The Memory Keeper's Daughter (43 page)

He looked across the table. Phoebe was standing next to a poplar tree whose leaves were just beginning to turn, scraping whipped cream off her cake with her fork.

"Our lives could have been so much different."

"Yes. That's true. But they weren't different, Paul. They happened just like this."

"You're defending him," he said slowly.

"No. I'm forgiving him. I'm trying to, anyway. There's a difference."

"He doesn't deserve forgiveness," Paul said, surprised at his bitterness, still.

"Maybe not," his mother said. "But you and I and Phoebe, we have a choice. To be bitter and angry, or to try and move on. It's the hardest thing for me, letting go of all that righteous anger. I'm still struggling. But that's what I want to do."

He considered this. "I was offered a job in Pittsburgh," he said.

"Really?" His mother's eyes were intent now, such a dark green in this light. "Are you going to take it?"

"I think so," he said, realizing he'd made up his mind. "It's a very good offer."

"You can't fix it," she said softly. "You can't fix the past, Paul."

"I know." And he did. He'd gone to Pittsburgh that first time believing that help was his to offer, or not. He'd been worried about the responsibility he'd have to undertake, how his life would change with the burden of a retarded sister, and he'd been surprised- astonished, really-to find this same sister saying no, I like my life the way it is, no than't you.

"Your life is your life," she went on, more urgently now. "You're not responsible for what happened. Phoebe's okay, financially."

Paul nodded. "I know. I don't feel responsible for her. I truly don't. It's just-I thought I'd like to get to know her. Day by day. I mean, she is my sister. It's a good job, and I really need a change. Pittsburgh's a beautiful city. So, I guess-why not?"

"Oh, Paul." His mother sighed, running her hand through her short hair. "Is it really a good job?"

"Yes. Yes it is."

She nodded. "It would be nice," she admitted slowly, "to have the two of you in the same place. But you have to think of the whole picture. You're so young, and you're just beginning to find your way. Know it's okay for you to do that."

Before he could answer, Frederic was there, tapping on his watch, saying they had to leave soon to catch their flight. After a moment's conversation Frederic went to get the car and his mother turned back to Paul, put one hand on his arm, and kissed his cheek.

"We're just about to go, I think. You'll be taking Phoebe home?"

"Yes. Caroline and Al said I could stay at their place."

She nodded. "Thank you," she said softly, "for being here. It can't have been easy for you, for all sorts of reasons. But it has meant so much to me."

"I like Frederic," he said. "I hope you'll be happy."

She smiled and touched his arm. "I'm so proud of you, Paul. Do you have any idea how proud I am of you? How much I love you?" She turned to gaze across the table at Phoebe; she had tucked the cluster of daffodils beneath her arm and the breeze moved her shiny skirt. "I'm proud of both of you."

"Frederic is waving," Paul said, speaking quickly to cover his emotion. "I think it's time. I think he's ready. Go and be happy, Mom."

She looked at him hard and long again, tears in her eyes, then kissed him on the check.

Frederic crossed the lawn and shook Paul's hand. Paul watched his mother embrace his sister and give Phoebe her bouquet; he watched Phoebe's tentative hug in return. Their mother and Frederic climbed into the car, smiling and waving, amid another shower of confetti. The car disappeared around the curve, and Paul made his way back to the table, pausing to say hello, to one guest after another, keeping Phoebe's figure in sight. When he drew near he heard her talking happily to another guest about Robert and her own wedding. Her voice was loud, her speech a little thick and awkward, her excitement uncontained. He saw the guest's reaction-a strained, uncertain, patient smile-and winced. Because Phoebe just wanted to talk. Because he himself had reacted to such conversations in the very same way, just a few weeks earlier.

"How about it, Phoebe," he said, walking over and interrupting. "You want to go?"

"Okay," she said, and put her plate down.

They drove through the lush countryside. It was a warm day. Paul turned off the air-conditioner and rolled down the windows, remembering the way his mother had driven so wildly through these same landscapes to escape her loneliness and grief, the wind whipping through her hair. He must have traveled thousands of miles with her, back and forth across the state, lying on his back, trying to guess where they were by the glimpses of leaves, telephone wires, sky. He remembered watching a steamship move through the muddy waters of the Mississippi, its bright wheels flashing light and water. He had never understood her sadness, though he had carried it with him later, wherever he went.

Now it was all gone, that sadness: that life was finished, gone, as well.

He drove fast, edges of autumn everywhere. The dogwoods were already turning, clouds of brilliant red against the hills. Pollen tickled Paul's eyes and he sneezed several times, but he still kept the windows open. His mother would have had the air-conditioning on, the car as chilly as a florist's case. His father would have opened his bag and found the antihistamine. Phoebe, sitting straight in the seat beside him, her skin so white, almost translucent, took a Kleenex from a small pack in her large black plastic purse and of-fered it to him. Veins, pale blue, traced just below the surface of her skin. He could see her pulse moving in her neck, calmly, steadily.

