The Memory Keeper's Daughter Read online

  “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 cliché. I hate that more than anything—being part of a cliché.”

  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 flushed 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.

  It was after eight o’clock. The world had softened at the edges. She went back to the kitchen and stood at the stove, picking at the dried pork. She ate one of the potatoes straight from the pan, smashing it into the drippings with her fork. The broccoli-cheese dish had curdled and was beginning to dry; Norah tasted that too. It
burned her mouth, and she reached for her glass. Empty. She drank a glass of water, standing at the sink, and then another, holding on to the edge of the counter because the world was so unsteady. I’m drunk, she thought, surprised and mildly pleased with herself. She had never been drunk before, though Bree had once come home from a dance and thrown up all over the linoleum. Her punch had been spiked, she told their mother, but to Norah she had confessed it all: the bottle in a brown-paper bag and her friends gathered in the bushes, their breath making sharp little clouds in the night.

  The telephone seemed a long way away. Walking, she felt strange, as if she were somehow floating, just outside herself. She held on to the doorjamb with one hand and dialed with the other, the receiver pressed between her shoulder and her ear. Bree answered on the first ring.

  “I know it’s you,” she said. “Paul’s fine. We read a book and had a bath and now he’s sound asleep.”

  “Oh, good. Yes, wonderful,” Norah said. She had intended to tell Bree about this shimmering world, but now it seemed too private somehow, a secret.

  “How about you?” Bree was saying. “Are you okay?”

  “I’m fine,” Norah said. “David’s not here yet, but I’m fine.”

  She hung up fast, poured herself another glass of wine, and stepped onto the porch, where she lifted her face to the sky. A light mist hung in the air. Now the wine seemed to move through her like heat or light, spreading out through her limbs to her fingertips and toes. When she turned, her body once again seemed to float for an instant, as if she were sliding out of herself. She remembered their car, traveling over the icy roads as if airborne, swerving slightly before David got it under control. People were right; she couldn’t remember the pain of labor, but she had never forgotten that feeling in the car of the world slipping, spinning, and her hands holding fast to the cold dashboard while David, methodical, stopped at every light.

  Where was he, she wondered, sudden tears in her eyes, and why had she married him anyway? Why had he wanted her so much? Those whirlwind weeks after they met he’d been at her apartment every day, offering roses and dinners and drives in the country. Christmas Eve the doorbell rang and she went to answer it in her old robe, expecting Bree. Instead, she opened the door to find David, his face flushed with cold, brightly wrapped boxes in his arms. It was late, he said, he knew that, but would she come with him for a drive?

  No, she said, and You’re crazy! but all the time she was laughing at the wildness of it, laughing and stepping back and letting him in, this man on her steps holding his flowers and his gifts. She was amazed and pleased and a little astonished. There had been moments, watching others go off to sorority parties, or sitting on her stool in the windowless room of the telephone company while co-workers planned their weddings down to the last corsage and party mint, when Norah, so quiet and reserved, believed she would be single all her life. Yet here was David, handsome, a doctor, standing in the doorway of her apartment saying, Come on, please, there’s something special I want you to see.

  It had been a clear night, stars vivid in the sky. Norah sat on the wide vinyl front seat of David’s old car. She was wearing a red wool dress and she felt beautiful, the air so crisp and David’s hands on the wheel and the car traveling through the darkness, through the cold, traveling on smaller and smaller roads, into a landscape she did not recognize. He pulled to a stop beside an old flour mill. They stepped out of the car into the sound of rushing water. Black water caught the moonlight and poured over the rocks, turning the mill’s great wheel. The building stood darkly against the darker sky, obscuring stars, and the air was filled with the rushing, spilling sounds of the water.

  “Are you cold?” David asked, shouting over the stream, and Norah laughed, shivering, and said, No; no, she was not, she was fine.

  “What about your hands?” he shouted, his voice ringing, cascading like the water. “You didn’t bring any gloves.”

  “I’m fine,” she shouted back, but he was already taking her hands in his, pressing them to his chest, warming them between his gloves and the dark flecked wool of his coat.

  “It’s beautiful here!” she called to him, and he laughed. Then he leaned down and kissed her, releasing her hands and letting his own slide inside her coat and up her back. Water rushed, echoing off the rocks.

  “Norah,” he shouted, his voice part of the night, rolling like the stream, the words clear and yet small amid the other sounds. “Norah! Will you marry me?”

  She laughed, letting her head fall back, the night air pouring over her.

  “Yes!” she shouted, pressing her palms against his coat again. “Yes, I will!”

  He slid a ring on her finger, then: a thin white-gold band, exactly her size, its marquise diamond flanked by two tiny emeralds. To match her eyes, he said later, and the coat she’d worn when they met.

