The memory keeper's daughter - Kim Edwards [183]
“Maybe,” Phoebe conceded.
“Phoebe,” Caroline said, “Why don’t you show Paul around for a while? Give Mrs. Henry and me a chance to talk a little bit. And don’t worry, sweetheart,” she added, resting her hand lightly on Phoebe’s arm. “No one’s going anywhere. Everything’s okay.”
Phoebe nodded and stood up.
“Want to see my room?” she asked Paul. “I got a new record player.”
Paul glanced at his mother and she nodded, watching the two of them as they crossed the room together. Paul followed Phoebe up the stairs.
“Who’s Robert?” he asked.
“He’s my boyfriend. We’re getting married. Are you married?”
Paul, pierced with a memory of Michelle, shook his head. “No.”
“You have a girlfriend?”
“No. I used to have a girlfriend, but she went away.”
Phoebe stopped on the top step and turned. They were eye to eye, so close that Paul felt uncomfortable, his personal space invaded. He glanced away and then looked back, and she was still looking straight at him.
“It’s not polite to stare at people,” he said.
“Well, you look sad.”
“I am sad,” he said. “Actually, I’m very, very sad.”
She nodded, and for a moment she seemed to have joined him in his sadness, her expression clouding up and then, an instant later, clearing.
“Come on,” she said, leading him down the hall. “I got some new records, too.”
They sat on the floor of her room. The walls were pink, with pink and white checked curtains at the windows. It was a little girl’s room, filled with stuffed animals, bright pictures on the walls. Paul thought of Robert and wondered if it was true that Phoebe would get married. Then he felt bad for wondering this; why shouldn’t she get married, or do something else? He thought of the extra bedroom in his parents’ house, where his grandmother stayed occasionally when he was a boy. That would have been Phoebe’s room; she would have filled it with her music and her things. Phoebe put the album on and turned the volume up loud on her little record player, blasting “Love, Love Me Do,” singing along to the music with her eyes half shut. She had a nice voice, Paul realized, turning the volume down a bit, flipping through her other albums. She had a lot of popular music but she had symphonies, too.
“I like trombones,” she said, pretending to pull a long slide, and when Paul laughed, she laughed too. “I really love trombones.” She sighed.
“I play the guitar,” he said. “Did you know that?”
She nodded. “My mom said. Like John Lennon.”
He smiled. “A little,” he said, surprised to find himself in the middle of a conversation. He’d gotten used to her speech, and the more he talked to Phoebe, the more she was simply herself, impossible to label. “You ever hear of Andrés Segovia?”
“Uh-uh.”
“He’s really good. He’s my favorite. Someday I’ll play his music for you, okay?”
“I like you, Paul. You’re nice.”
He found himself smiling, charmed and flattered. “Thanks,” he said. “I like you too.”
“But I don’t want to live with you.”
“That’s okay. I don’t live with my mother either,” he said. “I live in Cincinnati.”
Phoebe’s face brightened. “All by yourself?”
“Yes,” he said, knowing he would go back to find Michelle gone. “All by myself.”
“Lucky.”
“I suppose,” he said gravely, knowing suddenly that he was. The things he took for granted in life were the stuff of Phoebe’s dreams. “I’m lucky, yes. It’s true.”
“I’m lucky too,” she said, surprising him. “Robert has a good job, and so do I.”
“What’s your job?” Paul asked.
“I make copies.” She said this with quiet pride. “Lots and lots of copies.”
“And you like it?”
She smiled. “Max works there. She’s my friend. We have twenty-three different colors of paper.”
She hummed a little, content, as she put the first record carefully away and chose another. Her gestures were not fast, but they were efficient and focused. Paul could imagine her at the copy shop, doing her work, joking with her friend, pausing