Harvesting the Heart (31 page)

He carried Max down to the living room, settling him on the couch in a nest of stuffed pillows. The baby had Nicholas's eyes. After the first day, the dark black had given way to cool sky blue, startling against the red oval of his face. Other than that, Nicholas couldn't tell. It remained too early to see whom Max would take after.

Max's glazed eyes roamed blindly over Nicholas's face, seeming for a moment to come into focus. He started to cry again.

“Jesus fucking Christ,” Nicholas muttered, picking the baby up and starting to walk. He bounced Max on his shoulder as he moved. He sang Motown. He twirled around and around, very fast, and he tried hanging the baby upside down again. But Max would not stop crying.

Nicholas couldn't get away from the sound. It pounded behind his eyes, over his ears. He wanted to put the baby down and run. He was just thinking about it when Paige came downstairs, groggy but resigned, like a prisoner on death row. “I think he's hungry,” Nicholas said. “I couldn't make him stop.”

“I know,” Paige said. “I heard.” She took the baby from Nicholas and rocked him back and forth. Nicholas's shoulders throbbed with relief, as if a huge weight had been removed. Max quieted a little, his crying now a soft, grating whine. “He just ate,” Paige said. She went to sit on the couch and flipped the television on. “Nickelodeon,” she said to nobody. “Max seems to like Nickelodeon.”

Nicholas slipped into the bedroom and set off the test button on his beeper. The soft chirps vibrated against his hip. He opened the door, to find Paige waiting. “I've got to go back to the hospital,” he lied. “Complications on a heart-lung transplant.”

Paige nodded. He pushed past her, fighting the urge to take her into his arms and say,
Let's get away. Just you and I, let's go, and everything will be different.
Instead he went into the bathroom, showering quickly and then changing his shirt, his pants, his socks.

When he left, Paige was sitting in the rocking chair in the nursery. She had her nightgown opened to her belly, still soft and round. Max's mouth was clamped to her right breast. With every tug of his lips he seemed to be pulling in more and more of her. Nicholas's gaze strayed to Paige's face, which was turned to the window. Her eyes held the ragged edge of pain. “It hurts?” Nicholas asked.

“Yes.” Paige did not look at him. “That's what they don't tell you.”

Nicholas drove quickly to Mass General, weaving in and out of traffic. He opened all the windows in the car, and he turned on the radio, some rap station, as loud as possible. He tried to drown out the sound of Max's cries in his ears, the image of Paige when he walked out the door. At least he was able to leave.

When he passed the nurses' station in the ER, Phoebe, who had known him for years, raised her eyebrows. “You're not on call tonight, Dr. Prescott,” she said. “Did you miss me again?”

Nicholas smiled at her. “I can't live without you, Phoebe,” he said. “Run away with me to Mexico.”

Phoebe laughed and opened a patient file. “Such words from a man with a new baby boy.”

Nicholas moved through the halls with the confidence people expected of him. He ran his fingers over the smooth aqua tiles lining the walls of the corridors, heading for the small room kept for the residents on call overnight. It was no more than a closet, but Nicholas welcomed the familiar smell of formaldehyde and antiseptic and blue woven cotton as if he had entered a palatial estate. His eyes swept the neat cot that filled up the room, and then he pulled back the covers. He turned off his beeper and set it on the floor below his head. He drew into his memory the only Lamaze class he had attended, the nurse's low voice washing over the temples of the pregnant women:
Imagine a long, cool white beach.
Nicholas could see himself stretched out on the sand, under a feverish sun. He fell asleep to the music of an invented ocean, beating like a heart.

chapter
16

I
woke up in a pool of my own milk. It had been thirty minutes since I put Max down, and in the other room he was already talking, those high little squeaks he made when he woke up happy. I heard the rattle and spin of the striped wheel on his Busy Box, the toy he didn't recognize yet but kicked from time to time with his feet. Max's gurgles began to get louder, insistent. “I'm coming,” I yelled through the adjoining wall. “Give me a minute.”

