The Memory Keeper's Daughter (8 page)

Caroline smiled, feeling an unexpected surge of pride and pleasure. The features she had noted in the delivery room-the sloping eyes, the slightly flattened face-had become so familiar that she hardly noticed them. Lucy, with her untrained eye, didn't see them at all. Phoebe was like any baby, delicate, adorable, fierce in her demands.

"I love looking at her," Caroline confessed.

"Oh, that poor little mother," Lucy whispered. "Do they expect she'll live?"

"No one knows," Caroline said. "Time will tell."

"They must be devastated," Lucy said.

"Yes. Yes, they are. They've completely lost their appetites," Caroline confided, thereby heading off the arrival of one of Lucy's famous hot dishes.

For the next two days, Caroline did not go out. The world came to her in the form of newspapers, grocery deliveries, milkmen, the sounds of traffic. The weather changed and the snow was gone as suddenly as it had come, cascading down the sides of buildings and disappearing into drains. For Caroline, the broken days blurred together into a stream of random images and impressions: the sight of her Ford Fairlane, its battery recharged, being driven into the lot; the sunlight streaming through cloudy windows; the dark scent of wet earth; a robin at the feeder. She had her spells of worry, but often, sitting with Phoebe, she was surprised to find herself completely at peace. What she had told Lucy Martin was true: she loved looking at this baby. She loved sitting in the sunlight and holding her. She warned herself not to fall in love with Phoebe; she was just a temporary stop. Caroline had watched David Henry often enough at the clinic to believe in his compassion. When he had raised his head from the desk that night and met her eyes, she had seen in them an infinite capacity for kindness. She had no doubt that he would do the right thing, once he got over the shock.

Every time the phone rang she started. But three days passed with no word from him.

On Thursday morning there was a knock on the door. Caroline hurried to answer it, adjusting the belt of her dress, touching her hair. But it was only a deliveryman, holding a vase full of flowers: dark red and pale pink in a cloud of baby's breath. These were from Al. My thanks for the hospitality, he'd written on the card. Maybe I'll see you on my next run.

Caroline took them inside and arranged them on the coffee table. Agitated, she picked up The Leader, which she hadn't read in days, slipped off the rubber band, and skimmed through the articles, not really taking in any of them. Escalating tensions in Vietnam, social announcements about who had entertained whom the previous week, a page of local women modeling the new spring hats. Caroline was about to throw the paper down when a black-bordered square caught her eye.

Memorial Service

For Our Beloved Daughter

Phoebe Grace Henry

Born and Died March y, 1964

Lexington Presbyterian Church

Friday, March 13, 1964, at 9 a.m.

Caroline sat down slowly. She read the words once and then again. She even touched them, as if this would make them clearer somehow, explicable. With the paper still in her hands, she stood up and went to the bedroom. Phoebe slept in her drawer, one pale arm outflung against the blankets. Born and died. Caroline went back into the living room and called her office. Ruby picked up on the first ring.

"I don't suppose you're coming in?" she said. "It's a madhouse here. Everyone in town seems to have the flu." She lowered her voice then. "Did you hear, Caroline? About Dr. Henry and his babies? They had twins after all. The little boy is fine; he's precious. But the girl, she died at birth. So sad."

"I saw it in the paper." Caroline's jaw, her tongue, felt stiff. "Iwonder if you'd ask Dr. Henry to call me. Tell him it's important. I saw the paper," she repeated. "Tell him that, will you, Ruby?" Then she hung up and sat staring out at the sycamore tree and the parking lot beyond.

An hour later he knocked at her door.

"Well," she said, showing him in.

David Henry came in and sat on her sofa, his back hunched, turning his hat in his hand. She sat down in the chair across from him, watching him as if she'd never seen him before.

"Norah put the announcement in," he said. When he looked up she felt a rush of sympathy despite herself, for his forehead was lined, his eyes bloodshot, as if he hadn't slept in days. "She did it without telling me."

"But she thinks her daughter died," Caroline said. "That's what you told her?"

He nodded, slowly. "I meant to tell her the truth. But when I opened my mouth, I couldn't say it. At that moment, I thought I was saving her pain."

Caroline thought of her own lies, streaming out one after the other.

"I didn't leave her in Louisville," she said softly. She nodded at the bedroom door. "She's in there. Sleeping."

David Henry looked up. Caroline was unnerved, for his face was white; she had never before seen him shaken.

"Why not?" he asked, on the edge of anger. "Why in the world not?"

"Have you been there?" she asked, remembering the pale woman, her dark hair falling into the cold linoleum. "Have you seen that place ?"

