The Memory Keeper's Daughter (31 page)

"My father had a sister," Paul said, remembering the story and his father's soft steady voice, pushing to see if it was true, that she'd been there.

"I know. June. She's buried on a hillside above the house. We went there too."

The thin flare widened, making his breathing low and shallow. Why should it matter that she knew this? What difference did it make? And yet he could not stop imagining her there, walking up some hillside, following his father to this place he'd never seen.

"So what?" he said. "So what that you've been there, so what?"

She seemed about to speak for a moment, but then she turned and started walking across the room to the kitchen. Her dark hair, in a long rope, bounced against her back. Her shoulders were lean and delicate, and she walked slowly, with careful grace, like a dancer.

"Wait," Paul called after her, but when she paused he did not know what to say.

"I needed a place to stay," she said softly, looking back over her shoulder. "That's all there is to know about me, Paul."

He watched her go into the kitchen, heard the refrigerator door open and shut. Then he went upstairs and got the folder he'd hidden in his bottom drawer, full of the photos he'd saved from the night he'd talked with his father.

He took the pictures and his guitar and went out on the porch, shirtless, barefoot. He sat on the swing and played, keeping an eye on this girl as she moved through the rooms inside: the kitchen, the living room, the dining room. But she did very little, just ate some yogurt and then stood for a long time in front of his mother's bookshelves before she pulled down a novel and sat on the couch.

He kept on playing. It soothed him, the music, in a way that nothing else did. He entered some other plane where his hands seemed to move automatically. The next note was right there, and then the next and the next. He reached the end and stopped, eyes closed, letting the notes die away into the air.

Never again. Not this music, this moment, ever again.

"Wow." He opened his eyes and she was leaning against the door jamb. She pushed open the screen door and came out onto the porch, carrying a glass of water, and sat down. "Wow, your father was right," she said. "That was amazing."

"Thanks," he said, ducking his head to hide his pleasure, hitting a chord. The music had released him; he was not so angry anymore. "What about you? You play?"

"No. I used to take piano lessons."

"We have a piano," he said, nodding at the door. "Go ahead."

She smiled, though her eyes were still serious. "That's okay. Thanks. I'm not in the mood. Besides, you're really, really good. Like a professional. I'd be embarrassed to pound out "Fur Elise' or something."

He smiled too. " 'Für Elise.' I know that one. We could do a duet."

"A duet," she repeated, nodding, frowning a little. Then she looked up. "Are you an only child?" she asked.

He was startled. "Yes and no. I mean, I had a sister. A twin. She died."

Rosemary nodded. "Do you ever think about her?"

"Sure." He felt uncomfortable and looked away. "Not about her, exactly. I mean, I never knew her. But about what she might have been like."

He flushed then, shocked to have revealed so much to this girl, this stranger who'd disrupted all their lives, this girl he didn't even like.

"So okay," he said. "Now it's your turn. Tell me something personal. Tell me something my father doesn't know."

She gave him a searching look.

"I don't like bananas," she said at last, and he laughed, and then she did. "No, honestly, I don't. What else? When I was five, I fell off my bike and broke my arm."

"Me too," Paul said. "I broke my arm too, when I was six. I fell out of a tree." He remembered it then, the way his father had lifted him, the way the sky had flashed, full of sun and leaves, as he was carried to the car. He remembered his father's hands, so focused and so gentle as he set the bones, and coming home again, into the bright golden light of the afternoon.

"Hey," he said. "I want to show you something."

He laid the guitar flat on the swing and picked up the grainy black-and-white photos.

"Was it this place?" he asked, handing one to her. "Where you met my father ?"

She took the photo and studied it, then nodded. "Yes. It looks different now. I can see from this picture-those sweet curtains in the windows and the flowers growing-that it was a nice house once. But no one lives there now. It's just empty. The wind comes through because the windows are broken. When I was a kid we used to play there. We used to run wild in those hills, and I used to play house with my cousins. They said it was haunted, but I always liked it. I don't know exactly why. It was like my secret place. Sometimes I just sat inside, dreaming about what I was going to be."

