The Memento (32 page)

T
HAT EVENING
Art and I come out to the Atelier after supper, and Sakura and Margaret joined us with a plate of gingersnaps. We watched the sun sink down in the sky, the swans doing a bedtime glide. Margaret had stayed late to help Marigold, whose screams had fused with Pomeline’s, as though her fingers too had been crushed by the heavy wood. If Harry had promised Sakura a romantic summer, an enchanted holiday on his distant cousin’s big country property, it had surely gone awry.

“Look how the sun is reflecting on their wings.” Sakura’s voice was satin smooth on the ear, the way a piece of fine embroidery floss feels on the fingertips.

Margaret took a cookie and went down to the edge of the pond. She broke off a piece and tossed it out to the unmoving birds. “I guess they aren’t hungry,” she said, turning back toward us. But then Sweet William hissed and lifted up his wings. He came running out of the water after her and latched onto her leg. Margaret
shrieked and Art and I ran down to shoo the swan away. It charged all of us and we ran up the bank to the deck.

“Even her pets are wicked,” Margaret gasped. Her skin was red and bleeding, but it wasn’t a deep gash. She brushed cookie crumbs off her uniform and they stuck to the small wound. “I’m going to go change and get the hell out of here. You might not be aware but everyone is fucking crazy around here. And the adults do nothing. They never do.” She was breathing heavily the whole time she talked, and she was covered in sweat. “It was an accident, you know. It was so baking hot in there. My allergies have been out of control the last week, I think. Maybe Jenny felt lightheaded. It wasn’t fair for her to say it was my fault she got startled and fell. I didn’t mean to bump into her. She hates her sister. I think she did it on purpose but she’s never held accountable.”

Sakura rested her hand on Margaret’s back. “Accidents happen. It was no one’s fault. We shouldn’t have been in there when the room was that stifling. Pomeline will recover. She was feeling dizzy anyway, from the searing weather and too much practising.”

Margaret rolled her eyes and left. We watched her fade into the twilight.

Sakura, Art and I walked across the garden to the gazebo by the labyrinth. The big stone fountain was running. Frothy water, stained pink from the sky, gushed from the grey stone flowers that the angry, chiselled cherub was clutching.

Sakura ran her finger under the water and spoke over the fountain’s gurgle. “Harry wanted me to tell you it will be okay. We’re going to take you out to the island the day after the garden party. We’ll stay all night camping. We can look at wildflowers and collect seashells. I guess it will be you taking us since you’ve been there before. But nonetheless it will be good for us to have an expedition.” She then took our hands and squeezed them. Her fingers were small, like Jenny’s, and firm. “You are both good
children. I don’t think you know that.” She went off, floating over the lawn. The sky darkened into hysterical red and orange.

Art walked over to the hedge labyrinth and I followed him. I heard voices far off, so I started inside the maze, trying to disappear. I sat on the bench at the opening. It served as a waiting room for those who were too afraid to go inside.

Art came in and sat beside me. “Do you think she did it on purpose?”

That’s what Margaret had yelled directly after it happened: that Jenny did it, that she was up to her tricks again, even to her own sister. She kept yelling it as Art and I lifted the lid off Pomeline’s fingers. It was a horrible sight, the blood smeared on the keys and dripping on the floor, her fingers swelling, the skin red and blue. Pomeline’s eyes rolled back in her head and she threw up. Jenny was crying out that she was sorry, and Marigold had come over with her cane in one hand, the other hand over her mouth, muffling her screams.

A bird flew through the western sky, a solitary black silhouette. “It’s been a long day,” Art said.

The darkness inside the hedges made me feel safe, shut away from it all.

“Fancy, the graveyard …”

“What about the graveyard?”

“Your mother shouldn’t have gone down the beach. She shouldn’t have let John Lee out of her sight. But you can’t change the past. There’s nothing you can do. I don’t know what she thinks John Lee can tell you. It’s just her guilt talking. It’s made her crazy. I think it made your Grampie crazy too. I’m sorry.” Art’s voice was gentle, which made it lower, a glimpse of the man he would become.

My throat hurt.
Hush-a-bye, don’t you cry
. It was all I wanted to do then, cry.

“Do you think she did it on purpose?” he asked again.

I stood up and started walking into the maze. Art came behind me.

“Who?” There was enough going on that it was hard to know who was plotting against who.

“Margaret pushing Jenny. Jenny pushing Pomeline. They’re both saying each other did it. It was an accident, don’t you think?”

“She did too do it on purpose.” Jenny stood at the entrance with a bandage on her forehead, a souvenir of her fall.

“How are you feeling?” Art asked her, ignoring what she’d said.

“I have a headache. Dr. Baker gave me a pill. He’s gone off to the city with Pomeline, to have her fingers X-rayed. He’s sure they’re just bruised. Margaret pushed me. She shouldn’t have made fun of my grandmother. She should never have come here. Pomeline’s mad at me, as if it were all my fault. I just do what I have to. Doesn’t anyone understand that?”

There was no point in any more conversation. I went into the maze and left them there at the entrance.

Jenny called after me, “I won’t tell on you.”

“For what?”

“For going into the labyrinth. I’m going to see my swans.”

“Then I won’t tell on you, Jenny,” I said under my breath.

“Wait for me here when you’re finished,” she said, skipping off humming.

I started running farther and farther in. It was stupid to run toward the centre with the light disappearing. It was heavy twilight now, and everything was silhouette and shadow.

“Art? I’m lost.”

No reply.

I heard rustling. “Art, speak to me,” I called out.

And Art did call to me, his voice muffled. “Fancy?”

“Come find me right now.” I heard more swishing. It was not coming from the direction of his voice. Something was shaking the hedges. “Art? You come to me. I’ll whistle so you can find me. I’m going to try to go back to the start. I’ll follow the sky.”

