Harvesting the Heart (58 page)

Paige is at the house when Nicholas returns with Max. She sits quietly in front of the porch with her sketch pad and her charcoal. In spite of his threat, Nicholas does not call the police. He does not even acknowledge that he sees her when he carries Max and his diaper bag and the files from the hospital into the house. From time to time that night when he is playing with Max on the living room floor he can see Paige peering in through the window, but he doesn't bother to close the drapes or to move Max into another room.

When Max has trouble falling asleep, Nicholas tries the one thing that always works. Dragging the vacuum cleaner out of the front hall closet, he sets it over the threshold of the nursery and flips the switch so that the whir of the motor drowns out the choked cries of Max's screams. Eventually Max quiets down and Nicholas pulls the vacuum away. It works because of the white noise that distracts Max, but Nicholas thinks it might be genetic. He can remember coming home from thirty-six-hour shifts, falling asleep to the hum of the vacuum as Paige cleaned the house.

Nicholas walks to the front hall and turns out the light. Then he steps to the window, knowing that he'll be able to see Paige without her being able to see him. Her face is silver in the moonlight, her hair a rich bronze glow. Puddled around her are scores of drawings: Max sitting, Max sleeping, Max rolling over. Nicholas can not see among them a single image of himself.

The wind blows a couple of the drawings up the steps of the porch. Before he can even think to stop himself, Nicholas opens the front door in time for them to fly into the hall. He picks them up —one of Max playing with a rattle, one of Max grabbing his own feet—and walks onto the porch. “I think these are yours,” he says, coming to stand beside her.

Paige is on her hands and knees, trying to keep the other drawings from blowing away. She has secured a stack of them under a big rock and has pinned the rest with her elbow. “Thanks,” she says, rolling awkwardly onto her side. She gathers the pictures up and stuffs them inside the front cover of her sketch pad, as if she is embarrassed. “If you want to stay out here,” she says, “I can sit in the car.”

Nicholas shakes his head. “It's cold,” he says. “I'm going to go inside.” He sees Paige draw in her breath, waiting for an invitation, but he's not about to let that happen. “You're very good with Max,” he says. “He's going through this stranger thing now, and he doesn't take to just anybody.”

Paige shrugs. “I think I've grown into him. This is more what I pictured when I thought of a baby—something that sits up and smiles and laughs with you, not just something that eats and sleeps and poops and completely ignores you.” She peers up at him. “I think that you're the one who's very good with Max. Look at what he's turned into. He's like a whole different kid.”

Nicholas thinks of many things he could say, but instead he just nods his head. “Thanks,” he says. He leans against the step of the porch and stretches out his legs. “You can't stay here forever,” he says.

“I hope I don't have to.” Paige tilts her head back and lets the night wash over her face. “When I was in North Carolina, I slept outside with my mother.” She sits up and laughs. “I actually liked it.”

“I'll have to take you camping in Maine,” Nicholas says.

Paige stares at him. “Yes,” she says, “you'll have to.”

A chill sweeps across the lawn, beading the dew and sending a shiver down Nicholas's spine. “You're going to freeze out here,” he says, and he stands before he can say anything else. “I'm going to get you a coat.”

He runs up the porch as if it is a refuge and pulls the first coat he can find out of the hall closet. It is a big woolen overcoat, one of his, and as he holds it out to Paige he sees it will sweep her ankles. Paige steps into the coat and pulls the lapels together. “This is nice,” she says, touching Nicholas's hand.

Nicholas pulls away. “Well,” he says, “I don't want you to get sick.”

“No,” Paige says, “I mean
this.”
She gestures between herself and Nicholas. “Not yelling.” When Nicholas does not say anything, she picks up her sketch pad and her charcoal, and as a second thought she offers a half-smile. “Give Max a kiss for me,” she says.

When Nicholas steps into the safety of the house and stands in the folds of the dark hallway, he is momentarily disoriented. He has to lean against the doorframe and let the room settle before his memory returns. Maybe he believed that at some point he'd stop playing the game and let Paige back; but he can see that isn't going to happen. She's come for Max, only for Max, and something about that is driving him crazy. The feeling is like a fist being driven into his gut, and he knows exactly why. He still loves her. As stupid as it seems, as much as he hates her for what she has done, he can't quite stop that.

He peeks out the window and sees Paige settled in his overcoat and a sleeping bag she's borrowed from some goddamned neighbor. Part of him hates her for being given that comfort, and part of him hates himself for wanting to give her even more. With Paige, there have never been easy answers, only impulses, and Nicholas is beginning to wonder if it has all been a huge mistake. He can't keep doing this; not to himself and not to Max. There has to be a reconciliation or a clean break.

The moon slips under the front door, filling the hallway with a spectral glow. Suddenly exhausted, Nicholas pulls himself up the stairs. He will have to sleep on it. Sometimes things look different in the morning. He crawls into bed with his clothes still on and envisions Paige lying like a sacrifice beneath that stifling moon. His last conscious thought is of his bypass patients, of the moment during surgery when he stops their hearts from beating. He wonders if they ever feel it.

chapter
35

A
nna Maria Santana, whom I had never met, was born and died on March 30, 1985. OUR FOUR HOUR ANGEL, the tombstone reads, still fairly new among the grave markers in the Cambridge graveyard I had last walked through when I was pregnant. I do not know why I didn't notice Anna Maria's grave back then. It is tidy and trimmed, and violets grow at the edges. Someone comes here often to see their little girl.

