The Memento

by Christy Ann Conlin

  Art walked over to the hedge labyrinth and I followed him. I heard voices far off, so I started inside the maze, trying to disappear. I sat on the bench at the opening. It served as a waiting room for those who were too afraid to go inside.

  Art came in and sat beside me. “Do you think she did it on purpose?”

  That’s what Margaret had yelled directly after it happened: that Jenny did it, that she was up to her tricks again, even to her own sister. She kept yelling it as Art and I lifted the lid off Pomeline’s fingers. It was a horrible sight, the blood smeared on the keys and dripping on the floor, her fingers swelling, the skin red and blue. Pomeline’s eyes rolled back in her head and she threw up. Jenny was crying out that she was sorry, and Marigold had come over with her cane in one hand, the other hand over her mouth, muffling her screams.

  A bird flew through the western sky, a solitary black silhouette. “It’s been a long day,” Art said.

  The darkness inside the hedges made me feel safe, shut away from it all.

  “Fancy, the graveyard …”

  “What about the graveyard?”

  “Your mother shouldn’t have gone down the beach. She shouldn’t have let John Lee out of her sight. But you can’t change the past. There’s nothing you can do. I don’t know what she thinks John Lee can tell you. It’s just her guilt talking. It’s made her crazy. I think it made your Grampie crazy too. I’m sorry.” Art’s voice was gentle, which made it lower, a glimpse of the man he would become.

  My throat hurt. Hush-a-bye, don’t you cry. It was all I wanted to do then, cry.

  “Do you think she did it on purpose?” he asked again.

  I stood up and started walking into the maze. Art came behind me.

  “Who?” There was enough going on that it was hard to know who was plotting against who.

  “Margaret pushing Jenny. Jenny pushing Pomeline. They’re both saying each other did it. It was an accident, don’t you think?”

  “She did too do it on purpose.” Jenny stood at the entrance with a bandage on her forehead, a souvenir of her fall.

  “How are you feeling?” Art asked her, ignoring what she’d said.

  “I have a headache. Dr. Baker gave me a pill. He’s gone off to the city with Pomeline, to have her fingers X-rayed. He’s sure they’re just bruised. Margaret pushed me. She shouldn’t have made fun of my grandmother. She should never have come here. Pomeline’s mad at me, as if it were all my fault. I just do what I have to. Doesn’t anyone understand that?”

  There was no point in any more conversation. I went into the maze and left them there at the entrance.

  Jenny called after me, “I won’t tell on you.”

  “For what?”

  “For going into the labyrinth. I’m going to see my swans.”

  “Then I won’t tell on you, Jenny,” I said under my breath.

  “Wait for me here when you’re finished,” she said, skipping off humming.

  I started running farther and farther in. It was stupid to run toward the centre with the light disappearing. It was heavy twilight now, and everything was silhouette and shadow.

  “Art? I’m lost.”

  No reply.

  I heard rustling. “Art, speak to me,” I called out.

  And Art did call to me, his voice muffled. “Fancy?”

  “Come find me right now.” I heard more swishing. It was not coming from the direction of his voice. Something was shaking the hedges. “Art? You come to me. I’ll whistle so you can find me. I’m going to try to go back to the start. I’ll follow the sky.”

  “It’s easier if you just stay put.” It was impossible to tell where his voice was coming from.

  My winding took me to the centre where the roses were. The stars were coming out. And there was Jenny. She was walking funny, all hunched over, shuffling, like she was going to fall over. She was humming. I can hear it still, a tuneless hum. She came toward me. I stopped whistling then.

  “Jenny, let’s go out,” I said.

  She looked up but it was no little girl, no Jenny Parker. It had a shrivelled face and eyes like black pits, stringy hair and a horrible leer as it reached out a hand to me, and in its long fingers it held a pink flower. It was still humming away as it tossed its head back and gave a scream that rounded in weird short chirps as it shook its head and lifted its thin arm out in front of its hobbled body, clothes all tattered, palm facing toward its head, index finger pointed up. Through all these years I can still hear the gurgle I made as I tried to call again to Art. The creature lifted an arm over its head and hopped up on the hedge wall, making to pounce down on me, but I darted straight ahead, turning left and right, tripping, my hands grabbing onto the dirt under the hedge, the sharp needles cutting into my fingers. I got up and ran, and it felt like a miracle when I saw the expanse of lawn outside the maze up ahead. I didn’t dare look behind me.

