Harvesting the Heart (59 page)

He
finished in the nursery and came back downstairs. He leaned over Max
from behind. "Don't tell me," he said. "Rain?"

Max
reached up his hands. "Dada," he said, and then he coughed.

Nicholas
sighed and settled Max into the crook of his arm. "Let's make a
deal," he said. "If you go to sleep within twenty minutes
I'll tell Grandma you don't have to eat apricots for the next five
days." He uncapped the bottle that had been leaking onto the
couch and rubbed it against Max's lips until his mouth opened like a
foundling's. Max could take three strong sucks before he had to
break away and breathe. "You know what's going to happen,"
Nicholas said. "You're going to get all better, and then
I'm
going
to get sick. And I'll give it back to you, and we'll have this damn
thing until Christmas."

Nicholas
watched the commentator talk about the consumer price index, the
DJIA, and the latest unemployment figures. By the time the news was
over, Max had fallen asleep. He was cradled in Nicholas's arms
like a little angel, his arms resting limp over his stomach. Nicholas
held his breath and contorted his body, pushing himself up from the
heels, then the calves, then the back, finally snapping his head up.
He tiptoed up the stairs toward the nursery, and then the doorbell
rang.

Max's
eyes flew open, and he started to scream. "Fuck," Nicholas
muttered, tossing the baby against his shoulder and jiggling him up
and down until the crying slowed. The doorbell rang again. Nicholas
headed back down the hall. "This better be an emergency,"
he muttered. "A car crash on my front lawn, or a fire next
door."

He
unlocked and pulled open the heavy oak door and came face-to-face
with his wife.

At
first Nicholas didn't believe it. This didn't really look like Paige,
at least not as she had looked when she left. She was tanned and
smiling, and her body was trim. "Hi," she said, and he
almost fell over just hearing the melody wrapped around her voice.

Max
stopped crying, as if he knew she was there, and stretched out his
hand. Nicholas took a step forward and extended his palm, trying to
ascertain whether he would be reaching toward a vision, coming up
with a handful of mist. His fingertips were inches away from her
collarbone, and he could see the pulse at the base of her throat,
when he snapped his wrist back and stepped away. The space between
them became charged and heavy. What had he been thinking? If he
touched her, it would start all over again. If he touched her, he
wouldn't be able to say what had been building inside him for three
months; wouldn't be able to give her her due.

"Nicholas,"
Paige said, "give me five minutes."

Nicholas
clenched his teeth. It was all coming back now, the flood of anger
he'd buried under his work and his care of Max. She couldn't just
step in as though she'd been on a getaway weekend and play the loving
mother. As far as Nicholas was concerned, she didn't have the right
to be there anymore at all. "I gave you three months," he
said. "You can't just breeze in and out of our lives at your
pleasure, Paige. We've done fine without you."

She
wasn't listening to him. She reached forward and touched her hand to
the baby's back, brushing the side of Nicholas's thumb. He turned so
that Max, asleep again on his shoulder, was out of reach. "Don't
touch him," he said, his eyes flashing. "If you think I'm
going to let you walk back in here and pick up where you left off,
you've got another thing coming. You aren't getting into this house,
and you're not getting within a hundred feet of this baby."

If
he
decided
to talk to Paige,
if
he
let
her see Max, it would be in his own sweet time, on his own agenda.
Let her stew for a little while. Let her see what it was like to be
powerless all of a sudden. Let her fall asleep fitfully, knowing she
had absolutely no idea what tomorrow held in store.

Paige's
eyes filled with tears, and Nicholas schooled himself not to move a
muscle. "You can't do this," she said thickly.

Nicholas
stepped back far enough to grab the edge of the door. "Watch
me," he said, and he slammed it shut in his wife's face.

Part
III:
Delivery

Fall
1993

happens.
Well, I will wait forever, if it comes to that. I have made my
decision. I want my husband to come back into my life. But I will
settle for finding a chink in his armor, so that I can slip back into
his
life
and prove that we can go back to normal.

