The Memory Keeper's Daughter Read online

  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 hands. 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 she’d 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.

  The night is as clear as day; the darkness and light are to thee both alike.

  Caroline had woken at all hours. She’d stood eating crackers at the kitchen window in the middle of the night. Her days and nights had become indistinguishable, the comforting patterns of her life shattered once and for all.

  Norah Henry wiped at her eyes with a lace handkerchief. Caroline remembered her grip as she pushed one baby out and then the other, and the tears in her eyes, then, too. This would destroy her, David Henry had declared. And what would it do if Caroline stepped forward now with the lost baby in her arms? If she interrupted this grief, only to introduce so many others?

  Thou has set our misdeeds before thee, and our secret sins in the light of thy countenance.

  David Henry shifted his weight as the minister spoke. For the first time Caroline understood in her body what she was about to do. Her throat closed and her breath grew short. The gravel seemed to press up through her shoes, and the group in the courtyard trembled in her sight, and she thought she might fall. Grave, Caroline thought, watching Norah’s long legs bending, so graceful, kneeling suddenly in the mud. Wind caught at Norah’s short veil, pulled at her pillbox hat.

  For the things that are seen are transient, but the things that are unseen are eternal.

  Caroline watched the minister’s hand and, when he spoke again, the words, though faint, seemed addressed not to Phoebe but to herself, some kind of finality that could not be reversed.

  We have committed her body to the elements, earth to earth, ashes to ashes, dust to dust. The Lord bless her and keep her, the Lord make his face to shine upon her and give her peace.

  The voice paused, the wind moved in the trees, and Caroline pulled herself together, wiped her eyes with her handkerchief, and gave her head a swift shake. She turned and went to her car, where Phoebe was still sleeping, a wand of sunlight falling across her face.

  In every end, then, a beginning. Soon enough she was turning the corner by the monument factory with its rows of tombstones, headed for the interstate. How strange. Wasn’t it a bad omen to have a gravestone factory marking the entrance to a city? But then she was beyond it all, and when she reached the split in the highway she chose to go north, to Cincinnati and then to Pittsburgh, following the Ohio River to the place where Dr. Henry had lived a part of his mysterious past. The other road, to Louisville and the Home for the Feebleminded, disappeared in her rearview mirror.

  Caroline drove fast, feeling reckless, her heart filling with an excitement as bright as the day. Because, really, what could ill omens matter now? After all, the child who rode beside her was, in the eyes of the world, already dead. And she, Caroline Gill, was vanishing from the face of the earth, a process that left her feeling light, then lighter, as if the car itself had begun to float high over the quiet fields of southern Ohio. All that sunny afternoon, traveling north and east, Caroline believed absolutely in the future. And why not? For if the worst had already happened to them in the eyes of the world, then surely, surely, it was the worst that they left behind them now.

  1965

  February 1965

  NORAH 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 f
inally 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.

  “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.