The Memory Keeper's Daughter Part 4

"But thanks," she said. "I appreciate the thought."

"My infinite pleasure," he said seriously, and then he stood up to go.

Caroline watched from the window as he went to his truck, climbing up the steps into the cab and turning once to wave from the open doorway. She waved back, happy to see his smile, so ready and so easy, surprised by the tug in her heart. She had an impulse to run after him, remembering the narrow bed in the back of the cab where he sometimes slept and the way he'd touched Phoebe's forehead so gently. Surely a man who lived such a solitary life could keep her secrets, contain her dreams and fears. But his engine caught, and smoke billowed up from the silver pipe on his cab, and then he was pulling carefully out of the parking lot and onto the quiet street and away.

For the next twenty-four hours, Caroline slept and woke on Phoebe's schedule, staying up just long enough to eat. It was strange; she had always been particular about meals, fearing undisciplined snacking as a sign of eccentricity and self-absorbed solitude, but now she ate at odd hours: cold cereal straight from the box, ice cream spooned from the carton while standing at her kitchen counter. It was as if she had entered some twilight zone of her own, some state halfway between sleep and waking, where she would not have to consider too fully the consequences of her decisions, or the fate of the baby sleeping in her dresser drawer, or her own.

On Monday morning she got up in time to call in sick to work. Ruby Centers, the receptionist, answered the phone.

"Are you all right, honey?" she asked. "You sound awful."

"It's the flu, I think," Caroline said. "I'll probably be out a few days. Anything happening there?" she asked, trying to make her voice casual. "Dr. Henry's wife have the baby?"

"Well, I sure don't know," Ruby said. Caroline imagined her thoughtful frown, her desk swept clear and ready for the day, a little vase of plastic flowers on the corner. "No one else is in yet, except about a hundred patients. Looks to be everyone else has got your flu, Miss Caroline."

The minute Caroline hung up there was a knock on the front door. Lucy Martin, no doubt. Caroline was surprised it had taken her this long.

Lucy was wearing a dress with big bright pink flowers on it, an ap.r.o.n with ruffles edged in pink, and fuzzy slippers. When Caroline opened the door she stepped right in, carrying half a loaf of banana bread wrapped in plastic.

Lucy had a heart of gold, everyone said so, but her very presence set Caroline's teeth on edge. Lucy's cakes and pies and hot dishes were her tickets into the center of every drama: deaths and accidents, births and weddings and wakes. There was something not quite right about her eagerness, an eerie kind of voyeurism in her need for bad news, and Caroline usually tried to keep a distance.

"I saw your visitor," Lucy said now, patting Caroline's arm. "My goodness! Quite a good-looking fellow, wasn't he? I just couldn't wait to get the scoop."

Lucy sat down on the sofa bed, now folded up. Caroline took the armchair. The bedroom door, where Phoebe slept, stood open.

"You're not sick, dear?" Lucy was saying. "Because, come to think of it, usually you're long gone by this time in the morning."

Caroline studied Lucy's eager face, aware that whatever she said would travel swiftly through town-that in two days, or three, someone would come up to her in the grocery store or at church and inquire about the stranger who had spent the night at her apartment.

"That was my cousin you saw last night," Caroline said easily, amazed all over again at this sudden facility she'd developed, the fluidity and ease of her lies. They came to her whole; they didn't even make her blink.

"Oh, I wondered, wondered," Lucy said, looking a little disappointed.

"I know," Caroline answered. And then, in a preemptive strike that amazed her when she thought about it later, she went on. "Poor Al. His wife is in the hospital." She leaned a little closer, lowered her voice. "It's so sad, Lucy. She's only twenty-five, but they think she might have brain cancer. She's been falling down a lot, so Al brought her in from Somerset to see the specialist. And they have this little baby. I told him, Look, go and be with her, stay in the hospital day and night if you have to. Leave the baby with me. And I think because I'm a nurse they felt comfortable with that. I hope you haven't been bothered with her crying."

For a few instants Lucy was stunned to silence, and Caroline understood the pleasure-the power-that comes from delivering a bolt from the blue.

