The Memory Keeper's Daughter

  “You look tired,” she whispered.

  Sandra nodded. “Tim has the flu. Of all days. My mother had to come from McKeesport to watch him.”

  Before Caroline could answer the door swung open again, and men from the Board of Education began to file in, relaxed, joking with one another, shaking hands. When everyone was settled and the meeting had been called to order, Ron Stone stood and cleared his throat.

  “All children deserve an education,” he began, his words familiar. The evidence he presented was clear, specific: steady growth, tasks accomplished. Still, Caroline watched the faces in front of her turn impassive, masked. She thought of Phoebe sitting at the table last night, a pencil gripped in one hand, writing the letters of her name: backwards, all over the page, wavering, but written. The men on the board shuffled papers and cleared their throats. When Ron Stone paused, a young man with dark wavy hair spoke up.

  “Your passion is admirable, Mr. Stone. We on the board appreciate everything you say, and we appreciate the commitment and devotion of these parents. But these children are mentally retarded; that’s the bottom line. Their accomplishments, significant though they may be, have taken place within a protected environment, with teachers capable of giving extra, perhaps undivided, attention. That seems a very significant point.”

  Caroline met Sandra’s eye. These words were familiar too.

  “Mentally retarded is a pejorative term,” Ron Stone replied evenly. “These children are delayed, yes, no one’s questioning that. But they are not stupid. No one in this room knows what they can achieve. The best hope for their growth and development, as for all children, is an educational environment without predetermined limits. We only ask for equity today.”

  “Ah. Equity, yes. But we haven’t got the resources,” said another man, thin, with sparse graying hair. “To be equitable, we would have to accept them all, a flood of retarded individuals that would overwhelm the system. Take a look.”

  He passed around copies of a report and began doing a cost-benefit analysis. Caroline took a deep breath. It would do no good for her to lose her temper. A fly buzzed, caught between the panes of glass in the old windows. Caroline thought again of Phoebe, such a loving quicksilver child. A finder of lost things, a girl who could count to fifty and dress herself and recite the alphabet, a girl who might struggle to speak but who could read Caroline’s mood in an instant.

  Limited, the voices said. Flooding the schools. A drag on resources and on the brighter children.

  Caroline felt a rush of despair. They’d never really see Phoebe, these men, they would never see her as more than different, slow to speak and to master new things. How could she show them her beautiful daughter: Phoebe, sitting on the rug in the living room and making a tower of blocks, her soft hair falling around her ears and an expression of absolute concentration on her face? Phoebe, putting a 45 on the little record player Caroline had bought her, enthralled by the music, dancing across the smooth oak floors. Or Phoebe’s soft small hand suddenly on her knee, at a moment when Caroline was pensive or distracted, absorbed by the world and its concerns. You okay, Mom? she would say, or simply, I love you. Phoebe, riding on Al’s shoulders in the evening light, Phoebe hugging everyone she met. Phoebe having tantrums and stubbornly defiant, Phoebe dressing herself that morning, so proud.

  The talk around the table had turned to numbers and logistics, the impossibility of change. Caroline stood up, trembling. Her dead mother’s hand flew to her mouth in shock. Caroline herself could not quite believe it, how her life had changed her, what she had become. But there was no going back. A flood of the mentally retarded, indeed! She pressed her hands to the table and waited. One by one the men stopped speaking, and the room grew quiet.

  “It’s not about numbers,” Caroline said. “It’s about children. I have a daughter who is six years old. It takes her more time, it’s true, to master new things. But she has learned to do everything that any other child learns to do: to crawl and walk and talk and use the bathroom, to dress herself, which she did this morning. What I see is a little girl who wants to learn, and who loves everyone she sees. And I see a roomful of men who appear to have forgotten that in this country we promise an education to every child—regardless of ability.”

  For a moment no one spoke. The tall window rattled slightly in the breeze. Paint was beginning to bubble and peel on the beige walls.

  The voice of the dark-haired man was gentle.

  “I have—we all have—great sympathy for your situation. But how likely is it that your daughter, or any of these children, will master any academic skills? And what would that do to her self-image? If it were me, I’d rather have her settled in a productive and useful trade.”

