The Memento

by Christy Ann Conlin

“Agatha,” I said, “it ain’t polite to stare. It’s giving me the willies.”

  She laughed like an imbecile, not even trying to be discreet after that.

  “I’m terribly sorry for what has happened to you, Fancy. I knew all those years ago that Hector was a bad man but he never told on me for burning down his illegal fields. Good was mixed in with the bad of Hector.”

  Art stood up. She held her hand up and he didn’t move or speak.

  “All people do a few terrible things in their lifetimes. One must set those things straight. It’s the only way. I hear your mother is doing poorly, Fancy. You must go and make your peace with her.” Jenny got up with her cane and went across the verandah and into the house.

  For the first few weeks all our interactions were much like that—stunted, convoluted, strange.

  Art sat down and put his arm around me. It felt some good sitting together, his musky scent wafting over me as we looked out over the lawn to where the forest began. Shivers went tapping down my spine, maybe from sitting close to Art and from him being kind, from how good his warm summer skin smelled … or maybe it was the family heirloom closing in on me, which despite—or maybe due to—my muddled head, I could tell was happening. There was just too much not making sense, too many strange occurrences. I could rationalize and make up stories but something unorthodox was going on. Either way, Art making me excited, and the peculiarities—both scared me. The trees seemed even tighter together, a wall closing us off.

  I spent the next two weeks getting the place cleaned and livable, my water lilies and peonies beautiful in the outdoor vase, and trying to figure out a way to take on the cooking without upsetting Jenny. It wasn’t just the horror show of nibbling at her meals and then sneaking a sandwich when she was asleep, which I discovered Art had also been doing when we had a midnight run-in. It was that Jenny was constantly in the kitchen watching me, looking at me like she wanted to talk. “Hear that?” she’d ask me throughout the day. Of course I was hearing birds sing and the outlandish racket she’d make with the pots and pans and opening and slamming cupboards. “See that?” she’d ask, pointing over at a doorway or the window. My silence seemed to be interpreted as a sign I was in agreement, as though we had an understanding.

  She and Art seemed happy to creep around in the dust and cobwebs. Every evening they drank their wine and we talked about silly things. By day there was barely any conversation, like we were in a monastery. Jenny spent her afternoons reading and sorting through old photos. She was making an album of her grandmother’s days at Petal’s End, she said. She was off to bed early each night with her sherry and up late in the morning, just as Marigold was. That left me and Art, and we’d go off to the kitchen and clean up, singing while we did so. After, we would rest outside on a bench or in chairs in the sitting room Loretta had. He talked about his psychology and I listened to him, although I couldn’t keep up with most of it. But he smelled good and put no pressure on me for anything at all.

  Jenny got around with a cane just like Marigold did, but she was more petite than her grandmother ever was. She still wore her kerchief, hiding her bits of hair. She wheezed around the place, her asthma worse than ever. She spent hours in the library with her book, The Woman Beautiful, or Maidenhood, Marriage and Maternity by Monfort B. Allen and Amelia C. McGregor. It was Granny’s book, she said. It was full of information on all the marvellous and complex matters pertaining to women together with the Diseases Peculiar to the Female Sex. She read that much to us.

  I can still hear Jenny’s thudding and clunking as she walked. She said she had to use the cane because of the horrible treatments her mother had inflicted on her for her illness, treatments that made her wish she was dead more than her illness ever did. Jenny said it was a disease particular to women. She dropped that kind of information into a conversation no different than if she was commenting on the weather. “Oh my, I got a disease in my uterus, pass me the pastry cutter. Oh yes, they gave me such a sinister treatment it burned my skin and made me vomit and made my bones brittle. Where’s the sugar, Fancy? I went out to see Sweet William. He was paddling about. He doesn’t seem to age. My mother locked me up in a hospital and forced medicine and treatment on me. I love Lady Dundee cake. Can you bake that, Fancy? My Granny died in a nursing home. She never got better. She was crippled up and her face was frozen in a scream after the garden party. Do you think you could make more bread? Mine doesn’t rise. It’s a shocking shame about your daughter, but it’s good you’re here with us now. How I adore a fresh dill pickle.”

