The Memory Keeper's Daughter (33 page)

Paul was on a bench on the far side of the room, hunched over, his elbows on his knees and his hands dangling loosely between them. Norah's heart caught. She walked past the desk and the officers, wading through that thick sea-green air to her son. It was hot in the room. A fan turned almost imperceptibly against the stained acoustic tiles on the ceiling. She sat down beside Paul on the bench. He hadn't bathed, his hair was thick and greasy, and beneath the stink of sweat and dirty clothes the odor of cigarettes clung to him. Acrid, sharp smells, the smells of a man. His fingers were calloused, tough from the guitar. He had his own life now, his secret life. It humbled her suddenly to find he was so much his own person. Of her, yes, always that, but no longer hers.

"I'm glad to see you," she said quietly. "I was worried, Paul. We all were."

He looked at her, his eyes darkly angry and suspicious, and turned away suddenly, blinking back tears.

"I stink," he said.

"Yeah," Norah agreed. "You really do."

He scanned the lobby, his gaze lingering on Bree, who stood at the desk, and then on the swirl and flash of the revolving doors.

"So. I guess I'm lucky he didn't bother to come."

David, he meant. Such pain in his voice. Such anger.

"He's coming," Norah said, keeping her voice even. "He'll be here any minute. Bree drove me over. Flew, really."

She had meant to make him smile, but he only nodded.

"Is she okay?"

"Yes," Norah said, thinking of their conversation in the car. "She's okay."

He nodded again. "Good. That's good. I'll bet Dad's pissed off."

"Count on it."

"Am I going to jail?" Paul's voice was very soft.

She took a breath. "I don't know. I hope not. But I don't know."

They sat in silence. Bree was talking to an officer, nodding, gesturing. Beyond, the revolving door turned and turned, flashing light and dark, spilling strangers inside or out, one by one, and then it was David striding across the terrazzo floor, his black shoes squeaking, his expression serious and impassive, impossible to read. Norah tensed and felt Paul tense beside her. To her astonishment, David walked straight to Paul and grabbed him in a powerful, wordless hug.

"You're safe," he said. "Thank God."

She drew a deep breath, grateful for this moment. An officer with a white crew cut and startling blue eyes crossed the room, a clipboard under one arm. He shook Norah's hand, David's. Then he turned to Paul.

"What I'd like to do is put you in the slammer," he said conversationally. "A smart-aleck boy like yourself. Don't know how many I've seen over the years, boys thinking they're so tough, boys who get let off again and again, until eventually they hit real trouble. Then they go to jail for a long time and find out that they're not tough at all. It's a shame. But it seems your neighbors think they're doing you a favor and won't press charges about the car. So since I can't lock you up, I'm releasing you in the custody of your parents."

Paul nodded. His hands were trembling; he shoved them in his pockets. They all watched as the officer tore a paper off his clipboard, handed it to David, and walked slowly back to the desk.

"I called the Bolands," David explained, folding the paperwork and tucking it into his breast pocket. "They were reasonable. This could have been much worse, Paul. But don't think you won't be paying back every red cent of what it will cost to get that car repaired. And don't think your life is going to be very happy for quite a while. No friends. No social life."

Paul nodded, swallowing.

"I have to rehearse," he said. "I can't just drop the quartet."

"No," David said. "What you can't do is steal a car from our neighbors and expect life to go on as usual."

Norah felt Paul, so tense beside her and so angry. Leave it, she found herself thinking, seeing the muscle move in David's jaw. Leave it alone, both of you. That's enough.

"Fine," Paul said. "Then I'm not coming home. I'd rather go to jail."

"Well, I can certainly arrange that," David answered, his tone dangerously cool.

"Go ahead," Paul said. "Arrange it. Because I'm a musician. And I'm good. And I'd rather sleep in the streets than give it up. Hell, I'd rather be dead."

There was a moment, a heartbeat. When David didn't respond, Paul's eyes narrowed.

"My sister doesn't know how good she's got it," he said.

Norah, who had been holding herself very still, felt the words like shards of ice, a harsh, bright, piercing grief. Before she knew what she'd done, she'd slapped Paul across the face. The stubble of his new beard was rough against her palm-he was a man, no longer a boy, and she'd hit him hard. He turned, shocked, a red mark already rising on his cheek.

