The Memory Keeper's Daughter (14 page)

"I'm not trying to be a hero."

"No?" She looked away. "I think you are," she said. "It's my fault too. For a long time I wanted to be rescued, I realize that. But not anymore. You don't have to protect me all the time now. I hate it."

And then she took the car seat and turned away again. In the dappled sunlight, Paul's hand reached for her hair, and David felt a sense of panic, almost vertigo, at all he didn't know; at all he knew and couldn't mend. And anger: he felt that too, suddenly, in a great rush. At himself, but also at Caroline, who had not done what he'd asked, who had made an impossible situation even worse. Norah slid into the front seat and slammed the car door shut. He fished in his pocket for his keys and instead pulled out the last geode, gray and smooth, earth-shaped. He held it, warming in his palm, thinking of all mysteries the world contained: layers of stone, concealed beneath the flesh of earth and grass; these dull rocks, with their glimmering hidden hearts.

E'S ALLERGIC TO BEES," NORAH TOLD THE TEACHER, watching Paul run across the new grass of the playground. He climbed to the top of the slide, sat for a moment with his short white sleeves flapping in the wind, and then sailed down, springing up with delight as he hit the ground. The azaleas were in dense bloom, and the air, warm as skin, hummed with insects, birds. "His father's allergic too. It's very serious."

"Don't worry," Miss Throckmorton replied. "We'll take good care of him."

Miss Throckmorton was young, just out of school, dark-haired and wiry and enthusiastic. She wore a full skirt and sturdy flat sandals, and her eyes never left the groups of children playing on the field. She seemed steady, competent, focused, and kind. Still, Norah did not completely trust her to know what she was doing.

"He picked up a bee," she persisted, "a dead bee; I mean, one that was just lying on the windowsill. Seconds later, he was swelling up like a balloon."

"Don't worry, Mrs. Henry," Miss Throckmorton repeated, a bit less patiently. She was already moving off, her clear voice calming, like a bell, to help a little girl with sand in her eyes.

Norah lingered in the new spring sun, watching Paul. He was playing tag, his cheeks flushed, running with his arms straight down by his sides-he'd slept that way, too, as an infant. His hair was dark, but otherwise he looked like Norah, people said, with the same bone structure and fair coloring. She saw herself in him, it was true, and David was there too, in the shape of Paul's jaw, the curve of his ears, the way he liked to stand with his arms folded, listening to the teacher. But mostly Paul was simply himself. He loved music and hummed made-up songs all day long. Though he was only six, he'd already sung solos at school, stepping forward with an innocence and confidence that astonished Norah, his sweet voice rising in the auditorium as clear and melodic as water in a stream.

Now he paused to squat beside another little boy who was skimming leaves from the dark water of a puddle with a stick. His right knee was skinned, the Band-Aid pulling off. Sunlight glinted in his short dark hair. Norah watched him, serious and utterly absorbed in his task, overcome by the simple fact of his existence. Paul, her son. Here in the world.

"Norah Henry! Just the person I wanted to see."

She turned to see Kay Marshall, dressed in slim pink pants and a cream and pink sweater, gold leather flats, and glimmering gold earrings. She was pushing her newborn in an antique wicker carriage while Elizabeth, her oldest, walked by her side. Elizabeth, born a week after Paul, in the sudden spring that had followed that strange and sudden snow. She was dressed this morning in pink dotted Swiss and white patent leather shoes. Impatiently, she pulled away from Kay and ran off across the playground to the swings.

"It's such a pretty day," Kay said, watching her go. "How are you, Norah?"

"I'm fine," Norah said, resisting the impulse to touch her hair, acutely aware of her plain white blouse and blue skirt, her lack of jewelry. No matter when or where Norah saw her, Kay Marshall was always like this: calm and cool, coordinated to the last detail, her children perfectly dressed and well-behaved. Kay was the sort of mother Norah had always imagined that she herself would be, handling every situation with a relaxed and instinctive calm. Norah admired her, and she envied her too. Sometimes she even caught herself thinking that if she could be more like Kay, more serene and secure, her marriage might improve; she and David might be happier.

"I'm fine," she repeated, looking at the baby, who gazed up at her with wide inquisitive eyes. "Look how big Angela is getting!"