  She was inside now, standing in the doorway of the dining room, turning this ring on her finger. Streamers drifted. One brushed her face; another had dipped into her wineglass. Norah watched, fascinated, as the stain spread slowly upward. It was, she noticed, almost exactly the same color as the napkins. Suzy Homemaker, indeed: she couldn’t have found a closer match on purpose. Wine had splashed from her glass and spattered across the tablecloth too, staining the gold striped wrapping of her present to David. She picked this up and, on an impulse, tore the paper off. I’m really very drunk, she thought.

  The camera was compact, a pleasing weight. Norah had debated for weeks about a suitable gift, until she’d seen this in the display case at Sears. Black and flashing chrome, with complex dials and levers and numbers etched around the rings, the camera had resembled David’s medical equipment. The salesman, young and eager, had plied her with technical information about apertures and f-stops and wide-angle lenses. The terms washed over her like so much water, but she liked the weight of the camera in her hands, its cool textures, and the way the world was so precisely framed when she held it to her eye.

  Tentatively, now, she pushed the silver lever. Click and then snap, loud in the room, as the shutter released. She turned the little dial, advancing the film—she remembered the salesman using that phrase, advancing the film, his voice rising up for a moment out of the stream of noise in the store. She looked through the viewfinder, framing the ruined table again, then turned two different dials to find the focus. This time, when she snapped the shutter, light exploded across the wall. Blinking, she turned the camera over and studied the bulb, now blackened and bubbled. She replaced it, burning her fingers, but somehow distant from that pain.

  She stood and glanced at the clock: 9:45 P.M.

  The rain was soft, steady. David had walked to work, and she imagined him trudging wearily home down the dark streets. On an impulse she got her coat and the car keys—she would go to the hospital and surprise him.

  The car was cold. She backed out of the driveway, fumbling for the heat, and by old habit turned in the wrong direction. Even after she realized her mistake, she kept driving on the same narrow rainy streets, back to their old house, where she’d decorated the nursery with such innocent hope, where she’d sat nursing Paul in the dark. She and David had agreed about the wisdom of moving away, but the truth was she could not bear the idea of selling this place. She still went there almost every day. Whatever life her daughter had known, whatever Norah had experienced of her daughter, had happened in that house.

  Except for being dark, the house looked much the same: the wide front porch with its four white columns, the rough-cut limestone and single light burning. There was Mrs. Michaels next door, just a few yards away, moving in her kitchen, washing dishes and staring out into the night; there was Mr. Bennett in his easy chair, the curtains open, the television on. Norah could almost believe, walking up the steps, that she lived here still. But the door opened into rooms that were bare, empty, shocking in their smallness.

  Walking through the cold house, Norah struggled to clear her head. The effects of the wine seemed very much stronger
now, and she was having trouble connecting one moment to another. She held David’s new camera in one hand. A fact, not a decision. There were fifteen pictures left and spare flashbulbs in her pocket. She took a picture of the chandelier, satisfied, when the bulb flashed, because now she would always have that image with her; she would never wake up in the middle of the night in twenty years and not be able to remember this detail, these graceful sickles of gold.

  She walked from room to room, still drunk but charged with purpose, framing windows, light fixtures, the swirling grain of the floor. It seemed vitally important that she record every detail. At one point, in the living room, a spent and blistered bulb slipped from her hand and shattered; when she stepped back, glass pierced her heel. She studied her stocking feet for a moment, amused and impressed by her degree of drunkenness—she must have left her wet shoes by the front door, out of old habit. She wandered through the house twice more, documenting light switches, windows, the pipe where gas had once come up to the second floor. It was only on her way downstairs that she realized her foot was bleeding, leaving a splotchy trail: grim hearts, bloody little valentines. Norah was shocked and also strangely thrilled at the damage she had managed to inflict.

  She found her shoes, went outside. Her heel throbbed as she slid into the car, the camera still dangling from her wrist.

  Later, she would not remember much about the drive, only the dark narrow streets, the wind in the leaves, light flashing on the puddles, and water spraying off her tires. She would not remember the crash of metal against metal, but only the sudden startling sight of a trash can, glittering, flying up in front of the car. Wet with rain, it seemed suspended for a long moment before it began to fall. She remembered that it hit the hood and rolled up to shatter the windshield; she remembered the car, bouncing over the curb and coming to a gentle stop in the median, beneath a pin oak. She did not remember hitting the windshield, but it looked like a spiderweb, the intricate lines fanning out, delicate, beautiful, and precise. When she pressed her hand to her forehead, it came away lightly smeared with blood.