Harvesting the Heart (51 page)

I
knew as soon as I was sitting that I looked ridiculous. A little girl
might have looked cute on a pony, but I was a fully grown woman. I
was certain my legs almost touched the ground. I might as well have
been riding a burro. "You're not going to kick him,'' my mother
said. "Just urge him into walking."

I
touched my foot gently to the horse's flanks, but nothing happened.
So I did it again, and the horse shot off, bouncing me from left to
right until I leaned forward and wrapped my arms around its neck.
"Sit up!" my mother yelled. "Sit up and pull back."
I summoned all my strength and did what she said, sighing when
the horse slowed to a quiet walk that barely jogged me at all.
"Never
lean
forward," my mother said, smiling, "unless you're planning
to gallop."

I
listened to my mother's calm directions, letting all the words run
together and feeling the simple meter of the horse's movements and
the scratch of its hide against my bare calves. I was amazed at the
power I had. If I pushed my right leg against Tony's side, he moved
to the left. If I pushed my left leg against him, he moved right. He
was completely under my control.

When
my mother urged the horse to a trot by clucking at him, I did what
she said. I kept my shoulders, my hips, and my heels in a straight
line. I posted up and down, letting the horse's rhythm lift me out of
the saddle and holding the beat until the next hoof fell. I kept my
back erect and my hands quiet on Tony's withers. I was completely out
of breath when she told me to sit back and let the horse walk, and I
turned to her immediately. It wasn't until then that I saw how much I
wanted her approval.

"That's
enough for today," she said. "Your legs are going to kill
you tonight."

She
held the reins while I slid out of the saddle, patting Tony on the
side of his neck. "So what do you know about me now that you
didn't know before?" I asked.

My
mother turned, her hands on her hips. "I know that at least
twice during that half hour you pictured yourself galloping across a
field. And that if you had fallen the first time Tony pulled away a
little fast, you would have got right back on. I know you're
wondering what it's like to jump, and I know that you're more of a
natural at this than you think." She tugged on the reins so that
the horse separated us. "All in all," she said, "I
can see that you are very much like me."

It
was my job to make the salad. My mother was simmering spaghetti
sauce, her hands on her hips in front of the old stove. I glanced
around the neat kitchen, wondering where I would find a salad bowl,
tomatoes, vinegar.

"The
lettuce is on the bottom shelf," my mother said, her back to me.

I
stuck my head into the refrigerator, pushing past nectarines and
Barries & Jaymes wine coolers to find the head of iceberg
lettuce. My father believed you could tell a lot about people from
their kitchens. I wondered what he'd have to say about this one.

I
started to peel the leaves off the lettuce and rinse them in the
sink, and looked up to find my mother watching me. "Don't you
core it?" she asked.

"Excuse
me?"

"You
know," my mother said. "Take the core out." She rammed
the heel of the lettuce against the counter and neatly twisted it
out. The lettuce fell open in a series of petals. "Your father
never taught you that?" she said lightly.

My
spine straightened at the criticism.
No,
I
wanted to tell her.
He
was too busy doing other things. Like guaranteeing my moral
conscience, and showing me how to trust other people, and letting me
in on the unfair ways of the world.
"As
a matter of fact," I said quietly, "he did not."

My
mother shrugged and turned back to the stove. I began tearing
the lettuce into a bowl, ripping it furiously into tiny pieces. I
peeled a carrot and diced a tomato. Then I stopped. "Is there
anything you don't take?" I asked. My mother looked up. "In
your salad, I mean."

"Onion,"
she said. She hesitated. "What about you?"

"I
eat everything," I told her. I chopped cucumber, thinking how
ridiculous it was that I did not know what vegetables my own mother
would eat in a tossed salad. I couldn't prepare her coffee, either,
or conjure her shoe size, or tell a stranger which side of the bed
she slept on. "You know," I said, "if our lives had
been a little different, I wouldn't be asking these things."

My
mother did not turn around, but her hand stopped stirring the sauce
for the span of a breath. "Our lives weren't a little bit
different, though, were they?" she said.

I
stared at her back until I could not stand it anymore. Then I threw
the carrots, the tomatoes, and the cucumber into the bowl, while the
rough anger and the disappointment pressed back-to-back and settled
heavy on my chest.

We
ate on the porch, and afterward we watched the sun go down. We drank
cold peach wine coolers from cognac glasses that still had price
stickers on their bottoms. My mother pointed out the mountains in the
background, which rose in swells so close they seemed within reach. I
concentrated on physical things: the bones of our knees, the curve of
our calves, the placement of freckles, all so similar. "When I
first moved here," my mother said, "I used to wonder if it
was at all like Ireland. Your father was always saying he'd take me
there, but it never happened." She paused. "I miss him very
much, you know."

