Harvesting the Heart (36 page)

The
UPS man had come very other day since Nicholas mentioned to his
mother that she had a grandson. Big boxes filled with Dr. Seuss
books, Baby Dior clothing, even a wooden hobbyhorse, were sent in an
effort to buy Max's—and Nicholas's—love. I liked my UPS
man.

He
was young and he called me ma'am and he had soft brown eyes and a
moony smile. Sometimes when Nicholas was on call he was the only
adult I'd see for days. "Maybe you'd like to have some coffee,"
I said. "It's still pretty early."

The
UPS man grinned at me. "Thanks, ma'am," he said, "but
I can't, not on company time."

"Oh,"
I said, stepping back from the threshold. "I see."

"It
must be tough," he said.

I
blinked up at him. "Tough?"

"With
a baby and all. My sister just had one and she used to be a teacher
and she says one little monster is worse than a hundred and twenty
seventh graders in springtime."

"Well,"
I said, "I suppose it is."

The
UPS man hoisted the box into our living room. "Need help opening
it?"

"I
can manage." I shrugged and gave a small smile. "Thanks,
though."

He
tipped his worn brown hat and disappeared through the open doorway. I
listened to the squat truck chug down the block, and then I set Max
on the floor next to the box. "Don't go anywhere," I said.
I backed my way into the kitchen, and then I ran to get a knife. When
I came into the living room again, Max had pushed himself up on his
hands, like the Sphinx. "Hey," I said, "that's pretty
good." I flushed, pleased that I had finally seen a
developmental marker before Nicholas.

Max
watched as I cut the twine around the box and pulled out the staples.
He caught a length of string in his fist and tried to work it into
his mouth. I laid the knife beside the couch and pulled out of the
box a little stool with cut-out yellow letters that spelled
max
and
could be removed like a jigsaw puzzle. "Love, Grandma and
Grandpa," read the note. Somewhere, Max had another grandpa and
possibly another grandma. I wondered if he'd ever meet either.

I
stood up to throw away the box, but a smaller, flat pink box caught
my eye. It had been packed in the bottom of the larger one. I broke
the gold-foil seals at its sides and opened it to reveal a beautiful
silk scarf printed with linked brass horse bits and braided reins and
U-shaped silver shoes. "For Paige," the card said, "because
not only the baby deserves gifts. Mother." I thought about this.
Astrid Prescott was not my mother; she never would be. For a moment
my breath caught, and I wondered if it was possible that my real
mother, wherever she was, had sent me this beautiful scarf through
the Pres-cotts. I rumpled the thin silk and held it to my nose,
breathing in the fragrance of a fine boutique. It was from Astrid, I
knew that, and inside I was fluttering because she had thought of me.
But just for today, I was going to pretend this had come from the
mother I never got to know.

Max,
who could not crawl, had wriggled himself over to the knife. "Oh,
no you don't," I said, lifting him by his armpits. His feet
kicked a mile a minute, and little bubbles of spit formed at the
corners of his mouth. Standing, I held him to my chest, one arm out
like a dance partner. I whirled into the kitchen, humming a Five
Satins song, watching his unsteady head bob left and right.

We
watched the bottle heat up in the saucepan—the only bottle of
formula Max got each day, because in some ways I was still afraid
that the La Leche woman would come back and find out and point a
damning finger at me. I tested the liquid on my hand. We danced back
to the couch in the living room and turned on Oprah, then I gently
placed him on a pillow across the couch.

I
liked to feed Max this way, because when I held him in my arms he
could smell the breast milk and sometimes he refused to take the
bottle. He wasn't a stupid little thing; he knew the real McCoy. I'd
prop him on the pillow and tuck a cloth burping diaper under his chin
to catch the runoff; then I'd even have a free hand to flip through
channels with the remote or to scan the pages of a magazine.

Oprah
had on women who had been pregnant and given birth without even
knowing they'd been carrying a child. I shook my head at the screen.
"Max, my boy," I said, "where could she even
find
six
people like this?" One woman was saying that she had had a child
already and then one night she felt a little gassy and she went to
lie down in bed and ten minutes later she realized a squalling infant
was between her legs. Another woman nodded her head; she'd been in
the back seat of her friend's van and all of a sudden she just gave
birth through her underwear and her shorts, and the baby was lying on
the floor mat. "How couldn't they feel it kicking?" I said
out loud. "How couldn't they notice a contraction?"

Max
lifted his chin, and the diaper-bib fell to the floor, twisting over
my leg to land behind me. I sighed and turned away for half a second
to grab it, and that was when I heard the hard crack of Max's head
striking the side of the coffee table as he rolled off the couch and
onto the floor.

He
lay on the pale-beige carpet, scant inches from the knife I'd used to
cut the twine of the box. His arms and legs were flailing, and he was
facedown. I could not breathe. I lifted him into my arms, absorbing
his screams into the shallows of my bones. "Oh, God," I
said, rocking him back and forth tightly as he howled with pain.
"Dear God."

I
lifted my head to see if Max was quieting down, and then I saw the
blood, staining my shirt and a corner of the beautiful new scarf. My
baby was bleeding.

