Harvesting the Heart (63 page)

“Remarkable,” Astrid says, lightly touching each image. “I can see why Nicholas was impressed.” She cocks her head. “Can you draw from memory?” I nod. “Then do one of yourself.”

I have done self-portraits before but never on command. I do not know if I can do it, and I tell her this. “You never know until you try,” Astrid chides, and I dutifully turn to a blank page. I start with the base of my neck, working my way up the lines of my chin and my jaw. I stop for a second and see it is all wrong. I tear it off and turn to the next page, start at the hairline, working down. Again, I have to begin all over. I do this seven times, making each drawing a little more complete than the last. Finally, I put the pencil down and press my fingers against my eyes. “Some other time,” I say.

But Astrid is leafing through the discarded drawings I've ripped off the pad. “You've done better than you think,” she says, holding them out to me. “Look.” I riffle through the papers, shocked that I didn't see this before. On every one, even the pictures made of threadbare lines, instead of myself I have drawn Nicholas.

chapter
38

F
or the past three days Nicholas has been the talk of the hospital, and it's all because of me. In the morning when he arrives, I help ready his patient for surgery. Then I sit on the floor in front of his office in my pale pinafore and draw the portrait of the person he is operating upon. They are simple sketches that take only minutes. Each shows the patient far away from a hospital, in the prime of his or her life. I have drawn Mrs. Comazzi as a dance hall girl, which she was in the forties; I have drawn Mr. Goldberg as a dapper pin-striped gangster; I have drawn Mr. Allen as Ben-Hur, robust and perched on his chariot. I leave them taped to the door of the office, usually with a second picture, of Nicholas himself.

At first I drew Nicholas as he was at the hospital, on the telephone or signing a release form or leading a gaggle of residents into a patient's room. But then I started to draw Nicholas the way I wanted to remember him: singing “Sweet Baby James” over Max's bassinet, teaching me how to pitch a Wiffle ball, kissing me on the swan boat in front of everyone. Every morning at about eleven, Nicholas does the same thing. He comes back to his office, curses at the door, and rips both pictures off. He stuffs the one of himself in the trash can or his upper desk drawer, but he usually takes the one I've done of the patient and brings that during the postoperative checkup. I was offering magazines to Mrs. Comazzi when he gave the picture to her. “Oh, my stars,” she exclaimed. “Look at me. Look at
me!”
And Nicholas, in spite of himself, smiled.

Rumors spread fast through Mass General, and everyone knows who I am and when I leave the drawings. At ten-forty, before Nicholas arrives, a crowd starts to gather. The nurses drift upstairs on their coffee break to see if they can figure out the likeness and to make cracks about the Dr. Prescott I tend to draw, the one they never see. “Jeez,” I heard one profusionist say, “I wouldn't have guessed he even owned casual clothes.”

I hear Nicholas's footsteps coming down the hall, quick and clipped. He is still wearing his scrubs, which might mean something has gone wrong. I start to scoot out of his way, but I am stopped by an unfamiliar voice. “Nicholas,” the man says.

Nicholas stops, his hand on the doorknob. “Elliot,” he says, more a sigh than a word. “Look,” he says, “it's been a pretty bad morning. Maybe we can talk later.”

Elliot shakes his head and holds up a hand. “Didn't come here to see you. I came to see what the fuss is with the artwork. Your door is becoming the hospital gallery.” He looks down at me and beams. “Scuttlebutt has it that the phantom artist here is your wife.”

Nicholas pulls the blue paper cap off his head and leans back against the door, closing his eyes. “Paige, Elliot Saget. Elliot, Paige. My wife.” He exhales slowly. “For now.”

If memory serves me right, Elliot Saget is the chief of surgery. I stand quickly and offer my hand. “A pleasure,” I say, smiling.

Elliot pushes Nicholas out of the way and stares at the picture I've done of Mr. Olsen, Nicholas's morning surgery. Next to him is the image of Nicholas singing karaoke at an Allston bowling alley, something that to my knowledge he has never tried but that probably would do him good. “Quite a talent,” he says, looking from the picture to Nicholas and back again. “Why, Nicholas, she almost makes you seem as human as the rest of us.”

Nicholas mutters something under his breath and turns the key in the doorknob. “Paige,” Elliot Saget says to me, “the hospital's communications director would like very much to talk to you about your artwork. Her name is Nancy Bianna, and she asked me to tell you to stop by when you aren't busy.” He smiles then, and I know immediately that I can trust him if need be. “Nicholas,” he says into the open doorway. He nods and then he lopes away down the hall.

Nicholas bends over, trying to touch his fingers to his toes. It helps his back; I've seen him do it before, after a very long day on his feet. When he looks up and sees that I am still here, he grimaces. He crosses to the door and rips off the two pictures I've drawn, crumples them into a ball, and tosses them into the garbage.

“You don't have to do that,” I say, angry. The pictures—however simple they are—are my work. I hate watching my work be destroyed. “If you don't want yours, well, fine. But maybe Mr. Olsen would like to see his portrait.”

Nicholas's eyes darken, and his fingers tighten on the doorknob. “This isn't a garden party, Paige. Mr. Olsen died twenty minutes ago on the operating table. Maybe
now,”
he says quietly, “you can leave me alone.”

