Harvesting the Heart (55 page)

He finished in the nursery and came back downstairs. He leaned over Max from behind. “Don't tell me,” he said. “Rain?”

Max reached up his hands. “Dada,” he said, and then he coughed.

Nicholas sighed and settled Max into the crook of his arm. “Let's make a deal,” he said. “If you go to sleep within twenty minutes I'll tell Grandma you don't have to eat apricots for the next five days.” He uncapped the bottle that had been leaking onto the couch and rubbed it against Max's lips until his mouth opened like a foundling's. Max could take three strong sucks before he had to break away and breathe. “You know what's going to happen,” Nicholas said. “You're going to get all better, and then
I'm
going to get sick. And I'll give it back to you, and we'll have this damn thing until Christmas.”

Nicholas watched the commentator talk about the consumer price index, the DJIA, and the latest unemployment figures. By the time the news was over, Max had fallen asleep. He was cradled in Nicholas's arms like a little angel, his arms resting limp over his stomach. Nicholas held his breath and contorted his body, pushing himself up from the heels, then the calves, then the back, finally snapping his head up. He tiptoed up the stairs toward the nursery, and then the doorbell rang.

Max's eyes flew open, and he started to scream. “Fuck,” Nicholas muttered, tossing the baby against his shoulder and jiggling him up and down until the crying slowed. The doorbell rang again. Nicholas headed back down the hall. “This better be an emergency,” he muttered. “A car crash on my front lawn, or a fire next door.”

He unlocked and pulled open the heavy oak door and came face-to-face with his wife.

At first Nicholas didn't believe it. This didn't really look like Paige, at least not as she had looked when she left. She was tanned and smiling, and her body was trim. “Hi,” she said, and he almost fell over just hearing the melody wrapped around her voice.

Max stopped crying, as if he knew she was there, and stretched out his hand. Nicholas took a step forward and extended his palm, trying to ascertain whether he would be reaching toward a vision, coming up with a handful of mist. His fingertips were inches away from her collarbone, and he could see the pulse at the base of her throat, when he snapped his wrist back and stepped away. The space between them became charged and heavy. What had he been thinking ? If he touched her, it would start all over again. If he touched her, he wouldn't be able to say what had been building inside him for three months; wouldn't be able to give her her due.

“Nicholas,” Paige said, “give me five minutes.”

Nicholas clenched his teeth. It was all coming back now, the flood of anger he'd buried under his work and his care of Max. She couldn't just step in as though she'd been on a getaway weekend and play the loving mother. As far as Nicholas was concerned, she didn't have the right to be there anymore at all, “I gave you three months,” he said. “You can't just breeze in and out of our lives at your pleasure, Paige. We've done fine without you.”

She wasn't listening to him. She reached forward and touched her hand to the baby's back, brushing the side of Nicholas's thumb. He turned so that Max, asleep again on his shoulder, was out of reach. “Don't touch him,” he said, his eyes flashing. “If you think I'm going to let you walk back in here and pick up where you left off, you've got another thing coming. You aren't getting into this house, and you're not getting within a hundred feet of this baby.”

If he decided to talk to Paige,
if
he let her see Max, it would be in his own sweet time, on his own agenda. Let her stew for a little while. Let her see what it was like to be powerless all of a sudden. Let her fall asleep fitfully, knowing she had absolutely no idea what tomorrow held in store.

Paige's eyes filled with tears, and Nicholas schooled himself not to move a muscle. “You can't do this,” she said thickly.

Nicholas stepped back far enough to grab the edge of the door. “Watch me,” he said, and he slammed it shut in his wife's face.

chapter
33

T
he front door has grown larger overnight. Thicker, even. It is the biggest obstacle I've ever seen. And I should know. For hours at a time, I focus all my concentration on it, waiting for a miracle.

It would almost be funny, if it didn't hurt so much. For four years I walked in and out of that door without giving it a second thought, and now—the first time I've really
wanted
to, the first time I've
chosen
to—I can't. I keep thinking,
Open sesame.
I close my eyes and I picture the little hallway, the Chinese umbrella stand, the Persian runner. I've even tried praying. But it doesn't change anything; Nicholas and Max are on one side, and I'm stuck on the other.