  And so it went with Jenny that summer, her talking away and me doing as she requested, but refusing to engage. At least there was no sign of her strange religion, and she was not spouting off any of her funny scripture lines she pulled out of hymns and carols. There was the rare time I would catch myself whistling, but I would stop right away for the quiet house amplified it out of proportion and sent those shivers through my bones.

  Since I wasn’t running around filling up vases with flowers and doing all the things Loretta had always kept me busy with, there was not much else to do except keep her company, when I wasn’t cleaning or hustling her out of the way in the kitchen to stop her from cooking. Jenny didn’t want no help with her bathing and she said she didn’t need no help with her pills, she just wanted the friendship. Like it used to be, she said, as though in her memory Art and I had been her bosom buddies. Funny how time can draw such different pictures of the past. She also got me teaching her embroidery, although she seemed happier to just watch me do the stitching than try it herself. I was doing up a picture for her of the pond and the flowers around it, and them nasty white swans on the water among the lilies. She liked to do the needlework in the afternoon when it was too sticky to do anything else but sit in the shade. We did the cooking in the morning. Every day she let me do more. We ate in the dining room at that long table, just the three of us sitting there like we was waiting for guests who weren’t never going to arrive.

  She kept asking if I had seen Ma much. Well, no, of course not, I told her. She said she understood how difficult it could be with mothers. Her mother and Dr. Baker were still scheming how to get Petal’s End from her. Jenny didn’t ask me much about my daughter. She would start to talk about her and then would drop the topic. I thought that was odd but decided it was because she couldn’t have children.

  I was stitching one afternoon and she was watching me. “You have good hands, Fancy. You go so fast your fingers blur. And you come up with those designs like I have never seen.” I stopped. It reminded me of such a thing Pomeline would have said. I glanced up at her portrait and Jenny’s eyes followed me. Together we looked at Pomeline, with her flowing hair and her blue eyes, posed there like she was going to walk right out of the painting. Jenny started shaking and hoisted herself up with her cane. She stood by the door. My needle was still between my fingertips, the white silk floss I was using to make Sweet William come to life was in my hands and the silver thimble capped my index finger. Her breathing got short and wheezy but she held up her hand when I made to get up. I stayed put as she coughed and left the room.

  I told Art about it later when Jenny was in bed and he said he’d check on her when she was sleeping. She kept the door open in the night. “In case I need you,” she said, “I’ll call out for you.” But it had been weeks and she hadn’t called out once. We kept all them doors open then, connecting the back of the house with the front, just in case, both of those worlds fused together at last. We hadn’t said a word about the Annex. When I checked, the key wasn’t hanging behind the painting no more. The door was locked up tight, and I didn’t know if Jenny had the key or if Estelle had taken it with her twelve years ago.

  5.

  The Swan House

  THE MIDSUMMER air was crispy hot with late-day cicadas buzzing and crickets chirping, the sounds of season change. Jenny liked going out to the pond in the early afternoon, to sit in contemplation, she said. She proclaimed it eased her suffering
and pain. Counting damselflies, meditating on the water lilies, listening to the frogs croak, watching her swans, all of these activities soothed and calmed her. We did whatever she wanted, seeing we were working for her. There was solace in the familiarity of Art. He stopped with most of his psychology tactics and we just picked blueberries and worked together around the house and garden when we weren’t catering to Jenny. It was almost like bygone times. I made muffins, and it gave me comfort, that tradition, using the same pots and spoons and jars and labels, being in the room where Loretta had worked.

  August started off with Estelle and Dr. Baker relentlessly telephoning. Jenny wanted nothing to do with either of them. Finally, after a week of it, I asked Jenny what they were calling about. And why they hadn’t been calling before. We were needle-working in the sitting room at the front of the house. I already had three embroideries, finished in July, encased in frames from the embroidery box. Jenny had me hang them in the sitting room.

