The Memory Keeper's Daughter

  He had not been married then. Not married, not engaged, and with no attachments that she could ascertain. Caroline had listened carefully, both that day as he toured the clinic and later at the welcome parties and meetings. She heard what others, absorbed by the flow of polite conversation, distracted by his unfamiliar accent and sudden unexpected bursts of laughter, did not: that aside from mentioning his time in Pittsburgh now and then, a fact already known from his résumé and diploma, he never made reference to the past. For Caroline, this reticence gave him an air of mystery, and the mystery increased her sense that she knew him in ways the others did not. For her, their every encounter was charged, as if she were saying to him across the desk, the examination table, the beautiful, imperfect bodies of one patient or another, I know you; I understand; I see what the others have missed. When she overheard people joking about her crush on the new doctor, she flushed with surprise and embarrassment. But she was secretly pleased, too, for the rumors might reach him in a way that she, with her shyness, could not.

  One late evening, after two months of quiet work, she had found him sleeping at his desk. His face was resting on his hands and he breathed with the light, even cadence of deep sleep. Caroline leaned against the doorway, her head tilted, and in that moment the dreams she’d nurtured for years had all coalesced. They would go together, she and Dr. Henry, to some remote place in the world, where they would work all day with sweat rising on their foreheads and instruments growing slippery in their palms, and where of an evening she would play to him on the piano that would be sent across the sea and up some difficult river and across the lush land to where they lived. Caroline was so immersed in this dream that when Dr. Henry opened his eyes she smiled at him, openly and freely, as she had never done before with anyone.

  His clear surprise brought her to herself. She stood up straight and touched her hair, murmured some apology, blushed deep red. She disappeared, mortified but also faintly thrilled. For now he must know, now he would see her at last as she saw him. For a few days her anticipation of what might happen next was so great that she found it difficult to be in the same room with him. And yet when the days passed and nothing happened she was not disappointed. She relaxed and made excuses for the delay and went on waiting, unperturbed.

  Three weeks later, Caroline had opened the newspaper to find the wedding photo on the society page: Norah Asher, now Mrs. David Henry, caught with her head turned, her neck elegant, her eyelids faintly curved, like shells….

  Caroline started, sweating in her coat. The room was overheated; she had almost drifted off. Beside her, the baby still slept. She stood and walked to the windows, the floorboards shifting and creaking beneath the worn carpet. Velvet drapes brushed the floor, remnants from the far-flung time when this place had been an elegant estate. She touched the edge of the sheer curtains beneath; yellow, brittle, they billowed dust. Outside, half a dozen cows stood in the snowy field, nosing for grass. A man wearing a red plaid jacket and dark gloves broke a path to the barn, buckets swinging from his hands.

  This dust, this snow. It was not fair, not fair at all, that Norah Henry should have so much, should have her seamless happy life. Shocked at this thought, at the depth of her bitterness, Caroline let the curtains fall and walked out of the room, moving toward the sound of human voices.

  She entered a hallway, fluorescent lights humming against the high ceiling. The air was thick with cleaning fluid, steamed vegetables, the faint yellow scent of urine. Carts rattled; voices called and murmured. She turned one corner, then another, descending a single step to enter a more modern wing with pale turquoise walls. Here the linoleum floor gave loosely against the plywood below. She passed several doors, glimpsing moments of people’s lives, the images suspended like photographs: a man staring out a window, his face cast in shadows, his age indeterminate. Two nurses making a bed, their arms lifted high and the pale sheet floating for an instant near the ceiling. Two empty rooms, tarps spread, paint cans stacked in the corner. A closed door, and then the last one, open, where a young woman wearing a white cotton slip sat on the edge of a bed, her hands folded lightly in her lap, her head bent. Another woman, a nurse, stood behind her, silver scissors flashing. Hair cascaded darkly onto the white sheets, revealing the woman’s bare neck: narrow, graceful, pale. Caroline paused in the doorway.

  “She’s cold,” she heard herself saying, causing both women to look up. The woman on the bed had large eyes, darkly luminous in her face. Her hair, once quite long, now jutted raggedly at the level of her chin.