"Paul," David said, "don't make things worse than they are. Don't say things you'll regret for the rest of your life."

Norah's hand was still stinging; her blood rushed. "We'll go home," she said. "We'll settle this at home."

"I don't know. A night in jail might do him good."

"I lost one child," she said, turning to him. "I will not lose another."

Now David looked stunned, as if she'd slapped him too. The ceiling fan clicked, and the revolving door spun with rhythmic thunks.

"All right," David said. "Maybe that's right. Maybe you're right to pay no attention to me. God knows I'm sorry for the things I've done to fail you both."

"David?" Norah said, as he turned away, but he didn't respond. She watched him walk across the room and enter the revolving door. Outside, he was visible for an instant, a middle-aged man in a dark jacket, part of the crowd, then gone. The ceiling fan clicked amid smells of sour flesh and French fries and cleaning fluid.

"I didn't mean-" Paul began.

Norah held up her hand. "Don't. Please. Don't say another word."

It was Bree, calm and efficient, who got them to the car. They opened the windows against Paul's stench, and Bree drove, her thin fingers steady on the wheel. Norah, brooding, paid little attention, and it was nearly half an hour before she realized that they were no longer on an interstate but were traveling more slowly, on smaller roads, through the vivid spring countryside. Fields, barely greening, flashed in the windows, and branches with their just-opening buds.

"Where are you going?" Norah asked.

"On a little adventure," Bree said. "You'll see."

Norah didn't want to look at Bree's hands, so bony, the blue veins visible. She glanced at Paul in the rearview mirror. He sat, pale and sullen, arms folded, slouching, clearly furious, clearly in pain. She had done the wrong thing back there, lashing out at David like that, slapping Paul; she had only made things worse. His angry eyes met hers in the mirror, and she remembered his soft plump infant hand pressed against her cheek, his laughter trilling through the rooms. Another boy altogether, that child. Where had he gone?

"What kind of adventure?" Paul asked.

"Well, actually I'm trying to find the Abbey of Gethsemani."

"What for?" Norah asked. "Is it nearby?"

Bree nodded. "It's supposed to be. I've always wanted to see it, and on the way here I realized how close we were. I thought, Why not? It's such a pretty day."

It was pretty, the sky a clear blue, pale at the horizon, the trees vivid and alive, fluttering in the breeze. They drove along the narrow roads for another ten minutes, and then Bree pulled over to the side of the road and started rummaging under the seat.

"I guess I didn't bring a map," she said, sitting up.

"You never bring a map," Norah replied, realizing in that moment that this had been true of Bree all her life. Yet it didn't seem to matter. She and David had started off with all sorts of maps, and look where they were now.

Bree had stopped near two farmhouses, modest and white, the doors shut tight and no one in sight, the tobacco barns, weathered silver, standing open on the far hills. It was planting season. Distantly, tractors crawled across the newly plowed fields, and people followed, reaching to set the bright green tobacco seedlings into the dark earth. Down the road, at the far end of the field, there was a small white church, shaded by old sycamores, bordered with a row of purple pansies. At the side of this church was a graveyard, the old stones tilting behind a wrought-iron fence. It was so like the place where her daughter was buried that Norah caught her breath, remembering that long-ago March day, damp grass beneath her feet, the low clouds pressing down, and David silent and distant beside her. Ashes to ashes, dust to dust, and the known world had shifted under their feet.

"Let's go to the church," she said. "Someone there might know."

They drove down the road, and she and Bree got out of the car by the church, feeling citified and out of place in their work clothes. The day was very still, almost hot, sunlight flickering through the leaves. The grass against Bree's yellow shoes was dark green and lush. Norah put her hand on Bree's thin arm, the yellow linen both soft and crisp.

"You're going to ruin those shoes," she said.

Bree looked down, nodded, and slipped them off. "I'll ask at the manse," she said. "The front door's open."

"Go on," Norah said. We'll wait here."

Bree stooped to pick up her shoes and then made her way through the rich green grass, something girlish and vulnerable about her pale legs, her stocking feet. Her yellow shoes were swinging from her hand. Norah remembered her, suddenly, running through a field behind their childhood home, laughter floating through the sunlit air. Be well, she thought, watching. Oh, my sister, be well.