  Art was hollering from somewhere but I ran straight out onto the lawn, away from the labyrinth. The garden lights snapped on, illuminating the path. Loretta would be on her way out to fetch us for bed any moment. Jenny stood there looking at me, one hand behind her back.

  “Don’t blame me for anything, Fancy. I’m not stupid enough to go in there at this time of night. After being in the graveyard today I should think you would have had enough of creepy places.”

  Art came running out. “What was it?”

  I went to the fountain and splashed my face with gushing cold water.

  “Look,” Art said, pointing at the swishing branches behind the maze. A cloud of starlings lifted from the treetops, flying west, east and north and to the dark southern skies, making the same sounds that had come out of the thing’s mouth, twisting and turning like a great black current winding through the air, swooping low and then lifting high up and south over the forest, breaking against the sky, a black wave on the twilight blue. They left behind a cloak of silence so thick we did not move, the damp threads of the evening air falling on our tongues. Night was enveloping us now.

  This is one of those moments that repeats over and over in my mind now, many years later. With each rock of this chair I see the birds twisting, as though giving us a warning, Grampie speaking to me through them birds.

  Jenny held up her hands to the sky, like she was trying to get a scoopful of the stars before they was gone, but it was too late.

  20.

  Rose Absolute

  THEY BROUGHT Pomeline back from the hospital deep in the night and the next day she stayed in her room. It was the first day without the sound of piano music. And Margaret did not come to work. Her father called to say she was unwell, that she had been up all night sick and he was taking her to the doctor. He thought she was having a severe allergy flare. She might not come back to work, he said.

  Harry and Sakura came to the kitchen in the morning when Art and I were having a snack. They wanted to make more rosewater for party favours. We were carrying on with the festivities. Pomeline’s right hand was injured but it was just severely swollen and bruised. No broken bones, thank God, Harry said. But she wouldn’t be able to play the piano for a few weeks. They didn’t say she would miss her exams but we all knew she would. She was icing her hand and taking pain pills. Dr. Baker had given her something to make her sleep.

  I’d gone up early with a breakfast tray for Marigold. When I took the tray in, she was sitting in bed and she pointed to a table by the window. She talked about the party like nothing had happened, lounging in her white nightgown with a net over her hair, watching me move across the room. Out of nowhere it seemed, she said, “It was a terrible shame about your brother. But fortunate your mother was able to go on and have so many children. I only had one child, one Parker. I had that in common with Estelle.”

  I was about to point out that Estelle had two children, but before I could she carried on as though she had it sorted out in her mind again.

  “She had precious Pomeline, and with the help of medicine she was able to have Agatha Jennifer. She
had one miscarriage after another. Did you know that? There was something wrong with her womb.” She was looking around her room, like she was talking to someone else. “She lost baby after baby. Charlie was dreadfully disappointed. He was overjoyed to have Pomeline, of course. She was his heart’s delight. It was such a pity he didn’t care about Agatha the same way. It was as though there had been so many lost that by the time she was born he didn’t have any heart left to love her with. For me, there were no babies to lose. I wasn’t like your mother having babies like some barn cat, or Estelle with all her dead ones. I can understand why Estelle went to such lengths to have Jenny. We couldn’t do that in my day. What I would have given to turn my womb into a nurturing haven. But at least I had Charlie. He wasn’t like the other boys. He was a soft boy. His father didn’t understand him. He did not appreciate him.”

  I looked in the mirror and Marigold was looking right at me in the reflection. “But your mother just went on having children, one after another, like she was making cakes, big plump babies, even when it was past her time. There’s nothing more distasteful than an old woman having children, when the bloom is long off the rose.” I could tell it revolted her. “There was nothing we could do, you see. The waves were horrifically big. And no one could swim. Charlie was traumatized. His father hated how anxious he was after that.” Marigold dabbed her eye with a fine cotton hankie, pink roses on it that my mother had probably embroidered all them years ago. I doubt Marigold even noticed when I left the room.

