The Memory Keeper's Daughter (16 page)

A single wasp buzzed near the fiery azaleas and moved angrily away. Norah stepped off the soggy paper sack. Dazed, cold sober, she walked across the lawn, fingering her keys. She got in the car, as if it were any other day, and drove off to get her son.

I AD? DADDY?"

At the sound of Paul's voice, his quick light steps on the garage stairs, David looked up from the exposed sheet of paper he had just slipped into the developer.

"Hang on!" he called out. "Just a second, Paul." But even as he spoke the door burst open, spilling light into the room.

"Damn it!" David watched the paper darken rapidly, the image lost in the sudden burst of light. "Damn it, Paul, haven't I told you a million zillion trillion times not to come in when the red light is onr

"Sorry. I'm sorry, Dad."

David took a deep breath, chastened. Paul was only six, and standing in the doorway he looked very small. "It's okay, Paul. Come on in. I'm sorry I yelled at you."

He squatted down and held out his arms, and Paul plunged into them, resting his head briefly on David's shoulder, the bristle of his new haircut both soft and stiff against David's neck. Paul was slight and wiry, strong, a boy who moved through the world like quicksilver, quiet and watchful and eager to please. David kissed his forehead, regretting that moment of anger, marveling at his son's shoulder blades, elegant and perfect, stretching out like wings beneath layers of skin and muscle.

"Okay. What was so important?" he asked, sitting back on his heels. "What was important enough to spoil my pictures?"

"Dad, look!" Paul said. "Look what I found!"

He unclenched his small fist. Several flat stones, thin disks with a hole in the center, rested on his palm, the size of buttons.

"These are great," David said, picking one up. "Where did you find them ?"

"Yesterday. When I went with Jason to his grandfather's farm. There's a creek, and you have to be careful because Jason saw a copperhead last summer, but it's too cold for snakes now, so we were wading and I found these right by the edge of the water."

"Wow." David fingered the fossils; light and delicate, millennia old, time preserved more clearly than any photograph ever could. "These fossils were part of a sea lily, Paul. You know, a long time ago, a lot of Kentucky used to be under an ocean."

"Really? Neat. Is there a picture in the rock book?"

"Maybe. We'll check as soon as I clean up. How are we doing on time?" he added, stepping to the darkroom door and glancing outside. It was a beautiful spring day, the air soft and warm, dogwoods in bloom all around the perimeter of the garden. Norah had set up tables and covered them with bright cloths. She'd arranged plates and punch, chairs and napkins, vases of flowers. A maypole, fashioned around a lean poplar tree in the center of the backyard, streamed bright ribbons. She'd done this by herself too. David had offered to help, but she'd declined. Stay outIof the way, she'd told him. That's the best thing you can do right now. So he had.

He stepped back into the darkroom, cool and hidden, with its pale red light and sharp scent of chemicals.

"Mom's getting dressed," Paul said. "I'm not supposed to get dirty."

"A tough order," David observed, sliding the bottles of fixer and developer onto a high shelf beyond Paul's reach. "Go on inside, okay? I'll be right there. We'll look up those sea lilies."

Paul ran down the stairs; David glimpsed him sprinting across the lawn, the screen door of the house slamming shut behind him.

He washed out the trays and set them to dry, then removed the film from the developer and put it away. It was peaceful in the darkroom, cool and quiet, and he stood there for a few seconds longer before he followed Paul. Outside, the tablecloths rippled in the breeze. May baskets, woven of paper and filled with spring flowers, adorned each plate. Yesterday, on the real May Day, Paul had taken baskets like these to the neighbors too, hanging them from each front door, knocking and running and hiding to watch them be discovered. Norah's idea: her artistry and energy and imagination.

She was in the kitchen, wearing an apron over a suit of coral-colored silk, arranging parsley and cherry tomatoes on a meat platter.

"Everything set?" he asked. "It looks great out there. Anything I can do?"

"Get dressed?" she suggested, glancing at the clock. She dried her hands on a towel. "But first put this platter in the fridge downstairs, okay? This one's already full. Thanks."

David took the platter, the glass cool against his hands. "Such a lot of work," he observed. "Why don't you have these parties catered?"