I stripped off Nicholas's polo shirt—my own shirts were too tight across my chest—and changed my bra. I wedged soft flannel handkerchiefs into the cups, a trick of the trade I'd discovered after those disposable nursing pads kept bunching up or sticking to my skin. I did not bother putting on a new shirt. Max fed so often that sometimes I would walk around the house topless for hours at a time, my breasts becoming heavier and heavier as they replenished what Max had taken.

Max's little bud mouth was already working on the air when I got to his crib. I lifted him out and unhooked the front of the bra, unsure whether it was the left or right side he'd fed on last, because the whole day just seemed to run together. As soon as I settled into the rocking chair, Max began drinking—long, strong draws of milk that sent vibrations from my breasts to my stomach to my groin. I counted off ten minutes on my watch and then switched him to the other side.

I was in a rush this morning because of my adventure. It was the first time I was going out with Max, just the two of us. Well, I had done it once before, but it had taken me an hour to get his diaper bag together and figure out how to strap his car seat into place, and by the time we got to the end of the block he was screaming so hard to be fed that I decided to just turn around and send Nicholas to the bank when he got home. So for six weeks I had been a prisoner in my own house, a slave to a twenty-one-inch tyrant who could not live without me.

For six weeks I had slept the hours Max dictated, kept him changed and dry as he demanded, let him drink from me. I gave Max so much of my time that I found myself praying for him to take a nap so that I would have those ten or fifteen minutes to myself, and then I'd just sit on the couch and take deep breaths and try to remember what I used to do to fill my days. I wondered how it could happen so quickly: once Max had been inside
me,
existing because of
me,
surviving from
my
bloodstream and
my
body; and now, by quick reversal, I had simply become part of him.

I put Max on his back in the playpen and watched him suck on the corner of a black-and-white geometric-print card. Yesterday a woman from La Leche had come to the house, sent by the hospital for a follow-up visit. I had let her in reluctantly, kicking toys and cloth burping diapers and old magazines under the furniture as I led the way. I wondered if she'd say something about the dust piled on the fireplace mantel, the overflowing trash bins, or the fact that we hadn't fitted our outlets with safety plugs yet.

She didn't comment on the house at all. She walked straight to Max's playpen. “He's beautiful,” she said, cooing at Max, but I wondered if she said that about all the babies she saw. I myself had once believed all babies were cute, but I knew that wasn't true. In the hospital nursery, Max was the best-looking baby by far. For one thing, he looked like a little boy; there was no question. He had ebony hair, tufted and fine, and eyes that were cool and demanding. He was so much like Nicholas that sometimes I found myself staring at him, amazed.

“I've just come to see how the nursing is going,” she said. “I'm sure you're still nursing.”

As if that was the only option,
I thought. “Yes,” I told her. “It's going just fine.” I hesitated and then told her that I was considering giving him one bottle of formula a day—just one—so that if I had to run an errand or take Max out, I could do it without worrying about having to nurse him in public.

The woman had been horrified. “You wouldn't want to do that,” she said. “Not yet, at least. It's only been six weeks, isn't that right? He's still getting used to the breast, and if you give him the bottle, well, who knows what might happen.”

I hadn't answered, thinking,
What might happen, indeed?
Maybe Max would wean himself. Maybe my milk would dry up and I could fit back into my clothes and lose the twelve pounds that still was settled around my waist and hips. I didn't see what the big deal about formula was. After all, I had been brought up on formula. Everyone had, in the sixties. We all turned out okay.

I had offered the woman tea, hoping she wouldn't accept, because I didn't have any. “I have to go along;” she told me, patting my hand. “Do you have any more questions?”

“Yes,” I said without thinking. “When does my life go back to normal?”

And she had laughed and opened the front door. “What makes you think it ever does?” she said, and disappeared down the porch, her shantung suit whispering around her.

Today I had convinced myself otherwise. Today was the day that I started acting like a regular person. Max was only a baby, and there really wasn't any reason that
I
couldn't control the schedule. He didn't
need
to eat every two hours. We would stretch that to four. He didn't
have
to sleep in his crib or his playpen; he could just as easily nap in his car seat while I went grocery shopping or bought stamps at the post office. And if I got up and left the house, breathed some fresh air and gave myself a purpose, I wouldn't find myself exhausted all the time. Today, I told myself, was the day I'd begin all over again.

