The memory keeper's daughter - Kim Edwards [100]
“Damn,” Paul said. He put his hands flat on the oak floor, glad to find it there and himself on it and the room around him totally intact.
“No joke,” Duke agreed. “Some stuff. What time is it?”
Paul stood up and walked to the grandfather clock in the foyer. Minutes or hours earlier, they had stood here, convulsing with laughter as the seconds ticked off, a gaping stretch of time between each one. Now all Paul could think of was his father, who paused to set his watch by this clock every morning, looking up across the table full of photos, and he was filled with sadness. He looked back on the afternoon and saw it gone, condensed into a memory no larger than that drop of rain, and the sky already nearly dark.
The phone rang. Duke was still lying flat out on the living room rug, and it seemed like hours passed before Paul picked up the receiver. It was his mother.
“Sweetie,” she said, over noise and silverware in the background. He pictured her in her suit, maybe the dark blue one, fingers running through her short hair, rings flashing. “I’ve got to take these clients out to dinner. It’s the IBM account, it’s important. Is your father home yet? Are you okay?”
“I did my homework,” he said, studying the grandfather clock, so recently hilarious. “I practiced the piano. Dad’s not home.”
There was a pause. “He promised he’d be home,” she said.
“I’m okay,” he said, remembering last night, how he’d sat on the edge of the windowsill and thought about jumping, and then he was in the air, falling; he was landing with a soft thud on the ground, and no one heard. “I’m not going anywhere tonight,” he said.
“I don’t know, Paul. I’m worried about you.”
So come home, he wanted to say, but in the background laughter rose and fell, breaking like a wave. “I’m okay,” he said again.
“You’re sure?”
“Sure.”
“Well, I don’t know.” She sighed, covered the receiver, and spoke to someone else, then came back on the line. “Well, that’s good about your homework, anyway. Look, Paul, I’ll call your father, and no matter what, I’ll be no later than another two hours myself. I promise. Is that okay? Are you sure you’re okay? Because I’ll drop everything if you need me.”
“I’m okay,” he said. “You don’t need to call Dad.”
Her tone, when she answered, was cool, clipped.
“He told me he’d be home,” she said. “He promised me.”
“These people,” he asked, “from IBM. Do they like flamingos?”
There was a pause, the roar of laughter and clinking glasses.
“Paul,” she said at last. “Are you all right?”
“I’m fine,” he said. “It was just a joke. Never mind.”
When she’d hung up, Paul stood alone for a moment, listening to the dial tone. The house rose around him, silent. It wasn’t like the silence in the auditorium, expectant and charged, but rather an emptiness. He reached for his guitar, wondering about his sister. If she hadn’t died, would she be like him? Would she like to run? Would she sing?
In the living room, Duke was still lying with an arm over his face. Paul picked up the empty pizza box and the thin sheets of waxy paper and carried them out to the garbage can. The air was cool, the world brand new. He was thirsty like a desert, like a ten-mile run, and he carried a half gallon of milk back with him to the living room, drinking straight from the jug and then passing it to Duke. He sat down and played again, more quietly. The guitar notes fell through the air, slowly, gracefully, like winged things.
“You got any more of that stuff?” he asked.
“Yeah. But this’ll cost.”
Paul nodded, kept on playing, while Duke got up and went to make a phone call.
He had drawn his sister once, when he was just a kid, maybe in kindergarten. His mother had told him all about her, so he’d drawn her into the picture he made called “My Family”: his father, outlined in brown, his mother with dark yellow hair, and himself holding hands with a mirror figure. Drawn at school, tied up with a ribbon, he’d presented this