The Memento

by Christy Ann Conlin

  Hector was leaning against a car near Ronnie’s, watching the grade nine class go by. He was examining the girls in their bright summer clothes. They were all giggling. Hector was dazzling to look at. There was not a woman who didn’t feel some sort of swoon for him. Loretta had made him the hired man earlier that year. He lounged on that fine long shiny car like he was the only owner it had ever had, but in fact it was the Parkers’ car. Old Rolly, he called it. It had been the Colonel’s car and was sitting in the carriage house for years, but Marigold got Hector working on it. Or, rather, he got her to let him work on it, when Marigold decided she was well enough to come for the summer. It did not occur to Hector that no one with an expensive antique car like that would be in greasy work clothes and a ball cap.

  Hector’s father, Clyde, had a farm on the mountain, inland from Petal’s End, to the southwest on the Flying Squirrel Road. Clyde had occasionally worked at Evermore a long time ago, but mostly he farmed with draught horses, and they had fields of strawberries and you could go pick them, looking out over the bay as you filled your berry baskets. We’d see Hector there, working in the fields, and he’d give Art and me mints when Grampie or Yvette took us over. He was always working on some old-time car of his own, and back then it was one he called Old Stu. Loretta had a car and Hector kept that running as well. He took care of all the transportation needs. Long ago Grampie had helped Loretta get her driver’s licence but she was a nervous driver and drove rarely.

  Hector had been someone I noticed from the corner of my eye, but that summer he went to dead centre. He was wearing aviator sunglasses, likely thinking they would hide his gawking at the young girls, with his slow easy smile. He tipped his hat at us when we came over.

  “Long day, I hear. Well, don’t let that bother you. It’s cooler over in Lupin Cove and we’ll be there soon. You’re just as well out of this place where people think they’re better. Nothing good ever came of living down here. School never did anybody no good, no offence to the school system.” Hector laughed like that was the funniest thing and he gave us both a mint and opened the back door to the car. “Don’t you worry about what anyone thinks, Fancy. They’re all idiots here in the valley.”

  I nodded and touched my scar. We were bound together, those of us from the mountain.

  Hector knew about crazy parents. When we was very young there was Petal’s End Gala Days in mid August, the same time the Parkers would have their big summer garden party. It was a magical time of year for children. They’d have horse pulls at the community hall before it burned down. Clyde would go with his big workhorses, their manes braided, harnesses polished and bells jingling. One year we was sitting in the stands, me and Art and Grampie and Ma and Ronnie. Even Yvette was there with us. Hector’s uncle, Eldritch Loomer, who was jealous he wasn’t left the family farm, kept making low comments as Clyde was getting his horses ready to pull more weight. Eldritch was sitting at the bottom of the stands and it was just a murmur to us in the back but Clyde could hear every drawled insult and curse. Suddenly he dropped the reins and left his horses there hitched to the weights and come running and started pounding away on his brother. Blood was flying and people was screaming and taking their kids. Clyde would have these fits of rage and they’d only last a few minutes and he’d have no memory. His sore bloodied knuckles and the police would tell him the tale of what he done. When Hector got older he started to be just like his father. You see, what runs in the blood runs in the blood.

  When Loretta came out of the school Hector was telling us a story about his father chasing the workhorses when they got out of the barn because he forgot to close their stalls, and how he heard his father calling to them, Lloyd, Floyd, Harold and Jim. They had boy names, Hector said, because Clyde viewed them horses as his true sons. Loretta was with a policeman and he walked her to the car. Hector opened the door for her and the policeman called Hector by name. His troubles with the police had started when he was just a boy. Hector helped Loretta into the car and closed the door, tipping his hat to the policeman, and off we went through the valley and up the mountain.

  We drove toward the mountain and Loretta discussed her summer plans for us as though Ma had never come to the school, like it was just a normal June day. She and Hector began their regular good-natured bickering about household matters, making the odd comment to Art, who also seemed happy to pretend nothing had happened. The breeze floating in through the windows smelled of fresh-cut grass. I tried to make sense of what had just happened. Ma had just picked right up from that night in the spring.

