The Memory Keeper's Daughter, Page 35

  “Don’t worry,” Bree said. “He’ll come.”

  “He missed the funeral,” Norah said. “I’ll always feel awful about that. They never really resolved things, David and Paul. I don’t think Paul ever got over David’s leaving.”

  “And you did?”

  Norah looked at Bree, her short spiky hair and clear skin, her green eyes, calm and penetrating. She looked away.

  “That sounds like something Ben would ask. I think maybe you’ve been spending too much time with ministers.”

  Bree laughed, but she didn’t let it go. “Ben’s not asking,” she said. “I am.”

  “I don’t know,” Norah replied slowly, thinking of David the last time she’d seen him, sitting on the porch with a glass of iced tea after a run. They had been divorced for six years and married for eighteen before that: she had known him twenty-five years, a quarter of a century, more than half her lifetime. When Bree had called with news of his death, she simply could not believe it. Impossible to imagine the world without David. It was only later, after the funeral, that grief had caught up with her. “There are so many things I wish I’d said to him. But at least we did talk. Sometimes he just stopped by: to fix something, to say hello. He was lonely, I think.”

  “Did he know about Frederic?”

  “No. I tried to tell him once, but he didn’t seem to take it in.”

  “That sounds like David,” Bree observed. “He and Frederic are so different.”

  “Yes. Yes, they are.”

  An image of Frederic in Lexington, standing outside in the shadowy dusk, tapping ash into the dirt around her rhododendrons, rushed through her. They had met just over a year ago on another drought-stricken day, in another park. The IBM account, landed with such effort, was still one of Norah’s most lucrative ones, so she had gone to the annual picnic despite her headache and the distant growl of thunder. Frederic was sitting alone, looking vaguely dour and uncommunicative. Norah fixed herself a plate and sat next to him. If he didn’t want to chat, that would suit her just fine. But he’d smiled and greeted her warmly, stirring from his thoughts, speaking English with a faint French accent; he was from Quebec. They talked for hours as the storm gathered, as the other picnickers packed their things and left. When the rain started, he’d asked her out to dinner.

  “Where is Frederic anyway?” Bree asked. “Didn’t you say he was coming?”

  “He wanted to, but he got called to Orléans to work. He has some family connection there from way back. Some distant second cousin who lives in a place called Châteauneuf. Wouldn’t you like to live in a place named that?”

  “They probably have traffic jams and bad hair days even there.”

  “I hope not. I hope they walk to market every morning and come home with fresh bread and pots full of flowers. Anyway, I told Frederic to go. He and Paul are great friends, but it’s better that I give him this news alone.”

  “Yes. I’m planning to slip away too, once he comes.”

  “Thank you,” Norah said, taking her hand. “Thank you for everything. For helping so much with the funeral. I couldn’t have gotten through the last week without you.”

  “You owe me big-time,” Bree said, smiling. Then she grew pensive. “I thought it was a beautiful funeral, if you can say such a thing. There were so many people. It surprised me to know how many lives David touched.”

  Norah nodded. She had been surprised too. Bree’s little church filled up with people, so that by the time the service began they were standing three deep in the back. The preceding days had been a blur, Ben guiding her gently through choosing the music and the scriptures, the casket and the flowers, helping her write the obituary. Still, it had been a relief to have these concrete things to do, and Norah moved through the tasks in a protective cloud of numb efficiency—until the service began. People must have thought it odd, how deeply she’d wept then, the beautiful old words newly significant, but it was not only for David that she grieved. They had stood together at the memorial service for their daughter all those years ago, their loss even then growing between them.

  “It was the clinic,” Norah said. “The clinic he ran for all those years. Most of the people had been his patients.”

  “I know. It was amazing. People seemed to think he was a saint.”

  “They weren’t married to him,” Norah said.

  Leaves fluttered against the hot blue sky. She scanned the park again, looking for Paul, but he was nowhere in sight.

  “Oh,” Norah said, “I can’t believe David is really dead.” Even now, days later, the words sent a little shock through her body. “I feel so old, somehow.”

