Harvesting the Heart (6 page)

Which made him question, as he held Paige, what had prompted him to do so and what part of him, exactly, was in control.

On his first free day for the month of July, Nicholas asked Paige out on a date. He told himself it wasn't really a date; it was more like a big brother taking a little sister out to see the town. They had spent time together the week before, going first to see Hurst pitch a Red Sox game, then walking through the Common and riding on a swan boat. It was the first time in the twenty-eight years Nicholas had lived in Boston that he had been on a swan boat, but he did not tell that to Paige. He watched the sun flame through her hair and turn her cheeks pink and laughed when she ate the hot dog without the roll, and he tried to convince himself that he was not falling in love.

It didn't surprise Nicholas that Paige wanted to spend time with him—at the risk of seeming arrogant, Nicholas was used to that kind of thing; any doctor was a magnet for single women. The surprise was that he wanted to spend time with her. It had come to the point of obsession for Nicholas. He loved that she walked barefoot through the streets of Cambridge at dusk, when the pavement cooled. He loved that she chased ice cream trucks down the block and sang out loud with their carnival jingles. He loved that she acted so much like a kid, maybe because he'd forgotten the way it was done.

His day off happened to fall on the Fourth of July, and Nicholas planned the outing carefully—dinner at a famous steakhouse north of Boston, followed by fireworks on the banks of the Charles.

They left the restaurant at seven, plenty of time, Nicholas said, to get to the Esplanade. But a car fire on the highway blocked traffic for a good hour. He hated when things didn't go according to plan, especially when they moved beyond the realm of his control. Nicholas sat back and sighed. He switched on the radio, then he shut it off. He honked his horn, even though they weren't moving at all. “I can't believe this,” Nicholas said. “We're never going to get there in time.”

Paige was sitting cross-legged on the seat. “It doesn't matter,” she said. “Fireworks are fireworks.”

“Not these,” Nicholas said. “You've never seen these.” He told her about the barges in the basin of the Charles and the way the explosions were orchestrated to the “1812 Overture.”

“The ‘1812 Overture'?” Paige said. “What's that?” And Nicholas had looked at her and honked again at the immobile car ahead of him.

After they'd played six games of Geography and three rounds of Twenty Questions, the traffic started to move. Nicholas drove like a madman toward Boston but couldn't get any closer to the Esplanade than Buckingham, Browne, and Nichols, a prep school that was miles away. He parked in the faculty lot and told Paige it would be worth the walk.

By the time they got to the Esplanade, it was a sea of people. Over the bobbing heads, in the distance, Nicholas could make out the Hatch Shell and the orchestra beneath it. A woman kicked him in the shin. “Hey, mister,” she said, “I been camping out here since five in the morning. You ain't cutting in.” Paige wrapped her arms around Nicholas's waist as a man pulled at the back of her shirt and told her to sit down. He felt her whisper against his chest. “Maybe,” she said, “we should just go.”

They didn't have a choice. They were pushed farther back by the heaving throng of people until they were standing underneath a highway tunnel. It was long and dark, and they could not see a thing. “I can't believe this,” Nicholas said, and just as he was wondering how things could possibly get worse, a convoy of helmeted bikers cut him off, one ten-speed running over his left foot.

“Are you okay?” Paige asked, touching his shoulder as he hobbled around and winced at the pain. In the background, Nicholas heard the beginning bursts of fireworks. “Jesus Christ,” he said.

Beside him, Paige leaned against the damp concrete wall of the tunnel. She crossed her arms. “Your problem, Nicholas,” she said, “is that you always see the glass half empty instead of half full.” She turned to stand in front of him, and even in the darkness he could see the bright glow of her eyes. From somewhere came the whistle of a Roman candle. “That's a red one,” Paige said, “and it's climbing higher and higher, and now—there—it's shimmering across the sky and falling like a shower of hot sparks from a soldering iron.”

“For God's sake,” Nicholas muttered. “You can't see a thing. Don't be ridiculous, Paige.”

He had snapped at her, but Paige only smiled.
“Who's
being ridiculous?” she said. She moved in front of him and placed her hands on his shoulders. “And who says I can't see a thing?” she said.

Two loud booms sounded. Paige turned so that her back was pressed against him and they were both staring at the same blank tunnel wall. “Two circles exploding,” Paige said, “one inside the other. First blue streaks and then white streaks reaching over them, and now, just as they're fading, little silver spirals are showing up at the edges like dancing fireflies. And here's a fountain of gold spouting like a volcano, and this one is an umbrella, raining tiny blue spots like confetti.”

Nicholas felt the silk of Paige's hair beneath his cheek; the tremble of her shoulders when she spoke. He wondered how one person's imagination could possibly hold so much color. “Oh, Nicholas,” Paige said, “this is the finale. Wow! Huge bursts of blue and red and yellow splashing over the sky, and just as they're fading, the biggest one yet is exploding—it covers
everything-it's
a huge silver fan, and its fingers are stretching and stretching, and they hiss and they sizzle and fill the sky with a million new glowing pink stars.” Nicholas thought he could listen to Paige's voice forever. He pulled her tightly against him, closed his eyes, and saw her fireworks.