"Poor, poor things, your cousin and his wife! How old is the baby?"

"Just three weeks," Caroline said, and then, inspired, she stood up. "Wait here."

She went into the bedroom and lifted Phoebe from the dresser drawer, keeping the blankets wrapped close around her.

"Isn't she beautiful?" she asked, sitting down next to Lucy.

"Oh, she is. She's lovely!" Lucy said, touching one of Phoebe's tiny hands.

Caroline smiled, feeling an unexpected surge of pride and pleasure. The features she had noted in the delivery room-the sloping eyes, the slightly flattened face-had become so familiar that she hardly noticed them. Lucy, with her untrained eye, didn't see them at all. Phoebe was like any baby, delicate, adorable, fierce in her demands.

"I love looking at her," Caroline confessed.

"Oh, that poor little mother," Lucy whispered. "Do they expect she'll live?"

"No one knows," Caroline said. "Time will tell."

"They must be devastated," Lucy said.

"Yes. Yes, they are. They've completely lost their appet.i.tes," Caroline confided, thereby heading off the arrival of one of Lucy's famous hot dishes.

For the next two days, Caroline did not go out. The world came to her in the form of newspapers, grocery deliveries, milkmen, the sounds of traffic. The weather changed and the snow was gone as suddenly as it had come, cascading down the sides of buildings and disappearing into drains. For Caroline, the broken days blurred together into a stream of random images and impressions: the sight of her Ford Fairlane, its battery recharged, being driven into the lot; the sunlight streaming through cloudy windows; the dark scent of wet earth; a robin at the feeder. She had her spells of worry, but often, sitting with Phoebe, she was surprised to find herself completely at peace. What she had told Lucy Martin was true: she loved looking at this baby. She loved sitting in the sunlight and holding her. She warned herself not to fall in love with Phoebe; she was just a temporary stop. Caroline had watched David Henry often enough at the clinic to believe in his compa.s.sion. When he had raised his head from the desk that night and met her eyes, she had seen in them an infinite capacity for kindness. She had no doubt that he would do the right thing, once he got over the shock.

Every time the phone rang she started. But three days pa.s.sed with no word from him.

On Thursday morning there was a knock on the door. Caroline hurried to answer it, adjusting the belt of her dress, touching her hair. But it was only a deliveryman, holding a vase full of flowers: dark red and pale pink in a cloud of baby's breath. These were from Al. My thanks for the hospitality, My thanks for the hospitality, he'd written on the card. he'd written on the card. Maybe I'll see you on my next run. Maybe I'll see you on my next run.

Caroline took them inside and arranged them on the coffee table. Agitated, she picked up The Leader, The Leader, which she hadn't read in days, slipped off the rubber band, and skimmed through the articles, not really taking in any of them. Escalating tensions in Vietnam, social announcements about who had entertained whom the previous week, a page of local women modeling the new spring hats. Caroline was about to throw the paper down when a black-bordered square caught her eye. which she hadn't read in days, slipped off the rubber band, and skimmed through the articles, not really taking in any of them. Escalating tensions in Vietnam, social announcements about who had entertained whom the previous week, a page of local women modeling the new spring hats. Caroline was about to throw the paper down when a black-bordered square caught her eye.

Memorial Service For Our Beloved Daughter Phoebe Grace Henry Born and Died March 7, 1964 Lexington Presbyterian Church Friday, March 13, 1964, at 9 a.m.

Caroline sat down slowly. She read the words once and then again. She even touched them, as if this would make them clearer somehow, explicable. With the paper still in her hands, she stood up and went to the bedroom. Phoebe slept in her drawer, one pale arm outflung against the blankets. Born and died. Caroline went back into the living room and called her office. Ruby picked up on the first ring.

"I don't suppose you're coming in?" she said. "It's a madhouse here. Everyone in town seems to have the flu." She lowered her voice then. "Did you hear, Caroline? About Dr. Henry and his babies? They had twins after all. The little boy is fine; he's precious. But the girl, she died at birth. So sad."

