The memory keeper's daughter - Kim Edwards [36]
“Wow,” Bree said, sliding her bags on the counter and reaching for Paul. “Everything looks great, Norah. I can’t believe what you’ve done with the house in such a short time.”
“It’s kept me busy,” Norah agreed, thinking of the weeks she’d spent steaming off wallpaper and applying new coats of paint. They had decided to move, she and David, thinking that, like his new job, it would help them leave the past behind. Norah, wanting nothing else, had poured herself into this project. Yet it hadn’t helped as much as she had hoped; often, still, her sense of loss stirred up, like flames out of embers. Twice in this last month alone she’d hired a babysitter for Paul and left the house, with its half-painted trim and rolls of wallpaper, behind. She had driven too fast down the narrow country roads to the private cemetery, marked with a wrought-iron gate, where her daughter was buried. The stones were low, some very old and worn nearly smooth. Phoebe’s was simple, made from pink granite, with the dates of her short life chiseled deeply beneath her name. In the bleak winter landscape, the wind sharp in her hair, Norah had knelt in the brittle frozen grass of her dream. She’d been paralyzed with grief almost, too full of sorrow even to weep. But she had stayed for several hours before she finally stood up and brushed off her clothes and went home.
Now Paul was playing a game with Bree, trying to catch hold of her hair.
“Your mom’s amazing,” Bree told him. “She’s just a regular Suzy Homemaker these days, isn’t she? No, not the earrings, honey,” she added, catching Paul’s small hand in her own.
“Suzy Homemaker?” Norah repeated, anger lifting through her like a wave. “What do you mean by that?”
“I didn’t mean anything,” Bree said. She’d been making silly faces at Paul, and now she looked up, surprised. “Oh, honestly, Norah. Lighten up.”
“Suzy Homemaker?” she said again. “I just wanted to have things look nice for my anniversary. What’s wrong with that?”
“Nothing.” Bree sighed. “Everything looks great. Didn’t I just say so? And I’m here to babysit, remember? Why are you so angry?”
Norah waved her hand. “Never mind. Oh, darn it, never mind. David’s in surgery.”
Bree waited a heartbeat before she said, “That figures.”
Norah started to defend him, then stopped. She pressed her hands against her cheeks. “Oh, Bree. Why tonight?”
“It’s awful,” Bree agreed. Norah’s face tightened, she felt her lips purse, and Bree laughed. “Oh, come on. Be honest. Maybe it’s not David’s fault. But that’s exactly how you feel, right?”
“It’s not his fault,” Norah said. “There was an accident. But okay. You’re right. It does—it stinks. It absolutely stinks, okay?”
“I know,” Bree said, her voice surprisingly soft. “It’s really rotten. I’m sorry, Sis.” Then she smiled. “Look, I brought you and David a present. Maybe it will cheer you up.”
Bree shifted Paul to one arm and rummaged in her oversized quilted bag, pulling out books, a candy bar, a pile of leaflets about an upcoming demonstration, sunglasses in a worn leather case, and, finally, a bottle of wine, glimmering like garnets as she poured them each a glass.
“To love,” she said, handing Norah one glass and raising the other. “To eternal happiness and bliss.”
They laughed together and drank. The wine was dark with berries, faint oak. Rain dripped from the gutters. Years from now Norah would remember this evening, the gloomy disappointment and Bree bearing shimmering tokens from another world; her shiny boots, her earrings, her energy like a kind of light. How beautiful these things were to Norah, and how remote, how unreachable. Depression—years later she would understand the murky light she lived in—but no one talked about this in 1965. No one even considered it. Certainly not for Norah, who had her