Harvesting the Heart

Acknowledgments

I
am grateful to all the professionals who willingly shared their time
and their expertise: Dr. James Umlas, Dr. Richard Stone, Andrea
Greene, Frank Perla, Eddie LaPlume, Troy Dunn, Jack Gaylord, and
Eliza Saunders. For their help with fact checking, baby-sitting, and
brainstorming, thanks also to Christopher van Leer, Rebecca Piland,
Kathleen Desmond, Jane Picoult, Jonathan Picoult, and Timothy
van Leer. Special thanks to Mary Morris and Laura Gross, and a
standing ovation to Caroline White—who is as wonderful an
editor as she is a friend.

Harvesting
the
Heart

prologue

Paige

in
the dark for so long that when the yellow light of the room washes
over me, I keep blinking.

Nicholas
is zipping up Max's blanket sleeper. When he leans close, Max reaches
up, grabs his tie, and stuffs it in his mouth. It is when Nicholas
pulls the tie away from our son that he sees me at the window. He
picks up the baby and deliberately turns Max's face away. He strides
over to the window, the only one close enough to look into, and
stares at me. Nicholas does not smile, he does not speak. Then he
pulls the curtains closed, so that all I can see is a line of
balloons and ponies and elephants playing trombones—all the
smiling images I painted and prayed to when I was pregnant,
hoping fairy tales could calm my fears and guarantee my son a happy
childhood.

On
this night when the moon is so white and heavy that I cannot sleep
without fearing I will be crushed, I remember the dream that led me
to my missing mother. Of course I know now that it was not a dream at
all, that it was true, for whatever that is worth. It is a memory
that started coming after Max was born—the first night after
his delivery, then the week we brought him home—sometimes
several times a night. More often than not, I would be picturing this
memory when Max awakened, demanding to be fed or changed or taken
care of, and I am embarrassed to say that for many weeks I did not
see the connection.

The
watermarks on the ceiling of my mother's kitchen were pale and pink
and shaped like purebred horses.
There,
my
mother would say, pointing over our heads as she held me on her lap,
can
you see the nose? the braided tail?
We
called each other's attention to our horses daily. At breakfast,
while my mother unloaded the dishwasher, I'd sit on the Formica
countertop and pretend the fine china chime of bowl against mug was a
series of magical hoofbeats. After dinner, when we sat in the dark,
listening to the bump and grind of the laundry in the double-stacked
washer and dryer, my mother would kiss the crown of my head and
murmur the names of places our horses would take us: Telluride,
Scarborough, Jasper. My father, who at that time was an inventor
moonlighting as a computer programmer, would come home late and find
us asleep, just like that, in my mother's kitchen. I asked him
several times to look, but he could never see the horses.

When
I told this to my mother, she said that we'd just have to help him.
She held me high on her shoulders one day as she balanced on a low
stool. She handed me a black marker with the powerful scent of
licorice and told me to trace what I saw. Then I colored the horses
with the crayons from my Wal-Mart 64-pack—one brown with a
white star, one a strawberry roan, two bright orange-dappled
Appa-loosas. My mother added the muscular forelegs, the strain of the
backs, the flying jet manes. Then she pulled the butcher-block table
to the center of her kitchen and lifted me onto it. Outside, summer
hummed, the way it does in Chicago. My mother and I lay beside each
other, my small shoulder pressed to hers, and we stared up at these
stallions as they ran across the ceiling. "Oh, Paige"—my
mother sighed peacefully—"look at what we've
accomplished."

At
five, I did not know what "accomplished" meant, nor did I
understand why my father was furious and why my mother laughed at
him. I just knew that the nights after my mother had left us I would
lie on my back on the kitchen table and try to feel her shoulder
against mine. I would try to hear the hills and valleys of her voice.
And when it had been three full months, my father took whitewash and
rolled it across the ceiling, erasing those purebreds inch by lovely
inch, until it looked as if the horses, and even my mother, had never
been there.

The
light in the bedroom flashes on at 2:30
a.m
.,
and I have a little surge of hope, but it goes off as quickly as it
was turned on. Max is quiet, no longer waking three or four times a
night. I shimmy out of the sleeping bag and open the trunk of my car,
fish through jumper cables and empty diet Coke cans until I find my
sketch pad and my
cont'e
sticks.

