The Memory Keeper's Daughter (19 page)

Phoebe stopped in her twirling, arms held out to keep her balance. Then she gave a shout and ran headlong across the lawn and up the steps to where Al stood, looking down, a brightly wrapped package in one hand for Phoebe and bunch of lilacs that Caroline knew were for her.

Her heart lifted. He had courted her with a slow, persistent patience, showing up, solid and steady, week after week, offering a fistful of flowers or some other cheerful gift, the pleasure on his face so real that she could not bear to turn him away. Yet she'd held herself back from him, not trusting this love that had come so unexpectedly, from such an unexpected source. Now she stood, feeling a rush of pleasure. How afraid she'd been that this time he would stay away!

"Pretty day," he said, squatting to hug Phoebe, who flung her arms around his neck in welcome. The package contained a filmy butterfly net with a carved wooden handle, which she took at once, running off toward a bank of dark blue hydrangeas. "How did the meeting go?"

She told him the story and he listened, shaking his head.

"Well, school's not for everyone," he said. "I sure didn't like it much. But Phoebe's a sweet kid, and they shouldn't keep her out."

"I want her to have a place in the world," Caroline said, realizing suddenly that it wasn't Al's love for her she doubted, it was his love for Phoebe.

"Honey, she has a place. It's right here. But yeah, I think you're right. I think you're doing the right thing to fight for her so hard."

"I hope you had a better week," she said, noting the shadows beneath his eyes.

"Oh, same old, same old," he said, sitting on the steps beside her and picking up a stick, which he started to peel. Distantly, mowers hummed; Phoebe's little radio played "Love, Love Me, Do."

"I logged 2,398 miles this week. A record, even for me."

He'll ask again, Caroline thought. This was the moment; he was road weary and ready to settle down, and he'd ask. She watched his hands move deftly, swiftly, stripping the bark, and her heart surged. This time she'd say yes. But Al didn't speak. The silence extended for so long that finally she felt pressured to break it.

"That was a nice gift," she said, nodding across the grassy space where Phoebe was running, the net making bright arcs in the air.

"Fellow in Georgia made it," Al said. "Nicest guy. Had a whole bunch of them he'd carved for his grandkids. We got to talking in the grocery store. He collects shortwave radios and invited me to stop by and see them. Spent the whole night talking, me and him. Now, that's the plus of the wandering life. Oh, yeah," he went on, reaching into his pants pocket and pulling out a white envelope. "Here's your mail from Atlanta."

Caroline took the envelope without comment. Inside there would be several twenty-dollar bills folded neatly into a plain white paper. Al brought them back from Cleveland, Memphis, Atlanta, Akron: cities he frequented on his runs. She told him simply that the money was for Phoebe, from her father. Al accepted this without comment, but Caroline's feelings were more complex. Sometimes she dreamed she was walking through Norah Henry's house, taking things from the shelves and the cupboards, filling a cloth bag, happy until she came upon Norah Henry standing by a window, her expression distant and infinitely sad. She'd wake, trembling, and get up and make herself some tea, sitting in the darkness. When the money came she put it in the bank and didn't think about it until the next envelope arrived. She had done this for five years now, and she had saved almost $7,000.

Phoebe was still running, chasing after butterflies, birds, motes of light, the fluttering notes spilling from the radio. Al was fiddling with the dial.

"The nice thing about this city is that you can really find some music. Some of those podunk little towns I stay in, all you get is the

Top Forty. Gets old, after a while." He began to hum along with "Begin the Beguine."

"My parents used to dance to this song," Caroline said, and for an instant she was sitting on the stairs of her childhood home, invisible, watching her mother, in a full-skirted dress, welcoming guests at the door. "I haven't thought of it in years. But every now and then they used to roll the rug up in the living room on a Saturday night and have some other couples in, and they'd dance."

"We ought to go dancing sometime," Al said. "You like to dance, Caroline?"

Caroline felt something shift in her then, some excitement. She couldn't place its source: something to do with her anger from the morning passing, and the vibrant day, and the warmth of Al's arm next to hers. The breeze fluttered the poplars, revealing the silvery undersides of their leaves.

"Why wait?" she asked, and stood, extending her hand.

