The Memory Keeper’s Daughter: Chapter 16: April 1982 Summary & Analysis

At his opening, David tries to focus on the questions an art history professor is asking him about his work—but his eyes keep flicking across the room, trying to keep tabs on Caroline. He is afraid she’s going to leave, but is desperate for her to stay so that they can continue their conversation. As he searches the room after one of the professor’s questions, though, he’s unable to find Caroline, and he excuses himself to search for her.

Caroline is gone. David feels overcome by “loss and grief,” and reaches for the envelope she gave him to flip through the photographs inside. He takes in Phoebe’s “gentle-seeming” face, and is startled by a picture in which she’s playing basketball—the sport Paul “refuse[s] to play.” Rather than going back inside the museum, David begins walking through the streets of Pittsburgh.

David passes his old college neighborhood and travels on through the city streets. He thinks back on the moment he handed Phoebe over to Caroline, and realizes his whole life has “turned around that single action.” His photography, he realizes, has been an attempt “to try and give another moment similar substance,” but has failed to “still the rushing world.”

David realizes his life has passed him by. Norah has become a powerful, successful travel agent and has, he knows, sustained several affairs over the years, while Paul has suffered under the lie at the heart of his parents’ marriage. David realizes his efforts to spare Paul and Norah “poverty and worry and grief”—the things that marked his own childhood—have only “created losses” he never could have foreseen.

David reflects on another lie that has marked his life—the fact that when he was admitted to the University of Pittsburgh, a clerical error shortened his name from David Henry McCallister to simply David Henry. He never told anyone, and took refuge in the new identity—which allowed him distance from his grieving parents, his impoverished childhood, and his past burdens. As David comes upon a river, he considers throwing himself in—but decides against it at the last minute.

In the morning, David boards a bus to West Virginia, and travels to the small town where he grew up. He walks down the quiet, familiar streets and finds them abandoned and covered in graffiti. He knows that he does not belong here, and “never” has—and even as he realizes Paul and Norah must be worried about him, he feels compelled to do something while he’s here.

David walks along the shoulder of the highway into the mountains—towards the house where he grew up. As the home comes into view, David feels “taken […] powerfully into the past,” and half-expects to see his mother and sister waiting on the porch. Even though the roof now sags and the yard is overgrown, as David enters the house, he sees that the floor has been swept clean and there are flowers in jars around the house—someone, he realizes, is living here.

As David looks around more closely, he realizes that there are paper cutouts hanging everywhere around the main room—intricate, detailed, and beautiful little pieces of art. Exhausted, his head throbbing, David sits down on a pile of blankets in the corner and closes his eyes, thinking of his life back in Lexington. He soon falls asleep, and dreams of his childhood and his sister.

David wakes up to find a teenage girl standing nearby in the kitchen, cooking on the stove. It is dark out, and David’s wrists are bound—he cannot sit up. David asks the girl what her name is—she tells him she’s called Rosemary, and that her boyfriend is coming home any minute. David doesn’t believe she has a boyfriend at all, though—the girl moves through the house as if she lives there alone. David asks her for some water, and she brings it to him, but refuses to untie him. David explains that he is the owner of the house, and that technically, Rosemary is trespassing—the girl sarcastically asks if David has “technically” come to claim his property. David admires Rosemary’s wit and fire.

David asks the girl how old she is, and she tells him she’s sixteen. He asks her, again, to untie him, but she refuses. When she turns to face him, David can see that she is pregnant. He tells her he’s a doctor, and asks once more to be released, but Rosemary insists on looking through his wallet. Even after confirming his identity, and the fact that he’s a physician, Rosemary doesn’t trust David. He urges her to look through the envelope in his jacket pocket—it contains pictures of his daughter Phoebe, who is Rosemary’s age. Rosemary looks through the photos and remarks that Phoebe is pretty. 

David asks if Rosemary’s family knows where she is—she says they don’t, and that she can never go back to them. David wishes he could comfort Rosemary, but knows there’s nothing he can say or do. Unsure of what to say, he begins telling Rosemary the story of Phoebe—how she was born with Down syndrome, and how he gave her away. Rosemary is silent for a while, and David asks her when her baby is due. She tells him that she’s due in five months, and also divulges that, although she’s from Pennsylvania, she used to come to West Virginia in the summers to stay with an aunt.

Rosemary picks up some scissors—but instead of untying David, she begins working on a paper cutting. David admires her work, and Rosemary says she learned how to make them from her deceased grandmother, whom she feels closer to when she’s creating. David tells Rosemary about his own photography, and the two of them connect over the fickle demands of artmaking. 

David once again begs Rosemary to untie him. She demands to know how he could give his daughter away, and urges him to correct his mistake—she tells him it’s not too late. David, though, believes it is too late. Every day for over sixteen years, he’s woken up each morning thinking that he would “put things right”—but each day, he’s failed to own up to his lies and mistakes, instead retreating into photography in order to try and “stop time.” David tells Rosemary all about the frustration and regret he feels, and she listens quietly to his entire story. When David can speak no more, Rosemary comes over and unties him, declaring him “free.”