The Memory Keeper's Daughter

by Kim Edwards

  She nodded, thoughtful now, and smoothed her skirt with both hands.

  “Your mother is going to France.”

  “Yes,” Paul said, though he tensed at her choice of words: your mother. A phrase you’d use for strangers, and of course they all were. This, finally, was what had pained his mother most, the lost years standing between them, their words so tentative and formal where ease and love should have been. “You and me too, in a couple of months,” he said, reminding Phoebe of the plans they’d finally agreed on. “We’ll go to France and see them.”

  An expression of worry, fleeting as a cloud, crossed Phoebe’s face.

  “We’ll come back,” he added gently, remembering how scared she’d been by his mother’s suggestion that she move with her to France.

  She nodded, but she still looked worried.

  “What is it,” he asked. “What’s wrong?”

  “Eating snails.”

  Paul looked at her, surprised. He’d been joking with his mother and Bree in the vestibule before the wedding, kidding about the feast they’d have in Châteauneuf. Phoebe stood quietly at the edge of the conversation; he hadn’t thought she was listening. This was a mystery too, Phoebe’s presence in the world, what she saw and felt and understood. All he really knew of her he could put on an index card: she loved cats, weaving, listening to the radio, and singing in church. She smiled a lot, was prone to hugs, and was, like him, allergic to beestings.

  “Snails aren’t so bad,” he said. “They’re chewy. Kind of like garlic gum.”

  Phoebe made a face and then she laughed. “Gross,” she said. “That’s gross, Paul.” The breeze moved lightly in her hair, and her gaze was still fixed on the scene before them: the moving guests, the sunlight, the leaves, all woven through with music. Her cheeks were scattered with freckles, just like his own. Far across the lawn, his mother and Frederic lifted a silver cake knife.

  “Me and Robert,” Phoebe said, “we’re getting married too.”

  Paul smiled. He’d met Robert on that first trip to Pittsburgh; they’d gone to the grocery store to see him, tall and attentive, dressed in a brown uniform, wearing a name tag. When Phoebe introduced them, shyly, Robert had immediately taken Paul’s hand and clapped him on the shoulder, as if they were seeing each other after a long absence. Good to see you, Paul. Phoebe and me, we’re getting married, so pretty soon you and me will be brothers; how about that? And then, pleased, not waiting for a response, confident that the world was a good place and that Paul shared his pleasure, he’d turned to Phoebe and put his arm around her, and the two of them had stood there, smiling.

  “It’s too bad Robert couldn’t come.”

  Phoebe nodded. “Robert likes parties,” she said.

  “That doesn’t surprise me,” Paul said.

  Paul watched his mother slip a bite of cake into Frederic’s mouth, touching the corner of his lip with her thumb. She was wearing a dress the color of cream and her hair was short, blond turning silver, making her green eyes look larger. He thought of his father, wondering what their wedding had been like. He’d seen the photos, of course, but that was just the surface. He wanted to know what the light had been like, how the laughter had sounded; he wanted to know if his father had leaned down, like Frederic was now doing, to kiss his mother after she’d licked a bit of frosting from her lips.

  “I like pink flowers,” Phoebe said. “I want lots and lots of pink flowers at my wedding.” She grew serious then, frowned and shrugged, the green dress slipping a little against her collarbone. She shook her head. “But me and Robert, we have to save the money first.”

  The breeze lifted and Paul thought of Caroline Gill, tall and fierce, standing in the hotel lobby in downtown Lexington with her husband, Al, and Phoebe. They’d all met there yesterday, on neutral ground. His mother’s house was empty, a FOR SALE sign in the yard. Tonight, she and Frederic would leave for France. Caroline and Al had driven in from Pittsburgh, and after a polite if somewhat uneasy brunch together they had left Phoebe here for the wedding while they went on a holiday to Nashville. Their first vacation alone, they’d said, and they seemed happy about it. Still, Caroline had hugged Phoebe twice, then paused on the sidewalk to look back through the window and wave.

  “Do you like Pittsburgh?” Paul asked. He’d been offered a job there, a good job with an orchestra; he had an offer from an orchestra in Santa Fe, as well.

  “I like Pittsburgh,” Phoebe said. “My mother says it has a lot of stairs, but I like it.”

