The memory keeper's daughter - Kim Edwards [135]
“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.