“I won't embarrass you,” Paige said. “I know which one is the salad fork.”

Nicholas laughed. They were driving to his parents' home for dinner, and Paige's understanding of table etiquette had been the last thing on his mind. “Do you know,” he said, “you are the only person in the world who can make me forget about atrial fibrillation?”

“I'm a girl of many talents,” Paige said. She looked at him. “I know the butter knife too.”

Nicholas grinned. “And who taught you all these grand things?”

“My dad,” Paige said. “He taught me everything.”

At a red light, Paige leaned out the open window to catch a better glimpse of herself in the side mirror. She stuck out her tongue. Nicholas looked appreciatively at the white curve of her neck and the tips of her bare feet, curled beneath her. “And what other things did your father teach you?”

Nicholas smiled as Paige's face lit up. She counted off on her fingers. “Never to leave the house without eating breakfast,” she said, “to always walk with your back to a storm, to try to steer into a skid.” She straightened her legs and slipped her shoes back on. “Oh, and to bring snacks to Mass, but not things that crunch.” She began to tell Nicholas about her father's inventions—ones that had succeeded, like the automatic spinning carrot peeler, and ones that hadn't, like the canine toothbrush. In the middle of her reverie she cocked her head and looked at Nicholas. “He would like you,” she said. “Yes.” She nodded, convincing herself. “He'd like you very much.”

“And why's that?”

“Because of what you have in common,” Paige said. “Me.”

Nicholas ran his hands around the edges of the steering wheel. “And your mother?” he said. “What did you learn from her?”

He remembered after he said it what Paige had told him about her mother at the diner. He remembered when it was too late, when the words, heavy and stupid, were hanging almost palpably in the space between them. For a moment Paige did not answer, did not move. He would have thought she hadn't even heard him, but then she leaned forward and switched on the radio, blasting the music so loudly she could only have been trying to crowd out the question.

Ten minutes later, Nicholas parked in the shade of an oak tree. He got out of the car and walked around to Paige's side to help her, but she was already standing and stretching.

“Which one is yours?” Paige asked, looking across the street at several pretty Victorians with white picket fences. Nicholas turned her by her elbow so that she would notice the house behind her, a tremendous brick colonial with ivy growing on its north side. “You've got to be kidding,” she said, shrinking back a little. “Are you a Kennedy?” she murmured.

“Absolutely not,” Nicholas said. “They're all Democrats.” He walked her up the slate path to the front door, which, he thanked God, was opened not by the maid but by Astrid Prescott herself, wearing a wrinkled safari jacket, three cameras slung around her neck.

“Nich-
olas
,
” she breathed. She threw her arms around him. “I've just gotten back. Nepal. Amazing culture; can't wait to see what I've got.” She patted her cameras, caressing the one on top as if it were alive. She pulled Nicholas through the doorway with the force of a hurricane, and then she took Paige's small, cold hands in her own. “And you must be Paige.” She pulled Paige into a breathtaking mahogany-paneled hallway with a marble floor that reminded her of the Newport mansions she had seen when visiting RISD as a junior. “I've been back less than an hour, and all Robert's told me about is this mysterious, magical Paige.”

Paige took a step back. Robert Prescott was a well-known doctor, but Astrid Prescott was a legend. Nicholas didn't like to tell acquaintances he was related to
“the
Astrid Prescott,” which people said with the same reverent tone they'd used a hundred years before to murmur
“the
Mrs. Astor.” Everyone knew her story: the rich society girl had impetuously given up balls and garden parties to toy with photography, only to become one of the best in the field. And everyone knew Astrid Prescott's photography, especially her graphic black-and-white portraits of endangered species, which—Paige noticed—were placed haphazardly throughout the hall. They were haunting photos, shadows and light, of giant sea turtles, bird-wing butterflies, mountain gorillas. In flight, a spotted owl; the split of a blue whale's tail. Paige remembered a
Newsweek
article she'd read some years ago on Astrid Prescott, who was quoted as saying that she wished she'd been around when the dinosaurs died, because that would have been quite a scoop.

Paige looked from one photograph to another. Everyone had an Astrid Prescott calendar, or a small Astrid Prescott day diary, because her pictures were remarkable. She caught the terror and the pride. Next to this mythic woman, dwarfed by the monstrous house, Paige felt herself slipping away.

But Nicholas was more affected by his father. When Robert Prescott entered the room, the atmosphere changed, as if the air had become ionized. Nicholas stood straighter, put on his most winning smile, and watched Paige from the corner of his eye, wondering for the first time ever why he had to put on an act in front of his own parents. He and his father never touched, unless you counted shaking hands. It had something to do with showing affection, a forbidden thing among Prescotts, which left family members wondering at funerals why there were so many things that hadn't been said to the deceased but that should have been.

Over cold fruit soup and pheasant with new potatoes, Nicholas told his parents about his rotations, especially the emergency ward, downplaying the horrors for the dinner table. His mother kept bringing the conversation back to her trip. “Everest,” she said. “You can't even take it with a wide-angle.” She had removed her jacket for the dinner, revealing an old tank top and baggy khaki pants. “But damn if those Sherpas don't know the mountain like the back of their hand.”