Impulsively, Norah leaned down and picked up the baby, Kay's second daughter, dressed in frothy pink to match her sister. She was light and warm in Norah's arms, patting at Norah's cheeks with her small hands, laughing. Norah felt a rush of pleasure, remembering the way Paul had felt at this age, his scent of soap and milk, his soft skin. She glanced across the playground; he was running again, playing tag. Now that he was in school, he had his own life. He no longer liked to sit and cuddle with her unless he was sick or wanted her to read him a story before bed. It seemed impossible that he had ever been this small, impossible that he'd grown into a boy with a red tricycle who thrust sticks into puddles and sang so beautifully.

"She's ten months today," Kay said. "Can you believe it?"

"No," Norah said. "Time goes so fast."

"Have you been down by the campus?" Kay asked. "Have you heard what's happening?"

Norah nodded. "Bree called last night." She'd stood, the phone in one hand and the other on her heart, watching grainy news on TV: four students shot dead at Kent State. Even in Lexington, tension had been building for weeks, the newspapers full of war and protests and unrest, the world volatile and shifting.

"It's scary," Kay said, but her tone was calm, more disapproving than dismayed, the same voice she might have used to talk about someone's divorce. She took Angela, kissed her forehead, and put her gently back into the carriage.

"I know," Norah agreed. She used the same tone, but to her the unrest seemed deeply personal, a reflection of what had been going on within her heart for years. For a moment she felt another sharp, deep pang of envy. Kay lived in innocence, untouched by loss, believing that she would always be safe; Norah's world had changed when Phoebe died. All her joys were set into stark relief-by that loss and by the possibility of further loss she now glimpsed in every moment. David was always telling her to relax, to hire help, not to push herself so hard. He grew irritated with her projects, her committees, her plans. But Norah could not sit still; it made her too uneasy. So she arranged meetings and filled up her days, always with the desperate sense that if she let down her guard, even for a moment, disaster would follow. The feeling was worst in the late morning; she almost always had a quick drink then-gin, sometimes vodka-to ease her into the afternoon. She loved the calm, spreading through her like light. She kept the bottles carefully hidden from David.

"Anyway," Kay was saying. "I wanted to RSVP about your party. We'd love to come, but we'll be a little late. Is there anything I can bring?"

"Just yourselves," Norah said. "Everything's almost ready. Except I have to go home and take down a wasp's nest."

Kay's eyes widened slightly. She was from an old Lexington family and had "people," as she called them. Pool people and cleaning people and lawn people and kitchen people. David always said Lexington was like the limestone on which it was built: layers of stratification, nuances of being and belonging, your place in the hierarchy fixed in stone long ago. No doubt Kay had insect people too.

"A wasp's nest? Poor you!"

"Yes," Norah said. "Paper wasps. The nest is hanging off the garage."

It pleased her to shock Kay, even so mildly; she liked the concrete sound of the task before her. Wasps. Tools. The dismantling of a nest. Norah hoped it would take all morning. Otherwise, she might find herself driving, as she had so often in these last weeks, fast and hard, a silver flask in her purse. She could make it to the Ohio River in less than two hours. Louisville or Maysville or once, even, Cincinnati. She'd park on a river bluff and get out of the car, watching the distant ever-shifting water far below.

The school bell rang and the children began funneling inside. Norah searched for Paul's dark head, watched him disappear. "I just loved our two singing together," Kay said, blowing kisses to Elizabeth. "Paul has such a beautiful voice. A gift, really."

"He loves music," Norah replied. "He always has."

It was true. Once, at three months, while she talked with friends, he had suddenly begun to babble, a cascade of sounds pouring into the room like flowers spilling suddenly from a shaft of light, stopping the conversation entirely.

"Actually, that's the other thing I wanted to ask you, Norah. This fund-raiser I'm doing next month. It's a Cinderella theme, and I've been sent out to round up as many little footmen as I can. I thought of Paul."

Despite herself, Norah felt a surge of pleasure. She had given up hope of such an invitation years ago, after Bree's scandalous marriage and divorce.

"A footman?" she repeated, taking in the news.

"Well, that's the best part," Kay confided. "Not just a footman. Paul would sing. A duet. With Elizabeth."

"I see," Norah said, and she did. Elizabeth's voice was sweet but thin. She sang with forced cheer, like spring bulbs in January, her anxious eyes darting over the audience. Her voice wouldn't be strong enough without Paul's.

"It would mean such a lot to everyone if he would."

Norah nodded slowly, disappointed, annoyed with herself for caring. But Paul's voice was pure, winged; he would love to be a footman. And at least this party, like the wasps, would provide another anchor to her days.

