Harvesting the Heart (44 page)

In
the corner of the mirror I saw Jake come to stand in the doorway. His
eyes lingered on my hands as I traced them over my body, lost and
unnatural in his wife's clothing. Then he looked up and held my
reflection, as if he was trying to say something but could not find
the words. I turned away to break the spell, and put my hand on the
serpent's carved neck. "This is some bed," I said.

Jake
laughed. "Ellen's mom gave it to us as a wedding gift. She hates
me. I think this was her way of telling me to go to hell." He
walked to a chipped armoire in the corner of the room and took out a
T-shirt, tossing it to me. It hung to the middle of my thighs. "You
all set?" he said, but he was already leaving.

Jake
and I parked in the lot for a private golf club and walked beneath
the highway overpass to the shores of Lake Michigan. He had pulled
the wicker basket and a cooler of beer out of the trunk, and as I was
about to lock it up, I pulled out my sketch pad and conte sticks on
impulse.

In
early July, the lake was still cold, but the humidity and the heat
rolling off its surface softened the shock of wading in. My ankles
throbbed and then little by little became numb. Jake splashed by me,
diving in headfirst. He surfaced about six feet away and tossed his
hair, spraying me with tiny iced drops that made my breath catch.
"You're a wimp, Flea," he said. "You move out East and
look what happens."

I
thought about Memorial Day the year before, when it was unseasonably
hot and I had begged Nicholas to take me to the beach in Newburyport.
I'd waded into the water, ready to swim. The ocean was no more than
fifty degrees, and Nicholas had laughed and said it never gets
swimmable until the end of August. He'd practically carried me back
up the beach, and then he held his warm hands over my ankles until my
teeth stopped chattering.

Jake
and I were the only ones on the beach, because it was barely nine in
the morning. We had the whole lake to ourselves. Jake did the
butterfly and then the backstroke, and he purposely came close so
that he'd splash me. "I think you should move back here
permanently," he said. "What the hell. Maybe I'll just
never go back to work."

I
sank into the water. "Isn't that the beauty of being the owner,
though? You can delegate responsibility and walk away and still make
a profit."

Jake
dove under and stayed there for so long I began to get worried.
"Jake," I whispered. I splashed around with my hands to
clear the deep water. "Jake!"

He
grabbed my foot and pulled hard, and I didn't even have a chance to
take a breath before I went under.

I
came to the surface, sputtering and shivering, and Jake smiled at me
from several feet away. "I'm going to kill you," I said.

Jake
dipped his lips to the water and then stood up and spurted a
fountain. "You could," he said, "but then you'd have
to get wet again." He turned and started to swim farther away
from the shore. I took a deep breath and went after him. He had
always been a better swimmer; I was out of breath by the time I
reached him. Gasping, I grabbed at his bathing suit and then at the
slippery skin of his back. Jake treaded water with one hand and held
me under the armpit with the other. He was winded too. "Are you
okay?" he said, running his eyes over my face and the cords of
my neck.

I
nodded; I couldn't really speak. Jake supported both of us until my
breathing came slow and even. I looked down at his hand. His thumb
was pressed so tightly against my skin that I knew it would leave a
mark. The straps of Ellen's bathing suit, too long to begin with, had
fallen off my shoulders, and the fabric sagged, leaving a clear line
of vision down my chest. Jake pulled me closer, scissor-kicking
between my own legs, and he kissed me.

It
was no more than a touch of our lips, but I pushed away from Jake and
began swimming as hard as I could back to the shore, terrified. It
was not what he had done that scared me so; it was what was missing.
There had been no fire, no brutal passion, nothing like what I
remembered. There had been only the quiet beat of our pulses and the
steady lap of the lake.

I
was not upset that Jake was no longer in love with me; I'd known that
since the day I took a bus east and started my second life. But I had
always wondered
What
if?,
even
after I was married. It wasn't that I didn't love Nicholas; I just
assumed a little piece of me would always love Jake. And maybe that
was what had me so shaken: I knew now that there was no holding on to
the past. I was tied, and always would be, to Nicholas.

I
lay down on the towel Jake had brought and pretended to be asleep
when he came out of the water and dripped over me. I did not move,
although I wanted to sprint miles down the beach, tearing over the
hot sand until I couldn't breathe. Running through my mind were the
words of Eddie Savoy:
I'm
gonna start with the scraps of the truth.
I
was starting to see that the past might
color
the
future, but it didn't
determine
it.
And if I could believe that, it was much easier to let go of what I'd
done wrong.

When
Jake's steady breathing told me he had fallen asleep, I sat up and
opened my sketch pad to a fresh page. I picked up my conte stick and
drew his high cheekbones, the flush of summer across his brow, the
gold stubble above his upper lip. There were so many differences
between Jake and Nicholas. Jake's features held a quiet energy;
Nicholas's had power. I had waited forever for Jake; I got Nicholas
in a matter of days. When I pictured Jake I saw him standing
beside me, at eye level, although he really had half a head on me.
Nicholas, though—well, Nicholas had always seemed to me to be
twenty feet tall.

Nicholas
had come into my life on a white stallion, had handed me his heart,
and had offered me the palace and the ball gown and the gold ring. He
had given me what every little girl wanted, what I had long given up
hope of having. He could not be blamed just because no one ever
mentioned that once you closed the storybook, Cinderella still had to
do laundry and clean the toilet and take care of the crown prince.

