The Memory Keeper's Daughter

  And then David saw her: Phoebe, his daughter. She was in the dining room, setting the table. She had Paul’s dark hair and his profile, and for an instant, until she turned to reach for the saltshaker, David felt as if he must be watching his son. He took a step forward, and Phoebe walked out of his line of vision and then came back with three plates. She was short and stocky, and her hair was thin, held back with barrettes. She wore glasses. Even so, the resemblance was still visible to David: there was Paul’s smile, his nose, Paul’s expression of concentration on Phoebe’s face when she put her hands on her hips and surveyed the table. Caroline came into the room and stood beside her, then put her arm around Phoebe in a quick affectionate hug, and they both laughed.

  By then it was fully dark. David stood, transfixed, glad there was little foot traffic. Leaves skittered along the sidewalk in the wind, and he pulled his jacket closer. He remembered how he’d felt on the night of the birth, as if he were standing outside his own life and watching himself move through it. Now he understood that he was not in control of this situation, he was excluded from it as completely as if he didn’t exist. Phoebe had been invisible to him all these years: an abstraction, not a girl. Yet here she was, putting water glasses on the table. She looked up, and a man with bristly dark hair came in and said something that made Phoebe smile. Then they sat down at the table, the three of them, and began to eat. David went back to his car. He imagined Norah, standing next to him in the darkness, watching their daughter move through her life, unaware of them. He had caused Norah pain; his deception had made her suffer in ways he had never imagined or intended. But he could spare her this. He could drive away and leave the past undisturbed. And that was what he did, finally, traveling all night across the flat expanse of Ohio.

  • • •

  “I don’t understand.” Rosemary was looking at him. “Why can’t you promise? It’s the right thing to do.”

  “It would cause too much grief.”

  “You don’t know what will happen until you do it.”

  “I can make a pretty good guess.”

  “But David—promise me you’ll think about it?”

  “I think about it every single day.”

  She shook her head, troubled, then smiled a small, sad smile. “All right, then. There’s one more thing.”

  “Yes?”

  “Stuart and I are getting married.”

  “You’re far too young to get married,” he said at once, and they both laughed.

  “I’m as old as the hills,” she said. “That’s how I feel half the time.”

  “Well,” he said. “Congratulations again. It’s no surprise, but it’s good news all the same.” He thought of Stuart Wells, tall and athletic. Strapping was the word that came to mind. He was a respiratory therapist. He’d been in love with Rosemary for years now, but she’d made him wait until she finished school. “I’m glad for you, Rosemary. He’s a good young man, Stuart. And he loves Jack. Does he have a job in Harrisburg?”

  “Not yet. He’s looking. His contract here finishes this month.”

  “How’s the job market in Harrisburg?”

  “So-so. But I’m not worried. Stuart’s very good.”

  “I’m sure he must be.”

  “You’re angry.”

  “No. No, not at all. But your news makes me feel sad. Sad and old.”

  She laughed. “Old as the hills?”

  Now he laughed too. “Oh, much, much older.”

  They were silent for a moment. “It all just happened,” Rosemary said. “Everything came together in this last week. I didn’t want to mention anything about the job until I was sure. And then, once I got the job, Stuart and I decided to get married. I know it must seem sudden.”

  “I like Stuart,” David said. “I’ll look forward to congratulating him too.”

  She smiled. “Actually, I wondered if you’d give me away.”

  He looked at her then, her pale skin, the happiness she could no longer contain shining through her smile.

  “I’d be honored,” he said gravely.

  “It’s going to be here. Very small and simple and private. In two weeks.”

  “You’re not wasting any time.”

  “I don’t need to think about it,” she said. “Everything feels completely right.” She glanced at her watch and sighed. “I’d better get going.” She stood up, brushing off her hands. “Come on, Jack.”

  “I’ll keep an eye on him, if you want, while you get dressed.”

  “That would be a lifesaver. Thanks.”

  “Rosemary.”

  “Yes?”

