The Memory Keeper's Daughter (23 page)

Moonlight poured in through the windows in the gallery space. Paul had stopped playing. David gazed at the moon, higher in the sky now, yet distinct and sharply rendered against the darkness. He'd made a choice, on the beach; he'd left Norah's clothes lying on the sand, her laughter spilling into the light. He'd gone back to the cottage and worked with the photos, and when she'd come in, an hour or so later, he hadn't said a thing about Howard. He'd kept this silence because his own secrets were darker, more hidden, and because he believed that his secrets had created hers.

Now he went back into the darkroom and searched through his most recent roll of film. He'd taken some candid photos during the dinner party: Norah, carrying a tray of glasses, Paul standing by the grill with his cup lifted, various shots of them all relaxing on the porch. It was the final image he wanted; once he found it, he cast it with light onto the paper. In the developing bath, he watched the image emerge slowly, grain by tiny grain, something appearing where nothing had been. This was always, for David, an experience of intense mystery. He watched as the image took shape, Norah and Howard on the porch, lifting their glasses of wine in a toast, laughing. A moment both innocent and charged; a moment when a choice was being made. David took the photograph from the developer, but he didn't slide it into the fixer. Instead, he went into the gallery room and stood in the moonlight with the wet photo in his hands, looking at his house, darkened now, Paul and Norah inside, dreaming their private dreams, moving in their own orbits, their lives constantly shaped by the gravity of the choice he'd made so many years ago.

In the darkroom again, he hung the photograph of that moment to dry. Unfinished, unfixed, the image wouldn't last. Over the next hours, light would work on the exposed paper. The picture of Norah laughing with Howard would slowly darken until-within a day or two-it would be completely black.

T~7 HEY WERE WALKING ON THE TRACKS, DUKE MADISON WITH J his hands shoved in the pockets of the leather jacket he'd found at Goodwill, Paul kicking at stones that zinged against the rails. A train whistle sounded, distant. In silent accord, the two boys stepped to the edge of the tracks, their feet still on the westward rail, balancing. The train was coming for a long time, the rail beneath them vibrating, the engine a speck, growing steadily larger and darker, the driver blasting on the horn. Paul looked at Duke, whose eyes were alive with the risk and danger, and felt that rising excitement in his own flesh, too much to bear almost, with the train closer and closer and the wild horn sounding through all the neighborhood streets and far beyond. There was the light and the engineer visible in the high window and the horn again, warning. Closer, the wind off the engine flattening weeds, he waited, looking at Duke, who stood balanced on the rail beside him, the train rushing, almost on them, and still they waited and waited and Paul thought he might never jump. And then he did, he was in the weeds and the train was rushing a foot from his face. For an instant only the conductor's expression, pale shock, and then the train-darkness and flash, darkness and flash-as the cars passed, and then it passed into the distance, and even the wind was gone.

Duke, a foot away, sat with his face raised to the overcast sky.

"Damn," he said. "What a rush."

The two boys brushed themselves off and started walking toward Duke's place, a little shotgun house right by the tracks. Paul had been born over here, a few streets down, but even though his mother sometimes drove him over to see the little park with the gazebo and the house across from it where he'd first lived, she didn't like him coming over here or to Duke's. But what the hell, she was never around, and as long as his homework was done, which it was, and as long as he'd mowed the lawn and practiced the piano for an hour, which he had, he was free.

What she didn't see wouldn't hurt her. What she didn't know.

"He was royally pissed off," Duke said. "That train dude."

"Yeah," Paul said. "He sure as hell was."

He liked swearing, and the memory of the hot wind on his face, and the way it quelled, for the moment anyway, this quiet rage. He'd gone running on the beach that morning in Aruba with a carefree heart, pleased at how the wet sand at the water's edge gave just slightly beneath his feet, strengthening the muscles in his legs. Pleased, too, because the fishing trip with his father had fallen through. His father loved to fish, long hours sitting in silence in a boat or on a dock, casting and recasting and-every once in a while-the drama of a catch. Paul had loved it too, as a child, not the ritual of fishing as much as the chance to spend time with his father. But as he'd grown older, the fishing trips had come to seem more and more obligatory, like something his father planned because he couldn't think what else to do. Or because they might bond; Paul imagined him reading it in some manual for parents. He'd gotten the facts of life on one vacation, sitting trapped in the boat on a lake in Minnesota as his father, turning red beneath his sunburn, talked about the realities of reproduction. These days, Paul's future was his father's favorite topic, his ideas about as interesting to Paul as a glassy flat expanse of water.

