The memory keeper's daughter - Kim Edwards [151]
And somehow, that would be enough.
He stood, stretched, and loped off to the park. About a mile into his run, he remembered the other thing that had been nagging him all morning, the importance of this day beyond Rosemary’s test: July twelfth. Norah’s birthday. She was forty-six.
Hard to believe. He ran, falling into an easy stride, remembering Norah on their wedding day. They had walked outside, into the raw late-winter sun, and stood on the sidewalk shaking hands with their guests. The wind caught at her veil, whipped it against his cheek, late snow on the dogwood tree raining down like a cloud of petals.
He ran, veering away from the park, heading instead for his old neighborhood. Rosemary was right. Norah should know. He would tell her today. He would go to their old house, where Norah still lived, and wait until she returned, and he would tell her, though he could not imagine how Norah would respond.
Of course you can’t, Rosemary had said. That’s life, David. Would you have imagined yourself, years ago, living in this dumpy little duplex? Would you, in a million years, ever have imagined me?
Well, she was right; the life he lived was not the one he had imagined for himself. He had come to this town as a stranger, but now the streets flashing by were so familiar; not a step or an image remained unconnected to a memory. He had seen these trees planted, watched them grow. He passed houses he knew, houses where he had been for dinner or for drinks, where he’d gone on emergency calls, standing late in the night in hallways or foyers, writing out prescriptions, calling an ambulance. Layer on layer of days and images, dense and complex and particular to him alone. Norah could walk here, or Paul, and see something quite different but just as real.
David turned down his old street. He had not been over here in months, and he was surprised to find the porch columns of his house torn down, the roof supported by pairs of two-by-fours. Rot in the porch floor, it looked like, but no workmen were in sight. The driveway was empty; Norah wasn’t home. He paced across the lawn a few times to catch his breath, then walked to where the key was still hidden beneath a brick beside the rhododendron. He let himself inside and got a drink of water. The house smelled stale. He pushed open a window. Wind lifted the sheer white curtains. These were new, as was the tile floor and the refrigerator. He got another glass of water. Then he walked through the house, curious to see what else had changed. Small things, everywhere: a new mirror in the dining room, the living room furniture reupholstered and rearranged.
Upstairs, the bedrooms were the same, Paul’s room a shrine to adolescent angst, with posters of obscure quartets taped to the wall, ticket stubs pinned to the bulletin board, the walls painted a hideous dark blue, like a cave. He’d gone to Juilliard, and although David had given his blessing and paid half his bills, what Paul still remembered was the deeper past, when David didn’t believe his talent would be enough to sustain him in the world. He was always sending program flyers and reviews, along with postcards from every city where he’d performed, as if to say Here, look, I’m a success. As if Paul himself could hardly believe it. Sometimes David traveled a hundred miles or more, to Cincinnati or Pittsburgh or Atlanta or Memphis, to slip into the back of a darkened auditorium and watch Paul perform. His head bent over the guitar, his fingers deft, the music a language both mysterious and beautiful, would move David to tears. It was all he could do sometimes not to stride down the dark aisles and take Paul in his arms. But of course he never did; sometimes, he slipped away unseen.
The master bedroom was perfectly arranged,