by Kim Edwards
She did not get out of the car. The trash can was rolling in the street. Dark shapes—cats—lurked at the edges of the trash, scattered in an arc. Lights flashed on in the house to her right, and a man came out in his robe and slippers, hurrying down the sidewalk to her car.
“Are you all right?” he asked, leaning down to look in the window as she rolled it slowly open. The cool night air lapped at her face. “What happened out here? Are you all right? Your forehead’s bleeding,” he added, pulling a handkerchief from his pocket.
“It’s nothing,” Norah said, waving away his handkerchief, suspiciously wrinkled. She pressed her palm gently to her forehead again, wiping away another smear of blood. The camera, still dangling from her wrist, tapped against the steering wheel. She slipped it off and put it carefully beside her on the seat. “It’s my anniversary,” she informed the stranger. “My heel’s bleeding, too.”
“Do you need a doctor?” the man asked.
“My husband’s a doctor,” Norah said, noting the man’s uncertain expression, aware that she had perhaps not made much sense a moment earlier. Was, perhaps, not making much sense now. “He’s a doctor,” she repeated firmly. “I’ll go find him.”
“I’m not sure you should be driving,” the man said. “Why don’t you leave the car here and let me call an ambulance?”
At his kindness her eyes filled with tears, but then she imagined it, the lights and sirens and gentle hands, how David would come hurrying and find her in the ER, disheveled and bloody and somewhat drunk: a scandal and a disgrace.
“No,” she said, becoming very careful of her words. “I’m fine, really. A cat ran out and startled me. But truly, I’m fine. I’ll just go home now, and my husband will attend to this cut. It’s really nothing.”
The man hesitated for a long moment, the streetlight shining silver in his hair, before he shrugged and nodded once and stepped back onto the curb. Norah drove carefully, slowly, using her turn signals properly on the empty street. In the rearview mirror she saw him, arms folded, watching her until she turned the corner and disappeared.
The world was quiet as she drove back through the familiar streets, the effects of the wine beginning to ebb. Her new house was ablaze with lights in every window, upstairs and down, light pouring out like something liquid, something that had overflowed and could no longer be contained. She parked in the driveway and got out, standing for a moment on the damp grass, rain falling softly and beading on her hair, her coat. Inside, she glimpsed David sitting on the sofa. Paul was in his arms, sleeping with his head resting lightly on David’s shoulder. She thought of how she’d left things, the spilled wine and trailing streamers, the ruined roast. She pulled her coat around her and hurried up the steps.
“Norah!” David met her at the door, still carrying Paul. “Norah, what happened to you? You’re bleeding.”
“It’s okay. I’m okay,” she said, refusing David’s hand when he tried to help her. Her foot hurt, but she was glad for the sharp pain; a counterpoint to the throbbing in her head, it seemed to run straight through her in a line and hold her steady. Paul was sound asleep, his breathing slow and even. She rested the palm of her hand lightly on his small back.
“Where’s Bree?” she asked.
“She’s looking for you,” David said. He glanced into the dining room and she followed his gaze, saw the ruined dinner, the streamers all pooled on the floor. “When you weren’t home, I panicked and called her. She brought Paul over, and then she went out looking for you.”
“I was at the old house,” Norah said. “I hit a trash can.” She put her hand to her forehead and closed her eyes.
“You were drinking.” He made the statement calmly.
“Wine with dinner. You were late.”
“There are two empty bottles, Norah.”
“Bree was here. It was a long wait.”
He nodded. “Those kids tonight, the ones in the crash? There was beer all over the place. I was terrified, Norah.”
“I wasn’t drunk.”
The phone rang and she picked it up, heavy in her hand. It was Bree, her voice swift as water, wanting to know what had happened. “I’m okay,” Norah said, trying to speak calmly and clearly. “I’m fine.” David was watching her, studying the dark lines on her palm where the blood had settled and dried. She pressed her fingers over them and turned away.
“Here,” he said gently, once she hung up, touching her arm. “Come here.”
