Harvesting the Heart (66 page)

"She
abandoned me," Nicholas interrupts. "And she lied for eight
years."

Oakie
rubs his hands together. "Was she gone for more than two years?"
Nicholas shakes his head. "She wasn't the primary breadwinner,
was she?" Nicholas snorts and throws his napkin on the table.
Oakie purses his lips. "Well, then it's not desertion—at
least not legally. And lying . . . I'm not sure about lying. Usually,
just cause for fault is things like excessive drinking, beating,
adultery."

"I
wouldn't be surprised," Nicholas mutters.

Oakie
does not hear him. "Fault would
not
include
a change of religion, say, or moving out of the house."

"She
didn't move," Nicholas clarifies. "She
left."
He
stares up at Oakie. "How long is this going to take?"

"I
can't know yet," he says. "It depends on whether we can
find grounds. If not, you get a separation agreement, and a year
later it can be finalized into a divorce."

"A
year,"
Nicholas
yells. "I can't wait a year, Oakie. She's going to do something
crazy. She just up and left three months ago, remember—she's
going to take my kid and run."

"A
kid," Oakie says softly. "You didn't say there was a kid."

When
Nicholas leaves the restaurant, he is seething. What he has learned
is that although courts no longer assume that a woman should have
custody, Max will go wherever his best interests lie. With Nicholas
working so many hours a day, there is no guarantee of custody. He has
learned that since Paige supported him through medical school, she is
entitled to a portion of his future earnings. He has learned that
this procedure will take much longer than he ever thought possible.

Oakie
has tried to talk him out of it, but Nicholas is certain he has no
choice. He cannot even think about Paige without feeling his spine
stiffen or his fingers turn to ice. He cannot stand knowing that he
has been played for a fool.

He
walks into Mass General and ignores everyone who says hello to him.
When he reaches his office, he shuts and locks the door behind him.
With a sweep of his arm, he clears all the files off his desk. The
one that lands on top of the pile on the floor is Hugo Albert's. That
morning's surgery. It was also, he noted from the patient history,
Hugo Albert's golden wedding anniversary. When he told Esther Albert
that her husband was doing well, she cried and thanked Nicholas over
and over, said that he would always be in her prayers.

He
puts his head down on the desk and closes his eyes. He wishes he had
his father's private practice, or that the association with surgical
patients lasted as long as it does in internal medicine. It is too
hard to deal with such intense relationships for such a short period
of time and then move on to another patient. But Nicholas is starting
to see that this is his lot in life.

With
fierce self-control, he opens the top drawer and takes out a piece of
the Mass General stationery that now bears his name. "Oakie
wants a list," he mutters, "I'll give him a list." He
starts to write down all the things that he and Paige own. The house.
The cars. The mountain bikes and the canoe. The barbecue and the
patio furniture and the white leather couch and the king-size bed. It
is the same bed they had in the old apartment; it had too much of a
history to justify replacement. Nicholas and Paige had ordered the
handcrafted bed on the understanding that it would be theirs by the
end of the week. But it was delayed, and they slept on a mattress on
the floor for months. The bed had been burned in a warehouse fire and
had to be built all over again. "Do you think," Paige said
one night, curled against him, "God is trying to tell us this
was all a mistake?"

When
Nicholas runs out of possessions, he takes a blank sheet of paper and
writes his name at the top left and Paige's name at the top right.
Then he makes a grid.
date
of birth, place of birth, education. length of marriage
.
He can fill it all in easily, but he is shocked at how much space his
own schooling takes up and how little is written in Paige's column.
He looks at the length of marriage and does not write anything.

If
she had married that guy, would she have had the child?

Nicholas
pushes away the papers, which suddenly feel heavy enough to threaten
the balance of the desk. He leans his head back in the swivel chair
and stares at the clouds manufactured by the hospital smokestacks,
but all he sees are the lines of Paige's wounded face. He blinks, but
the image does not clear. He half expects that if he whispers her
name, she will answer. He thinks he must be going crazy.

He
wonders if she loved this other guy, and why the question, still
unspoken, makes him feel as if he will be sick.

When
he turns the chair around, his mother is standing in front of the
desk. "Nicholas," she says, "I've brought you a
present." She holds a large, flat, paper-wrapped square. Even
before he pulls at the string, Nicholas knows it is a framed
photograph. "It's for your office," she says. "I've
been working on it for weeks."

"It
isn't my office," Nicholas says. "I can't really hang
anything up." But even as he is speaking, he finds himself
staring at the photograph. It is a pliant willow tree on the
shore of a lake, bent into an inverted U by an angry wind. Everything
in the background is one shade or another of purple; the tree itself
is molten red, as if it is burning at the core.

Astrid
comes to his side of the desk and stands at his shoulder. "Striking,
isn't it?" she says. "It's all in the lighting." She
glances at the papers on Nicholas's desk, pretending not to notice
what they say.

