The Memento (24 page)

“I’m an old lady, Dr. Baker. I don’t need flattery. It is wasted on me, I assure you, as clever as you are with it. It’s better spent on Estelle.”

Jenny turned to a song and showed it to Marigold. “I want this,” she said.

Pomeline looked at the music book and shook her head. “No, I was telling Fancy that I don’t like that one. She doesn’t like it either, do you, Fancy?”

I was saved having to reply for Jenny seemed about to launch into a tirade. She composed herself, trying to show how agreeable she could be when she wanted. “Well, how about this one? It’s one you used to sing just to me, Granny. I know all the words. Then I taught Pomeline so we could sing it in rounds. Remember, Pomeline? I don’t mean I have to sing it but can’t I pick even one?”

Marigold started singing, Pomeline joining her on the piano.
White coral bells, upon a slender stalk, lilies of the valley deck my garden walk
.

Jenny taught us the few words as though she was the choral director, line by line, everything made right by a song. She kept looking over to Marigold for approval.
Oh, don’t you wish that you could hear them ring?
Jenny wasn’t allowed to sing but she mouthed the words, trying to look as an opera singer would.
That will happen only when the fairies sing
.

Marigold waved her hands like a conductor and she was grinning, but when her eyes reached mine she frowned.

Jenny looked over at me, fixing a look that Jesus saves for the little lambs. The golden afternoon light left the room as the sun pulled over in the sky and there was nothing but tremulous voices singing in the shadows.

A
RT AND
I went down to the kitchen after choir practice and I asked Loretta why Marigold was acting batty around me. It seemed senility had roosted on her. Loretta was finishing supper, pan-fried haddock and lemon potatoes, and she didn’t look up as she cut parsley to toss over the fish, talking as she snipped, telling me that it was a sorrowful thing when John Lee drowned, that was all. Marigold felt badly that Ma’s child died and she had her Charlie. Loretta was not herself. She was short with me. It was better not to talk about any of it, she said.

I’d already upset Loretta by going in the Annex earlier in the summer, on top of Grampie’s letter and the family memento. By this point it seemed like a story Ma and Grampie had made up—the lush Mosher imagination. Anything I was seeing or hearing was just that, put there by adults who didn’t know how to deal with grief. Adults who did not understand mourning and who infected little children with their melancholy. I reminded myself
the music I kept hearing was in fact just a sentimental song I had heard in the halls and rooms and through the walls when I was small. A child’s imagination hears whispers when there is only wind. And moans and groans when it is nothing more than squeaky stairs and hinges.

Later, when Art and I were cleaning up the supper dishes with Loretta, Jenny arrived in the kitchen, saying our names, walking slowly, almost a sashay if it hadn’t been so awkward and stiff. We could smell her perfume. She had her glass bells in a box. The Parkers had forever been coming down to the kitchen, for a snack, or to tell Loretta their problems like we all did, to sit with her while she listened, took your hand, put her arm around you, hummed as she went about the kitchen, the way she had that made you feel whatever was going wrong would right itself.

“Let’s go out to Evermore.” Jenny stood there impatiently. “I want to hang up my wind bells. You two can help me.”

“Good evening to you as well, Miss Jenny,” Loretta said as she handed me the last plate to dry.

“Oh yes, hello.” Jenny clasped her hands. “It smells good. You are the best cook, Loretta.”

Loretta wrung out the dishrag, dried her hands on a towel and gave Jenny’s cheek a gentle pinch. “Thank you, Jenny. I’m happy to see you eat. There’s barely anything to you.”

Jenny gave a weird little coughing giggle. She turned to me. “I saw the picture you made of Granny. Why on earth did you make a picture of her sleeping like that? It’s not very becoming, although Granny doesn’t seem to mind. She says embroidery isn’t a realistic depiction but an interpretation.”

I shrugged. To me, the face was much improved from my first attempt. I didn’t see what she found so disturbing about it.

“Maybe you can teach me to embroider.”

“That’s a nice idea,” Loretta said.

“Granny says you do it like an expert. I wonder what my mother
would think if I took up needlework. It’s something my father liked.” Jenny’s laugh boomeranged around the immense kitchen.

