The memory keeper's daughter - Kim Edwards [75]
She sighed. “No,” she said. “You wouldn’t believe it, would you?”
“What’s that supposed to mean?”
“You see yourself as the center of the universe,” Norah said. “The still point around which everything else revolves.”
They gathered up their things and walked to the elevator. Outside it was still a beautiful day, late afternoon, clear and sunny. By the time they got home, the guests had dispersed. Only Bree and Mark were left, carrying plates of food into the house. The ribbons of the maypole fluttered in the breeze. David’s camera was on the table, and Paul’s fossils were piled neatly beside it. David paused, surveying the lawn, scattered with chairs. Once, this whole world had been hidden beneath a shallow sea. He carried Paul inside and up the stairs. He gave him a drink of water and the orange chewable aspirin he liked and sat with him on the bed, holding his hand. So small, this hand, so warm and alive. Remembering the light-filled images of Paul’s bones, David was filled with a sense of wonder. This was what he yearned to capture on film: these rare moments where the world seemed unified, coherent, everything contained in a single fleeting image. A spareness that held beauty and hope and motion—a kind of silvery poetry, just as the body was poetry in blood and flesh and bone.
“Read me a story, Dad,” Paul said, so David settled himself on the bed, holding Paul in his arms, turning the pages of Curious George, who was in the hospital with a broken leg. Downstairs, Norah moved through the rooms, cleaning up. The screen door swung open and shut, open and shut again. He imagined her walking through it, dressed in a suit, heading for her new job and a life that excluded him. It was late afternoon, and a golden light filled the room. He turned the page and held Paul, feeling his warmth, his measured breathing. A breeze lifted the curtains. Outside, the dogwood was a bright cloud against the dark planks of the fence. David paused in his reading, watching the white petals fall and drift. He felt both comforted and troubled by their beauty, trying not to notice that they looked, from this distance, like snow.
June 1970
WELL, PHOEBE CERTAINLY HAS YOUR HAIR,” DORO OBSERVED.
Caroline touched the nape of her neck, considering. They were on the east side of Pittsburgh, in an old factory building that had been converted into a progressive preschool. Light fell through the long windows and splashed in motes and patterns on the plank floor; it caught the auburn highlights in Phoebe’s thin braids as she stood before a big wooden bin, scooping lentils, letting them cascade into jars. At six, she was chubby, with dimpled knees and a winning smile. Her eyes were a delicate almond shape, upslanted, dark brown. Her hands were small. This morning she wore a pink-and-white striped dress, which she had chosen and put on by herself—backwards. She wore a pink sweater, too, which had caused a spectacular tantrum at home. She’s certainly got your temper. Leo, dead now for almost a year, had been fond of muttering this, and Caroline had always been astonished: not so much that he’d seen a genetic connection where none could exist but that anyone would define her as a woman with a temper.
“Do you think so?” she asked Doro, running her fingers through the hair behind her ear. “Do you think her hair’s like mine?”
“Oh, yes. Sure it is.”
Phoebe was shoving her hands deep into the velvety lentils now, laughing with the little boy beside her. She lifted fistfuls and let them run through her fingers, and the boy held out a yellow plastic cup to catch them.
To the other children in this preschool Phoebe was simply herself, a friend who liked the color blue and Popsicles and twirling in circles; here, her differences went unnoticed. In the first weeks, Caroline had watched warily, braced against the sorts of comments she’d heard too often, on playgrounds, at the grocery store, in the doctor’s office.