He had meant to be helpful, but Norah paused, frowning, on her way out the door.

"Because I enjoy this," she said. "The planning and the cooking-all of it. Because it gives me a lot of pleasure to pull something beautiful out of nothing. I have a lot of talents," she added, coolly, "whether you realize it or not."

"That's not what I meant." David sighed. These days they were like two planets in orbit around the same sun, not colliding but not drawing any closer either. "I just meant, Why not have some help? Hire a catering staff. We can certainly afford it."

"It's not about the money," she said, shaking her head, and stepped outside.

He put the platter away and went upstairs to shave. Paul followed him in and sat on the edge of the tub, talking a mile a minute and kicking his heels against the porcelain. He loved Jason's grandfather's farm, he had helped milk a cow there, and Jason's grandfather had let him drink some milk, still warm, tasting of grass.

David lathered on the soap with a soft brush, taking pleasure in listening. The razor blade slid in smooth clean strokes against his skin, sending quivering motes of light against the ceiling. For a moment the whole world seemed caught, suspended: the soft spring air and the scent of soap and the excited voice of his son.

"I used to milk cows," David said. He dried his face and reached for his shirt. "I used to be able to squirt a stream of milk straight into the cat's mouth."

"That's what Jason's pawpaw did! I like Jason. I wish he was my brother."

David, putting on his tie, watched Paul's reflection in the mirror. In the silence that was not quite silence-the sink faucet dripping, the clock ticking softly, the whisper of cloth against cloth-his thoughts traveled to his daughter. Every few months, shuffling through the office mail, he came across Caroline's loopy handwriting. Though the first few letters had come from Cleveland, now each envelope bore a different postmark. Sometimes Caroline enclosed a new post office box number-always in different places, vast impersonal cities-and whenever she did this David sent money. They had never known each other well, yet her letters to him had grown increasingly intimate over the years. The most recent ones might have been torn from her diary, beginning Dear David or simply David, her thoughts pouring forth in a rush. Sometimes he tried to throw the letters away unopened, but he always ended up fishing them from the trash and reading them quickly. He kept them locked in the filing cabinet in the darkroom so he would always know where they were. So Norah would never find them.

Once, years ago, when the letters first began to arrive, David had made the eight-hour drive to Cleveland. He'd walked through the city for three days, studying phone books, inquiring at every hospital. In the main post office he'd touched the little brass door numbered 621 with his fingertips, but the postmaster would not give him the owner's name or address. I'll stand here and wait then, David said, and the man shrugged. Go ahead, he said. Better bring some food, though. Weeks can pass before some of these mailboxes get opened.

In the end, he'd given up and come home, allowing the days to pass, one by one, as Phoebe grew up without him. Each time he sent money, he enclosed a note asking Caroline to tell him where she lived, but he did not press her, or hire a private investigator, as he sometimes imagined doing. It would have to come from her, he felt, the desire to be found. He believed he wanted to find her. He believed that once he did-once he could fix things-he would be able to tell Norah the truth.

He believed all this, and he got up every morning and walked to the hospital. He performed surgeries and examined X-rays and came home and mowed the lawn and played with Paul; his life was full. Yet even so, every few months, for no predictable reason, he woke from dreams of Caroline Gill staring at him from the clinic doorway or across the courtyard at the church. Woke, trembling, and got dressed and went down to the office or out to the darkroom, where he worked on his articles or slid his photographs into their chemical baths, watching images emerge where nothing had been.

"Dad, you forgot to look up the fossils," Paul said. "You promised."

"That's right," David said, pulling himself back to the present, adjusting the knot in his tie. "That's right, son. I did."

They went downstairs together to the den and spread the familiar books on the desk. The fossil was a crinoid, from a small sea animal with a flowerlike body. The buttonlike stones had once been plates forming the stem column. He rested his hand lightly on Paul's back, feeling his flesh, so warm and alive, and the delicate vertebrae just beneath his skin.

