The Memento

Copyright © 2016 Christy Ann Conlin

All rights reserved. The use of any part of this publication, reproduced, transmitted in any form or by any means electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, or stored in a retrieval system without the prior written consent of the publisher—or in the case of photocopying or other reprographic copying, license from the Canadian Copyright Licensing Agency—is an infringement of the copyright law.

Doubleday Canada and colophon are registered trademarks of Penguin Random House Canada Limited

This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, events and incidents are either the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

Library and Archives Canada Cataloguing in Publication

Conlin, Christy Ann, author
The memento / Christy Ann Conlin.

ISBN 978-0-385-66241-3 (paperback).–ISBN 978-0-385-68616-7
(epub)

I. Title.

PS8555.O5378M44 20167    C813′.6    C2015-906220-9
                                                        C2015-906221-7

The author would like to acknowledge the support of the Canada Council for the Arts and the Province of Nova Scotia through the Department of Communities, Culture and Heritage.

Lyrics from the following songs appear in the novel:
“Down by the Salley Gardens,” William Butler Yeats (1909 set by Herbert Hughes to melody of traditional Irish air “The Moorlough Shore”); “She Moved Through the Fair,” Irish traditional; “White Coral Bells,” American traditional; “Slumber Boat” by Alice Riley (1898); “Connemara Cradle Song” (Irish traditional)

Excerpts from “Rappaccini’s Daughter” by Nathaniel Hawthorne (1844) appear in
Chapter 10
,
Part 1
.

Part II
epigram poem by Yosano Akiko translated from the Japanese by Kenneth Rexroth,
One Hundred More Poems from the Japanese
, 1976.

Scripture quotations in
Part II
,
Chapter 1
, from the King James Bible: Matthew 10:32-33; Luke 15:10 and 1 Corinthians 5:11.

Cover Painting, End of Spring © Marie Cameron

Published in Canada by Doubleday Canada,
a division of Penguin Random House Canada Limited

www.​penguin​randomhouse.​ca

v3.1

For Andy Brown
&
Millie Laporte

I
WAS TWELVE
.

That is the year I must tell you about.

The cicadas buzz on this hot August afternoon as the season draws to a close. There is a mirror by the big door here at Petal’s End but I have not looked in it this summer. I am not yet ready to see what might be reflected. It’s a tradition in these parts to have a mirror outside by the front door. You can take a peek before entering. Not to see how fine you are looking but to see what’s at your back. Even those who don’t believe in the Mountain traditions will hesitate a moment before taking such a mirror down, and to this day you’ll still find them mirrors on the century houses in Lupin Cove and across the mountain. There’s an even older story, though, which most have forgotten. The mirror is there so if you’ve been to a funeral you can see if the dead followed you home, which they will do if they have business yet to resolve with the living. But there is no story about what you are to do if a dead one is there
behind you in the mirror. Marigold Parker, the grand matriarch at Petal’s End, was afraid of the hobgobblies, as she called the dead. She checked the mirror in the evening, for that’s when she said they came around. They’d slip in the door behind you or come in an open window. They would get inside you and fold up your soul with their long spindly fingers, she told us. The old story was wrong, Marigold said. Ghosts were not confined to the funereal period—the dead kept their own schedule.

Grampie advised we pay no mind to Marigold, but nonetheless keep an eye on the mirror. We had one over at Grampie’s cottage, where I lived with him as a young child. The mirror was by the door when he moved in and it stayed there, for Grampie believed in tradition. But Grampie was never afraid of what we might see behind us. Best to know what is on your heels, he would say.

Grampie’s father had been a poor dirt farmer who supplemented his living with beehives and making turpentine and furniture polish. My great-grandfather bought the place from the Parkers when they were selling a few pieces of what they called their vast
demesne
at Petal’s End after the Great War. The Parker money was endless and flowed down through the generations. They parcelled off parts of the land to returning soldiers. Out of compassion, people said. Out of pity. They practically gave the land away, expecting only gratitude in perpetuity as payment.

Grampie was in the next war, but he never spoke of that—only his limp told the story. He was not a young man when he went off, but the army would take who they could get in those last few years, Grampie said, even a farmer and a gardener. So many younger than him died, and their bodies would often not come home. This drove him to enlist, thinking it would lessen the sorrow. He was wrong about that.

Grampie called himself the accidental artist. Ma told me he found his gift for painting when he drew for the army. They called him a war artist, but he never showed me a single sketch from that
time. He come home to Lupin Cove a changed man and went back to work at Petal’s End as a gardener, his leg not fit for walking any distance. His eyes looked the same but they could see different.

It’s easier to rest here in my chair with the years heavy on my bones than to rise and stand by the door. There is a mirror in my mind’s eye, and my recollections lure me into the harsh light whether I want them to or not. The birds sing, high and clear. It is June. It is the last day of school before summer vacation. It is also my birthday. I am twelve that day. Grampie is three years dead and I live over at Petal’s End with Loretta, the longtime housekeeper tending the place for the Parker family, who don’t come no more but insist the estate be kept like they’ll be taking up residence any day. They are more phantom than alive, for we rarely see them.