"I saw it in the paper." Caroline's jaw, her tongue, felt stiff. "I wonder if you'd ask Dr. Henry to call me. Tell him it's important. I saw the paper," she repeated. "Tell him that, will you, Ruby?" Then she hung up and sat staring out at the sycamore tree and the parking lot beyond.

An hour later he knocked at her door.

"Well," she said, showing him in.

David Henry came in and sat on her sofa, his back hunched, turning his hat in his hand. She sat down in the chair across from him, watching him as if she'd never seen him before.

"Norah put the announcement in," he said. When he looked up she felt a rush of sympathy despite herself, for his forehead was lined, his eyes bloodshot, as if he hadn't slept in days. "She did it without telling me."

"But she thinks her daughter died," Caroline said. "That's what you told her?"

He nodded, slowly. "I meant to tell her the truth. But when I opened my mouth, I couldn't say it. At that moment, I thought I was saving her pain."

Caroline thought of her own lies, streaming out one after the other.

"I didn't leave her in Louisville," she said softly. She nodded at the bedroom door. "She's in there. Sleeping."

David Henry looked up. Caroline was unnerved, for his face was white; she had never before seen him shaken.

"Why not?" he asked, on the edge of anger. "Why in the world not?"

"Have you been there?" she asked, remembering the pale woman, her dark hair falling into the cold linoleum. "Have you seen that place?"

"No." He frowned. "It came highly recommended, that was all. I've sent other people there, in the past. I've heard nothing negative."

"It was awful," she said, relieved. So he hadn't known what he was doing. She wanted to hate him still, but she remembered how many nights he had stayed at the clinic, treating patients who couldn't afford the care they needed. Patients from the countryside, from the mountains, who made the arduous trip to Lexington, short on money, long on hope. The other clinic partners hadn't liked it, but Dr. Henry had not stopped. He wasn't an evil man, she knew that. He wasn't a monster. But this-a memorial service for a living child-that was monstrous.

"You have to tell her," she said.

His face was pale, still, but determined. "No," he said. "It's too late now. Do whatever you have to do, Caroline, but I can't tell her. I won't."

It was strange; she disliked him so much for these words, but she felt with him also at that moment the greatest intimacy she had ever felt with any person. They were joined together now in something enormous, and no matter what happened they always would be. He took her hand, and this felt natural to her, right. He raised it to his lips and kissed it. She felt the press of his lips on her knuckles and his breath, warm on her skin.

If there had been any calculation in his expression when he looked up, anything less than pained confusion when he released her hand, she would have done the right thing. She would have picked up the phone and called Dr. Bentley or the police, and she would have confessed it all. But he had tears in his eyes.

"It's in your hands," he said, releasing her. "I leave it to you. I believe the home in Louisville is the right place for this child. I don't make the decision lightly. She will need medical care she can't get elsewhere. But whatever you have to do, I will respect that. And if you choose to call the authorities, I will take the blame. There will be no consequences for you, I promise."

His expression was weighted. For the first time Caroline thought beyond the immediate, beyond the baby in the next room. It had not really occurred to her before that their careers were in jeopardy.

"I don't know," she said slowly. "I have to think. I don't know what to do."

He pulled out his wallet, emptying it. Three hundred dollars-she was shocked that he carried this much with him.

"I don't want your money," she said.

"It's not for you," he told her. "It's for the child."

"Phoebe. Her name is Phoebe," Caroline said, pus.h.i.+ng away the bills. She thought of the birth certificate, left blank but for his signature in David Henry's haste that snowy morning. How easy it would be to type in Phoebe's name, and her own.

"Phoebe," he said. He stood up to go, leaving the money on the table. "Please, Caroline, don't do anything without telling me first. That's the only thing I ask. That you give me warning, whatever it is you decide."

