One of the ladies had evidently made a strike as she began jumping up and down, squealing with delight, while her companion drummed out a two-fisted congratulations on her back. We moved on, past a bank where nobody was doing any business and an ice-cream parlor where everybody was. Half-a-dozen people sat on vintage heart-backed soda fountain chairs at small round tables enjoying make-your-own sundaes under a sign shaped like a giant waffle cone that said ‘Sweet Tooth.’
Although I distinctly heard a tub of rum-and-raisin ice cream calling my name, I scurried along after Naddie, who was waiting for me at the door to the dining room. She pushed it open. ‘We’re between lunch and dinner. Doesn’t it look nice?’
Tables for two, four or six diners had already been set with white linen tablecloths and napkins, quality china, proper silver and glassware. ‘Wine glasses,’ I noted, nodding my approval.
‘Of course,’ Naddie said. ‘There’s a private dining room adjoining this one that seats twelve, in case you want to invite your family to join you for special occasions. And we have a full-service bar, too, called The Tidewater.’ She yoo-hooed to an attractive blonde dressed in a navy blue suit and a crisp white blouse who was seated at a table near the kitchen door, poring over some papers. The woman glanced up from the ledger she was working on, grinned and walked over to us. When she got closer, I saw she was in her early thirties, about my daughter, Emily’s age. Her hair was rolled into a twist at the top of her head and secured with a tortoiseshell claw.
‘Hello, Mrs Gray.’
‘We’re just passing through, Filomena. This is an old friend of mine, Hannah Ives. Hannah, I’d like you to meet Filomena Buccho. She’s the catering manager.’
I extended my hand and Filomena took it in her small, cold one, squeezing gently. She considered me with cool blue eyes. ‘Pleased to meet you, Mrs Ives. Will you be joining us for dinner?’
‘No, thank you,’ I smiled. ‘Perhaps another time.’
‘Accent?’ I asked Naddie after we’d bid Filomena goodbye and were breezing through the well-appointed, wood-paneled bar, out of earshot.
‘Spanish, from Argentina. Buenos Aires, as I recall. Her younger brother, Raniero, is our chef.’
‘How fortunate to have a matched set,’ I teased.
‘Well, exactly. I only hope we can hold on to them. Raniero is fantastic! I know you’re busy today but won’t you come to lunch tomorrow? See for yourself?’
I consulted my mental calendar. Other than a trip to Wegman’s – The bakery! The buffet! The sushi! – my days were embarrassingly free. Paul would be leaving shortly on a summer sailing trip with the Naval Academy midshipman, so I would be more or less on my own.
‘I’d be delighted,’ I told her.
‘Good. Now, here’s the library.’
A woman I took to be a librarian was seated in an upholstered armchair behind an elegant Hepplewhite writing desk reading a Kindle. After we were introduced she gave us a quick tour of the shelves which were arranged broadly by topic – romance, mystery, history and biography – in alphabetical order by author. ‘We keep the collection fresh and up to date by using a subscription service,’ the librarian told us. ‘Our residents have access to all the recent bestsellers that way, although I have to say that the self-help books are our most popular items. And large print, too, of course, although some of our residents have graduated to e-readers so they can make the font as big as they want.’ She pointed to the Kindle on her desk. ‘In fact, I was downloading a book for one of them when you came in.
‘And this,’ she said with a slight dramatic bow, ‘is our pièce de résistance.’ She pushed through a swinging door that led into an adjoining room. ‘Behold! The computer room!’
Eight iMac desktop machines sat on tabletops, two of which were high enough to accommodate wheelchairs. ‘Calvert Colony is totally wireless, of course,’ the librarian explained, ‘and some of our residents have laptops in their rooms, but even then, they sometimes need a bit of assistance when it comes to email and Skyping. And when tax time rolls around, volunteers are kept super busy down here helping out with TurboTax, as you can imagine.’
Two residents who had been typing, one slowly, the other more proficiently, looked up curiously, then went back to tapping the keyboards.
At the far end of the room, a woman dressed in black slacks and a bulky red sweater, presumably to ward off the chill of the air conditioning, seemed to be carrying on a conversation with someone on the screen; her son, I gathered when I wandered over and leaned in casually for a closer look. The guy was in his thirties, wearing a gray T-shirt and a baseball cap turned backwards. The woman, who had combs shoved haphazardly into her spare, improbably orange hair, was rattling on about her dog, Winkle, who had been a very good poochie-woochie while having his toenails trimmed earlier in the day. As I eavesdropped, the son nodded indulgently.
‘Residents can have pets?’ I inquired.
‘Of course.’ The librarian smiled. ‘They’re family members, too. To say you can’t bring a family member with you… well, that would be cruel. We even have a vet on call twenty-four seven.’
I was mulling that over, thinking sourly that grandchildren were family members, too, when a new voice trilled, ‘Hannah!’
It belonged to an old friend, Angela McSpadden, one of my on-again, off-again jogging buddies. I hadn’t seen her since we ran together in the Ocean City Komen Race for the Cure to raise money for breast cancer research the previous April. ‘Angie! What are you doing here?’
Angie, I knew, had only recently achieved the Big Five-Oh, so unless she’d divorced Bill McSpadden and married an aging sugar daddy she wouldn’t yet qualify to live in the colony.
‘Visiting Mom.’ She nodded in the direction of the woman wearing the red sweater who had moved on from a dissertation on poodle manicures to a spirited discussion of the previous evening’s broadcast of American’s Got Talent. ‘Hi, Mom,’ Angie trilled, waggling her fingers in her mother’s direction.
Her mother frowned, deepening the already prominent lines that furrowed her brow. ‘Go away and leave me alone! Can’t you see I’m busy?’
Angie must have been used to such shabby treatment because she merely smiled and said, ‘Oh, dear. Somebody got up out of the wrong side of the bed this morning.’ She took a deep breath then let it out slowly. ‘Christie’s my mother-in-law, actually. She tries my patience! Honestly, I don’t know what I’m going to do with her. She spends hours and hours talking to that, that…’ She paused, searching for the appropriate word.
Naddie saved Angie the trouble, cutting in before she could complete the sentence. ‘Have you discussed the situation with her social worker?’
‘Yes. She seems to think it’s harmless enough.’
I’d completely lost the plot. ‘Seems to me that Skyping is a good way to keep in touch with your family,’ I cut in.
‘If only…’ Angie sighed. ‘But that guy isn’t family.’
‘Then who…?’ I asked.
‘She says he’s her boyfriend.’
I was struck momentarily dumb while I processed that information. A woman, eighty years old at least. A young man, clearly on the low side of thirty. ‘But…’ I began.
Angie waved my sentence away. ‘Exactly. Mother says I’m just jealous.’ She rolled her eyes. ‘As if.’
‘I can hear you, Angela!’ her mother-in-law screeched. She flopped back in her chair. ‘Now you’ve done it! I’ve lost the connection.’
Angie lowered her voice to a whisper. ‘They met on Match dot.com. What does that tell you about the website’s screening process?’
‘Maybe the guy lied,’ I suggested. ‘Claimed to be older. It’s been known to happen.’