  Once details between Ma and Loretta had been finalized, I’d ridden my bicycle over from Petal’s End one evening after supper. It was a beautiful spring night. Ma’s house was painted different colours because she could only afford to buy the discontinued paint, the leftover cans. My mother greeted me at the door without any of her usual makeup on, not a bit of jewellery. She was in a ratty bathrobe and her hair was in curlers that looked like they’d been in there for a few days. She had that odour of smoke and booze and hairspray, and her hand shook when she lifted it from the doorknob. I asked her where Ronnie was and she said he had to go off and haul some flowers, she had the dates mixed up. She hugged me, too tightly, and tried to keep from crying.

  “Oh, Fancy,” she said, “I’m a bad mother. I baked for you but it didn’t turn out so well, Honeysuckle.”

  “You’re not so bad,” I said. “No one can stitch like you, Mama.” She was a horrible-looking mess. I put my arm around her and took her inside. She sat in a chair picking at her fingernails while I put the kettle on.

  “Well, you can stitch like you was born with a needle in your hand, Fancy Mosher, and you ain’t even twelve years old. Almost but not quite,” she said.

  We ate the cookies she’d made. She had forgotten to put sugar or baking powder in them and they were flat and bitter. I knew she’d used a cookie cutter, a steel bird-shaped one, because it was on the counter, but the shapes were all wrong from her hand shaking so. They was birds that would never fly.

  We was out on the screened-in verandah after and the embroidery picture Ma was working on was stretched in her hoop on the table by her chair. I had brought my hoop along, a night garden by a pond with tall swooping willows and water lilies. Ma picked up her embroidery. She pretended she didn’t notice me watching as she started slowly pulling the mauve thread through, colour Ma was putting into the sunset sky behind the green floss treetops. She was making a flock of dark birds swooping through the sky with one split stitch after another and, unlike her cookies, those stitched birds looked like they would always be flying.

  While she’d drink cheap wine and dirty-tasting gin, Ma only used the finest silk flosses for her work and had them mail-ordered. She poked her finger and a stain of blood spread over the tight Evenweave fabric she was working with. Ma swore and put it down and took a sip from her teacup full of gin. She sat looking out at the stand of silver birches and crossed her arms. “Your needlework is near perfect. You got a gift for it, Fancy.” She studied my satin stitches in the flowers I was making. “I never seen someone who didn’t need to work with a pattern. It just comes right out of you. Watch your shadows, though. They don’t fall right. The sun or the moon has to be behind to cast a shadow.”

  She lit up a cigarette and blew the smoke out in rings and puffs, beautiful and deadly. After a time she smashed it out in the ashtray and started stitching again. “Ain’t nobody got use for this no more but that’s no reason to stop, Fancy. Maybe them Parkers will get you doing their linens again. But I don’t know who they think they are, having you work there so young. They’re making fun of me, that’s why they offered you a summer job. You’ll find out, yes you will. Them Parkers are bad. Nothing good will come from spending time there. Look at me. It all went wrong when I started working at Petal’s End, only sixteen years old, I was. Your Grampie had me looking after my poor crippled mother and waiting on them snobs at Petal’s End. How was a girl to have any fun, I ask yo
u?”

  I didn’t reply, for that could turn her, if she felt you was prying. It was best to keep stitching while she bounced around from one topic to another. There was a shake in her voice, from the weird blend of anger and fear that ran through all Ma’s conversation.

  “There’s no one to wait on me. Ten other children and litters of grandbabies and none of them even so much as visit. And they pretend you weren’t never born. I’m just a pariah, Fancy, that’s all I am. They abandoned me, one after another.

  “I would have gone and caught you a fish but I wasn’t up for it. I hope you’ll understand. I know how much you always liked a butter pan-fry with a bit of lemon and parsley. You were the cutest thing when I’d take you out in the boat on the lake. You’d clap your little hands when I’d haul in a fish. It was a miracle how long you could sit in that canoe without saying a word. You always understood you had to be patient. You liked most when we’d wade in for the water lilies when the sun was rising. The best time to pick them, you know, when the day is fresh. Remember that? I’m sorry I didn’t cook you supper, Fancy. I’m all worn out from years of cooking and stitching for the lot of you. Ronnie does most of the cooking now, God love the man. A good man is hard to find, and you should stitch that and hang it on your wall right in front of your goddamn nose. You be careful over at Petal’s End. That place was always full of shady types coming and going.”