He was puzzled, bemused, but then he was standing with his hand resting on her shoulder and they were moving on the lawn to the thin strains of the music, the background of rushing cars. Sunlight mingled in her hair, the grass was soft beneath her stocking feet, and they moved together so easily, dipping and turning, the tension she'd carried with her from the meeting dissipating with each step. Al smiled, pressing her close; sunlight struck her neck.

Oh, she thought, as he spun her again, I'll say yes.

There was the pleasure of the sunlight and Phoebe's floating laughter and Al's hands warm through the fabric on her back. They moved in the grass, turning with the music, connected by it. The traffic rushing by was as present and soothing as the ocean. Other sounds, thin, lifted through the strands of music, through the bright day. Caroline didn't register them at first. Then Al turned her, and she stopped dancing. Phoebe was kneeling in the soft warm grass by the hydrangeas, crying too hard to speak, holding up her hand. Caroline ran and knelt in the grass, studying the angry swollen circle on Phoebe's palm.

"It's a beesting," she said. "Oh, honey, it hurts, doesn't it?"

She pressed her face into Phoebe's warm hair. Soft, soft skin, and her chest, rising and falling; beneath that, the steady pattern of her heart. Here was the thing that couldn't be measured, couldn't be quantified or even explained: Phoebe was herself alone. You could not, finally, categorize a human being. You could not presume to know what life was or what it might hold.

"Oh, sweetie, it's all right," she said, smoothing Phoebe's hair.

But Phoebe's sobs were giving way to a wheezing like the croup she'd suffered as a child. Her palm was swelling; the back of her hand and her fingers too. Caroline felt herself grow still inside, even as she rose swiftly and called to Al.

"Hurry!" she cried, her voice so loud and strange. "Oh Al, she's allergic."

She was lifting Phoebe, heavy in her arms, and then she paused, bewildered, because her keys were in her purse on the kitchen counter and she couldn't figure out how to open the door while holding Phoebe, who was wheezing harder now. Then Al was there, taking Phoebe and running to the car, and Caroline had the keys somehow, the keys and her purse. She drove as fast as she dared through the city streets. By the time they reached the hospital, Phoebe's breath was coming in short, desperate gasps.

They left the car at the entrance and Caroline grabbed the first nurse she saw.

"It's an allergic reaction. We need to see a doctor now."

The nurse was older, a bit heavyset, her gray hair turned under in a pageboy. She led them through a set of steel doors where Al put Phoebe gently, gently, on the gurney. Phoebe was struggling to breathe now, her lips faintly blue. Caroline, too, was having trouble breathing, fear pulled so tightly in her chest. The nurse swept Phoebe's hair back, touching her fingers to the pulse in her neck. And then Caroline watched her see Phoebe as Dr. Henry had seen her on that snowy night so long ago. She saw the nurse taking in the beautifully sloped eyes, the small hands that had gripped the net so hard as she ran after butterflies, saw her eyes narrow slightly. Still, she was not prepared.

"Are you sure?" the nurse asked, looking up and meeting her eyes. "Are you really sure you want me to call a doctor?"

Caroline stood fixed in place. She remembered the scents of boiled vegetables, and the day she had driven away with Phoebe, and the impassive expressions worn by the men on the board of education. In a rush of wild alchemy her fear transformed itself into anger, fierce and piercing. She raised her hand to slap the bland, impassive face of the nurse, but Al caught her wrist.

"Call the doctor," he said to the nurse. "Do it now."

He put his arm around Caroline and didn't let go, not when the nurse turned away or when the doctor appeared, not until Phoebe's breathing began to ease and some of the color returned to her cheeks. Then they went together to the waiting room and sat in the orange plastic chairs, hand in hand, nurses buzzing and voices coming over the intercom and babies crying.

"She could have died," Caroline said. Her calm broke; she began to tremble.

"But she didn't," Al said firmly.

Al's hand was warm, large and comforting. He had been so patient all these years, he had come back again and again, saying he knew a good thing when he saw it. Saying he'd wait. But he'd been away two weeks this time, not one. He hadn't called from the road, and though he'd brought her flowers as always, he hadn't proposed for six months. He could drive away in his truck and never come back, never give her another chance to say yes.

She raised his hand and kissed his palm, strong, so rough with calluses, so marked with lines. He turned, startled from his thoughts, as puzzled as if he'd just been stung himself.

