The Memory Keeper's Daughter (17 page)

"Why are you being so hostile, David?" Bree asked, fixing her green eyes on him.

"I'm not being hostile," David said, realizing even as he spoke that he was. Realizing, too, that he was beginning to flatten and extend his own vowels, called by the deep pull of language, patterns of speech as familiar and compelling as water. "I'm gathering information, that's all. Where are you from?" he asked Mark.

"West Virginia. Over near Elkins. Why?"

"Just curious. I had family there once."

"I didn't know that about you, David," Bree said. "I thought you were from Pittsburgh."

"I had family near Elkins," David repeated. "A long time ago."

"Is that so?" Mark was watching him less warily now. "They work coal ?"

"Sometimes, in the winter. They had a farm. A hard life, but not as hard as coal."

"They keep their land?"

"Yes." David thought of the house he had not seen for nearly fifteen years.

"Smart. My daddy, now, he sold the home place. When he died in the mines five years later, we had nowhere to go. Nowhere at all." Mark smiled bitterly and thought for a moment. "You ever go back there?"

"Not in a long time. You?"

"No. After Vietnam I went to college. Morgantown, the GI bill. It got to be strange, going back. I belonged and I didn't belong, if you know what I mean. When I left I didn't think I was making a choice. But it turned out I was."

David nodded. "I know," he said. "I know what you mean."

"Well," Bree said, after a long moment of silence. "You're both here now. I'm getting thirstier by the second," she added. "Mark? David? Want a drink?"

"I'll come with you." Mark said, extending his hand to David. "Small world, isn't it? It's good to meet you."

"David is a mystery to us all," Bree said, pulling him away. "Just ask Norah."

David watched them merge into the bright milling crowd. A simple encounter, yet he felt strangely agitated, exposed and vulnerable, his past rising up like the sea. Each morning he stood for a moment in his office doorway, surveying his clean simple world: the orderly array of instruments, the crisp white length of cloth on the examination table. By every external measure he was a success, yet he was never filled, as he hoped to be, with a sense of pride and reassurance. I suppose this is it, his father had said, slamming the truck door and standing on the curb by the bus stop on the day David left for Pittsburgh. 1 suppose this is the last we can expect to hear from you, moving up in the world and all. You won't have time for the likes of us anymore. And David, standing on the curb with early leaves falling down around him, had felt a deep sense of desperation, because even then he sensed the truth of his father's words: whatever his own intentions were, however much he loved them, his life would carry him away.

"Are you all right, David?" Kay Marshall asked. She was walking by, carrying a vase of pale pink tulips, each petal as delicate as the edge of a lung. "You look a million miles away."

"Ah, Kay," he said. She reminded him a little of Norah, some kind of loneliness moving always beneath her carefully polished surface. Once, after drinking too much at another party, Kay had followed him into a dark hallway, slipped her arms around his neck, and kissed him. Startled, he had kissed her back. The moment had passed, and although he often thought about the cool, surprising touch of her lips on his, every time he saw her David also wondered that it had ever really happened. "You look ravishing as always, Kay." He raised his glass to her. She smiled and laughed and moved on.

He went into the coolness of the garage and up the stairs, where he took his camera from the cupboard and loaded a new roll of film. Norah's voice lifted above the crowd, and he remembered the feel of her skin when he'd reached for her that morning, the smooth curve of her back. He remembered the moment she'd shared with Bree, how connected they were, beyond any bond he'd ever share with her again. I want, he thought, slipping the camera around his neck. I want.

He moved around the edges of the party, smiling and saying hello, shaking hands, drifting away from conversations to catch moments of the party on film. He paused before Kay's tulips, focusing in close, thinking how much they really did resemble the delicate tissue of lungs and how interesting it would be to frame shots of both and stand them next to each other, exploring this idea he had that the body was, in some mysterious way, a perfect mirror of the world. He grew absorbed in this, the sounds of the party falling away as he concentrated on the flowers, and he was startled to feel Norah's hand on his arm.

"Put the camera away," she said. "Please. It's a party, David."

"These tulips are so beautiful," he began, but he was unable to explain himself, unable to put into words why these images compelled him so.