I
put him on the pale couch, not caring, running my fingers over his
face and his neck and his arms. The blood was coming out of his nose.
I had never seen so much blood. He didn't have any other cuts; he
must have fallen face-first onto the hard oak of the table. His
cheeks were puffed and beet red; his fists beat the air with the fury
of a warrior. He would not stop bleeding. I did not know what to do.

I
called the pediatrician, the number etched into my heart. "Hello,"
I said, breathless, over Max's cries. "Hello? No, I can't be put
on hold—" But they cut me off. I pulled the phone into the
kitchen, still trying to rock my child, and picked up Dr. Spock's
book. I looked up Nosebleeds in the index.
Get
on the phone,
I
thought.
This
is a goddamned emergency. I have hurt my child.
There
...
I read the whole paragraph, and at the end it said to tilt him
forward so he wouldn't choke on the blood. I positioned Max and
watched his face get even redder, his cries louder. I curled him into
my shoulder again and wondered how I had done it wrong.

"Hello?"
A voice returned to the pediatrician's line.

"Oh,
God, please help me. My baby just fell. He's bleeding through his
nose, and I can't make it stop—"

"Let
me get you a nurse," the woman said.

"Hurry,"
I
shouted into the phone, into Max's ear.

The
nurse told me to tilt Max forward, just like Dr. Spock said, and to
hold a towel to his nose. I asked her if she'd hang on, and then I
tried that, and this time the bleeding seemed to ebb. "It's
working," I yelled into the receiver, lying on its side on the
kitchen table. I picked it up. "It's working," I repeated.

"Good,"
the nurse told me. "Now, watch him for the next couple of hours.
If he seems content, and if he's eating all right, then we don't need
to see him."

At
this, a flood of relief washed through me. I didn't know how I'd ever
manage to get him to the doctor by myself. I could barely make it out
of the neighborhood with him yet.

"And
check his pupils," the nurse continued. "Make sure they
aren't dilated or uneven. That's a sign of concussion."

"Concussion,"
I whispered, unheard over Max's cries. "I didn't mean to do it,"
I told the nurse.

"Of
course," the nurse assured me. "No one does."

When
I hung up the phone, Max was still crying so hard that he'd begun to
gag on his sobs. I was shaking, rubbing his back. I tried to sponge
the clotted blood around his nostrils so that he'd be able to
breathe. Even after he was cleaned, faint red blotches remained,
as if he'd been permanently stained. "I'm so sorry, Max," I
whispered, my words rattling in my throat. "It was just a
second, that's all I turned away for; I didn't know that you were
going to move that fast." Max's cries waned and then became
louder again. "I'm so sorry," I said, repeating the words
like a lullaby. "I'm so sorry."

I
carried him to the bathroom and ran the faucet and let him peek into
the mirror—all the things that usually calmed him down. When
Max didn't respond, I sat down on the toilet lid and rocked him
closer. I had been crying too, high keening notes that tore through
my body and ripped shrilly through Max's screams. It took me a moment
to realize that suddenly I was the only one making a sound.

Max
was still and quiet on my shoulder. I stood and moved to the mirror,
afraid to look. His eyes were closed; his hair was matted with sweat.
His nose was plugged with dried sienna blood, and two bruises
darkened his skin just beneath his eyes. I shivered with the sudden
thought: I was just like those women. I had killed my child.

Still
hiccuping with sobs, I carried Max to the bedroom and placed him on
the cool blue bedspread. I sighed with relief: his back rose and
fell; he was breathing, asleep. His face, though brutally marked,
held the peace of an angel.

I
put my face into my hands, trembling. I had known that I wouldn't be
a very good mother, but I assumed that my sins would be forgetfulness
or ignorance. I didn't know I would hurt my own son. Surely anyone
else would have lifted the baby to retrieve the diaper. I was too
stupid to think of it. And if I had done it once, it could happen
again.

I
had a sudden memory of my mother the night before she disappeared
from my life. She wore a pale-peach bathrobe and fuzzy bunny
slippers. She sat on the edge of my bed. "You know I love you,
Paige-boy," she said, because she thought I was asleep. "Don't
you let anyone tell you otherwise."

I
laid my hand on my son's back, smoothing out his ragged breathing. "I
love you," I said, tracing the letters of his name on his cotton
playsuit. "Don't let anyone tell you otherwise."

Max
woke up smiling. I was leaning over his crib, as I had been for the
hour he'd been asleep, praying for the first time since he was born
that he'd wake up soon. "Oh, sweetie," I said, reaching for
his chubby fingers.

I
changed his diaper and took out his little bathtub. I sat him in it
fully clothed but filled the basin with Baby Magic and warm water.

Then
I washed off his face and his arms where they were still splattered
from the nosebleed. I changed his outfit, rinsing the old one as best
I could and hanging it over the shower rod to dry.

I
gave him the breast instead of the bottle he'd never finished,
figuring he deserved a little pampering. I cuddled him close, and he
smiled and rubbed his cheek against me. "You don't remember a
thing, do you?" I said. I closed my eyes and leaned my head
against the couch. "Thank heaven."