He left, then, and everything was the same as it had been: the clock on the mantel, the square of light on the floor, the sharp shadows of bare branches. In a few weeks the new leaves would come, feathering out on the trees and changing the shapes on the floors. She had seen all this so many times, and yet the room seemed strangely impersonal now, as if she had never lived here at all. Over the years she had bought very few things for herself, being naturally frugal and imagining, always, that her real life would happen elsewhere. The plaid sofa, the matching chair-she liked this furniture well enough, she had chosen it herself, but she saw now that she could easily leave it. Leave all of it, she supposed, looking around at the framed prints of landscapes, the wicker magazine rack by the sofa, the low coffee table. Her own apartment seemed suddenly no more personal than a waiting room in any clinic in town. And what else, after all, had she been doing here all these years but waiting?

She tried to silence her thoughts. Surely there was another, less dramatic way. That's what her mother would have said, shaking her head, telling her not to play Sarah Bernhardt. Caroline hadn't known for years who Sarah Bernhardt was, but she knew well enough her mother's meaning: any excess of emotion was a bad thing, disruptive to the calm order of their days. So Caroline had checked all her emotions, as one would check a coat. She had put them aside and imagined that she'd retrieve them later, but of course she never had, not until she had taken the baby from Dr. Henry's arms. So something had begun, and now she could not stop it. Twin threads ran through her: fear and excitement. She could leave this place today. She could start a new life somewhere else. She would have to do that, anyway, no matter what she decided to do about the baby. This was a small town; she couldn't go to the grocery store without running into an acquaintance. She imagined Lucy Martin's eyes growing wide, the secret pleasure as she relayed Caroline's lies, her affection for this discarded baby. Poor old spinster, Poor old spinster, people would say of her, people would say of her, longing so desperately for a baby of her own. longing so desperately for a baby of her own.

I'll leave it in your hands, Caroline. His face aged, clenched like a walnut. His face aged, clenched like a walnut.

The next morning, Caroline woke early. It was a beautiful day and she opened the windows, letting in the fresh air and the scent of spring. Phoebe had woken twice in the night, and while she slept Caroline had packed and carried her things to the car in the darkness. She had very little, as it turned out, just a few suitcases that would fit easily in the trunk and the backseat of the Fairlane. Really, she could have left for China or Burma or Korea at a moment's notice. This pleased her. She was pleased with her own efficiency, too. By noon yesterday she had made all the arrangements: Goodwill would take the furniture; a cleaning service would handle the apartment. She had stopped the utilities and the newspaper, and she had written letters to close her bank accounts.

Caroline waited, drinking coffee, until she heard the door slam downstairs and Lucy's car roar into life. Quickly, then, she picked Phoebe up and stood for a moment in the doorway of the apartment where she had spent so many hopeful years, years that seemed as ephemeral now as if they had never happened. Then she shut the door firmly and went down the stairs.

She put Phoebe in her box on the backseat and drove into town, pa.s.sing the clinic with its turquoise walls and orange roof, pa.s.sing the bank and dry cleaners and her favorite gas station. When she reached the church she parked on the street and left Phoebe asleep in the car. The group gathered in the courtyard was larger than she'd expected, and she paused at its outside edge, close enough to see the back of David Henry's neck, flushed pink from the cold, and Norah Henry's blond hair swept up in a formal twist. No one noticed Caroline. Her heels sank into the mud at the edge of the sidewalk. She eased her weight to her toes, remembering the stale smells of the inst.i.tution Dr. Henry had sent her to last week. Remembering the woman in her slip, her dark hair falling to the floor.

Words drifted on the still morning air.

The night is as clear as day; the darkness and light are to thee both alike.

Caroline had woken at all hours. She'd stood eating crackers at the kitchen window in the middle of the night. Her days and nights had become indistinguishable, the comforting patterns of her life shattered once and for all.

Norah Henry wiped at her eyes with a lace handkerchief. Caroline remembered her grip as she pushed one baby out and then the other, and the tears in her eyes, then, too. This would destroy her, David Henry had declared. And what would it do if Caroline stepped forward now with the lost baby in her arms? If she interrupted this grief, only to introduce so many others?

Thou has set our misdeeds before thee, and our secret sins in the light of thy countenance.

