The memory keeper's daughter - Kim Edwards [156]
“Yes. I kept waiting for him to make the first move.”
“I think he was waiting for the same thing.”
“He was my father,” Paul said. “He was supposed to know what to do.”
“He loved you,” she said. “Don’t ever think he didn’t.”
Paul gave a short, bitter laugh. “No. That sounds pretty, but it’s just not true. I’d go over to his house and I’d try; I’d hang out and talk with Dad about this and that, but we never went any further. I could never get anything right for him. He’d have been happier with another son altogether.” His voice was still calm, but tears had gathered in the corners of his eyes and were slipping down his cheeks.
“Honey,” she said. “He loved you. He did. He thought you were the most amazing son.”
Paul pushed the tears roughly off his cheeks. Norah felt her own grief and sadness gather in her throat, and it was a moment before she could speak.
“Your father,” she said at last, “had a very hard time revealing himself to anyone. I don’t know why. He grew up poor, and he was always ashamed of that. I wish he could have seen how many people came to the funeral, Paul. Hundreds. It was all the clinic work he did. I have the guest book; you can see for yourself. A lot of people loved him.”
“Did Rosemary come?” he asked, turning to face her.
“Rosemary? Yes.” Norah paused, letting the warm breeze move lightly over her face. She’d glimpsed Rosemary when the service ended, sitting in the last pew in a simple gray dress. Her hair was still long but she looked older, more settled. David had always insisted there had never been anything between them; in her heart, Norah knew this was true. “They weren’t in love,” Norah said. “Your father and Rosemary. It wasn’t what you think.”
“I know.” He sat up straighter. “I know. Rosemary told me. I believed her.”
“She did? When?”
“When Dad brought her home. That first day.” He looked uncomfortable, but he went on. “I’d see her at his place sometimes. When I stopped in to visit Dad. Sometimes we’d all have dinner together. Sometimes Dad wasn’t home, so I’d hang out for a while with Rosemary and Jack. I could tell there wasn’t anything between them. Sometimes she’d have a boyfriend there. I don’t know. It was a little weird, I guess. But I got used to it. She was okay, Rosemary. She wasn’t the reason I couldn’t ever really talk to him.”
Norah nodded. “But Paul, you mattered to him. Look, I know what you’re saying, because I felt it too. That distance. That reserve. That sense of a wall too high to get over. After a while I gave up trying, and after a longer while I gave up waiting for a door to appear in it. But behind that wall, he loved us both. I don’t know how I know that, but I do.”
Paul didn’t speak. Every now and then he brushed tears from his eyes.
The air was cooler, and people had begun to stroll through the gardens, lovers holding hands, couples with children, solitary walkers. An elderly couple approached. She was tall, with a flash of white hair, and he walked slowly, stooping slightly, with a cane. She had her hand tucked around his elbow and was leaning down to speak to him, and he was nodding, pensive, frowning, looking across the gardens, beyond the gates, at whatever she wanted him to note. Norah felt a pang to see this intimacy. Once she had imagined herself and David moving into such an old age, their histories woven together like vines, tendril around shoot, leaves meshed. Oh, she’d been so old-fashioned; even her regret was old-fashioned. She had imagined that, married, she would be some sort of lovely bud, wrapped in the tougher, resilient calyx of the flower. Wrapped and protected, the layers of her own life contained within another’s.
But instead she had found her own way, building a business, raising Paul, traveling the world. She was petal, calyx, stem, and leaf; she was the long white root running deep into the earth. And she was glad.
As they passed, the couple spoke in English, arguing about where to have dinner. Their accents were from the south—from Texas, Norah guessed—and the man wanted to find a