made.
“I’m thinking about it,” Jane answered. “Do you like it here?”
“Love it. Best thing I ever did.”
“Was it hard giving up your home?” Jane’s question was genuine.
“Horrible,” Evangeline answered. “I sorted and cried, cried and sorted. I cried an ocean of tears and threw out a boatload of stuff. Worst pain I ever went through. But now it’s gone, and I’ve never felt lighter. I have as much room as I need. I have great company, and I’m busy every day. I don’t have to mow grass or shovel snow or clean gutters. And I don’t have to worry about dropping dead somewhere and leaving my poor heirs to make head or tail of all that stuff.”
“It’s the home equivalent of wearing clean underwear in case you wind up in the ER,” Jane said. “Your underdrawers and your desk drawers are clean in case of the unexpected.”
“I