"Caroline." His tone was formal. "There's something I want to say."

"I know." She placed his hand on her heart, held it there. "Oh, Al, I've been such a fool. Of course I'll marry you," she said.

IKE THIS?" NORAH ASKED. J ? She was lying on the beach, and beneath her hip the gritty sand slid and shifted. Every time she took a deep breath and released it, sand slithered out from under her. The sun was so hot, like a shimmering metal plate against her skin. She had been here for over an hour, posing and re-posing, the word repose like a taunt, for it was what she longed to do and could not. It was her vacation, after all-she had won two weeks in Aruba for selling the highest number of cruise packages in the state of Kentucky last year-and yet here she was: sand sticking to the sweat on her arms and neck as she lay still, pressed between sun and beach.

To distract herself, she kept her gaze on Paul, who was running along the shore, a speck on the horizon. He was thirteen, and he'd shot up like a sapling in this last year. Tall and awkward, he ran every morning as if he might escape from his own life.

Waves crashed slowly against the beach. The tide was turning, coming in, and the harsh noon light would soon change, making the picture David wanted impossible until tomorrow. A strand of hair was stuck against Norah's lip, tickling, but she willed herself to stillness.

"Good," David said, bent over his camera and clicking off a rapid series of shots. "Oh, yes, great, that's really very good."

"I'm hot," she said.

"Just a few more minutes. We're almost done." He was on his knees now, his thighs winter pale against the sand. He worked so hard, and spent long hours in his darkroom too, clipping images to dry on the clotheslines he'd strung from wall to wall. "Think about the sea. Waves in the water, waves in the sand. You're part of that, Norah. You'll see in the photo. I'll show you."

She lay still beneath the sun, watching him work, remembering days early in their marriage when they'd gone out for long walks in the spring evenings, holding hands, the air infused with scents of honeysuckle and hyacinths. What had she imagined, that younger version of herself, walking in the soft still light of dusk, dreaming her dreams? Not this life, certainly. Norah had learned the travel business inside out over the past five years. She'd organized the office, and gradually she'd started overseeing trips. She'd built a stable client list and learned to sell, pushing glossy brochures across her desk, describing in breathless detail places she herself had only dreamed of going. She'd become an expert at solving last-minute crises: lost luggage, misplaced passports, sudden bouts of giardiasis. Last year, when Pete Warren decided to retire, she'd taken a deep breath and bought the business. Now it was all hers, from the low brick building to the boxes of blank airline tickets in the closet. Her days were hectic, busy, satisfying-and every night she came home to a house full of silence.

"I still don't see it," she said, when David finally finished, when she was standing up and brushing sand from her legs and her arms, shaking sand from her hair. "Why take the photo of me at all, if you're hoping I'll just disappear into the landscape?"

"It's about perspective," David said, looking up from his equipment. His hair was wild, his cheeks and forearms flushed with noon sun. In the far distance Paul had turned and was on his way back, drawing nearer. "It's about expectations. People will look at this picture and see a beach, rolling dunes. And then they'll glimpse something a little odd, something familiar in your particular set of curves, or they'll read the title and look again, searching for the woman they didn't see the first time, and they'll find you."

There was intensity in his voice; the wind coming off the ocean moved through his dark hair. It made her sad, because he spoke of photography as he had spoken once of medicine, of their marriage, a language and tone that evoked the lost past and filled her with longing. Do you and David tal't about big things or small things? Bree asked her once, and Norah was shocked to realize how many of their conversations were about things as perfunctory and necessary as household chores and Paul's schedule.

The sun was bright on her hair and the gritty sand had caught in the tender skin between her legs. David was absorbed in putting away his camera. Norah had hoped this dream vacation would be a path back to the closeness they'd once shared. This was what had compelled her to spend so many hours lying in the hot sun, holding herself still while David took roll after roll of photos, but they had been here three days now, and nothing but the setting was significantly different from home. Each day they drank their morning coffee in silence. David found ways to work; he was either taking pictures or fishing. He did read in the evenings, swinging in the hammock. Norah took walks and naps, puttered, and went shopping at the bright, overpriced tourist shops in town. Paul played his guitar, and he ran.