"No." He frowned. "It came highly recommended, that was all. I've sent other people there, in the past. I've heard nothing negative."

"It was awful," she said, relieved. So he hadn't known what he was doing. She wanted to hate him still, but she remembered how many nights he had stayed at the clinic, treating patients who couldn't afford the care they needed. Patients from the countryside, from the mountains, who made the arduous trip to Lexington, short on money, long on hope. The other clinic partners hadn't liked it, but Dr. Henry had not stopped. He wasn't an evil man, she knew that. He wasn't a monster. But this-a memorial service for a living child-that was monstrous.

"You have to tell her," she said.

His face was pale, still, but determined. "No," he said. "It's too late now. Do whatever you have to do, Caroline, but I can't tell her. I won't."

It was strange; she disliked him so much for these words, but she felt with him also at that moment the greatest intimacy she had ever felt with any person. They were joined together now in something enormous, and no matter what happened they always would be. He took her hand, and this felt natural to her, right. He raised it to his lips and kissed it. She felt the press of his lips on her knuckles and his breath, warm on her skin.

If there had been any calculation in his expression when he looked up, anything less than pained confusion when he released her hand, she would have done the right thing. She would have picked up the phone and called Dr. Bentley or the police, and she would have confessed it all. But he had tears in his eyes.

"It's in your hands," he said, releasing her. "I leave it to you. I believe the home in Louisville is the right place for this child. I don't make the decision lightly. She will need medical care she can't get elsewhere. But whatever you have to do, I will respect that. And if you choose to call the authorities, I will take the blame. There will be no consequences for you, I promise."

His expression was weighted. For the first time Caroline thought beyond the immediate, beyond the baby in the next room. It had not really occurred to her before that their careers were in jeopardy.

"I don't know," she said slowly. "I have to think. I don't know what to do."

He pulled out his wallet, emptying it. Three hundred dollars- she was shocked that he carried this much with him.

"I don't want your money," she said.

"It's not for you," he told her. "It's for the child."

"Phoebe. Her name is Phoebe," Caroline said, pushing away the bills. She thought of the birth certificate, left blank but for his signature in David Henry's haste that snowy morning. How easy it would be to type in Phoebe's name, and her own.

"Phoebe," he said. He stood up to go, leaving the money on the table. "Please, Caroline, don't do anything without telling me first. That's the only thing I ask. That you give me warning, whatever it is you decide."

He left, then, and everything was the same as it had been: the clock on the mantel, the square of light on the floor, the sharp shadows of bare branches. In a few weeks the new leaves would come, feathering out on the trees and changing the shapes on the floors. She had seen all this so many times, and yet the room seemed strangely impersonal now, as if she had never lived here at all. Over the years she had bought very few things for herself, being naturally frugal and imagining, always, that her real life would happen elsewhere. The plaid sofa, the matching chair-she liked this furniture well enough, she had chosen it herself, but she saw now that she could easily leave it. Leave all of it, she supposed, looking around at the framed prints of landscapes, the wicker magazine rack by the sofa, the low coffee table. Her own apartment seemed suddenly no more personal than a waiting room in any clinic in town. And what else, after all, had she been doing here all these years but waiting?

She tried to silence her thoughts. Surely there was another, less dramatic way. That's what her mother would have said, shaking her head, telling her not to play Sarah Bernhardt. Caroline hadn't known for years who Sarah Bernhardt was, but she knew well enough her mother's meaning: any excess of emotion was a bad thing, disruptive to the calm order of their days. So Caroline had checked all her emotions, as one would check a coat. She had put them aside and imagined that she'd retrieve them later, but of course she never had, not until she had taken the baby from Dr. Henry's arms. So something had begun, and now she could not stop it. Twin threads ran through her: fear and excitement. She could leave this place today. She could start a new life somewhere else. She would have to do that, anyway, no matter what she decided to do about the baby. This was a small town; she couldn't go to the grocery store without running into an acquaintance. She imagined Lucy Martin's eyes growing wide, the secret pleasure as she relayed

Caroline's lies, her affection for this discarded baby. Poor old spinster, people would say of her, longing so desperately for a baby of her own.

I'll leave it in your hands, Caroline. His face aged, clenched like a walnut.

The next morning, Caroline woke early. It was a beautiful day and she opened the windows, letting in the fresh air and the scent of spring. Phoebe had woken twice in the night, and while she slept Caroline had packed and carried her things to the car in the darkness. She had very little, as it turned out, just a few suitcases that would fit easily in the trunk and the backseat of the Fairlane. Really, she could have left for China or Burma or Korea at a moment's notice. This pleased her. She was pleased with her own efficiency, too. By noon yesterday she had made all the arrangements: Goodwill would take the furniture; a cleaning service would handle the apartment. She had stopped the utilities and the newspaper, and she had written letters to close her bank accounts.

