The memory keeper's daughter - Kim Edwards [138]
That night he left a message on her machine. Norah’s heart had quickened, stirred at his voice. Still, when the tape ended, she had forced herself to sit down and count up her affairs—short-lived and long, passionate and detached, bitter and amicable—over the years.
Four. She had written the number down, dark blunt streaks of graphite on the edge of the morning paper. Upstairs, water was dripping in the tub. Paul was in the family room, playing the same chord over and over again on his guitar. David was outside, working in his darkroom—so much space between them, always. Norah had walked into each of her affairs with a sense of hope and new beginnings, swept up in the rush of secret meetings, of novelty and surprise. After Howard, two more, transitory and sweet, followed by one other, longer. Each had begun at moments when she thought the roar of silence in her house would drive her mad, when the mysterious universe of another presence, any presence, had seemed to her like solace.
“Norah, please, just listen,” Sam was saying now: a forceful man, something of a bully in negotiations, a person she didn’t even particularly like. In the reception room, Bree turned to glance at her, inquiring, impatient. Yes, Norah gestured through the glass, she would hurry. They had courted this IBM account for almost a year; she would certainly hurry. “I just want to ask about Paul,” Sam was insisting. “If you’ve heard anything. Because I’m here for you, okay? Do you hear what I’m saying, Norah? I’m totally, absolutely, here for you.”
“I hear you,” she said, angry with herself—she didn’t want Sam talking about her son. Paul had been gone for twenty-four hours now; a car three blocks down was missing too. She’d watched him leave after that strained scene on the porch, trying to remember what she’d said, what he’d overheard, pained at the confusion on his face. David had done the right thing, giving Paul his blessing, but somehow that too, the very strangeness of it, had made the moment worse. She’d watched Paul run off, carrying his guitar, and she’d nearly gone after him. But her head ached, and she’d let herself think that maybe he needed some time to work this out on his own. Plus, surely, he wouldn’t go far—where could he go, after all?
“Norah?” Sam said. “Norah, are you okay?”
She closed her eyes briefly. Ordinary sunlight warmed her face. Sam’s bedroom windows were full of prisms, and on this brilliant morning light and color would be shifting, alive, on every surface. It’s like making love in a disco, she’d told him once, half complaining, half enchanted, long shafts of color moving on his arms, her own pale skin. That day, as on every day since they’d met, Norah had intended to end things. Then Sam had traced the shaft of variegated light on her thigh with his finger, and slowly she’d felt her own sharp edges begin to soften, to blur, her emotions bleeding one into another in mysterious sequence, from darkest indigo to gold, reluctance transforming, mysteriously, to desire.
Still, the pleasure never lasted past the drive home.
“I’m focusing on Paul right now,” she said, and then, sharply, she added, “Look, Sam, I’ve had it, actually. I was serious the other day. Don’t call me again.”
“You’re upset.”
“Yes. But I mean it. Don’t call me. Never again.”
She hung up. Her hand was trembling; she pressed it flat on her desk. She felt Paul’s disappearance like a punishment: for David’s long anger, for her own. The car he’d stolen had been found deserted on a side street in Louisville last night, but there had been no trace of Paul. And so she and David were waiting, moving helplessly through the silent layers of their house. The girl from West Virginia was still sleeping on the pull-out sofa in the den. David never touched her, hardly