The memory keeper's daughter - Kim Edwards [137]
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.
Paul drove. He did not want to be in that house for whatever happened next. He reached the interstate where the road split and went west, to Louisville. California glimmered in his mind: music there, and an endless beach. Lauren Lobeglio would latch herself onto someone new. She didn’t love him and he didn’t love her; she was like an addiction, and what they were doing had a darkness to it, a weight. California. Soon he’d be on the beach, playing in a band and living cheap and easy all summer long. In the fall, he’d find a way to get to Juilliard. Hitchhike across the country, maybe. He cranked his window all the way down, letting the spring air rush in. The Gremlin barely hit 55 even with his foot pressing the pedal to the floor. Still, it felt like he was flying.
He had come this way before, on orderly school trips to the Louisville Zoo and earlier, on those wild rides his mother had taken when he was small, when he lay in the backseat watching leaves and branches and phone lines flashing in the window. She had sung, loudly, with the radio, her voice lurching, promising him they’d stop for ice cream, for a treat, if he’d just be good, be quiet. All these years he had been good, but it hadn’t made any difference. He’d discovered music and played his heart out into the silence of that house, into the hole his sister’s death had made in their lives, and that hadn’t mattered either. He had tried as hard as he could to make his parents look up from their lives and hear the beauty, the joy that he’d discovered. He’d played so much and he’d gotten so fine. And yet all this time they’d never looked up, not once, not until Rosemary had stepped through the door and altered everything. Or maybe she hadn’t changed anything at all. Maybe it was just that her presence cast a new, revealing light on their lives, shifting the composition. After all, a picture could be a thousand different things.
He put his hand on the guitar, feeling the warm wood, comforted. He pressed the pedal to the floor, climbing between the limestone walls where the highway had been cut into the hill, and then he descended toward the curve of the Kentucky River, flying. The bridge sang under his tires. Paul drove and drove, trying to do anything but think.
IV
BEYOND NORAH’S GLASS-PANELED DOOR, THE OFFICE HUMMED. Neil Simms, the personnel manager from IBM, walked through the outer doors, a flash of dark suit, polished shoes. Bree, who had paused in the reception room to collect the faxes, turned to greet him. She was wearing a yellow linen suit and dark yellow shoes; a fine gold bracelet slipped down her wrist as she reached to shake his hand. She’d gotten thin and sharp-boned beneath her elegance. Still, her laugh was light, traveling through the glass to where Norah sat with the phone in one hand, the glossy folder she’d spent weeks preparing on her desk, IBM in bold black letters across the front.
“Look, Sam,” Norah said. “I told you not to call me, and I meant it.”
A cool deep current of silence welled up against her ear. She imagined Sam at home, working by the wall of windows overlooking the lake. He was an investment analyst, and Norah had met him in the parking garage six months ago, in the murky concrete light near the elevator. Her keys had slipped and he had caught