He nodded, taking the photo back and studying the figures as he had so many times before, as if they might answer all his questions about his father.

"You didn't dream this," he said at last, looking up.

"No," she said softly. "Never this."

Neither of them spoke for a few minutes. Sunlight slanted through the trees and cast shadows on the painted floor of the porch.

"Okay. It's your turn again," she said after a minute, turning back to him.

"My turn?"

"Tell me something your father doesn't know."

"I'm going to Juilliard," he said, the words coming in a rush, bright as music in the room. He'd told no one but his mother yet. "I was first on the wait list, and I got accepted last week. While he was gone."

"Wow." She smiled a little sadly. "I was thinking more in terms of your favorite vegetable," she said. "But that's great, Paul. I always thought college would be great."

"You were going to go," he said, realizing suddenly what she'd lost.

"I will go. I will definitely go."

"I'll probably have to pay my own way," Paul offered, recognizing her fierce determination, the way it covered fear. "My father's set on me having some kind of secure career plan. He hates the idea of music."

"You don't know that," she said, looking up sharply. "You don't really know the whole story about your father at all."

Paul did not know how to answer this, and they sat silently for several minutes. They were screened from the street by a trellis, clematis vines climbing all over it and the purple and white flowers blooming, so when two cars pulled into the driveway, one after the other, his mother and his father home so oddly in the middle of the day, Paul glimpsed them in flashes of color, bright chrome. He and Rosemary exchanged looks. The cars doors slammed shut, echoing against the neighboring house. Then there were footsteps, and the quiet, determined voices of his parents, back and forth, just beyond the edge of the porch. Rosemary opened her mouth, as if to call out, but Paul held up one hand and shook his head, and they sat together in silence, listening.

"This day," his mother said. "This week. If you only knew, David, how much pain you caused us."

"I'm sorry. You're right. I should have called. I meant to."

"That's supposed to be enough? Maybe I'll just go away," she said. "Just like that. Maybe I'll just take off and come back with a good-looking young man and no explanation. What would you think of that?"

There was a silence, and Paul remembered the discarded pile of bright clothes on the beach. He thought of the many evenings since when his mother had not made it home before midnight. Business, she always sighed, slipping off her shoes in the foyer, going straight to bed. He looked at Rosemary, who was studying her hands, and he held himself very still, watching her, listening, waiting to see what would happen next.

"She's just a child," his father said at last. "She's sixteen and pregnant, and she was living in an abandoned house, all alone. I couldn't leave her there."

His mother sighed. Paul imagined her running a hand through her hair.

"Is this a midlife crisis?" she asked quietly. "Is that what this is?"

"A midlife crisis?" His father's voice was even, thoughtful, as if he were considering the evidence carefully. "I suppose it might be. I know I hit some kind of wall, Norah. In Pittsburgh. I was so driven as a young man. I didn't have the luxury of being anything else. I went back to try and figure out some things. And there was Rosemary, in my old house. That doesn't feel like a coincidence. I don't know, I can't explain it without sounding kind of crazy. But please trust me. I'm not in love with her. It's not like that. It never will be."

Paul looked at Rosemary. Her head was bent so he couldn't see her expression, but her cheeks were flushed pink. She picked at a torn fingernail and wouldn't meet his eye.

"I don't know what to believe," his mother said slowly. "This week, David, of all weeks. Do you know where I was just now? I was with Bree, at the oncologist's. She had a biopsy done last week: her left breast. It's a very small lump, her prognosis is good, but it's malignant."

"I didn't know, Norah. I'm sorry."

"No, don't touch me, David."

"Who's her surgeon?"

"Ed Jones."

"Ed's good."

"He'd better be. David, your midlife crisis is the last thing I need."

Paul, listening, felt the world slow down a little bit. He thought of Bree, with her quick laugh, who would sit for an hour listening to him play, the music moving between them so they didn't need to speak. She'd close her eyes and stretch out in the swing, listening. He couldn't imagine the world without her.

"What do you want?" his father was asking. "What do you want from me, Norah? I'll stay, if you want, or I'll move out. But I can't turn Rosemary away. She has no place to go."

