The memory keeper's daughter - Kim Edwards [146]
Brief memories, almost unbearably beautiful. And then there were the years of adolescence, when Paul had traveled a distance greater even than Norah’s, shaking the house with his music and his anger.
David tapped on the window and waved to Jack and Rosemary. He’d bought this house, a duplex, in such haste, looking at it only once and then going home to pack while Norah was at work. It was an old two-story house, split almost exactly in half, with thin partitions dividing what had been expansive rooms; even the stairway, once wide and elegant, had been cut in half. David had taken the larger apartment and given Rosemary the keys to the other; for the last six years they had lived side by side, separated by thin walls but seeing each other every day. Rosemary had tried to pay rent from time to time, but David had refused, telling her to go back to school and get a degree; she could pay him back later. He knew that his motives weren’t entirely altruistic, yet he couldn’t explain even to himself why she mattered so much to him. I fill up that place left by the daughter you gave away, she said once. He’d nodded, thinking it over, but that wasn’t it either, not exactly. It was more, he suspected, that Rosemary knew his secret. He’d poured his story out to her in such a rush, the first and last time he had ever told it, and she had listened without judging him. There was freedom in that; David could be completely himself with Rosemary, who had listened to what he’d done without rejecting him and without telling anyone, either. Strangely, over the years Rosemary and Paul had established a friendship, grudging at first, then later a kind of earnest ongoing argument about issues that mattered to them both—politics and music and social justice—arguments that started over dinner during Paul’s rare visits and lasted into the night.
Sometimes, David suspected that this was Paul’s way of keeping a distance from him, a way of being in the house without having to talk about anything deeply personal. Now and then David made overtures, but Paul always chose that moment to leave, pushing back his chair and yawning, suddenly tired.
Now Rosemary looked up, brushing a wisp of hair from her cheek with her wrist, and waved back. David saved his files and walked down the narrow hallway. On the way he passed the door that opened into Jack’s room. It was supposed to have been sealed when the house was converted to a duplex, but one evening David had, on an impulse, tried the handle and found that it was not. Now, quietly, he pushed the door open. Rosemary had painted the walls of Jack’s room light blue, the bed and the dresser, found discarded on the curb, clean white. A whole series of scherenschnitte, intricate paper cuttings of mothers with children, of children playing beneath shady trees, delicate and full of motion, were mounted against midnight blue, framed and hung on the far wall. Rosemary had displayed these pieces in an art show a year ago, and to her surprise, orders had begun to come in, one after another. Nights, she often sat at her kitchen table, beneath a bright light, cutting one scene after another, each one different than any other. She couldn’t promise people what she’d make; she refused to be tied down to any set of images. Because it was already there, she explained, hidden in the paper and the movements of her hands, and it could never be the same image twice.
David stood, listening to the sounds of the house: faint water dripping, and the hum of the old refrigerator. The smell of perfume and baby powder was strong; a slip was draped off the chair in the corner. He breathed in the scent of her, of Jack, and then he pulled the door firmly shut and carried on down the narrow hall. He’d never told Rosemary about the unsealed door, but he’d never walked through it either. It was a point of honor with him that, despite the scandal, he had never taken advantage of her, had never trespassed into her personal life.
Still, he liked knowing that the door was there.
There was more paperwork to do, but David