  “She’s six years old,” Caroline said. “She’s not ready to learn a trade.”

  Ron Stone had been watching the exchange intently, and now he spoke.

  “Actually,” he said. “This entire discussion is beside the point.” He opened his briefcase and took out a thick cluster of papers. “This is not just a moral or logistical issue. It’s the law. This is a petition, signed by these parents and by five hundred others. It’s appended to a class-action lawsuit filed on behalf of these families to allow the acceptance of their children into Pittsburgh’s public schools.”

  “This is the civil rights law,” the gray-haired man said, looking up from the document. “You can’t use that. That’s not the letter or the spirit of this law.”

  “You look those documents over,” Ron Stone said, shutting his briefcase. “We’ll be in touch.”

  Outside, on the old stone steps, they burst into talk; Ron was pleased, cautiously optimistic, but the others were ebullient, hugging Caroline to thank her for her speech. She smiled, hugging them back, feeling both drained and moved by a deep affection for these people: Sandra, of course, who still came over every week for coffee; Colleen, who with her daughter had gathered the names on the petition; Carl, a tall sprightly man whose only son had died young from heart complications related to Down’s syndrome and who had given them office space in his carpet warehouse for their work. She’d known none of them four years ago except Sandra, yet they were bound to her now by many late nights, many struggles and small triumphs, and so much hope.

  Agitated, still, from her speech, she drove back to the preschool. Phoebe jumped up from the circle group and ran to Caroline, hugging her knees. She smelled of milk and chocolate and there was a streak of dirt across her dress. Her hair was a soft cloud beneath Caroline’s hand. Caroline told Doro briefly what had happened, the ugly words—flood, drag—still running through her mind. Doro, late for work, touched her arm. We’ll talk more tonight.

  The drive home was beautiful, leaves on the trees and lilacs blooming like drifts of foam and fire against the hills. It had rained the night before; the sky was a clear bright blue. Caroline parked in the alley, disappointed to see that Al hadn’t yet arrived. Together, she and Phoebe walked beneath the flickering shade of the sycamores, through the piercing hum of bees. Caroline sat on the porch steps and turned on the radio. Phoebe started spinning on the soft grass, her arms held out and her head flung back, face to the sun.

  Caroline watched her, still trying to shed the tension and acrimony of the morning. There was reason to hope, but after all these years of struggling to change the world’s perceptions, Caroline made herself stay cautious.

  Phoebe ran over and cupped her hands around Caroline’s ear, whispering a secret. Caroline couldn’t catch the words, just the breathless excited rush of air, and then Phoebe ran off into the sunshine again, twirling in her pale pink dress. The sunlight touched amber glints in her dark hair, and Caroline remembered Norah Henry beneath the bright clinic lights. For an instant she was stung with weariness and doubt.

  Phoebe stopped in her twirling, arms held out to keep her balance. Then she gave a shout and ran headlong across the lawn and up the steps to where Al stood, looking down, a brightly wrapped package in one hand for Phoebe and a bu
nch of lilacs that Caroline knew were for her.

  Her heart lifted. He had courted her with a slow, persistent patience, showing up, solid and steady, week after week, offering a fistful of flowers or some other cheerful gift, the pleasure on his face so real that she could not bear to turn him away. Yet she’d held herself back from him, not trusting this love that had come so unexpectedly, from such an unexpected source. Now she stood, feeling a rush of pleasure. How afraid she’d been that this time he would stay away!

  “Pretty day,” he said, squatting to hug Phoebe, who flung her arms around his neck in welcome. The package contained a filmy butterfly net with a carved wooden handle, which she took at once, running off toward a bank of dark blue hydrangeas. “How did the meeting go?”

  She told him the story and he listened, shaking his head.

  “Well, school’s not for everyone,” he said. “I sure didn’t like it much. But Phoebe’s a sweet kid, and they shouldn’t keep her out.”

  “I want her to have a place in the world,” Caroline said, realizing suddenly that it wasn’t Al’s love for her she doubted, it was his love for Phoebe.

  “Honey, she has a place. It’s right here. But yeah, I think you’re right. I think you’re doing the right thing to fight for her so hard.”