There was a silence and he waited, hardly daring to breathe, wanting to know what his mother would say, and wanting her never to answer.

"What about me?" he asked, startling himself. "What about whatI want?"

"Paul?" His mother's voice.

"Right here," he said, picking up his guitar. "On the porch. Me and Rosemary."

"Oh, good grief," his father said. Seconds later, he came around to the steps. Since last night he'd showered and shaved and put on a clean suit. He was thin, and he looked tired. So did his mother, coming to stand beside him.

Paul stood and faced him. "I'm going to Juilliard, Dad. They called last week: I got in. And I'm going."

He waited, then, for his father to start in as usual: how a musical career wasn't reliable, not even a classical one. How Paul had so many options open to him; he could always play, and always take joy in playing, even if he made his living another way. He waited for his father to be firm and reasonable and resistant, so that Paul could give vent to his anger. He was tense, ready, but to his surprise his father only nodded.

"Good for you," his father said, and then his face softened for a moment with pleasure, the frown of worry easing from his forehead. When he spoke his voice was quiet and sure. "Paul, if it's what you want, then go. Go and work hard and be happy."

Paul stood uneasily on the porch. All these years, each time he and his father talked, he'd felt he was running into a wall. And now the wall was mysteriously gone but he was still running, giddy and uncertain, in open space.

"Paul?" his father said. "I'm proud of you, son."

Everyone was looking at him now, and he had tears in his eyes.

He didn't know what to say, so he started walking, at first just to get out of sight, so he wouldn't embarrass himself, and then he was truly running, the guitar still in his hand.

"Paul!" his mother called after him, and when he turned, running backward for a few steps, he saw how pale she was, her arms folded tensely across her chest, her newly streaked hair lifting in the breeze. He thought of Bree, what his mother had said, how much they'd come to be like each other, his mother and his aunt, and he was afraid. He remembered his father in the foyer, his clothes filthy, dark stubble taking the rough shape of a beard, his hair wild. And now, this morning, clean and calm, but still changed. His father- impeccable, precise, sure of everything-had turned into someone else. Behind, half screened by the clematis, Rosemary stood listening, her arms folded, her hair, set free, falling over her shoulders now, and he imagined her in that house set into the hill, talking with his father, riding the bus with him for so many long hours, somehow a part of this change in his father, and again he was afraid of what was happening to them all.

So he ran.

It was a sunny day, already warm. Mr. Ferry, Mrs. Pool, waved from their porches. Paul lifted the guitar in salute and kept running. He was three blocks away from home, five, ten. Across the street, in front of one low bungalow, an empty car stood running. The owner had forgotten something probably, had run inside to grab a briefcase or a jacket. Paul paused. It was a tan Gremlin, the ugliest car in the universe, edged with rust. He crossed the street, opened the driver's door, and slipped inside. No one shouted; no one came running from the house. He yanked the door shut and adjusted the seat, giving himself leg room. He put the guitar on the seat beside him. The car was an automatic, scattered with candy wrappers and empty cigarette packs. A total loser owned this car, he thought, one of those ladies who wore too much makeup and worked as a secretary somewhere dead and plastic spastic, like the dry cleaners, maybe, or the bank. He put the car in gear and backed up.

Still nothing: no shouts, no sirens. He geared into drive and pulled away.

He hadn't driven much, but it seemed to be a lot like sex: if you pretended to know what was going on, then pretty soon you did know, and then it was all second nature. By the high school, Ned Stone and Randy Delaney were hanging out on the corner, tossing butts into the grass before they went inside, and he looked for Lauren Lobeglio, who sometimes stood there with them, whose breath was often dark and smoky when he kissed her.

The guitar slipped. He pulled over and strapped it in with a seat belt. A Gremlin, shit. Through town now, stopping carefully at every light, the day vibrant and blue. He thought of Rosemary's eyes, filling with tears. He hadn't meant to hurt her, but he had. And something had happened, something had changed. She was part of it and he was not, though his father's face had filled, for just an instant, with happiness at his news.