Harvesting the Heart (43 page)

I
swallowed, and Eddie reached across the table and took my hand. His
skin felt like a snake's. "It's very difficult to disappear,"
he said. "It's all a matter of public records. The hardest
people to find are the ones who live in tenements, because they move
around a lot. But then you get them through welfare."

I
had an image of my mother on welfare, living on the streets, and I
winced. "What if my mother isn't my mother anymore?" I
asked. "It's been twenty years. What if she's found a new
identity?"

Eddie
blew smoke rings that expanded and settled around my neck. "You
know, Paige," he said, pronouncing my name
Pej,
"people
just ain't creative. If they get a new identity, they do something
stupid like flip their first and middle names. They use their maiden
names or the last name of their favorite uncle. Or they spell their
same name different or change one digit in their Social Security
number. They aren't willing to completely give up what they're
leaving behind." He leaned forward, almost whispering. "Of
course, the really sharp ones get a whole new image. I found a guy
once who'd taken a new identity by striking up a conversation at a
bar with a fellow who looked like him. He got the other guy to
compare IDs, just for kicks, and he memorized the number on the
driver's license and then got himself a copy by saying it had been
stolen. It ain't so hard to become someone else. You look in the
local papers and find the name of someone who died within the past
week who was about your own age. That gives you a name and an
address. Then you go to the place where the death occurred, and it's
on public record, and bingo, you got a date of birth. Then you go to
Social Security and make up a wacko story about your wallet being
filched and you get a new card with this new name—the death
records are usually slow in getting over to Social Security, so
nothing seems out of the ordinary. And then you pull the same shit at
the RMV and you get a new driver's license. . . ."He shrugged
and stubbed out his cigarette on the floor. "The thing is,
Paige, I know all this stuff. I got connections. I'm one step ahead
of your mother."

I
thought about my mother's obituaries; how easy it would have been for
her to find someone close to her age who had died. I thought of how
connected she got to those people, how she'd visit the graves as if
they were old friends. "What are you going to do first?" I
asked.

"I'm
gonna start with the scraps of the truth. I'm gonna take all this
information you gave me and the picture, and I'm gonna walk around
your neighborhood in Chicago, seeing if anyone remembers her. Then
I'm gonna run a driver's license check and a Social Security check.
If that don't work, I'm gonna look up twenty-year-old obit pages of
the
Trib.
And
if
that
don't
work, I'm gonna dig in my brain and ask myself, 'Where the hell can I
turn now?' I'm gonna hunt her down and get an address for you. And
then if you want I'll go to her house and I'll get her garbage before
the town picks it up and I'll be able to tell you anything you want
to know about her: what she eats for breakfast, what she gets in the
mail, if she's married or livin' with someone, if she has kids."

I
thought of my mother holding another baby, a different daughter.
"I don't think that will be necessary," I whispered.

Eddie
stood up, letting us know the meeting was over. "Fifty bucks an
hour is my fee," he said, and I paled. I couldn't possibly
afford to pay him for more than three days.

Jake
stepped up behind me. "That's fine," he said. He squeezed
my shoulder, and his words fell softly behind my ear. "Don't
worry about it."

I
left Jake waiting in the car and called Nicholas from a pay phone on
the way back to Chicago. It rang four times, and I was thinking about
what kind of message I could leave, when Nicholas answered, hurried
and breathless. "Hello?"

"Hello,
Nicholas," I said. "How are you?"

There
was a beat of silence. "Are you calling to apologize to me?"

I
clenched my fists. "I'm in Chicago now," I said, trying to
keep my voice from wavering. "I'm going to find my mother."
I hesitated and then asked what was on my mind, what I couldn't get
off my mind. "How's Max?" I said.

"Apparently,"
Nicholas said, "you don't give a damn."

"Of
course I do. I don't understand you, Nicholas. Why can't you just
think of this as a vacation, or a visit to my father? I haven't been
back here in eight years. I
told
you
I'd come home." I tapped my foot against the pavement. "It's
just going to take a little longer than I thought."

"Let
me tell you what I did today,
dear,"
Nicholas
said, his voice icy and restrained. "After getting up with Max
three times during the night, I took him to the hospital this
morning. I had a quadruple bypass scheduled, which I almost didn't
complete because I couldn't stay on my feet. Someone could have died
because of your need for a—what did you call it?—a
vacation.
And
I left Max with a stranger because I didn't have any idea who else
could baby-sit for him. And you know what? I'm doing this all again
tomorrow. Aren't you jealous, Paige? Don't you wish you were
me?" The static on the line grew as Nicholas fell silent. I had
never thought about all that; I had just left. Nicholas's voice was
so bitter that I had to hold the receiver away from my ear. "Paige,"
he said, "I don't want to see your face again." And then he
hung up.

I
leaned my forehead against the side of the telephone booth and took
deep breaths. Out of nowhere, that list I had written of my
accomplishments just days before came to mind. I
can
change a diaper. I can measure formula. I can sing Max to sleep.
I
closed my eyes. I
can
find my mother.

I
walked out of the phone booth, shading my eyes from the judgment
of the sun. Jake grinned at me from the passenger seat of my car.
"How's Nicholas?" he asked.

"He
misses me," I said, forcing a smile. "He wants me to come
home."