  “I might move there,” Paul said. “What do you think?”

  “That would be nice,” Phoebe said. “You could come to my wedding.” Then she sighed. “A wedding costs a lot of money. It’s not fair.”

  Paul nodded. It wasn’t fair, no. None of it was fair. Not the challenges Phoebe faced in a world that didn’t welcome her, not the relative ease of his own life, not what their father had done—none of it. He suddenly, urgently, wanted to give Phoebe any wedding she wanted. Or at least a cake. It would be such small gesture against everything else.

  “You could elope,” he suggested.

  Phoebe considered this, turning a green plastic bracelet on her wrist. “No,” she said. “We wouldn’t have a cake.”

  “Oh, I don’t know. Couldn’t you? I mean, why not?”

  Phoebe, frowning hard, glancing at him to see if he was making fun of her. “No,” she said firmly. “That’s not how you have a wedding, Paul.”

  He smiled, touched by her sureness of how the world worked.

  “You know what, Phoebe? You’re right.”

  Laughter and applause drifted across the sunny lawn as Frederic and his mother finished with the cake. Bree, smiling, raised her camera to take a final picture. Paul nodded to the table where the small plates were being filled, passing from hand to hand. “The wedding cake has six layers. Raspberries and whipped cream in the middle. How about it, Phoebe? You want some?”

  Phoebe smiled more deeply and nodded in reply.

  “My cake is going to have eight layers,” she said, as they walked across the lawn through the voices and the laughter and the music.

  Paul laughed. “Only eight? Why not ten?”

  “Silly. You’re a silly guy, Paul,” Phoebe said.

  They reached the table. Bright confetti was scattered on his mother’s shoulders. She was smiling, gentle in her motions, and she touched Phoebe’s hair, smoothed it back, as if she were still a little girl. Phoebe pulled away, and Paul’s heart caught; for this story, there were no simple endings. There would be transatlantic visits and phone calls, but never the ordinary ease of daily life.

  “You did a good job,” his mother said. “I’m so glad you were in the wedding, Phoebe, you and Paul. It meant a lot to me. I can’t tell you.”

  “I like weddings,” Phoebe said, reaching for a plate of cake.

  His mother smiled a little sadly. Paul watched Phoebe, wondering how she understood what was happening. She seemed not to worry very much about things, but rather to accept the world as a fascinating and unusual place where anything might happen. Where one day, a mother and brother you never knew you had might appear at your door and invite you to be in a wedding.

  “I’m glad you’re coming to visit us in France, Phoebe,” his mother went on. “Frederic and I, we’re both so glad.”

  Phoebe looked up, uneasy again.

  “It’s the snails,” Paul explained. “She doesn’t like snails.”

  His mother laughed. “Don’t worry. I don’t like them either.”

  “And I’m coming back home,” Phoebe added.

  “That’s right,” his mother said gently. “Yes. That’s what we agreed.”

  Paul watched, feeling helpless against the pain that had settled in his body like a stone. In the sharp light he was struck by his mother’s age, a certain thinness to her skin, her blond hair giving way to silver. By her beauty too. She seemed lovely and vulnerable, and he wondered, as he had wondered so often in these past weeks, how
his father could have betrayed her, betrayed them all.

  “How?” he asked softly. “How could he never tell us?”

  She turned to him, serious. “I don’t know. I’ll never understand it. But think how his life must have been, Paul. Carrying this secret with him all those years.”

  He looked across the table. Phoebe was standing next to a poplar tree whose leaves were just beginning to turn, scraping whipped cream off her cake with her fork.

  “Our lives could have been so much different.”

  “Yes. That’s true. But they weren’t different, Paul. They happened just like this.”

  “You’re defending him,” he said slowly.

  “No. I’m forgiving him. I’m trying to, anyway. There’s a difference.”

  “He doesn’t deserve forgiveness,” Paul said, surprised at his bitterness, still.

  “Maybe not,” his mother said. “But you and I and Phoebe, we have a choice. To be bitter and angry, or to try to move on. It’s the hardest thing for me, letting go of all that righteous anger. I’m still struggling. But that’s what I want to do.”

  He considered this. “I was offered a job in Pittsburgh,” he said.