"It's a party," she repeated. "You can either miss it and take pictures of it, or you can get a drink and join it."

"I have a drink," he pointed out. "No one cares that I'm taking a few pictures, Norah."

"I care. It's rude."

They were speaking softly, and during the whole exchange Norah had not stopped smiling. Her expression was calm; she nodded and waved across the lawn. And yet David could feel the tension radiating from her, and the pressed-back anger.

"I've worked so hard," she said. "I organized everything. I made all the food. I even got rid of the wasps. Why can't you just enjoy it?"

"When did you take the nest down?" he asked, searching for a safe topic, looking up at the smooth, clean eaves of the garage.

"Yesterday." She showed him her wrist, the faint red welt. "I didn't want to take any chances with your allergies and Paul's."

"It's a beautiful party," he said. On an impulse he brought her wrist to his lips and gently kissed the place where she'd been stung. She watched him, her eyes widening in surprise and a flicker of pleasure, then pulled her hand away.

"David," she said softly, "for heaven's sake, not here. Not now."

"Hey, Dad," Paul called, and David looked around, trying to locate his son. "Mom and Dad, look at me. Look at me!"

"He's in the hackberry tree," Norah said, shading her eyes and pointing across the lawn. "Look, up there, about halfway up. How did he do that?"

"I bet he climbed up from the swing set. Hey!" David called, waving back.

"Get down right now!" Norah called. And then, to David, "He's making me nervous."

"He's a kid," David said. "Kids climb trees. He'll be fine."

"Hey, Mom! Dad! Help!" Paul called, but when they looked up at him, he was laughing.

"Remember when he used to do that in the grocery store?" Norah asked. "Remember, when he was learning to talk, how he used to shout out help in the middle of the store? People thought I was a kidnapper."

"He did it at the clinic once," David said. "Remember that?"

They laughed together. David felt a wave of gladness.

"Put the camera away," she said, her hand on his arm.

"Yes," he said. "I will."

Bree had wandered over to the maypole and picked up a royal purple ribbon. A few others, intrigued, had joined her. David started back to the garage, watching the fluttering ends of the ribbons. He heard a sudden rush and stirring of the leaves, a branch cracking loudly. He saw Bree lift her hands, the ribbon slipping from her fingers as she reached up into the open air. A silence grew for a long instant, and then Norah cried out. David turned around in time to see Paul hit the ground with a thud, then bounce once, slightly, on his back, the sea lily necklace broken, the treasured crinoids scattered on the ground. David ran, pushing through the guests, and knelt beside him. Paul's dark eyes, were full of fear. He grabbed David's hand, trying hard to breathe.

"It's okay," David said, smoothing Paul's forehead. "You fell out of the tree and lost your wind, that's all. Just relax. Take another breath. You're going to be okay."

"Is he all right?" Norah asked, kneeling down beside him in her coral suit. "Paul, sweetie, are you okay?"

Paul gasped and coughed, tears standing in his eyes. "My arm hurts," he said, when he could speak again. He was pale, a thin blue vein visible in his forehead, and David could tell he was trying hard not to cry. "My arm really hurts." I"

"Which arm?" David asked, using his calmest voice. "Can you show me where?"

It was his left arm, and when David lifted it carefully, supporting the elbow and the wrist, Paul cried out in pain.

"David!" Norah said. "Is it broken?"

"Well, I'm not sure," he said calmly, though he was nearly certain that it was. He rested Paul's arm gently on his chest, then put one hand on Norah's back to comfort her. "Paul, I'm going to pick you up. I'm going to carry you to the car. And then we're going to go to my office, okay? I'm going to show you all about X-rays."

Slowly, gently, he lifted Paul. His son was so light in his arms. Their guests parted to let him pass. He put Paul in the backseat, got a blanket from the trunk, and tucked it around him.

"I'm coming too," Norah said, sliding in the front seat beside him.

"What about the party?"

"There's lots of food and wine," she said. " They'll just have to figure it out."

They drove through the bright spring air toward the hospital. From time to time, Norah still teased him about the night of the birth, how slowly and methodically he had driven through the empty streets, but he could not bring himself to speed today either.

