The Memento

by Christy Ann Conlin

  Estelle had never come any more than she had to. She was a nurse a long time ago, and they say she married Charlie for his fortune, but when he died the whole lot went to his mother. Then she hated Petal’s End and the country more than ever. Estelle kept thin with coffee and cigarettes. She had been pretty once upon a time, and her looks lived on in Pomeline.

  They brought Marigold out once, in a wheelchair. It was like half of her face was stuck in a leer and the other half was stuck in anguish. Marigold seemed to shrink, the way the elderly do, getting shorter, like the earth itself in her precious garden had reached up one fine summer morning and curled fingers round her ankles and started tugging her down. Dainty don’t always hold up to aging. Jenny and Pomeline and the doctor carted Marigold about, out in Evermore, and she looked around, smirking at half of it, raging at the other.

  The bumpy lane, the thought of the Parkers and their tragedies, my birthday ruined—the entirety of the day made the bile rise in my throat and I gagged. In a daze, I heard Loretta tell Hector to stop. He slammed on the brakes and my stomach lurched as I pushed the door open and threw up all over the wildflowers growing at the edge of the forest by the road, the bitterness spewing forth. Sweat dripping down my temples and Loretta rubbing my back. Exhaust fumes made me throw up again and Loretta told Hector to shut the engine off. All went quiet except for a draught that came right up and tickled the leaves. My hands went clammy. A bird called out, a red bird, its trill long and clear, and Loretta and I both watched it fly down and perch on a low branch gazing at us.

  “It’s Grampie,” I said. Loretta’s eyes got great big and she said I was exhausted by the horrible shock to my system with Ma coming by. The bird sat on the branch and sang. Loretta shooed it but it took no notice of her. A surge of great hurt flooded over me. Was it Grampie in the bird? I do not know, but it sang out once more and flew down the lane, as though we were to follow, as though there was no turning back. I wiped my mouth on the hankie Loretta passed me and pulled the car door closed.

  We came out of the lane in sight of the house and the stark sunlight made me squint. There was a row of laburnum trees off to the south, just starting to bloom and hang with their poisonous golden chain blossoms—we were not allowed to climb those trees. I fixed my eyes on the yellow flowers as the vehicles from the Briar Patch headed out in a convoy. The Parkers had hired the garden centre to do all the gardening and lawn mowing. They came five days a week in their trucks and vans, wearing their uniforms and hats and tool belts, waving and smiling but never making much chitchat, maybe warned to keep to themselves and ask no questions. Art was the only one who spent much time with them. The Happy Helpers came as well, a cleaning service, with two vanloads of girls in uniforms, whispering to themselves, biting their tongues. They’d been warned too, it seemed. They also came five days a week, as though the Parkers were in full-time residence, when really it was just a big empty house and sprawling grounds, waiting for a party that never started, for guests that never arrived, a family who was missing.

  Hector parked at the carriage house. He ran around but Loretta was already getting out. He held the door for me. “Miss Fancy Mosher,” he said, holding out his hand. I put my hand in his and as he pulled me out he gave me a tight squeeze. “Don’t you worry. You forget about your Ma. You’re a big girl now.”

  Loretta nodded at Hector. “Thank you, Hector. You are helpful in an emergency, I’ll say that. Fancy, you need to relax. Come along to the house. We’ll have some birthday cake and lemonade later. Hector, make sure you put the car back, and don’t go disappearing. There’s cookies and I will put on some tea, if you want, and you can come help yourself.”

  “Well that’s awful kindly of you, Loretta, but I’d be happy with cold water. My father never takes a glass of water. ‘Did you ever see what water can do to a nail?’ he says. ‘What it can do to steel? Rot your gut. I wouldn’t put water in me if you paid me, unless it’s diluted with a shot of bourbon.’ He swears if the well runs dry he won’t have a new one dug. Nothing I like more than drinking down a big tall glass of water in front of my father. Makes him shudder.” Hector snorted as he shut the door to Old Rolly.

  “Good enough then, Hector. Just come to the kitchen if you want a drink.”