Loretta smoothed out her apron. “Dear, sometimes parents don’t get along, like anybody. Sometimes we argue with our friends or our sisters. It’s just a part of learning to get along. Your father was a good man, Jenny. Oh, I’ll never forget what a dancer he was. He’d swoop through the kitchen and twirl me about, and then he’d be out the door and off to Evermore so quickly it was like he was a dream. We need enthusiasm like that around here if we are to be ready for the garden party your grandmother wants, God bless her. Now, off with you. Go hang those bells.”

As we went through the hall Jenny glanced into the cloakroom we used, where Margaret had left her orange sweater hanging. A bottle of rosewater we had made earlier was on the top shelf, beside her purse. Jenny didn’t stop but her head turned slightly. Her expression was blank, like maybe she hadn’t even registered nothing but that orange sweater. Art was calling to us to hurry up and we were both through the door and into the evening.

Outside we heard laughing from the carriage house and we went around. Hector and Margaret were talking in hushed tones, and they didn’t hear us coming. It was one of those moments where you should either back up quiet or clear your throat. But we did neither. We stood there at the corner of the carriage house, listening as Margaret spoke.

“Yes, my darlings, Charlie was a fine dancer. How I love Petal’s End. Come along and we’ll make some rosewater, some lily oil. How horrible that we do not have fresh morning petals covered in dew. Whatever shall we do with steamy hot rose petals? I’ll make you a serum, a deadly serum to put myself out of my misery.”
Margaret cackled. “She prattles on like that all day long making my ears bleed. And she’s obsessed with that little freak of a human. And she’s so rude to Pomeline. I’d slap her if she was my grandmother. What a hate she’s got on
for the doctor. Can’t say I blame her. I can spot his type a mile away. He can’t fool me. No wonder Charlie did himself in. Can you imagine having to live with this lot, day in, day out? They must have drove Charlie to it.”

Margaret grabbed Hector and started whirling him around. He wasn’t much of a dancer but he played along. A dirty jealousy came over me, but it was nothing compared to Jenny’s response, wiggling her fingers fast like they was big spiders itching to coil around their necks and dig in.

Margaret did a dip and Hector caught her and pulled her up close. Margaret reached up to pat her hair down. “Can’t you just see that shrivelled biddy dancing with her homo son, talking about roses?”

They kept laughing. Hector lit a cigarette and leaned against the wall and Margaret sat down on the ground just as Jenny came stomping in, pointing her finger. “How dare you!”

They stopped mid laugh and looked at her. “I didn’t mean anything by it,” Margaret said quickly.

Hector took a drag of his cigarette and stubbed it out in his butt-can. “Margaret, I thought you was going on about your own grandmother. I’ve been telling Margaret she needs to show more respect.”

Margaret’s grin shrivelled up. “That’s not true, Hector.”

Art coughed. “We should go out to the garden.”

“Well, I agree with Mr. Man there. I guess you shouldn’t be making fun, like I told you, Margaret.”

Jenny went bright red and I thought she was having an attack, and she opened her mouth, but Margaret spoke before she could say anything, even one of her weird religious lines.

“What are you going to do? Go and tell her? How do you think that would make an elderly lady feel? Let’s just forget about it. I’m sorry if I hurt your feelings. You should be proud of your grandmother.” Margaret winked. “Not everyone has time to flounce
around in a garden and pluck flower petals and boil them up and make potions. Usually it’s kids doing that, but if it makes her happy there’s nothing wrong with it.”

“To hear the angels sing.” Jenny said each word slow and long.

Margaret hurried off to the house and didn’t look back. Hector let out a low whistle and rolled his eyes. “You all are just too much for this here fellow. I got work to do.”

We watched him saunter away. Then Jenny turned and left, and we followed her to the walled garden. It was still bright as we skipped through Evermore. But Jenny wasn’t talking at all, just breathing funny. She stopped. I put my hand on her back and told her to breathe deep and slow. We’d grown up seeing her family do that, and the wheezing settled, bit by bit, the early-evening light falling down tender on us, making Art look so young, and Jenny so old. She worried that if she had an attack she’d have to go back to the city. We stayed there with her until her breathing was almost normal. She licked her lips and we carried on. Jenny wanted to go to the lily pond to see the swans.

A few clanks and bangs came from the Water House as we went by and Harry waved to us through the window. “Come in, children, come in, come in,” he called.