I
don't find it strange that I would give my right arm to be
inside
the
house, watching Max grow up before my eyes—doing, really, the
things that made me so crazy three months ago. I'd just been going
through the motions then, acting out a role that I couldn't really
remember being cast in. Now I'm back by my own free will. I
want
to
spread chutney on Nicholas's turkey sandwiches. I
want
to
stretch socks over Max's sunburned feet. I
want
to
find all my art supplies and draw picture after picture with pastels
and oils and hang them on the walls until every dull, pale corner of
that house is throbbing with color. God, there is such a difference
between living the life you are
expected
to
live and living the life you
want
to
live. I just realized it a little late, is all.

Okay,
so my homecoming hasn't gone quite the way I'd planned. I figured on
Nicholas welcoming me with a small parade, kissing me until my knees
gave out beneath me, telling me that come hell or high water, he'd
never let me go again. Truth is, I was so excited about slipping back
into the routine that fit me like a soft old shoe, I never considered
that the circumstances might have changed. I had learned the lesson
already this past summer, with Jake, but I never thought to apply it
here. But of course, if I am different, I shouldn't expect that time
has stood still for Nicholas. I understand that he's been hurt, but
if I can forgive myself, surely Nicholas can forgive me too. And if
he can't, I'll have to make him try.

Yesterday
I accidentally let him get away. I never thought of following him; I
assumed that he'd found someone to watch Max at home when he went to
work. But at 6:30
a.m
.,
there he had been, toting the baby and a diaper bag, stuffing both
into his car with the carelessness that comes from constant practice.
I was very impressed. I could never carry both Max
and
the
diaper bag—in fact, I could barely summon enough courage to
take Max out of the house. Nicholas—well, Nicholas made it look
so easy.

He
had come out the front door and pretended I wasn't there. "Good
morning," I had said, but Nicholas didn't even nod his head. He
got into his car, sitting for a minute behind the wheel. Then he
unrolled the window on the passenger side and leaned toward it. "You
will be gone," he said, "by the time I get home."

I
assumed he was going to the hospital, but I wasn't about to go there
looking the way I did. Embarrassing Nicholas in his own front yard
was one thing; making him look bad in front of his superiors was
another. That I knew he would never forgive. And I
had
looked
awful yesterday. I'd driven seventeen hours straight, slept on my
front lawn, and skipped showers for two days. I would slip into the
house, wash up, change my clothes, and then go to Mass General. I
wanted to see Max without Nicholas around, and how difficult could it
be to find the day care facility there?

After
Nicholas left, I crawled into the front seat of my car and fished my
keys from my pocketbook. I felt sure that Nicholas had forgotten
about those. I opened the front door and stepped into my house for
the first time in three full months.

It
smelled of Nicholas and Max and not at all of me. It was a mess. I
didn't know how Nicholas, who loved order, could live like this, much
less consider it sanitary for Max. There were dirty dishes piled on
every pristine surface in the kitchen, and the Barely White tiles on
the floor were streaked with muddy footprints and scribbles of jelly.
In the corner was a dead plant, and fermenting in the sink was half a
melon. The hallway was dark and littered with stray socks and boxer
shorts; the living room was gray with dust. Max's toys— most of
which I'd never seen before—were covered with tiny smudged
handprints.

My
first instinct had been to clean up. But if I did that, Nicholas
would know I had been inside, and I didn't want him yelling again. So
I made my way to the bedroom and pulled a pair of khaki pants and a
green cotton sweater out of my closet. After a quick shower, I put
them on and threw my dirty clothes into the bathroom hamper.

When
I thought I heard a noise, I ran out of the bathroom, stopping only
in the nursery to get a quick scent of Max—soiled diapers and
baby powder and sweet milky skin. I slipped out the back door just in
case, but I didn't see anybody. With my hair still wet, I drove to
Mass General and inquired about staff child care, but they told me
there was no facility on the hospital grounds. "Good Lord,"
I said to the receptionist at the information desk. "Nicholas
has him in a day care center." I laughed out loud then, thinking
about how ridiculous this had all turned out. If Nicholas had agreed
to consider day care before the baby was born, I wouldn't have been
home all day with him. I would have been taking classes, maybe
drawing again—I would have been doing something for
myself.
If
I hadn't been home with Max, I might never have needed to get away.