Harvesting the Heart (38 page)

Nicholas's
voice was hoarse and low. "Don't bother," he said, and he
slammed down the phone.

I
drove all night and all day, and by 4:00
p.m.
I
was on the Loop, heading into Chicago. Knowing that my father
wouldn't be home for a couple of hours, I headed toward the old art
supply store I used to go to. It felt strange driving through the
city. When I had been here last, I had no car; I had always been
escorted. At a stoplight I thought about Jake—the angles of his
face and the rhythm of his breathing. Once, that was all it had taken
to make him appear. I drove carefully when the light turned green,
expecting him to be on the next street corner, but I was mistaken.
That telepathy had been severed years ago by Jake, who knew we could
never go back.

The
owner of the art store was Indian, with the smooth brown skin of an
onion. He recognized me right away. "Missy O'Toole," he
said, his voice running over my name like a river. "What can I
get for you?" He clasped his hands in front of himself, as if I
had last stepped into the store a day or two before. I did not answer
him at first. I walked to the carved statues of Vishnu and Ganesh,
running my fingers over the cool stone elephant's head. "I'll
need some conte' sticks," I whispered, "a newsprint pad,
and charcoal." The words came so easily, I might as well have
been seventeen again.

He
brought me what I had asked for and held out the conti sticks for my
approval. I took them into my palm as reverently as I'd taken the
Host at Communion. What if I couldn't do it anymore? It had been
years since I'd drawn anything substantial.

"I
wonder," I said to the man, "if maybe you would let me draw
you."

Pleased,
the man settled himself between the Hindu sculptures of the Preserver
of Life and the God of Good Fortune. "What better place for me
to be sitting myself," he chattered. "If you please, missy,
this place would be very good, very good indeed."

I
swallowed hard and picked up the newsprint pad. With hesitant lines I
drew the oval of the man's face, the fierce glitter of his eyes. I
used a white conti stick for relief shading, creating a fine web of
wrinkles at his temples and his chin. I mapped the age of his smile
and the slight swell of his pride. When I finished, I stepped away
from the pad and observed it critically. I was a little off on the
likeness, but it was good enough for a first try. I peered into
the background and the shadows of his face, expecting to see one
of my hidden pictures, but there was nothing except for the calm
brush of charcoal. Maybe I had lost my other talent, and I thought
that this might not be so bad.

"Missy,
you have finished? You do not want to keep such work all to
yourself." The man scurried toward me and beamed at my sketch.
"You will leave it here for me, yes?"

I
nodded. "You can have it. Thank you."

I
handed him the sketch, and a twenty to pay for the supplies, but he
waved me away. "You give me a gift," he said, "I give
you one in return."

I
drove to the lake and parked illegally. Carrying my pad and my box of
charcoal under my arm, I went to sit on the shore. It was a cool day,
and not many people were in the water, just some children with bubble
floats around their waists, whose mothers watched with lioness stares
in case they drifted away. I sat on the edge of the water and brought
Max to mind, trying to conjure a clear enough image to draw him. When
I couldn't, I was shocked. No matter how hard I tried, I couldn't
catch in his eyes the way he looked at the world, the way everything
was a series of first times. And without that, a picture of Max just
wasn't a picture of Max. I tried to imagine Nicholas, but it was the
same. His fine aquiline nose, the thick sheen of his hair— they
appeared and receded in waves, as if I were looking at him lying on
the bottom of a rippled pond. When I touched the charcoal to the
paper, nothing happened at all. It struck me how strong the slam of
that phone might have been. As Jake had done once before, it was
possible that Nicholas had broken all of our connections.

Determined
not to start crying, I stared across the dappled surface of the lake
and began to move the charcoal over the blank page. Diamonds of
sunlight and shifting currents appeared. Even though the picture was
black and white, you could clearly see how blue the water was. But as
I continued, I realized that I was not drawing Lake Michigan at all.
I was drawing the ocean, the Caribbean ring that banded Grand Cayman
Island.