His sister. His twin. What if she'd been born without Down's? Or what if she'd been born as she was, simply herself, and their father had not raised his eyes to Caroline Gill, snow falling in the world outside and his colleague in a ditch? He imagined his parents, so young and so happy, bundling the two of them into the car, driving slowly through the watery streets of Lexington in the March thaw that followed their birth. The sunny playroom adjoining his would have belonged to Phoebe. She'd have chased him down the stairs, through the kitchen and into the wild garden, her face always with him, his laughter an echo of her own. Who would he have been, then?

But his mother was right; he could never know what might have happened. All he had were the facts. His father had delivered his own twins in the middle of an unexpected storm, following the steps he knew by heart, keeping his focus on the pulse and heart rate of the woman on the table, the taut skin, the crowning head. Breathing, skin tone, fingers and toes. A boy. On the surface, perfect, and a small singing started, deep in his father's brain. A moment later, the second baby. And then his father's singing stopped for good.

They were close to town now. Paul waited for a break in traffic, then turned into the Lexington cemetery, past the gatehouse made of stone. He parked beneath an elm tree that had survived a hundred years of drought and disease and got out of the car. He walked around to Phoebe's door and opened it, offering his hand. She looked at it, surprised, then up at him. Then she pushed herself out of the seat on her own, still holding the daffodils, their stems crushed and pulpy now. They followed the path for a while, past the monuments and the pond with the ducks, until he guided her across the grass to the stone that marked their father's grave.

Phoebe traced her fingers over the names and dates engraved in the dark granite. He wondered again what she was thinking. Al Simpson was the man she called her father. He did puzzles with her in the evenings, and brought her favorite albums home from his trips; he used to carry her on his shoulders so that she could touch the high leaves of the sycamores. It couldn't mean anything to her, this slab of granite, this name.

David Henry McCallister. Phoebe read the words out loud, slowly. They filled her mouth and fell heavily into the world.

"Our father," he said.

"Our father," she said, "who art in heaven hallowed be thy name."

"No," he said, surprised. "Our father. My father. Yours."

"Our father," she repeated, and he felt a surge of frustration, for her words were agreeable, mechanical, of no significance in her life.

"You're sad," she observed, then. "If my father died, I'd be sad too."

Paul was startled. Yes, that was it-he was sad. His anger had cleared, and suddenly he could see his father differently. His very presence must have must have reminded his father in every glance, with every breath, of the choice he'd made and could not undo. Those Polaroids of Phoebe that Caroline had sent over the years, found hidden in the back of a darkroom drawer after the curators had gone; the single photograph of his father's family too, the one Paul still had, standing on the porch of their lost home. And the thousands of others, one after another, his father layering image on image, trying to obscure the moment he could never change, and yet the past rising up anyway, as persistent as memory, as powerful as dreams.

Phoebe, his sister, a secret kept for a quarter of a century.

Paul walked a few feet back to the gravel path. He paused, his hands in his pockets, leaves swirling up in the eddies of wind, a scrap of newspaper floating over the rows of white stones. Clouds moved against the sun, making patterns on the land, and sunlight flashed on the headstones, the grass and trees. Leaves tapped lightly in the breeze, and the long grass rustled.

At first the notes were thin, almost an undercurrent to the breeze, so subtle that he had to strain to hear them. He turned. Phoebe, still standing by the headstone, her hand resting on its dark granite edge, had begun to sing. The grass over the graves was moving and the leaves were stirring. It was a hymn, vaguely familiar. Her words were indistinct, but her voice was pure and sweet, and other visitors to the cemetery were glancing in her direction, at Phoebe with her graying hair and bridesmaid's dress, her awkward stance, her unclear words, her carefree, fluted voice. Paul swallowed, stared at his shoes. For the rest of his life, he realized, he would be torn like this, aware of Phoebe's awkwardness, the difficulties she encountered simply by being different in the world, and yet propelled beyond all this by her direct and guileless love.

By her love, yes. And, he realized, awash in the notes, by his own new and strangely uncomplicated love for her.

Her voice, high and clear, moved through the leaves, through the sunlight. It splashed onto the gravel, the grass. He imagined the notes falling into the air like stones into water, rippling the invisible surface of the world. Waves of sound, waves of light: his father had tried to pin everything down, but the world was fluid and could not be contained.

Leaves lifted; sunlight swam. The words of this old hymn came back to him, and Paul picked up the harmony. Phoebe did not seem to notice. She sang on, accepting his voice as she might the wind. Their singing merged, and the music was inside him, a humming in his flesh, and it was outside, too, her voice a twin to his own. When the song ended, they stayed as they were in the clear pale light of the afternoon. The wind shifted, pressing Phoebe's hair against her neck, scattering old leaves along the base of the worn stone fence.

Everything slowed, until the whole world was caught in this single hovering moment. Paul stood very still, waiting to see what would happen next.

For a few seconds, nothing at all.

Then Phoebe turned, slowly, and smoothed her wrinkled skirt.

A simple gesture, yet it set the world back in motion.

Paul noted how short and clipped her fingernails were, how delicate her wrist looked against the granite headstone. His sister's hands were small, just like their mother's. He walked across the grass and touched her shoulder, to take her home.

END