It takes me forty minutes to get back to the Prescotts', and when I do I am still shaking. I pull off my jacket and sag against a highboy, which jabs into my ribs. Wincing, I move away and stare at myself in an antique mirror. For the past week, no matter where I am, I've been uncomfortable. And deep down I know this has nothing to do with the sharp edges of the furniture, or with any other piece of decor. It's just that the cool hospital and the elegant Prescott mansion are not places where I feel at home.

Nicholas is right. I don't understand his life. I don't know the things that everyone else takes for granted, like how to read a doctor's mood after surgery, or which side to lean to when Imelda takes the dishes away. I'm killing myself to be part of a world where I'm always two steps behind.

A door opens, and classical music floods the hallway. Robert holds Max, letting him chew on the plastic CD case. I give my best smile, but I am still shivering. My father-in-law steps forward and narrows his eyes. “What's happened to you?” he asks.

The whole day, this past month, all of it crowds and chokes in my throat. The last person in the world I want to break down in front of is Robert Prescott, but still, I start to cry. “Nicholas,” I sob.

Robert frowns. “Never did learn to pick on someone his own size,” he says. He takes my elbow and guides me into his study, a dark room that makes me think of fox hunts and stiff British lords. “Sit down and unwind,” he says. He settles into a huge leather chair and sets Max on the top of his desk to play with brass paperweights.

I lean back against the burgundy couch and obediently close my eyes, but I feel too conspicuously out of place to unwind. A crystal brandy decanter rests on a mahogany table beneath the frozen smile of a mounted buck. A set of dueling pistols, just for show, are crossed above the arch of the door. This room—dear God, this whole house —is like something straight out of a novel.

Real people do not live like this, surrounded by thousands of volumes of books and ancient paintings of pale women and thick silver varsity mugs. Real people do not take tea as seriously as if it were Communion. Real people do not make five-figure donations to the Republican party—

“Do you like Handel?”

At the sound of Robert's voice, my eyes fly open and every muscle in my body goes on the alert. I stare at him carefully, wondering if this is a test, a trap set for me so I'll slip up and show how little I understand. “I don't know,” I say bitterly.
“Should
I?” I wait to see his eyes flare, or his mouth tighten, and when it doesn't, the fight goes out of me.
It's your own fault, Paige,
I think.
He's only trying to be nice.
“I'm sorry,” I say. “I haven't had a very good day. I didn't mean to snap at you. It's just that when I was growing up, the only antique we had was my father's family Bible, and the music we listened to had words.” I smile hesitantly. “This kind of life takes a little getting used to, although you couldn't really understand that—”

I break off, recalling what Nicholas told me years ago about his father, what I'd forgotten when I'd seen Robert, and all his trappings, again. Something flickers across his eyes—regret, or maybe relief—but just as quickly, it disappears. I stare at him, fascinated. I wonder how he could have come from my kind of background but still know, so easily, the right way to move and to act in a house like this.

“So Nicholas told you,” Robert says, and he doesn't sound disappointed or furious; it's simply a statement of fact.

Suddenly I remember what had tugged at the corner of my mind when Nicholas said his father had grown up poor. Robert Prescott was the one who had objected to Nicholas's marrying me. Not Astrid—which I could understand—but Robert. He had been the one to drive Nicholas away.
He
had been the one who said Nicholas would be ruining his life.

I tell myself I'm not angry anymore, just curious. But I pick Max up anyway, taking him away from my father-in-law. “How
could
you?” I whisper.

Robert leans forward, resting his elbows on the desk. “I worked so hard for this. All of this.” He gestures, sweeping his hands in the directions of the four walls. “I could never stand the thought of someone throwing it all away. Not Astrid, and especially not Nicholas.”

Max squirms, and I set him down on the floor. “Nicholas didn't have to throw it all away,” I point out. “You could have paid for his education.”

Robert shakes his head. “It wouldn't have been the same. Eventually you'd have held him back. You could never move in these circles, Paige. You wouldn't be comfortable living like this.”

It isn't the truth that stings; it is hearing Robert Prescott, once again, decide what is best for me. I curl my hands into fists. “How the hell can you be so sure?”

“Because
I'm
not,” he says quietly. Shocked, I sink back into the couch. I stare at Robert's cashmere sweater, his neat white hair, the pride gracing his jaw. But I also notice that his hands are clenched tight together and that a pulse beats fast at the base of his neck.
He's terrified,
I think.
He's as scared of me as I've been of him.

I think about this for a moment, and about why he is telling me something it obviously hurts him to discuss. I remember something my mother said in North Carolina when I asked her why she had never come back. “You make your own bed,” she told me. “You have to lie in it.”

I smile gently and sweep Max off the floor. I hand him to his grandfather. “I'll change for dinner,” I say, and I start toward the hall.

Robert's voice stops me. His words trip over Handel's sweet violins and reaching flutes. “It's worth it,” he says quietly. “I would do it all over again.”

I do not turn around. “Why?”

“Why would
you?”
he says, and his question follows me up the stairs and slips into the cool quiet of my room. It demands an answer, and it knocks me off center.