  “Yes,” the nurse said, and reached to brush some hair off the woman’s shoulder; it drifted through the dull light and settled on the sheets, the speckled gray linoleum. “But it had to be done.” Her eyes narrowed then as she studied Caroline’s wrinkled uniform, her capless head. “Are you new here or something?” she asked.

  Caroline nodded. “New,” she said. “That’s right.”

  Later, when she remembered this moment, one woman with a pair of scissors and the other sitting in a cotton slip amid the ruins of her hair, she would think of it in black and white and the image would fill her with a wild emptiness and yearning. For what, she was not certain. The hair was scattered, irretrievable, and the cold light fell through the window. She felt tears in her eyes. Voices echoed in another hall, and Caroline remembered the baby, left sleeping in a box on the overstuffed velvet sofa of the waiting room. She turned and hurried back.

  Everything was just as she had left it. The box with its cheerful red cherubs was still on the sofa; the baby, her hands curled into small fists by her chin, was still sleeping. Phoebe, Norah Henry had said, just before she went under from the gas. For a girl, Phoebe.

  Phoebe. Caroline unfolded the blankets gently and lifted her. She was so tiny, five and a half pounds, smaller than her brother though with the same rich dark hair. Caroline checked her diaper—tarry meconium stained the damp cloth—changed her, and wrapped her back up. She had not woken, and Caroline held her for a moment, feeling how light she was, how small, how warm. Her face was so small, so volatile. Even in her sleep, expressions moved like clouds across her features. Caroline glimpsed Norah Henry’s frown in one, David Henry’s concentrated listening in another.

  She put Phoebe back into the box and tucked the blankets lightly around her, thinking of David Henry, edged with weariness, eating a cheese sandwich at his desk, finishing a cup of half-cold coffee, then rising to open the office doors again on Tuesday nights, a free clinic for patients who could not afford to pay him. The waiting room was always full on those nights, and he was often still there when Caroline finally went home at midnight, so weary herself that she could barely think. This was why she had come to love him, for his goodness. Yet he had sent her to this place with his infant daughter, this place where a woman had sat on the edge of a bed, her hair drifting into soft piles on the harsh cold light of the floor.

  This would destroy her, he had said of Norah. I will not have her destroyed.

  There were footsteps, drawing nearer, and then a woman with gray hair and a white uniform very much like Caroline’s stood in the doorway. She was solidly built, agile for her size, no-nonsense. In another situation, Caroline would have been favorably impressed.

  “Can I help you?” she asked. “Have you been waiting long?”

  “Yes,” Caroline said slowly. “I’ve been waiting for a long time, yes.”

  The woman, exasperated, shook her head. “Yes, look, I’m sorry. It’s the snow. We’re short-staffed today because of it. You get as much as an inch here in Kentucky, and the whole state shuts down. I grew up in Iowa, myself, and I don’t see what all the fuss is about, but that’s just me. Now, then. What can I do for you?”

  “Are you Sylvia?” Caroline asked, struggling to remember the name on the paper below the directions. She’d left it in the car. “Sylvia Patterson?”

  The woman’s expression grew annoyed. “No. I am certainly not. I’m Janet Masters. Sylvia no longer works here.”
r />   “Oh,” Caroline said, and then stopped. This woman didn’t know who she was; clearly, she hadn’t talked with Dr. Henry. Caroline, still holding the dirty diaper, dropped her hands to her sides to keep it out of sight.

  Janet Masters planted her hands firmly on her hips, and her eyes narrowed. “Are you here from that formula company?” she asked, nodding across the room to the box on the sofa, the red cherubs smiling benignly. “Sylvia had something going with that rep, we all knew that, and if you’re from the same company you can just pack up your things and go.” She shook her head sharply.

  “I don’t know what you mean,” Caroline said. “I’ll just go,” she added. “Really. I’m leaving. I won’t bother you again.”

  But Janet Masters wasn’t finished. “Insidious, that’s what you people are. Dropping off free samples and then sending a bill for them a week later. This may be a home for the feebleminded, but it isn’t run by them, you know.”

  “I know,” Caroline whispered. “I’m truly sorry.”

