The memory keeper's daughter - Kim Edwards [45]
Now nearly a year had passed. Doro stood up in the steam-softened bathroom. The sleeves of her black silk robe, printed with bright tropical birds, slipped down to her elbows. “Let me take her. You look exhausted, Caroline.”
Phoebe’s wheezing had abated and her color had improved; her cheeks were faintly pink, Caroline handed her over, feeling the sudden coolness of her absence.
“How was Leo today?” Doro asked. “Did he give you any grief?”
For a moment Caroline didn’t answer. She was so tired, and she had traveled so far in this past year, one moment to the next, and her careful solitary life had been utterly transformed. Somehow she had come to be here in this tiny purple bathroom, a mother to Phoebe, a companion to a brilliant man with a failing mind, an unlikely but certain friend to this woman Doro March: the two of them strangers a year ago, women who might have passed each other on the street without a second glance or a glimmer of connection, their lives now woven together by the demands of their days and a cautious, sure respect.
“He wouldn’t eat. He accused me of putting scouring powder in the mashed potatoes. So—a fairly typical day, I’d say.”
“It’s not personal, you know,” Doro said softly. “He wasn’t always like this.”
Caroline turned off the shower and sat on the edge of the purple tub.
Doro nodded at the steamy window. Phoebe’s hands were pale, like stars, against her robe. “That used to be our playground, over there on the hill. Before they put the freeway in. Herons used to nest in the trees, did you know that? My mother planted daffodils one spring, hundreds of bulbs. My father came home from work on the train every day at six o’clock, and he’d go straight over there and pick her a bunch of flowers. You wouldn’t have known him,” she said. “You don’t.”
“I know,” Caroline said gently. “I realize that.”
They were silent for a moment. The faucet dripped, and steam swirled.
“I think she’s asleep,” Doro said. “Will she be okay?”
“Yes. I think so.”
“What’s wrong with her, Caroline?” Doro’s voice was intent now, her words a determined rush. “My dear, I know nothing about babies, but even I can sense that something’s not right. Phoebe is so beautiful, so sweet, but there’s something wrong, isn’t there? She’s nearly a year old and only now learning to sit up.”
Caroline looked out the steam-streaked window at the moon and closed her eyes. As an infant, Phoebe’s stillness had seemed, more than anything, a gift of quiet, of attentiveness, and Caroline could let herself believe nothing was wrong. But after six months, when Phoebe was growing but still small for her age, still slack in her arms, when Phoebe would follow a set of keys with her eyes and sometimes wave her arms but never reach to grab them, when she showed no signs of sitting on her own, Caroline had started taking Phoebe to the library on her day off. At the wide oak tables of the Carnegie, in the airy, spacious, high-ceilinged rooms, she stacked up the books and articles and began to read, grim journeys into gloomy institutions, shortened lives, no hope. It was a strange sensation, a pit opening in her stomach at every word. And yet there was Phoebe stirring in her car seat, smiling, waving her hands and cooing: a baby, not a case history.
“Phoebe has Down’s syndrome,” she forced herself to say. “That’s the term.”
“Oh, Caroline,” Doro said. “I’m so sorry. This is why you left your husband, isn’t it? You said he didn’t want her. Oh, my dear, I’m so very, very sorry.”
“Don’t be,” Caroline said, reaching to take Phoebe back. “She’s beautiful.”
“Oh, yes. Yes, she is. But Caroline. What will become of her?”
Phoebe was warm and heavy in her arms, her soft dark hair falling against pale skin. Caroline, fierce, protective, touched her cheek so gently.
“What will become of any of us? I mean, tell me honestly, Doro. Did you ever imagine that this would be your life?”
Doro looked away, an expression of pain on her face. Years ago, her fiancé had been killed while jumping from a bridge into the river on