The Memento

by Christy Ann Conlin

Ma turned the radio down, like she had an attack of manners. “Don’t talk about your corpse of a grandmother. We’re going to the Flying Squirrel Road on family business, to the graveyard. You can sit in the car, you Parkers. I’ll drive you home after,” she hollered.

  Ma pulled up at the cemetery and the car heaved to a stop. She got out and put her hands on her hips, taking it all in. She took a step forward and her high heels caught on the grass. “This is where my son’s buried,” she said in a soft voice, looking straight ahead, like there was things in front of her that were listening. “John Lee. He’d be a grown man, if he was alive. He was the first-born and the first to die. No mother should outlive her first-born.”

  Jenny got out and tilted her head back as though a movement up above had caught her attention. “Risen with healing in his wings.”

  “Jesus wept. Yes sir, he did, and he also rose. You are a wise little girl,” Ma said.

  “From the realms of glory,” Jenny said. “My grandfather paid for John Lee’s tombstone. The finest marble. My father told me so.”

  Harry tried to catch my eye but he didn’t understand. Art looked back at Harry and held his hands up in defeat. Our helplessness seemed to spur Harry on and he jumped out of the car, slamming the door behind him.

  Ma lurched off to the rusted gate and pulled it open, the door creaking as it swung. The roses by the garden gate had been chewed off, mangled. The graveyard was surrounded by thick leafy forest and it was shady and cool. I smelled sweet cicely. It was growing all through the ditches, having escaped from the gardens at Petal’s End a long time ago. Neither Art nor I had said a word and we were still sitting in back seat of the car.

  I guess then Harry thought he’d be a man, take control and be an adult. He followed Ma. “Mrs. Mosher, my dear lady …” he started. “I really think you need assistance—”

  “Marilyn. Please just call her Marilyn,” Art called over to Harry.

  “Don’t you tell me what to do,” Ma spit out—but we weren’t sure at who. Then from far up in the branches came a horrible screaming, like it, too, would tell her what to do. The screaming stopped. We had no idea what was hidden in the foliage, and whatever it was, we hoped it would not come down.

  Jenny looked where the noise had been coming from, a weird rapture on her face like she was in church, her hands tightly clasped together.

  “Don’t you think you can go telling me what to do. You could have helped me and you didn’t. No sir, you didn’t, you just kept what you had to yourself and left me on my own, wondering. I don’t need no more judgment.” Ma shook her fist. Another scream came piercing down through the air. Art and I got out of the car then and went in through the gate to stand beside Jenny.

  “Ma,” I called. “Ma. Grampie ain’t there.”

  “You get over here, Fancy Mosher, and you do your job. You wouldn’t even tell me if you could see your Grampie. You’re stubborn, just like him. I want you to believe. I want you to be a believer.”

  “Just stay here,” Harry said. “Fancy, just stay here. It’s all right. Marilyn, perhaps it would make more sense to come back at another time, without the children. I think that’s a splendid idea, don’t you?” He came and stood beside me, his arm out, like he thought Ma might try to snatch me.

  “It’s the day,” I said. “The same day. All those years ago. It was the day John Lee drowned.”

  As if in a reverie, Ma touched John Lee’s tombstone, talking as she stroked it, telling a story about silver moons and a baby’s boat sailing across starry skies, like we weren’t there anymore but rather a young boy was sitting beside her on the grass with the shining Mosher eyes and soft tousled hair just like mine. John Lee, she sang, her low aching voice entrancing and holding us as she brought the past to life in a brief graveside moment that plays out for me still.