  Margaret called in sick the next day as well, and the house was quiet, no piano music, no choir practice. But the day after, we were gathered at the Water House and Margaret came in, drawn and grey, rundown, slipping in quietly as Harry and Sakura put three large pots on the stove. We had collected an enormous amount of rose petals. They were going to refrigerate some to toss at the party. Jenny took one bowl over to the stove and put the petals in the pots. She picked up an enamel pitcher full of water and poured it in, carefully setting the pitcher back down. She peered inside on her tiptoes before she put the lid on top. No one said a word to her. It was like she was taking over her grandmother’s job. The water simmered and she poured the ice on the tops.

  Margaret stood by the counter near where Jenny and Harry took turns scooping out the distilled water and putting it in a glass container. Despite not feeling well she was making jokes and chatting with Marigold. Jenny had her lips pressed together, as though she was concentrating, thinking on matters of grave importance. She didn’t speak at all. Harry and Marigold discussed party details. They’d put a big tent up in case it rained. We’d sing in the gazebo. The waiters from the city would drift through with trays of food and drink. Marigold would welcome the visitors. Jenny could toss rose petals about. Art and I could wander around with baskets of soap and the miniature glass bottles of rosewater and offer them to the guests.

  Jenny was on a stool by a big steaming pot. Harry stood by another. Harry said it could have been anyone accidentally brushing up against the knob, it turned so easily from simmer to boil. Margaret had come over to the middle pot and lifted the lid. Jenny sneezed. And she sneezed again, holding her fingers up and squeezing her nose, falling into Margaret, who braced herself just in time on the edge of the stove. Margaret went to take the lid off and that’s when Jenny sneezed the last time, and Margaret startled and she fell forward, but this time she lunged over the pot, the sweet, dense steam scalding her face like a lobster shell, her skin blistering before our eyes as though rose oil was forming on her skin, her mouth open wide as she leapt about waving her hands, trying to cool her face off, shrieks coming out of that dark gaping hole, drowning out the gonging copper chimes in the herb garden.

  21.

  The Garden Party

  THAT NIGHT my dreams were shot through with Pomeline’s and Margaret’s screams, Pomeline’s mangled fingers, Margaret’s melting face smelling of scalded rose, my mother chanting and bird screech. I hardly slept, and the following day’s party was looming.

  There was a path of pink petals leading from the house to Evermore the next morning. Harry and Sakura discovered them early and they brought me and Loretta around to see. No one knew who had scattered them. But the day came up behind us breathing heavy and it was so busy no one cared, and no one thought about whether the trail led from house to garden or garden to house except for me. I kept thinking about them open windows earlier in the summer, about the door in the far wall of Evermore that Art and I had come through on our way back through the woods from Grampie’s house, and the thing in the labyrinth. I kept sorting through what Grampie said in his letter, but it was of no help to me.

  Summer was pressing herself down, digging in with her heels. Marigold missed Margaret, she said, who had been outstanding at bringing her ice water and keeping her fanned. Estelle was there, and she was strangely pleasant, her nursing training taking over, all business, as though they’d hired her, too. She went out to assist, inspecting, helping get the gazebo ready for our choir. Jenny whispered that her mother was calm because after the Margaret Incident, as Estelle called it, there would be no more long summers at Petal’s End for Marigold.

  Art came over in a white shirt with a bow tie. It was then that the first breaks came in his voice. I watched him ride up on his bicycle with a cap on, like he was a lad from long ago coming by the old pasture where the lane came in, through the fireweed, towering goldenrod and blue star flowers of the borage plant. The summer was turning him into a man as it was turning me into a woman. The season would end and we’d be free of the Parkers, if we could just hang on. But that morning we had the party in front of us, and soon we were in Evermore with the music playing from the gazebo, and back by the lily pond, and all the guests arriving, people I knew and people I had never seen before and would never see again.

