The Memory Keeper’s Daughter: Chapter 22: July 1, 1989 Summary & Analysis

Since his death, David’s photographs have become popular and valuable. Norah enters his old darkroom studio for the first time in years in order to get the collection ready for some curators to come view the following day. She is nervous about the task ahead of her, afraid of going through boxes that contain years of memories, but she sets to work calmly and methodically, determined to get through it.

As Norah picks through years and years of photographs, she can’t help but be drawn in by her memories. When her emotions grow to be too much she takes a break, going inside for a Coke. As she thinks of her memories in this house, she feels a twinge of sadness at the idea that, in two months, she is going to marry Frederic and “leave this place forever”—the two of them are moving to France.

Norah, refreshed and renewed, returns to the darkroom to finish what she started. As she opens up several new boxes of photographs, she’s puzzled by their contents—they all hold pictures of babies and young girls. The photos are not fetishistic or sexual in nature—the photos seem instead to highlight innocence. The boxes are marked “SURVEY,” and as she opens the last box marked with the same name, she sees that it contains photographs of Paul at every stage of his life. She sees that David has been photographing anonymous girls alongside Paul to keep a “record of [Phoebe’s] absence.” Norah is stunned by her husband’s “silent, secret longing.”

Norah spends several hours looking through the SURVEY boxes, and stops only when she hears the crunch of gravel in the driveway—someone is pulling up to the house. She hurries to the front door and answers it to find a “vaguely familiar” woman standing on the porch. As she looks into the woman’s eyes, she realizes it is Caroline Gill. Norah asks Caroline what she’s doing here, and Caroline says there’s something “rather difficult” she needs to discuss with Norah. Norah tells Caroline that David is dead, but Caroline says she already knows.

Norah is confused, but she lets Caroline come inside. They go together to the kitchen and make small talk while Norah pours them each a glass of water. Norah sits down at the table with Caroline, and Caroline begins speaking. She says there’s no easy way to say what she has to say—she reveals that on the night Phoebe and Paul were born, Phoebe did not die. She explains that Phoebe was born with Down syndrome and that David, believing Phoebe would have a short and painful life, asked Caroline to take her away. Caroline explains that rather than leave Phoebe with strangers, she herself took the baby in—Phoebe, she says, is alive, and “very well.”

Norah is stunned by the information, and tells Caroline that she “must be crazy.” Even as she says the words, though, she feels all the “jagged pieces of her life” start to make sense. Caroline slides some photographs of Phoebe across the table, and Norah asks why Caroline would do such a thing. Caroline admits that, for many years, she believed her motives in taking Phoebe were pure—now, though, she knows well enough to see that she wanted a child of her own badly, and wanted to sustain the secret love she had for David.

Norah thinks back to the memorial service they had for Phoebe, shaking and breathing heavily. She wonders aloud why David would never have told her the truth in all their years together. As she looks back on the years of their marriage, though, she understands what the weight of his terrible secret did to him, and large swaths of their life begin to make “a terrible kind of sense.”

Caroline slides a piece of paper with an address and phone number on it over to Norah. She explains that Phoebe has had a happy life—she is going to move into a group home next month, and has maintained a good job at a photocopy shop for years. Caroline says that Phoebe does not know anything about David or Norah, and that if Norah decides she doesn’t want to meet Phoebe, things will stay that way. Norah says she doesn’t know what she wants—she’s in shock. Caroline says that Norah can come visit any time she wants, then stands up to leave.

After Caroline departs, Norah stumbles through the house, thinking of all the mundane tasks she has to do. She has to take care of David’s photos, meet with a furniture appraiser, and tomorrow, host Paul. She wonders how she’s going to get through any of it with all the anger and grief now swirling inside of her. Norah goes back out to David’s studio—she knows that his collection is valued at about fifty thousand dollars, but as she looks upon the photographs, she feels only revulsion. She throws the boxes haphazardly out onto the lawn, then goes inside to take a shower.

For the rest of the evening, Norah drinks and naps, slipping in and out of sleep and dreaming of Phoebe. She wakes at dawn and looks outside to see that David’s photographs are scattered everywhere. Norah gets dressed, goes outside, and drags as many boxes as she can to the backyard. She places them in a pile, and lights them on fire. “You bastard,” she thinks as she watches David’s life’s work go up in flames.