  We could not take our eyes off her as she stood amidst the midsummer green foliage, smeared ruby lips and sparkling necklace bright against her black mourning clothes. With her peculiar audience of children and a stiff middle-aged man, Marilyn Mosher gave her lament for the dead. I’ve seen Ma upon a stage in my mind every summer since that moment, and as the words come forth from her mouth with them comes the laugh of a boy who appears on the beach and watches his mother wave to him as she walks down the beach with a tall man. The boy has a toy boat, and he giggles because it looks funny playing in the waves. He follows it, and then he is soaring up and down the waves that cover the steep beach while his Mama is behind the cliff in a shallow cave. This is how Ma recalled it. Her back is against the wet rock, her back going up and down, the skin rubbing raw, absent as the man pushes deeper inside her, and fireworks explode in her belly and travel up to the same breasts that used to fill with milk for the little boy now floating face down in the big waves beyond the surf. The big blue sky and the island out on the horizon watch quietly as he drowns. The other boy who has come to the beach looks up from his rock castle, screaming. There is a woman there collecting amethyst and holding a parasol. She doesn’t know how to swim, she cries. The other boy keeps screaming at the water’s edge. And Marilyn Mosher comes wobbling, woozy from the gin, over the rocks in her high heels and falls, cracking her forehead open, her hands slipping on the rocks, crawling over them to get to the waves. The other child is in the water trying to reach the boy but the older woman pulls him back. The man from the cave runs to his truck for a rope. The incoming tide brings the little boy closer to the beach and he is caught up on a wave, on the top of the wave, and it breaks and he comes in on the surf, his hands moving like small sea stars as the water pulls back and leaves little John Lee Mosher dead on the beach.

  We all knew bits and pieces, of course. It was a story people told from time to time. And people tell parts of stories just as people collect rocks from here and there on the beach, and take them away. But Ma was in possession of the entire thread. In that moment, though, Harry only knew that the drunken mother of the girl the housekeeper named Loretta cared for was out of her mind in a cemetery, telling stories only adults should hear. But the child the housekeeper cared for and the strange girl with glasses from the big house and the boy with the high voice from Lupin Cove, they began to understand how the pieces really fit together.

  More screaming came again from up in the ironwood trees, the sound of a harness jingling and clop clop clop as Hector’s father, Clyde, came by in his wagon loaded with hay, pulled by a team of four draught horses. One of the horses whinnied. The spell was broken.

  “Goddamn peacocks. Stupid man bringing all them animals who don’t belong over here,” Clyde said, as he tipped his hat and took a drag off his cigarette and watched three peacocks fly down from the high branches, strutting around among the tombstones, their tail feathers fanning out and shimmering against the grey stones as they screamed. Ma turned and looked at the horses.

  “Marilyn,” he said, nodding at her. He opened his mouth like he was going to speak but then closed it. Clyde sat on his wagon with the reins in his hands.

  “You was there, Clyde. You know what day it is.”

  A look of a pain moved through him, but he ran a hand through his hair and whatever had taken hold of him was gone. It was no surprise to me. Everybody knew what Clyde Loomer was like. He didn’t bother even looking at Ma as he called to the horses to giddy up. “You know them horses don’t like a woman who cries, Marilyn,” Clyde said, and then he continued down the road, showing us the same interest he managed for his son.

  Ma wept quietly now, eaten up by a pain I would not know until I was older, when I would understand how that kind of ache never goes away. The clop and the jingle faded off and it was just tearful Ma as she called over her shoulder. “Come, Fancy.”

  I went.

  “Do you see him?”

  I wanted to believe and I wanted the dead to find me so I could take Ma’s pain away. Grampie’s tombstone was behind John Lee’s. Let the dead bury the dead, Marilyn, Grampie had said to her, not long before he died. Let them pass.
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br />   I took my mother’s face in my hands then, my dirty hands, and I stroked her forehead, my tears spilling down. “I can’t help you, Ma. He’s gone now. He’s gone away in his little boat across the sky.” And I whistled for her because I did not have a voice for singing.

  Her crying then was something unearthly and I took my hands away from her, my fingers slick with her tears. She bowed her head down and I saw the white roots of her dyed raven-black hair. Art was crying too. I could hear him, calling my name. My heart started pounding and I heard a movement from west down the dirt road, a pebble tossed, and a bird called, the cardinal … then stillness. Jenny was admiring the peacocks and Art and Harry were paralyzed with indecision. I saw a flash of white. There was a sound at the edge of the cemetery. I took a step that way. The peacocks were quiet now, eating the flower arrangement left on a grave.

  The red bird appeared in the sky, and I took off right through the graveyard, grass soft on my bare feet, weaving through the grave markers, hopping over a few, then over the fence and north through the trail in the woods, in the direction of Petal’s End, where Loretta was, where her calm was.

