Harvesting the Heart (61 page)

Oakie has tried to talk him out of it, but Nicholas is certain he has no choice. He cannot even think about Paige without feeling his spine stiffen or his fingers turn to ice. He cannot stand knowing that he has been played for a fool.

He walks into Mass General and ignores everyone who says hello to him. When he reaches his office, he shuts and locks the door behind him. With a sweep of his arm, he clears all the files off his desk. The one that lands on top of the pile on the floor is Hugo Albert's. That morning's surgery. It was also, he noted from the patient history, Hugo Albert's golden wedding anniversary. When he told Esther Albert that her husband was doing well, she cried and thanked Nicholas over and over, said that he would always be in her prayers.

He puts his head down on the desk and closes his eyes. He wishes he had his father's private practice, or that the association with surgical patients lasted as long as it does in internal medicine. It is too hard to deal with such intense relationships for such a short period of time and then move on to another patient. But Nicholas is starting to see that this is his lot in life.

With fierce self-control, he opens the top drawer and takes out a piece of the Mass General stationery that now bears his name. “Oakie wants a list,” he mutters, “I'll give him a list.” He starts to write down all the things that he and Paige own. The house. The cars. The mountain bikes and the canoe. The barbecue and the patio furniture and the white leather couch and the king-size bed. It is the same bed they had in the old apartment; it had too much of a history to justify replacement. Nicholas and Paige had ordered the handcrafted bed on the understanding that it would be theirs by the end of the week. But it was delayed, and they slept on a mattress on the floor for months. The bed had been burned in a warehouse fire and had to be built all over again. “Do you think,” Paige said one night, curled against him, “God is trying to tell us this was all a mistake?”

When Nicholas runs out of possessions, he takes a blank sheet of paper and writes his name at the top left and Paige's name at the top right. Then he makes a grid. DATE OF BIRTH. PLACE OF BIRTH. EDUCATION. LENGTH OF MARRIAGE. He can fill it all in easily, but he is shocked at how much space his own schooling takes up and how little is written in Paige's column. He looks at the length of marriage and does not write anything.

If she had married that guy, would she have had the child?

Nicholas pushes away the papers, which suddenly feel heavy enough to threaten the balance of the desk. He leans his head back in the swivel chair and stares at the clouds manufactured by the hospital smokestacks, but all he sees are the lines of Paige's wounded face. He blinks, but the image does not clear. He half expects that if he whispers her name, she will answer. He thinks he must be going crazy.

He wonders if she loved this other guy, and why the question, still unspoken, makes him feel as if he will be sick.

When he turns the chair around, his mother is standing in front of the desk. “Nicholas,” she says, “I've brought you a present.” She holds a large, flat, paper-wrapped square. Even before he pulls at the string, Nicholas knows it is a framed photograph. “It's for your office,” she says. “I've been working on it for weeks.”

“It isn't my office,” Nicholas says. “I can't really hang anything up.” But even as he is speaking, he finds himself staring at the photograph. It is a pliant willow tree on the shore of a lake, bent into an inverted U by an angry wind. Everything in the background is one shade or another of purple; the tree itself is molten red, as if it is burning at the core.

Astrid comes to his side of the desk and stands at his shoulder. “Striking, isn't it?” she says. “It's all in the lighting.” She glances at the papers on Nicholas's desk, pretending not to notice what they say.

Nicholas runs his fingers across his mother's signature, carved at the bottom. “Very nice,” he says. “Thanks.”

Astrid sits on the edge of the desk. “I didn't come just to give you the photograph, Nicholas; I'm here to tell you something you aren't going to like,” she says. “Paige has moved in with us.”

Nicholas stares at her as if she has stated that his father was really a gypsy or that his medical diploma is a fraud. “You've got to be kidding,” he says. “You can't do this to me.”

“As a matter of fact, Nicholas,” Astrid says, standing and pacing the room, “you have very little say as to what we do in our own house. Paige is a lovely girl—better to realize it late than never, I think—and she's a charming guest. Imelda says she even makes her own bed. Imagine.”

Nicholas's fingers itch; he has a savage urge to strike out or to strangle. “If she lays a hand on Max—”

“I've already taken care of it,” Astrid says. “She's agreed to leave the house during the day while I've got Max. She only comes back to sleep, since a car or a front lawn isn't really suitable.”

Nicholas thinks that maybe he will remember this moment forever: the wrinkled empty smile of his mother; the flickering track light overhead; the scrape of wheels as something is rolled by the door. This, he will say to himself in years to come,
was the moment my life fell apart.
“Paige isn't what you think she is,” he says bitterly.

Astrid walks to the far side of the office as if she hasn't heard him. She removes a yellowed nautical map from the wall, smoothing her fingers over the glass and tracing the whorls of eddies and currents. “I'm thinking about right here,” she says. “You'll see it every time you look up.” She crosses the room to put the old frame on the desk and picks up the picture of the willow. “You know,” she says casually, reaching up on her toes to hang the picture correctly, “your father and I almost got a divorce. I think you remember her—she was a hematologist. I knew about it, and I fought him every step of the way, trying to be very difficult and spilling drinks on him to make a scene and threatening once or twice to run away with you. I thought that being quiet about the whole thing was the biggest mistake I could make, because then he'd think I was weak and he could walk all over me. And then one day I realized that I would have much more power if I decided to be the one to yield.” Astrid straightens the picture and steps back. “There. What do you think?”

