The memory keeper's daughter - Kim Edwards [81]
“Are you sure?” the nurse asked, looking up and meeting her eyes. “Are you really sure you want me to call a doctor?”
Caroline stood fixed in place. She remembered the scents of boiled vegetables, and the day she had driven away with Phoebe, and the impassive expressions worn by the men on the board of education. In a rush of wild alchemy her fear transformed itself into anger, fierce and piercing. She raised her hand to slap the bland, impassive face of the nurse, but Al caught her wrist.
“Call the doctor,” he said to the nurse. “Do it now.”
He put his arm around Caroline and didn’t let go, not when the nurse turned away or when the doctor appeared, not until Phoebe’s breathing began to ease and some of the color returned to her cheeks. Then they went together to the waiting room and sat in the orange plastic chairs, hand in hand, nurses buzzing and voices coming over the intercom and babies crying.
“She could have died,” Caroline said. Her calm broke; she began to tremble.
“But she didn’t,” Al said firmly.
Al’s hand was warm, large and comforting. He had been so patient all these years, he had come back again and again, saying he knew a good thing when he saw it. Saying he’d wait. But he’d been away two weeks this time, not one. He hadn’t called from the road, and though he’d brought her flowers as always, he hadn’t proposed for six months. He could drive away in his truck and never come back, never give her another chance to say yes.
She raised his hand and kissed his palm, strong, so rough with calluses, so marked with lines. He turned, startled from his thoughts, as puzzled as if he’d just been stung himself.
“Caroline.” His tone was formal. “There’s something I want to say.”
“I know.” She placed his hand on her heart, held it there. “Oh, Al, I’ve been such a fool. Of course I’ll marry you,” she said.
1977
July 1977
LIKE THIS?” NORAH ASKED.
She was lying on the beach, and beneath her hip the gritty sand slid and shifted. Every time she took a deep breath and released it, sand slithered out from under her. The sun was so hot, like a shimmering metal plate against her skin. She had been here for over an hour, posing and re-posing, the word repose like a taunt, for it was what she longed to do and could not. It was her vacation, after all—she had won two weeks in Aruba for selling the highest number of cruise packages in the state of Kentucky last year—and yet here she was: sand sticking to the sweat on her arms and neck as she lay still, pressed between sun and beach.
To distract herself, she kept her gaze on Paul, who was running along the shore, a speck on the horizon. He was thirteen, and he’d shot up like a sapling in this last year. Tall and awkward, he ran every morning as if he might escape from his own life.
Waves crashed slowly against the beach. The tide was turning, coming in, and the harsh noon light would soon change, making the picture David wanted impossible until tomorrow. A strand of hair was stuck against Norah’s lip, tickling, but she willed herself to stillness.
“Good,” David said, bent over his camera and clicking off a rapid series of shots. “Oh, yes, great, that’s really very good.”
“I’m hot,” she said.
“Just a few more minutes. We’re almost done.” He was on his knees now, his thighs winter pale against the sand. He worked so hard, and spent long hours in his darkroom too, clipping images to dry on the clotheslines he’d strung from wall to wall. “Think about the sea. Waves in the water, waves in the sand. You’re part of that, Norah. You’ll see in the photo. I’ll show you.”
She lay still