The memory keeper's daughter - Kim Edwards [85]
David turned, smiling, and the moment slammed shut like a door.
“It’s white,” Howard said, handing her the bottle. Norah was struck by how ordinary Howard seemed then, by the silly way his sideburns grew halfway down his cheeks. The hidden meaning of the earlier moment—had she imagined it then?—was gone. “I hope that’s all right.”
“Perfect,” she said. “We’re having lobster.” Yes, so ordinary, this talk. The stunning moment was behind them now, and she was the gracious hostess, moving as easily in her role as she moved within her whisper of a dress. Howard was her guest; she offered him a wicker chair and a drink. When she came back, carrying bottles of gin and tonic and a bucket of ice on a tray, the sun had reached the edge of the water. Clouds billowed high in airy shades of pink and peach.
They ate on the porch. Darkness fell swiftly, and David lit the candles set at intervals along the railing. Beyond, the tide came in, waves rushing invisibly against the sand. In the flickering light, Howard’s voice rose and fell and rose again. He talked about a camera obscura he had built. The camera obscura was a mahogany box that sealed out all light, except for a single pinpoint. This pinprick cast a tiny image of the world onto a mirror. The instrument was the precursor to the camera; some painters—Vermeer was one—had used it as a tool to achieve an extraordinary level of detail in their work. Howard was exploring this, too.
Norah listened, awash in the night, struck by his imagery: the world projected on a darkened interior wall, tiny figures caught in light but moving. It was so different from her sessions with David, when the camera seemed to pin her in place and time, hold her still. That, she realized, sipping her wine in the darkness, was the problem at the heart of everything. Somewhere along the way, she and David had gotten stuck. They circled each other now, fixed in their separate orbits. The conversation shifted, and Howard told stories about the time he’d spent in Vietnam, working as a photographer for the army, documenting battles. “A lot of it was boring, actually,” he said, when Paul expressed his admiration. “A lot of it was just riding up and down the Mekong on a boat. It’s an extraordinary river, though, an extraordinary place.”
After dinner Paul went to his room. A few minutes later, notes from his guitar cascaded amid the sounds of the waves. He had not wanted to come on this vacation; he had given up a week at music camp, and he had an important concert to play just a few days after they got home. David had insisted that he come; he did not take Paul’s musical ambitions seriously. As an avocation it was fine, but not as a career. But Paul was passionate about the guitar, determined to go to Juilliard. David, who had worked so hard to give them every comfort, got tense every time the subject came up. Now Paul’s notes fell through the air, winged and graceful but each one a little cut, too, the point of a knife piercing flesh.
The conversation moved from optics to the rarefied light of the Hudson River Valley, where Howard lived, and southern France, where he liked to visit. He described the narrow road, a thin dust rising, and the fields of pulsing sunflowers. He was all voice, hardly more than a shadow next to her, but his words moved through her like Paul’s music did, somehow both inside and outside her at once. David poured more wine and changed the subject, and then they were standing, stepping into the brightly lit living room. David pulled his series of black-and-white photos from his portfolio, and he and Howard launched into an intent discussion about the qualities of light.
Norah lingered. The photographs they were discussing