The Memento (5 page)

“Eighty-five, isn’t she?” Hector looked at Loretta. “My grandfather lived to be a hundred. Marigold says she wants the car ready in case she needs to go somewhere. Or for company. No offence to senior citizens. Just seems you get to a certain age and it’s kind of like you’re young again except you ain’t. You’re just travelling around in your mind. And looking in the mirror seeing what only you can see.”

“Hector, sometimes you speak the truth.” Loretta sighed. “Only sometimes, mind you. In the end, it is Marigold’s decision to do what she pleases with Petal’s End and we’ll be respectful and do our jobs. It’s not our place to disagree. I remember the day she hired me. She supervised each blessed detail at the house. You have no idea. Marigold swept around and we did as we were told. At nighttime she looked as though the day was just beginning, not a hair out of place, her clothes immaculate. There was a butler way back then and he was always at her side. Mr. Long. I never saw the man smile once, not even when he got his Christmas bonus. He took nothing stronger than hot water with a teaspoon of lemon. There used to be a big gong in the small back courtyard by the kitchen that a guest had brought as a hostess gift. If Marigold was up before the help she sent Mr. Long out to give it a smash. We’d all awaken thinking the world was coming to an end for we’d only just fallen asleep. He dropped dead one day just as he was to ring the morning gong. We’d fully expected him to live forever. He was laid out in his coffin looking just the same as when he was alive except his eyes were shut and for once he wasn’t standing up. All us girls were afraid to look at him for fear he’d open his eyes and order us straight back to work. ‘You know your places, girls.’ Those were his favourite words.”

“My mother wasn’t afraid of him, I bet.” Of course I was curious hearing Loretta talking about the past, but mostly I wanted to prod her about my mother. It was odd that Loretta was acting like nothing untoward had happened.

Loretta paused for just a second before she swallowed and replied. “No, Marilyn was not, much to his consternation. That day in the funeral parlour Marilyn stood by his corpse and made faces when the undertaker wasn’t looking. We couldn’t help but laugh. It’s best to remember your mother, Fancy, when she was well, although short on propriety as she always has been.”

“I haven’t heard you like this, Loretta, since you and Art’s grandmother came to the church charity bingo and got into that punch someone spiked with pear wine.”

“Hector, I did not drink the punch. You’re mistaken. Anyway, children, in the good summer weather there was no end to the parties and events Marigold put on. A stream of guests and family from all parts of the world. There was a large staff living at Petal’s End back then. We worked from dawn until dusk, all of us wearing uniforms, with Sundays off. We could hardly wait for winter when it would end. Marigold would be out in the Water House making her soaps and flower waters until all hours of the night, and she expected us to work just as long. The Colonel was always telling Marigold she should leave a few things to chance. In his spare time he enjoyed spontaneity. Marigold despised it.

“When Marigold telephoned last night she was already speaking of a garden party. ‘You’re caught up in a second wind, Mrs. Parker,’ I said. ‘Loretta, this is my
final
wind and we best make haste while it blows,’ she said. Most people don’t change. Hector, slow down please. Do not come up so fast behind that car. Thank you, my dear.”

Art put his hand out the window like he was patting the wind. “I guess the wind blows for all of us someday.”

“Well, ain’t we got us a little poet back there.”

“Don’t mock, Hector, my young man. Art might be only twelve but he understands more about life than most ever will. Slow down, please. There is a speed limit.” Loretta put her hand to her mouth and held it there.

Many years later I realized Loretta was nearing sixty that summer and already her time-gone-by was circling back to find her. She was being brushed ever so soft to the other side of that wind Art was stroking.

