The Memento

by Christy Ann Conlin

  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.

  There seemed no words I could speak to comfort Loretta but I was compelled to try. I cleared my throat, but her eyes popped open then, the grief swallowed back down for the time being.

  “Well, there is nothing to be done, Fancy. She’s back drinking. She hid it well this time, but now we know. Marilyn will die of the drink. She’s already drowning in sin. Terrible things happened to her but she refuses any help. She has turned from the Lord. I’m sorry to tell you but it’s the way it will be. We should not speak of John Lee. It’s not right to speak of a dead child like she did.” She squeezed my shoulder. She was satisfied Ma had not told me everything, and she didn’t invite me to speak further of it.

  Loretta enjoyed nothing more than stories about the good old days but she was never one for talking about the bad times. Until that summer she had always been private that way. She was sentimental about cooking and baking and sewing. She went out to her prayer group every week, talking about good deeds. She was true and loyal and ever steady.

  As we approached the village Art started singing some French song he learned from his father, Demain s’il fait beau, j’irons au grand-père. Normally his singing calmed me but right then those words brought me back to the car. He kept going and I got more and more anxious. The more he sang the more I thought of Grampie and his songs, and Ma and her strange lullabies. Loretta started discussing Marigold’s favourite baked desserts in a very serious tone and finally I’d had enough. The endless stream of their ridiculous talk and the stink of carcass had contaminated any chance my birthday had of being salvaged.

  “What was Ma talking about today being my twelfth birthday and Grampie having special powers?” I inquired from the back, my voice loud and angry. Art stopped singing.

  Loretta didn’t turn around. “We’ll talk about that at home, Fancy. Not another word.” She had never used such a threatening tone before. I didn’t dare disobey.

  We passed the village and a salty breeze was blowing in over the water as it came into the harbour at high tide. Lupin Cove was quiet and still most of the time, no bustle about, and if you didn’t know schooners had once docked there long ago in the age of sail there was nothing to give you even a peek into that time. The village was faded, like it still is now, hardly anyone about, as though they’d all closed their doors and left one day, never to return, just as it was up at Petal’s End. Only those who knew the history could picture it. The wind ruffled the water like lace at the edge of a bedsheet. There was a thin fog coming in with the tide, coming so quickly that when I looked up the island was gone.

  We dropped Art off at home. “You take care of Yvette, Mister Man, and we’ll see you tomorrow.” Loretta gave him a wave.

  Art looked at me but I closed my eyes and kept them shut. I didn’t know who to trust any more. It was like they was all in on it. In the quiet of Lupin Cove my heart was a pounding drum, and the thoughts in my head fast charging, all them memories of Grampie painting, them people looking out of his portraits and on the walls of the Tea House, John Lee’s cup sitting on the shelf. Did Grampie ever hold that cup or sip out of it? I couldn’t do as Loretta said and remember Ma when she was well for she was scarcely so while I was with her.

  We drove up the road. Without lifting an eyelid I could feel the turn as my body rolled into the car door. I had no use for my eyes right then, just as I don’t need them now to know you’re still listening to me. Petal’s End was home to me, as frightful as some folks thought the vast house was, way off on the mountain in the forest by the bay. Things smelled familiar. I thought of how I missed the Tea House, Grampie’s fresh-baked bread, the sharp thick odour of his oil paints and turpentine, the scent of the wood stove in the winter. I felt sick to my stomach with longing. I pushed Grampie and our lives together out of my mind and sat in the back of the vintage Rolls-Royce, feeling the car moving through the imposing wrought-iron gates and by the huge chestnut trees in front of the stone walls like guards, driving over each and every bump of the long lane. Them raging words of Ma’s scrambled in my ears, the foul valley air lodged in my nostrils. Finally we plunged into the deep piney woods Petal’s End Road ran through. Off in the forest there were broken pieces of marble, statues that had long ago fallen over and broken. The pieces would glow white at dusk, as though they might pick themselves up and put themselves back together when the moon came out. Petal’s End wasn’t on no modern maps.