I smile when I can to my neighbors as they go by, but I am very busy. Such concentration takes all my energy. I repeat Nicholas's name silently, and I picture him so vividly I almost believe I can conjure him—magic!—inches from where I sit. And still nothing happens. Well, I will wait forever, if it comes to that. I have made my decision. I want my husband to come back into my life. But I will settle for finding a chink in his armor, so that I can slip back into his life and prove that we can go back to normal.

I don't find it strange that I would give my right arm to be inside the house, watching Max grow up before my eyes—doing, really, the things that made me so crazy three months ago. I'd just been going through the motions then, acting out a role that I couldn't really remember being cast in. Now I'm back by my own free will. I
want
to spread chutney on Nicholas's turkey sandwiches. I
want
to stretch socks over Max's sunburned feet. I
want
to find all my art supplies and draw picture after picture with pastels and oils and hang them on the walls until every dull, pale corner of that house is throbbing with color. God, there is such a difference between living the life you are
expected
to live and living the life you
want
to live. I just realized it a little late, is all.

Okay, so my homecoming hasn't gone quite the way I'd planned. I figured on Nicholas welcoming me with a small parade, kissing me until my knees gave out beneath me, telling me that come hell or high water, he'd never let me go again. Truth is, I was so excited about slipping back into the routine that fit me like a soft old shoe, I never considered that the circumstances might have changed. I had learned the lesson already this past summer, with Jake, but I never thought to apply it here. But of course, if
I
am different, I shouldn't expect that time has stood still for Nicholas. I understand that he's been hurt, but if I can forgive myself, surely Nicholas can forgive me too. And if he can't, I'll have to make him try.

Yesterday I accidentally let him get away. I never thought of following him; I assumed that he'd found someone to watch Max at home when he went to work. But at 6:30 A.M., there he had been, toting the baby and a diaper bag, stuffing both into his car with the carelessness that comes from constant practice. I was very impressed. I could never carry both Max
and
the diaper bag—in fact, I could barely summon enough courage to take Max out of the house. Nicholas—well, Nicholas made it look so easy.

He had come out the front door and pretended I wasn't there. “Good morning,” I had said, but Nicholas didn't even nod his head. He got into his car, sitting for a minute behind the wheel. Then he unrolled the window on the passenger side and leaned toward it. “You will be gone,” he said, “by the time I get home.”

I assumed he was going to the hospital, but I wasn't about to go there looking the way I did. Embarrassing Nicholas in his own front yard was one thing; making him look bad in front of his superiors was another. That I knew he would never forgive. And I
had
looked awful yesterday. I'd driven seventeen hours straight, slept on my front lawn, and skipped showers for two days. I would slip into the house, wash up, change my clothes, and then go to Mass General. I wanted to see Max without Nicholas around, and how difficult could it be to find the day care facility there?

After Nicholas left, I crawled into the front seat of my car and fished my keys from my pocketbook. I felt sure that Nicholas had forgotten about those. I opened the front door and stepped into my house for the first time in three full months.

It smelled of Nicholas and Max and not at all of me. It was a mess. I didn't know how Nicholas, who loved order, could live like this, much less consider it sanitary for Max. There were dirty dishes piled on every pristine surface in the kitchen, and the Barely White tiles on the floor were streaked with muddy footprints and scribbles of jelly. In the corner was a dead plant, and fermenting in the sink was half a melon. The hallway was dark and littered with stray socks and boxer shorts; the living room was gray with dust. Max's toys—most of which I'd never seen before—were covered with tiny smudged handprints.

My first instinct had been to clean up. But if I did that, Nicholas would know I had been inside, and I didn't want him yelling again. So I made my way to the bedroom and pulled a pair of khaki pants and a green cotton sweater out of my closet. After a quick shower, I put them on and threw my dirty clothes into the bathroom hamper.

