Harvesting the Heart (41 page)

The
mother of Christ. There aren't that many blessed women in
Catholicism, so when I was a child she was my idol. I always prayed
to her. And like every other little Catholic girl, I figured that if
I was perfectly good for the twelve or so years left in my childhood,
I'd grow up to be just like her. Once on Halloween I had even dressed
up as her, wearing a blue mantle and a heavy cross, but nobody knew
who I was supposed to be. I imagined Mary to be very peaceful and
very beautiful—after all, God had chosen her to bear His son.
But the thing I loved best about her was that her place in heaven was
guaranteed simply because she'd been the mother of someone very
special, and sometimes I'd borrow her from Jesus, pretending that she
was sitting on the edge of my bed at night, asking me what I'd done
in school that day.

I
seemed to know so much about mothers in the abstract. I remembered
when I had learned during a social studies unit in fifth grade that
baby monkeys, given the choice, picked terry-cloth figures to cling
to, rather than wire ones. Once, in a doctor's waiting room, I had
read of coyotes, who howl if their cubs get lost, knowing they will
find their way home by the signal. I wondered if Max would be able to
find safety in my voice. I wondered if after all these years I'd be
able to pick out my mother's.

Out
of the corner of my eye I saw a familiar priest heading toward the
altar. I did not want to be recognized and shamed into penance. I
ducked my head and pushed past him in the aisle, shivering as my
shoulder caught the strength of his faith.

I
drove away from Saint Christopher's to the place where I knew I'd
have to go before I left to find my mother. Even as I approached the
Mobil station, I could see him from a distance. Jake was handing a
credit card back to a buttoned-down lawyer type, taking care not to
brush his blackened hand against his customer's. The man drove away
in his Fiat, leaving a space for me.

Jake
did not move as I pulled my car up beside the unleaded tank and got
out. "Hello," I said. He clenched and then unclenched his
fingers. He was wearing a wedding band, and this made my stomach
burn, even though I was wearing one too. It was all right for
me
to
go on, but I somehow had expected Jake to be just the way he had been
when I left.

I
swallowed and put on my brightest smile. "Well," I said, "I
can tell you're overwhelmed to see me."

Jake
spoke then, his voice running and low as I had remembered it. "I
didn't know you were back," he said.

"I
didn't know I was coming." I took a step away from him,
shielding my eyes from the sun. The facade of the garage had been
updated with fresh paint and a sign that said, "Jake Flanagan,
Proprietor." I turned back to Jake.

"He
died," Jake said quietly, "three years ago."

The
air between us was humming, but I kept my distance. "I'm sorry,"
I said. "No one told me."

Jake
looked at the car, which was dusty from its long drive. "How
much do you want?" he said, lifting the nozzle from its cradle.

I
stared at him blankly. He unscrewed the cap. "Oh, the car,"
I said. "Fill it."

Jake
nodded and started the pump. He leaned against the hot metal door,
and I watched his hands, restrained in their strength. Grease had
settled into the creases in his palms, the way it used to. "What
are you doing now?" he asked. "Still drawing?"

I
smiled at the ground. "I'm an escape artist," I said. "Like
Houdini?"

"Yeah,"
I said, "but the knots and cuffs are stronger."

Jake
didn't look at me when the pump switched off. He held out his hand,
and I gave him my credit card.

I
had expected the familiar physical jolt that had always flared
between us when our fingers touched. But nothing happened. Nothing
at all. I wasn't looking for passion, and I knew I wasn't in love
with Jake. I was married to Nicholas. I was where I was supposed to
be. But somehow I expected there to be a little something left from
before. I looked into Jake's face, and his aqua eyes were cool and
reserved.
Yes,
he
seemed to be saying,
between
us, it is over.

When
he came back a minute later, he asked if I'd come into the office for
a moment. My heart caught; maybe he was going to say something to me
or let down his guard. But he took me to the machine that validated
credit cards. My American Express card had been rejected. "That's
impossible," I murmured, and I handed him a Visa. "Try
this."

The
same thing happened. Without asking Jake's permission, I picked up
the telephone and dialed the emergency 800 number on the back of my
credit card. The operator informed me that Nicholas Prescott had
voided his old Visa card and that a new one, with a new number, was
being sent to his address. I put the receiver down on the counter and
shook my head. "My husband," I said. "He just cut me
off."

I
mentally ran through the amount of cash I had left, the chances of my
checks being accepted out-of-state. What if I didn't have enough to
find my mother? What if I
could
find
her but then was too broke to get to her? Suddenly Jake's arm was
around my shoulders. He led me to a worn orange plastic window seat.
"I'm gonna move your car," he said. "I'll be right
back." I closed my eyes and slipped into the familiar feeling.
This time, I told myself, Jake would be able to rescue me.

When
he came back he sat beside me. There was gray in his hair now, just
at the temples, and it still hung over his eyes and curled at the
edges of his ears. He lifted my chin, and in his touch I felt that
easy camaraderie I had felt when I was his favorite little sister.
"So, Paige O'Toole," he said, "what brings you back to
Chicago?"

