The Memento

by Christy Ann Conlin

  After that story, we never played games in the big house, not even with Jenny. And now three years later I was working throughout the house as a maid.

  After I made sure the room was tidy and the flowers set perfect in the hall, I came back to the kitchen. Loretta was on the phone. “Oh yes, I see, yes, oh really, yes,” she kept saying over and over again. Art was hulling strawberries and I put on an apron and started helping him. Loretta was going to make jam. Even when the Parkers didn’t come out they still wanted Loretta to make preserves and send them to the city for the winter.

  Loretta hung the phone up. “Well, the Parkers will be along any day now, not that they’ve settled on a day.” Loretta didn’t get annoyed—she got concerned. She liked a fixed schedule. She started getting the huge Maslin pots ready for cooking the jam. “That was Dr. Baker calling on behalf of Marigold. They’ve hired a girl to help Marigold out. He says it would be too much for me or you, Fancy. Pomeline is so busy practising for her piano exams she can’t help her grandmother as much as she used to. Jenny isn’t capable, of course. Apparently Marigold is doing very well, though. She’s a tough old bird. She’ll attribute it to the herbal remedies and teas she has taken over the years, and her hardy constitution. Maybe there’s something to it after all, children. Don’t be fooled by how fragile she looks. We should never judge someone on their appearance, that is the truth. They’ve hired Margaret Armstrong. You’ll remember her from Bible School.”

  Art locked eyes with me from across the room as he dried his hands. I took the plates of sandwiches out of the fridge and put them on the table. “Oh. Yes. Bible Camp Margaret,” I said.

  Loretta was inspecting the strawberries, making sure we hadn’t cut too much fruit off with the hull. “Well, was she a nice girl?”

  “She’s lazy as a pet raccoon.”

  “Fancy, really, that’s not pleasant.”

  “Well, it’s true. She’s not much of a worker.”

  “Her father owns the store that sells furniture and vitamins and swimming pools. And he has a private nursing home now, too. That must be how Dr. Baker knows them.” Loretta put her hands in the prayer position and looked at me and Art over her glasses. “Margaret will be here after lunch. You can show her around. There won’t be much for her to do yet. I’m sure she is a wholesome girl if Dr. Baker has hired her. You know how he is. She’s going to the vocational school in the autumn, doing the certificate program to be a nursing home attendant. This will most certainly be a good job to get experience attending to the old.” She shook her head and chuckled.

  “I hope Margaret likes seniors more than she likes children. I don’t think she liked working at Bible School,” I said.

  Art shot me a laser eye. You see, until the previous summer when we was eleven, we had gone to the Summer Vacation Bible School each August. Margaret had been a camp counsellor. She paid us no mind for most of the summer, and from the way she treated the kids who did catch her eye we were grateful we were invisible. Until one day near the end of camp, when we was waiting for the rickety school bus to take us home. The minibus was run by a number of churches, and after we got dropped off in the morning the bus would clang and bang away to pick up other kids going to the Christian Canoe Club, Gardeners for Christ, or out for full-immersion baptisms at the lake camp up on the South Mountain. At the end of the day it would rattle back to get us at camp, where we’d spent the day learning Bible stories and hymns under the old-growth hemlocks, and playing godly games of hide-and-seek and statue tag where we froze in the shape of Bible characters. I got in trouble every summer for swearing and telling ghost stories about the night-creeping hobgobblies at Petal’s End and the headless sailor over on the rugged island off Lupin Cove. It was so easy scaring them valley children, their great big eyes and round mouths. I felt bad when the little ones were scared but it was funny when the older kids got even more afraid. Art had stories too, ones he learned from Yvette, about the duppies, as she called them in the place she come from, nasty spirits of the night wandering around with chains and animals not quite right in their animal minds.