I
stared at her, softening. "He told me you were married three
months after you'd met." I took a large gulp of wine and smiled
tentatively. "It was love at first sight, he said."

My
mother leaned back her head so that her throat was straight and white
and vulnerable. "It could have been," she said. "I
can't remember all that well. I know I couldn't wait to get out of
Wisconsin, and then Patrick magically appeared, and I always
felt a little sorry that he had to suffer when I found out it hadn't
been about Wisconsin at all."

I
saw this as my lead-in. "When I was little," I said, "I
used to dream up these scenarios that had made you leave. I figured
once that you were connected to a gang and you'd slipped up and they
threatened the safety of your family. And another time I figured
that you maybe had fallen in love with someone else and run off with
him."

"There
was someone else," my mother said frankly, "but it was
after
I
left, and I never loved him. I wasn't going to take that away from
Patrick too."

I
put the glass down beside me, tracing its edge with my fingertip.
"What made you leave, then?" I asked.

My
mother stood up and rubbed her upper arms. "Damn mosquitoes,"
she said. "I swear they're here all year. I'm going to check on
the barn." She started to turn away. "You can stay or you
can come."

I
stared at her, astonished. "How can you do that?" "Do
what?"

"Just
change the subject like that?" I hadn't come all this distance
just to be pushed farther away. I walked down the two steps of the
porch until we were standing eye-to-eye. "It's been twenty
years,
Mom,"
I
said. "Isn't it a little late to be dodging the question?"

"It's
been twenty years,
dear,"
my
mother shot back. "What makes you think I remember the answer?"
She broke her stare, looking down at her shoes, and then she
sighed. "It was not the mob, and it was not a lover. It wasn't
anything like that at all. It was something much more normal."

I
lifted my chin. "You still haven't given me a reason," I
said, "and you are far from what is considered normal. Normal
people do not vanish in the middle of the night and never speak to
their families again. Normal people do not spend two decades using a
dead person's name. Normal people do not meet their daughter for the
first time in twenty years and act like it's an ordinary visit."

My
mother took a step back, anger and pride making violet slashes in her
eyes. "If I had known you were coming," she said, "I
would have taken my goddamned red carpet out of storage." She
started off toward the barn, and then she stopped and faced me. When
she spoke, her voice was more gentle, as if she'd realized too late
what she had said. "Don't ask me why I left, Paige, until you
can tell yourself why
you
left."

Her
words burned, flaming my cheeks and my throat. I watched her slip up
the hill toward the barn.

I
wanted to run after her and tell her it was her fault that I'd left;
that I knew I had to take this opportunity to learn all the things I
had never learned from her: how to look pretty; how to hold a man;
how to be a mother. I wanted to tell her that I never would have left
my
husband
and
my
child
under any other circumstances and that, unlike her, I was going back.
But I had a feeling that she would have laughed at me and said,
Yes,
that's the way it begins.
And
I had a feeling that I would not be telling the complete truth.

I
had left before I had any inkling that I wanted to find my mother. I
had left without giving my mother a second thought. No matter what I
had brainwashed myself to believe by now, I hadn't even considered
going to Chicago until I was several hundred miles away from my home.
I needed to see her; I wanted to see her—I understood what had
prompted me to hire Eddie Savoy. But it was only
after
I'd
left Max and Nicholas that I thought of coming here. It wasn't the
other way around. The truth was that even if my mother had lived just
down the street, I would have wanted to get away.

Back
then I had blamed it on Max's nosebleed—but that had just been
the spark that set off the fire. The real reason was that my
confusion ran too deep to sort out at home. I
had
to
go. I didn't have any other choice. I didn't leave out of anger, and
I didn't want to leave forever—just long enough. Long enough to
feel that I wasn't doing it all wrong. Long enough to feel that I
mattered, that I was more than a necessary extension of Max's or
Nicholas's life.

I
thought of all the magazine articles I'd read on mothers who worked
and constantly felt guilty about leaving their children with someone
else. I had trained myself to read pieces like that and silently say
to myself,
See
how lucky you are?
But
it had been gnawing at me inside, that part that didn't quite fit,
that I never let myself even
think
about.
After all, wasn't it a worse kind of guilt to be
with
your
child and to know that you wanted to be anywhere but there?

I
saw a light flash on in the barn, and all of a sudden I knew why my
mother had left.