So he'd been happy to run on the beach, he'd been relieved, and he'd thought nothing of the pile of clothes at first, discarded in front of one of the little cottages so widely spaced beneath the casuarina trees. He had run right past them, deep in a rhythmic stride, his muscles making a kind of music that sustained him all the way to the rocky point. Then he stopped, walked circles for a while, and started running back, more slowly. The clothes had shifted: the sleeve of the blouse was flapping in the ocean wind, and the flamingos, bright pink, danced against the dark turquoise background. He slowed. It could have been anybody's shirt. But his mother had one like it. They had laughed about it in the tourist shop in town; she had held it up, amused, and bought it as a joke.

So, okay, maybe there were a hundred, a thousand shirts like this around. Still, he leaned down and picked it up. His mother's bathing suit, nubby, the color of flesh and unmistakable, fell out of the sleeve. Paul stood still, unable to move, as if he'd been caught stealing, as if a camera had flashed and pinned him. He dropped the shirt, but he still couldn't move. Finally, he started walking, and then he was running back to their own cottage as if seeking sanctuary. He stood in the doorway, trying to pull himself together. His father had moved the bowl of oranges to the counter. He was arranging photos on the big wooden table. What's wrong? he asked, looking up, but Paul couldn't say. He went to his room and slammed the door and didn't look up, not even when his father came and knocked on the door.

His mother was back two hours later, humming, the flamingo shirt tucked neatly into her tan shorts. "I thought I'd take a swim before lunch," she said, as if everything might still be normal. "Want to come?" He shook his head and that was that, the secret, his secret, hers and now his, between them like a veil.

His father had secrets too, a life that happened at work or in the darkroom, and Paul had figured it was all normal, just the way families were, until he started hanging out with Duke, an awesome piano player he'd met in the band room one afternoon. The Madi-sons didn't have much money, and the trains were so close the house shook and the windows rattled in their frames every time they passed, and Duke's mom had never been on an airplane in her life. Paul knew he ought to feel sorry for her, his parents would; she had five kids and a husband who worked at the GE plant and wouldn't ever make much money. But Duke's dad liked to play ball with his boys, and he came home every night at six when the shift was over, and even though he didn't talk any more than Paul's own father did he was right there, and when he wasn't they always knew where to find him.

"So whaddaya want to do?" Duke asked him.

"Dunno," Paul said. "How about you?" The metal rails were still humming. Paul wondered where the train would finally stop. Wondered if anyone had seen him standing at the edge of the track, so close he could have reached out and touched a moving car, the wind slicing through his hair, stinging his eyes. And if they had seen him, what had they thought? Images moving past the train windows like a series of still photographs: one and another; a tree, yes; a rock, yes; a cloud, yes; and none the same. And then a boy, himself, with his head flung back, laughing. And then gone. A bush, electric lines, the flash of road.

"We could shoot some hoops."

"Nah."

They walked along the tracks. When they had crossed Rose-mont Garden and were surrounded by tall grass, Duke stopped, fishing in the pockets of his leather jacket. His eyes were green, flecked with blue. Like the world, Paul thought. That's how Duke's eyes were. Like the view of the earth from the moon.

"Look here," he was saying. "I got this last week from my cousin Danny."

It was a small plastic bag full of dried green clippings.

"What is it," Paul asked, "a bunch of dead grass?" As he spoke he understood, and he flushed, embarrassed, at what a geeky dork he was.

Duke laughed, his voice loud in the silence, the rustle of weeds.

"That's right, man,grass. You ever get high?"

Paul shook his head, shocked despite himself.

"You don't get hooked, if that's what's scaring you. I've done it twice. It's totally amazing. I'm telling you."

The sky was still gray, and the wind was moving in the leaves, and far away another train whistle sounded.

"I'm not scared," Paul said.

"Sure. Nothing to be scared of," Duke said. "You wanna try it?"

"Sure." He looked around. "But not here."

Duke laughed. "Who do you think is going to catch us out here?"

"Listen," Paul said. They did, and then the train was visible, approaching from the opposite direction, a small dot growing ever larger, its whistle slicing the air. They got off the tracks and stood facing each other on either side of the metal rails.

"Let's go to my place," Paul shouted, as the train bore down. "No one's home." He imagined them smoking pot on his mother's new chintz sofa, and he laughed out loud. Then the train was rushing between them; there was the roar and silence, roar and silence, of the passing cars. He glimpsed Duke in flashes, like photographs hanging in his father's darkroom, all those moments from his father's life like glimpses from a train. Trapped and caught. Rush and silence. Like this.

So they walked back to Duke's house and got on their bicycles, crossing over Nicholasville Road and meandering through the neighborhoods to Paul's.