They went upstairs. While David settled Paul into his crib, Norah eased off her ruined stockings and sat on the edge of the tub. The world was becoming clearer and steadier, and she blinked in the bright lights, trying to put the events of the evening in their proper order. When David came back, he brushed the hair from her forehead, his gestures gentle and precise, and started cleaning the cut.
“Hope you left the other guy in worse shape,” he said, and she imagined that he might say this same thing to the patients who came through his office: small talk, banter, empty words as a distraction from the work he was doing.
“There was no one else,” she said, thinking of the silver-haired man leaning into her window. “A cat startled me, and I swerved. But the windshield—oh!” she said, as he put antiseptic on her cut. “Oh, David, that hurts.”
“It won’t last long,” he said, putting his hand on her shoulder for a moment. Then he knelt down by the tub and took her foot in his hand.
She watched him pick out the glass. He was careful and calm, absorbed in his thoughts. She knew he would attend to any patient with these same practiced motions.
“You are so good to me,” she whispered, longing to bridge the distance between them, the distance she had made.
He shook his head and paused in his work and looked up.
“Good to you,” he repeated slowly. “Why did you go there, Norah, to our old house? Why don’t you want to let it go?”
“Because it’s the final thing,” she said at once, surprised by the sureness and sorrow in her voice. “The final way we leave her behind.”
In the brief instant before he looked away there was, on David’s face, a flash of tension, of anger quickly repressed.
“What would you have me do that I’m not doing? I thought this new house would make us happy. It would make most people happy, Norah.”
At his tone, fear rushed through her; she could lose him too. Her foot throbbed, and her head, and she closed her eyes briefly at the thought of the scene she had caused. She did not want to be stuck forever in this dark static night, David an unreachable distance away.
“All right,” she said. “I’ll call the realtor tomorrow. We should take that offer.”
A film closed over the past as she spoke, a barrier as brittle and fragile as ice forming. It would grow and strengthen. It would become impenetrable, opaque. Norah felt this happening and she feared it, but now she feared more what would happen if it shattered. Yes, they would move on. This would be her gift to David and to Paul.
Phoebe she would keep alive in her heart.
David wrapped her foot in a towel and sat back on his heels.
“Look, I don’t see us moving back there,” he said, gentler now that she’d conceded. “But we could. If you really wanted that, we could sell this place and move back.”
“No,” she said. “We live here now.”
“But you’re so sad,” he said. “Please don’t be sad. I didn’t forget, Norah. Not our anniversary. Not our daughter. Not anything.”
“Oh, David,” she said. “I left your present in the car.” She thought of the camera, its precise dials and levers. The Memory Keeper, it said on the box, in white italic letters; this, she realized, was why she’d bought it—so he’d capture every moment, so he’d never forget.
“That’s all right,” he said, standing. “Wait. Wait right here.”
He ran down the stairs. She sat on the edge of the tub for a moment longer, then stood and limped across the hall to Paul’s room. The carpet was dark blue
and thick beneath her feet. She had painted clouds on the pale blue walls and hung a mobile of stars above the crib. Paul slept beneath the drifting stars, the blanket thrown off, his small hands outflung. She kissed him gently and tucked him in, running her hand over his soft hair, touching her index finger against his palm. He was so big now, walking and beginning to talk. Those nights almost a year ago, when Paul had nursed so intently and David had filled the house with daffodils: where had they gone? She remembered the camera, and how she’d walked through their empty house determined to record every detail, a hedge against time.
“Norah?” David came into the room and stood behind her. “Close your eyes.”
A cool line shimmered on her skin. She looked down to see emeralds, a long sequence of dark stones, caught in the gold stream of the chain against her skin. To match her ring, he was saying. To match her eyes.
“It’s so beautiful,” she whispered touching the warm gold. “Oh, David.”
His hands were on her shoulders then, and for an instant she stood again amid the sound of rushing water from the mill, happiness as full around her as the night. Don’t breathe, she thought. Don’t move. But there was no stopping anything. Outside, rain fell softly, and seeds stirred in the dark wet earth. Paul sighed and shifted in his sleep. He would wake tomorrow, grow, and change. They’d live their lives day by day, each one taking them another step away from their lost daughter.
