The memory keeper's daughter - Kim Edwards [89]
Later, she would be astonished, not that she had done these things or any of those that followed, but that she had done them on Howard’s bed beneath the open unscreened window, framed like an image in a camera. David was gone, far out at sea with Paul, fishing. Still, anyone might have walked by and seen them.
Yet she did not stop, then or later. He was with her like a fever, a compulsion, an open door into her own possibilities, into what she believed was freedom. Strangely, she found that her secret made the distance between herself and David seem more bearable too. She went back to Howard again and again, even after David remarked about how many walks she was taking, how far she went. Even when, lingering in bed while Howard fixed them both a drink, she fished his shorts off the floor and found a photo of his smiling wife and three small children, inside a letter that said My mother is better, we all miss and love you and will see you next week.
This happened in the afternoon, sunlight glittering on the moving water, heat shimmering up from the sand. The ceiling fan clicked in the dim room and she held the photo, gazed outside into the landscape of the imagination, the brilliant light. In real life, this photo would have cut, swift and sure, but here she felt nothing. Norah slid the photo back and let his shorts slip back to the floor. Here, this did not matter. Only the dream mattered, and the fevered light. For the next ten days, she met him.
August 1977
I
DAVID RAN UP THE STAIRS AND STEPPED INTO THE QUIET foyer of the school, pausing for a moment to get his breath and his bearings. He was late for Paul’s concert, very late. He’d planned to leave the hospital early, but ambulances had pulled in with an older couple as he was walking out the door: the husband had fallen off a ladder and landed on his wife. His leg was broken, and her arm; the leg needed a plate and pins. David called Norah, hearing the barely contained anger in her voice, angry enough himself that he didn’t care, was glad, even, to annoy her. She had married him knowing what his work was, after all. The silence had pulsed between them for a long moment before he hung up.
The terrazzo floor had a faintly pinkish cast, and the lockers that lined the walls of the hallway were dark blue. David stood listening, hearing only his own breathing for a moment, and then a burst of applause drew him down the hall to the big double wooden doors of the auditorium. He pulled one door open and stepped inside, letting his eyes adjust. The place was packed; a sea of darkened heads flowed downward to the brightly lit stage. He scanned them, looking for Norah. A young woman handed him a program, and as a boy in low-slung jeans walked out onto the stage and sat down with his saxophone, she pointed to the fifth name down. David took a deep grateful breath and felt his tension ease. Paul was number seven; he had made it just in time.
The saxophonist began, playing with passion and intensity, hitting one screeching wrong note that sent chills down David’s spine. He scanned the audience again and found Norah in the center near the front, with an empty seat beside her. So she had thought of him, at least, saving him this place. He hadn’t been sure she would; he wasn’t sure, anymore, of anything. Well, he was sure of his anger, and of the guilt that kept him silent about what he’d seen in Aruba; those things certainly stood between them. But he did not have the smallest glimpse into Norah’s heart, her desires or motivations.
The sax player finished with a flourish and stood up to bow. During the applause, David made his way down the dimly lit aisle, climbing awkwardly past those already seated to take his place by Norah.
“David,” she said, moving her coat. “So. You made it after all.”
“It was emergency surgery, Norah,” he said.