The house was locked, the key hidden under the loose flagstone by the rhododendron. Inside the air was warm, faintly stale. While Duke called home to say he'd be late, Paul opened a window, and the breeze lifted the curtains his mother had made. Before she'd started working, she'd redecorated the whole house every year. He remembered her bent over the sewing machine, swearing when the lining snagged and bunched. These curtains had a creamy background with country scenes in dark blue that matched the dark-striped wallpaper. Paul remembered sitting at the table staring at them, as if the figures might suddenly start to move, might step out of their houses and hang up their clothes and wave goodbye.

Duke hung up and looked around. Then he whistled. "Man," he said. "You're rich.'He sat at the dining room table and spread out a thin rectangular paper. Paul watched, fascinated, as Duke arranged a line of ragged weed, then rolled a thin white tube.

"Not in here," Paul said, uneasy at the last minute. They went outside and sat on the back steps, and the joint flared orange on the tip and moved back and forth between them. Paul felt nothing at first. It began to sprinkle, then stopped, and after a while-he wasn't sure how long-he realized that he had been staring at a drop of water on the pavement, watching it spread slowly and merge with another drop and then spill off the edge into the grass. Duke was laughing hard.

"Man, you should see yourself," he said. "Are you ever stoned!"

"Leave me alone, you asshole," Paul said, and then he started laughing too.

They went inside at some point, though not before the rain had started again, leaving them soaked and suddenly chilled. His mother had left a casserole on the stove but Paul ignored it. Instead, he opened a jar of pickles and another of peanut butter, and then Duke ordered a pizza and Paul got out his guitar and they went into the living room, where the piano was, to jam. Paul sat on the edge of the raised hearth and strummed a few chords, and then his fingers started moving in the familiar patterns of the Segovia pieces he'd played the night before: "Estudio" and "Estudio Sin Luz." The titles made him think of his father, tall and silent, bending over the enlarger in the darkroom. The songs felt like light and shadow, one set against the other, and now the notes had been woven into his own life, into the silence in the house and the vacation on the beach and the high-windowed classrooms of his school. Paul played, and he felt himself being lifted up, the waves riding in and he was on them, he was making the music and then he was the music and it was carrying him up and up, rising to a crest.

When he finished there was silence for a minute, before Duke said, Damn, that was good! He ran a scale on the piano and launched into his piece from the recital, Grieg's March of the Trolls, with its energy and dark joy. Duke played and then Paul did and they didn't hear the doorbell or the knocking; suddenly the pizza delivery boy was standing in the open door. It was dusk by then; a darkening wind surged into the house. They ripped open the boxes and ate furiously, quickly and without tasting, burning their tongues. Paul felt the food settling in him, holding him down like a stone. He looked up through the French doors to the bleak gray sky beyond, and then at Duke's face, so pale his zits stood out, his dark hair falling flatly over his forehead, a smear of red sauce on his lips.

"Damn," Paul said. He put his hands fiat on the oak floor, glad to find it there and himself on it and the room around him totally intact.

"No joke," Duke agreed. "Some stuff. What time is it?"

Paul stood up and walked to the grandfather clock in the foyer. Minutes or hours earlier, they had stood here, convulsing with laughter as the seconds ticked off, a gaping stretch of time between each one. Now all Paul could think of was his father, who paused to set his watch by this clock every morning, looking up across the table full of photos, and he was filled with sadness. He looked back on the afternoon and saw it gone, condensed into a memory no larger than that drop of rain, and the sky already nearly dark.

The phone rang. Duke was still lying flat out on the living room rug, and it seemed like hours passed before Paul picked up the receiver. It was his mother.

"Sweetie," she said, over noise and silverware in the background. He pictured her in her suit, maybe the dark blue one, fingers running through her short hair, rings flashing. "I've got to take these clients out to dinner. It's the IBM account, it's important. Is your father home yet? Are you okay?"

"I did my homework," he said, studying the grandfather clock, so recently hilarious. "I practiced the piano. Dad's not home."

There was a pause. "He promised he'd be home," she said.

"I'm okay," he said, remembering last night, how he'd sat on the edge of the windowsill and thought about jumping, and then he was in the air, falling; he was landing with a soft thud on the ground, and no one heard. "I'm not going anywhere tonight," he said.

"I don't know, Paul. I'm worried about you."

So come home, he wanted to say, but in the background laughter rose and fell, breaking like a wave. "I'm okay," he said again.

"You're sure?"

"Sure."

"Well, I don't know." She sighed, covered the receiver, and spoke to someone else, then came back on the line. "Well, that's good about your homework, anyway. Look, Paul, I'll call your father, and no matter what, I'll be no later than another two hours myself. I promise. Is that okay? Are you sure you're okay? Because I'll drop everything if you need me."