  A bell rang, distantly, and the woman let her hands fall from her hips.

  “See that you’re out of here in five minutes,” she said. “Out of here, and don’t come back.” Then she was gone.

  Caroline stared at the empty doorway. A draft slid around her legs. After a moment she put the dirty diaper in the middle of the rickety piecrust table by the sofa. She felt in her pocket for her keys, then picked up the box with Phoebe in it. Quickly, before she could think about what she was doing, she went into the spartan hallway and through the double doors, the rush of cold air from the world outside as astonishing as being born.

  She settled Phoebe in the car again and pulled away. No one tried to stop her; no one paid any attention at all. Still, Caroline drove fast once she reached the interstate, fatigue sluicing through her body like water down rock. For the first thirty miles she argued with herself, sometimes out loud. What have you done? she demanded severely. She argued with Dr. Henry, too, imagining the lines deepening in his forehead, the stray muscle in his cheek that leaped whenever he was upset. What are you thinking? he demanded to know, and Caroline had to confess that she had no idea whatsoever.

  But the energy soon drained from these conversations, and by the time she reached the interstate she was driving mechanically, shaking her head now and then just to keep herself awake. It was late afternoon; Phoebe had been asleep for almost twelve hours. Soon she would need to be fed. Caroline hoped against hope they would be in Lexington before this happened.

  She had just passed the last Frankfort exit, thirty-two miles from home, when the brake lights of the car ahead of her flared. She slowed, then slowed some more, then had to press down hard. Dusk was already beginning to gather, the sun a dull glow in the overcast sky. As she crested the hill, traffic came to a complete stop, a long ribbon of taillights that ended in a cluster flashing red and white. An accident: a pileup. Caroline thought she might weep. The gas gauge hovered below a quarter of a tank, enough to get back to Lexington but nothing extra, and this line of cars—well, they could be here for hours. She couldn’t risk turning off the engine and losing the heat, not with a newborn in the car.

  She sat still for several minutes, paralyzed. The last exit ramp was a quarter of a mile back, separated from her by a gleaming chain of cars. Heat rose from the Fairlane’s powder-blue hood, shimmering faintly in the dusk, melting the few flakes of snow that had started to fall. Phoebe sighed, and her face tightened slightly and then relaxed. Caroline, following an impulse that would amaze her later, jerked the steering wheel and slid the Fairlane off the asphalt and onto the soft gravel shoulder. She put the car in reverse and then backed up, traveling slowly past the stalled line of cars. It was strange, as if she were passing a train. There was a woman with a fur coat; three children making faces; a man in a cloth jacket, smoking. She traveled slowly backward in the softening darkness, the stilled traffic like a frozen river.

  She reached the exit without incident. It took her to route 60, where the trees were heavy with snow again. The fields were broken by houses, first a few and then many, their windows already glowing in the dusk. Soon Caroline was driving down the main street of Versailles, charmed by the brick shopfronts, searching for signs that would mark her way home.

  A dark blue Kroger sign rose up a block away. That familiar sight, sale flyers decorating its bright windows, comforted Caroline and made her realize suddenly how hungry she was. And it was what, now—Saturday, not quite evening? The stores would be closed all day tomorrow, and she had very little food in her apartment. Despite her exhaustion, she pulled into the parking lot and turned off the car.

  Phoebe, warm and light, twelve hours old, was wrapped in sleep. Caroline shouldered the diaper bag and tucked the baby beneath her coat, so small, curled close and warm. Wind moved over the asphalt, whisking the remnants of snow and a few new flakes, swirling them in corners. She picked her way through the slush, afraid of falling and hurting the baby, thinking at the same time, fleetingly, how easy it would be to simply leave her, in a garbage Dumpster or on the steps of a church or anywhere. Her power over this tiny life was total. A deep sense of responsibility flooded through her, making her light-headed.

  The glass door swung open, releasing a rush of light and warmth. The store was crowded. Shoppers spilled out, their carts piled high. A bag boy stood at the door.

  “We’re only still open on account of the weather,” he warned, as she entered. “We’re closing in half an hour.”

