The Memento (28 page)

I cleared my throat but they seemed to have forgotten I was standing there. I could have slipped away without saying a word. “Excuse me. I’m going to the big house.”

“Hurry back, Fancy. We’ll get started on the soaps when you return. See if you can round up Margaret. And stop by the carriage house to get more glass bottles from Hector.”

That was the last place I wanted to go but I did as I was told.

Hector was sitting in a chair under the tree beside the carriage house having a cigarette and drinking a beer. He gave me a big grin when I came up.

“They want to know where the glass bottles are, for the rosewater.”

“Oh yes, their rosewater. Turning back the clock, these people. Why don’t you come over here and sit on my lap and have a drink?” Hector blew out smoke as he laughed. My face burned.

“Suit yourself,” he said. “By the way, be careful around your pal, Art. He’s thinking about nature this year in a whole different way.”

I stared at him in disbelief. It was hard to tell if I was angrier with him or with myself.

Hector stared back. “What’s got into you, cranky pants?”

I ran off then, straight for the house. Sweat dripped down my cheeks and into my mouth, salty, making me think of the night before.

“Fancy, is everything okay?” Loretta looked up from her mixing bowl.

“Jenny’s eating lunch with her cousins. She don’t want to come in.”

“That’s fine, just as long as she eats. Girly Miss, how many times do I have to tell you? Put your shoes on. Have a drink and cool down.”

Margaret came in then from the main house with a tray of dirty dishes. She put them down with a crash on the counter. “Harry wants you to come out to the Water House, Margaret,” I said, walking to the back of the kitchen, not looking at her. When I didn’t look at her it was easier to ignore how sick she appeared. “He wants you to help with the soap.”

“I said I would help down here. Pomeline is with Mrs. Parker.”

“I don’t need any help. Go ahead with the others, Margaret. Just walk slow and stay out of the sun. The day will be over soon enough. Mrs. Parker wants all the soaps done up. Honestly, these preparations are enough to give her another stroke. I keep thinking maybe I’m having a heart attack myself.” Loretta pounded her chest. “Oh my … the weather is getting to us all.”

“If you ask me, her freak granddaughters are enough to give her a heart attack. One whining all the time and the other moping about and hammering on the piano all day. Does no one else think Pomeline is sick? It’s not just me this place is getting to.”

“No one asked you, did they, Margaret, for your opinion, and if no one asks, please keep it to yourself.”

Outside, Margaret called after me, following across the yard. “I can’t wait for this job to end.” She stopped to light a cigarette that she had stuffed in her bra, along with matches. With breasts like hers, her bra was like a purse. She was just like Ma, who kept a photo of John Lee tucked in by her heart. The cigarette seemed to give Margaret a lift. Maybe she was just having an off day. Maybe her being sick had nothing to do with Jenny putting something in her rosewater, I thought. Maybe that whole memory was just some dream or drunken fantasy.

“I’m sick of that four-eyed bitch Jenny telling me what to do, I’ll tell you that. Hector says someday she’s going to have it out with her mother, with all of them. She likes to scare people. It’s the only way she can feel important. Just look at her. You’d think she owns the place.”

I didn’t like Hector’s name coming out of Margaret’s mouth. “Well, she
is
going to own the place eventually.”

“Hector says it will go to Pomeline because she’s the oldest, unless Estelle can get her hands on it beforehand. I guess Jenny takes after her, a thief. You little girls are always up to no good. And you stop following me around too, Fancy. I can hear you.
You’re not grown up enough for some things and you should know that.”

“I’m not following anybody around,” I said cautiously.

Margaret took a few more quick sucks off her cigarette and tossed it on the ground, stamping it out with her kitten heel before following after me into Evermore.

They were just about to get started in the Water House. I sat beside Art at the big table where the soap was piled high on trays.

“Margaret, so glad you could join us. It will go faster with more hands. We’ll show you, like Marigold showed us this morning.” Harry was fiddling with the ribbons as he spoke and Sakura was clearing some counter space.

Jenny came over and stood beside me, ignoring Margaret. She picked up two bars of soap and handed one to me.

Margaret looked at Jenny’s dress. “Doesn’t wearing a dress with a floral print make you feel like you’re wearing dead things?”