I
HEAR GRAMPIE’S
voice in my head still. And your voice. Once, a long time ago, you asked me what I was afraid of and I told you I wasn’t afraid of one single thing. That was not true. I was afraid of many things but talking about them only made it worse. I was never afraid of the dark, nor of animals, or creatures that howl in the night. But I was afraid around my mother because there was no fixing her. Stiff and old in my chair, I am only afraid now of what will be in your eyes when I see you, if you come out from wherever it is you are waiting. Afraid of the judgment, I suppose, same as what Ma feared she’d see in my eyes. It’s the details, isn’t it, that we remember? The eyes, the sound of the voice, the scent of the air, the way the light dapples through leaves onto the grass, or the perfect shadow of the winter branches on the snowy field, and how the child’s footprints on the sand are always washed away. This is what we remember.

These fingers of mine, they curl, the thick yellow nails I can’t trim no more with such stiff hands. But these hands do not tremble, not even with the age all over them. They are held tight together now as I rock, taking a break from my stitching. I’ve done a lovely sun with this floss, and my shadows are perfect.

Petal’s End was where I wanted to be as we drove from the school and over the valley floor, past the farms, the big sky stretching above the fields and orchards. A haze was hanging over the land from the fierce heat. It was like we were in one of my embroideries, peaceful and perfect, with cattle and sheep grazing in the gentle June fields, some farmers still working with draught horses. We smelled something putrid come in on the wind then as we drove up behind a big truck. It hit a bump and an animal leg was sticking up, and there was another bump and the load shifted and a furry head jostled up and down, and another hoof. A truckload of carcasses. It made me think of crazy Ma again and filled my mouth with thick bitter drool.

Hector swore and he hit the gas. We roared by the truck in Old Rolly. Hector gave the finger to the driver as we passed, shouting that a farmer should know better and he had half a mind to call the police when we got back and report his ass. Loretta was gagging and she said nothing about how fast we were going. Hector sped along, careening up the mountain and screeching through the sharp turns, up and around the oxbow switchback where Ma had put us in the ditch, away from the stench and the sweltering valley, up and over the mountain on the Lonely Road, the car purring along by fields of buttercup, clover and Queen Anne’s lace. Their sweetness filled the car as the bay appeared before us, a strip of blue and the sky beyond and the island. The island never looks to be in the same spot. Sometimes it’s as though it’s moved right close to shore and other times it seems to be drifting away, as though it don’t want to be an extension of Petal’s End. And sometimes it disappears in a fog bank, all but the top. On a clear day it can look
either like it’s floating on the water or descending from the sky, long like a man’s old-fashioned hat, forest and meadow on top but almost entirely surrounded by soaring jagged cliffs. We drew nearer to Lupin Cove.

At Ma’s I had woken in the middle of the night in a cold sweat, surrounded by darkness. The spring peepers, them tiny tree frogs, were singing in the swampy part in back of Ma’s, near the falling-down barn she’d once kept her horses in. Far off I could hear lonely coyotes, their yips and yowls coming from the woods, and the wind blew in the spring leaves. But inside Ma’s house I heard singing, too. I didn’t know who it was at first. There was faint whispered words all run together. I heard footsteps, you see, these gentle steps, right slow, but I could not tell whose footsteps they were. My bedroom door swung open. There was glossy singing and a soft flowery breeze brushed my face, but it wasn’t coming in the window, and I knew there was something right in front of me, searching for me. Shaking, I reached out to the lamp on the bedside table and snapped it on, but there was nothing there and the singing had stopped. I turned out the light and lay back down, eyes wide open, and as soon as I did the singing started again. I heard shuffling in the hall, a dull light getting brighter, and there was Ma in the doorway and she was singing in a tremulous voice,
Baby’s boat the silver moon
. I smelled gin.
Sailing in the sky
.

I squeezed my eyes shut and when I opened them there she was standing over me with a candle and a picture of my brother. Her hair was a huge crazy halo with some curlers hanging down like broken bits of wing.

“Do you believe? I know you’re awake. You turned your light on. I wouldn’t come in and wake up a child. John Lee was here. I am sure he was here but he ain’t looking for me because I can’t see
him. He’s looking for the one who can see him.” Her voice was a rough whisper.
Baby’s fishing for a dream, fishing near and far
. It was no song she ever sung to me. “Can you see him? Has he come visiting?” She took a sharp breath and whispered, “Can you see him, Fancy, can you see your brother?”