  The cicadas were buzzing. White gauzy clouds hung in the sky and it seemed we’d been invaded by the world. The party planners dashed about here and there and Marigold wandered with her cane.

  “Isn’t the music pleasant?” Loretta said. She didn’t know what to do with herself. The caterer from the city brought in the food and a fleet of servers, dressed in black and white, moving with the starlings’ perfect timing, trays and trays of glasses balanced.

  “Must be what a ballet looks like,” Art said as a woman with a china plate full of delicate fairy cakes with light yellow icing went by, the tray held high. I took a cake and she swung away. As directed, we were holding out baskets of soap and rosewater bottles and bestowing them upon the guests.

  The quartet they had in the gazebo and the quartet by the pond played gentle, almost tranquilizing music. This is the backdrop in my mind, even after the passage of these years. No one could find Jenny. As careful as I’d watched her, she’d still slipped away. We were sent off to fetch her. Not one more thing could go wrong at Petal’s End, Marigold said, especially on the day she had been anticipating all summer.

  We looked everywhere, even in the labyrinth, a different place to navigate by daylight, but we could not find her. Loretta and Art and I went to the big house to look. We called through the rooms and halls and stairs. We had given up and left the house when Jenny appeared, walking from the carriage house, her white-gloved hands together. Loretta put her hand to her chest. “Oh my goodness, Jenny, don’t disappear like that. You’ll be the death of me.” She rushed back to the kitchen, calling over her shoulder that they were waiting for us at the gazebo.

  We took our places to sing. Pomeline, who insisted on playing through the pain, Art and me, Jenny beside her sister ready to turn the sheet music. Marigold stood with her cane like she was the director but she wasn’t doing nothing but fanning herself. We were to sing and then Pomeline was to walk over to the side of the gazebo and lead us in a bow. My stomach hurt, and Pomeline gave me a look of desperation. Dr. Baker was laughing and talking, seeming so kindly and wise, busy looking at what he wanted, knowing nothing, you see, of what he did all them years ago when Estelle was a youn
g nurse. He knew not a thing of what he had done now that Pomeline was a young woman who wanted to be a concert pianist. None of us knew then, on that summer day, how all the lies and secrets wove together.

  Jenny seemed nervous, like I was, as the people crowded in the chairs on the lawn. We gazed over a sea of summer hats. Jenny held out her bony arm and pulled me to her, Art standing on the other side. Marigold seemed electrified, like the audience had brought a life force out in her. She talked about the history of Petal’s End, of the Annex, of the poor soldiers who came, the people who convalesced, of the Petal’s End Chorus and how it lived again now in us.

  Harry took a step back. He was staying nearby while we sang, off to the side and crouched down, in case we needed him. Pomeline was at the keyboard of the spinet they had brought out for the concert. Her hair was piled up in a mass of ringlets. The bodice of her summer dress was very tight and her sapphire ring gleamed and she began. It was painful to see and hear, but we sang along, and Marigold closed her eyes. When we were finished the crowd was clapping away—oh how adorable, all decked out in their funny clothes. All of a sudden Pomeline started playing her exam piece, “Wedding Day at Troldhaugen.” Music coursed through the gazebo, sweet and choppy as her swollen fingers stumbled over the keys, and she cried as she played, for it hurt her.

  That’s when it happened. Marigold walking over to the side of the gazebo, holding out her arms for applause, taking the bow instead of Pomeline. Marigold bending strangely, the guests thinking she’s curtseying—the old lady is curtseying in her big summer gown—and that her expression was leering and off because of her stroke a few years back. But she was not curtseying. Her foot was caught by a loose board, tripping her, causing her to smash down, hitting her head with a thud. In that moment I was beside the lady, Jenny and Art and I were beside her. We tried to get her leg out. Marigold blinked and reached up a claw-like hand and she pointed directly at me. “We must make choices,” she said, tears leaking out of her eyes. “Poor little John Lee. But sometimes there have to be sacrifices, even if it brings out the hobgobblies. Do you understand that, darling?” Her runny eyes were wide, as though a ghastly sight was coming at her.