The Memory Keeper’s Daughter: Chapter 9: May 1970 Summary & Analysis

David is developing photographs in his darkroom shed in the backyard when he hears Paul calling for him from the other side of the door. He tells Paul to wait a moment, but Paul opens the door—flooding the room with light and ruining the pictures. David lashes out at Paul, but when Paul appears sorry and frightened, David apologizes for losing his temper and invites Paul into the room. David asks Paul what he has to tell him, and Paul opens his fist to reveal several small, flat stones in his palm. Paul explains that he found them in a creek at one of his friend’s houses. Paul wants David to help him find a description of the rocks in a special book they have, and David follows Paul out of the darkroom. 

Outside, it is a beautiful spring day. The backyard is all set up for a party—Norah has arranged flowers and plates on some tables, and erected a maypole covered in bright ribbons. David tells Paul to hurry inside, promising to follow him and help him look up the rocks. David cleans up the darkroom, enjoying the peace and quiet. When he’s finished, he heads inside to find Norah in the kitchen, and asks her if she needs any help. She insists she’s fine without him. David asks why Norah has gone to so much trouble for the party and didn’t hire caterers, but Norah snaps and says she enjoys using her “talents” in planning and cooking.

David heads upstairs to get ready. Lost in thought as he shaves, thinks about Phoebe and what she might be doing at this moment—every few months, he receives letters and pictures from Caroline. The P.O. boxes they’re delivered from are always in different cities, but the letters are intimate and detail both Caroline and Phoebe’s lives. David keeps these letters locked in a filing cabinet in his darkroom, where Norah and Paul will never find them. Once, David tried to find Caroline and even drove to Cleveland—but he gave up and has not made an attempt to seek her out again. Still, he hopes that one day Caroline will come out of the woodwork and their two families can patch things up. David wants badly “to tell Norah the truth,” and yet can never work up the courage to do so.

Paul comes up to get David, and reminds him that they’re supposed to look at their rock book together. David follows Paul downstairs and helps him look up the kind of rock he’s found—they determined that it’s a fossilized sea animal. Paul, excited, picks up his fossils and runs outside to show Norah. David can see that some of their guests are beginning to arrive. As Norah greets them, David marvels at how his shy, quiet wife has blossomed over the years into someone so gregarious. David thinks that he barely even recognizes Norah.

Paul strings the fossils into a necklace and wears it around his neck while he plays outside. Norah warns him not to play while wearing the necklace, as it’s “dangerous.” David tells Norah to relax and let Paul have fun—she is about to argue back, but Bree and her boyfriend Mark arrive, and Bree agrees with David. 

Bree introduces Mark to David, and as they start having a political discussion, Norah walks away to greet Kay Marshall. David recognizes Mark from the news—he gave a speech on TV during the riots at the University of Kentucky, during which the ROTC building was burned down by protestors. David and Mark talk about their lives amiably, and Mark marvels at David’s humble beginnings and success as a doctor. After Mark and Bree walk away to get a drink, though, David feels empty—his accomplishments mean nothing to him.

David goes up to his darkroom, loads a new roll of film into the camera, and heads back downstairs to photograph the party. He captures as many details as he can, enjoying observing his friends through the eye of his camera, but Norah urges him to put the camera away and join the party. When David insists he’s just enjoying the party in his own way, Norah complains that David is snubbing all her hard work. David apologizes and kisses Norah, but she pulls away and chides him for kissing her in front of their guests.

Paul calls to David and Norah from up in a tree. Norah urges him to get down, but David points out that it’s normal and fun for kids to climb trees. Within a minute, though, David hears a rustle of leaves and a terrible crack—Paul has fallen out of the tree and broken his fossil necklace. David rushes over to Paul and urges him to stay calm while he regains his breath, but Paul begins crying, complaining that his arm hurts badly. David carries Paul to the car so that he can take him to the hospital for X-rays, and Norah joins them, leaving the party behind.

David helps Paul and Norah get settled in a bed in the ER, and then after the X-rays are taken, David intercepts the technician from bringing them to the room and instead takes them into his own office. He takes down his own photographs, pinned up to the lightboards by which he reads his patient’s X-rays, and puts Paul’s up to look at them alone. He is able to see the damage clearly, and though the break is sizable, it’s easily fixed. As David walks back to Paul and Norah, he finds himself thinking of June—nothing, now, but bones.

David takes the X-rays back to Paul and Norah, and shows them both the break. He begins readying materials to make a cast for Paul, but Norah cries, miserable that her son got into an accident—and upset that her careful watching over him and destruction of the wasp’s nest still couldn’t keep him safe. David applies Paul’s cast, and tells him he’ll have to avoid swimming and sports for the summer.

While Paul plays with the stethoscope, David tells  Norah that he’s concerned about her. She tells him he doesn’t have to be—yesterday, she got a job at a travel agency in town. David is clearly unenthusiastic about the news, and Norah berates him for being unsupportive of her dreams. She says that she wants freedom and a life of her own. David retorts that no one is truly free—he certainly isn’t. Paul interrupts them by joking about the things he’s hearing on the stethoscope, and they stop fighting.

Waiting for the elevator, David apologizes to Norah, but she is sick of David seeing himself “as the center of the universe.” Back at home, the party has dissipated, and Bree and Mark are cleaning up the mess. David brings Paul inside and upstairs and administers some aspirin. David thinks of his son’s bones on the X-ray and is full of wonder for his son’s life. He wishes he could “capture on film” the love he feels for Paul. David reads a book to Paul while downstairs, Norah, Mark, and Bree finish tidying up. He looks outside the window and sees a dogwood shedding its petals—he is perturbed because the falling white blooms look, for a moment, “like snow.”