  “Oh, they have been calling. My mother never stops calling. Those pictures are awfully disturbing, Fancy. The stitching is remarkable, though, just like your mother’s,” she said.

  She must have thought embroidery brought my mother to mind, which it did not. I didn’t take the bait, and asked Jenny once more why her mother persisted in calling.

  Jenny kept studying my pictorials. “How would I know? I leave the phone off the hook. Art keeps putting it back. I take it off again. He thinks my mind is affected by pain medication and I don’t know the difference. He means well, so I indulge him.”

  That explained why the social worker hadn’t been calling about my daughter, to check in and see how I was doing. They were getting a busy signal. Jenny said not to worry—if there was anything urgent they’d go through Raymond Delquist at the law firm, as Estelle was supposed to do. That was the arrangement, she said, and it must have slipped my mind. She said it like I was the one with recollection troubles, not her. It wasn’t worth arguing about, although she looked primed for a debate.

  She sighed and kept on about her tormentors. “They found out I’ve stopped going down to the hospital for treatments. With all my mother’s snooping, it took her long enough to find that out. But my well-being is the least of my mother’s concerns. I’m an obstacle, you see. She’s threatening to have me declared incompetent. My mother lives to undermine. It’s her sole pleasure. I don’t want them coming here. They’ve been waiting for years for an excuse to try to change Granny’s will, biding their time. Mother says that I’m possessed by Granny’s spirit. Granny thought the same about you, that you were John Lee reincarnated.” She didn’t need anyone in a room but herself to keep a conversation going.

  Jenny fell into a fit of cackles as Art walked in. His arms glistened as he sat down with a glass of ice water. He’d been taking the boards off more of the windows so we could have some light and air. He didn’t even bother asking why she was laughing.

  “I told my mother what we saw that day in the Annex, years ago. She didn’t believe me, not a word. Dr. Baker said I was delusional, making up stories. Well, I told Mother that he was fucking her and her daughter, how did she feel about that? She slapped me across the face like I was a lewd shrew. My mother believes only what she wants to. Don’t come out here, I told her. It enrages her when I tell her what to do.” Jenny rubbed her fingers together like she was doing an invocation. It appeared to me the cancer was the least of her worries—a pestilence of remorse and retribution was growing in her, gnawing on her organs.

  As if by divine providence, the phone out in the hall rang then and we all jumped. “Just let it ring,” Jenny said.

  Art ran his fingers through his hair, his skin brown against the silver. “I have an activity set up for us outside. I thought you might enjoy it. Making stepping stones.”

  Jenny clapped her hands gleefully. I announced, however, that Art was clearly losing his mind from not having enough to do if it had come to crafts.

  “Ain’t that nice, Art, making me feel like I’m back down in the valley hospital. Or like we’re pretending it’s back when they had the soldiers with shell shock. We could go in the Annex and do it there, and bring back more good times,” I said.

  Jenny folded her arms together. “They don’t call it shell shock now, Fancy. It’s a disorder. Everything’s a disorder, even grief.”

  I thought of Charlie, but Jenny didn’t seem to mind. “There are painful memories in there,” she said.

  I apologized for being insensitive but Jenny waved her hand. “Sometimes it’s easier to forget. But you would know more about that than me, Fancy.”

  What did she know? Art was drinking his water as though it was the last glass of his life.

  “Fancy, your mother isn’t well. We can’t protect you from that. Ronnie called from the hospital. I think that’s his name. It must be short for Ronald. That’s a better name. Anyway, he said your mother would like to see you. He’s called several times. The busy signal didn’t deter him either. It’s serious.”

  “It’s too little, too late. She only ever wants one thing from me and I ain’t delivering on that.”

  We set out after lunch for our activity. Art had the materials ready in the Water House. The room still had a slight botanical fragrance lingering in the air. I hadn’t been in there since Margaret had her face scalded, but we said nothing of that.