  “You’ll send me photos now and then? Of Jack, as he grows up? Of you both, in your new place?”

  “Sure. Of course.” She folded her arms and kicked at the edge of the step.

  “Thanks,” he said simply, troubled again by the ways he had managed to miss his own life, absorbed as he’d been by his lenses and his grief. People imagined he had quit taking pictures because of the dark-haired woman in Pittsburgh and her unflattering review. He’d fallen out of favor, people speculated, he’d become discouraged. No one would believe he had simply ceased caring, but it was true. He hadn’t picked up a camera since he went to stand by the confluence of those rivers. He had given it up, art and craft, the intricate and exhausting task of trying to transform the world into something else, to turn the body into the world and the world into the body. Sometimes he came across his photographs, in textbooks or hanging on the walls of private offices or homes, and he was startled by their cold beauty, their technical precision—sometimes, even, by the hungry searching that their emptiness implied.

  “You can’t stop time,” he said now. “You can’t capture light. You can only turn your face up and let it rain down. All the same, Rosemary, I’d like to have some pictures. Of you and of Jack. They would give me a glimpse, anyway. They would give me great pleasure.”

  “I’ll send a lot,” she promised, touching his shoulder. “I’ll inundate you.”

  He sat on the steps while she dressed, lazy in the sun. Jack played with his truck. You should tell her. He shook his head. After he’d sat watching Caroline’s house like a voyeur, he’d called a lawyer in Pittsburgh and set up those beneficiary accounts. When he died, they would skip probate. Jack and Phoebe would be taken care of, and Norah would never need to know.

  Rosemary came back, smelling of Ivory soap, dressed in a skirt and flat shoes. She took Jack’s hand and hefted a turquoise backpack on her shoulder. She looked so young, strong and slender, her hair damp, her face concentrated in a frown. She would drop Jack at the sitter’s house on the way.

  “Oh,” she said, “with everything else, I almost forgot: Paul called.”

  David’s heart quickened. “Did he?”

  “Yes, this morning. It was the middle of the night for him; he’d just come from a concert. He was in Seville, he said. He’s been there for three weeks, studying flamenco guitar with someone—I don’t remember who, but he sounded famous.”

  “Was he having a good time?”

  “Yes. It sounded like he was. He didn’t leave a number. He said he’d call again.”

  David nodded, glad Paul was safe. Glad he’d called.

  “Good luck on your exam,” he said, standing.

  “Thanks. As long as I pass, that’s all that matters.”

  She smiled, then waved and walked with Jack down the narrow stone path to the sidewalk. David watched her go, trying to fix this moment—the vivid backpack, her hair swinging against her back, Jack’s free hand reaching out to grab leaves and sticks—forever in his mind. It was futile, of course; he was forgetting things with every step she took. Sometimes his photographs amazed him, pictures he came across stored in old boxes or folders, moments he could not remember even when he saw them: himself laughing with people whose names he had forgotten, Paul wearing an expression David had never seen in life. And what would he have of this moment in another year, in five? The sun in Rosemary’s hair, a
nd the dirt beneath her fingernails, and the faint clean scent of soap.

  And somehow, that would be enough.

  He stood, stretched, and loped off to the park. About a mile into his run, he remembered the other thing that had been nagging him all morning, the importance of this day beyond Rosemary’s test: July twelfth. Norah’s birthday. She was forty-six.

  Hard to believe. He ran, falling into an easy stride, remembering Norah on their wedding day. They had walked outside, into the raw late-winter sun, and stood on the sidewalk shaking hands with their guests. The wind caught at her veil, whipped it against his cheek, late snow on the dogwood tree raining down like a cloud of petals.

  He ran, veering away from the park, heading instead for his old neighborhood. Rosemary was right. Norah should know. He would tell her today. He would go to their old house, where Norah still lived, and wait until she returned, and he would tell her, though he could not imagine how Norah would respond.

  Of course you can’t, Rosemary had said. That’s life, David. Would you have imagined yourself, years ago, living in this dumpy little duplex? Would you, in a million years, ever have imagined me?