“It’s easier if you just stay put.” It was impossible to tell where his voice was coming from.

My winding took me to the centre where the roses were. The stars were coming out. And there was Jenny. She was walking funny, all hunched over, shuffling, like she was going to fall over. She was humming. I can hear it still, a tuneless hum. She came toward me. I stopped whistling then.

“Jenny, let’s go out,” I said.

She looked up but it was no little girl, no Jenny Parker. It had a shrivelled face and eyes like black pits, stringy hair and a horrible leer as it reached out a hand to me, and in its long fingers it held a pink flower. It was still humming away as it tossed its head back and gave a scream that rounded in weird short chirps as it shook its head and lifted its thin arm out in front of its hobbled body, clothes all tattered, palm facing toward its head, index finger pointed up. Through all these years I can still hear the gurgle I made as I tried to call again to Art. The creature lifted an arm over its head and hopped up on the hedge wall, making to pounce down on me, but I darted straight ahead, turning left and right, tripping, my hands grabbing onto the dirt under the hedge, the sharp needles cutting into my fingers. I got up and ran, and it felt like a miracle when I saw the expanse of lawn outside the maze up ahead. I didn’t dare look behind me.

Art was hollering from somewhere but I ran straight out onto the lawn, away from the labyrinth. The garden lights snapped on, illuminating the path. Loretta would be on her way out to fetch us for bed any moment. Jenny stood there looking at me, one hand behind her back.

“Don’t blame me for anything, Fancy. I’m not stupid enough to go in there at this time of night. After being in the graveyard today I should think you would have had enough of creepy places.”

Art came running out. “What was it?”

I went to the fountain and splashed my face with gushing cold water.

“Look,” Art said, pointing at the swishing branches behind the maze. A cloud of starlings lifted from the treetops, flying west, east and north and to the dark southern skies, making the same sounds that had come out of the thing’s mouth, twisting and turning like a great black current winding through the air, swooping low and then lifting high up and south over the forest, breaking against the sky, a black wave on the twilight blue. They left behind a cloak of silence so thick we did not move, the damp threads of the evening air falling on our tongues. Night was enveloping us now.

This is one of those moments that repeats over and over in my mind now, many years later. With each rock of this chair I see the birds twisting, as though giving us a warning, Grampie speaking to me through them birds.

Jenny held up her hands to the sky, like she was trying to get a scoopful of the stars before they was gone, but it was too late.

T
HEY BROUGHT
Pomeline back from the hospital deep in the night and the next day she stayed in her room. It was the first day without the sound of piano music. And Margaret did not come to work. Her father called to say she was unwell, that she had been up all night sick and he was taking her to the doctor. He thought she was having a severe allergy flare. She might not come back to work, he said.

Harry and Sakura came to the kitchen in the morning when Art and I were having a snack. They wanted to make more rosewater for party favours. We were carrying on with the festivities. Pomeline’s right hand was injured but it was just severely swollen and bruised. No broken bones, thank God, Harry said. But she wouldn’t be able to play the piano for a few weeks. They didn’t say she would miss her exams but we all knew she would. She was icing her hand and taking pain pills. Dr. Baker had given her something to make her sleep.

I’d gone up early with a breakfast tray for Marigold. When I took the tray in, she was sitting in bed and she pointed to a table by the window. She talked about the party like nothing had happened, lounging in her white nightgown with a net over her hair, watching me move across the room. Out of nowhere it seemed, she said, “It was a terrible shame about your brother. But fortunate your mother was able to go on and have so many children. I only had one child, one Parker. I had that in common with Estelle.”

I was about to point out that Estelle had two children, but before I could she carried on as though she had it sorted out in her mind again.

“She had precious Pomeline, and with the help of medicine she was able to have Agatha Jennifer. She had one miscarriage after another. Did you know that? There was something wrong with her womb.” She was looking around her room, like she was talking to someone else. “She lost baby after baby. Charlie was dreadfully disappointed. He was overjoyed to have Pomeline, of course. She was his heart’s delight. It was such a pity he didn’t care about Agatha the same way. It was as though there had been so many lost that by the time she was born he didn’t have any heart left to love her with. For me, there were no babies to lose. I wasn’t like your mother having babies like some barn cat, or Estelle with all her dead ones. I can understand why Estelle went to such lengths to have Jenny. We couldn’t do that in my day. What I would have given to turn my womb into a nurturing haven. But at least I had Charlie. He wasn’t like the other boys. He was a soft boy. His father didn’t understand him. He did not appreciate him.”

I looked in the mirror and Marigold was looking right at me in the reflection. “But your mother just went on having children, one after another, like she was making cakes, big plump babies, even when it was past her time. There’s nothing more distasteful than an old woman having children, when the bloom is long off the rose.” I could tell it revolted her. “There was nothing we could do, you
see. The waves were horrifically big. And no one could swim. Charlie was traumatized. His father hated how anxious he was after that.” Marigold dabbed her eye with a fine cotton hankie, pink roses on it that my mother had probably embroidered all them years ago. I doubt Marigold even noticed when I left the room.

Margaret called in sick the next day as well, and the house was quiet, no piano music, no choir practice. But the day after, we were gathered at the Water House and Margaret came in, drawn and grey, rundown, slipping in quietly as Harry and Sakura put three large pots on the stove. We had collected an enormous amount of rose petals. They were going to refrigerate some to toss at the party. Jenny took one bowl over to the stove and put the petals in the pots. She picked up an enamel pitcher full of water and poured it in, carefully setting the pitcher back down. She peered inside on her tiptoes before she put the lid on top. No one said a word to her. It was like she was taking over her grandmother’s job. The water simmered and she poured the ice on the tops.