  “I have a few things to do but I may come by later. Now you all go and have a quiet afternoon. It’s just too damn busy down there in the valley, and it reeks. He should know better, transporting dead animals like that, uncovered and all. It’s against the law. Must have been on his way to the incinerator. I don’t know why he just didn’t burn them on his farm or bury them. Kind of disturbing, ain’t it, seeing that. Nothing like the fresh air to clear that out of your system. Sniff a few flowers. Don’t let any of it bother you, Fancy.”

  “Too late for that,” I mumbled under my breath. I started walking back to the house.

  Hector let out a low whistle and starting crooning. “Fancy’s looking all grown up, not like no twelve-year-old. She don’t talk nor walk like one neither, oh no she don’t!”

  That got Loretta’s ear pricked right up. “Lord, give me strength. Hector, how rude. She’s still a child I’ll have you remember.”

  I went in through the kitchen door at the back of the house, Loretta close behind me. “Fancy, you pay no attention to Hector. Don’t encourage him. He’s a fine worker but he likes the girls. At least he’s pleasant, not like his father. That man would rather impale himself upon a pitchfork than say a pleasant word. I never understood why all the girls were crazy for Clyde. There’s more to a man than looks. There’s kindness, but that can be just as deceptive. Listen to me go on. I don’t know what’s come over me today.” Loretta set her purse down and reached for her apron.

  The air in the kitchen was a tonic. Big thick walls and the deep-set windows kept the heat of the day outside. I heard the clock ticking. I said nothing, just got myself a glass of milk. I wasn’t going to rattle on and pretend nothing had happened. Worse, I feared I would start screaming and never stop if I even opened my mouth. Loretta was fussing, retying her apron, fiddling with lists on the bulletin board. In the rear of the house there was a housekeeper’s sitting room, and a corridor leading to a staff living room and bedroom and bathroom, and a flight of stairs that went up to the long hall where the servants’ quarters once were. All those rooms were empty now except for the room I had. The house was a maze of staircases and halls, corridors so the staff could move without being seen, all of it connecting. It was easy to get lost, and the only ones who knew it well now were the children, me and Art and Jenny and Pomeline. We used to play hide-and-seek in the house while Marigold napped. It was easy to hide from grown-ups in such a big house.

  I stomped upstairs. I took my shoes off and the hardwood was cool on my feet. Then I sat on my bed, which was as old as the house itself. For a second I considered running back down and through the mansion to the front door to look in the mirror there but I was too tired and angry to move. Creaks and groans threaded through the stillness. I could always tell who was coming down the halls at Petal’s End. Everyone had their own way of walking, and the floor had a special squeak for them all. Loretta made a lot of noise coming up the stairs, her thick body pressing down on the floorboards, bracing herself on the walls, clomping down the hall. She knocked on my door. I said nothing. The knob turned. Loretta stood there with an ice pack.

  “Fancy, I’m sorry. I know you are angry. You should soak your feet. And put this on your scar.”

  I slapped the floor with my feet so hard it made them sting and I crossed my arms with as much force as I could muster.

  “We were trying to protect you. I understand you’re upset.”

  “What was Ma talking about? First the awful ranting in the night and now this? Why won’t you tell me, Loretta? It ain’t right to hide the truth. That’s what you always told me, but you’re a hypocrite.” I spoke to my dirty toenails at first, and when I raised my eyes she didn’t look away. Outside the window I saw Evermore, calling m
e out to where I could sit quietly within those stone garden walls.

  Loretta came and sat beside me, the bed sagging underneath her. She passed me the ice pack as she surveyed the bed. “Let’s hope I don’t break it. It’s been here for years and I suppose it can take the weight of old Loretta, don’t you think?” She took my sweating hand in her cool ones. “It’s true about your grandfather … he did believe what your Ma said. And all who came to see him believed it. What you believe is true, that’s what I think now, although I didn’t back when I was young. I suppose it was inevitable it would come out.”

  “Do you believe it?”

  “It’s not for me to believe or not. I know your grandfather saw what he said. But then the artist sees many things we cannot.”