"Wonderful!" Kay said. "Oh, marvelous. I hope you won't mind," she added, "I took the liberty of reserving a little tuxedo for him. I just knew you'd say yes!" She glanced at her watch, efficient now, ready to go. "Good to see you," she added, waving as she walked away, pushing the carriage.

The playground was empty. A candy wrapper flashed, pin-wheeling, across the overgrown spring grass and caught in the flaming pink azaleas. Norah walked past the bright swings and slides to her car. The river, its calming swirl, called to her. Two hours, and she could be there. The lure of the fast drive, the rushing wind, the water, was nearly irresistible, so great that on the last school holiday she had been shocked to find herself in Louisville, Paul frightened and quiet in the backseat, her hair windswept and the gin already wearing thin. There's the river, she had said, standing with Paul's small hand in hers, looking at the muddy, swirlings water. Now we'll go to the zoo, she'd announced, as if that had been her intention all along.

She left the school and drove into town through the tree-lined streets, past the bank and the jewelry store, her longing as vast as the sky. She slowed as she passed World Travel. Yesterday, she had interviewed for a job there. She'd seen the ad in the paper, and she'd been drawn into the low brick building by the glamorous signs in the windows: glittering beaches and buildings, vivid skies and colors. She had not really wanted the job until she got there,; and then suddenly she did. Sitting in her printed linen sheath, holding her white purse on her lap, she had wanted this job more than anything. The agency was owned by a man named Pete Warren, fifty years old and bald across the top, who'd tapped a pencil on his clipboard and joked about the Wildcats. He had liked her, she could tell, even though her degree was in English and she had no experience. He was supposed to let her know today.

Behind her, someone honked a horn. Norah speeded up. This road went through town and intersected with the highway. But as she neared the university, traffic grew dense. The streets were so full of people she slowed to a crawl and then had to pull over entirely. She got out of the car and left it. Distantly, from deeper in the campus, came a dark swelling of voices, rhythmic and rising, a chant full of energy that was somehow akin to the buds bursting open on the trees. Her restlessness and longing seemed answered by this moment, and she fell into the current of moving people.

Scents of sweat and patchouli oil filled the air, and the sunlight was warm on her arms. She thought of the elementary school, just a mile away, the order there and the ordinariness, and she thought of Kay Marshall's disapproving tone, and yet she kept going. Shoulders and arms and hair brushed against her. The current began to slow and pool; there was a crowd gathering by the ROTC building, where two young men stood on the steps, one with a megaphone. Norah paused too, craning to see what was happening. One of the young men, wearing a suit jacket and tie, was holding an American flag aloft, the stripes fluttering. As she watched, the other young man, also nicely dressed, held his fist near the edge. The flames were invisible at first, an intensity of shimmering heat, and then they caught in the fabric, rising up against the leaves, the blue and greenness of the day.

Norah watched this happening as if in slow motion. Through the wavering air she saw Bree, moving along the perimeter of the crowd near the building, passing out leaflets. Her long hair was caught in a ponytail that swung against her white peasant top. She was so beautiful, Norah thought, glimpsing the determination and excitement on her sister's face in the instant before she disappeared. Envy rose in her again, flamelike: envy of Bree, for her sureness and her freedom. Norah pushed her way through the crowd.

She glimpsed her sister twice more-the flash of her blond hair, her face in profile-before she finally reached her. By then Bree was standing on the curb, talking to a young man with reddish hair, their conversation so intent that when Norah finally touched her arm Bree turned, puzzled and unseeing, her expression utterly blank for a long instant before she recognized her sister.

"Norah?" she said. She placed her hand on the red-haired man's chest, a gesture so sure and intimate that Norah's heart caught. "It's my sister," Bree explained. "Norah, this is Mark."

He nodded without smiling and shook Norah's hand, assessing her.

"They set the flag on fire," Norah said, conscious once again of her clothes, as out of place here as on the playground, for utterly different reasons.

Mark's brown eyes narrowed slightly and he shrugged.

"They fought in Vietnam," he said. "So I guess they had their reasons."

"Mark lost half his foot in Vietnam."

Norah found herself glancing down at Mark's boots, laced high up his ankles.

"The front half," he said, tapping his right foot. "The toes and then some."

"I see," Norah said, deeply embarrassed.

"Look, Mark, can you give us a minute?" Bree asked.

He glanced at the stirring crowd. "Not really. I'm the next speaker."

"It's okay. I'll be right back," she said, then took Norah's hand and pulled her a few yards away, ducking beneath a cluster of catalpa trees.