  Bree took her hand, and they sat quietly for several minutes. Bree’s palm was smooth and warm against her own, and Norah felt the moment extending, growing, as if it could contain the whole world. She remembered a similar feeling, all those long years ago when Paul was an infant and she sat in the soft dark nights, nursing him. Grown now, he stood in a train station or on the sidewalk beneath fluttering leaves or strode across a street. He paused in front of shop windows, or reached into his pocket for a ticket, or shaded his eyes against the sun. He’d grown from her body and now, astonishingly, he moved through the world without her. She thought of Frederic too, sitting in a meeting room, nodding as he scanned papers, placing his hands flat on the table as he prepared to speak. He had dark hair on his arms and long square fingernails. He shaved twice a day, and if he forgot, his new beard scraped against her neck when he pulled her close in the night, kissing her behind the ear to rouse her. He did not eat bread or sweet things; if the morning paper was late it made him exceptionally cross. All these small habits, alternately endearing and irritating, belonged to Frederic. Tonight she would meet him at their pension by the river. They would drink wine and she would wake in the night, moonlight flooding in, his steady breath soft in the room. He wanted to get married, and that was a decision too.

  Norah’s book slipped from her hand, and she leaned over to pick it up. Van Gogh’s Starry Night wheeled across the brochure she’d been using as a bookmark. When she sat up again, Paul was crossing the park.

  “Oh,” she said, with the sudden rush of pleasure she always felt on seeing him: this person, her son, here in the world. She stood up. “There he is, Bree. Paul’s here!”

  “He’s so handsome,” Bree observed, standing up too. “He must get that from me.”

  “He must,” Norah agreed. “Though where he gets the talent is anybody’s guess, when neither one of us nor David could carry a tune in a bucket.”

  Paul’s talent, yes. She watched him walk across the park. A mystery, that, and a gift.

  Paul raised one hand to wave, grinning widely, and Norah started walking toward him, leaving her book on the bench. Her heart was beating with excitement and gladness, as well as grief and trepidation; she was trembling. How it changed the world, his being there! She reached Paul at last and hugged him hard. He wore a white shirt with the sleeves rolled up, khaki shorts. He smelled clean, as if he had just showered. She felt his muscles through the fabric, his strong bones, the very heat of him, and she understood, just for an instant, David’s desire to fix the world in place. You couldn’t blame him, no, you couldn’t fault him for wanting to go deeper into every fleeting moment, to study its mystery, to shout against loss and change and motion.

  “Hey, Mom,” Paul said, pulling back to look at her. His teeth were white, straight, perfect; he’d grown a dark beard. “Fancy meeting you here,” he said, laughing.

  “Yes, fancy that.”

  Bree was beside her then. She stepped forward and hugged Paul too.

  “I have to go,” she said. “I was just hanging around to say hello. You’re looking good, Paul. The wandering life agrees with you.”

  He smiled. “Can’t you stay?”

  Bree glanced at Norah. “No,” she said. “But I’ll see you soon, okay?”

  “Okay,” Paul said, leaning to kiss her on the cheek. “I guess.”

&nb
sp; Norah wiped the back of her wrist against her eye as Bree turned and walked away.

  “What is it?” Paul asked; then, suddenly serious, “What’s wrong?”

  “Come and sit,” she said, taking his arm.

  Together, they crossed back to her bench, causing a cluster of pigeons, their feathers iridescent, to burst into flight. She picked up her book, fingering her bookmark.

  “Paul, I have bad news. Your father died nine days ago. A heart attack.”

  His eyes widened in shock and grief and he looked away, staring without speaking at the path he’d walked to reach her, to reach this moment.

  “When was the funeral?” he asked at last.

  “Last week. I’m so sorry, Paul. There was no time to find you. I thought about contacting the embassy to help me track you down, but I didn’t know where to start. So I came here today, hoping you’d show up.”

  “I almost missed the train,” he said, pensive. “I almost didn’t make it.”