"I'm going to take a walk," she told Paul, who was still slouching in the backseat. She left him there and followed the gravel path to the cemetery. The iron gate pushed open easily, and Norah wandered in among the stones, gray and worn. She had not been to the grave on Bentley's farm for years. She looked back at Paul. He was getting out of the car, stretching, his eyes masked by dark sunglasses.

The church door was red. It swung open silently when Norah touched it. The sanctuary was dim and cool, and the stained-glass windows were ablaze, jewel-like images of saints and biblical scenes, doves and fire. Norah thought of Sam's bedroom, the riot of colors there, and how tranquil this seemed in contrast, the colors stable, fixed, falling through the air. A guest book lay open, and she signed it in her fluid script, remembering the ex-nun who had taught her cursive writing. Norah lingered. Perhaps it was simply the silence that caused her to take a few steps down the empty center aisle: silence and this sense of peace and emptiness, the way the light fell through the stained-glass windows, the dusty air. Norah walked through this light: red, dark blue, gold.

The pews smelled of furniture polish. She slid into one. There were blue velvet kneelers, a little dusty. She thought of Bree's old sofa, and then she had a sudden memory of the women of her long-ago night circle, the women who had come to her house bearing gifts for Paul. She remembered helping them once to clean the church, how they'd polished the pews by sitting on rags and sliding across the long smooth planks on their bottoms. More weight this way, they'd joked, laughter filling the sanctuary. In her grief Norah had turned away from them and never gone back, but it occurred to her now that they had suffered too, had lost loved ones, experienced illnesses, failed themselves and others. Norah had not wanted to be one of them or to accept their comfort, and she had walked away. Remembering, her eyes filled with tears. Oh, this was silly, her loss had happened almost two decades ago. Surely this grief should not be welling up, fresh as water in a spring.

It was crazy. She was crying so hard. She'd run so fast, so far, to avoid this moment, and yet it was still happening: a stranger slept on the pull-out sofa, dreaming, a mysterious new life within her like a secret, and David shrugged and turned away. She would go home, she knew, to find him gone, a suitcase packed, perhaps, but nothing else taken. She wept for this knowledge and for Paul, the rage and lostness in his eyes. For her daughter, never known. For Bree's thin hands. For the multitude of ways in which their love had failed them all, and they, love. Grief, it seemed, was a physical place. Norah wept, unaware of anything except a kind of release she remembered from childhood; she sobbed until she was aching, breathless, spent.

There were birds, sparrows, nesting in the open rafters. As she came back to herself, Norah became aware, slowly, of their soft sounds, the nutter of wings. She was kneeling with her arms resting on the back of the pew in front of her. Light still fell through the windows in angled shafts, collecting in pools on the floor. Embarrassed, she sat up and wiped the tears from her face. A few gray feathers rested on the tile steps to the altar. Looking up, Norah caught sight of a sparrow winging lightly overhead, a shadow amid the greater shadows. Over the years so many others had sat here with their secrets and their dreams, dark and light. She wondered if their wild grief, like hers, had eased. It didn't make any sense to her, that this place should have brought her such peace, but it had.

When she stepped back outside, blinking, into the sunlight, Paul was sitting on a stone in front of the wrought-iron fence.

In the distance, Bree was walking through the grass, her shoes swinging.

He nodded at the scattered stones of the cemetery. "I'm sorry," he said, "for what I said. I didn't mean it. I was trying to make Dad angry, so I could be."

"Don't ever say it again," Norah told him. "That your life's not worth it. Don't ever, ever let me hear that again. Don't think it, either."

"I won't," he said. "I'm really sorry."

"I know you're angry," Norah said. "You have a right to whatever life you want to live. But your father's right too. There will be certain conditions. Break them, and you're on your own."

She said all this without looking at him, and when she turned she was shocked to see his face working, tears on his cheeks. Oh, the boy he'd been was not so far away, after all. She hugged him as well as she could. He was so tall; her head only reached his chest.

"Look, I love you," she said into his smelly shirt. "I'm so glad you're back. And you really, really stink," she added, laughing, and he laughed too.