The memory keeper's daughter - Kim Edwards [160]
That person, it appeared, was Phoebe, who seemed to brighten, awash in some internal light, when Robert was around, who watched him move up and down the aisle as if he were some marvelous new creature, a peacock perhaps, beautiful and showy and proud. When he finally settled down in the seat next to her, still talking, Phoebe simply smiled up at him. It was a radiant smile; she held nothing back. No reserve, no caution, no waiting to make sure he felt the same surging love. Caroline closed her eyes at her daughter’s naked expression of emotion—the wild innocence, the risk! But when she opened them again Robert was smiling back, as pleased by Phoebe, as wonderstruck, as if a tree had cried out his name.
Well, yes, Caroline thought, and why not? Wasn’t such love rare enough in the world? She glanced at Al, who sat next to her, nodding off, his graying hair lifting as the bus traveled over bumps, around curves. He’d come in late last night and would leave again tomorrow morning, earning overtime to pay for the new roof and gutters. These last months, their days together had been mostly consumed with business. Sometimes a memory of their early marriage—his lips on hers, the touch of his hand on her waist—swept through Caroline, a bittersweet nostalgia. How had they become so busy and careworn, the two of them? How had so many days slipped away, one after another, to bring them to this moment?
The bus sped across the ravine, up the incline to Squirrel Hill. Headlights were already on in the early winter dusk. Phoebe and Robert sat quietly, facing the aisle, dressed for the Upside Down Society’s annual dance. Robert’s shoes were polished to a high shine; he wore his best suit. Beneath her winter coat, Phoebe wore a flowery white and red dress, a delicate white cross from her confirmation on a slender chain around her neck. Her hair had darkened and grown thinner and was cut in a short flyaway cap around her skull, clipped here and there with red barrettes. She was pale, with light freckles on her arms and face. She stared out the window, smiling faintly, lost in her thoughts. Robert studied the billboards above Caroline’s head, ads for clinics and dentists, maps of the route. He was a good man, prepared in every moment to be delighted by the world, though he forgot conversations almost as soon as they were finished and asked Caroline for her phone number every time they met.
Still, he always remembered Phoebe. He always remembered love.
“We’re almost there,” Phoebe said, tugging on Robert’s arm as they neared the top of the hill. The day facility was half a block away, its lights spilling softly across the brown grass, the crusts of snow. “I counted seven stops.”
“Al,” Caroline said, shaking his shoulder. “Al, honey, it’s our stop.”
They stepped off the bus into the damp chill of the November evening and walked in pairs through the dusky light. Caroline slid her hand around Al’s arm.
“You’re tired,” she said, seeking to break the silence that, more and more, had come to be their habit. “You’ve had a long couple of weeks.”
“I’m okay,” he said.
“I wish you didn’t have to be away so much.” She regretted her words the moment she said them. The argument was old by now, a tender knot in the flesh of their marriage, and even to her own ears her voice sounded strident, shrill, as if she were deliberately picking a fight.
Snow crunched under their shoes. Al sighed heavily, his breath a faint cloud in the cold.
“Look, I’m doing the best I can, Caroline. The money’s good just now and I have some seniority built up. I’m pushing sixty. I have to milk it while I can.”
Caroline nodded. His arm beneath her hand was firm and steady. She was so glad to have him here,