  “Really?” His mother’s eyes were intent now, such a dark green in this light. “Are you going to take it?”

  “I think so,” he said, realizing he’d made up his mind. “It’s a very good offer.”

  “You can’t fix it,” she said softly. “You can’t fix the past, Paul.”

  “I know.” And he did. He’d gone to Pittsburgh that first time believing that help was his to offer, or not. He’d been worried about the responsibility he’d have to undertake, how his life would change with the burden of a retarded sister, and he’d been surprised—astonished, really—to find this same sister saying no, I like my life the way it is, no thank you.

  “Your life is your life,” she went on, more urgently now. “You’re not responsible for what happened. Phoebe’s okay, financially.”

  Paul nodded. “I know. I don’t feel responsible for her. I truly don’t. It’s just—I thought I’d like to get to know her. Day by day. I mean, she is my sister. It’s a good job, and I really need a change. Pittsburgh’s a beautiful city. So, I guess—why not?”

  “Oh, Paul.” His mother sighed, running her hand through her short hair. “Is it really a good job?”

  “Yes. Yes it is.”

  She nodded. “It would be nice,” she admitted slowly, “to have the two of you in the same place. But you have to think of the whole picture. You’re so young, and you’re just beginning to find your way. Know it’s okay for you to do that.”

  Before he could answer, Frederic was there, tapping on his watch, saying they had to leave soon to catch their flight. After a moment’s conversation Frederic went to get the car and his mother turned back to Paul, put one hand on his arm, and kissed his cheek.

  “We’re just about to go, I think. You’ll be taking Phoebe home?”

  “Yes. Caroline and Al said I could stay at their place.”

  She nodded. “Thank you,” she said softly, “for being here. It can’t have been easy for you, for all sorts of reasons. But it has meant so much to me.”

  “I like Frederic,” he said. “I hope you’ll be happy.”

  She smiled and touched his arm. “I’m so proud of you, Paul. Do you have any idea how proud I am of you? How much I love you?” She turned to gaze across the table at Phoebe; she had tucked the cluster of daffodils beneath her arm and the breeze moved her shiny skirt. “I’m proud of both of you.”

  “Frederic is waving,” Paul said, speaking quickly to cover his emotion. “I think it’s time. I think he’s ready. Go and be happy, Mom.”

  She looked at him hard and long again, tears in her eyes, then kissed him on the cheek.

  Frederic crossed the lawn and shook Paul’s hand. Paul watched his mother embrace his sister and give Phoebe her bouquet; he watched Phoebe’s tentative hug in return. Their mother and Frederic climbed into the car, smiling and waving, amid another shower of confetti. The car disappeared around the curve, and Paul made his way back to the table, pausing to say hello to one guest after another, keeping Phoebe’s figure in sight. When he drew near he heard her talking happily to another guest about Robert and her own wedding. Her voice was loud, her speech a little thick and awkward, her excitement uncontained. He saw the guest’s reaction—a strained, uncertain, patient smile—and winced. Because Phoebe just wanted to talk. Because he himself had reacted to such conversations in the very same way, just a few weeks earlier.

  “How about it, Phoebe,” he said, walking over and interrupting. “You want to go?”

  “Okay,” she said, and put her plate down.

  They drove through the lush countryside. It was a warm day. Paul turned off the air-conditioner and rolled down the windows, remembering the way his mother had driven so wildly through these same landscapes to escape her loneliness and grief, the wind whipping through her hair. He must have traveled thousands of miles with her, back and forth across the state, lying on his back, trying to guess where they were by the glimpses of leaves, telephone wires, sky. He remembered watching a steamship move through the muddy waters of the Mississippi, its bright wheels flashing light and water. He had never understood her sadness, though he had carried it with him later, wherever he went.

  Now it was all gone, that sadness: that life was finished, gone, as well.

  He drove fast, edges of autumn everywhere. The dogwoods were already turning, clouds of brilliant red against the hills. Pollen tickled Paul’s eyes and he sneezed several times, but he still kept the windows open. His mother would have had the air-conditioning on, the car as chilly as a florist’s case. His father would have opened his bag and found the antihistamine. Phoebe, sitting straight in the seat beside him, her skin so white, almost translucent, took a Kleenex from a small pack in her large black plastic purse and offered it to him. Veins, pale blue, traced just below the surface of her skin. He could see her pulse moving in her neck, calmly, steadily.

