The Dangers of Self-Interest

All the time he was thinking of the snow, the silver car floating into a ditch, the deep quiet of this empty clinic.

In “March 1964, Part I,” David has just delivered his twins at the Lexington clinic, and he has seen that the baby girl has Down syndrome. He mechanically attends to the details of her care, his thoughts elsewhere. He considers that the circumstances created by the snowstorm present an alternative to bringing her home. The snow prevented he and his wife Norah from making the trip to the hospital, and instead they are in a deserted clinic. His colleague Dr. Bentley who was supposed to handle the delivery spun out into a ditch and couldn’t be present. His wife is deeply sedated. No one but the attending nurse, Caroline Gill, knows of the existence of the baby girl. In this moment, David’s plan takes shape to send the baby to an institution and tell the world that she died, ultimately setting the plot of the novel into motion.

Surely Norah Henry would want to hold this child, even if she couldn’t keep her. Surely this was none of Caroline’s affair. Yet she did not turn around. She turned on the radio again—this time she found a station of classical music—and drove on.

In “March 1964, Part II,” Caroline has just driven away from the clinic where she and David delivered his twins and where Norah lies sedated, unaware of the birth of Phoebe. Having seen the signs of Down syndrome along with David, Caroline agreed to take Phoebe to the Home for the Feebleminded, where Phoebe would reside for the rest of her life. Caroline has second thoughts, however, as her nursing instincts caution her that mothers want and need to hold their newborns. She realizes that by making this request of her, David has deviated from proper medical protocols and has involved her in a clandestine purpose. Caroline understands that the decision to institutionalize the baby should be made by both husband and wife. Instead of acting on her sound ethical and moral principles, Caroline turns on the radio to drown out her misgivings and continues on her way.

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.

In “March 1964, Part IV,” Caroline has brought the Henrys’ baby home to her apartment instead of leaving her at the institution as David had instructed. Analyzing his actions and her responsibilities has left her paralyzed with indecision about how to proceed. Motivated by sincere concern for the welfare of an unwanted child, Caroline contemplates keeping her. Professional ethics and common sense tell her she violated her Hippocratic oath, abducted a child, and committed records fraud. In the rational world, Caroline has a duty to report the incident and turn over the baby to the proper authorities. In her emotional state, however, the confluence of grandiose dreams and an imagined romance with David bear her along in an alternate reality. The use of the word fate shrouds the possibility of a course correction in the inevitability of the course taken.

Safety versus Risk-Taking

He began to feel as if he were somehow removed from the scene of this birth, both there and also floating elsewhere, observing from some safe distance.

In “March 1964, Part I,” a moment of panic seizes David when he finds out the obstetrician would not be able to be at Norah’s delivery and he would have to care for her himself. As an orthopedic surgeon, David was outside his area of expertise. He had to call to mind the five deliveries he had done years before in medical school. Norah’s labor has progressed to the final stage where the contractions move the baby through the birth canal to the outside world. David monitors the baby’s position and prepares for any complications while controlling Norah’s pain. He finds he must set aside his instinctive protectiveness and empathy for this woman he loves to give her the best care. Controlling his emotions requires becoming an observer above the million different things that could go wrong.

Outside, the landscape shimmered in the light and heat, and children from the neighborhood, children whose parents were younger and thus less acquainted with the possibility of disaster, shouted to one another in the distance.

As Caroline drives the Henrys’ newborn baby girl to the Home for the Feebleminded in “March 1964, Part II,” she reminisces about her lonely and isolated life as the only child born to middle-aged parents. She understands that their loving overprotectiveness sprang from long experience with the unpredictability of life. From her adult vantage point, Caroline shows her own hard-won wisdom by characterizing younger parents as operating in blissful ignorance. Caroline’s reflection seems to touch on the Henrys’ disaster of having a Down syndrome baby. The insight also foreshadows her decision to parent the stolen baby, Phoebe, an action that will bring calamity into Norah’s life. Caroline’s vivid childhood memories of missing the bright sunshine and energetic play reach into the present as an unrequited yearning for connection, informing her decision to raise Phoebe as her own.

His 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 but the memory of love—nothing, now, but bones.

In “May 1970, Part II,” Paul falls out of a tree and breaks his arm. At the hospital, his parents David and Norah argue about culpability for exposing their child to danger and what they should have done differently to keep him safe. David, an orthopedic surgeon, initiates medical treatment. As David studies the x-ray of the break, he recalls his first experience discovering the hidden structure of bones in the human body at a shoe store foot scanner. The subcutaneous order inspired him to look at people for clues to their inner selves. David remembers how, as a child, he had studied his sister June, who had a fatal congenital heart condition. His memory turns bitter with thoughts of her death. The fearlessness with which she faced the trials of her life and the joy she took in simple pleasures did not save her. June’s vulnerability stays with David, internalized as a sense of his own lack of safety and his powerlessness to protect those he loves.

The Benefits of Change

‘When we come back we’ll have our baby with us,’ she said. ‘Our world will never be the same.’

In “March 1964, Part I,” Norah speaks these words as she and David leave their home to embark on the drive to the clinic for the delivery of her baby. Although she is in active labor with the baby coming imminently, she turns in the driveway to look at the house where they have lived their honeymoon existence as a married couple. She touches David to also look, as if to fix the memory between them forever. With an open heart, she anticipates, prepares for, and accepts change, expecting the birth to enrich their lives. Norah has no reason to know that this happy reflection on the life-altering milestone of a new baby foreshadows a more ominous future. David’s inability to embrace radical change with the birth of his Down syndrome baby will ultimately destroy his family.

For Caroline Gill was thirty-one, and she had been waiting a long time for her real life to begin. Not that she had ever put it that way to herself. But she had felt since childhood that her life would not be ordinary. A moment would come—she would know it when she saw it—and everything would change.

This observation is found in “March 1964, Part II.” Caroline grew up as the only child born late in life to an older mother and father. They treated her like precious china and kept her safe in the house away from other children, who represented possible harm. Dreams rather than activities filled Caroline’s solitary days. Once in high school, she tested the waters of her imagined future exploits and achievements. She found that caution had been ingrained in her, as when fear of public performance stymied her desire to be a famous pianist. Still, Caroline’s sense of a transcendent destiny came to the fore at the moment of decision about keeping Phoebe or giving her back to Norah. Caroline was able to embrace the dramatic changes required to keep Phoebe because her imaginative self-fulfilling prophecy gave her optimism and fearlessness.

She had imagined that, married, she would be some sort of lovely bud, wrapped in the tougher, resilient calyx of the flower. Wrapped and protected, the layers of her own life contained within another’s. But instead she had found her own way, building a business, raising Paul, traveling the world.

In “July 1988, Part II,” Norah and Paul walk through the Louvre grounds in Paris, discussing David’s sudden death. Norah watches an elderly couple, remembering how she had once envisioned her marriage ripening to the deep knowledge and acceptance she sees in their tender interactions. Here, she reflects back on her early expectations for marriage as a metaphor. She would be a delicate, beautiful bud about to bloom in David’s protective care as they grew together. Instead, David’s withdrawal into his own world dissipated her dream of shared support. She had to change from a sheltered young girl needing to be cared for to a strong, self-sufficient woman caring for others. Norah accepts without bitterness that she turned the disappointment of the unfulfilled perfect partnership into independent accomplishments.

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