  Art started mixing up a big bucket of concrete. He pointed at an envelope on the table and I opened it to find the broken fragments of Grampie’s and John Lee’s cups and saucers. “I thought you might want them after all this time. You can use them in a memory stone. It’s a nice way to put things to rest.”

  I didn’t know what to say. On one hand it was thoughtful, and on the other hand it seemed outrageous, like he was trying to rile me up, to provoke me. Art wanted me to remember while he and Jenny were busy blocking out what had happened on the island. It made no sense.

  I poured the china bits out on the table, each piece clinking as it hit the wood. Jenny ran her fingers over them, barely touching, as though she might need to snatch back her hand at any moment.

  “My Grampie’s teacup,” I told her. “And my brother’s.”

  “His paintings are worth a great deal of money now. I’ve been collecting them. The art gallery in the city wants to do a show, so they have them there,” she said. “We could glue this cup together and donate it. Or auction it.”

  I was speechless.

  Art looked up from the concrete. “I think your Grampie would have been surprised too.”

  “Didn’t people want to keep the portraits?”

  “When people get old no one cares about the things they leave behind. All these possessions, and as soon as you die the family can’t wait to call the auctioneers. Rather humbling, isn’t it? My ancestors would be appalled. Anyway, when the value went up on your grandfather’s paintings, more people sold them. They were instantly collectible. Such a distinct style. I did some courses in art history. It’s folk art, of course, vernacular art.” Jenny said that the gallery would like to come out and see where he lived. “I know the place belongs to you but—”

  “That’s not true,” I interrupted. “The place was left to Loretta, and she said we were never, ever to go there again. When we went to the Believers she said it was best to forget life on the mountain.” I told Jenny I didn’t want to go through the woods to Grampie’s and I was glad it was all boarded up. Jenny knew then to let it drop, and Art put two silver bowls full of broken china on the table in front of us.

  Art had aluminum pie plates set out on the long table and he poured the concrete in and we made designs. He had some patterns and Jenny used those, and I just made mine up like I did with embroidery scenes, using the bits of broken china. Art’s therapeutic session seemed to be working. We went fast, so the concrete wouldn’t set on us. Jenny got tired out of nowhere, as she had been prone to. She lost interest. I took her into the house but she refused any help going up all those stairs.

 
Back out in the Water House, Art was cleaning up. I didn’t see the point in mincing words.

  “Is it true what she says, about her health, about her mother and Dr. Baker?”

  Art said it was true that she gave up getting treatments. She didn’t think she’d get better. She still took pain pills but he didn’t know how often. She was secretive about that. And yes, her mother and Dr. Baker was phoning. And it didn’t matter if all three of us told Estelle what we saw all them years ago, Estelle would never believe it. She would say that Jenny was mentally ill, that she had brain damage from when she was born, that Jenny just wanted to be in control. They had come out a few times for what they called family visits, he said. Art was at Petal’s End when they had the big fight in early June. He didn’t want to tell me earlier, for I was just settling in. Estelle had come out by herself that day and she and Jenny were in the music room. Art ran from the kitchen when he heard screaming from the hall. Estelle even broke a glass lamp. She was irrational, and kept cutting Jenny off, saying she was delusional. Dr. Baker came out with Estelle the next week and he said Jenny was having a psychotic break, with slanderous fantasies.

  Art said Jenny seemed afraid of them at that point, of what they might do. It was then she’d retained Raymond Delquist. I pushed, asking him why Jenny was frightened.

  Art went about tidying up from our stepping stone project, taking his time before he answered. “You don’t need to be worrying about any of this, Fancy,” he said.

  But I was piecing it together that Jenny had brought me here because she did want me worrying about it, that we was all a part of this somehow. Art didn’t say nothing when I suggested that. Then he come over and kissed me on both eyes. “Don’t you worry, Fancy Mosher.” He went back to his cleaning up and I left him there, feeling his lips on my skin all the way back to the kitchen. I brought my stepping stone with me and set it on the grass by the kitchen door to dry.