Caroline waited, drinking coffee, until she heard the door slam downstairs and Lucy's car roar into life. Quickly, then, she picked Phoebe up and stood for a moment in the doorway of the apartment where she had spent so many hopeful years, years that seemed as ephemeral now as if they had never happened. Then she shut the door firmly and went down the stairs.

She put Phoebe in her box on the backseat and drove into town, passing the clinic with its turquoise walls and orange roof, passing the bank and dry cleaners and her favorite gas station. When she reached the church she parked on the street and left Phoebe asleep in the car. The group gathered in the courtyard was larger than sheM expected, and she paused at its outside edge, close enough to see the back of David Henry's neck, flushed pink from the cold, and Norah Henry's blond hair swept up in a formal twist. No one noticed Caroline. Her heels sank into the mud at the edge of the sidewalk. She eased her weight to her toes, remembering the stale smells of the institution Dr. Henry had sent her to last week. Remembering the woman in her slip, her dark hair falling to the floor.

Words drifted on the still morning air.

ORAH STOOD, BAREFOOT AND PRECARIOUSLY BALANCED,on a stool in the dining room, fastening pink streamers to the brass chandelier. Chains of paper hearts, pink and magenta, floated down over the table, trailing across her wedding china, the dark red roses and gilded rims, the lace tablecloth, the linen napkins. As she worked the furnace hummed and.strands of crepe paper wafted up, brushing against her skirt, then falling softly against the floor again, rustling.

Paul, eleven months old, sat in the corner beside an old grape basket full of wooden blocks. He had just learned to walk, and all afternoon he'd amused himself by stomping through this, their new house, in his first pair of shoes. Every room was an adventure. He had dropped nails down the registers, delighting in the echoes they made. He'd dragged a sack of joint compound through the kitchen, leaving a narrow white trail in his wake. Now, wide-eyed, he watched the streamers, as beautiful and elusive as butterflies, then pulled himself up on a chair and staggered in pursuit. He caught one pink strand and yanked, swaying the chandelier. Then he lost his balance and sat down hard. Astonished, he began to cry.

"Oh, sweetie, " Norah said, climbing down to pick him up.

"There, there," she murmured, running her hand over his soft dark hair.

Outside, headlights flashed and disappeared and a car door slammed. At the same time, the phone began to ring. Norah carried Paul into the kitchen and picked up the receiver just as someone knocked on the door.

"Hello?" She pressed her lips to Paul's forehead, damp and soft, straining to see whose car was in the driveway. Bree wasn't due for an hour. "Sweet baby," she whispered. And then into the phone she said again, "Hello?"

"Mrs. Henry?"

It was the nurse from David's new office-he'd joined the hospital staff a month ago-a woman Norah had never met. Her voice was warm and full: Norah pictured a middle-aged woman, hefty and substantial, her hair in a careful beehive. Caroline Gill, who had held her hand through the rippling contractions, whose blue eyes and steady gaze were inextricably connected for Norah to that wild and snowy night, had simply disappeared-a mystery, that, and a scandal.

"Mrs. Henry, it's Sharon Smith. Dr. Henry was called into emergency surgery just, I swear, as he was about to walk out the door and go home. There was a horrible accident out off Leestown Road. Teenagers, you know; they're pretty badly hurt. Dr. Henry asked me to call. He'll be home as soon as he can."

"Did he say how long?" Norah asked. The air was redolent with roast pork, sauerkraut, and oven potatoes: David's favorite meal.

"He didn't. But they say it was an awful wreck. Between you and me, honey, it may end up being hours."

Norah nodded. Distantly, the front door opened, shut. There were footsteps, light and familiar, in the foyer, the living room, the dining room: Bree, early, coming to pick up Paul, to give Norah and David this evening before Valentine's Day, their anniversary, to themselves.

Norah's plan, her surprise, her gift to him.

"Thank you," she told the nurse, before she hung up. "Thanks for calling."

Bree walked into the kitchen, bringing with her the scent of rain.

Below her long raincoat she wore black boots to her knees, and her thighs, long and white, disappeared in the shortest skirt Norah had ever seen. Her silver earrings, studded with turquoise, danced with light. She'd come straight from work-she managed the office for a local radio station-and her bag was full of books and papers from the classes she was taking.

"Wow," Bree said, sliding her bags on the counter and reaching for Paul. "Everything looks great, Norah. I can't believe what you've done with the house in such a short time."