Nicholas
runs his fingers across his mother's signature, carved at the bottom.
"Very nice," he says. "Thanks."

Astrid
sits on the edge of the desk. "I didn't come just to give you
the photograph, Nicholas; I'm here to tell you something you aren't
going to like," she says. "Paige has moved in with us."

Nicholas
stares at her as if she has stated that his father was really a gypsy
or that his medical diploma is a fraud. "You've got to be
kidding," he says. "You can't do this to me."

"As
a matter of fact, Nicholas," Astrid says, standing and pacing
the room, "you have very little say as to what we do in our own
house. Paige is a lovely girl—better to realize it late than
never, I think—and she's a charming guest. Imelda says she even
makes her own bed. Imagine."

Nicholas's
fingers itch; he has a savage urge to strike out or to strangle. "If
she lays a hand on Max—"

"I've
already taken care of it," Astrid says. "She's agreed to
leave the house during the day while I've got Max. She only comes
back to sleep, since a car or a front lawn isn't really suitable."

Nicholas
thinks that maybe he will remember this moment forever: the
wrinkled empty smile of his mother; the flickering track light
overhead; the scrape of wheels as something is rolled by the door.
This,
he
will say to himself in years to come,
was
the moment my life fell apart.
"Paige
isn't what you think she is," he says bitterly.

Astrid
walks to the far side of the office as if she hasn't heard him. She
removes a yellowed nautical map from the wall, smoothing her fingers
over the glass and tracing the whorls of eddies and currents.
"I'm thinking about right here," she says. "You'll see
it every time you look up." She crosses the room to put the old
frame on the desk and picks up the picture of the willow. "You
know," she says casually, reaching up on her toes to hang the
picture correctly, "your father and I almost got a divorce. I
think you remember her—she was a hematologist. I knew about it,
and I fought him every step of the way, trying to be very difficult
and spilling drinks on him to make a scene and threatening once or
twice to run away with you. I thought that being quiet about the
whole thing was the biggest mistake I could make, because then
he'd think I was weak and he could walk all over me. And then one day
I realized that I would have much more power if I decided to be the
one to yield." Astrid straightens the picture and steps back.
"There. What do you think?"

Nicholas's
eyes are slitted, dark and angry. "I want you to throw Paige out
of the house, and if she comes within a hundred feet of Max, I swear
to God I'll have you brought up on charges. I want you to get out of
my office and call me later and apologize profusely for butting into
my life. I want you to put back that goddamned ocean map and leave me
alone."

"Really,
Nicholas," Astrid says lightly, although every muscle in her
body is quivering. She has never seen him like this. "The way
you're acting, I wouldn't recognize you as my son." She picks up
the sailing chart and hooks it on the wall again, but she does not
turn around.

"You
don't know the half of it," Nicholas murmurs.

By
a twist of bad timing, Nicholas and Paige run into each other that
afternoon at the Prescotts'. Because of a complication with a
patient, Nicholas left the hospital late. He is just packing Max's
toys into the duffel bag when Paige bursts into the parlor. "You
can't do this to me," Paige cries, and when Nicholas lifts his
head, his gaze has carefully been wiped clean of emotion.

"Ah,"
Nicholas says, picking up a Big Bird jingle ball. "My mother has
been the bearer of bad news."

"You've
got to give me a chance," she says, moving in front of him to
catch his eye. "You aren't thinking clearly."

Astrid
appears in the doorway, with Max in her arms. "Listen to her,
Nicholas," she says quietly.

Nicholas
tosses his mother a look that makes Paige remember the basilisk in
Irish legend, the monster who killed with a glance. "I think
I've listened enough," he says. "In fact, I've heard things
I never wanted to hear." He stands and slings the diaper bag
over his shoulder, roughly grabbing Max out of Astrid's arms.
"Why don't you just run upstairs to your guest bedroom," he
sneers. "Cry your little heart out, and then you can come
downstairs for brandy with
my
goddamned
parents."

"Nicholas,"
Paige says. Her voice breaks over the syllables. She takes a quick
look at Astrid and runs through the hall after Nicholas, swinging
open the door and yelling his name again into the street.

Nicholas
stops just before his car. "You'll get a good settlement,"
he says quietly. "You've earned it."

Paige
is openly crying now, clinging to the frame of the door as if she
cannot keep upright by herself. "It isn't supposed to be this
way," she sobs. "Do you think I really care about the
money? Or about who lives in that stupid old house?"

Nicholas
thinks about the horror stories he's heard from other surgeons, whose
cutthroat, red-taloned wives have robbed them of half their Midas
earnings and all their sterling reputations. He cannot picture Paige
in a tailored suit, glaring from the witness stand, replaying a
testimony that will support her for life. He can't truly see her
caring about whether $500,000 per year will be enough to cover her
cost of living. She'd probably hand him the keys to the house if he
asked nicely. In truth, she isn't like the others; she never has
been, and that's what Nicholas always liked.