Caroline took a seat in the breakfast nook while Norah filled two glasses with ice and water. David's final note—1 fixed the bathroom sin't. Happy Birthday—was tacked onto the bulletin board just be?hind Caroline's shoulder. Norah thought impatiently of the photos waiting in the garage, of all she had to do that couldn't wait.
"You've got bluebirds," Caroline observed, nodding at the wild, chaotic garden.
"Yes. It took years to attract them. I hope the next people will feed them."
"It must be strange to be moving."
"It's time," Norah said, getting out two coasters and putting the glasses on the table. She sat down. "But you didn't come to ask about that."
"No."
Caroline took a drink, then placed her hands flat on the table as if, Norah sensed, to steady them. But when she spoke she seemed calm, resolved.
"Norah—may I call you Norah? That's how I've thought of you, all these years."
Norah nodded, still perplexed, increasingly unnerved. When was the last time Caroline Gill had crossed her mind ? Not in ages, and never except as part of the fabric of the night when Paul was born.
"Norah," Caroline said, as if reading her mind, "what do you re?member about the night your son was born?"
"Why do you ask?" Norah's voice was firm, but she was already leaning back, pulling away from the intensity in Caroline's eyes, from some swirling undercurrent, from her own fear of what might be coming. "Why are you here, and why are you asking me that?"
Caroline Gill didn't answer right away. The lilting voices of the bluebirds flashed through the room like motes of light.
"Look, I'm sorry," Caroline said. "I don't know how to say this. There isn't an easy way, I suppose, so I'll just come out with it. Norah, that night when your twins were born, Phoebe and Paul, there was a problem."
"Yes," Norah said sharply, thinking of the bleakness she had felt after the birth, joy and bleakness woven together, and the long hard path she had taken to reach this moment of steady calm. "My daughter died," she said. "That was the problem."
"Phoebe did not die," Caroline said evenly, looking straight at her, and Norah felt caught in the moment as she had been all those years ago, holding on to that gaze as the known world shifted around her. "Phoebe was born with Down's syndrome. David be?lieved the prognosis was not good. He asked me to take her to a place in Louisville where such children were routinely sent. It wasn't uncommon, in 1964, to do that. Most doctors would have advised the same. But I couldn't leave her there. I took her and moved to Pittsburgh. I've raised her all these years. Norah," she added gently, "Phoebe is alive. She's very well."
Norah sat very still. The birds in the garden were fluttering, call?ing. She was remembering, for some reason, the time she had fallen through an unmarked grate in Spain. She had been walking on a sunny street, carefree. Then a rush, and she was up to her waist in a ditch with a sprained ankle and long bloody scrapes on her calves. I'm okay, I'm okay, she had kept telling the people who helped her out, who took her to the doctor. Brightly, unconcerned, blood seep?ing from her cuts: I'm okay. It was only later, alone and safe in her room, when she closed her eyes and felt that rush again, that loss of control, and wept. She felt this way now. Shaking, she held onto the edge of the table.
"What?" she said. "What did you say?"
Caroline said it again: Phoebe, not dead but taken away. All these years. Phoebe, growing up in another city. Safe, Caroline kept saying. Safe, well cared for, loved. Phoebe, her daughter, Paul's twin. Born with Down's syndrome, sent away.
David had sent her away.
"You must be crazy," Norah said, though even as she spoke so many jagged pieces of her life were falling into place that she knew what Caroline was saying must be true.
Caroline reached into her purse and slid two Polaroids across the polished maple. Norah couldn't pick them up, she was trembling too hard, but she leaned close to take them in: a little girl in a white dress, chubby, with a smile that lit her face, her almond-shaped eyes closed in pleasure. And then another, this same girl years later, about to shoot a basketball, caught in the instant before she jumped. She looked a little like Paul in one, a little like Norah in the other, but mostly she was just herself: Phoebe. Not any of the images so neatly filed away in David's folders but simply herself. Alive, and some?where in the world.
"But why?" The anguish in her voice was audible. "Why would he do this? Why would you?"
Caroline shook her head and looked out into the garden again.