“I told you, it’s the smell. Do you have memory problems like everyone else seems to? Fabric doesn’t have any smell. Unless you’re a servant and you have to wear uniforms like you and Fancy, and then it smells musty which is almost as bad.” Jenny wrinkled up her nose.

Harry pointed to the table. “All right then, we wrap each bar, like so. The bar goes into one of these cotton bags, like so. Next we pull the ribbon ends tight and tie a bow, like so, and voila—a charming party favour for each of our guests to take home, to remember the serenity of Evermore, of Petal’s End. It’s so romantic.” The soap was stacked like castles all along the counters.

Art let out a big sigh, and Margaret took it to mean one thing. “And who do you fancy, Art?” Margaret was tying bows one after another in a blur of coloured ribbon.

Art blushed and went back to humming.

“Art loves Fancy,” Margaret said, gawking at Art. She thought she was hilarious.

“Margaret,” I said. “He’s like my brother. Don’t be disgusting.”

“Oh, I’m just teasing,” Margaret said, winking at Jenny, who ignored her. “Art’s not interested in girls, not yet. Wait until his voice changes.”

“I love the roses,” Art said to the soap castles. “I love the gardens … the sound of the birds … the stars and the sky. And I like fixing engines with Hector.”

“And I like all of those things too, Art. You’ll be a big tall man with a low voice soon enough. No need to rush any of that,” Harry said.

“What’s the rest of the story?”

“Which story, Fancy?”

“The story you was reading when you first got here. About the garden.”

“Oh yes, what a memory you have, yes, ‘Rappaccini’s Daughter.’ ”

“What happens?”

“It doesn’t end well. It’s not a happy story.”

“How does it end? I hope no one loses their ears in it.” Jenny giggled.

“Well, you see, as spectacular and exotic as it is, the garden also happens to be, well … it’s poisonous, as I said before, and his daughter, raised in the garden, is immune to the poisons of the flowers and plants.”

“That’s a good thing. My mother keeps me in all the time because she says I have a weak immune system.”

“Well, Beatrice, the girl in the story, she has a very strong immune system, so even the most beautiful and deadly flower can’t hurt her. But she became poisonous to others, as I told you. And when she fell in love, she began to poison her lover. He found an antidote but it overwhelmed her as she was already intensely toxic. And thus Beatrice died in the garden.”

Margaret rubbed the sweat off her forehead. “Love can be poisonous all right.” She looked at me. Jenny was watching us both.

“Yes indeed, Margaret, that’s one interpretation of the story. Love is a complex emotion. Infatuation is an intoxicating thing. I suppose, like anything, we can be corrupted by it or uplifted by it, poisoned by it or healed by it.”

Margaret went to put one more piece of soap at the top of the tower and she held it there. She glanced at Jenny and me as she dropped it and the soap castle fell to pieces, the blocks of soap clunking on the table and down on the floor. “Oh my goodness,” Margaret said, twiddling her bangs. “That wasn’t balanced properly, now was it?”

Harry put his head in his hands.

“Girls. Now please, let’s get along,” Sakura said. Her voice was level and reassuring.

Margaret seemed so sturdy it was hard to believe Jenny could actually do anything to really harm her. We heard the laughing and shrieking of the party planners as they got near the Water House. Jenny and I slipped out and left the rest of them there. Margaret watched us go.

Jenny held her parasol over both of our heads as we strolled toward the house. I didn’t know whether I should be direct and just come out and ask her what she put in that flower water. It was hard to forget Margaret shaking and gasping for breath.

“I know what Margaret did. I’ve seen them in the carriage house. I watched from behind the corner. It was disgusting. She was on her hands and knees,” Jenny said out of nowhere. “I’ve seen my mother like that. Those sorts of women never think anyone sees. Hector is not your one true love, Fancy. You will know your one true love. My father told me so. He said you’ll know when your love isn’t true.”

Just like that, my pity for Margaret was snatched away with those words. Jenny could do as she pleased to her.

“I long for my one true love. In the winter it’s snowflakes. In the summer it’s my swans and roses. But there must be more to true love. It’s not the kind that makes you bad.”

Jenny reached out and with her icy hand she squeezed mine. “All is calm,” she said. “All is bright.” She let go of my hand and ran up the side steps into the big house. Such a peculiar small girl, holding the handle of that big wooden door as she pulled it closed, leaving me alone like there was no one else on earth but me.