I
had to buy these on the road; I couldn't even begin to tell you where
in my house I buried the originals when it became clear to me that I
could not attend art school and also take care of Max. But I started
sketching again when I was running away. I drew stupid things: the
Big Mac wrappers from my lunch; a Yield sign; pennies. Then, although
I was rusty, I tried people—the checkout girl at the minimart,
two kids playing stickball. I drew images of Irish heroes and gods
I'd been told of my whole life. And little by little, the second
sight I've always had in my fingers began to come back.

I
have never been an ordinary artist. For as long as I can remember,
I've made sense of things on paper. I like to fill in the spaces and
give color to the dark spots. I sketch images that run so close to
the edges of the page, they are in danger of falling off. And
sometimes things are revealed in my drawings that I do not
understand. Occasionally I will finish a portrait and find
something I never meant to draw hidden in the hollow of a neck or the
dark curve of an ear. I am always surprised when I see the finished
products. I have sketched things I should not know, secrets that
haven't been revealed, loves that weren't meant to be. When people
see my pictures, they seem fascinated. They ask me if I know what
these things mean, but I never do. I can draw the image, but people
have to face their own demons.

I
do not know why I have this gift. It doesn't come with every picture
I draw. The first time was in the seventh grade, when I drew a simple
Chicago skyline in art class. But I had covered the pale clouds with
visions of deep, empty halls and gaping doors. And in the corner,
nearly invisible, was a castle and a tower and a woman in the window
with her hands pressed to her heart. The sisters, disturbed, called
my father, and when he saw the drawing he turned white. "I
didn't know," he said, "that you remembered your mother so
well."

When
I came home and Nicholas would not let me in, I did the next best
thing—I surrounded myself with pictures of my husband and my
son. I sketched the look on Nicholas's face when he opened the door
and saw me; I sketched Max where he sat in Nicholas's arms. I taped
these two on the dashboard of my car. They are not technically good,
but I have captured the feeling, and that is something.

Today,
while I was waiting for Nicholas to come home from the hospital, I
drew from memory. I did sketch after sketch, using both sides of the
paper. I now have more than sixty pictures of Nicholas and Max.

I
am working on a sketch I began earlier this night, and I am so
wrapped up in it that I don't see Nicholas until he steps onto the
front porch. He is haloed in soft white light. "Paige?" he
calls. "Paige?"

I
move in front of the porch, to a spot where he can see me. "Oh,"
Nicholas says. He rubs his temples. "I just wanted to see if you
were still here."

"I'm
still here," I say. "I'm not going anywhere."

Nicholas
crosses his arms. "Well," he says, "it's a little late
for that." I think for a moment he is going to storm inside, but
he pulls his robe tighter around himself and sits down on the porch
step. "What are you doing?" he says, pointing to my sketch
pad.

"I've
been working on you. And Max," I say. I show him one of the
sketches I did earlier.

"That's
good," he says. "You always were good at that."

I
cannot remember the last time I heard Nicholas giving me credit for
something, anything, a job well done. He looks at me for a second,
and he almost lets his guard down. His eyes are tired and pale. They
are the same color blue as mine.

In
just that second, looking at Nicholas, I can see a younger man who
dreamed of getting to the top, who used to come home and heal in my
arms when one of his patients died. I can see, reflected, the eyes of
a girl who used to believe in romance. "I'd like to hold him,"
I whisper, and at that Nicholas's stare turns dark and shuttered.

"You
had your chance," he says. He stands and goes into our house.

By
moonlight, I work on my sketch. The whole time, I am wondering
whether Nicholas is having trouble sleeping, too, and how angry he'll
be tomorrow when he's not one hundred percent. Maybe because my
attention is divided, my picture turns out the way it does. It's all
wrong. I have captured the likeness of Max—his sticky fists,

his
spiky velvet hair—but something is completely off. It takes me
a few minutes to figure it out. This time, instead of drawing Max
with Nicholas, I have drawn him with me. He sits in the curve of my
arm, grabbing for my hair. To an outsider, the picture would be fine.
But hidden in the purple hollow of Max's outstretched palm is a faint
woven circle of leaves and latticework. And in its center I've drawn
the image of my running mother, who holds, like an accusation,
the child I did not have.

Part
I:
Conception

1985-1993

^chapter
1