When I thought I heard a noise, I ran out of the bathroom, stopping only in the nursery to get a quick scent of Max—soiled diapers and baby powder and sweet milky skin. I slipped out the back door just in case, but I didn't see anybody. With my hair still wet, I drove to Mass General and inquired about staff child care, but they told me there was no facility on the hospital grounds. “Good Lord,” I said to the receptionist at the information desk. “Nicholas has him in a day care center.” I laughed out loud then, thinking about how ridiculous this had all turned out. If Nicholas had agreed to consider day care before the baby was born, I wouldn't have been home all day with him. I would have been taking classes, maybe drawing again—I would have been doing something for
myself.
If I hadn't been home with Max, I might never have needed to get away.

I wasn't about to search through the Boston phone book for day care centers, so I had gone home and resigned myself to the fact that I'd lost a day. Then Nicholas showed up and told me again to get the hell off his lawn. But late last night, he had come outside. He wasn't angry, at least not as angry as he had been. He stepped down to the porch, sitting so close that I could have touched him. He was wearing a robe I had not seen before. As I watched him, I pretended that we were different, that it was years ago, and we were eating bagels and chive cream cheese and reading the real estate listings of the Sunday
Globe.
For a moment, just a moment, something passed behind the shadows in his eyes. I could not be sure, but I thought it took the shape of understanding.

That's why today I am bright-eyed and bushy-tailed, ready to follow Nicholas to the ends of the earth. He's late—it's past seven o'clock—and I'm already in the car. I have moved out of the driveway and parked down the block, because I want him to think I have disappeared. When he drives away I am going to tail him, like in the movies, always keeping a couple of cars between us.

He walks out the front door with Max tucked beneath his arm like a Federal Express package, and I start the engine. I unroll my window and stare, just in case Nicholas does anything I can use as a clue. I hold my breath as he locks the door, saunters to his car, and settles Max into the car seat. It's a different car seat now, facing forward, instead of the little bucket that faced the back. On the plastic bar across the car seat is a circus of plastic animals, each holding a different jingling bell. Max giggles when Nicholas buckles him in, and he grabs a yellow rubber ball that hangs from an elephant's nose. “Dada,” he says—I swear I can hear it—and I smile at my baby's first word.

Nicholas looks over the top of the car before he slips into his seat, and I know he is trying to find me. I have an unobstructed view of him: his glinting black hair and his sky-colored eyes. It has been quite a while since I've really looked at him; I have been making up images from a composite of memories. Nicholas really is the most handsome man I have ever seen; time and distance haven't changed that. It isn't his features as much as their contrast; it isn't his face as much as his ease and his presence. When he puts the car in gear and begins to drive down the block, I count, whispering out loud. “One Mississippi, two Mississippi,” I say. I make it to five, and then I start to follow him.

As I expected, Nicholas doesn't take the turn to Mass General. He takes a route that I recognize from somewhere but that I can't quite place. It is only when I hide my car in a driveway three houses down from Nicholas's parents' house that I realize what has happened while I've been away.

I can see Astrid only from a distance. Her shirt is a blue splotch against the wood door. Nicholas holds out the baby to her, and I feel my own arms ache. He says a few words, and then he walks back to the car.

I have a choice: I can follow Nicholas to wherever he's going next, or I can wait until he leaves and hope that I have the advantage of surprise and try to get Astrid Prescott to let me hold my baby, which I want more than anything. I see Nicholas start the car. Astrid closes the heavy front door. Without thinking about what I am doing, I pull out of the neighbor's driveway and follow Nicholas.

I realize then that I would have come back to Massachusetts no matter what. It has to do with more than Max, with more than my mother, with more than obligation. Even if there were no baby, I would have returned because of Nicholas.
Because of Nicholas. I'm in
love with
Nicholas.
In spite of the fact that he is no longer the man I married; in spite of the fact that he spends more time with patients than with me; in spite of the fact that I have never been and never will be the kind of wife he should have had. A long time ago, he dazzled me; he saved me. And out of every other woman in the world, Nicholas chose me. We may have changed over the years, but these are the kinds of feelings that last. I
know
they're still there in him, somewhere. Maybe the part of his heart that he's using now to hate me used to be the part that loves.