March 1965
THE SHOWER RUSHED AND STEAM SWIRLED, MISTING THE mirror and the window, clouding the pale moon. Caroline paced in the tiny purple bathroom, holding Phoebe close. Her breathing was light and rapid, her small heart beat so quickly. Be well, my baby, Caroline murmured, stroking her soft dark hair. Be better, sweet girl, be well. She paused, tired, to look out at the moon, a smear of light caught in the sycamore branches, and Phoebe’s cough started again, deep in her chest. Her body grew rigid beneath Caroline’s hands as she barked the air out of her constricted throat, the sounds sharp, wheezing. This was croup, a textbook case. Caroline stroked Phoebe’s back, hardly bigger than her hand. When the coughing spell ended, she started walking again so she wouldn’t sway herself to sleep on her feet. More than once this year she’d started awake to find herself standing and Phoebe, miraculously, still safe in her arms.
Stairs creaked, then floorboards, nearer, and then the purple door swung open in a rush of cool air. Doro, wearing a black silk robe over her nightgown, her gray hair falling loose around her shoulders, came in.
“Is it bad?” she asked. “It sounds just awful. Should I get the car?”
“I don’t think so. But could you shut the door? The steam helps.”
Doro pushed the door shut and sat on the edge of the tub.
“We woke you,” Caroline said, Phoebe’s soft breath against her neck. “Sorry.”
Doro shrugged. “You know me and sleep. I was up anyway, reading.”
“Anything interesting?” Caroline asked. She wiped at the window with the cuff of her robe; moonlight fell into the garden three floors below and shone like water on the grass.
“Science journals. Dull as dust, even for me. Sleep being the goal.”
Caroline smiled. Doro had a PhD in physics; she worked in the university department her father had once chaired. Leo March, brilliant and well known, was now in his eighties, physically strong but subject to lapses of memory and sense. Eleven months ago, Doro had hired Caroline as his companion.
A gift, this job: she knew that. She had emerged from the Fort Pitt tunnel onto the high bridge over the Monongahela River, emerald hills rising out of the river flats, the city of Pittsburgh gleaming suddenly before her, immediate, vivid, so startling in its vastness and its beauty that she had gasped and slowed, afraid of losing control of the car.
For one long month she had lived in a cheap motel on the edge of town, circling want ads and watching her savings dwindle. By the time she’d come to this interview, her euphoria had turned into dull panic. She rang the bell and stood on the porch, waiting. Bright yellow daffodils swayed against the overgrown spring grass; next door, a woman in a quilted housecoat swept soot from her steps. The people at this house had not bothered; Phoebe’s car seat rested on the gritty accumulation of several days. Dust like blackened snow; Caroline’s footprints were stark and pale behind her.
When Dorothy March, tall and slender in a trim gray suit, finally opened the door, Caroline ignored her wary glance at Phoebe, lifted the car seat, and stepped inside. She took a seat on the edge of an unsteady chair, its wine-velvet cushions faded to pink except for a few dark places near the upholstery studs. Dorothy March sat down across from her, on a couch of cracked leather supported on one end by a brick. She lit a cigarette. For several moments she studied Caroline, her blue eyes quick and alive. She did not say anything right away. Then she cleared her throat, exhaling smoke.
“Quite frankly, I wasn’t counting on a baby,” she said.
Caroline pulled out her résumé. “I’ve been a nurse for fifteen years. I’d bring a great deal of experience and compassion to this position.”
Dorothy March took the papers in her free hand and studied them.
“Yes, you do seem to have a lot of experience. But it doesn’t say here just where you’ve worked. You are not at all specific.”
Caroline hesitated. She had tried a dozen different answers to this question at a dozen different interviews in these last weeks, and they had all come to nothing.
“That’s because I ran away,” she said, nearly giddy. “I ran away from Phoebe’s father. And so I can’t tell you where I’m from, and I can’t give you any references. That’s the only reason I don’t already have a job. I’m an excellent nurse, and you’d be lucky to get me, frankly, given what you’re offering to pay.”