"It's kept me busy," Norah agreed, thinking of the weeks she'd spent steaming off wallpaper and applying new coats of paint. They had decided to move, she and David, thinking that, like his new job, it would help them leave the past behind. Norah, wanting nothing else, had poured herself into this project. Yet it hadn't helped as much as she had hoped; often, still, her sense of loss stirred up, like flames out of embers. Twice in this last month alone she'd hired a babysitter for Paul and left the house, with its half-painted trim and rolls of wallpaper, behind. She had driven too fast down the narrow country roads to the private cemetery, marked with a wrought-iron gate, where her daughter was buried. The stones were low, some very old and worn nearly smooth. Phoebe's was simple, made from pink granite, with the dates of her short life chiseled deeply beneath her name. In the bleak winter landscape, the wind sharp in her hair, Norah had knelt in the brittle frozen grass of her dream. She'd been paralyzed with grief almost, too full of sorrow even to weep. But she had stayed for several hours before she finally stood up and brushed off her clothes and went home.

Now Paul was playing a game with Bree, trying to catch hold of her hair. 't

"Your mom's amazing," Bree told him. "She's just a regular Suzy Homemaker these days, isn't she? No, not the earrings, honey," she added, catching Paul's small hand in her own.

"Suzy Homemaker?" Norah repeated, anger lifting through her like a wave. "What do you mean by that?"

"I didn't mean anything," Bree said. She'd been making silly faces at Paul, and now she looked up, surprised. "Oh, honestly, Norah. Lighten up."

"Suzy Homemaker?" she said again. "I just wanted to have things look nice for my anniversary. What's wrong with that?"

"Nothing." Bree sighed. "Everything looks great. Didn't I just say so? And I'm here to babysit, remember? Why are you so angry?"

Norah waved her hand. "Never mind. Oh, darn it, never mind. David's in surgery."

Bree waited a heartbeat before she said, "That figures."

Norah started to defend him, then stopped. She pressed her hands against her cheeks. "Oh, Bree. Why tonight?"

"It's awful," Bree agreed. Norah's face tightened, she felt her lips purse, and Bree laughed. "Oh, come on. Be honest. Maybe it's not David's fault. But that's exactly how you feel, right?"

"It's not his fault," Norah said. "There was an accident. But okay. You're right. It does-it stinks. It absolutely stinks, okay?"

"I know," Bree said, her voice surprisingly soft. "It's really rotten. I'm sorry, Sis." Then she smiled. "Look, I brought you and David a present. Maybe it will cheer you up."

Bree shifted Paul to one arm and rummaged in her oversized quilted bag, pulling out books, a candy bar, a pile of leaflets about an upcoming demonstration, sunglasses in a worn leather case, and, finally, a bottle of wine, glimmering like garnets as she poured them each a glass.

"To love," she said, handing Norah one glass and raising the other. "To eternal happiness and bliss."

They laughed together and drank. The wine was dark with berries, faint oak. Rain dripped from the gutters. Years from now Norah would remember this evening, the gloomy disappointment and Bree bearing shimmering tokens from another world; her shiny boots, her earrings, her energy like a kind of light. How beautiful these things were to Norah, and how remote, how unreachable. Depression-years later she would understand the murky light she lived in-but no one talked about this in 1965. No one even considered it. Certainly not for Norah, who had her house, her baby, her doctor husband. She was supposed to be content.

"Hey-did your old house sell?" Bree asked, putting her glass on the counter. "Did you decide to take the offer?"

"I don't know," Norah said. "It's lower than we hoped. David wants to accept it, just to have it settled, but I don't know. It was our home. I still hate to let it go."

She thought of their first house, standing dark and empty with a for sale sign planted in the yard, and felt as if the world had become very fragile. She held on to the counter to steady herself and took another sip of wine.

"So how's your love life these days?" Norah asked, changing the subject. "How are things with that guy you were seeing-what was his name-Jeff?"

"Oh, him." A dark expression crossed Bree's face, and she shook her head, as if to clear it. "I didn't tell you? I came home two weeks ago and found him in bed-in my bed-with this sweet young thing who worked with us on the mayoral campaign."

"Oh! I'm sorry."

Bree shook her head. "Don't be. It's not like I loved him or anything. We were just good, you know, together. At least I thought so."

"You didn't love him?" Norah repeated, hearing and hating her mother's disapproving voice coming from her own mouth. She did not want to be that person, drinking cups of tea in the orderly silent house of their childhood. But neither did she want to be the person she seemed to be becoming, set loose by grief into a world that made no sense.

"No," Bree was saying. "No, I didn't love him, though for a while I thought I might. But that's not even the point anymore. The point is he turned our whole thing into a cliche. I hate that more than anything-being part of a cliche."