  “But the storm’s over,” Caroline said, and the boy laughed, excited and incredulous. His face was flushed with the heat pouring down over the automatic doors and spilling out into the evening.

  “Didn’t you hear? We’re supposed to get hit again tonight, but good.”

  Caroline settled Phoebe in a metal cart and walked through the unfamiliar aisles. She pondered over formulas, a bottle warmer, over the rows of bottles with their selections of nipples, over bibs. She started to the checkout, then realized she had better get milk for herself, and some more diapers, and some kind of food. People passed her, and when they saw Phoebe they all smiled, and some even paused and moved the blanket aside to see her face. They said, “Oh, how sweet!” and “How old?” Caroline lied without compunction. Two weeks, she told them. “Oh, you shouldn’t have her out in this,” one woman with gray hair reprimanded her. “My! You should get that baby home.”

  In aisle 6, while Caroline was picking out cans of tomato soup, Phoebe stirred, her small hands jerking wildly, and began to cry. Caroline vacillated for a moment, then picked up the baby and the bulky bag and went to the restroom in the back of the store. She sat on an orange plastic chair in the corner, listening to water drip from the faucet, while she balanced the infant on her lap and poured formula from the thermos into a bottle. It took several minutes for the baby to settle down, because she was so agitated and because her sucking reflex was poor. Eventually, however, she caught on, and then Phoebe drank as she had slept: fiercely, intently, her hands in fists by her chin. By the time she relaxed, sated, they were announcing that the store was about to close. Caroline hurried to the checkout counter, where a single cashier waited, bored and impatient. She paid quickly, cradling the paper sack in one arm, Phoebe in the other. When she left, they locked the doors behind her.

  The parking lot was nearly empty, the last few cars idling or pulling slowly out into the street. Caroline rested her paper sack of groceries on the hood and settled Phoebe in her box in the backseat. The faint voices of employees echoed across the lot. Scattered flakes swirled in the cones from the streetlights, no more or less than before. The forecasters so often got it wrong. The snow that had started before Phoebe was born—just last night, she reminded herself, though it seemed ages past—had not even been predicted. She reached into the paper sack and ripped open a loaf of bread, taking out a slice, for she had not eaten all day and was ravenous. She chewed as she shut the door, thinking with weary longing of her apartment, so spare and tidy,
of her twin bed with its white chenille spread, everything in order and in place. She was halfway around the back of the car before she realized that her taillights were glowing weakly red.

  She stopped where she was, staring. All that time, while she had dithered in the grocery aisles, while she had sat in the unfamiliar restroom quietly feeding Phoebe, this light had been spilling out across the snow.

  When she tried the ignition it merely clicked, the battery so dead the engine wouldn’t even groan.

  She got out of the car and stood by the open door. The parking lot was empty now; the last car had driven away. She began to laugh. It wasn’t a normal laugh; even Caroline could hear that: her voice too loud, halfway to a sob. “I have a baby,” she said out loud, astonished. “I have a baby in this car.” But the parking lot stretched quietly before her, the lights from the grocery store windows making large rectangles in the slush. “I have a baby here,” Caroline repeated, her voice thinning quickly in the air. “A baby!” she shouted then, into the stillness.

  III

  NORAH OPENED HER EYES. OUTSIDE, THE SKY WAS FADING into dawn, but the moon was still caught in the trees, shedding pale light into the room. She had been dreaming, searching on frozen ground for something she had lost. Blades of grass, sharp and brittle, shattered at her touch, leaving tiny cuts on her flesh. Waking, she held her hands up, momentarily confused, but her hands were unmarked, her nails carefully filed and polished.

  Beside her, in his cradle, her son was crying. In one smooth motion, more instinct than intention, Norah lifted him into the bed. The sheets beside her were cool, arctic white. David was gone then, called to the clinic while she slept. Norah pulled her son into the warm curve of her body, opened her nightgown. His small hands fluttered against her swollen breasts like moth wings; he latched on. A sharp pain, which subsided in a wave as the milk came. She stroked his thin hair, his fragile scalp. Yes, astonishing, the powers of the body. His hands stilled, resting like small stars against her aureolas.