"I'm going to show Mom," Paul said. He grabbed the fossils and ran off through the house and out the back door. David got a drink and stood by the window. A few guests had arrived and were scattered across the lawn, the men in dark blue coats, the women like bright spring flowers in pink and vibrant yellow and pastel blue. Norah moved among them, hugging the women, shaking hands, managing the introductions. She had been so quiet when David first met her, calm and self-contained and watchful. He could never have imagined her in this moment, so gregarious and at ease, launching a party she had orchestrated down to the very last detail. Watching her, David was filled with a kind of longing. For what? For the life they might have had, perhaps. Norah seemed very happy, laughing on the lawn. Yet David knew this success would not be enough, not even for a day. By evening she would have moved on to the next thing, and if he woke in the night and ran his hand along the curve of her back, hoping to stir her, she would murmur and catch his hand in hers and turn away, all without waking.

Paul was on the swing set now, flying high into the blue sky. He wore the crinoids on a long piece of string around his neck; they lifted and fell, bouncing against his small chest, sometimes snapping against the chains of the swing.

"Paul," Norah called, her voice drifting in clearly through open screen. "Paul, take that thing off your neck. It's dangerous."

David took his drink and went outside. He met Norah on the lawn.

"Don't," he said softly, putting his hand on her arm. "He made it himself."

"I know. I gave him the string. But he can wear it later. If he slips while he's playing and it gets caught, it could choke him."

She was so tense; he let his hand fall.

"That's not likely," he said, wishing he could erase their loss and what it had done to them both. "Nothing bad is going to happen to him, Norah."

"You don't know that."

"Even so, David's right, Norah."

The voice came from behind. He turned to see Bree, whose wild-ness and passions and beauty moved like a wind through their house. She was wearing a spring dress of filmy material, which seemed to float around her as she moved, and holding hands with a young man, shorter than she: clean-cut, with short reddish hair, wearing sandals and an open collar.

"Bree, honestly, it could catch and he could choke," Norah insisted, turning too.

"He's swinging," Bree told her lightly, as Paul flew high against the sky, his head tipped back, sun on his face. "Look at him, he's so happy. Don't make him get down and get all worried. David's right. Nothing's going to happen."

Norah forced a smile. "No? The world could end. You said so yourself just yesterday."

"But that was yesterday," Bree said. She touched Norah's arm and they exchanged a long look, connected for a moment in a way that excluded everyone else. David watched with a rush of longing and with a sudden memory of his own sister, the two of them hiding under the kitchen table, peeking through the folds of oilcloth, stifling their laughter. He remembered her eyes and the warmth of her arm and the joy of her company.

"What happened yesterday?" David asked, pushing away the memory, but Bree ignored him, talking to Norah,

"I'm sorry, Sis," she said. "Things were a little crazy yesterday. I was out of line."

"I'm sorry too," Norah said. "I'm glad you came to the party."

"What happened yesterday? Were you at the fire, Bree?" David asked again. He and Norah had woken in the night to sirens, to the acrid smell of smoke and a strange glow in the sky. They had come outside to stand with their neighbors on the dark quiet lawns, their ankles growing wet with dew while on campus the ROTC building burned. For days the protests had been growing, layers of tension in the air, invisible but real, while in towns along the Mekong River bombs fell and people ran, cradling their dying children in their arms. Across the river in Ohio now, four students lay dead. But no one had imagined this in Lexington, Kentucky: a Molotov cocktail and a building in flames, police pouring into the streets.

Bree turned to him, her long hair swinging over her shoulders, and shook her head. "No. I wasn't there, but Mark was." She smiled at the young man beside her and slipped her slender arm through his. "This is Mark Bell."

"Mark fought in Vietnam," Norah added. "He's here protesting the war."

"Ah," David said. "An agitator."

"A protester, I believe," Norah corrected, waving across the lawn. "There's Kay Marshall," she said. "Will you excuse me?"

"A protester, then," David repeated, watching Norah walk away, the breeze moving lightly against the sleeves of her silk suit.

"That's right," Mark said. He spoke with self-mocking intentness and a faint familiar accent that reminded David of his father's voice, low and melodic. "The relentless pursuit of equity and justice."

"You were on the news," David said, remembering him all at once. "Last night. You were giving some kind of speech. So. You must be glad about the fire."

Mark shrugged. "Not glad. Not sorry. It happened, that's all. We go on."