  “I hope you had a better week,” she said, noting the shadows beneath his eyes.

  “Oh, same old, same old,” he said, sitting on the steps beside her and picking up a stick, which he started to peel. Distantly, mowers hummed; Phoebe’s little radio played “Love, Love Me, Do.” “I logged 2,398 miles this week. A record, even for me.”

  He’ll ask again, Caroline thought. This was the moment; he was road weary and ready to settle down, and he’d ask. She watched his hands move deftly, swiftly, stripping the bark, and her heart surged. This time she’d say yes. But Al didn’t speak. The silence extended for so long that finally she felt pressured to break it.

  “That was a nice gift,” she said, nodding across the grassy space where Phoebe was running, the net making bright arcs in the air.

  “Fellow in Georgia made it,” Al said. “Nicest guy. Had a whole bunch of them he’d carved for his grandkids. We got to talking in the grocery store. He collects shortwave radios and invited me to stop by and see them. Spent the whole night talking, me and him. Now, that’s the plus of the wandering life. Oh, yeah,” he went on, reaching into his pants pocket and pulling out a white envelope. “Here’s your mail from Atlanta.”

  Caroline took the envelope without comment. Inside there would be several twenty-dollar bills folded neatly into a plain white paper. Al brought them back from Cleveland, Memphis, Atlanta, Akron: cities he frequented on his runs. She told him simply that the money was for Phoebe, from her father. Al accepted this without comment, but Caroline’s feelings were more complex. Sometimes she dreamed she was walking through Norah Henry’s house, taking things from the shelves and the cupboards, filling a cloth bag, happy until she came upon Norah Henry standing by a window, her expression distant and infinitely sad. She’d wake, trembling, and get up and make herself some tea, sitting in the darkness. When the money came she put it in the bank and didn’t think about it until the next envelope arrived. She had done this for five years now, and she had saved almost $7,000.

  Phoebe was still running, chasing after butterflies, birds, motes of light, the fluttering notes spilling from the radio. Al was fiddling with the dial.

  “The nice thing about this city is that you can really find some music. Some of those podunk little towns I stay in, all you get is the Top Forty. Gets old, after a while.” He began to hum along with “Begin the Beguine.”

  “My parents used to dance to this song,” Caroline said, and for an instant she was sitting on the stairs of her childhood home, invisible, watching her mother, in a full-skirted dress, welcoming guests at the door. “I haven’t thought of it in years. But every now and then they used to roll the rug up in the living room on a Saturday night and have some other couples in, and they’d dance.”

  “We ought to go dancing sometime,” Al said. “You like to dance, Caroline?”

  Caroline felt something shift in her then, some excitement. She couldn’t place its source: something to do with her anger from the morning passing, and the vibrant day, and the warmth of Al’s arm next to hers. The breeze fluttered the poplars, revealing the silvery undersides of their leaves.

  “Why wait?” she asked, and stood, extending her hand.

  He was puzzled, bemused, but then he was standing with his hand resting on her shoulder and they were moving on the lawn to the thin strains of the music, the background of rushing cars. Sunlight mingled in her hair, the grass was soft beneath her stocking feet, and they moved together so easily, dipping and turning, the tension she’d carried with her from the meeting dissipating with each step. Al smiled, pressing her close; sunlight struck her neck.

  Oh, she thought, as he spun her again, I’ll say yes.

  There was the pleasure of the sunlight and Phoebe’s floating laughter and Al’s hands warm through the fabric on her back. They moved in the grass, turning with the music, connected by it. The traffic rushing by was as present and soothing as the ocean. Other sounds, thin, lifted through the strands of music, through the bright day. Caroline didn’t register them at first. Then Al turned her, and she stopped dancing. Phoebe was kneeling in the soft warm grass by the hydrangeas, crying too hard to speak, holding up her hand. Caroline ran and knelt in the grass, studying the angry swollen circle on Phoebe’s palm.

  “It’s a beesting,” she said. “Oh, honey, it hurts, doesn’t it?”

