The memory keeper's daughter - Kim Edwards [92]
“Where is he?” David asked, glancing down at his program. “Where’s Paul?”
“Don’t worry, he’s here,” Norah said. To David’s surprise, she took his hand. He felt it, cool in his own, and was washed with an inexplicable relief, believing, for a moment, that nothing had changed; that nothing stood between them after all. “He’ll be out soon.”
Even as she spoke there was a stirring, and then Paul was walking onto the stage. David took him in: tall and lanky, wearing a clean white shirt with the sleeves rolled up and flashing a wry, crooked smile at the audience. David felt briefly astonished. How had it come to be that Paul was nearly grown, standing up here before this darkened room full of people with such confidence and ease? It was nothing David himself would ever have dreamed of doing, and a wave of intense nervousness washed through him. What if Paul failed up there before all these people? He was aware of Norah’s hand in his own as Paul leaned over the guitar, testing a few notes, and then began to play.
It was Segovia, the program noted: two short pieces, “Estudio” and “Estudio Sin Luz.” The notes of these songs, delicate and precise, were intimately familiar. David had heard Paul play these pieces a hundred times, a thousand times, before. All during the vacation in Aruba this music had spilled out of his room, faster or slower, measures and bars repeated again and again. The patterns were as familiar to him now as Paul’s long deft fingers, moving with such sureness over the strings, weaving music in the air. And yet David felt he was hearing it for the first time, and maybe he was seeing Paul for the first time also. Where was the toddler who had pulled off his shoes to taste them, the boy climbing trees and standing up on his bike with no hands? Somehow, that sweet daredevil boy had become this young man. David’s heart filled, beating with such intensity that he wondered for a moment if he might be having a heart attack—he was young for that, only forty-six, but such a thing might happen.
Slowly, slowly, David let himself relax into this darkness, closing his eyes, letting the music, Paul’s music, move through him in waves. Tears rose in his eyes, and his throat ached. He thought of his sister, standing on the porch and singing in her clear sweet voice; music was a silvery language it seemed she’d been born speaking, just as Paul had. A deep sense of loss rose up in him, so forceful, woven of so many memories: June’s voice, and Paul slamming the door shut behind him, and Norah’s clothes scattered on the beach. His newborn daughter, released into Caroline Gill’s waiting hands.
Too much. Too much. David was on the verge of weeping. He opened his eyes and made himself go through the periodic table—hydrogen, helium, lithium—so the knot in his stomach would not twist into tears. It worked, as it always worked in the operating room, to focus his attention. He pushed it all back: June, the music, the powerful rushing love he felt for his son. Paul’s fingers came to rest on the guitar. David pulled his hand from Norah’s. Fiercely, he applauded.
“Are you all right?” she asked, glancing at him. “Are you okay, David?”
He nodded, still not quite trusting himself to speak.
“He’s good,” he said at last, barking the words out. “He’s good.”
“Yes.” She nodded. “That’s why he wants to go to Juilliard.” She was still clapping, and when Paul looked in their direction she blew him a kiss. “Wouldn’t that be wonderful, if it could happen? He has a few years left to practice still, and if he gives it everything he has—who knows?”
Paul bowed, left the stage with his guitar. The applause swelled high.
“Everything he has?” David repeated. “What if it doesn’t work out?”
“What if it does?”
“I don’t know,” David said slowly. “I just think he’s too young to shut doors.”
“He’s so talented, David. You heard him. What if this is a door opening?”
“But he’s only thirteen.”
“Yes, and he loves music. He says he’s most alive when he’s playing the guitar.”
“But—it’s such an unpredictable life. Can he make