Page 60 of The Memory Gardener
“He doesn’t strike me as a small-town shopper,” Cynthia says. “He probably gets everything he needs delivered to his home to save himself five minutes.”
“Yes,” Marjorie agrees. “I’m sure he orders from somewhere that overcharges and kills off the mom-and-pop competition.”
“Somewhere profitable, then,” Fitz says, but we all ignore him.
Soon Louis heads off down the ramp with his new camera in tow, leaving the four of us.
“Cynthia and I were looking at the website for the Redwood Village again yesterday,” Marjorie tells me. “We’ve decided that if we must move, we’ll move together. Everything is easier with a good friend at your side. Even, I hope, living in a place that appears to be made of cardboard.”
“It seems awfully dull,” Cynthia confirms. “But if necessary, we’ll change that with our sparkling personalities. I really don’t think it will come to that, though. I think we can turn this place around. We’re stronger than we realize.”
She looks at me then, her gaze level and steady and fully present.
“You showed me that, Lucy,” she says. “You and these gardens. Who would have ever thought that they would flower so beautifully again? It just proves that nothing is ever really gone. We carry every turn of our lives, every version of ourselves, within us, forever. What a joy it is to understand that.
“I don’t know how long I’ll go on like this,” she continues quietly. “But that only makes me appreciate this more—this feeling of beingmyself again, this knowledge that my life is meaningful. It’s a gift to feel this way—to live once again with purpose.”
I nod, moved. Across the table, Fitz stares down at the chess set, but his body has gone still. I can’t help but feel that he listened closely to Cynthia’s speech and that he, too, was moved by it.
“You’re a true force of nature,” I tell Cynthia. “We couldn’t do any of this without you.”
She waves her hand. “Of course you could.” Then she adds, “Just not nearly as well.”
Marjorie seems to be laughing and crying at the same time.
Cynthia reaches out and pats her hand. “Well,” she says, “we didn’t come out here to let weeds grow over our feet, did we, Marjorie? Spirited gals like us need our exercise.”
“Quite right,” says Marjorie. “The gardens await. We’ll leave you two to your little chess club.”
“It’s not a club!” Fitz barks, but the woman are already walking away, their heads bent together, laughter trailing behind them.
Fog is racing over the Oceanview Home when I leave that afternoon. I drive through the forest toward town, peering up through the windshield and frowning. The spring party is a little more than a week away, and it’s the first time I’ve considered how the weather might affect the event. You really never know what you’re going to get along the coast of Northern California in spring. The past few weeks have been beautiful, though, with the occasional fog only present in the morning and evening. I can only hope that the pattern will hold.
When I reach the Bantom Bay Community Center, I grab a flyer from the stack Louis gave me and leave Gully in the truck with the windows down and cool, damp air pouring in. After a moment’s thought, I select a pot of violet primroses from the bed of my truck and walk toward the building.
I spent so much time here as a kid, but I haven’t been inside the center since my mother died. The outside, I notice, looks a little worse for wear, the paint peeling around the windows. That’s not unusual for a building so close to the sea, though, and maybe it was always this way. But I remember Roger saying he was meeting with some people to rehabilitate the theater, and I wonder if maybe the center is dealing with more challenges than just the perpetual lashings of salt air.
The answer is apparent when I walk inside. In my memory, the small lobby of the community center was always bustling, bright, and welcoming, the efficient little hub of a building that held an art studio, meeting rooms, a gymnasium, and a theater. Now, the room looks smaller and less tidy. The walls—still the pale lilac I remember from my youth—could use a fresh coat of paint. The colorful tiles on the floor look dingy, the grout between them now a shade of gray.
“These are a gift from the Oceanview Home,” I tell the teenaged girl at the reception desk as I set the primroses down. Already, their soft purple color and fresh, airy scent make the lobby seem more inviting. “There’s a party next week to raise money for the home to keep it from closing. Would you mind if I hung up a flyer?”
The girl breathes in the scent of the flowers and smiles dreamily. “Sure,” she says, gesturing across the lobby to where a bulletin board hangs at a precarious slant.
I pin the party flyer in a prominent spot and then ask if she minds if I peek into the art studio.
“No problem,” she says. “It’s down the hall, on the left.”
I don’t mention that I could have easily walked straight back to the art studio with my eyes closed.
At the entrance to the studio, I stop. There’s a brass plaque that I’ve never seen before beside the door.
The Nell McKinney Barnes Art Studio
I wonder if my dad is responsible for this, or if it was organized by the people my mom worked with here. Or maybe her students.
Inside the studio is much neater than it ever was when my mother worked there, but the shelves that used to be filled with painting supplies seem a bit bare. In a corner, there are a couple of easels that look like they need to be repaired.
Near the easels, hanging on the wall, is one of my mother’s paintings. I step closer. The image is of a windswept beach, but the details are smudged and vague, veiled by a wash of blues cut through here and there by streams of golden sunlight. Barely, just barely, I make out a figure kneeling in the sand, building something—perhaps a castle?