  “But you did,” she said. “Here you are.”

  He nodded and leaned forward with his elbows on his knees, his hands clasped between them. She remembered him sitting just this way as a child, struggling to hide his sadness. He clenched his fists, then released them. She took her son’s hand in hers. His fingertips were calloused from years of playing. They sat for a long while, listening to the wind rustling through the leaves.

  “It’s okay to be upset,” she said at last. “He was your father.”

  Paul nodded, but his face was still closed like a fist. When he finally spoke, his voice was on the edge of breaking.

  “I never thought he’d die. I never thought I’d care. It’s not like we ever really talked.”

  “I know.” And she did. After the call from Bree, Norah had walked down the leaf-canopied street, weeping freely, angry with David for leaving before she’d had a chance to settle things with him, once and for all. “But before, at least talking was always an option.”

  “Yes. I kept waiting for him to make the first move.”

  “I think he was waiting for the same thing.”

  “He was my father,” Paul said. “He was supposed to know what to do.”

  “He loved you,” she said. “Don’t ever think he didn’t.”

  Paul gave a short, bitter laugh. “No. That sounds pretty, but it’s just not true. I’d go over to his house and I’d try; I’d hang out and talk with Dad about this and that, but we never went any further. I could never get anything right for him. He’d have been happier with another son altogether.” His voice was still calm, but tears had gathered in the corners of his eyes and were slipping down his cheeks.

  “Honey,” she said. “He loved you. He did. He thought you were the most amazing son.”

  Paul pushed the tears roughly off his cheeks. Norah felt her own grief and sadness gather in her throat, and it was a moment before she could speak.

  “Your father,” she said at last, “had a very hard time revealing himself to anyone. I don’t know why. He grew up poor, and he was always ashamed of that. I wish he could have seen how many people came to the funeral, Paul. Hundreds. It was all the clinic work he did. I have the guest book; you can see for yourself. A lot of people loved him.”

  “Did Rosemary come?” he asked, turning to face her.

  “Rosemary? Yes.” Norah paused, letting the warm breeze move lightly over her face. She’d glimpsed Rosemary when the service ended, sitting in the last pew in a simple gray dress. Her hair was still long but she looked older, more settled. David had always insisted there had never been anything between them; in her heart, Norah knew this was true. “They weren’t in love,” Norah said. “Your father and Rosemary. It wasn’t what you think.”

  “I know.” He sat up straighter. “I know. Rosemary told me. I believed her.”

  “She did? When?”

  “When Dad brought her home. That first day.” He looked uncomfortable, but he went on. “I’d see her at his place sometimes. When I stopped in to visit Dad. Sometimes we’d all have dinner together. Sometimes Dad wasn’t home, so I’d hang out for a while with Rosemary and Jack. I could tell there wasn’t anything between them. Sometimes she’d have a boyfriend there. I don’t know. It was a little weird, I guess. But I got used to it. She was okay, Rosemary. She wasn’t the reason I couldn’t ever really talk to him.”

  Norah nodded. “But Paul, you mattered to him. Look, I know what you’re saying, because I felt it too. That distance. That reserve. That sense of a wall too high to get over. After a while I gave up trying, and after a longer while I gave up waiting for a door to appear in it. But behind that wall, he loved us both. I don’t know how I know that, but I do.”

  Paul didn’t speak. Every now and then he brushed tears from his eyes.

  The air was cooler, and people had begun to stroll through the gardens, lovers holding hands, couples with children, solitary walkers. An elderly couple approached. She was tall, with a flash of white hair, and he walked slowly, stooping slightly, with a cane. She had her hand tucked around his elbow and was leaning down to speak to him, and he was nodding, pensive, frowning, looking across the gardens, beyond the gates, at whatever she wanted him to note. Norah felt a pang to see this intimacy. Once she had imagined herself and David moving into such an old age, their histories woven together like vines, tendril around shoot, leaves meshed. Oh, she’d been so old-fashioned; even her regret was old-fashioned. She had imagined that, married, she would be some sort of lovely bud, wrapped in the tougher, resilient calyx of the flower. Wrapped and protected, the layers of her own life contained within another’s.