  “Why didn’t he tell me? I still don’t understand.”

  “He didn’t want to frighten you. Samuel never even talked to me about it, not directly. He would say he had to go tend to his business. He helped people is what he did. He knew all the shades of sorrow, he said, but then, that’s a part of life, isn’t it? That’s all I know.”

  But Loretta did know more, and suddenly she couldn’t seem to stop talking, trying to make sense of it all, as much for herself as for me. “Fancy, it’s hard to explain to someone who has never lived through a war, the way it changes people. We were in solemn times with news of people dying every single day. The soldiers were in a sea of death. Your grandfather came back a changed man. He felt such shame for leaving your grandmother in the first place. She was crippled up early in life with the arthritis that came over her when your mother was a girl. It’s why they never had another child. You know that.”

  I did know that. My grandmother was so crippled up she could hardly walk or use her hands by the end. Ma had cared for my grandmother while Grampie was at war and worked at Petal’s End at the same time. She was only a teenager taking all that on. But I didn’t want to tell Loretta what I did and did not know.

  Loretta was looking at the wall now, seeing a story written there only she could read. “We have to remember the past in a frame of compassion or we end up in misery. Even at Petal’s End life became simple for a time during the war, so they said. I didn’t start working here until after it was all over, and things had gone back to extravagance. I was raised plain, as I think you know a bit about. Marigold was making up for what she saw as the lost years now the Colonel was back from the war too. They were having a disastrous time finding help. All kinds were moving to the city for work. I’d had some … difficulties.”

  Everyone knew she gave her baby away, even if no one talked of it.

  “Your grandfather was acquainted with some people down in the valley who understood my situation. He knew people all over, from his paintings. He made the arrangements with Marigold. Your grandfather picked me up in his truck and drove me up from the valley. It was a beautiful summer day, much like today. There were so many people scurrying about and they got me settled. I was hulling strawberries when Marigold came into the kitchen to meet me. Mr. Long and his scowl were at her side, and she had little Charlie by the hand. He was four years old, same age as your brother.

  “Then Marigold spoke to me in front of all the servants in the kitchen. She told me part of my duties would be to assist with Charlie, and that I did the right thing for a girl who finds herself in such a situation. ‘There are good married people who cannot have children who are able to provide the most suitable environment. Others could learn from your selflessness,’ she said. Words left me, if you can comprehend it.”

  Loretta’s face flushed and she still kept avoiding my eyes, which I was grateful for.

  “And before I could burst into tears, who else but your mother sashayed into the kitchen from the pantry where she was gutting a fish. And in her loud voice Marilyn called out, ‘Why, has anyone seen John Lee? He must be out in the garden. I brought him over to play with Charlie, as you asked, Mrs. Parker.’ She was holding a big bloody knife with that look she had, you know the one, Fancy. Charlie waved at her and she winked back. And off Marilyn sauntered. There were a few titters, and Mr. Long’s brow got so low we could hardly see his eyes. To this day I remember that horrid silence. Then Marigold left without continuing to embarrass me. You see, your mother did the work of three girls, and they could ill afford to let her go. She was indispensable. And your mother, being who she is, took full advantage.

  “There was a girl who worked here at the time. She is long since dead from a lung ailment. She gave me a tour of the gardens when I arrived and she told me how a few years after the war ended was when your mother found herself in her predicament.”

  Loretta looked down at her hands as though she would weep and my anger sagged. She kept talking, paying some kind of debt to me with her revelations. “Your mother never showed me much patience, Fancy, but she was the only one who understood how hard it was for me. We needed jobs and you’ll put up with a lot when you have to. People like Marigold can’t help themselves. I’ve come to see this. Marigold thought she was being benevolent. She paid for your grandmother’s funeral. And your grandfather’s. She felt she was generous taking me in and letting me work and live here all these years.”

  “I know what Marigold is like,” I whispered.