  His sister. His twin. What if she’d been born without Down’s syndrome? Or what if she’d been born as she was, simply herself, and their father had not raised his eyes to Caroline Gill, snow falling in the world outside and his colleague in a ditch? He imagined his parents, so young and so happy, bundling the two of them into the car, driving slowly through the watery streets of Lexington in the March thaw that followed their birth. The sunny playroom adjoining his would have belonged to Phoebe. She’d have chased him down the stairs, through the kitchen and into the wild garden, her face always with him, his laughter an echo of her own. Who would he have been, then?

  But his mother was right; he could never know what might have happened. All he had were the facts. His father had delivered his own twins in the middle of an unexpected storm, following the steps he knew by heart, keeping his focus on the pulse and heart rate of the woman on the table, the taut skin, the crowning head. Breathing, skin tone, fingers and toes. A boy. On the surface, perfect, and a small singing started, deep in his father’s brain. A moment later, the second baby. And then his father’s singing stopped for good.

  They were close to town now. Paul waited for a break in traffic, then turned into the Lexington cemetery, past the gatehouse made of stone. He parked beneath an elm tree that had survived a hundred years of drought and disease and got out of the car. He walked around to Phoebe’s door and opened it, offering his hand. She looked at it, surprised, then up at him. Then she pushed herself out of the seat on her own, still holding the daffodils, their stems crushed and pulpy now. They followed the path for a while, past the monuments and the pond with the ducks, until he guided her across the grass to the stone that marked their father’s grave.

  Phoebe traced her fingers over the names and dates engraved in the dark granite. He wondered again what she was thinking. Al Simpson was the man she called her father. He did puzzles with her in the evenings, and brought her favorite albums home from
his trips; he used to carry her on his shoulders so that she could touch the high leaves of the sycamores. It couldn’t mean anything to her, this slab of granite, this name.

  David Henry McCallister. Phoebe read the words out loud, slowly. They filled her mouth and fell heavily into the world.

  “Our father,” he said.

  “Our father,” she said, “who art in heaven hallowed be thy name.”

  “No,” he said, surprised. “Our father. My father. Yours.”

  “Our father,” she repeated, and he felt a surge of frustration, for her words were agreeable, mechanical, of no significance in her life.

  “You’re sad,” she observed, then. “If my father died, I’d be sad too.”

  Paul was startled. Yes, that was it—he was sad. His anger had cleared, and suddenly he could see his father differently. His very presence must have reminded his father in every glance, with every breath, of the choice he’d made and could not undo. Those Polaroids of Phoebe that Caroline had sent over the years, found hidden in the back of a darkroom drawer after the curators had gone; the single photograph of his father’s family too, the one Paul still had, standing on the porch of their lost home. And the thousands of others, one after another, his father layering image on image, trying to obscure the moment he could never change, and yet the past rising up anyway, as persistent as memory, as powerful as dreams.

  Phoebe, his sister, a secret kept for a quarter of a century.

  Paul walked a few feet back to the gravel path. He paused, his hands in his pockets, leaves swirling up in the eddies of wind, a scrap of newspaper floating over the rows of white stones. Clouds moved against the sun, making patterns on the land, and sunlight flashed on the headstones, the grass and trees. Leaves tapped lightly in the breeze, and the long grass rustled.

  At first the notes were thin, almost an undercurrent to the breeze, so subtle that he had to strain to hear them. He turned. Phoebe, still standing by the headstone, her hand resting on its dark granite edge, had begun to sing. The grass over the graves was moving and the leaves were stirring. It was a hymn, vaguely familiar. Her words were indistinct, but her voice was pure and sweet, and other visitors to the cemetery were glancing in her direction, at Phoebe with her graying hair and bridesmaid’s dress, her awkward stance, her unclear words, her carefree, fluted voice. Paul swallowed, stared at his shoes. For the rest of his life, he realized, he would be torn like this, aware of Phoebe’s awkwardness, the difficulties she encountered in the world simply by being different, and yet propelled beyond all this by her direct and guileless love.