The Memory Keeper's Daughter

This thought, and the force of its bitterness, shocked David. He wanted to believe he’d done the right thing when he handed his daughter to Caroline Gill. Or at least that he’d had the right reasons. But perhaps he had not. Perhaps it was not so much Paul he’d been protecting on that snowy night as some lost version of himself.

  “You look so far away,” Norah observed.

  He shifted, moving closer to her, leaning against the boulder too.

  “My parents had great dreams for me,” he said. “But they didn’t match my own dreams.”

  “Sounds like me and my mother,” Norah said, hugging her knees. “She says she’s coming to visit next month. Did I tell you? She’s got a free flight.”

  “That’s good, isn’t it? Paul will keep her busy.”

  Norah laughed. “He will, won’t he? That’s her whole reason for coming.”

  “Norah, what do you dream about?” he asked. “What do you dream for Paul?”

  Norah didn’t answer right away. “I suppose I want him to be happy,” she said at last. “Whatever in life makes him happy, I want him to have that. I don’t care what it is, as long as he grows up to be good and true to himself. And generous and strong, like his father.”

  “No,” David said, uncomfortable. “You don’t want him to take after me.”

  She gave him an intent look, surprised. “Why not?”

  He didn’t answer. After a long, hesitant moment, Norah spoke again.

  “What’s wrong?” she asked, not aggressively but thoughtfully, as if she were trying to puzzle out the answer as she spoke. “Between us, I mean, David.”

  He didn’t answer, struggling against a sudden surge of anger. Why did she have to stir things up again? Why couldn’t she let the past rest and move on? But she spoke again.

  “It hasn’t been the same since Paul was born and Phoebe died. And yet you still won’t talk about her. It’s like you want to erase the fact that she existed.”

  “Norah, what do you want me to say? Of course life hasn’t been the same.”

  “Don’t get angry, David. That’s just some kind of strategy, isn’t it? So I won’t talk about her anymore. But I won’t back down. What I’m saying is true.”

  He sighed.

  “Don’t ruin the beautiful day, Norah,” he said at last.

  “I’m not,” she said, moving away. She lay down on the blanket and closed her eyes. “I’m perfectly content with this day.”

  He watched her for a moment, sunlight catching in her blond hair, her chest rising and falling gently with each breath. He wanted to reach out and trace the delicate curved bones of her ribs; he wanted to kiss her at the point the bones met, stretching away like wings.

  “Norah,” he said. “I don’t know what to do. I don’t know what you want.”

  “No,” she said. “You don’t.”

  “You could tell me.”

  “I suppose I could. Maybe I will. Were they very much in love?” she asked suddenly, without opening her eyes. Her voice was still soft and calm, but he was aware of a new tension in the air. “Your father and your mother?”

  “I don’t know,” he said, slowly, carefully, trying to determine the source of her question. “They loved each other. But he was away a lot. Like I said, they had hard lives.”

  “My father loved my mother more than she loved him,” Norah said, and David felt an uneasiness stir in his heart. “He loved her, but he couldn’t seem to show love in a way that was meaningful to her. She just thought he was offbeat, a little silly. There was a lot of silence in my house, growing up…. We’re pretty silent in our house too,” she added, and he thought of their calm evenings, her head bent over the little white hat with the ducks.

  “A good silence,” he said.

  “Sometimes.”

  “And other times?”

  “I still think about her, David,” she said, turning on her side and meeting his gaze. “Our daughter. What she would be like.”

  He didn’t answer, and as he watched she wept silently, covering her face with her hands. After a moment, he reached out and touched her arm; she wiped the tears from her eyes.

  “And you?” she demanded, fierce now. “Don’t you ever miss her too?”

  “Yes,” he said truthfully. “I think about her all the time.”

  Norah put her hand on his chest, and then her lips, berry-stained, were on his, a sweetness as piercing as desire against his tongue. He felt himself falling, the sun on his skin and her breasts lifting softly, like birds, against his hands. She sought the buttons on his shirt, and her hand brushed against the letter he had hidden in his pocket.

