The Memento

by Christy Ann Conlin

  “Away from me, you mean,” Estelle interrupted. “And what, really, do you know about this, David?”

  I thought again of the conversation they’d had by the Annex, and Hector’s surmising. Pomeline turned and went inside.

  “I don’t mean to interrupt but I’ve got some cold lemonade and strawberries and cake, if you’d like. It’s cool in the house. And there’s supper to get.” A piece of Loretta’s grey hair was sticking out of her bun and she poked it back into place, sweat rolling down beside her eyes.

  “We’re heading back now. But thank you, Loretta.” Estelle smiled at her as though only Loretta understood what Marigold was putting everyone through. Estelle opened the passenger door. “Jenny will be out at some point. She wanted to be her grandmother’s caregiver but I told her that was crazy. On that, at least, Marigold agreed with me.” Then all in one move she squished out her cigarette with her high heel, got in the car and slammed the door.

  Dr. Baker got in the driver’s side. Off the black car went, sliding through the forest. The trees seemed to have inched closer toward the house while we weren’t looking, their tops brushing the speck-less summer sky. Piano music streamed out the mansion’s windows. As Loretta and I walked to the house, I realized I was whistling the piano melody, and it was the same one I’d heard in the Annex the night before, the same song I’d heard at Grampie’s … now soaring from Pomeline’s fingers.

  9.

  The Maids

  CALM RETURNED as soon as Estelle and Dr. Baker left. It wasn’t the same, but it fooled me—the summer air, the way of our daily routines. There’s great comfort in predictability, Grampie would say. All good in a garden comes from habit and all good art comes from the same, he’d remark when he went off to the outdoors or to his painting. Through the long years I have lived I’ve found comfort in the routine of the day, the rising and setting of the sun, things that never fail you. Art and I did our chores and ate our meals and spent our spare time riding bikes and roving the beach and playing in Evermore. I cut flowers each day for the house. We opened the downstairs windows each morning and closed them by noon. Loretta cooked meals and we served them in the dining room, on trays in Marigold’s rooms, or on the verandah. Marigold took her daily walks with Margaret, and sat in the shade in Evermore, looking for her vitality, she proclaimed. She’d sip her teas and take her pills and tinctures. She went to bed right after supper and in the morning she slept in. Sleep, she preached, was the best healer. Margaret served her breakfast on the balcony of the bedroom, looking out over the grounds.

  I’d sit with Loretta in the evening doing embroidery and we’d watch the day fade into night.

  But underneath the tranquility there was a certain restlessness. I’d be sitting by the lily pond and there’d be chatter in the leaves, and yet when I looked there’d be nothing there. From the corner of my eye there’d be a flash in the perennial flower beds but when I gazed upon those lofty flowers there were only hummingbirds and butterflies. When the birds sang I would whistle along, and sometimes it seemed a muffled voice sang with me. When I’d stop and cock my ear there was only birdsong. It was at them times the memento seemed believable.

  Loretta did not want to discuss it any more. She kept herself busy, never looking at me for too long. Art would notice me listening and peering around my shoulder. But he too said nothing, not then anyway. It became easier and easier to let the peace of summer, them lazy days, just waltz us from dawn until dusk. Before long I had stopped looking over my shoulder altogether.

  Dr. Baker came out every few days as promised, and he’d chat with Loretta about domestic matters before heading off for discussion of intricate family politics—the management of Marigold and Estelle—with Pomeline. Their lives moved back behind closed doors. We were told what we needed to know when it pleased them. Marigold was determined to have the garden party, and Pomeline was helping. Dr. Baker looked after the back and forth with Estelle. He was the only one who could stand her, Art and I decided, because he was a man of medicine.

  Loretta and I would have our breakfast outside at the table near the kitchen door. The early air was refreshing, but the sun started licking at the edges and by noon the freshness was spoiled. There was little rain in July and by mid month the land was parched. No one knew when Jenny was coming and no one spoke of her. The city was a world away, and not even the loud ringing of the heavy black phones could bring it to us. We began to forget Jenny and her mother. If it wasn’t for the constant piano music flowing through the house, and the glimpses of them Parkers through doorways and in various parts of the garden and grounds, we might not have known they were at Petal’s End.