An
image of Max flooded the space in front of me. His eyes were wide
open as he rolled from belly to back, and a smile split his face in
two when he realized he was seeing the world from a whole different
angle. I was beginning to understand the wonder in that, and it was
better late than never. I stared at Jake, and I knew what was the
greatest difference: with Jake I had taken a life; with Nicholas I
had created one.

Jake
opened his eyes one at a time just as I was finishing his portrait.
He turned onto his side. "Paige," he said, looking down,
"I'm sorry. I shouldn't have done that."

I
looked squarely at him. "Yes, you should have. It's okay."
Now that his eyes were open, I sketched in his pale, glowing pupils
and the tiger's stripe of gold around them.

"I
had to make sure," he said. "I just had to make sure."
Jake tipped down the edge of my pad so that he could see. "You've
gotten so much better," he said. He ran his fingers along the
edge of the charcoal, too light to smudge.

"I've
just gotten older," I said. "I guess I've seen more."
Together we stared at the penciled lines of surprise in his
eyes, the beating heat of the sun reflecting off the white page.
He took my hand and touched my fingers to a spot on the paper where
damp curls met the nape of his neck. There I had drawn, in
silhouette, a couple embracing. In the distance, reaching toward the
woman, was a man who looked like Nicholas; reaching toward the man
was a girl with Ellen's face.

"It
worked out the way it should have," Jake said. He put his hand
on my shoulder, and all I felt was comfort. "Yes," I
murmured. "It has."

We
sat on Eddie Savoy's throw pillows, poring through a soiled manila
folder that pieced together the past twenty years of my mother's
life. "Piece of cake," Eddie said, picking his teeth with a
letter opener. "Once I figured out who she was, she was a cinch
to track down."

My
mother had left Chicago under the name Lily Rubens. Lily had died
three days before; my mother had written the obituary for the
Tribune.
She
was twenty-five, and she'd died—according to my mother's
words—of a long, painful illness. My mother had copies of her
Social Security card, driver's license, even a birth certificate from
the Glenwood Town Hall. My mother had not gone to Hollywood. She'd
somehow gotten to Wyoming, where she'd worked for Billy DeLite's Wild
West Show. She had been a saloon dancer until Billy DeLite himself
spotted her cancan and talked her into playing Calamity Jane.
According to Billy's fax, she'd taken to riding and target shooting
as if she'd been doing it since she was a tadpole. Five years later,
in 1977, she disappeared in the middle of the night with the most
talented rodeo cowboy in the Wild West show and most of the previous
day's earnings.

Eddie's
records blanked out here for a while, but they picked up again in
Washington, D.C., where my mother worked for a while doing
telemarketing surveys for consumer magazines. She saved up enough
commission money to buy a horse from a man named Charles Crackers,
and because she was living in a Chevy Chase condo at the time, she
boarded the horse at his stable and came to ride three times a week.

The
pages went on to record my mother's move from Chevy Chase to
Rockville, Maryland, and then a switch of jobs, including a brief
stint at a Democratic senator's campaign office. When the senator
didn't win reelection, she sold her horse and bought a plane ticket
to Chicago, which she did not use at the time.

In
fact, she hadn't traveled for pleasure at all over the past twenty
years, except once. On June 10, 1985, she
did
come
to Chicago. She stayed at the Sheraton and signed in as Lily Rubens.
Eddie watched over my shoulder as I read that part. "What
happened on June tenth?" he said.

I
turned to Jake. "My high school graduation." I tried to
remember every detail: the white gowns and caps all the girls of
Pope Pius had worn, the blazing heat of the sun burning the metal
rims of our folding chairs, Father Draher's commencement address
about serving God in a sinful world. I tried to see the hazy faces of
the audience seated on the bleachers of the playing field, but it had
been too long ago. The day after graduation, I left home. My mother
had come back to see me grow up, and she had almost missed me.

Eddie
Savoy waited until I came to the last page of the report. "She's
been here for the last eight years," he said, pointing to the
circle on the map of North Carolina. "Farleyville. I couldn't
get no address, though, not in her name, and there ain't a phone
listing. But this here's the last recorded place of employment. It
was five years ago, but something tells me that in a town no bigger
than a toilet stall, you ain't gonna have any trouble tracking her
down." I looked at the scribbled humps of Eddie's shorthand. He
grimaced and then sat down behind his low desk. He held out a piece
of ripped paper on which he'd written "Bridal Bits" and a
phone number. "It's some boutique, I guess," he said. "They
knew her real well."

I
thought about my mother, apparently single except for that rodeo
cowboy, and wondered what would compel her to move to the hills of
North Carolina to work in a bridal salon. I imagined her walking
around the tufts of Alencon lace, the thin blue garters and the satin
beaded pumps, touching them as if she had a right to wear them. When
I looked up, Jake was pumping Eddie Savoy's hand. I dug into my
wallet and pulled out his four-hundred-dollar fee, but Eddie shook
his head. "It's already been taken care of," he said. Jake
led me outside and didn't say a word as we settled into our
respective seats in my car. I drove slowly down the rutted road that
led to Eddie's, spraying bits of gravel left and right and flustering
the chickens that had gathered in front of the fender. I pulled
over less than a hundred yards from Eddie's and put my head down on
the steering wheel to cry.