  Margaret was a sixteen-year-old girl then, whose come-hither look was wearing out from overuse. Her voice was nasal-sounding from her allergies, and being a heavy girl only made her breathe harder. She was allergic to pollen, she said, to summer itself. She’d cock her hip and flip her hair. She didn’t have a bit of interest in children. We was pests to her. She’d take bug poison when we’d act up and wave it around like she was going to spray it in our eyes, sometimes misting our hair in it. Once Margaret sprayed it in a glass of water when a young bucktoothed girl called her a fatty-cake. She gave the girl the glass of water and ordered her to drink it right up or she’d put the poison in her eyes. The little girl didn’t know what to do because she was told over and over to obey the grown-ups. A teenager was a grown-up to the girl, and she started crying as she went to take a sip of the poison. Margaret started laughing. “Only kidding,” she said, taking the glass away. “Who doesn’t like a joke? If you’re stupid enough to be tricked then you get what’s coming to you.”

  The bus was late that day and it was terrible hot, even in the shade. Art and I had gone to get a drink of water from the lunchroom in the administration building. When we got there the screen door and the inside door were both locked. As we stood there thirsty in the wicked heat there was a groan inside. We looked through the window and saw Margaret kneeling in her navy blue work skirt. The student minister who ran the program was standing with his eyes closed tight and his fleshy pink man part going in and out of Margaret’s mouth. The white blouse she wore was unbuttoned. Her big boobs were jiggling up and down. Margaret’s eyes were shut too and her bangs were hanging in her face. Art and I had seen nothing like that before. The minister had his hands in her mousy hair. Even through the window we could hear him saying her name, Maggie, Maggie, Maggie. We never heard anyone call her Maggie. She got mad if you gave her a nickname, but apparently she changed her rules for romance. Margaret suddenly glanced up toward us when Art took a step back. We didn’t know if she’d seen us, with the hair in her eyes and the minister going at her like he was trying to pump the life out of her, and just then it was like he was having an attack because he started shaking and thrusting and gasping, all red in the face, and we went running off, waiting down in the shade, praying we’d hear that consumptive bus pull up. It didn’t.

  Margaret came strolling down through the hemlocks with the minister. He was holding a Bible and they looked all earnest as they discussed the good Lord, except they was flushed and sweaty. “Scorcher of a day, isn’t it, children. Be good. Don’t sin,” he chuckled, fanning himself. He nodded at Margaret all formal, and off he went through the gates.

  Margaret came over to us, let out a big breath, her mouth open wide like a dragon, and bits of her bangs flew up to show us her eyes for just a second before her hair closed back down over them. Margaret smelled salty, like a starfish that’s been in the sun too long. She held up a finger straight and stiff like she was going to slice us open with it. “Don’t you say a word. Do you hear, you motherfucking whore bastard?” She poked Art. “And you too, brown boy. Or I’ll take care of both you, I really will. First I’ll freeze your eyeballs and then I’ll chop your head off just like that pirate did to his sailor. You’ll just be drifting around forever, stuck here, and no one will even ever see you. Bet you wish you never told me that story, Fancy Mosher.”

  The minibus finally came rattling in, the muffler half hanging off making an angry terrible growl, the driver beeping. We took the steps in one leap and the bus driver hollered at us to slow the hell down. Margaret walked away, and when the bus passed her on the sidewalk we didn’t look at her. The last week of camp the student minister didn’t come back. Word went around that he got caught with another one of the camp counsellors, a thin girl with short red hair and big green eyes and great big boobs. A boob man, I told Art on the way home the day we found out.

  Margaret didn’t
even look at us after that. She didn’t come back the next year, either. I guess she’d thought she was the only one. She worked in her father’s furniture store selling sofas and vitamin pills. She had a reputation with all the kids, and probably with some of the adults, but not Loretta. And Dr. Baker was mostly in the city so he didn’t know much about her neither. It seemed to me that even if they did know they both would have wanted her to have a second chance, that good honest work might restore her. Margaret wouldn’t have cared if they did know her reputation. She was fine with how she was, like being bad made her mysterious in a way her big body and her crooked teeth and the pimples on her cheeks didn’t.