  Pomeline moved through the house like flickers of light coming in the deep-set windows of the mansion. At first I’d see her outside, or walking along a hall singing these cheery songs, or skipping over the stepping stones as though she was a young child again, twirling like she was dancing with someone we couldn’t see. One afternoon shortly after Pomeline arrived we was out by the lily pond. Art and I had been lying on our backs playing a game of finding shapes in the clouds and we heard Pomeline singing in the distance. She strolled over and sat down on a bench nearby, caressing the daisies in her hand and crooning in perfect French as she sat in her wide-brimmed sun hat. I could not understand a word. Art told me later she was singing about love—amour, he said.

  Margaret was with Marigold all the time, and we’d only see her when she was leaping out of her father’s car in the morning, or in passing as we gave her a tray or watched her take Marigold to the garden, or sometimes in the car with Hector if he drove her home. When Marigold would nap through the mid-afternoon Margaret came outside for her break, sitting out talking to Hector, if he was around, smoking cigarettes. She kept away from us.

  Time itself lost the meaning we put upon it, and it was a shock to us when Pomeline came down to the kitchen to tell us that, now two weeks had passed, Marigold was settled and wanted to start a choir in preparation for the party. Marigold insisted on calling it a choir even though we were such a small group. From then on we’d spend every afternoon in choir practice in the music room. I started hoping Pomeline would remember our piano lessons but she hadn’t mentioned it since the first day. She was distracted by her coming piano exams. She abruptly stopped walking in the garden and her colour began to wane from being inside most of the time, intensely focused on her relentless cadenzas and arpeggios.

  I came into the music room early for our first choir practice and I was a bundle of nerves, for I’d heard the piano far off in the house and recognized the tune right away. Pomeline was alone at the keyboard. She lifted her eyes to meet mine. She was playing that now familiar song again, the one that kept revealing itself to me. When I asked about it she said, “Oh, you look so alarmed, Fancy. It’s just a song Jenny loves. Granny sang it for us when we were children, a song from her childhood, she said. Granny sang it to Daddy, too. He couldn’t stand it. Granny said her nanny sang it to her as a child. I suppose it is somewhat creepy, like a lot of old songs are, terrorizing children to sleep. We aren’t doing it for the garden party, have no fear.” She put her head down and launched into a spectacular piece for a few moments. “ ‘Wedding Day at Troldhaugen,’ opus 65, number 6 … isn’t it breathtaking? It’s for my examination.” Pomeline didn’t wait for me to answer and she seamlessly switched to a ballad she said we were to sing for the garden party.

  I didn’t worry no more. The music I kept hearing must have been tucked away from when I was little, nothing more than snatches from my memory that was so sharp they seemed to play outside my mind.

  Just when singing was added to our day, Marigold had Pomeline tell us she wanted to start doing needlework in the late mornings before lunch, and I was to join her. Margaret would bring her down to the front sitting room and we’d work there by the French doors. It was unusual, as Marigold didn’t do much stitching. She just held the hoop in her hands as she rocked in her chair and watched me, admiring my herrin
gbone ladder stitch and my lazy daisies and French knots.

  Margaret wouldn’t let on but I knew she was impressed by my skill with a needle, for she could hardly take her eyes from watching my fingers. She was acting like some senior maid and Art and I weren’t worthy even of her notice, unless we was doing something wrong. When I passed her in the hall she’d tell me to put on shoes, and to slow down or speed up, the opposite of whatever I was doing. Margaret had no interest in learning embroidery stitching but Marigold insisted she try and do a sampler. I explained what Ma had told me, that it was what young girls did long ago, to show off their skills. I saw her watching me from under her bangs. It was the speed I could stitch at that Margaret liked, how fast my flowers would appear, and how perfect. Margaret and Marigold marvelled how I didn’t need to draw no picture on the muslin, how I just stitched the picture waiting in the fibres. I could put in stitch after stitch with my eyes closed, letting my fingers take control. Even the colours I picked without thinking, pulling the floss from the basket.

