The Memento (18 page)

Pomeline took her grandmother’s arm and Marigold didn’t seem to even notice. “Granny, you’re tired from the journey. You just need to rest. We should get you out of the sun.”

“Fancy Mosher. My but you have grown up, darling. You frightened me. I didn’t know who you were. I thought you were a hobgobbly,” she tittered. “Look at how strong you are. I was quite an athlete when I was a girl. Award-winning, you know.”

Estelle was correct—Marigold wasn’t right in her head. Loretta waved at me. She wanted nothing more than to be in her kitchen.

I stayed close to Art. A terrible shy feeling come over me now that our peace had been invaded.

Marigold reached out her finger and ran it over my scar. I wanted to pull my head away. “I’m glad Loretta is taking proper care of you. Someone had to. I can make you a salve for that. You look so pretty, just like your mother. She had perfect skin. The first time I saw her I thought how beauty can be such a curse.”

I bit my lip as I slowly handed Marigold the embroidery.

“Well, isn’t this utterly charming. I see your mother did teach you something useful. What fine stitching. Fancy, darling, what a gem of a gift.” She handed the picture to Margaret to hold. “We’ll have tea at four o’clock. We’ll see you, Estelle, when you bring Agatha out, which I hope will be soon.” Marigold fluttered her hand. “Come along, Margaret, my dear girl. We’ll be good friends. You’ll laugh at my stories. What a nice outfit you have on. You’re lovely and plump! You’ll have to teach Pomeline to eat a bit more. She takes after her mother that way. She’s so thin, if she falls I worry she’ll break.”

“Granny, really!”

Marigold continued like she didn’t hear Pomeline. “That won’t happen to you, my dear girl. You’re just delightful, nice and round like a popover. Men like a woman with substance. I met my husband back in the old world. He was there visiting his family. He preferred curves on a woman, but as you can see I was a disappointment to him in that regard.”

That sweltering July afternoon Marigold went up the stairs, trailing her words behind her like a cape, one hand on Margaret’s and the other on the railing. Marigold glanced in the mirror at the side of the door and then resumed her slow step. Like she’d been working here all her life, Margaret opened up them big doors, escorted Marigold through, pivoted, without even looking at us, and pulled them closed.

The rest of us was still in that blistering sun. Dr. Baker opened the trunk. Art and Hector took the bags and went in the house.

“I don’t see the point in you staying, Dr. Baker,” Estelle said.

Dr. Baker looked directly at Pomeline, lingering a moment, then shifted his gaze to Loretta. “I’ll be driving out from the city on a regular basis, just to keep an eye on Marigold. She is still suffering the effects of the stroke, as dramatic as her recovery has been. Pomeline will help, and I’ll help Pomeline, if she needs anything.”

“Yes, after her dramatic recovery.” Estelle was back to rubbing her temples.

“Mother, please don’t start. I don’t see why Dr. Baker has to go to the city with you. Granny will need him, even with Margaret. It’s not like she’s a nurse.”

Dr. Baker touched Pomeline on the shoulder. “I’ll be back out every few days. Don’t worry, my dear. It’s not that long a drive. Margaret seems capable, very robust.” He lifted up his hand and said firmly, “Estelle, I am telling you Marigold is perfectly fine, and a quiet summer away from the city—”

“Away from me, you mean,” Estelle interrupted. “And what, really, do you know about this, David?”

I thought again of the conversation they’d had by the Annex, and Hector’s surmising. Pomeline turned and went inside.

“I don’t mean to interrupt but I’ve got some cold lemonade and strawberries and cake, if you’d like. It’s cool in the house. And there’s supper to get.” A piece of Loretta’s grey hair was sticking out of her bun and she poked it back into place, sweat rolling down beside her eyes.

“We’re heading back now. But thank you, Loretta.” Estelle smiled at her as though only Loretta understood what Marigold was putting everyone through. Estelle opened the passenger door. “Jenny will be out at some point. She wanted to be her grandmother’s caregiver but I told her that was crazy. On that, at least, Marigold agreed with me.” Then all in one move she squished out her cigarette with her high heel, got in the car and slammed the door.