  He shrugged off his shirt, but even so, when he slid his arms around her again, he was thinking, I love you. I love you so much, and I lied to you. And the distance between them, millimeters only, the space of a breath, opened up and deepened, became a cavern at whose edge he stood. He pulled away, back into the light and shadow, the clouds over him and then not, and the sun-warmed rock hot against his back.

  “What is it?” she asked, stroking his chest. “Oh, David, what’s wrong?”

  “Nothing.”

  “David,” she said. “Oh, David. Please.”

  He hesitated, on the edge of confessing everything, and then he could not.

  “A problem from work. A patient. I can’t get the case out of my mind.”

  “Let it go,” she said. “I’m sick and tired of your work.”

  Hawks, lifting high on the updrafts, and the sun so warm. Everything circled, returning each time to the exact same point. He must tell her; the words filled his mouth. I love you, I love you so much, and I lied to you.

  “I want to have another baby, David,” Norah said, sitting up. “Paul’s old enough now, and I’m ready.”

  David was so startled he didn’t speak for a moment.

  “Paul’s only a year old,” he said at last.

  “So? People say it’s easier to get all the diapers and things over with at once.”

  “What people?”

  She sighed. “I knew you’d say no.”

  “I’m not saying no,” David replied carefully.

  She didn’t answer.

  “The timing seems wrong,” he said. “That’s all.”

  “You are saying no. You’re saying no, but you don’t want to admit it.”

  He was silent, remembering the way Norah had stood so close to the edge of the bridge. Remembering her photographs of nothing, and the letter in his pocket. He wanted nothing more than for the delicate structures of their lives to remain secure, for things to continue just as they were. For the world not to change, for this fragile equilibrium between them to endure.

  “Things are fine right now,” he said softly. “Why rock the boat?”

  “How about for Paul?” She nodded to him, sleeping, still and peaceful, on his blanket. “He misses her.”

  “He can’t possibly remember,” David replied sharply.

  “Nine months,” Norah said. “Growing heart to heart. How could he not, at some level?”

  “We’re not ready,” David said. “I’m not.”

  “It’s not only about you,” Norah said. “You’re hardly home anyway. Maybe it’s me who misses her, David. Sometimes, honestly, I feel like she’s so close, just in the other room, and I’ve forgotten her. I know that must sound crazy, but it’s true.”

  He didn’t answer, though he knew exactly what she meant. The air was thick with the scent of strawberries. His mother had made preserves on the outdoor stove, stirring the foaming mixture as it cooked into syrup, boiling the jars and filling them to stand, jewellike, on a shelf. He and June had eaten that jam in the dead of winter, stealing spoonfuls when their mother wasn’t looking and hiding under the table’s oilcloth cover to lick them clean. June’s death had broken their mother’s spirit, and David could no longer believe himself immune from misfortune. It was statistically unlikely that they’d have another child with Down’s syndrome, but it was possible, anything was possible; and he
couldn’t take the risk.

  “But it wouldn’t fix things, Norah, to have another baby. That’s not the right reason.”

  After a moment’s silence she stood up, brushing her hands on her shorts, and waded off angrily through the field.

  His shirt lay crumpled beside him, a corner of the white envelope visible. David did not reach for it; he did not need to. The note was brief, and though he had glanced at the photos only once, they were as clear to him as if he’d taken them himself. Phoebe’s hair was dark and fine, like Paul’s. Her eyes were brown, and she waved chubby fists in the air, as if reaching for something beyond the camera’s view. Caroline, perhaps, wielding the camera. He had glimpsed her at the memorial service, tall and lonely in her red coat, and he’d gone straight to her apartment afterward, unsure of his intentions, knowing only that he had to see her. But by then Caroline was gone. Her apartment had looked exactly the same, with its squat furniture and plain walls; a faucet dripped in the bathroom. Yet the air was too still, the shelves bare. The bureau drawers and closets were empty. In the kitchen, a dull light pouring in across the black and white linoleum, David had stood listening to the beating of his own uneasy heart.