Norah shaded her eyes and looked down the golden curve of the beach. Closer now, the runner's shape had emerged, and she saw it was not Paul after all. The man running was tall, lean, maybe thirty-five or forty. He wore blue nylon shorts edged with white piping and no shirt. His shoulders, already tanned dark, were edged with a burn that looked painful. As he drew close to them, he slowed and then stopped, hands on his hips, breathing heavily.

"Nice camera," he said. Then, looking straight at Norah, he added, "Interesting shot." He was beginning to go bald; his eyes were dark brown, intense. She turned away, feeling their heat, as David began to talk: waves and dunes, sand and flesh, two conflicting images at once.

She gazed down the beach. Yes. There, barely visible, was another running figure, her son. The sun was so bright. For a few seconds she felt dizzy, little silverfish of light flashing behind her eyelids just as it glanced across the edges of the waves. Howard: she wondered where he was from, where he'd gotten a name like that. He and David were talking intently now about apertures and filters.

"So you're the inspiration for this study," he said, turning to include Norah.

"I suppose," she said, brushing sand off her wrist. "It's a bit hard on the skin," she added, aware suddenly that the new bathing suit left her nearly naked. The wind moved over her, moved through her hair.

"No, you have beautiful skin," Howard said. David's eyes widened-he looked at her as if he'd never seen her before-and Norah felt a surge of triumph. See? she wanted to say. I have beautiful skin. But the intentness of Howard's gaze stopped her.

"You should see David's other work," Norah said. She gestured to the cottage, tucked low beneath the palms, bougainvillea cascading off the porch trellises. "He brought his portfolio." A wall, her words; also an invitation.

"I would like that," Howard said, turning back to David. "I'm interested in your study."

"Why not?" David said. "Join us for lunch."

But Howard had a meeting in town at one o'clock.

"Here comes Paul," Norah said. He was running very fast along the edge of the water, pushing through the last hundred yards, his arms and legs flashing in the light, the wavering heat. My son, Norah thought, the world opening for an instant as it sometimes did around the very fact of his presence. "Our son," she said to Howard. "He's a runner too."

"He has good form," Howard observed. Paul drew close and began to slow down. Once he reached them he bent down with his hands on his knees, dragging deep breaths into his lungs.

"And good time," David said, glancing at his watch. Don't do it, Norah thought; David couldn't seem to see how much Paul recoiled at David's suggestions for his future. Don't. But David pushed on. "I hate to see him miss his vocation. Look at that height.

Think what he could do on a court. But he doesn't give a damn about basketball."

Paul looked up, grimacing, and Norah felt a flare of familiar irritation. Why couldn't David understand that the more he pushed basketball, the more Paul would resist? If he wanted Paul to play, he ought to forbid it instead.

"I like running," Paul said, standing up.

"Who can blame you," Howard said, reaching to shake hands, "when you run like that?"

Paul shook his hand, flushing with pleasure. You have beautiful skin, he'd said to her, moments ago. Norah wondered if her own face had been so transparent.

"Come to dinner," she suggested impulsively, inspired by Howard's kindness to Paul. She was hungry, thirsty too, and the sun had made her light-headed. "Since you can't come for lunch, come for dinner. Bring your wife, of course," she added. "Bring your family. We'll build a fire and cook out on the beach."

Howard frowned, looking out over the shining water. He clasped his hands and put them behind his head, stretching. "Unfortunately," he said, "I am here alone. A retreat of sorts. I am about to be divorced."

"I'm sorry," Norah said, though she was not.

"Come anyway," David said. "Norah throws wonderful dinner parties. I'll show you the rest of the series I'm working on-it's all about perception. Transformation."

"Ah, transformation," Howard said. "I'm all for that. I'd love to come to dinner."

David and Howard talked for a few minutes while Paul paced along the waves, cooling down, and then Howard left. A few minutes later, standing in the kitchen, slicing cucumbers for lunch, Norah watched him walk far down the beach, there and gone and there again as the curtain caught the breeze. She remembered the dark burn on his shoulders, his penetrating eyes and voice. Water rushed in the pipes as Paul showered, and there was the soft rustling of paper as David arranged his photos in the living room. He'd seemed obsessed over the years, always seeing the world- seeing her-as if from behind the lens of a camera. Their lost daughter still hovered between them; their lives had shaped themselves around her absence. Norah even wondered, at times, if that loss was the main thing holding them together. She slid the cucumber slices into a salad bowl and started peeling a carrot. Howard was a pinprick in the distance, then gone. His hands were large, she remembered, the palms and cuticles pale against his tan. Beautiful shin, he'd said, and his eyes hadn't left hers.