"For years I believed in my own innocence," she said. "I believed I'd done the right thing. The institution was a terrible place. David hadn't seen it; he didn't know how bad it was. So I took Phoebe, and I raised her, and I fought many, many fights to get her an edu?cation and access to medical care. To make sure she would have a good life. It was easy to see myself as the hero. But I think I always knew, underneath, that my motives weren't entirely pure. I wanted a child and I didn't have one. I was in love with David too, or thought I was. From afar, I mean," she added quickly. "It was all in my own head. David never even noticed me. But when I saw the funeral announcement, I knew I had to take her. That I'd have to leave anyway, and I couldn't leave her behind."
Norah, caught in a wild turmoil, went back to those blurry days of grief and joy, Paul in her arms and Bree handing her the phone, saying, You have to put this to rest. She had planned the whole me?morial service without telling David, each arrangement helping her return to the world, and when David had come home that night she'd fought his resistance.
What must it have been like for him, that night, that service?
And yet he had let it all happen.
"But why didn't he tell me?" she asked, her voice a whisper. "All these years, and he never told me."
Caroline shook her head. "I can't speak for David," she said. "He was always a mystery to me. I know he loved you, and I believe that as monstrous as this all seems, his initial intentions were good ones. He told me once about his sister. She had a heart defect and died young, and his mother never got over her grief. For what it's worth, I think he was trying to protect you."
"She is my child." Norah said, the words torn out of some deep place in her body, some old long-buried hurt. "She was born of my flesh. Protect me? By telling me she'd died?"
Caroline didn't answer, and they sat for a long time, the silence gathering between them. Norah thought of David in all those pho?tos, and in all the moments of their lives together, carrying this se?cret with him. She hadn't known, she hadn't guessed. But now that she'd been told, it made a terrible kind of sense.
At last Caroline opened her purse and took out a piece of paper with her address and telephone number on it. "This is where we live," she said. "My husband, Al, and I, and Phoebe. This is where Phoebe grew up. She has had a happy life, Norah. I know that's not much to give you, but it's true. She's a lovely young woman. Next month, she's going to move into a group home. It's what she wants. She has a good job in a photocopy shop. She loves it there, and they love her."
"A photocopy shop?"
"Yes. She's done very well, Norah."
"Does she know?" Norah asked. "Does she know about me? About Paul?"
Caroline glanced down at the table, fingering the edge of the photo. "No. I didn't want to tell her until I'd talked to you. I didn't know what you'd want to do, if you'd want to meet her. I hope you will. But of course I won't blame you if you don't. All these years— oh, I'm so sorry. But if you want to come, we're there. Just call. Next week or next year."
"I don't know," Norah said slowly. "I think I'm in shock."
"Of course you are." Caroline stood up.
"May I keep the photos?" Norah asked.
"They're yours. They've always been yours."
On the porch, Caroline paused and looked at her, hard.
"He loved you very much," she said. "David always loved you, Norah."
Norah nodded, remembering that she'd said the same thing to Paul in Paris. She watched from the porch as Caroline walked to the car, wondering about the life Caroline was driving back to, what complexities and mysteries it held.
Norah stood on the porch for a long time. Phoebe was alive, in the world. That knowledge was a pit opening, endless, in her heart. Loved, Caroline had said. Well cared for. But not by Norah, who had worked so hard to let her go. The dreams she'd had, all that searching through the brittle frozen grass, came back to her, pierced her.
She went back in the house, crying now, walking past the shrouded furniture. The appraiser would come. Paul was coming too, today or tomorrow; he'd promised to call first but sometimes he just showed up. She washed the water glasses and dried them, then stood in the silent kitchen, thinking of David, all those nights in all those years when he rose in the dark and went to the hospital to mend someone who was broken. A good person, David. He ran a clinic, he tended those in need.
And he had sent their daughter away and told her she was dead.
Norah slammed her fist on the counter, making the glasses jump. She made herself a gin and tonic and wandered upstairs. She lay down, got up, called Frederic, and hung up when the machine answered. After a time she went back out to David's studio. Every?thing was the same, the air so warm, so still, the photographs and boxes scattered all over the floor, just as she'd left them. At least fifty
You bastard, she whispered, watching the photographs flame high before they blackened and curled and disappeared.