Dr. Baker got in the driver’s side. Off the black car went, sliding through the forest. The trees seemed to have inched closer toward the house while we weren’t looking, their tops brushing the speck-less summer sky. Piano music streamed out the mansion’s windows. As Loretta and I walked to the house, I realized I was whistling the piano melody, and it was the same one I’d heard in the Annex the night before, the same song I’d heard at Grampie’s … now soaring from Pomeline’s fingers.

C
ALM RETURNED
as soon as Estelle and Dr. Baker left. It wasn’t the same, but it fooled me—the summer air, the way of our daily routines. There’s great comfort in predictability, Grampie would say. All good in a garden comes from habit and all good art comes from the same, he’d remark when he went off to the outdoors or to his painting. Through the long years I have lived I’ve found comfort in the routine of the day, the rising and setting of the sun, things that never fail you. Art and I did our chores and ate our meals and spent our spare time riding bikes and roving the beach and playing in Evermore. I cut flowers each day for the house. We opened the downstairs windows each morning and closed them by noon. Loretta cooked meals and we served them in the dining room, on trays in Marigold’s rooms, or on the verandah. Marigold took her daily walks with Margaret, and sat in the shade in Evermore, looking for her vitality, she proclaimed. She’d sip her teas and take her pills and tinctures. She went to bed
right after supper and in the morning she slept in. Sleep, she preached, was the best healer. Margaret served her breakfast on the balcony of the bedroom, looking out over the grounds.

I’d sit with Loretta in the evening doing embroidery and we’d watch the day fade into night.

But underneath the tranquility there was a certain restlessness. I’d be sitting by the lily pond and there’d be chatter in the leaves, and yet when I looked there’d be nothing there. From the corner of my eye there’d be a flash in the perennial flower beds but when I gazed upon those lofty flowers there were only hummingbirds and butterflies. When the birds sang I would whistle along, and sometimes it seemed a muffled voice sang with me. When I’d stop and cock my ear there was only birdsong. It was at them times the memento seemed believable.

Loretta did not want to discuss it any more. She kept herself busy, never looking at me for too long. Art would notice me listening and peering around my shoulder. But he too said nothing, not then anyway. It became easier and easier to let the peace of summer, them lazy days, just waltz us from dawn until dusk. Before long I had stopped looking over my shoulder altogether.

Dr. Baker came out every few days as promised, and he’d chat with Loretta about domestic matters before heading off for discussion of intricate family politics—the management of Marigold and Estelle—with Pomeline. Their lives moved back behind closed doors. We were told what we needed to know when it pleased them. Marigold was determined to have the garden party, and Pomeline was helping. Dr. Baker looked after the back and forth with Estelle. He was the only one who could stand her, Art and I decided, because he was a man of medicine.

Loretta and I would have our breakfast outside at the table near the kitchen door. The early air was refreshing, but the sun started licking at the edges and by noon the freshness was spoiled. There was little rain in July and by mid month the land was parched. No
one knew when Jenny was coming and no one spoke of her. The city was a world away, and not even the loud ringing of the heavy black phones could bring it to us. We began to forget Jenny and her mother. If it wasn’t for the constant piano music flowing through the house, and the glimpses of them Parkers through doorways and in various parts of the garden and grounds, we might not have known they were at Petal’s End.

Pomeline moved through the house like flickers of light coming in the deep-set windows of the mansion. At first I’d see her outside, or walking along a hall singing these cheery songs, or skipping over the stepping stones as though she was a young child again, twirling like she was dancing with someone we couldn’t see. One afternoon shortly after Pomeline arrived we was out by the lily pond. Art and I had been lying on our backs playing a game of finding shapes in the clouds and we heard Pomeline singing in the distance. She strolled over and sat down on a bench nearby, caressing the daisies in her hand and crooning in perfect French as she sat in her wide-brimmed sun hat. I could not understand a word. Art told me later she was singing about love—
amour
, he said.