I
AVOIDED MARGARET
for the next week and she avoided everybody but Marigold. She was coming late to work and leaving early, walking slow, red hives all over. And I stayed away from Hector. I wanted nothing to do with him—a nineteen-year-old man playing nasty Margaret on one side and a twelve-year-old girl on the other.

On occasion I’d see Hector driving by in his precious Old Rolly or in his pickup truck and he’d wave like not a thing had happened. When he gave Margaret a ride home and she’d wave like the Queen I’d pretend I didn’t see them. It disgusted me to even think about them together. I remembered her with the student minister.

Other times she’d be waiting outside for her father to pick her up. Once he drove up quick. The gardeners were leaving and it was noisy and she didn’t hear him. I was at the door. Margaret hadn’t said a word to me as she stood there blowing out smoke while the trucks went by. Her father’s car came and she went stiff, looking
at her cigarette with terrified eyes. Without thinking, I plucked the cigarette from her fingers and took a puff. Margaret’s father got out of the car. He gave me a once-over. “Smoking’s disgusting,” he said. “Girls who smoke are disgusting.”

I took a drag and blew out the smoke real slow in a haze around my head. It made me dizzy.

“Come along, Margaret.”

She looked out the car window and mouthed “Thank you.” I gave her a nod.

Hector came to find me later in the day when I was bringing laundry in before suppertime, after he’d been in to see Loretta and she’d scolded him for disappearing all the time. He was burdened down with errands, he said, it wasn’t his fault. He went on and on about how much they were expecting him to do, and he had wood to cut, and it was all interfering with the business plans he and Buddy had. He made the mistake of putting his hand on my arm when he approached and I gave him a slap.

“Did Margaret tell you? It don’t mean nothing. She’d give it for free to a toothless old man. She’s that kind of girl,” he said. “Not like you.”

“Margaret didn’t say a word. The walls got eyes and ears at Petal’s End, don’t you know, Hector? Remember, I’m my Grampie’s granddaughter. I know things.” It was like the lies were infecting me. “You keep away from me,” I said. “You might have some fooled around here but not me.”

Hector took a step back as he spoke. “You’re going to turn out no different than your mother, Fancy Mosher. Don’t you go acting like you’re special, like you’re a Parker. You’re no different than any of us.”

It was easier for me now, with my lust for Hector broken into pieces. I moved through the house in a whisper, wearing my maid outfit. I barely saw Art, who was busy all the time out in the garden. I would hear him singing and I’d join in for a moment before going about whatever business Loretta had sent me out on, taking this and
that here and there, slipping through the big house, hearing voices talking and laughing and arguing, the piano music flowing from early in the morning right through to the night.

The choir practices were fast now because we was singing so beautiful and we wanted it to be over. We wasted no time. Jenny stood there turning the pages all demure and proper and quiet. Marigold stately in her armchair, sometimes napping through it or fanning herself, at other times just staring into space, and on occasion looking at me strangely. And me, wondering if I’d see someone, or something, if I looked where Marigold was staring. But when my eyes followed hers I’d see only a hairline crack in the ceiling or a chip in a wooden chair.

It seemed each day Pomeline faded further. She was barely eating. And she was napping now, after her morning practice, and again in the afternoon.

There were five days left until they’d throw open the gates to Petal’s End, the doors to Evermore, and people would laugh and children would sing and Marigold would stroll about with her silver-handled cane, tossing rose petals, handing out elegant slices of rose-petal soap and spraying mists of fresh rosewater.

For our afternoon off Art and I had gone out on our bicycles. A cormorant flew by and I followed it on my bike until it was just a dark speck disappearing into the sky.

“What’s she doing here?” Art said.

“Don’t know,” I said. “Hunting, I suppose.”

“Fancy,” Art said, “I meant there.” He was pointing at Ma. She was up the road a bit, leaning on her car, lips painted red. She must have got loose from Ronnie. She had on more makeup than usual and it was all put on as though she had double vision when she did it. Around her neck hung a glittery rhinestone necklace, like she was going somewhere special. She wore a black dress. Ma lit a cigarette and tapped her foot.