The memory keeper's daughter - Kim Edwards [189]
Paul walked a few feet back to the gravel path. He paused, his hands in his pockets, leaves swirling up in the eddies of wind, a scrap of newspaper floating over the rows of white stones. Clouds moved against the sun, making patterns on the land, and sunlight flashed on the headstones, the grass and trees. Leaves tapped lightly in the breeze, and the long grass rustled.
At first the notes were thin, almost an undercurrent to the breeze, so subtle that he had to strain to hear them. He turned. Phoebe, still standing by the headstone, her hand resting on its dark granite edge, had begun to sing. The grass over the graves was moving and the leaves were stirring. It was a hymn, vaguely familiar. Her words were indistinct, but her voice was pure and sweet, and other visitors to the cemetery were glancing in her direction, at Phoebe with her graying hair and bridesmaid’s dress, her awkward stance, her unclear words, her carefree, fluted voice. Paul swallowed, stared at his shoes. For the rest of his life, he realized, he would be torn like this, aware of Phoebe’s awkwardness, the difficulties she encountered simply by being different in the world, and yet propelled beyond all this by her direct and guileless love.
By her love, yes. And, he realized, awash in the notes, by his own new and strangely uncomplicated love for her.
Her voice, high and clear, moved through the leaves, through the sunlight. It splashed onto the gravel, the grass. He imagined the notes falling into the air like stones into water, rippling the invisible surface of the world. Waves of sound, waves of light: his father had tried to pin everything down, but the world was fluid and could not be contained.
Leaves lifted; sunlight swam. The words of this old hymn came back to him, and Paul picked up the harmony. Phoebe did not seem to notice. She sang on, accepting his voice as she might the wind. Their singing merged, and the music was inside him, a humming in his flesh, and it was outside, too, her voice a twin to his own. When the song ended, they stayed as they were in the clear pale light of the afternoon. The wind shifted, pressing Phoebe’s hair against her neck, scattering old leaves along the base of the worn stone fence.
Everything slowed, until the whole world was caught in this single hovering moment. Paul stood very still, waiting to see what would happen next.
For a few seconds, nothing at all.
Then Phoebe turned, slowly, and smoothed her wrinkled skirt.
A simple gesture, yet it set the world back in motion.
Paul noted how short and clipped her fingernails were, how delicate her wrist looked against the granite headstone. His sister’s hands were small, just like their mother’s. He walked across the grass and touched her shoulder, to take her home.