  We didn’t tell anyone. No one keeps a secret like a child. Sharing the secret binds you together. Art and I had an unspoken pact between us then about secrets. When you threaten a child and tell them that if they don’t keep the secret something wicked and terrible will happen, they believe you. They won’t go and ask a grown-up for help for they believe there is none. It’s an invisible wall they stand behind, peering through to the other side where there is safety, a safety they can’t reach.

  In the kitchen, Loretta looked at us now, her hands folded, like she thought we were about to confide in her, but we did not. We made the praying hands and she led us in grace as she asked for health and friendship and harmony in the moment, in the day, through the nights and in coming summer if God in Heaven and His Son the Risen Lord was willing and merciful, Amen.

  “Did you give the list to Hector, Mister Man?”

  “Yes, first thing. But he wasn’t too pleased about going for groceries. He said he’s the mechanic.”

  “Well, he is the mechanic. And the chauffeur, and the handyman, too. He keeps forgetting that. We all do a bit of everything. It’s not like the days gone by. Look at me. I was in charge of the housemaids back when I was just a bit older than Margaret. Hector’s busy making up some list for Estelle. He thinks I don’t know. She still thinks she’s going to sell the place but Marigold seems to be having a second wind. Anyway, we’ll get that jam done up. The berries look beautiful. I remember when we made all kinds of jams and jellies in this kitchen.”

  “I thought you were in charge of keeping the house clean,” Art said.

  “I didn’t start out that way. I would do cleaning. Sometimes they’d need help in the kitchen. Good help was scarce. Any help was scarce. Fancy’s mother and I both worked in the house, but the last year she was here Marigold moved her into the kitchen full time and she’d do cooking and the laundry.” Loretta’s tone had changed.

  “Ma said she hated working in the kitchen.”

  “Your mother wasn’t easy to work with, as you can imagine, but as I told you, Fancy, she was the hardest worker. Even Mr. Long said if you wanted something done right the first time to ask Marilyn Mosher.” Loretta chewed her sandwich fast, and I knew there was another thing she didn’t want me to know. “There’s nothing I like more on a summer day than one of my tuna sandwiches, if I do say so myself. You did a nice job with the flowers, Fancy. That will be your job this summer, filling the rooms with fresh flowers. But you’ll need to go close all those windows you opened. That was helpful but you must remember to close them before noon. And when Marigold is here you must not open them at night. We must follow her rules.”

  I gave Loretta a look. “I didn’t open them. You opened them when you got up, didn’t you?”

  “Maybe it was the hobgobblies,” Art said.

  “Art, we’ll have no talk of Marigold’s superstitions. And Fancy, it’s fine if you opened them, but not fine to tell stories. It’s nice you’re trying to help but I don’t want you running around the house. It’s not allowed. You know that. Go shut the windows, Girly Miss.”

  We all got on with our chores. I hadn’t opened any windows, you see, but I wasn’t going to argue with Loretta. She must have forgotten. She was getting older, and my birthday had taken a toll on her. I went back into the grand hall. I looked around and I listened for what I’d heard in the Tea House, telling myself even as I did that it was nonsense. There was a muggy breeze blowing in, carrying whiffs of ocean that lingered after I shut the front door and pulled the windows closed in the music room and the study and the day room. I remember thinking Loretta must have been distracted with all her worry about the Parkers coming and about what would happen to the house now Marigold was elderly and Estelle was vengeful.

  Back in the kitchen Art was now mashing up strawberries. Loretta had gone out to hang laundry on the line at the back of the house. I started smashing up another huge pot full of berries. Art looked over at me, eyebrow raised. “Maggie?”

  “Maggie indeed,” I answered.

  “Maybe she was born again.”

  Loretta came bustling in with glowing red cheeks. “Fancy, did you close the windows? Art, how are the berries? We’ll do two batches. Let’s get the burners on then. Fancy, run out and tell Hector we’ll need more pectin when he goes to town. I’m sure he’s still out there. See if you can catch him. And I hope Buddy isn’t hanging around. He doesn’t have good sense. And bring in the rest of the laundry off the line. There’s another basket out there. And if you have some time, maybe you could start an embroidery for Marigold, a new sampler for her to have when she arrives. She’d be overjoyed … maybe a serene garden scene with her in it. You’re so talented with stitching people.” There was nothing that made Loretta happier than a long list of tasks to get through, chores that ordered her day.

