The memory keeper's daughter - Kim Edwards [105]
“Oh, Mom,” Phoebe protested, but she stood still.
The minute the camera clicked she was off, running across the lawn to where their neighbor Avery, age eight, was holding a tiny kitten with hair the same dark orange as her own. Phoebe, at thirteen, was short for her age, chubby, still impulsive and impassioned, slow to learn but moving from joy to pensiveness to sadness and back to joy with an astonishing speed. “I’m confirmed!” she shouted now, turning once on the lawn with her arms flung high in the air, causing the guests to glance her way, drinks in their hands, and smile. Skirt swirling, she ran to Sandra’s son, Tim, now a teenager too. She wrapped her arms around him, kissing him exuberantly on the cheek.
Then she caught herself and glanced back anxiously at Caroline. Hugging had been a problem earlier this year, at school. “I like you,” Phoebe would announce, enveloping a smaller child; she didn’t understand why not. Caroline had told her again and again, Hugs are special. Hugs are for family; slowly Phoebe had learned. Now, however, seeing Phoebe rein in her love, she wondered if she’d done the right thing.
“It’s okay, honey,” Caroline called. “It’s okay to hug your friends at the party.”
Phoebe relaxed. She and Tim went off to pet the kitten. Caroline looked at the Polaroid in her hand: the luminous garden and Phoebe’s smile, a fleeting moment caught, already gone. There was more thunder in the distance, but the evening was still lovely, warm and beautiful with flowers. All across the lawn people moved, talking and laughing and filling their plastic cups. A cake, three tiers and frosted white, stood on the table, decorated with dark red roses from the garden. Three layers, for three celebrations: Phoebe’s confirmation, her own wedding anniversary, and Doro’s retirement, a bon voyage.
“It’s my cake.” Phoebe’s voice floated over the rise and fall of conversations, the physics professors and neighbors and choir members and school friends, families from the Upside Down Society, all sorts of children, running. Caroline’s new friends from the hospital, where she’d started working part-time once Phoebe was in school, were here too. She had brought all these people together; she had planned this beautiful party unfolding in the dusk like a flower. “It’s my cake.” Phoebe’s voice came again, high and floating. “I’m confirmed.”
Caroline sipped her wine, the air warm as breath on her skin. She didn’t see Al arrive but he was suddenly there, sliding a hand around her waist and kissing her cheek, his presence, his scent, sweeping through her. Five years ago they had married at a garden party much like this one, strawberries floating in champagne and the air full of fireflies, the scent of roses. Five years, and the novelty had not worn off. Caroline’s room on the third floor of Doro’s house had become a place as mysterious and sensual as this garden. She loved waking to the warm, heavy length of Al sleeping beside her, his hand coming to rest, lightly, on the flat of her belly, the scent of him—fresh soap and Old Spice—slowly infusing the room, the sheets, the towels. He was there, so vividly present she felt him in every nerve. There, and then as quickly gone.
“Happy anniversary,” he said now, pressing his hands lightly on her waist.
Caroline smiled, filled with pleasure. The evening had deepened and people were moving and laughing in the lingering warmth and fragrance, dew gathering on the darkening grass, the white froth of flowers everywhere. She took Al’s hand, solid and sure, and almost laughed because he’d just arrived and didn’t yet know the news. Doro was leaving on a year-long cruise around the world with her lover, a man named Trace. Al knew that already; plans had been evolving for months. But he didn’t know that Doro, in what she called a joyful liberation from the past, had given Caroline the deed to this old house.
Doro was arriving even now, coming down the stairs from the alley in a silky dress. Trace was just behind her, carrying a bag