The Memento Read Online Free PDF Page B

dissolve into a helpless jellyfish. That’s the sort of help the Parkers like. It’s peculiar enough up there that won’t anybody even notice. It’s no wonder they don’t come out. That place is full of bad spirits. You be careful. What your grandfather thought sending you there to live when you could be with me I’ll never know. You watch your six, as your Grampie used to say. You be careful around that Marigold. She’s a wily one. Sweet elderly lady, my precious arse. And only poor Loretta with all her useless prayers to protect you.” Ma kept stitching and snorting. “A frail woman half dead coming out to a big empty house?”
    “But Marigold’s an old lady. What harm can she do anyone? Dr. Baker says she’s well enough now to do as she pleases. And anyway, Grampie always said that whatever happened to Loretta was because she never had family to help her.” The lime-green leaves were on the embroidery trees now.
    Ma took a swig from her cup. “Dr. Baker would say that, the arse. He’s just trying to curry favour with the old bat. He’s no different than his father and probably not even as good a doctor. And your grandfather was right about fat old Loretta, I’m being too hard on her. Nothing for her but the turds life has placed in a bowl at her feet. But you watch those Parkers, every single one. They’ll try to use you, mark my words. What runs in the blood runs in the blood, and that, Fancy Mosher, is the truth. You look at me.”
    Her voice was hard and hollow now, and the soft wreck whohad answered the door was long gone. It was clear it had been a mistake to give her one more chance.
    “What runs in the blood runs in the blood. Do you understand? Your Grampie must have told you.”
    The only thing I understood was that she hadn’t changed at all and that she’d fooled even her beloved Ronnie. We said nothing further, not even good night, and I left her there looking out into the dark, scared of old ladies, humming to herself. I went into the room that had been mine, where so many children before me had slept. I put myself to bed, imagining a flock of birds, the starlings that Grampie liked, swirling up in the way they did at twilight, bending like a long black ribbon through that early sunset. I counted every bird in my mind.

    Hector’s loud voice burst through my thoughts, a town crier proclaiming to Loretta and Art what a fine machine Old Rolly was. He then moved on about Old Stu, about how they didn’t make them like they did back in the day.
    Loretta wagged her finger at him. “You talk as though you were in the first car factory there ever was, you fool. You’re only nineteen years old. Now don’t you go getting any ideas, Hector. This car will be parked just as soon as we get back. The only reason we’re out in this car is there wasn’t room to put us all in your pickup truck and I’m not driving around with anyone in the back. Nice and slow, Hector, please and thank you. Don’t strain the engine. Marigold wants this machine running smoothly when she comes out. She wants everything to be just so.”
    “When you get to a certain age wanting your own way is understandable,” Art said.
    Loretta turned around and she looked back at Art. She was so short she was like a child herself peering over the edge of the frontseat. “Why yes, that’s true, Mister Man. It’s more when you get to a certain age you want things the way you remember them. That’s what Marigold is after this summer, a bit of life how it was, and still is, in her mind.”
    “Eighty-five, isn’t she?” Hector looked at Loretta. “My grandfather lived to be a hundred. Marigold says she wants the car ready in case she needs to go somewhere. Or for company. No offence to senior citizens. Just seems you get to a certain age and it’s kind of like you’re young again except you ain’t. You’re just travelling around in your mind. And looking in the mirror seeing what only you can see.”
    “Hector, sometimes