  Hector was working on Old Rolly again, trying to get the wheel off, pounding with a hammer. The car looked perfect but he fussed with it anyway. He said his father told him an old car was like a woman of a certain age, kept in fine shape only with regular maintenance. Loretta said the Colonel was a car aficionado just as Hector was. Estelle wanted the cars sold off, but Marigold had insisted they stay just where they were. The same fight between the two of them ladies, but there the cars sat because Marigold was still in command.

  There were three carriage houses, one large one and a smaller one on either side of it, creating a courtyard. It had a curiously pleasant smell, a blend of gas and oil, paint and varnish, and old wood. I stood there, listening to Hector bang away. No sign of Buddy. Hector didn’t notice me. Hector had always lived on the mountain on the Flying Squirrel Road. He couldn’t bear to leave. Going to town was as far as he wanted to go. Who needs the world out there when you got the whole world around you here? he would say. I suppose more than anyone he understood why Marigold held so tightly to Petal’s End.

  When I turned twelve I saw a new side of Hector. He was the grown man that Art was not, and I was a girl waking into a woman. Oh yes, he was an arse, I’m sorry to say, but it was easy seeing past that when you were either a young girl or an elderly lonely lady. Hector had a slow quiet drawl, a long purr slinking between his full red lips, just like all the men in his family. It was hard to know what he thought, except that he was sure he was always right about everything. He’d smile and do just as he pleased. If he was wrong he found a reason to justify it. Hector was no different than the Parkers. That day in the carriage house I watched his muscles as he swung the heavy hammer to knock the tire off, the clang ringing out, the small butterfly tattoo on his bicep. His ball cap had fallen to the ground and he’d taken his T-shirt off. His sweat blended with the smell of oil and gas and it was intoxicating to me.

  “What are you staring at there, Girly Miss?” There was nothing sweet and innocent about how them words sounded coming off his tongue.

  I jumped and my face flushed. “Loretta wants you to pick up pectin for her jam. She forgot to put it on the list. She wants you to go soon. She was worried you’d just go and disappear.”

  “She does, does she? I see. Isn’t that just like a woman. Well, I guess I can head down now the afternoon has drawn on. Don’t that woman ever rest?”

  “Loretta’s got rest on her end-of-day list.”

  Hector laughed at that. “Loretta’s a good woman, don’t get me wrong
. You should try living with my father. At least I don’t have to work for him any more now I got this job. But I got some big plans with my friend, Buddy. I won’t be needing nothing from my asshole father soon.” He was scrubbing his hands and arms with some kind of spicy citrus cream for removing grease. Then he rinsed in the big set tub and washed again with soap and water. Beside the sink were some ropes and chains hanging on wall pegs and beside them rusty metal leghold traps hanging from hooks.

  Hector combed his hair. It was so thick and wavy, I can see it now, after all this time. “Well, guess who grew up this year,” Hector drawled, looking at me in the mirror. I saw his eyes in that reflection looking at my body. He didn’t even try and hide it now we were alone. I blushed again, his eyes on mine, his low laugh when he saw my fingers touching my scar. Hector was too young then for the cigarettes to have stained his teeth or his fingers, and there were no lines yet around his eyes or mouth, but there was a dark look he’d get. “Want to come to town with me, Fancy?”

  “I’m bringing in the laundry now. Art and I got work to do. Hector, you should get going or Loretta will get agitated.”

  Hector pinned me with a big long stare. I suppose it would have been good if I’d been frightened and run away like he was the big bad wolf but I had no fear of Hector. That summer it was more like a fascination come over me.

  “So, you aren’t scared now, a big girl like you, all that nonsense with your mother? I know what she was going on about, what your grandfather did. Don’t be ashamed. He helped people. I guess it’s time you knew. I thought you did.”