  They built Petal’s End back behind the forest and away from the water to keep it sheltered from the winter winds, but that didn’t stop the fog from creeping out from the forest. It kept the world away, and that was how the Parkers liked it, especially after Charlie killed himself. They liked privacy for personal matters and publicity for public matters. Charles Parker VI. The newspaper called him “The Scion” when he died. Charlie Parker, as he was known to those of us at Petal’s End. Charlie was a small man, fragile and reed thin, and he liked gardens and roses, dancing, and beautiful women and men. He was nothing but a disappointment to his big, strapping military father.

  A long time ago the first Lord Parker had come across the water from the Old World. Petal’s End was created—a thousand acres of forest and farmland, and even an island in the bay with massive four-hundred-foot vertical cliffs, part of the ancient basalt headlands. On an antique map of the estate hanging in the grand library it was marked Parker Island but it was only spoke of as the island. They had a lighthouse there and a family who kept the light and had a small farm on the island top. The Parkers went over for the occasional summer picnics and whale-watching trips. Lord Parker wasn’t born a lord, as the story goes. His people made money and then he bought himself a title. By the time I was a child the Parker family was already fading into history and stories, and Petal’s End was a mystery set back behind the woodland, the island a place where no one went, the lighthouse burned down and replaced by an automated one. The Parkers had another grand house in the city where they did most of their business. When the grandfather was grown and had become Colonel Parker, he went back to the Old World doing who knows what and he brought back Marigold, a young woman who liked dancing and singing and strolling in the gardens and spending her time with artists and at galas. The Colonel was much older than her and he wanted a proper wife. Marigold was built to last, he would say, pretty and dainty and durable just like fine bone china. Grampie said she was from a family of aristocrats with no money but an endless supply of prestige. Marigold didn’t have any idea what she was getting into, coming across the ocean, but once she was here, she rose to the occasion and never went back.

  As we drove into the estate I felt sick to my stomach and tried to conjure up soothing thoughts about my life at Petal’s End. Loretta and I were accustomed to the quiet. In the winter Hector would come and plow out the lane, and we’d stay in the back part of the house with the wood stove going. On stormy days I’d read and write and stitch. Sometimes in the summer I’d creep into the big house and play the piano. Pomeline Parker, the Colonel’s eldest granddaughter, had given me piano and singing lessons until they stopped coming out. The piano was kept in tune and it seemed that I should make an effort to play in case one day Pomeline did come back. There were times when I played and the air in the gardens would lift up and ripple and swirl, as though a fine lady had walked by with perfume, and a slight shiver would go up my spine and down my arms right into my fingertips that would be icy on the ivory. Fear shook me, and I forced myself to look, just as I had at Ma’s that night, but it was only ever the breeze blowing the curtain, and the sun casting a shadow in from the beauty bush growing near the window. I remember laughing at how superstitious I was, just like Marigold and her hobgobblies.

  The Colonel died when I was five, the year before his only child did. We think the Colonel got mauled by a bear. It was his own fault, having a bear as a pet. They said it was Marigold’s fault. If she’d let him keep his raptor birds he wouldn’t have had
a need for playing with a bear. He had a wildcat too, not so big, and in tree branches it looked almost like a house cat. But it weren’t no house cat. That was clear when it leapt down and chased a guest through the meadow, hissing and making an unearthly noise not like any normal meow. It came in a big crate off an airplane from somewhere far away. When the Colonel was found dead his throat was chewed and they never knew if the bear or the cat did it.

  Charlie, the heir, he died playing with a rope. It was just the ladies left, Marigold and her daughter-in-law, Estelle, and the two granddaughters, Pomeline and Jenny. Pomeline was sent off to boarding school but she was home every summer. Jenny was home-schooled and they went through at least two teachers a year and not one would come to Petal’s End. Most of what she learned was from her grandmother. Marigold had a stroke a few years after Charlie died. Loretta said the depression that blossomed in her after losing her only child caused it. It shocked her system, made everything constrict. After his death her hands were permanently clenched together and hung so low it seemed she had been forced to carry a stone about for the rest of her days. And so the family stopped coming.