  But instead she had found her own way, building a business, raising Paul, traveling the world. She was petal, calyx, stem, and leaf; she was the long white root running deep into the earth. And she was glad.

  As they passed, the couple spoke in English, arguing about where to have dinner. Their accents were from the south—from Texas, Norah guessed—and the man wanted to find a place with steak, with food that was familiar.

  “I’m so tired of Americans,” Paul said, once they were out of earshot. “Always so glad to find another American. You’d think there weren’t two hundred and fifty million of us. You’d think they’d want to be seeking out some French people, since they’re in France.”

  “You’ve been talking to Frederic.”

  “Sure. Why not? Frederic is right on the mark when it comes to American arrogance. Where is he, anyway?”

  “Away on business. He’ll come tonight.”

  It rushed through her again, the image of Frederic walking through the door of the hotel room, dropping his keys on the dresser and patting his pockets to make sure he had his wallet. He wore bright white shirts that caught the last light, with crisp button-down collars, and each evening he came in and tossed his tie over a chair, his low voice shaping her name. Perhaps it was his voice she had loved first. They had so much in common—grown children, divorces, demanding jobs—but because Frederic’s life had happened in another country, half in another language, it felt exotic to Norah, familiar and unknown at once. An old country and a new.

  “Has your visit been good?” Paul asked. “Do you like France?”

  “I’ve been happy here,” Norah said, and it was true. Frederic felt congestion had ruined Paris, but for Norah the charm was infinite, the boulangeries and the patisseries, the crêpes sold from street stands, the spires of ancient buildings, the bells. The sounds, too, of the language flowing like a stream, a word here and there emerging like a pebble. “How about you? How’s the tour? Are you still in love?”

  “Oh, yes,” he said, his face easing a little. He looked straight at her. “Are you going to marry Frederic?”

  She ran her finger around the sharp corner of the brochure. This was the question, of course, woven through all her moments: Should she change her life? She loved Frederic, she had never been happier, though she could see through that happiness to a time when his endearing habits might get on her nerves, a
nd hers on his. He liked things just so; he was meticulous about everything from mitered corners to tax forms. In that way, though in no others, he reminded her of David. She was old enough now, experienced enough, to know that nothing was perfect. Nothing stayed the same, herself included. But it was also true that when Frederic walked into a room the air seemed to shift, grow charged, to pulse straight through her. She wanted to see what might happen next.

  “I don’t know,” she said slowly. “Bree’s willing to buy the business. Frederic has two more years on his contract, so we don’t have to make any decisions for a while. But I can imagine myself in a life with him. I suppose that’s the first step.”

  Paul nodded. “Is that how it was last time? You know, with Dad?”

  Norah looked at him, wondering how to answer this.

  “Yes and no,” she said at last. “I’m much more pragmatic now. Then, I just wanted to be taken care of. I didn’t know myself very well.”

  “Dad liked to take care of things.”

  “Yes. Yes, he did.”

  Paul gave a short, sharp laugh. “I can’t believe he’s dead.”

  “I know,” Norah said. “Neither can I.”

  They sat for a time in silence, air moving lightly around them. Norah turned her brochure, remembering the coolness in the museum, the echo of footsteps. She’d stood for nearly an hour before this painting, studying the swirls of color, the sure and vivid brushstrokes. What was it Van Gogh had touched? Something that shimmered, something elusive. David had moved through the world, focusing his camera on its smallest details, obsessed with light and shadow, trying to fix things in place. Now he was gone and the way he’d seen the world was gone as well.

  Paul was standing up, waving across the park, the sadness on his face giving way to a joyous smile, intense, clearly focused, and exclusive. Norah followed his gaze across the dry grass to a young woman with a long delicate face and skin the color of ripe acorns, her dark hair in dreadlocks to her waist. She was slender, wearing a soft print dress; she carried herself with a dancer’s grace and reserve.