At this Dorothy March gave a sharp, startled laugh. “What a bold statement! My dear, it’s a live-in position. Why in the world would I take such a chance on a perfect stranger?”
“I’ll start now for room and board,” Caroline persisted, thinking of the motel room with its peeling wallpaper and stained ceiling, the room she could not afford to keep another night. “For two weeks. I’ll do that, and you can decide.”
The cigarette had burned to nothing in Dorothy March’s hand. She looked at it, then ground it out in the overflowing ashtray.
“But how would you manage?” she mused. “And with a baby too? My father is not a patient man. He will not be a patient patient, I assure you.”
“A week,” Caroline had replied. “If you don’t like me in a week, I’ll go.”
Now nearly a year had passed. Doro stood up in the steam-softened bathroom. The sleeves of her black silk robe, printed with bright tropical birds, slipped down to her elbows. “Let me take her. You look exhausted, Caroline.”
Phoebe’s wheezing had abated and her color had improved; her cheeks were faintly pink. Caroline handed her over, feeling the sudden coolness of her absence.
“How was Leo today?” Doro asked. “Did he give you any grief?”
For a moment Caroline didn’t answer. She was so tired, and she had traveled so far in this past year, one moment to the next, and her careful solitary life had been utterly transformed. Somehow she had come to be here in this tiny purple bathroom, a mother to Phoebe, a companion to a brilliant man with a failing mind, an unlikely but certain friend to this woman Doro March: the two of them strangers a year ago, women who might have passed each other on the street without a second glance or a glimmer of connection, their lives now woven together by the demands of their days and a cautious, sure respect.
“He wouldn’t eat. He accused me of putting scouring powder in the mashed potatoes. So—a fairly typical day, I’d say.”
“It’s not personal, you know,” Doro said softly. “He wasn’t always like this.”
Caroline turned off the shower and sat on the edge of the purple tub.
Doro nodded at the steamy window. Phoebe’s hands were pale, like stars, against her robe. “That
used to be our playground, over there on the hill. Before they put the freeway in. Herons used to nest in the trees, did you know that? My mother planted daffodils one spring, hundreds of bulbs. My father came home from work on the train every day at six o’clock, and he’d go straight over there and pick her a bunch of flowers. You wouldn’t have known him,” she said. “You don’t.”
“I know,” Caroline said gently. “I realize that.”
They were silent for a moment. The faucet dripped, and steam swirled.
“I think she’s asleep,” Doro said. “Will she be okay?”
“Yes. I think so.”
“What’s wrong with her, Caroline?” Doro’s voice was intent now, her words a determined rush. “My dear, I know nothing about babies, but even I can sense that something’s not right. Phoebe is so beautiful, so sweet, but there’s something wrong, isn’t there? She’s nearly a year old and only now learning to sit up.”
Caroline looked out the steam-streaked window at the moon and closed her eyes. As an infant, Phoebe’s stillness had seemed, more than anything, a gift of quiet, of attentiveness, and Caroline could let herself believe nothing was wrong. But after six months, when Phoebe was growing but still small for her age, still slack in her arms, when Phoebe would follow a set of keys with her eyes and sometimes wave her arms but never reach to grab them, when she showed no signs of sitting on her own, Caroline had started taking Phoebe to the library on her day off. At the wide oak tables of the Carnegie, in the airy, spacious, high-ceilinged rooms, she stacked up the books and articles and began to read, grim journeys into gloomy institutions, shortened lives, no hope. It was a strange sensation, a pit opening in her stomach at every word. And yet there was Phoebe stirring in her car seat, smiling, waving her hands and cooing: a baby, not a case history.
“Phoebe has Down’s syndrome,” she forced herself to say. “That’s the term.”
“Oh, Caroline,” Doro said. “I’m so sorry. This is why you left your husband, isn’t it? You said he didn’t want her. Oh, my dear, I’m so very, very sorry.”