  She pressed her face into Phoebe’s warm hair. Soft, soft skin, and her chest, rising and falling; beneath that, the steady pattern of her heart. Here was the thing that couldn’t be measured, couldn’t be quantified or even explained: Phoebe was herself alone. You could not, finally, categorize a human being. You could not presume to know what life was or what it might hold.

  “Oh, sweetie, it’s all right,” she said, smoothing Phoebe’s hair.

  But Phoebe’s sobs were giving way to a wheezing like the croup she’d suffered as a child. Her palm was swelling; the back of her hand and her fingers too. Caroline felt herself grow still inside, even as she rose swiftly and called to Al.

  “Hurry!” she cried, her voice so loud and strange. “Oh Al, she’s allergic.”

  She was lifting Phoebe, heavy in her arms, and then she paused, bewildered, because her keys were in her purse on the kitchen counter and she couldn’t figure out how to open the door while holding Phoebe, who was wheezing harder now. Then Al was there, taking Phoebe and running to the car, and Caroline had the keys somehow, the keys and her purse. She drove as fast as she dared through the city streets. By the time they reached the hospital, Phoebe’s breath was coming in short, desperate gasps.

  They left the car at the entrance and Caroline grabbed the first nurse she saw.

  “It’s an allergic reaction. We need to see a doctor now.”

  The nurse was older, a bit heavyset, her gray hair turned under in a pageboy. She led them through a set of steel doors where Al put Phoebe gently, gently, on the gurney. Phoebe was struggling to breathe now, her lips faintly blue. Caroline, too, was having trouble breathing, fear pulled so tightly in her chest. The nurse swept Phoebe’s hair back, touching her fingers to the pulse in her neck. And then Caroline watched her see Phoebe as Dr. Henry had seen her on that snowy night so long ago. She saw the nurse taking in the beautifully sloped eyes, the small hands that had gripped the net so hard as she ran after butterflies, saw her eyes narrow slightly. Still, she was not prepared.

  “Are you sure?” the nurse asked, looking up and meeting her eyes. “Are you really sure you want me to call a doctor?”

  Caroline stood fixed in place. She remembered the scents of boiled vegetables, and the day she had driven away with Phoebe, and the impassive expressions worn by the men on the board of education. In a rush of wild alchemy her fear transforme
d itself into anger, fierce and piercing. She raised her hand to slap the bland, impassive face of the nurse, but Al caught her wrist.

  “Call the doctor,” he said to the nurse. “Do it now.”

  He put his arm around Caroline and didn’t let go, not when the nurse turned away or when the doctor appeared, not until Phoebe’s breathing began to ease and some of the color returned to her cheeks. Then they went together to the waiting room and sat in the orange plastic chairs, hand in hand, nurses buzzing and voices coming over the intercom and babies crying.

  “She could have died,” Caroline said. Her calm broke; she began to tremble.

  “But she didn’t,” Al said firmly.

  Al’s hand was warm, large and comforting. He had been so patient all these years, he had come back again and again, saying he knew a good thing when he saw it. Saying he’d wait. But he’d been away two weeks this time, not one. He hadn’t called from the road, and though he’d brought her flowers as always, he hadn’t proposed for six months. He could drive away in his truck and never come back, never give her another chance to say yes.

  She raised his hand and kissed his palm, strong, so rough with calluses, so marked with lines. He turned, startled from his thoughts, as puzzled as if he’d just been stung himself.

  “Caroline.” His tone was formal. “There’s something I want to say.”

  “I know.” She placed his hand on her heart, held it there. “Oh, Al, I’ve been such a fool. Of course I’ll marry you,” she said.

  1977

  July 1977

  LIKE THIS?” NORAH ASKED.

  She was lying on the beach, and beneath her hip the gritty sand slid and shifted. Every time she took a deep breath and released it, sand slithered out from under her. The sun was so hot, like a shimmering metal plate against her skin. She had been here for over an hour, posing and re-posing, the word repose like a taunt, for it was what she longed to do and could not. It was her vacation, after all—she had won two weeks in Aruba for selling the highest number of cruise packages in the state of Kentucky last year—and yet here she was: sand sticking to the sweat on her arms and neck as she lay still, pressed between sun and beach.