  And now with my eyes dim it is no different. It focuses the mind, and when you are old that is helpful, for the mind begins to fracture. Needlework was my only way to feel close to Ma. I always knew it give her a satisfaction, too, that she passed something along to me, although I did not understand the significance for many years.

  The first day Marigold called me into the sitting room to join them she looked at me careful before she spoke. “Marilyn had a way with a needle, Fancy.” Marigold’s voice cracked when she said my mother’s name. “There was a time when most of the linens were embroidered by Marilyn Mosher. Now it’s all done by machine, but back then it was done by hand. It’s long out of fashion, but here at Petal’s End we don’t concern ourselves with fads.” Her tremor was barely visible, as though Petal’s End was rehabilitating her.

  Deep in July I took a vase of fresh flowers up to Marigold’s room just after breakfast. A light rain had fallen in the night and I’d been soaked from the raindrops falling off the leaves as I picked the flowers. I had to change when I got back. I was late coming up and hurried along to her room.

  When I walked in the door Margaret was helping Marigold pull on thick support hose, which she wore to support her bulging veins. Her white hair was braided and pinned up on her head.

  “Oh, how stunning, Fancy. Put them right here on the table beside me. I admire midsummer flowers but there’s nothing quite as special as the first and last flowers of the season, the mayflowers, and the October roses. I see you’ve been cutting the Lord Black of Swallow’s Hill. I worship the tea roses. I did a hybrid once, for my husband. I called it The Colonel Parker. But it had a fishy odour so I let it die. Charlie’s rose garden is doing well. They are keeping them splendidly. Arthur is a great help in the garden, they tell me.”

  She moved over to her dressing table where she looked at me in the round mirror. Margaret came over and helped her with her makeup. There was a magnifying glass on the table that Marigold used on her own so she wouldn’t get the lipstick and eye liner crooked.

  “Maybe you’ll end up working in a flower shop. Agatha would find that terrifying, of course. What a silly girl she can be, afraid of a vase of flowers. I never understood it. Agatha says cut flowers reek of death as they wilt and brown. She’s terribly morbid, that dear child, which I attribute to her mother.”

  “Jenny sure knows her own mind,” I said.

  Margaret was standing silently with her lips pressed together as we talked about Jenny, like we was talking about a lunatic. She went off into Marigold’s closet in an adjoining room.

  “No lady wants a shiny face.” Marigold chuckled with delight at her reflection and brushed some sweet-smelling powder on her cheeks with an enormous puff. “Well, each to their own, I say. There is time yet, so much time for you young people. Margaret and I are having a slow morning today.” She picked up a big pea-cock-feather fan with a base of abalone shell and started flapping it about. “Estelle says we should have air conditioning but I think that’s absurd. All you need is a breeze and you can endure any heat. And what we must never forget about summer, darling, is that it just doesn’t last.”

  Since Marigold seemed to be talking to herself, I left her at the vanity and went through the adjoining door. Margaret turned around holding an antiquated maid’s outfit. “Jenny sounds like a freak, Fancy. I hope she doesn’t come out,” she whispered.

  “She ain’t that bad. You get used to Jenny. She can be kind. You just never know when. Same with being mean. Ma says that’s a family trait. Except for Pomeline.”

  “I just hope they keep Jenny in the city.” Margaret held out the black dress with a white apron. “Look what I found yesterday, on the third floor in the sewing room. Or linen room. Whatever it’s called. Marigold asked me to go looking for them, for nostalgia’s sake.”

  Margaret carried the maid’s uniform on the hanger to show Marigold. She clapped her hands together and tittered like a mindless young girl. “It will be just like the old days. Why don’t you try them on, my dears? There must be one that will fit you, Fancy. Go have a look-see. So much nicer than what those cleaning girls wear, dressed like they’re going to a gymnasium. Margaret, take Fancy upstairs to change.” Marigold was looking at the dress fondly, like it might get up and start moving around the room and fold her clothes, maybe serve her some tea and crumpets.

  Margaret bit her lip and went out the door carrying the dress, and I followed her up the stairs to the third floor and past a long row of storage rooms. The nursery had been up there, as well as the room for the nanny and governess, though I couldn’t remember those being used in my lifetime. Margaret took out a skeleton key when we came to the room at the end.