  Well, she was right; the life he lived was not the one he had imagined for himself. He had come to this town as a stranger, but now the streets flashing by were so familiar; not a step or an image remained unconnected to a memory. He had seen these trees planted, watched them grow. He passed houses he knew, houses where he had been for dinner or for drinks, where he’d gone on emergency calls, standing late in the night in hallways or foyers, writing out prescriptions, calling an ambulance. Layer on layer of days and images, dense and complex and particular to him alone. Norah could walk here, or Paul, and see something quite different but just as real.

  David turned down his old street. He had not been over here in months, and he was surprised to find the porch columns of his house torn down, the roof supported by pairs of two-by-fours. Rot in the porch floor, it looked like, but no workmen were in sight. The driveway was empty; Norah wasn’t home. He paced across the lawn a few times to catch his breath, then walked to where the key was still hidden beneath a brick beside the rhododendron. He let himself inside and got a drink of water. The house smelled stale. He pushed open a window. Wind lifted the sheer white curtains. These were new, as was the tile floor and the refrigerator. He got another glass of water. Then he walked through the house, curious to see what else had changed. Small things, everywhere: a new mirror in the dining room, the living room furniture reupholstered and rearranged.

  Upstairs, the bedrooms were the same, Paul’s room a shrine to adolescent angst, with posters of obscure quartets taped to the wall, ticket stubs pinned to the bulletin board, the walls painted a hideous dark blue, like a cave. He’d gone to Juilliard, and although David had given his blessing and paid half his bills, what Paul still remembered was the deeper past, when David didn’t believe his talent would be enough to sustain him in the world. He was always sending program flyers and reviews, along with postcards from every city where he’d performed, as if to say Here, look, I’m a success. As if Paul himself could hardly believe it. Sometimes David traveled a hundred miles or more, to Cincinnati or Pittsburgh or Atlanta or Memphis, to slip into the back of a darkened auditorium and watch Paul perform. His head bent over the guitar, his fingers deft, the music a language both mysterious and beautiful, would move David to tears. It was all he could do sometimes not to stride down the dark aisles and take Paul in his arms. But of course he never did; sometimes, he slipped away unseen.

  The master bedroom was perfectly arranged, unused. Norah had moved to the smaller front bedroom; here the bedspread was wrinkled. David reached to straighten it, but pulled his hand back at the last minute, as if this would be too great an intrusion. Then he went back downstairs.

  He didn’t understand; it was late in the afternoon and Norah should be home. If she did not come soon, he would simply leave.

  There was a yellow legal pad on the desk by the phone, full of cryptic notes: Call Jan before 8:00 reschedule; Tim’s not sure; the delivery, before 10:00. Don’t forget—-Dunfree and tickets. He tore this page off carefully, neatly, arranging it in the center of the desk, then carried the pad back to the breakfast nook, sat down, and began to write.

  Our little girl did not die. Caroline Gill took her and raised her in another city.

  He crossed this out.

  I gave away our daughter.

  He sighed and put the pen down. He couldn’t do this; he could hardly imagine anymore what his life would be without the weight of his hidden knowledge. He’d come to think of it as a kind of penance. It was self-destructive, he could see that, but that was the way things were. People smoked, they jumped out of airplanes, they drank too much and got into their cars and drove without seat belts. For him, there was this secret. The new curtains stirred against his arm. Distantly, the tap in the downstairs bathroom dripped, something that had driven him crazy for years, something he had always meant to fix. He tore the page off the legal pad into small pieces and put them in his pocket to discard later. Then he went out into the garage and rummaged around in the tools he had left until he found a wrench and a spare set of washers. Probably he had bought them one Saturday for just this reason.