Bree put her empty glass on the counter and shifted Paul into her other arm. Her face, unadorned, was delicate, finely boned; her cheeks, her lips, were flashed pale pink.

"I couldn't live like you do," Norah said. Since Paul was born, since Phoebe had died, she'd felt the need to keep a constant vigil, as if a second's inattention would open the door for disaster. "I just couldn't do it-break all the rules. Blow everything up."

"The world doesn't end," Bree said quietly. "Amazing, but it really doesn't."

Norah shook her head. "It could. At any given moment, anything at all could happen."

"I know," Bree told her. "Honey, I know." Norah's earlier irritation was washed away by a sudden rush of gratitude. Bree would always listen and respond, would not demand anything less than the truth of her experience. "You're right, Norah, anything can happen, any time. But what goes wrong is not your fault. You can't spend the rest of your life tiptoeing around to try and avert disaster. It won't work. You'll just end up missing the life you have."

Norah did not know how to answer this, so she reached for Paul, who was squirming in Bree's arms, hungry, his long hair-too long, but Norah couldn't bear to cut it-drifting slightly, as if underwater, whenever he moved.

Bree poured more wine for them both and took an apple from the fruit bowl on the counter. Norah cut up chunks of cheese and bread and banana, scattering them across the tray of Paul's high chair. She sipped from her wine as she worked. Gradually, the world around her became clearer somehow, more vivid. She noticed Paul's hands, like small starfish, spreading carrots in his hair. The kitchen light cast shadows through the back porch railing onto the grass, patterns of darkness and light.

"I bought David a camera for our anniversary," Norah said, wishing she could capture these fleeting instants, hold them forever. "He's been working so hard since he took this new job. He needs a distraction. I can't believe he has to work tonight."

'You know what?" Bree said. "Why don't I take Paul anyway? I mean, who knows, David might get home early enough for dinner. So what if it's midnight? Why not? You could just skip dinner then, sweep away the plates and make love on the dining room table."

"Bree!"

Bree laughed. "Please, Norah? I'd love to take him."

"He needs a bath," Norah said.

"That's okay," Bree said. "I promise not to let him drown in the tub."

"Not funny," Norah said. "Not funny at all."

But she agreed, finally, and packed Paul's things. His soft hair against her cheek, his large dark eyes watching her seriously as Bree walked out the door with him, and then he was gone. She watched from the window as Bree's taillights disappeared down the street, taking her son away. It was all she could do to keep herself from running after them. How was it possible to let a child grow up and go out into that dangerous and unpredictable world? She stood for several minutes, staring out into the darkness. Then she went into the kitchen, where she put foil Over the roast and turned the oven off. It was seven o'clock. Bree's bottle of wine was nearly empty. In the kitchen, so silent she could hear the clock ticking, Norah opened another bottle, expensive and French, which she had bought for dinner.

The house was so quiet. Had she been alone, even once, since Paul was born? She did not think so. She had avoided such moments of solitude, moments of stillness when thoughts of her lost daughter might come rising up, unbidden. The memorial service, held in the church courtyard beneath the harsh light of the new March sun, had helped, but Norah sometimes still had the sense, inexplicably, of her daughter's presence, as if she might turn and see her on the stairs or standing outside on the lawn.

She pressed her hand flat against the wall and shook her head to clear it. Then, glass in hand, she walked through the house, her footsteps hollow on the newly polished floors, surveying the work she'd done. Outside, the rain fell steadily, blurring the lights across the street. Norah remembered another night, the swirling snow. David had taken her by the elbow, helping her into her old green coat, a raggy thing now but that she could not bring herself to discard it. The coat had fallen open around the fullness of her belly, and their eyes had met. He was so concerned, so serious, so charged with nervous excitement; in that moment Norah felt she knew him as she knew herself.

Yet everything^had changed. David had changed. Evenings, when he sat beside her on the couch, browsing through his journals, he was no longer really there. In her former life, as a long-distance operator, Norah had touched the cool switches and metal buttons, listening for the distant ringing, the click of connection. Hold, please, she'd said, and words echoed, were delayed; people spoke at once and then stopped, revealing the wild static night that lay between them. Sometimes she had listened, the voices of people she would never meet spilling out their formal heartfelt news: of births or weddings, illnesses or deaths. She had felt the dark night of those distances and the power of her ability to make them disappear.

But it was a power she had lost-at least now, and where it mattered most. Sometimes, even after they had made love in the middle of the night and still lay together, heart beating against heart, she would look at David and feel her ears filling up with the dark distant roar of the universe.