Inside, Harry held up a bottle with clear liquid in it. “The garden is simply celestial in the evening. I could stay here all the time. I was just getting the Water House ready for tomorrow, for our second go at rosewater. I can’t see how it can go any better than this round. This bottle is for your grandmother.” He unscrewed the lid and passed it to Jenny, who took a big whiff and closed her eyes. “Extraordinary fragrance. Truly. I can see why your grandmother is keen, why she wants to continue this, revive the lost art of flower water. The roses in the garden she made with your father are exquisite. What a fitting memorial to him.”

Jenny held the bottle. “Take a deep breath, both of you.” She passed it under our noses. “This is the essence of flowers that never
die. It’s their spirit in the bottle, you see.” She was very serious about this. “So many memories, and now, all in a bottle.”

Harry seemed equal parts enchanted and unnerved by Jenny. He took the bottle from her and put a cap on it. “I see you have your wind bells. If you leave them here I’ll hang them for you. Pomeline has hers hung out on the verandah. Anyway, children, Sakura and I were thinking we could go down to the beach and have a fire. I’ve already been down and have gathered up some wood. It’s just a matter of trotting through the woods and striking a match. We’ll roast marshmallows and tell ghost stories. What do you say? Sakura has wonderful stories. I’ve already checked, and even Pomeline will come. And Dr. Baker. What do you say? Fancy?”

I agreed.

“Splendid,” he said. “Huzzah! Arthur?”

Art smiled.

Harry crowed with joy. “Brilliant. We shall ring your grandmother so she won’t worry and we’ll run you home after. And Jenny?”

Jenny did a clumsy spin. As we turned to go out the door she ran back and gave Harry a great big hug, burying her head in his stomach. He was surprised and looked like he was a missionary visiting an orphanage. Her white kerchief hung off the side of her head as he touched the wisps of her silvery gold hair.

“Then it’s settled. We’ll head down in a half hour. Now on with the three of you to check on those swans. Better hurry before they roost. And be careful. They’re not like ducks, those things.”

The hedge labyrinth was perfectly trimmed now, towering dense green walls. We weren’t supposed to go into it without a grown-up around, certainly not in the twilight. One time Jenny went in and we tried to rescue her and the three of us ended up lost in there. She had a proper attack, and we followed the harsh, strangled
breaths until we found her. We called and called for help. Charlie and Dr. Baker found us, and Estelle threatened to ban us from the garden. She tried to blame me and Art. We were just six years old. It was the same summer Charlie died. Jenny told her mother she’d insisted we all go in so there was no point in banishing us. I still remember her hands on her hips, breathless, pushing her mother away. You could never banish Jenny from Evermore.

Jenny slowed down in front of the hedge and Art shook his head. “We’re not going in there. It’s too late. And we want to go to the beach fire.”

“If you do, Jenny, you are on your own,” I said.

“You two are cowards.”

She didn’t know the half of it, of course, of why Art and I might be scared of things in the dark and how not believing, not tempting fate, was working.

I rolled my eyes at her. “You’re right. I’m scared. Loretta will skin me alive if I get in any trouble. I’m not creeping around in the dark ever again and getting stranded in this stupid garden.”

Never again
, the child says,
never again
, but never is a long time.

“Forevermore,” Jenny laughed in her disturbing voice. “Stuck forevermore in Evermore. Don’t you get it? I’m the only one with a sense of humour.” She took off running toward the pond. “Catch me, catch me, catch me if you can.” For a sickly child, as her mother called her, she was fast, disappearing through trees and bushes and towering flower beds, only a flash of her white dress and cap, bright, like she was a firefly. We went running after her.

Jenny was standing in the water at the lily pond, her sandals on the bank, the swans at the far end, twisting their bodies around to stare at us. “You kind of look like one of them, Jenny,” Art said. I went down to the water. The lilies were closed up tight already. The two adult swans started gliding toward us, Sweet William and Iris White. The babies must have been in bed for the night, tucked up in the swan house.

“Don’t worry, they won’t hurt you if I’m here. They are mute swans. It’s funny because they make so much noise. After my grandfather’s peacocks, they wanted contemplative birds. I guess they were fooled. What kind of birds do you like?” She took out a crumbling piece of bread she had jammed in her pocket and threw it in the water, and they came and gobbled it up.