They passed the ROTC building, still smoldering. Wisps of smoke rose like dark lace. Dogwoods were in bloom nearby, the petals pale and fragile against the blackened wall.

"The world's falling to pieces, that's how it feels," Norah said softly.

"Not now, Norah." David glanced at Paul in the rearview mirror. He was quiet, uncomplaining, but tears streaked his pale cheeks.

In the ER, David used his influence to hurry the process of admission and X-ray. He helped Paul get settled in a bed, left Norah reading him stories from a book she'd grabbed in the waiting room, and went to pick up the X-rays. When he took them from the technician, he saw his hands were trembling, so he walked down the halls, strangely silent on this beautiful Saturday afternoon, to his office. The door swung shut behind him, and for a moment David stood alone in the darkness, trying to compose himself. He knew the walls to be a pale sea green, the desk scattered with papers. He knew that instruments, steel and chrome, were lined up in trays below the glass-fronted cupboards. But he could see nothing. He raised his hand and touched his palm to his nose, but even so close he could not see his own flesh, only feel it.

He groped for the light switch; it gave at his touch. A panel, mounted on the wall, pulsed and then filled with a steady white light that bleached things of their color. Against the light were negatives he'd developed the week before: a series of photos of a human vein, taken in sequence, in gradations of precisely controlled light, the level of contrast changing subtly with each one. What excited David was the precision he'd achieved, and the way the images did not resemble a part of the human body as much as other things: lightning branching down to earth, rivers moving darkly, a wavering expanse of sea.

His hands were shaking. He forced himself to take several deep breaths, then took the negatives down and slipped Paul's X-rays beneath the clips. His son's small bones, solid yet delicate, stood out with ghostly clarity. David traced the light-filled image with his fingertips. So beautiful, the bones of his small son, opaque yet appearing here as if they were filled with light, translucent images floating in the darkness of his office, as strong and as delicate as the intertwined branches of a tree.

The damage was simple enough: clear, straightforward fractures of the ulna and the radius. These bones ran parallel; the greatest danger was that, in healing, the two might fuse together.

He flipped on the overhead light and started back down the hall, thinking of the beautiful hidden world inside the body. Years ago, in a shoe store in Morgantown, while his father tried on work boots and frowned over the price tag, David had stood on a machine that X-rayed his feet, turning his ordinary toes into something ghostly, mysterious. Rapt, he'd studied the wands and bulbs of shadowy light that were his toes, his heels.

It was, though he would not realize it for years, a defining mo^-ment. That there were other worlds, invisible, unknown, beyond imagination even, was a revelation to him. In the weeks that followed, watching deer run and birds lift off, leaves fluttering and rabbits bursting suddenly from the undergrowth, David stared hard, seeking to glimpse their hidden structures. And June-sitting on the porch steps, calmly shelling peas or shucking corn, her lips parted with concentration-he had stared at her too. For she was like him yet not like him, and what separated them was a great mystery.

His sister, this girl who loved wind, who laughed at the sun on her face and was not afraid of snakes. She had died at age twelve, and by now she was nothing but the memory of love-nothing, now, but bones.

And his daughter, six years old, walked in the world, but he did not know her.

When he got back, Norah was holding Paul in her lap, though he was almost too big for such comfort, his head resting awkwardly on her shoulder. His arm was trembling with minor convulsions from the trauma.

"Is it broken?" she asked right away.

"Yes, I'm afraid so," David said. "Come and take a look."

He slipped the X-rays onto the light table and pointed out the darkened lines of fracture.

Skeletons in the closet, people said, and bone dry, and I have a bonetopic't with you. But bones were alive; they grew and mended themselves; they could knit back together what had been torn apart.

"I was so careful about the bees," Norah said, helping him move Paul back to the examination table. "The wasps, I mean. I got rid of the wasps, and now this."

"It was an accident," David said.

"I know," she said, near tears. "That's the whole problem."

David didn't answer. He had taken out the materials for the cast, and now he concentrated on applying the plaster. It had been a long time since he'd done this-usually he set the bone and left the rest to the nurse-and he found it comforting. Paul's arm was small and the cast grew steadily, white as a bleached shell, as bright and seductive as a sheet of paper. In a few days it would be turning a dull gray, covered with bright childhood graffiti.