  It took him more than an hour to fix the faucets in the bathroom. He took them apart and washed sediment from the screens, replaced the washers, tightened the fixtures. The brass was tarnished. He polished it, using an old toothbrush he found stuck in a coffee can beneath the sink. It was six o’clock when he finished, early on a midsummer evening, sunlight still pouring through the windows but lower now, slanting on the floor. David stood in the bathroom for a moment, feeling deeply satisfied by the way the brass was shining, by the silence. The phone rang in the kitchen and an unfamiliar voice came on, speaking urgently about tickets for Montreal, interrupting itself to say, Oh damn, that’s right, I forgot you were off to Europe with Frederic. And he remembered too—she’d told him, but he’d let it slip from his mind; no, he’d pushed it from his mind—that she had gone to Paris on a holiday. That she had met someone, a Canadian from Quebec, someone who worked out at the boxy buildings of IBM and spoke French. Her voice had changed when she spoke of him, somehow softened, a voice he’d never heard her use before. He imagined Norah, holding the phone with her shoulder while she typed information into the computer, looking up to realize that it was hours past dinner. Norah, striding through airport corridors, leading her groups to their buses, restaurants, hotels, adventures, all of which she had so confidently arranged.

  Well, at least she would be happy about the faucets. And he was too—he’d done a careful, meticulous job. He stood in the kitchen, stretching his arms wide as he prepared to finish his run, and picked the yellow legal pad up again.

  I fixed the bathroom sink, he wrote. Happy Birthday.

  Then he left, locking the door behind him, and ran.

  II

  NORAH SAT ON A STONE BENCH IN THE GARDENS AT THE Louvre, a book open in her lap, watching the silvery poplar leaves flutter against the sky. Pigeons waddled in the grass near her feet, pecking, shuffling their iridescent wings.

  “He’s late,” she said to Bree, who sat beside her, long legs crossed at the ankle, leafing through a magazine. Bree, now forty-four, was very beautiful, tall and willowy, turquoise earrings brushing against her olive skin, her hair a pure silvery white. During the radiation she’d cut it very short, saying she didn’t intend to waste another instant of her life being fashionable. She was lucky and knew it; they’d caught the tumor early and she’d been cancer free now for five years. Yet the experience had left her changed, in ways both large and small. She laughed more and took more time off work. She’d started volunteering weekends on Habitat houses; while building a house in eastern Kentucky she had met a warm, ruddy, fun-loving man, a minister recently widowed. His name was Ben. They met again on a project in Florida, and once more in Mexico. On that last trip, quietly, they had gotten married.
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  “Paul will come,” Bree said now, looking up. “It was his idea, after all.”

  “That’s true,” Norah said. “But he’s in love. I just hope he remembers.”

  The air was hot and dry. Norah closed her eyes, thinking back to the late-April day when Paul had surprised her at the office, home for a few hours between one gig and another. Tall and still lanky, he sat on the edge of her desk, tossing her paperweight from one hand to the other as he described his plans for a summer tour of Europe, with a full six weeks in Spain to study with guitarists there. She and Frederic had scheduled a trip to France, and when Paul discovered that they’d be in Paris on the same day, he grabbed a pen from her desk and scrawled LOUVRE on the wall calendar in Norah’s office: Five o’clock, July 21. Meet me in the garden, and I’ll take you out to dinner.

  He’d left for Europe a few weeks later, calling her now and then from rustic pensions or tiny hotels by the sea. He was in love with a flautist, the weather was great, the beer in Germany spectacular. Norah listened; she tried not to worry or ask too many questions. Paul was grown now, after all, six feet tall, with David’s dark coloring. She imagined him walking barefoot on the beach, leaning to whisper something to his girlfriend, his breath like a touch on her ear.

  She was so discreet she’d never even asked him for an itinerary, so when Bree called from the hospital in Lexington she had not known how to reach him with the shocking news: David, running in the arboretum, had been stricken with a massive heart attack and died.

  She opened her eyes. The world was both vivid and hazy in the late-afternoon summer heat, leaves shimmering against the blue sky. She had flown home alone, waking on the plane from uneasy dreams of searching for Paul. Bree helped her through the funeral, and wouldn’t let her return to Paris alone.