  “Where’d you get that?” I said, thinking about the key to the Annex.

  “Marigold sent me down to get it from Loretta. Loretta said it would be good to humour her.” She shrugged. “They’re paying me. I could care less. The summer will be over soon enough. That old lady’s crazy. You should hear the stories she tells me.”

  The key turned with a loud click, and she twisted the glass knob and opened the door. The room was large and the air was stale and dry. There was a small deep-set window with a window seat overlooking the back of the house. I reached for the tarnished brass light switch. There was a light fixture on the opposite wall with a pink sconce. I flicked the switch back and forth but it didn’t come on.

  “Another thing that doesn’t work,” Margaret said. “Surprise, surprise, with the age of this place. Hector says the whole place needs rewiring.”

  There was a curious light in the room coming through the window, staining the white walls pale purple. “I guess this was the sewing room. I ain’t never been in here.” The walls were lined with closet doors. There was a long oval mirror mounted on a stand-up wooden frame, the glass warped and dusty. On either side of the mirror was two of them dress forms, black metal skeletons to pull a dress over. A set of shelves was built into one wall with irons lined up, some books, a stand full of dress patterns and a porcelain watering can with faded yellow lilies on the side. I opened up a cupboard and it was packed with fabric, carefully folded but never used. It was like it had all been abandoned. On the floor was a brittle wickerwork box of embroidery flosses and fabrics and needles, probably my mother’s. I could hardly believe my find. There was also a box of wooden frames. I knelt down and started looking through them.

  “You might as well take those. Whoever stored it there is probably dead. I’d have figured you and Art would have been through the whole house,” Margaret said as she opened up the centre closet, where butler suits hung. “So many doors in this house, and most of them are locked.”

  Margaret opened up another closet. It was stuffed full of black dresses and white aprons. The upper shelf had white hair bands with a lace detail at the front. “Mrs. Parker said they had a seamstress at one point, when she first married Mr. Parker, to make all the clothes for the staff, and for her and the children.” We sto
od there in front of the big mirror, holding our dresses. “I’m going to put it on if that will make the old lady happy. She’s going to give me a reference. And maybe a raise.” Margaret took off her skirt and top and stood there in her bra and panties. She didn’t mind being undressed, even with her rolls of flesh, her big breasts stuffed into her black bra. “A girl should wear sexy underwear,” Margaret said, catching me glancing at her. “It catches a man off guard.” She pulled the dress on, buttoned it up and tied the apron. “Go on,” Margaret said. “It won’t bite you. And it will make Marigold shut up.”

  I turned my back. It was my first year wearing a bra. I had no choice for in just one year I’d gone from a girl flat as a cutting board to having breasts that reminded me of the naked statues in the gardens that the Colonel coveted. Loretta would have put brassieres on the statues if they’d have let her. She bought a couple for me, a scratchy beige industrial fabric. She said it wasn’t right for a girl my age to go jiggling about, although Loretta said nothing about Margaret’s bosom. I pulled the dress on and it seemed almost tailor-made for me. I looked in the mirror as I tied the apron. It was then I saw my mother’s initials embroidered on the pocket. I ran my fingertips over the stitches as Margaret came behind me and put lace maid caps on our heads. We stood there side by side in the mirror, me puny and short, and her tall and wide, an odd pair if there ever was one. I raised my hand and the girl in the mirror raised her hand back as far off we heard a door slam and we was both startled out of the strange mood that had come over the room.

  Margaret took lipstick out of the skirt she had laid over a chair. She circled my lips with it without even asking, and I let her do it. I examined my reflection, and I scarcely recognized myself. I smiled in the mirror and the small young woman smiled back. Margaret suddenly took a deep breath. I looked at her in the mirror, watching myself watching her, or the little maid in the mirror watching her. Margaret’s eyes weren’t on mine in the glass, or on my dress. She had one hand on my shoulder, and when I followed her eyes they were staring at a face behind us, reflected poorly in the blemished mirror, a young woman’s face watching us there in our uniforms, cameo perfect, motionless, just a disembodied head above Margaret’s shoulder. Fancy Mosher, it said.