The memory keeper's daughter - Kim Edwards [41]
She walked from room to room, still drunk but charged with purpose, framing windows, light fixtures, the swirling grain of the floor. It seemed vitally important that she record every detail. At one point, in the living room, a spent and blistered bulb slipped from her hand and shattered; when she stepped back, glass pierced her heel. She studied her stocking feet for a moment, amused and impressed by her degree of drunkenness—she must have left her wet shoes by the front door, out of old habit. She wandered through the house twice more, documenting light switches, windows, the pipe where gas had once come up to the second floor. It was only on her way downstairs that she realized her foot was bleeding, leaving a splotchy trail: grim hearts, bloody little valentines. Norah was shocked and also strangely thrilled at the damage she had managed to inflict.
She found her shoes, went outside. Her heel throbbed as she slid into the car, the camera still dangling from her wrist.
Later, she would not remember much about the drive, only the dark narrow streets, the wind in the leaves, light flashing on the puddles, and water spraying off her tires. She would not remember the crash of metal against metal, but only the sudden startling sight of a trash can, glittering, flying up in front of the car. Wet with rain, it seemed suspended for a long moment before it began to fall. She remembered that it hit the hood and rolled up to shatter the windshield; she remembered the car, bouncing over the curb and coming to a gentle stop in the median, beneath a pin oak. She did not remember hitting the windshield, but it looked like a spiderweb, the intricate lines fanning out, delicate, beautiful, and precise. When she pressed her hand to her forehead, it came away lightly smeared with blood.
She did not get out of the car. The trash can was rolling in the street. Dark shapes—cats—lurked at the edges of the trash, scattered in an arc. Lights flashed on in the house to her right, and a man came out in his robe and slippers, hurrying down the sidewalk to her car.
“Are you all right?” he asked, leaning down to look in the window as she rolled it slowly open. The cool night air lapped at her face. “What happened out here? Are you all right? Your forehead’s bleeding,” he added, pulling a handkerchief from his pocket.
“It’s nothing,” Norah said, waving away his handkerchief, suspiciously wrinkled. She pressed her palm gently to her forehead again, wiping away another smear of blood. The camera, still dangling from her wrist, tapped against the steering wheel. She slipped it off and put it carefully beside her on the seat. “It’s my anniversary,” she informed the stranger. “My heel’s bleeding, too.”
“Do you need a doctor?” the man asked.
“My husband’s a doctor,” Norah said, noting the man’s uncertain expression, aware that she had perhaps not made much sense a moment earlier. Was, perhaps, not making much sense now. “He’s a doctor,” she repeated firmly. “I’ll go find him.”
“I’m not sure you should be driving,” the man said. “Why don’t you leave the car here and let me call an ambulance?”
At his kindness her eyes filled with tears, but then she imagined it, the lights and sirens and gentle hands, how David would come hurrying and find her in the ER, disheveled and bloody and somewhat drunk: a scandal and a disgrace.
“No,” she said, becoming very careful of her words. “I’m fine, really. A cat ran out and startled me. But truly, I’m fine. I’ll just go home now, and my husband will attend to this cut. It’s really nothing.”
The man hesitated for a long moment, the streetlight shining silver in his hair, before he shrugged and nodded once and stepped back onto the curb. Norah drove carefully, slowly, using her turn signals properly on the empty street. In the rearview mirror she saw him, arms folded, watching her until she turned the corner and disappeared.
The world was quiet as she drove back through the familiar streets, the effects of the wine beginning to ebb. Her new house was ablaze with lights