David Henry s.h.i.+fted his weight as the minister spoke. For the first time Caroline understood in her body what she was about to do. Her throat closed and her breath grew short. The gravel seemed to press up through her shoes, and the group in the courtyard trembled in her sight, and she thought she might fall. Grave, Caroline thought, watching Norah's long legs bending, so graceful, kneeling suddenly in the mud. Wind caught at Norah's short veil, pulled at her pillbox hat.

For the things that are seen are transient, but the things that are unseen are eternal.

Caroline watched the minister's hand and, when he spoke again, the words, though faint, seemed addressed not to Phoebe but to herself, some kind of finality that could not be reversed.

We have committed her body to the elements, earth to earth, ashes to ashes, dust to dust. The Lord bless her and keep her, the Lord make his face to s.h.i.+ne upon her and give her peace.

The voice paused, the wind moved in the trees, and Caroline pulled herself together, wiped her eyes with her handkerchief, and gave her head a swift shake. She turned and went to her car, where Phoebe was still sleeping, a wand of sunlight falling across her face.

In every end, then, a beginning. Soon enough she was turning the corner by the monument factory with its rows of tombstones, headed for the interstate. How strange. Wasn't it a bad omen to have a gravestone factory marking the entrance to a city? But then she was beyond it all, and when she reached the split in the highway she chose to go north, to Cincinnati and then to Pittsburgh, following the Ohio River to the place where Dr. Henry had lived a part of his mysterious past. The other road, to Louisville and the Home for the Feebleminded, disappeared in her rearview mirror.

Caroline drove fast, feeling reckless, her heart filling with an excitement as bright as the day. Because, really, what could ill omens matter now? After all, the child who rode beside her was, in the eyes of the world, already dead. And she, Caroline Gill, was vanis.h.i.+ng from the face of the earth, a process that left her feeling light, then lighter, as if the car itself had begun to float high over the quiet fields of southern Ohio. All that sunny afternoon, traveling north and east, Caroline believed absolutely in the future. And why not? For if the worst had already happened to them in the eyes of the world, then surely, surely, it was the worst that they left behind them now.

1965.

February 1965 NORAH STOOD, BAREFOOT AND PRECARIOUSLY BALANCED, on a stool in the dining room, fastening pink streamers to the bra.s.s chandelier. Chains of paper hearts, pink and magenta, floated down over the table, trailing across her wedding china, the dark red roses and gilded rims, the lace tablecloth, the linen napkins. As she worked the furnace hummed and strands of crepe paper wafted up, brus.h.i.+ng against her skirt, then falling softly against the floor again, rustling. on a stool in the dining room, fastening pink streamers to the bra.s.s chandelier. Chains of paper hearts, pink and magenta, floated down over the table, trailing across her wedding china, the dark red roses and gilded rims, the lace tablecloth, the linen napkins. As she worked the furnace hummed and strands of crepe paper wafted up, brus.h.i.+ng against her skirt, then falling softly against the floor again, rustling.

Paul, eleven months old, sat in the corner beside an old grape basket full of wooden blocks. He had just learned to walk, and all afternoon he'd amused himself by stomping through this, their new house, in his first pair of shoes. Every room was an adventure. He had dropped nails down the registers, delighting in the echoes they made. He'd dragged a sack of joint compound through the kitchen, leaving a narrow white trail in his wake. Now, wide-eyed, he watched the streamers, as beautiful and elusive as b.u.t.terflies, then pulled himself up on a chair and staggered in pursuit. He caught one pink strand and yanked, swaying the chandelier. Then he lost his balance and sat down hard. Astonished, he began to cry.

"Oh, sweetie," Norah said, climbing down to pick him up. "There, there," she murmured, running her hand over his soft dark hair.

Outside, headlights flashed and disappeared and a car door slammed. At the same time, the phone began to ring. Norah carried Paul into the kitchen and picked up the receiver just as someone knocked on the door.

"h.e.l.lo?" She pressed her lips to Paul's forehead, damp and soft, straining to see whose car was in the driveway. Bree wasn't due for an hour. "Sweet baby," she whispered. And then into the phone she said again, "h.e.l.lo?"

"Mrs. Henry?"