Harvesting the Heart (47 page)

I
followed his directions, messing up only once, and that was because I
couldn't tell a tobacco from a corn field. The bait shop was nothing
but a shack with a crude fish painted on a wooden sign in front of
it, and I wondered why people would come all the way out here to buy
wedding gowns. Surely Raleigh would be a better place. I wondered if
my mother's shop was secondhand or wholesale, how it could even stay
in business.

The
only building three miles down on the left was a neat pink

cement-block
square, without a sign to herald it. I stepped out of the car and
pulled at the front door, but it was locked. The big show window was
partially lit by the setting sun, which had come up behind me as I
drove, to wash over the tops of the tobacco plants like hot lava. I
peered inside, looking for a seed-pearl headpiece or a fairytale
princess's gown. I couldn't see beyond the showcase itself, and it
took me a minute to realize that set proudly behind the glass was a
finely stitched saddle with gleaming stirrups, a furry halter, a
spread wool blanket with the woven silhouette of a stallion. I
squinted and then I moved back to the door, to the handwritten sign I
hadn't noticed the first time,
bridles
& bits,
it
said.
closed.

I
sank to the ground in front of the threshold and drew up my knees. I
rested my head against them. All this time, all these miles, and I'd
come for nothing. My thoughts came in waves: my mother wasn't working
here; she was supposed to be at a completely different kind of store;
I was going to have Eddie Savoy's head. Pink clouds stretched across
the sky like fingers, and at that moment the final streak of sun left
in the day lit the inside of the tack shop. I had a clear view of the
mural on the ceiling. It matched like a twin the ceiling I
remembered, the one I'd painted with my mother and had lain beneath
for hours, hoping that those fast-flying horses might champion us far
away.

^chapter
26

_Nicholas

should
know," he said, "I wouldn't be here if I wasn't at the end
of my rope."

Nicholas
had been awake most of the night, trying to come up with an alternate
plan. He'd been on unpaid leave for a full week, and in spite of his
best efforts, he hadn't found quality day care for his son. The
British nanny service had laughed when he said he needed a woman
within six days. He had almost hired a Swiss au pair—going so
far as to leave her with the baby while he went grocery shopping—but
he'd returned home to find Max wailing in his playpen while the girl
entertained some biker boyfriend in the living room. The reputable
child care centers had waiting lists until 1995; he didn't trust the
teenage daughters of his neighbors who were looking for summer
employment. Nicholas knew that if he was going to return to Mass
General as scheduled, the only option open to him was to swallow his
pride and go back to his parents for help.

He
knew his mother wouldn't turn him away. He'd seen her face when he'd
first told her of Max. He'd lay odds she kept the photo of Max—the
one he had left behind—right in her wallet. Nicholas pushed
past his mother into the parlor, the same room he'd pulled Paige from
indignantly eight years before. He found his eyes roaming over the
damask upholstery, the burnished wood tables. He waited for his
mother's questions, and then the accusations. What had his parents
been able to see that he'd been so blind to?

He
put Max down on the rug and watched him roll over and over until he
landed beneath the sofa, reaching for a thin carved leg. Astrid
hovered uneasily at the door for a moment and then put on her widest
diplomat's smile. She had charmed Idi Amin into granting her free
press access to Uganda; surely this couldn't be any more difficult.
She sat down on a Louis XIV love seat, which afforded her the best
view of Max. "It's so good to see you, Nicholas," she said.
"You'll be staying for lunch?"

Nicholas
did not take his eyes off his son. Astrid watched her son, too large
for the chair he sat upon, and realized he did not look right in this
room at all. She wondered when that had happened.

Nicholas
shifted his gaze to his mother, a challenge. "Are you busy?"
he asked.

Astrid
thought about the photographs spread across her study, the old
Ladakhi women with heavy feather necklaces, the bare brown children
playing tag in front of ancient Buddhist monasteries. She had been
writing the introduction to her latest book of photos, centering
on the Himalayas and the Tibetan plateau. She was three days late on
her deadline already, and her editor was going to call first thing
Monday morning to badger her again. "As a matter of fact,"
Astrid said, "I haven't a thing to do all day."

Nicholas
sighed so gently that even his mother did not notice. He sank against
the stiff frame of the chair, thinking of the blue-and-white-striped
overstuffed love seats Paige had found at a fire sale for the living
room in their old apartment. She had sweet-talked a drummer she met
on the street outside the diner into helping her bring the couches
home in his van, and then she spent three weeks asking Nicholas
whether they were too much sofa for such a little room.
Look
at those elephant legs,
she
had said.
Aren't
they all wrong?
"I
need your help," Nicholas said softly.