  “Fancy! Fancy!” I heard them all calling my name. There was crashing behind me and I kept going until Art called out. I stopped. He was bleeding, scratched from the brambles and shrubs grown in close over the trail. He put his hand on my cheek, where my scar was throbbing, and I pulled away.

  Jenny come up behind us, her white dress flying out. She was short and had no trouble ducking the branches. “Heavenly hosts,” she whispered as she stopped beside Art. We walked together, single file, me staying in the front. It was cool and dark in the woods.

  Art cleared his throat. “You don’t think she’ll follow us in here?”

  “No, Ma don’t like the woods. She don’t like shadows.”

  “Harry will take her home. He feels foolish for letting it go on for this long. I can tell. First getting us drunk on his fine wine and now letting us go to the graveyard,” Art said.

  “I knew the peacocks had to be somewhere. My mother said they died off but I knew she was wrong. They’ve been living in the forest up here by the cemetery. My grandfather would be happy. Granny will not be. She banished them a long time ago.”

  We didn’t respond.

  “It’s different, when a child dies, of course. Pomeline says Mother is the way she is because of all the babies she lost. All those babies who died before they were even born. The miscarriages. I guess your mother was the same way, Fancy. We’re the same, aren’t we?” Jenny pressed. “John Lee drowned.” She spoke it as though it was a fact she was reading in a history book or a newspaper.

  “Yes, he did too drown,” I said, dodging the branches ahead of me.

  “My mother doesn’t even go to my father’s grave. And she won’t let us in the Annex. Your mother takes you right to the graveside. Why does she think you can speak with the dead, Fancy? I know about your grandfather.”

  “Because she’s a drunk, Jenny, that’s why.” Jenny didn’t know about being the twelfth. She didn’t need to know about that, about believing. The Parkers didn’t know any of the true Mosher stories, only their own. But now we both knew who had been on the beach the day my brother died. My mother was in a cave having sex with Hector’s father and Jenny’s grandmother was helpless on the rocks with Charlie, watching John Lee drown.

  “Did either of you hear a noise on the road back there?” I asked.

  “You mean Clyde?” Art’s voice was worn out.

  “No, not Hector’s loser dad.”

  “Your mother and the peacocks were the only things anyone could hear.” Jenny giggled.

  “I saw something.”

  Art said, “There was a lot of commotion, Fancy.”

  It was pointless to talk about it any more. We were getting close to the wall around Petal’s End. The trail was sloping down, which meant we only had about another mile to go. We kept going on the trail until we come out into the clearing where the hunting lodge was. Or the ruins, I guess you’d call it. Way back, one of the Parkers built the lodge, for when they’d go out hunting across the mountain. There was a rotting picnic table still, for family picnics, not that they’d had any of those in years.

  “This is where it happened to my grandfather,” Jenny said. “Stupid man to have a bear for a pet. My grandmother talks about him like he was a saint but he wasn’t. He betrayed her. My mother told me. She said Granny deserved it because she was nasty. It is true, that we deserve our punishments. My grandfather would talk mean to Granny, telling her to mind her own business. In front of us. He thought children were like animals and you could say what you liked around them. That’s not true—he thought animals were smarter. Grandfather only married Granny because his father told him to. That’s what he said to her. Just like he told my father to marry my mother. ‘It’s not about love, Marigold. Marriage is never about love.’ He told her that. I was just a child but I heard. In the library at Petal’s End. Daddy never had enough affection, you see. That’s why he was the way he was.” Jenny just kept talking and talking, like she was trying to get out five words for every step, as though her words could come out and fit together and it would all finally make sense and growing up wouldn’t seem like such a horror show.

  I asked Jenny just what she’d been doing with Hector, what she was thinking having him teach her to drive.

