The Memory Keeper's Daughter

I just finished reading this book. I found the following synopsis at www.ket.org/pressroom/2006/01/KBKCL_000801.html

Kim Edwards' new novel, The Memory Keeper's Daughter, is an extended study of the effect of lies and secrecy on intimate family relationships. Set primarily in the author's adopted hometown of Lexington, the novel recounts 25 years in the lives of Dr. David Henry and his wife Norah, beginning with their courtship in the mid-1960s and ending with the exposure of the lie that has gradually destroyed their marriage and that threatens to destroy the happiness of their son. Edwards' beautifully written, mesmerizing story of deceit, betrayal and forgiveness is the January selection for bookclub@ket .

Dr. Henry is a self-made man determined to spare his family the kind of pain and loss that has marred his own life. When Norah goes into labor during a late winter snowstorm, the Henrys are unable to get to the hospital in time. So David enlists the help of his nurse, Caroline, to deliver the baby at their medical office. After the birth of a healthy baby boy, the unexpected happens. A second child, a girl, is born, and Henry immediately sees that she has Down syndrome. In the heat of the moment, he decides to give the child up and tell his wife that the baby died at birth. This decision leads to irrevocable and far-reaching consequences--for Norah, for Caroline, for the two children, and most of all, for David himself.

I have to quote some passages to be able to write further about this. This reminds me of writing papers in college... I actually miss that! But here's a warning--if you haven't read this book and you think you might, read no further because PLOT SPOILERS FOLLOW.

The first passage I flagged was on page 127:

"Norah's world had changed when Phoebe died. All her joys were set into stark relief--by that loss and by the possibility of further loss she now glimpsed in every moment."

"David . . . . grew irritated with her projects, her committees, her plans. But Norah could not sit still; it made her too uneasy. So she arranged meetings and filled up her days, always with the desperate sense that if she let down her guard, even for a moment, disaster would follow."

p. 135:
"Since the birth of her children . . . Norah could no longer understand the world in the same way. Her losss had left her feeling helpless, and she fought that helplessness by filling up her days."

p. 153:
"[David's] sister, this girl who loved wind, who laughed at the sun on her face and was not afraid of snakes. She had died at age twelve, and by now she was nothing the memory of love--nothing, now, but bones. And his daughter, six years old, walked in the world, but he did not know her."

p. 155:
"From the corner of his eye [David] saw Norah watching them. Away from the bright motion of the party, she carried her sadness like a dark stone clenched in her palm. He longed to comfort her, but he could think of nothing to say. He wished he had some kind of X-ray vision for the human heart: for Norah's and his own.
'I wish you were happier,' he said softly. 'I wish there were something I could do.'"

p. 234:

[Caroline] collected the photo albums and the stray pictures she'd been meaning to sort . . . then took out a piece of paper and wrote to David.
Phoebe was confirmed yesterday. She was so sweet in her white dress, eyelet fabric with pink ribbons. She sang a solo at the church. I'm sending a picture of the garden party we had later. It's hard to believe how big she's gotten, and I'm starting to feel worried about what the future holds. I suppose this was what was on your mind the night you handed her to me. I've fought so hard all these years and sometimes I'm terrified of what will happen next, and yet--
Here she paused, wondering at her impulse to reply. It wasn't for the money. Every cent of it went into the bank; over the years Caroline had saved nearly $15,000, all of it held in trust for Phoeve. Perhaps Caroline had simply wanted him to understand what he was missing. Here, she wanted to say, grabbing David Henry by the collar, here is your daughter: Phoebe, thirteen years old, a smile like the sun on her face.
She put her pen down, thinking of Phoebe in her white dress, singing with the choir, holding the kitten. How could she tell him all this and then not honor his request to meet his daughter? Yet if he came here, after all these years-- what would happen then? She didn't think she loved him anymore, but maybe she did. Maybe she was still angry with him, too, for the choices he'd made, for never really seeing who she was. It troubled her to discover this hardness in her own heart. What if he'd changed, after all? But what if he hadn't? He might hurt Phoebe as he'd once hurt her, without even knowing it had happened."

p. 246

"Are you happy?" he asked. "Have you been happy, Caroline? Has Phoebe?"

and later, her response:

"Do you really want to know?" she asked at last, looking him straight in the eye. "Because you never wrote back, David. Except for that one time, you never asked a single thing about our lives. Not for years."

And later... part of his response:

"Look, I know you don't realize this, but I kept every letter you ever sent. And when you stopped writing, I felt like you'd slammed a door in my face."

And still talking about the letters:

"I read them. I first I had to force myself, to be honest. Later I wanted to know what was happening, even though it was painful. You gave me little glimpses of Phoebe. Little scraps from the fabric of your lives. I looked forward to that."

Because they're in a public place where his presence and attention is in demand, David asks Caroline to stay so they can talk more. She nodded slightly, and he says,
"Good. We'll have dinner, all right? . . . But I was wrong, all those years ago. I want more than just the scraps."

p 251:
In some deep place in her heart, Caroline had kept alive the . . . notion that somehow David Henry had once known her as no one else ever could. But it was not true. He had never even glimpsed her."

On pg 257, he examines the pictures Caroline had given him of Phoebe.

On pg 258, he thinks about the ways his decision, his secret, had affected his son:
"Paul suffered for it, he knew that. David had tried so hard to give him everything. He had tried to be a good father. . . . Yet his very efforts had created losses David had never anticipated."

p 274
When David meets a young pregnant teenager, he has a conversation with her about the daughter he gave away:
"I realized it was wrong," David said. "But by then it was too late."
"It's never too late." [she replied].

p 365
Nora discovers the photos David has taken over the years of babies, girls, young women the age of their missing daughter, she has these thoughts:
"Always, all these years, she had felt her daughter's presence, a shadow, standing just beyond every photo that was taken. Phoebe, lost at birth, lingered just out of sight, as if she had risen moments earlier and left the room, as if her scent, the brush of air from her passing, still moved in the spaces she'd left. Norah had kept this feeling to herself, fearing that anyone who heard her would think her sentimental, even crazy. It astonished her now, it brought tears to her eyes, to realize how deeply David, too, had felt their daughter's absence. He had looked for her everywhere, it seemed--in every girl, in each young woman--and had never found her."

pg 370
When Caroline shows up to tell Norah about Phoebe,
part of what she says is, "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."
Norah asks, "Does she know about me? About Paul?"
Caroline says, "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 blameyou 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."

381
As Nora explains things to Paul, one of the things she says is, "I keep trying to be thankful that she was good to Phoebe, but there's a part of me that's just raging."
Paul closed his eyes for a moment, trying to hold all these ideas together. The world felt flat, strange, and unfamiliar.

386

No one spoke. Phoebe was gazing at Paul, and after a long moment she reached across the space between them and touched his cheek, lightly, gently, as if to see if he was real. Paul nodded without speaking, looking at her gravely; her gesture seemed right to him, somehow. Phoebe wanted to know him, that was all. He wanted to know her too, but he had no idea what to say to her this sudden sister, so intimately connected to him yet such a stranger.

p 396
In a conversation with Paul, Norah says,
"But you and I and Phoebe, we have a choice. To be bitter and angry, or to try and 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."

"You can't fix it," she said softly. "You can't fix the past, Paul."
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 here. Day by day. I mean, she is my sister."

p 400
Phoebe, his sister, a secret kept for a quarter of a century.

401
For the rest of his life, he realized, he would be torn like this . . . and yet propelled beyond all this by her direct and guileless love.
By her love, yes. And, he realized . . . by his own new and strangely uncomplicated love for her.