Whatever
hesitation Astrid might still have had, whatever warnings she
had been trying to heed to go slowly, all of that shattered when
Nicholas spoke. She stood and walked over to her son. Silently, she
folded him in her arms and rocked back and forth. She had not held
Nicholas like this since he was thirteen and had taken her aside
after she'd embraced him at a school soccer match and told her he was
too old for that.

Nicholas
did not try to push her away. His arms came up to press against the
small of her back; and he closed his eyes and wondered where his
mother, brought up with afternoon tea parties and Junior League
balls, had got all her courage.

Astrid
brought iced coffee and a cinnamon ring and let Nicholas eat, while
she kept Max from chewing on the fireplace tools and loose electrical
cords. "I don't understand," she said, smiling down at Max.
"How could she have left?"

Nicholas
tried to remember a time when he would have defended

Paige
to the end, railed at his mother and his father, and sacrificed his
right arm before letting them criticize his wife. He opened his mouth
to make an excuse, but he could not think of one. "I don't
know," he said. "I really don't know." He ran his
finger around the edge of his glass. "I can't even tell you what
the hell she was
thinking,
to
be honest. It's like she had this whole different agenda that she
never bothered to mention to me. She could have said something. I
would have—" Nicholas broke off. He would have what?
Helped her? Listened?

"You
wouldn't have done a damn thing, Nicholas," Astrid said
pointedly. "You're just like your father. When I fly off for a
shoot, it takes him three days to notice I'm gone."

"This
isn't my fault," Nicholas shouted. "Don't blame this on
me."

Astrid
shrugged. "You're putting words in my mouth. I was only
wondering what reasons Paige gave you, if she's planning on coming
back, that sort of thing."

"I
don't give a damn," Nicholas muttered.

"Of
course you do," Astrid said. She picked up Max and bounced him
on her lap. "You're just like your father."

Nicholas
put his glass down on the table, taking a small amount of
satisfaction in the fact that there was no coaster and that it would
leave a ring. "But
you
aren't
like Paige," he said,
"You
would
never have left your own child."

Astrid
pulled Max closer, and he began to suck on her pearls. "That
doesn't mean I didn't think about it," she said.

Nicholas
stood abruptly and took the baby out of his mother's arms. Nothing
was going the way he had planned. His mother was supposed to have
been so overwhelmed with gratitude to see Max that she wouldn't ask
these questions, that she would beg to watch her grandson for the
day, the week, whatever. His mother was
not
supposed
to make him think about Paige, was
not
supposed
to take her goddamned side. "Forget it," he said. "We're
going. I thought you'd be able to understand what I was getting at."

Astrid
blocked his exit. "Don't be an idiot, Nicholas," she said.
"I know exactly what you're getting at. I didn't say Paige was
right for leaving, I just said I'd considered it a couple of times
myself. Now give me that gorgeous child and go fix hearts."

Nicholas
blinked. His mother pulled the baby out of his arms. He hadn't told
her his plan; hadn't even mentioned that he needed her to baby-sit
while he worked. Astrid, who had started to carry Max back to the
parlor, turned around and stared at Nicholas. "I'm your
mother,"
she
said by way of explanation. "I know how you think."

Nicholas
closed the top of the baby grand piano and spread out the plastic
foam pad from the diaper bag, forming a makeshift changing
table. "I use A&D on him," he said to Astrid. "It
keeps him from getting diaper rash, and powder dries out his skin."
He explained when Max ate, how much he took, the best way to keep him
from spitting strained green beans back in your face. He brought in
Max's car seat/carrier and said it would work for a nap. He said that
if Max decided to sleep at all, it would be between two and four.

He
left Astrid his beeper number in case of emergency. She and Max
walked him to the door. "Don't worry," she said, touching
Nicholas's sleeve. "I've done it before. And I did a damn
good job." She reached up to kiss Nicholas on the cheek,
remembering the change in course her life had taken on the day her
once-little son was able to look her in the eye.

Nicholas
set off down the slate path, unencumbered. He did not turn back to
wave to Max or even bother to kiss him goodbye. He rolled the muscles
bunched in his shoulders from the cutting straps of the diaper bag
and the uneven weight of an eighteen-pound baby. He was amazed at how
much he knew about Max, how much he'd been able to tell his mother
about the routine. He began to whistle and was so proud of his
accomplishments that he didn't even think about Robert Prescott until
he reached his car.