In
honor of my return to Chicago, Jake took what he called a
well-deserved vacation, and insisted I spend time with him while
Eddie Savoy found my mother. So the next morning I drove to Jake and
Ellen's apartment, which was across the street from where Jake's
mother still lived. It was an unassuming little brick building, with
a cast-iron fence around the tiny blotched yard. I rang the bell and
was buzzed in.

Even
before I reached Jake's apartment, on the first floor, I knew which
one was his. The familiar smell of him—green spring leaves and
honest sweat—seeped through the cracks of the old wooden door.
Ellen opened it, startling me. She held a spatula in her hand and
wore an apron that said across her chest,
kiss
my grits
.
"Jake says Eddie's going to find your mother," she said,
not even bothering with "hello." She drew me in with her
excitement. "I bet you can't wait. I can't imagine not seeing my
mother for twenty years. I wonder how long it—"

"Jeez,
El," Jake said, coming down the hall. "It's not even nine
o'clock." He had just showered. His hair was still dripping at
the ends, leaving little pockmarks on the carpet. Ellen reached over
and made a part with her spatula.

The
apartment was nearly bare, dotted with mismatched sofas and armchairs
and an occasional plastic cube table. There weren't many knickknacks,
except for a few grade-school art class ceramic candy bowls, probably
made years before by Jake's siblings, and a statuette of Jesus on the
Cross. But the room was warm and homey and smelled like popcorn and
overripe strawberries. It looked happily wrapped and comfortably
lived-in. I thought about my Barely White kitchen, my skin-colored
leather couch, and I was ashamed.

Ellen
had made French toast for breakfast, and fresh-squeezed orange
juice and corned beef hash. I hovered at the edge of the speckled
Formica table, looking at all the food. I hadn't made breakfast in
years. Nicholas left at four-thirty in the morning; there wasn't time
for a spread like this. "When do you have to get up to do all
this?" I asked.

Jake
curled his arm around Ellen's waist. "Tell her the truth,"
he said, and then he looked up at me. "Breakfast is all Ellen
can
do.
My mother had to teach her how to turn on the oven when we got
married."

"Jake!"
Ellen slapped his hand away, but she was smiling. She slipped a piece
of French toast onto a plate for me. "I told him he's more than
welcome to move back home, but then he'd have to do his own laundry
again."

I
was mesmerized by them. They made it look so easy. I could not
remember the last time there had been a gentle touch or a relaxed
conversation between Nicholas and me. I couldn't remember if
Nicholas and I had
ever
been
like this. Things had happened so quickly for us, it was as though
our whole relationship had been fast-forwarded. I wondered for a
moment what might have happened if I had married Jake. I pushed that
thought away. I had given my life to Nicholas, and we could have been
like this, I knew we could, if Nicholas had been around just a little
more. Or if I had given him something to stick around for.

I
watched Jake pull Ellen onto his lap and kiss her senseless, as if I
weren't even there. He caught my eye. "Flea," he said,
grinning, "you
aren't
going
to watch, are you?"

"For
God's sake," I said, smiling back at Jake. "What's a girl
got to do to get breakfast in this house?" I stood up and opened
the refrigerator, looking for the maple syrup. I watched Jake and
Ellen from behind the door. I saw their tongues meet. I
promise
you this, Nicholas,
I
thought.
Once
I get my act together, I'm going to make it up to you. I'm going to
fall in love with you all over again. I'm going to make you fall in
love with me.

Ellen
left for work minutes later, without eating anything she'd prepared.
She worked for an advertising agency downtown, in Relocation.
"When people move to different branches in the country,"
she had said, "I get them started all over again." She
draped a long multicolored scarf over her shoulders and kissed Jake
on the neck and waved to me.

Over
the next two days, Jake and I went food shopping together, ate lunch
together, watched the evening news. I spent all day with him, waiting
to hear from Eddie Savoy. At seven o'clock, when Ellen came home, I
would get up off her sofa and turn Jake over to her. I'd drive home
to my father's, sometimes pulling off into a dark, rustling alley to
imagine what they were doing.

The
third day I was in Chicago, the temperature soared to one hundred
degrees. "Get yourself to the lake," the morning radio DJ
said when I was on my way over to Jake's place. When I opened his
door, he was standing in the middle of the living room in his boxer
shorts, packing a wicker basket. "It's a picnic kind of day,"
he said, and he held up an orange Tupperware bowl. "Ellen made
three-bean salad," he told me, "and she left you a bathing
suit to borrow."

I
tried on Ellen's bathing suit, feeling very uncomfortable in the
bedroom where Jake slept with his wife. There was nothing on the
white walls except the old sampler that had hung over Jake's
childhood bed, with the Irish blessing that he had left in my
knapsack when I walked away from my life. Most of the room was taken
up by an enormous four-poster bed, carved out of golden oak. Each
post depicted a different scene from the Garden of Eden: Adam and Eve
in a gentle embrace; Eve biting into the forbidden fruit; the Fall
from Grace. The serpent wound itself over the fourth post, which I
was using to balance myself as I stepped into Ellen's maillot. I
looked into the mirror and smoothed my hands over the places where my
bust did not fill up the cups and where the material strained at my
waist, thicker because of Max. I wasn't the slightest bit like Ellen.