Ann-Marie sighed. Whoever started this puzzle hadn’t even finished the edges, let alone filling much of the middle.
“Magic Forest,” it was titled, according to the box, whose picture showed several dozen very tall, leafless, many-branched trees, silhouetted against a starry sky as though one were looking up, prone, from the middle of them. Innumerable twiggy branches were etched against a starry sky with pale, multi-colored clouds.
Her strong preference was for jigsaws with pictures like photographs, say a village scene with a cottage, garden and tree or two, a car in front and maybe some children’s playscapes. With such puzzles one could usually find the next piece because it was unmistakably an extension of an image in the half-finished picture.
The pieces of the puzzle she stared at now – a puzzle fully two feet wide – all looked nearly alike. One would have to rely almost entirely on matching the shape of a piece to the bumps, bulges and hollows of pieces already placed. That wasn’t her forte.
Howard Hankins, one of the latest arrivals to the retirement community, had said he liked jigsaws, and liked to find pieces by shape. They’d chatted when seated together at a luncheon to welcome newcomers. She’d suggested they might rendezvous here, and she hoped he would come along. She’d gotten a sense that they might have other mutual interests, but he was still an enigma to be explored.
There were usually three or four jigsaw puzzles underway at Harmony Acres. The architect who designed the place understood that seniors sometimes get lonely, so had sprinkled sitting parlors at corridor intersections and elevator lobbies, all comfortably furnished and lit well enough to read, play dominoes or other games, or put together jigsaws. She didn’t know who put out new puzzles to replace those finished, perhaps aficionados who lived nearby, or perhaps someone in management who had a lending-library of them to circulate.
It was a big community: 250 residents in the independent-living apartments, and 100 more in various levels of assisted living or health care. The parlors with jigsaw puzzles under way were widely scattered. Almost all, including this one, looked out through wide windows into courtyards or gardens.
The clocks had been turned back just last week, ending daylight savings time, so a gray, frosty November afternoon was already verging on crepuscular. She soon would have to pull the drapes to cover windows dark and cold enough to freeze souls.
She did hope this Howard fellow would come soon.
Ann-Marie really liked puzzles, and sometimes went to work on one as a challenge to stimulate an 85-year-old mind. More often, though, she and others turned to the puzzles out of mere boredom: Nothing on television, tired of reading, not in the mood for choir practice or book discussions, or the various committees that seemed constantly to offer distraction or purpose to life at Harmony Acres.
So as she strolled the corridors—briskly, part of a deliberate exercise routine to stave off deterioration of an 85-year-old body—she kept an eye on all the puzzles. She knew which ones were best solved by matching shapes and which by matching colors, and how far along each was. They were always big: at least 500 pieces, or sometimes, like this one, 1,000 pieces. No one ever sat down to start and finish one at a single long sitting; the whole point was to have maybe a half-hour’s diversion from time to time.
Diversion, and company. Although she sometimes enjoyed working on one all by herself, she usually looked for a puzzle someone else was already engaged in, welcoming conversation and a chance to know some neighbors better.
This magic-forest monstrosity before her now was one she would ordinarily have left for others to piece together. But this parlor was just a short walk from her apartment, whose wee sitting room had a gas fireplace that would keep the cold dark night entirely at bay. She had in mind migrating there after a respectable time piecing together this damned forest, or at least trying to.
If Howard Hankins came along.
Almost half the men at Harmony Acres were married; those couples—mostly a bit younger than the average—were to some extent a different part of the community’s life. Among the older residents, women outnumbered men more than two to one, a widow-to-widower ratio that was common in life care communities like this.
Re-marriages were rare. Hormones no longer raged. Bodies were tired and not easily stimulated. Such daily routines as ablutions and disrobing revealed wrinkled skin that welcomed no audience. Moreover, most single seniors, having nursed spouses through illness and death, were not inclined to risk commitments that might develop such emotionally and physically taxing obligations again.
But after lifetimes of intimacy, most yearned for a half-casual closeness to someone of the opposite gender; someone who might remind them of spouses, have common ground, who might welcome occasional meals together and might, over time, share some emotions and insights.
Ann-Marie’s vigil this late-autumn evening was not in vain. Howard Hankins did indeed come along. She welcomed him with a warm smile. He proved as adept at remembering and matching shapes as he’d claimed and made progress at reassembling the fractured forest. He also seemed to share a congeries of musical and literary tastes and political attitudes.
And best of all, he brought along a small canvas gym bag—a man’s equivalent of a purse— from which he extracted, after a time, a bottle of sherry. “I thought we might share a sip, if we could find glasses,” he said.
“My apartment is just down the way,” she replied. “I have not only glasses, but a fireplace that offers cheer on cold gray afternoons. There’s just enough time to have a leisurely glass of sherry, and then go up to dinner, if you’ve a mind.”
“Perfect!” he said.
Perfect indeed, she thought. At least one puzzle solved.

-End-

Published in the American Mensa’s Calliope in October 2024