I said yes because he was in the picture she was holding.

Ma gasped and tears streamed out of her eyes like silver rivers in the candlelight. “Praises,” she said. “Praises. Does he forgive me? Does he know how sorry I am? Ask him. You’re almost twelve now. You can ask him for me. You can see him.”

I realized my mistake. Ma thought I could see John Lee, not just the little boy in the photo. His tender face in the soft light seemed to be saying,
Our Ma is a nutbar, sister-I-never-knew, so just count yourself back to sleep
. Ma kept talking and crying, and it made no sense to me, but even in my confusion there was a frosty shivering horror that come over me realizing Ma thought I could talk to my dead brother. She was a reckless drunk but she’d never been demented, beset with visions. There is a quiet terror that fills a child when they realize that their parent has gone over the edge and won’t be clawing their way back up again.

I could have lied to her and made up a story and she’d have gone away. But I didn’t even think to lie. I told Ma I could see him in the picture she was shoving in my face, that there was no ghostly business in my bedroom. The photo was moving in her trembling hand and it looked like his sweet eyes were shifting in the flickering light.

I waited for her to get right mad but she didn’t. She shuffled off, crying and singing her lullaby.
Hush-a-bye, don’t you cry
. It was quiet, not even the coyotes howling or the peepers singing, just Ma and her drunken lament. She knocked over a chair and broke a glass and she was swearing and howling again like all the world was lost to her.
Holy Mother Mercy
, I prayed,
Holy Mother Mercy and Dear Grampie come and save me
. Neither of them did.

It was hours I lay awake in that bed, even after she lurched off to her room, calling my name and John Lee’s name and swearing at Grampie.

When dawn slipped golden in the window I was up and dressed and back on the lane to Petal’s End. I put the kettle on and made tea and toast and was sitting at the table when Loretta came into the kitchen. She put her hand on my shoulder as she bustled by but I did not want to talk. Later in the day she found me asleep over my homework in the sitting room off the kitchen. I woke up when she came in.

“Was your mother on about anything?” That day Loretta held my eye, searching for what I knew.

“She came at me with a picture of John Lee in the middle of the night, babbling and singing and stuttering. She scared me. Ronnie wasn’t there. She lied about that. I think she wants to know how John Lee died. Doesn’t she already know?”

Loretta’s face went flat. She sat down beside me and took my hand. “You don’t pay any attention to her, Fancy. It was a mistake to let you go there. I’m sorry. Give me strength. There’s just no place for a soft spot with Marilyn and I should have known better. I remember how she was back when I first met her, when John Lee was alive, and how different she was, such a sparkle to her. You have to understand. There was not a person she didn’t captivate even if she irritated at the same time. This was the problem. Her beauty was unearthly, and beauty is a burden. I could hardly look at her then for the loveliness, just as I can hardly manage the wreck of it now. Headstrong and impatient with everybody but animals and children. Your grandfather had his hands full with her. Do you understand?”

Even only eleven I understood completely. The expression on my face was all Loretta needed to continue.

“Marilyn was just a child herself but she was such a good mother to John Lee. We all loved him so. She’d take him fishing in the canoe,
just like she took you, over at Little Blue Lake. They were always down to the shore as well, collecting shells and seaweed on the dulse tide. When I first started working here she’d bring him into the kitchen, only four years of age but sociable and jolly, playing with the cat. John Lee would look at your mother with such adoring eyes and she’d look right back at him with a wink and he’d giggle so. He’d sit on my lap and I’d read him stories. His skin was soft as a butterfly’s wing and smelled like spring violets. Marilyn would let me hold him as much as I wanted. I have never forgotten her kindness that way.” Loretta closed her eyes and took her hand away from mine and covered her mouth with it, pushing the stories back inside.