Nicholas's eyes are slitted, dark and angry. “I want you to throw Paige out of the house, and if she comes within a hundred feet of Max, I swear to God I'll have you brought up on charges. I want you to get out of my office and call me later and apologize profusely for butting into my life. I want you to put back that goddamned ocean map and leave me alone.”

“Really, Nicholas,” Astrid says lightly, although every muscle in her body is quivering. She has never seen him like this. “The way you're acting, I wouldn't recognize you as my son.” She picks up the sailing chart and hooks it on the wall again, but she does not turn around.

“You don't know the half of it,” Nicholas murmurs.

By a twist of bad timing, Nicholas and Paige run into each other that afternoon at the Prescotts'. Because of a complication with a patient, Nicholas left the hospital late. He is just packing Max's toys into the duffel bag when Paige bursts into the parlor. “You can't do this to me,” Paige cries, and when Nicholas lifts his head, his gaze has carefully been wiped clean of emotion.

“Ah,” Nicholas says, picking up a Big Bird jingle ball. “My mother has been the bearer of bad news.”

“You've got to give me a chance,” she says, moving in front of him to catch his eye. “You aren't thinking clearly.”

Astrid appears in the doorway, with Max in her arms. “Listen to her, Nicholas,” she says quietly.

Nicholas tosses his mother a look that makes Paige remember the basilisk in Irish legend, the monster who killed with a glance. “I think I've listened enough,” he says. “In fact, I've heard things I never wanted to hear.” He stands and slings the diaper bag over his shoulder, roughly grabbing Max out of Astrid's arms. “Why don't you just run upstairs to your guest bedroom,” he sneers. “Cry your little heart out, and then you can come downstairs for brandy with
my
goddamned parents.”

“Nicholas,” Paige says. Her voice breaks over the syllables. She takes a quick look at Astrid and runs through the hall after Nicholas, swinging open the door and yelling his name again into the street.

Nicholas stops just before his car. “You'll get a good settlement,” he says quietly. “You've earned it.”

Paige is openly crying now, clinging to the frame of the door as if she cannot keep upright by herself. “It isn't supposed to be this way,” she sobs. “Do you think I really care about the money? Or about who lives in that stupid old house?”

Nicholas thinks about the horror stories he's heard from other surgeons, whose cutthroat, red-taloned wives have robbed them of half their Midas earnings and all their sterling reputations. He cannot picture Paige in a tailored suit, glaring from the witness stand, replaying a testimony that will support her for life. He can't truly see her caring about whether $500,000 per year will be enough to cover her cost of living. She'd probably hand him the keys to the house if he asked nicely. In truth, she isn't like the others; she never has been, and that's what Nicholas always liked.

Her hair has fallen over her face, and her nose is running; her shoulders are shaking with the effort to stop crying. She is a mess. “Mama,” Max says, reaching out to her. Nicholas turns him away and watches Paige swipe the back of her hand across her eyes. He tells himself it can't turn out any other way, not with what he knows now; but he quite literally feels his chest burn, swollen tissue irreparably staked, as his heart begins to break.

Nicholas grimaces and shakes his head. He slips inside the car, fastening Max into his seat and then turning the ignition. He tries to trace the sequence, but he cannot figure out how they have made it to this point—the place where you cannot go back. Paige hasn't moved an inch. He cannot hear her voice over the purr of the engine, but he knows that she is telling him she loves him, she loves Max.

“I can't help that,” he says, and he drives away without letting himself look back.

chapter
37

W
hen I come down to breakfast in the morning, I am carrying my overnight bag. “I want to thank you for your hospitality,” I say stiffly, “but I think I'm going to be leaving today.”

Astrid and Robert look at each other, and it is Astrid who speaks first. “Where are you going?” she asks.

This question, the one I have been expecting, still throws me for a loop. “I don't know,” I say. “I guess back to my mother's.”

“Paige,” Astrid says gently, “if Nicholas wants a divorce, he'll find you even in North Carolina.”

When I do not say anything, Astrid stands up and folds her arms around me. She holds me even though I do not hold her back. She is thinner than I expected, almost brittle. “I can't change your mind?” she says.

“No,” I murmur, “you can't.”

She pulls away, keeping me at arm's length. “I won't let you leave without something to eat,” she says, already moving toward the kitchen. “Imelda!”

She leaves me alone with Robert, who of all the people in this household makes me most uncomfortable. It isn't that he's been rude or even unkind; he has offered his house to me, he goes out of his way to compliment my appearance when I come down to dinner, he saves me the Living section of the
Globe
before Imelda clips the recipes. I suppose the problem is mine, not his. I suppose some things —like forgiveness—take time.

Robert folds his morning paper and motions for me to sit next to him. “What was the name of that colicky horse?” he says out of nowhere.