  Loretta took my hand in hers. “I know you do, Fancy. I’m telling you all of this so you’ll appreciate that when you came along your grandfather was determined to make sure you were cared for, and that you were sheltered as much as you could be, just as he did with me. When you had the car accident he felt like he’d failed, and when you went to live with him at the Tea House he wanted things to be simple and light.” Loretta was swinging her feet like a girl. She patted my hand. “But Fancy, it wasn’t for discussing with a child, what your mother was going on about today. People understood he had a special way. He called it a little family memento, and he had us promise not to speak to you of it.”

  “That’s the problem with you adults, not ever talking about nothing when it needs talking about, keeping all these stories secret. And what about me? Being the twelfth-born?”

  “It’s just a story, Fancy. Your Grampie wanted to protect you.”

  “Well don’t you think he should have told me? What if I was walking along and all of a sudden somebody comes crawling out of the ground? What if some ghost grabs me and throttles me? Ma keeps going on about John Lee. What if he’s some angry demon child out to get her? Ma talks like he’s all mad, like she’s afraid, that she’s got to make amends with him before she dies or he’s gonna get her good.”

  “Don’t go talking about demons.”

  “Well, Marigold will be here soon talking about the hobgobblies. Maybe she sees stuff too. Maybe there are hobgobblies roaming around.”

  Loretta took in a deep breath and blew it out slowly, as though she was thinking of the right words. “Your grandfather did the best he could, that’s all there is to this, Fancy. He should have told you earlier. I should have. But we didn’t. I suppose we thought your mother would just let it go as she got older, that Ronnie would help her. But we were wrong. She can’t let go of John Lee dying young. When you lose a child you spend the rest of your life hearing their voice and seeing glimpses of them around every corner.”

  “How did he die? No one ever talks about that.”

  “You know he drowned down on the beach. It’s why she finds the ocean unsettling. Your mother wasn’t paying attention. She’d quit Petal’s End by then and she was running wild. Oh my, your hands have gone stone cold, Fancy.”

  They had. I was shivering, too, in the warm summer air. My stomach felt queasy again. “People are going to think I’m crazy like Ma.”

  “No one knows the family story of the twelfth-born, just your mother and me. Oh, there have been rumours, but as the older people have passed away so have the speculations. Ronnie doesn’t believe any of it. He thinks your grandfather is to blame for all your mother’s problems. He might be right, to a point. There’s no perfect parent.”

>   There wasn’t nothing to argue there, for right then it seemed to me Grampie should have done a lot of things different. At least Loretta wasn’t pretending otherwise. Her forehead had creases I’d never noticed before, and the crow’s feet by her eyes seemed to have deepened.

  “Marigold came to visit your grandfather when Charlie died and he gave her a painting. Your mother held that against your grandfather, one more item on her list of grievances. He wouldn’t see Marigold when she wanted to go back for a second visit. He wouldn’t tell me why, but they had made the arrangement you could come here. Marigold seemed indebted to your grandfather. Many people feel that way. People assume when your grandfather died his memento went with him.”

  I wondered what she wasn’t telling me.

  “Your mother is trying to change the past, and how can you blame her? But no one can do that, not your grandfather, no one. As your grandfather said, sometimes those who pass on need to be left in peace.”

  Loretta stood up and went to the doorway. “I’m making you a ham dinner for your birthday. Your favourite. It’s in the oven now. You’ll surely feel better after that. Strawberry shortcake for dessert with whipped cream. Just relax until supper. You’re only just twelve, Fancy. You are not your mother or your grandfather. Life goes quick enough. You’ll have fun helping out this summer, you and Art.”

  “Grampie has John Lee’s cup, the one Ma was talking about. It’s in the Tea House. I saw it there on the shelf. Maybe he talked to John Lee.”

  Loretta turned and looked at me. “You need to let well enough alone. Do you understand me?” She shook her head and went down the hall, the stairs squeaking as she descended. At last it was quiet again, only the far-off birds sang, the smell of early summer hay caught up in the wind blowing south over the mountain fields.

  I followed Loretta down into the kitchen a while later. She was hulling strawberries, and the aroma of baking ham basted in maple syrup filled the kitchen.