After lunch, David dozed in the hammock and Norah lay down on the bed beneath the window. An ocean breeze flowed in; she felt abundantly alive, somehow connected to the sand and the sea by this wind. Howard was just an ordinary person, almost scrawny and beginning to go bald, yet he was mysteriously compelling too, conjured perhaps from her own deep loneliness and wishing. She imagined Bree, delighted with her, laughing.

Well, why not? she would say. Really, Norah, why not?

I'm a married woman, Norah replied, shifting to look out the window at the dazzling, shifting sand, eager for her sister to refute her.

Norah, for heaven's sweet sake, you only live once. Why not have some fun?

Norah stood, walking softly on the old worn boards, and fixed herself a gin and tonic with lime. She sat on the porch swing, lazy in the breeze, watching David dozing, so unknown to her these days. Notes from Paul's guitar floated through the soft air. She imagined him, sitting cross-legged on the narrow bed, head bent in concentration over the new Almansa guitar that he loved, a gift from David on his last birthday. It was a beautiful instrument, with an ebony fretboard and rosewood back and sides, brass turners. David tried, with Paul. He pushed too hard on sports, it was true, but he also made time to take Paul fishing or hiking in the woods, on their endless search for rocks. He'd spent hours researching this guitar, ordering it from a company in New York, his face full of quiet pleasure as Paul lifted it reverently from the box. She looked at David now, sleeping on the other side of the porch, a muscle working in his cheek. David, she whispered, but he did not hear her. David, she said a bit louder, but he did not stir.

At four o'clock she roused herself, dreamily. She chose a sundress splashed with flowers, gathered at the waist, thin straps over her shoulders. She put on an apron and began to cook, simple, but luxurious foods: oyster stew with crisp crackers on the side, corn yellowing on the cob, a fresh green salad, small lobsters she'd bought that morning at the market, still in buckets of seawater. As she moved in the tiny kitchen, improvising roasting pans from cake pans and substituting oregano for marjoram in the salad dressing, the crisp cotton skirt moved lightly against her thighs, her hips. The air, warm as breath, glanced across her arms. She plunged her hands into a sink of cold water, rinsing the lettuce leaf by delicate leaf. Outside, Paul and David worked to light a fire in the half-rusted grill, its holes patched with aluminum foil. There were paper plates on the weathered table, and wine poured into red plastic glasses. They would eat the lobster with their fingers, butter running down their palms.

She heard his voice before she saw him, another tone, slightly lower than David's and slightly more nasal, with a neutral northern accent; crisp air, edged with snow, floated into the room with every syllable. Norah dried her hands on the kitchen towel and went to the doorway.

The three men-it shocked her that she thought of Paul this way, but he stood shoulder to shoulder with David now, nearly grown and independent, as if his body had never had anything to do with hers at all-were clustered' on the sand just beyond the porch. The grill gave off its aromas of smoke and resin, and the coals sent a wavering heat into the sky. Paul, shirtless, stood with his hands thrust into the pockets of his cutoffs, answering with awkward brevity the questions that came his way. They did not see her, her husband and her son; their eyes were on the fire and on the ocean, smooth as opaque glass at this hour. It was Howard, facing them, who lifted his chin to her and smiled.

For an instant, before the others turned, before Howard raised the bottle of wine and slid it into her hands, their eyes met. It was a moment real to only the two of them, something that could not be proven later, an instant of communion subject to whatever the future would impose. But it was real: the darkness of his eyes, his face and hers opening in pleasure and promise, the world crashing around them like the surf.

David turned, smiling, and the moment slammed shut like a door.

"It's white," Howard said, handing her the bottle. Norah was struck by how ordinary Howard seemed then, by the silly way his sideburns grew halfway down his cheeks. The hidden meaning of the earlier moment-had she imagined it then?-was gone. "I hope that's all right."