It does not pass my notice that Anna Maria Santana died at just about the same time I conceived my first child. Suddenly I wish I had something to leave—a silver rattle or a pink teddy bear—and then I realize that both Anna Maria and my own baby would have been eight now, growing out of baby gifts and into Barbies and bicycles. I hear my mother's voice:
You were stuck in my mind at five years old. Before I knew it, you were all grown up.

Something has to come to a head soon. Nicholas and I can't keep stepping around each other, moving closer and then ripping apart as though we're following a strange tribal dance. I have not even attempted going to Mass General today, and I do not plan to go to the Prescotts' to see Max. I can't push Nicholas any more, because he is at the breaking point, but that makes me restless. I won't just sit around and let him decide my future the way I used to. But I can't make him see what I want him to see.

I am in the graveyard to clear my mind—it worked for my mother, so I hope it will work for me. But seeing Anna Maria's tombstone doesn't help much. I have told Nicholas the truth about leaving, but I still haven't really come clean. What if, when I get home, Nicholas is standing on the porch with open arms, willing to pick up where we left off? Can I let myself make the same mistakes all over again?

I read a “Dear Abby” column years ago in which a man had written about having an affair with his secretary. It had been over for years, but he had never told his wife, and although they had a happy marriage, he felt he should reveal what had happened. I was surprised by Abby's answer.
You're opening a can of worms,
Abby wrote.
What she does not know she cannot be hurt by.

I do not know how long I can wait. I would never take Max and flee in the night, like I know Nicholas is thinking. I couldn't do it to Max, and I especially couldn't do it to Nicholas. Being with Max for three months has softened him around the edges. The Nicholas I left in July would never have crept around a corner on his hands and knees, pretending to be a grizzly bear to entertain his son. But practically, I cannot keep sleeping on the front lawn. It's mid-October, and already the leaves have come off the trees. We've had a frost at night. Soon there will be snow.

I walk to Mercy, hoping to get a cup of coffee from Lionel. The first familiar face is Doris's, and she drops two blue-plate specials at a booth and comes to hug me. “Paige!” She cries into the kitchen pass-through: “Paige is back again!”

Lionel runs in front and makes a big show of sitting me at the counter on a cracked red stool. The diner is smaller than I have remembered it, and the walls are a sickly shade of yellow. If I did not know the place, I would not feel comfortable eating here. “Where's that precious baby?” Marvela says, leaning in front of me so that her earbobs sway against the edges of my hair. “You got to have pictures, at least.”

I shake my head and gratefully accept the cup of coffee that Doris brings. Lionel ignores the small line that has formed by the cash register and sits down beside me. “That doctor boy of yours came in here some months back. Thought you'd up and run off, and come to us for help.” Lionel stares straight at me, and the line of his jagged scar darkens with emotion. “I tell him you ain't that kind of person,” he says. “I know these things.”

He looks for a moment as if he is going to hug me, but then he remembers himself and hoists his frame off the neighboring stool. “What you lookin' at?” he snaps at Marvela, who is wringing her hands beside me. “We got us a business, sweet pea,” he says to me, and he stomps toward the cash register.

When the waitresses and Lionel have settled back into their routines, I let myself look around. The menus haven't changed, though the prices have. They have been rewritten on tiny fluorescent stickers. The men's bathroom is still out of order, as it was the last day I had worked there. And tacked above the cash register, dangling above the counter, are all the portraits I drew of the customers.

I cannot believe Lionel hasn't thrown them out. Surely some of the people have died by now. I scan the portraits: Elma the bag lady; Hank the chemistry professor; Marvela and Doris and Marilyn Monroe; Nicholas.
Nicholas.
I stand up, and then I crawl onto the countertop to get a closer look. I crouch with my hands pressed against Nicholas's portrait, feeling the stares of the customers. Lionel and Marvela and Doris, true friends, pretend they do not notice.

I remember this one very well. In the background I had drawn the face of a little boy, sitting in a twisted tree and holding the sun. At first I thought I'd drawn my favorite Irish legend, the one about Cuchulainn leaving the sun god's palace when his mother went home to her original husband. I did not understand why I would have drawn this particular scene, something from my own childhood, on Nicholas's portrait, but I thought it had something to do with my running away. I had stared at the drawing, and I imagined my father telling me the story while he smoked a bayberry pipe. At the time, I could easily see my father's hands, studded with glue and bits of twine from his workshop, waving in the air as he mimicked the passage of Cuchulainn back to ordinary earth. I wondered if Cuchulainn missed that other life.

Months afterward, when Nicholas and I were sitting in the diner and looking at his portrait, I told him the story of Dechtire and the sun god. He laughed. When I'd drawn it he had seen something completely different in the picture. He said he'd never even
heard
of Cuchulainn, but that as a kid he believed that if he climbed high enough he could truly catch the sun.
I guess,
he said,
in a way, we all do.

I unlock the house and spend a full hour pulling dirty socks and Onesies and fuzzy blanket sleepers from unimaginable places: the microwave, the wine rack, a soup tureen. When I have gathered a pile of laundry, I start a wash. In the meantime I dust the living room and the bedroom and scrub the white counters in the bathroom. I scour the toilet and vacuum the skin-colored rugs and try my best to get the jelly stains off the ivory tiles in the kitchen. I change the sheets on the bed and the ones in Max's crib, and I empty his diaper pail and spray perfume into the carpet so that some of the smell is masked. All the while, the TV is on, tuned to the soap operas I watched when my mother's ankle was first broken. I tell Devon to leave her husband and I cry when Alana's baby is stillborn and I watch, riveted, a love scene between a rich girl named Leda and Spider, a street-smart hustler. I am just setting the table for two when the telephone rings, and out of force of habit, I pick it up.