As
he drew the outline I filled in with chiseled images and stories the
past eight years of my life. I had just told him about Max falling
off the couch and getting a nosebleed, when the glass door jingled
and a young woman came in. She had dark, exotic skin and eyes that
tilted up. She was wearing a tie-died cotton jumper, and she carried
a big bag of Fritos in her left hand. "Dinner!" she sang,
and then she saw Jake sitting with me. "Oh." She smiled. "I
can wait out back."

Jake
stood and wiped his hands on his jeans. He put his arm around the
woman's shoulders. "Paige," he said, "this is my wife,
Ellen."

Ellen's
dark eyes opened wider at the sound of my name. I waited a second,
expecting a flare of jealousy to streak her smile. But she just took
a step forward and held out her hand. "After all these years of
hearing about you, it's nice to finally meet you," she said, and
I could see it in her gaze—she was being honest. She slipped
her arm around Jake's waist and squeezed lightly, hooking her thumb
into the belt loop of his jeans. "How about I leave the Fritos,"
she said. "I'll catch up with you at home." And as easily
as she'd interrupted, she disappeared.

When
she left the small glass business office, taking with her the halo of
energy that hovered around her, the air seemed to be sucked away as
well. "Ellen and I have been married for five years," Jake
said, staring after her. "She knows about everything. We can't—"
His voice tripped, and then he started again. "We haven't been
able to have any kids yet." I turned away; I did not trust
myself to meet his eyes. "I love her," he said softly,
watching her drive onto Franklin.

"I
know."

Jake
squatted down on the floor in front of me. He picked up my left hand
and rubbed his thumb over my wedding band, leaving a stripe of grease
that he did not try to erase. "Tell me why he cut off your
charge cards," he said.

I
tilted back my head and thought about the days when Jake

would
be getting ready for a date with another girl; all the nights I had
eaten with his family and pretended that I really belonged and spun
such complicated tales about my mother's death that I sometimes
wrote them down just to keep track. I remembered Terence Flanagan's
buckled grin as he pinched his wife's backside while she served the
potatoes. I remembered Jake coming to me after midnight, to dance in
the moonlit kitchen. I thought of Jake's arms around me as he carried
me to my bedroom, still bleeding from the loss of a life. I thought
of his face coming in and out of my pain; of the impossible ties he
cut to say goodbye. "I've run away," I whispered to Jake,
"again."

^chapter
22

_Nicholas

_T
his
is the deal," Nicholas said, juggling Max on his hip and the
diaper bag on his shoulder. "I'll pay you whatever you ask. I'll
do everything in my power to get you off the next two graveyard
shifts. But you've got to watch my kid."

LaMyrna
Ratchet, the nurse on duty in orthopedics, twisted a strawberry-blond
curl around her finger. "I don't know, Dr. Prescott," she
said. "I could get in a shitload of trouble for this."

Nicholas
gave her his most winning smile. He was watching the heavy clock
above her head, which said that even if he left right now he'd be
fifteen minutes late to surgery. "I'm trusting you with my son,
LaMyrna," he said. "I've got to go. I've got a patient
waiting. I'll bet you can figure something out."

LaMyrna
chewed on a fingernail and finally reached out for Max, who grabbed
at her Coke-bottle glasses and her stringy hair. "He

doesn't
cry, does he?" she called after Nicholas, who was running down
the hall.

"Oh,
no," Nicholas yelled over his shoulder. "Not a bit."

Nicholas
had arrived at the hospital at five in the morning, a half hour
earlier than usual. He'd actually had the pleasure of waking up his
son, who had awakened him three times during the night to drink and
to be changed. Max, still half asleep, had fussed the whole time
Nicholas tried to jam him into a fuzzy yellow playsuit. "Yeah,
well," he'd said, "how do
you
like
it?"

Nicholas
had expected to put Max in whatever sort of staff day care the
hospital had, but there
was
no
damn program on site. If Nicholas wanted to use Mass General's child
care facility, he'd have to drive to fucking
Charlestown,
and—as
if that weren't inconvenient enough—it didn't open until 6:30
a.
m
.,
when Nicholas would already be scrubbing for surgery. He'd asked the
OR nurses to watch Max, but they had looked at him as though he had
two heads. They couldn't, they said, not when at least six times a
day there was no one behind the desk because of short staffing. They
suggested the general patient floors, but the only nurses on the
early shift were bleary from being up all night, and Nicholas didn't
quite trust them. So he'd headed up to the orthopedics floor, and
he'd found LaMyrna, a homely girl with a good heart whom he
remembered from his internship.

"Dr.
Prescott," he heard, and he whipped around. He'd missed the door
to the operating suite, that's how exhausted he was. The nurse held
the swinging door for him. He turned on the steaming water in the
industrial sinks, scouring under his fingernails until the pads of
his fingers were pink and raw. When he pushed his way backward into
the operating suite, he saw that everyone else had been waiting.