  Now he lay back, the clouds moving over him, light and shadow. He had not tried to find Caroline, and since her letter had no useful return address, he could not imagine where to start. It’s in your hands now, he had told her. But he found himself stricken at odd moments: alone in his new office; or developing photos, watching images emerge, mysteriously, on the sheets of blank white paper; or lying here on this warm rock while Norah, hurt and angry, walked away.

  He was tired, and he felt himself drifting into sleep. Insects hummed in the sunlight, and he felt faintly anxious about bees. The stones in his pockets pressed against his leg. Nights in his childhood, he sometimes found his father in the porch rocker, the poplar trees glinting, alive with fireflies. On one such night his father handed him a smooth stone, an axhead he’d found while digging a trench. Over two thousand years old, he said. Imagine that, David. It sat in other hands once, that eternally long ago, but beneath this very same moon.

  That was one time. There were other days when they went out to catch rattlesnakes. Dusk to dawn, they’d walked through the woods, carrying forked sticks, cloth bags over their shoulders and a metal box swinging from David’s hand.

  It always seemed to David that time paused on those days, the sun forever in the sky and the dry leaves moving under his feet. The world was reduced to just himself and his father and the snakes, but it was expanded, too, the sky opening vastly around him, higher and bluer with every step, and everything slowing down to the moment when he spotted a movement amid the colors of dirt and dry leaves, the diamondback pattern visible only when the snake began to move. His father had taught him how to go still, watching the yellow eyes, the flickering tongue. Each time a snake shed its skin the rattle grew longer, so you could tell by the loudness of the rattle in the forest silence how old the snake was, how big, and how much money it would bring. For the largest ones, coveted by zoos and scientists and sometimes by snake handlers, they might receive five dollars apiece.

  Light fell through the trees and made patterns on the forest floor, and there was the sound of wind. Then there was the rattling, and the rearing head of the snake, and his father’s arm, strong and solid, plunging a forked stick down to pin the snake by its neck. The fangs extended, striking hard into damp earth, the rattling wild and furious. With two strong fingers his father gripped the snake tightly behind its open jaw and picked it up: cool, dry, writhing like a whip. He slung the snake into a cloth bag and jerked it shut, and then the bag was a live thing, quivering on the ground. His father flipped it into a metal box and closed the lid. Without speaking they walked on, counting the snake money in their minds. There were weeks, in the summer and late fall, when they could make $25 this way. The money paid for food; when they went to the doctor in Morgantown, it paid for that too.

  David!

  Norah’s voice came to him faintly, urgently, through the distant past and the forest and into the day. He rose up on his elbows and saw her standing on the far edge of the field of ripening strawberries, transfixed by something on the ground. He felt a rush of adrenaline and fear. Rattlesnakes liked sunny logs like the one by which she’d stopped; they laid their eggs in the fertile rotting wood. He glanced at Paul, still sleeping quietly in the shade, and then he was up and running, thistles scratching his ankles and strawberries bursting softly beneath his feet, already reaching into the pocket of his jeans and closing his fist around the largest stone. When he got close enough to glimpse the dark line of the snake, he threw it as hard as he could. The dull stone arched slowly through the air, turning. It fell six inches short of the snake and burst open, its purple heart alive and glittering.

  “What in the world are you doing?” Norah asked.

  He’d reached her by then. Panting, he looked down. It was not a snake at all but a dark stick resting against the dry skin of the log.

  “I thought you called me,” he said, confused.

  “I did.” She pointed to a cluster of pale flowers just beyond the line of shade. “Jack-in-the-pulpits. Like your mother used to have. David, you’re scaring me.”

  “I thought it was a snake,” he said, gesturing to the stick, shaking his head once more to try to clear away the past. “A rattlesnake. I was dreaming, I guess. I thought you needed help.”