I was afraid to leave Max alone for even a minute, because I'd read all about crib deaths. I had fleeting visions of Max strangling himself with the Wiggle Worm toy or choking on the corner of the red-balloon quilt. So I tucked him under my arm and carried him into his nursery. I laid him on the carpet while I packed the diaper bag with seven diapers, a bib, a rattle, and, just in case, trial sizes of Johnson's shampoo and Ivory Snow.

“Okay,” I said, turning to Max. “What would you like to wear?”

Max looked up at me and pursed his lips as if he were considering this. It was about sixty degrees outside, and I didn't think he needed a snowsuit, but then again, what did I know? He was already wearing an undershirt and a cotton playsuit embroidered with elephants, a gift from Leroy and Lionel. Max started to squirm on the floor, which meant he was going to cry. I scooped him into my arms and pulled from one of his near-empty dresser drawers a thin hooded sweatshirt and a bulky blue sweater. Layers, that's what Dr. Spock said, and surely with both of these on, Max couldn't catch a cold. I placed him on his changing table, and I had his sweatshirt half on when I realized I needed to change his diaper. I pulled him out of the sweatshirt, making him cry, and started to sing to him. Sometimes it made him quiet right down, no matter what the song. I let myself believe he just needed to hear my voice.

The sweater's arms were too long, and this really annoyed Max, because every time he stuffed his fist into his mouth, fuzz from the wool caught on his lips. I tried to roll the sleeves back, but they got chunky and knotted. Finally, I sighed. “Let's just go,” I told Max. “You won't even notice after a while.”

This was the day of my six-week checkup at Dr. Thayer's. I was looking forward to going; I'd get to see the people I had worked with for years—real adults—and I considered the visit the last one of my pregnancy. After this, I was going to be a whole new woman.

Max fell asleep on the way to Dr. Thayer's, and when we pulled into the parking lot, I found myself holding my breath and gently disengaging my seat belt, praying he would not wake up. I even left the car door ajar, afraid that a slam would start him screaming. But Max seemed to be out for the long haul. I slung his car seat/carrier over my arm, as if he were a basket of harvested grapes, and headed up the familiar stone stairs of the OB/GYN office.

“Paige!” Mary, the receptionist who had replaced me, stood up the minute I walked in the door. “Let me give you a hand.” She came up to me and lifted Max's carrier off my arm, poking her finger into his puffy red cheek. “He's adorable,” she said, and I smiled.

Three of the nurses, hearing my name, swelled into the waiting room. They embraced me and wrapped me in the heady smell of their perfume and the brilliance of their clean white outfits. “You look fabulous,” one said, and I wondered if she didn't see my tangled, hanging hair; my mismatched socks; the pasty wax of my skin.

Mary was the one to shoo them back behind the swinging wooden door. “Ladies,” she said, “we've got an office to run here.” She carried Max to an empty chair, surrounded by several very pregnant women. “Dr. Thayer's running late,” she said to me. “So what's new?”

Mary ran back to the black lacquer desk to answer the phone, and I watched her go. I wanted to push her out of the way, to open the top drawer and riffle through the paper clips and the payment invoices, to hear my own steady voice say “Cambridge OB/GYN.” Before Max was even born, Nicholas and I had decided I'd stay home with him. Art school was out of the question, since we couldn't afford both day care and tuition. And as for me. working, well, the cost of decent day care almost equaled my combined salaries at Mercy and the doctors' office, so it just didn't pay.
You don't want a stranger taking care of him, do you?
Nicholas had said. And I suppose I had to agree. One year, Nicholas told me, smiling.
Let's give it one year, and then we'll see.
And I had beamed back at him, running my palms over my still-swollen belly. One year. How bad could one single year be?

I leaned over and unzipped Max's sweater, opened the first few buttons of the jacket underneath. He was sweating. I would have taken them both off, but that would have awakened him for sure, and I wasn't ready for that. One of the pregnant women caught my eye and smiled. She had healthy, thick brown hair that fell in little cascades to her shoulders. She was wearing a sleeveless linen maternity dress and espadrilles. She looked down at Max and unconsciously rubbed her hands over her belly.