  “They’re paying me, you know. It’s not like I’m going to be a slave for the Parkers. I’m old enough for a job. Art’s helping out too. They told Loretta to hire some help but they didn’t want any strangers. That didn’t leave her with much choice. But Art and I are both almost twelve. We ain’t babies. I’m surprised Loretta didn’t try to hire you back, Ma. She thinks the Parkers will come out again this summer, and it will be busier than it’s been in a long time.” My eyes stayed on the embroidery, trying to make sure when I put the shadow in it fell right.

  “I wouldn’t go back and work there if it was the last place on earth. They paid me too, you’ll recall, and it wasn’t worth a penny. It always ends in heartache and tears over there, and it don’t matter a shit how gorgeous it may be, goddamn mansion. Loretta was always willing to bow down and do as she was told. She gave her own baby up. Can you imagine? It’s always like that, poor young girls having to give up so much. But I wasn’t going to pull out my spine and dissolve into a helpless jellyfish. That’s the sort of help the Parkers like. It’s peculiar enough up there that won’t anybody even notice. It’s no wonder they don’t come out. That place is full of bad spirits. You be careful. What your grandfather thought sending you there to live when you could be with me I’ll never know. You watch your six, as your Grampie used to say. You be careful around that Marigold. She’s a wily one. Sweet elderly lady, my precious arse. And only poor Loretta with all her useless prayers to protect you.” Ma kept stitching and snorting. “A frail woman half dead coming out to a big empty house?”

  “But Marigold’s an old lady. What harm can she do anyone? Dr. Baker says she’s well enough now to do as she pleases. And anyway, Grampie always said that whatever happened to Loretta was because she never had family to help her.” The lime-green leaves were on the embroidery trees now.

  Ma took a swig from her cup. “Dr. Baker would say that, the arse. He’s just trying to curry favour with the old bat. He’s no different than his father and probably not even as good a doctor. And your grandfather was right about fat old Loretta, I’m being too hard on her. Nothing for her but the turds life has placed in a bowl at her feet. But you watch those Parkers, every single one. They’ll try to use you, mark my words. What runs in the blood runs in the blood, and that, Fancy Mosher, is the truth. You look at me.”

  Her voice was hard and hollow now, and the soft wreck who had answered the door was long gone. It was clear it had been a mistake to give her one more chance.

  “What runs in the blood runs in the blood. Do you understand? Your Grampie must have told you.”

  The only thing I understood was that she hadn’t changed at all and that she’d fooled even her beloved Ronnie. We said nothing further, not even good night, and I left her there looking out into the dark, scared of old ladies, humming to herself. I went into the room that had been mine, where so many children before me had slept. I put myself to bed, imagining a flock of birds, the starlings that Grampie liked, swirling up in the way they did at twilight, bending like a long black ribbon through that early sunset. I counted every bird in my mind.

  Hector’s loud voice burst through my thoughts, a town crier proclaiming to Loretta and Art what a fine machine Old Rolly was. He then moved on about Old Stu, about how they didn’t make them like they did back in the day.

  Loretta wagged her finger at him. “You talk as though you were in the first car factory there ever was, you fool. You’re only nineteen years old. Now don’t you go getting any ideas, Hector. This car will be parked just as soon as we get back. The only reason we’re out in this car is there wasn’t room to put us all in your pickup truck and I’m not driving around with anyone in the back. Nice and slow, Hector, please and thank you. Don’t strain the engine. Marigold wants this machine running smoothly when she comes out. She wants everything to be just so.”

  “When you get to a certain age wanting your own way is understandable,” Art said.

  Loretta turned around and she looked back at Art. She was so short she was like a child herself peering over the edge of the front seat. “Why yes, that’s true, Mister Man. It’s more when you get to a certain age you want things the way you remember them. That’s what Marigold is after this summer, a bit of life how it was, and still is, in her mind.”

  “Eighty-five, isn’t she?” Hector looked at Loretta. “My grandfather lived to be a hundred. Marigold says she wants the car ready in case she needs to go somewhere. Or for company. No offence to senior citizens. Just seems you get to a certain age and it’s kind of like you’re young again except you ain’t. You’re just travelling around in your mind. And looking in the mirror seeing what only you can see.”