When
I was twelve I had gone with my father to Grand Cayman for an
Invention Convention. He used up most of our savings for the plane
ticket and the rental condo. He was setting up a booth of rocks, the
fake ones he'd created that held a secret compartment for a key and
could be placed on the dirt right outside your front door just in
case. The convention lasted for two days, during which I was left at
the condo to roam the beach. I made snow angels in the white sand and
I snorkeled around the reefs and dove to grab at fire-colored coral
and neon-streaked angelfish. The third day, our last, my father sat
on a chaise longue on the beach. He didn't want to go into the water
with me, because, he said, he'd barely even seen the sun. So I went
in alone, and to my surprise, a sea turtle came swimming beside me.
It was two feet long and had a tag under its armpit. It had black
beaded eyes and a leathery smile; its shell was curved down like a
topaz horizon. It seemed to grin at me, and then it swam away.

I
followed. I was always a few strokes behind. Finally, when the turtle
disappeared behind a wall of coral, I stopped. I floated on my back
and rubbed the stitch in my side. When I opened my eyes, I was at
least a mile away from where I'd started.

I
breast-stroked back, and by that time my father was frantic. He asked
where I'd gone, and when I told him he said it had been a stupid
thing to do. But I went into the ocean again anyway, hoping to find
that sea turtle. Of course it was a big ocean and the turtle was long
gone, but I had known—even at twelve—that I had to take
the chance.

I
laid down the drawing. A familiar breathlessness came when I finished
the sketch, as if I'd had a spirit channeling through me and was only
just returning now. In the middle of Lake Michigan I'd drawn that
vanishing turtle. Its back was made up of a hundred hexagons. And
very faintly, in every single polygon, I had drawn my mother.

I
knew before I even turned onto my old block that I would not be
staying long enough to remember all the things about my childhood
that I'd trapped in some dark corner of my mind. I would not be able
to remember the bus route to the Institute of Art. I would not have
time to recall the name of the Jewish bakery with fresh onion bagels.
I would stay only until I had gathered the information I needed to
find my mother.

I
realized that in a way I'd always been trying to find her. Except I
hadn't been chasing her; she'd been chasing me. She was always there
when I looked over my shoulder, reminding me of who I was and how I
got to be that way. Until today I had believed she was

the
reason I had lost Jake, the reason I'd run from Nicholas, the reason
I'd left Max. I saw her at the root of every mistake I'd ever made.
But now I wondered if she really
was
the
enemy. After all, I seemed to be following in her footsteps. She had
run away too, and maybe if I knew her reasons I'd understand mine.
For all I knew, my mother could be just like me.

I
walked up the steps to my childhood home, my feet falling into the
sunken brick patterns. Behind me lay Chicago, winking at dusk and
spread like a destiny. I knocked on the front door for the first time
in eight years.

My
father opened it. He was shorter than I remembered, and his hair,
streaked with gray, fell over his eyes. "May," he
whispered, frozen.

My
love.
He
had spoken in Gaelic, which he almost never did, an endearment I
remembered him saying to my mother. And he had called me by my
mother's name.

I
did not move. I wondered if this was an omen. My father blinked
several times and took a step backward, and then he stared at me
again.
"Paige,"
he
said, shaking his head as if he still could not believe it was me. My
father held out his hands and, with them, everything he could offer.
"Lass," he said, "you're the image of your mother."

^chapter
20

_Nicholas

This
was inexcusable.

Nicholas
glanced at Max, still chewing on the piece of telephone cord that
dipped into his playpen. He picked up the telephone and called the
twenty-four-hour emergency number of the bank. Within minutes he'd
put a hold on his assets, frozen his checking account, and revoked
Paige's charge cards. This made him smile, with a feeling of
satisfaction that snaked all the way down to his belly. She wasn't
going to get very far.

Then
he called Fogerty's office at the hospital, expecting to leave a
message for Alistair to call him later that evening. But to
Nicholas's surprise, it was Fogerty's brusque, icy voice that
answered the phone. "Well, hello," he said, when he heard
Nicholas. "Shouldn't you be sleeping?"

"Something's
come up," Nicholas said, swallowing the bitterness that lodged
in his mouth. "It seems that Paige is gone."

Alistair
didn't respond, and then Nicholas realized he probably thought Paige
was dead. "She's left, I mean. She just sort of picked up and
disappeared. Temporary insanity, I think."

There
was silence. "Why are you telling me this, Nicholas?"

Nicholas
had to think about that. Why
was
he
calling Fogerty? He turned to watch Max, who had rolled onto his back
and was biting his own feet. "I need to do something with Max,"
Nicholas said. "If I have surgery tomorrow I'll need someone to
watch him."