Margaret was with Marigold all the time, and we’d only see her when she was leaping out of her father’s car in the morning, or in passing as we gave her a tray or watched her take Marigold to the garden, or sometimes in the car with Hector if he drove her home. When Marigold would nap through the mid-afternoon Margaret came outside for her break, sitting out talking to Hector, if he was around, smoking cigarettes. She kept away from us.

Time itself lost the meaning we put upon it, and it was a shock to us when Pomeline came down to the kitchen to tell us that, now two weeks had passed, Marigold was settled and wanted to start a choir in preparation for the party. Marigold insisted on calling it a choir even though we were such a small group. From then on we’d spend every afternoon in choir practice in the music room. I started hoping Pomeline would remember our piano lessons but
she hadn’t mentioned it since the first day. She was distracted by her coming piano exams. She abruptly stopped walking in the garden and her colour began to wane from being inside most of the time, intensely focused on her relentless cadenzas and arpeggios.

I came into the music room early for our first choir practice and I was a bundle of nerves, for I’d heard the piano far off in the house and recognized the tune right away. Pomeline was alone at the keyboard. She lifted her eyes to meet mine. She was playing that now familiar song again, the one that kept revealing itself to me. When I asked about it she said, “Oh, you look so alarmed, Fancy. It’s just a song Jenny loves. Granny sang it for us when we were children, a song from her childhood, she said. Granny sang it to Daddy, too. He couldn’t stand it. Granny said her nanny sang it to her as a child. I suppose it is somewhat creepy, like a lot of old songs are, terrorizing children to sleep. We aren’t doing it for the garden party, have no fear.” She put her head down and launched into a spectacular piece for a few moments. “ ‘Wedding Day at Troldhaugen,’ opus 65, number 6 … isn’t it breathtaking? It’s for my examination.” Pomeline didn’t wait for me to answer and she seamlessly switched to a ballad she said we were to sing for the garden party.

I didn’t worry no more. The music I kept hearing must have been tucked away from when I was little, nothing more than snatches from my memory that was so sharp they seemed to play outside my mind.

Just when singing was added to our day, Marigold had Pomeline tell us she wanted to start doing needlework in the late mornings before lunch, and I was to join her. Margaret would bring her down to the front sitting room and we’d work there by the French doors. It was unusual, as Marigold didn’t do much stitching. She just held the hoop in her hands as she rocked in her chair and watched me, admiring my herringbone ladder stitch and my lazy daisies and French knots.

Margaret wouldn’t let on but I knew she was impressed by my skill with a needle, for she could hardly take her eyes from watching my fingers. She was acting like some senior maid and Art and I weren’t worthy even of her notice, unless we was doing something wrong. When I passed her in the hall she’d tell me to put on shoes, and to slow down or speed up, the opposite of whatever I was doing. Margaret had no interest in learning embroidery stitching but Marigold insisted she try and do a sampler. I explained what Ma had told me, that it was what young girls did long ago, to show off their skills. I saw her watching me from under her bangs. It was the speed I could stitch at that Margaret liked, how fast my flowers would appear, and how perfect. Margaret and Marigold marvelled how I didn’t need to draw no picture on the muslin, how I just stitched the picture waiting in the fibres. I could put in stitch after stitch with my eyes closed, letting my fingers take control. Even the colours I picked without thinking, pulling the floss from the basket.

And now with my eyes dim it is no different. It focuses the mind, and when you are old that is helpful, for the mind begins to fracture. Needlework was my only way to feel close to Ma. I always knew it give her a satisfaction, too, that she passed something along to me, although I did not understand the significance for many years.

The first day Marigold called me into the sitting room to join them she looked at me careful before she spoke. “Marilyn had a way with a needle, Fancy.” Marigold’s voice cracked when she said my mother’s name. “There was a time when most of the linens were embroidered by Marilyn Mosher. Now it’s all done by machine, but back then it was done by hand. It’s long out of fashion, but here at Petal’s End we don’t concern ourselves with fads.” Her tremor was barely visible, as though Petal’s End was rehabilitating her.