Light to light, she thought, moving back from the heat, the roar, the powdery residue swirling in the air.
Ashes to ashes.
Dust, at last, to dust.
July 2-4, 1989
I OOK, IT'S FINE FOR YOU TO SAY THAT NOW, PAUL." MICHELLE
I .?,;: was standing by the window with her arms folded, and when she turned her eyes were dark with emotion, veiled, too, by her anger. "You can say anything you want in the abstract, but the fact is, a baby would change everything—and mostly for me."
Paul sat on the dark-red sofa, warm and uncomfortable on this summer morning. He and Michelle had found it on the street when they first started living together here in Cincinnati, in those giddy days when it meant nothing to haul it up three flights of stairs. Or it meant exhaustion and wine and laughter and slow lovemaking later on its rough velvet surface. Now she turned away to look out the window, her dark hair swinging. An airy emptiness, a rushing, filled his heart. Lately, the world felt fragile, like a blown egg, as if it might shatter beneath a careless touch. Their conversation had begun amicably enough, a simple discussion of who would take care of the cat while they were both out of town: she in Indianapolis for a concert, he in Lexington to help his mother. And now, sud?denly, they were here in this bleak territory of the heart, the place to which, lately, they both seemed constantly drawn. Paul knew he should change the subject.
"Getting married doesn't translate directly into babies," he said instead, stubborn.
"Oh, Paul. Be honest. Having a child is your heart's desire. It's not me you want, even. It's this mythical baby."
"Our mythical baby," he said. "Someday, Michelle. Not right away. Look, I just wanted to raise the subject of getting married. It's not a big deal."
She gave a sound of exasperation. The loft had a pine floor and white walls and splashes of primary colors in the bottles, the pil?lows, the cushions. Michelle was wearing white too, her skin and hair as warm as the floors. Paul ached, looking at her, knowing she had, in some important sense, already made up her mind. She would leave him very soon, taking her wild beauty and her music with her.
"It's interesting," she said. "I find it very interesting, anyway. That all this is coming up just as my career is about to take off. Not before, but now. In a weird way, I think you're trying to break us up."
"That's ridiculous. Timing has nothing to do with it."
"No?"
"No!"
They didn't speak for several minutes and the silence grew in the white room, filled the space and pressed against the walls. Paul was afraid to speak and more afraid not to, but at last he could not hold back any longer.
"We've been together for two years. Either things grow and change or they die. I want us to keep growing."
Michelle sighed. "Everything changes anyway, with or without a piece of paper. That's what you're not factoring in. And no matter what you say, it is a big deal. No matter what you say, marriage changes everything, and it's always women who make the sacrifices, no matter what anyone says."
"That's theory. That's not real life."
"Oh! You're infuriating, Paul—so damned sure of everything."
The sun was up, touching the river and filling the room with a silvery light, casting wavering patterns on the ceiling. Michelle went into the bathroom and shut the door. A rummaging in draw-ers, the running of water. Paul crossed the room to where she had stood, taking in the view as if this might help him understand her. Then, quietly, he tapped on the door.
"I'm leaving," he said.
A silence. Then she called back. "You'll be back tomorrow night?"
"Your concert's at six, right?"
"Right." She opened the bathroom door and stood, wrapped in a plush white towel, rubbing lotion into her face.
"Okay, then," he said, and kissed her, taking in her scent, the smoothness of her skin. "I love you," he said, as he stepped back.
She looked at him for a moment. "I know," she said. "I'll see you tomorrow."
/ know. He brooded on her words all the way to Lexington. The drive took two hours: across the Ohio River, through the dense traf?fic near the airport, and finally into the beautiful rolling hills. Then he was traveling through the quiet downtown streets, past empty buildings, remembering how it had been when Main Street still was the center of life, the place where people went to shop and eat and mingle. He remembered going into the drugstore, sitting at the ice cream fountain in the back. Scoops of chocolate in a metal cup frosted with ice, the whir of the blender; mingled scents of grilled meat and antiseptic. His parents had met downtown. His mother had ridden on an escalator and risen above the crowd like the sun, and his father had followed her.