  “Hector, sometimes you speak the truth.” Loretta sighed. “Only sometimes, mind you. In the end, it is Marigold’s decision to do what she pleases with Petal’s End and we’ll be respectful and do our jobs. It’s not our place to disagree. I remember the day she hired me. She supervised each blessed detail at the house. You have no idea. Marigold swept around and we did as we were told. At nighttime she looked as though the day was just beginning, not a hair out of place, her clothes immaculate. There was a butler way back then and he was always at her side. Mr. Long. I never saw the man smile once, not even when he got his Christmas bonus. He took nothing stronger than hot water with a teaspoon of lemon. There used to be a big gong in the small back courtyard by the kitchen that a guest had brought as a hostess gift. If Marigold was up before the help she sent Mr. Long out to give it a smash. We’d all awaken thinking the world was coming to an end for we’d only just fallen asleep. He dropped dead one day just as he was to ring the morning gong. We’d fully expected him to live forever. He was laid out in his coffin looking just the same as when he was alive except his eyes were shut and for once he wasn’t standing up. All us girls were afraid to look at him for fear he’d open his eyes and order us straight back to work. ‘You know your places, girls.’ Those were his favourite words.”

  “My mother wasn’t afraid of him, I bet.” Of course I was curious hearing Loretta talking about the past, but mostly I wanted to prod her about my mother. It was odd that Loretta was acting like nothing untoward had happened.

  Loretta paused for just a second before she swallowed and replied. “No, Marilyn was not, much to his consternation. That day in the funeral parlour Marilyn stood by his corpse and made faces when the undertaker wasn’t looking. We couldn’t help but laugh. It’s best to remember your mother, Fancy, when she was well, although short on propriety as she always has been.”

  “I haven’t heard you like this, Loretta, since you a
nd Art’s grandmother came to the church charity bingo and got into that punch someone spiked with pear wine.”

  “Hector, I did not drink the punch. You’re mistaken. Anyway, children, in the good summer weather there was no end to the parties and events Marigold put on. A stream of guests and family from all parts of the world. There was a large staff living at Petal’s End back then. We worked from dawn until dusk, all of us wearing uniforms, with Sundays off. We could hardly wait for winter when it would end. Marigold would be out in the Water House making her soaps and flower waters until all hours of the night, and she expected us to work just as long. The Colonel was always telling Marigold she should leave a few things to chance. In his spare time he enjoyed spontaneity. Marigold despised it.

  “When Marigold telephoned last night she was already speaking of a garden party. ‘You’re caught up in a second wind, Mrs. Parker,’ I said. ‘Loretta, this is my final wind and we best make haste while it blows,’ she said. Most people don’t change. Hector, slow down please. Do not come up so fast behind that car. Thank you, my dear.”

  Art put his hand out the window like he was patting the wind. “I guess the wind blows for all of us someday.”

  “Well, ain’t we got us a little poet back there.”

  “Don’t mock, Hector, my young man. Art might be only twelve but he understands more about life than most ever will. Slow down, please. There is a speed limit.” Loretta put her hand to her mouth and held it there.

  Many years later I realized Loretta was nearing sixty that summer and already her time-gone-by was circling back to find her. She was being brushed ever so soft to the other side of that wind Art was stroking.

  3.

  The Memento

  I HEAR GRAMPIE’S voice in my head still. And your voice. Once, a long time ago, you asked me what I was afraid of and I told you I wasn’t afraid of one single thing. That was not true. I was afraid of many things but talking about them only made it worse. I was never afraid of the dark, nor of animals, or creatures that howl in the night. But I was afraid around my mother because there was no fixing her. Stiff and old in my chair, I am only afraid now of what will be in your eyes when I see you, if you come out from wherever it is you are waiting. Afraid of the judgment, I suppose, same as what Ma feared she’d see in my eyes. It’s the details, isn’t it, that we remember? The eyes, the sound of the voice, the scent of the air, the way the light dapples through leaves onto the grass, or the perfect shadow of the winter branches on the snowy field, and how the child’s footprints on the sand are always washed away. This is what we remember.