  She looked puzzled, and he shook his head to clear away the dream. He felt terribly foolish, suddenly. The stick was a stick, nothing more. The day seemed absurdly normal. Birds called out, and the leaves began to move again in the trees.

  “Why were you dreaming of snakes?” she asked.

  “I used to catch them,” he said. “For money.”

  “For money?” she repeated, puzzled. “Money for what?”

  The distance was back between them, a chasm of the past that he could not cross. Money for food, and for those trips into town. She came from a different world; she would never understand this.

  “They helped to pay my way through school, those snakes,” he said.

  She nodded and seemed about to ask more, but she did not.

  “Let’s go,” she said, rubbing her shoulder. “Let’s just get Paul and go home.”

  They walked back across the field and packed up their things. Norah carried Paul; he, the picnic basket.

  • • •

  As they walked, he remembered his father standing in the doctor’s office, green bills falling like leaves on the countertop. With each one, David remembered the snakes, the whipping of their rattles and their mouths opening in a futile V, the coolness of their skin beneath his fingers, and their weight. Snake money. He was a boy, eight or nine, and it was one thing he could do.

  That and protect June. Watch your sister, his mother would caution, looking up from the stove. Feed the chickens and clean the coop and weed the garden. And watch June.

  David did, though not well. He kept June in sight but did not stop her from digging in the dirt and rubbing it through her hair. He didn’t comfort her when she tripped over a rock and fell down, scraping her elbow. His love for her was so deeply woven with resentment that he could not untangle the two. She was sick all the time, from her weak heart and from the colds she got in every season, which made her wheeze and gasp for breath. Yet when he came up the path from school with his books slung over his back, it was June who was always waiting, June who looked into his face and understood what his day had been like, who wanted to know all about it. Her fingers were small and she liked to pat him, the breeze shifting her long lank hair.

  And then one weekend he came home from school to find the cabin empty, still, a washrag hanging over the side of the tub and a chill in the air. He sat on the porch, hungry and cold, waiting. Very much later, near dusk, he glimpsed his mother walking down the hill with her arms folded. She did not speak until she reached the steps, and then she looked up at him and said, David
, your sister died. June died. His mother’s hair was pulled back tautly and a vein was pulsing in her temple and her eyes were red-rimmed from crying. She wore a thin gray sweater, pulled close, and she said, David, she’s gone. And when he stood and hugged her she broke down, weeping, and he said, When, and she said, Three days ago, on Tuesday, it was early in the morning and I went outside to get some water, and when I came back the house was quiet and I knew right away. She was gone. Stopped breathing. He held his mother, and he could not think of anything more to say. The pain he felt was deep inside him, and above that was a numbness and he could not cry. He put a blanket around his mother’s shoulders. He made her a cup of tea and went out to the hens and found the eggs she had not collected, and he gathered them. He fed the chickens and milked the cow. He did these ordinary things, but when he went inside the house was still dim, the air still silent, and June was still gone.

  Davy, his mother said, a long time later, from the shadows where she sat, You go off to school. Learn something that could help in the world. He felt a resentment at that; he wanted his life to be his own, unencumbered by this shadow, this loss. He felt guilty because June was lying in the earth with a mound of dirt over her and he was still standing here; he was alive, and the breath moved in and out of his lungs; he could feel it, and his heart beat. I’ll be a doctor, he said, and his mother didn’t answer, but after a while she nodded and rose, pulling her sweater close again. Davy, I need you to take the Bible and go up there with me and say the words. I want the words said formally, and right. And so they walked up the hillside together. It was dark by the time they got there, and he stood beneath the pines with the high wind whispering, and by the flickering light from the kerosene lamp he read, The Lord is my shepherd. I shall not want. But I want, he thought, as he spoke the words. I want. And his mother wept and they walked silently down the hill to the house, where he wrote a letter to his father, telling the news. He posted this on Monday when he went back to town, with its bustle and bright lights. He stood behind the counter, the oak worn smooth by a generation of commerce, and dropped the plain white letter in the mail.