The memory keeper's daughter - Kim Edwards [93]
Norah’s face was very serious. She shook her head. “I don’t know. But what’s that old saying? Do what you love, and the money will follow. Don’t shut the door on his dream.”
“I won’t,” David said. “But I worry. I want him to be secure in life. And Juilliard is a long shot, no matter how good he is. I don’t want Paul to get hurt.”
Norah opened her mouth to speak, but the auditorium grew quiet as a young woman in a dark red dress came on with her violin, and they turned their attention to the stage.
David watched the young woman and all those who followed, but it was Paul’s music that was with him still. When the performances were over, he and Norah made their way to the lobby, stopping to shake hands every few feet, hearing praise for their son. When they finally reached Paul, Norah pushed through the crowd and hugged him, and Paul, embarrassed, patted her on the back. David caught his eye and grinned, and Paul, to his surprise, grinned back. An ordinary moment: again David let himself believe that things would be all right. But seconds later Paul seemed to catch himself. He pulled away from Norah, stepping back.
“You were great,” David said. He hugged Paul, noting the tension in his shoulders, the way he was holding himself: stiff, aloof. “You were fantastic, son.”
“Thanks. I was kind of nervous.”
“You didn’t seem nervous.”
“Not at all,” Norah said. “You had wonderful stage presence.”
Paul shook his hands at his sides, loosely, as if to release leftover energy.
“Mark Miller invited me to play with him at the arts festival. Isn’t that the best?”
Mark Miller was David’s guitar instructor, with a growing reputation. David felt another surge of pleasure.
“Yes, it is the best,” Norah said, laughing. “That’s absolutely the best, indeed.”
She looked up and caught Paul’s pained expression.
“What?” she asked. “What is it?”
Paul shifted, shoving his hands in his pockets, and glanced around the crowded lobby. “It’s just—I don’t know—you sound kind of ridiculous, Mom. I mean, you’re not exactly a teenager, okay?”
Norah flushed. David watched her grow still with hurt, and his own heart ached. She didn’t know the source of Paul’s anger, or his own. She did not know that her discarded clothes fluttered in a wind that he himself had set in motion so many years ago.
“That’s no way to talk to your mother,” he said, taking on Paul’s anger. “I want you to apologize right now.”
Paul shrugged. “Right. Sure. Okay. Sorry.”
“Like you mean it.”
“David”—Norah’s hand was on his arm now—“let’s not make a federal case out of this. Please. Everyone is just a little excited, that’s all. Let’s go home and celebrate. I was thinking I’d invite some people over. Bree said she’d come, and the Marshalls—wasn’t Lizzie good on the flute? And maybe Duke’s parents. What do you think, Paul? I don’t know them very well, but maybe they’d like to come over too?”
“No,” Paul said. He was distant now, looking past Norah at the crowded foyer.
“Really? You don’t want to invite Duke’s family?”
“I don’t want to invite anyone,” Paul said. “I just want to go home.”
For a moment they stood, an island of silence in the midst of the buzzing room.
“All right then,” David said at last, “let’s go home.”
The house was dark when they got there, and Paul went straight upstairs. They heard his footsteps moving to the bathroom and back again; they heard his door shutting softly, the turn of the lock.
“I don’t understand,” Norah said. She had slipped off her shoes and she looked very small to him, very vulnerable, standing in her stocking feet in the middle of the kitchen. “He was so good onstage. He seemed so happy—and then what happened? I don’t understand.” She sighed. “Teenagers. I’d better go talk to him.”
“No,” he said. “Let me.”
He climbed the stairs without turning on the light, and when he reached Paul’s door he paused for a long moment in the darkness, remembering how his son’s hands had moved with such delicate precision over the strings, filling the wide auditorium with music. He had done the wrong thing all those years ago; he had made