  “Oh, I followed him back there one day. I got into the back of the pickup truck. It was fun rattling along on the country roads, just like being in a song.” She kept walking, her hands clasped together. “He finally saw me in his rear-view mirror. That’s the problem with Hector. He doesn’t pay attention to details. I pay attention to details. He thought he’d seen a ghost and he almost did kill me from how he slammed on the brakes. He has a tattoo of a butterfly. Did you ever notice that? Anyway, I crawled over the other side and ran out of the truck and he came after me, but he didn’t catch me before I saw what he and Buddy are growing back there on my grandmother’s property. It’s pretty, quite tall, and looks like ferns. He offered me a mint. Then he tried to tell me he was growing parsley and sage, rosemary and thyme. He was a moron to think I don’t know that song. Or herbs. Hector was a bigger fool to think I don’t read and watch the television news when I’m in the city. It’s the only thing my mother will let me do. And he made me promise not to tell.”

  I couldn’t help but laugh then, because Jenny wasn’t someone you could make to do anything.

  “Hector said he’d do whatever I wanted if I didn’t tell. It was for medicinal purposes, that’s what he said. I told him if he taught me how to drive then maybe I wouldn’t say anything. And if he stayed away from Margaret. And now I know how to drive even though it’s hard because I am short, you see. And Margaret doesn’t go back to the carriage house any more.”

  Art just kept shaking his head and I was laughing. Jenny seemed pleased and held her hands up like she was doing a benediction.

  “Fancy,” Art said, “I’m sorry your mother’s the way she is.”

  Jenny answered, like she was nine hundred years old, “We can only endure them. Now we know. I’m sorry. My grandmother couldn’t do anything. She was helpless. We should never be helpless.”

  18.

  She Laid Her Snow-White Hand

  WHEN WE came out of the woods there was no one outside the big house. Dr. Baker’s car was parked out front and Estelle’s white car was parked behind it. We assumed they were inside, and we were thirsty but decided to get a drink at the Water House. We weren’t ready to see no one yet. Jenny and Art were hovering around me like two weird bats, him on one side, with his squeaking voice, and Jenny on the other.

  Art and I sat outside the door of the Water House and Jenny brought out glasses of water. It was the first time I recall her ever doing such a thing. It was late in the afternoon now but we were tired enough for bed, and there was still choir practice yet.

  The three of us sat looking at the expanse of Evermore. It was
a whole world in behind those stone walls, safe and comforting. The gardens were clipped and perfect. The flower beds were dazzling. The statues, the benches, the stepping stone paths, the foliage, all immaculate. It was a contrast to the shabby graveyard, the forest we ran through, the scruffy dirt road. The screaming peacocks were already a grotesque memory, for when things are strange enough the mind stores them as a story. And in this story the three of us were sitting in the wicker chairs under the awning of the Water House.

  There was a tinkle from the tall flowering bushes, where Sakura had also hung glass wind bells. The breeze was strong and lifted our hair in a velvet-soft touch, then it dropped away just as the peace was splintered by a deep angry voice. In a certain sort of summer air a harsh whisper travels intact. Art leaned back and shut his eyes, letting out an exasperated sigh. Jenny stood up and walked down the path toward the sound. We followed her to the Wishing Pool, where I hadn’t been since Grampie’s teacup had broken.

  “Well, I’ll have to take care of it. After the garden party, of course.” Dr. Baker cleared his throat. “I don’t see how you could have let this happen. This is a disaster. You aren’t a child. You have to take responsibility for something other than your piano playing, for God’s sake, Pomeline.”

  “Well, you’re the doctor,” Pomeline pleaded.

  “Yes, I am, and that’s why I gave you those pills and told you exactly … exactly what to do with them. All you had to do was take them at the same time. Surely you could have managed that. You Parker women are all the same with your frivolous priorities, only thinking of yourselves. Did you get the days mixed up?”

  Pomeline was crying and trying to talk at the same time. “I don’t know. It’s been hard with Jenny here, bickering with Margaret, with Mother calling all the time and fighting with Granny. And Granny hardly makes sense. It’s been difficult to keep track of anything. And my exams are coming, but all that seems to matter is the garden party and Mother wanting to sort out the will. Mother says there is a letter from Daddy that confirms he was going to leave her more, but she can’t find it. Granny says it must be a forgery, that Daddy would never let anything go outside the family. She says the entire estate will go to her and pass along to Jenny. It’s like I don’t even exist to them.”