Harvesting the Heart (70 page)

I
hear my mother draw in her breath. "So you're speaking to me
after all." She pauses, and then she asks me where I am.

"I'm
staying with Nicholas's parents," I say. "You were right
about coming back."

"I
wish I didn't have to be," my mother says.

I
didn't really want to call my mother, but I couldn't help it. In
spite of myself, now that I had found her I needed her. I wanted to
tell her about Nicholas. I wanted to cry about the divorce. I wanted
her suggestions, her opinion.

"I'm
sorry you left like that," she says.

"Don't
be sorry." I want to tell her that no one is at fault. I think
about the way the clean air in North Carolina would thrill to the
back of my throat with the first breath of the morning. "I had a
very nice time."

"For
God's sake, Paige," she says, "that's the kind of thing
you'd tell some Daughter of the American Revolution after a
luncheon."

I
rub my eyes. "Okay," I say, "I
didn't
have
a very nice time." But I'm lying, and she knows it as well as I
do. I picture the two of us, bracing Donegal when he could barely
stand. I picture my arms around my mother's shoulders when she cried
at night. "I miss you," I say, and instead of feeling sort
of empty as the words leave my mouth, I start to smile. Imagine me
saying that to my own mother after all these years, and meaning it,
and no matter what I expected, the world hasn't shattered at my feet.

"I
don't blame you for leaving," my mother says. "I know
you'll be back."

"How
do you know that?" I say sulkily, a little upset that she can
pin me down so easily.

"Because,"
my mother says, "that's what's keeping me going."

I
tighten my grip on the arm of Robert's chair. "Maybe I'm
wasting my time," I say. "Maybe I should just come
back now."

It
would be so easy to be someplace where I am wanted, anyplace but
here. I pause, waiting for her to take me up on the offer. But
instead my mother laughs softly. "Do you know that your first
word," she says, "even before
Mama
and
Dada,
was
goodbye?"

She's
right. It isn't going to do me any good to just keep running. I sink
back against the chair and close my eyes, trying to picture the
hairpin stream I jumped with Donegal, the ribbons of clouds lacing
the sky. "Tell me what I'm missing," I say. I listen to my
mother speak of Aurora and Jean-Claude, of the sun-bleached paint on
the chipped wall of the barn, of a brisk seasonal change that creeps
farther up the porch every night. After a while I don't bother to
concentrate on her actual words. I let the sound of her voice wash
over me, making itself familiar.

Then
I hear her say, "I called your father, you know."

But
I haven't spoken to my father since I've been back, so of course I
could not have known. I am certain I've heard her wrong. "You
what?"
I
say.

"I
called your father. We had a good talk. I never would have called,
but you sort of encouraged me. By leaving, I mean." There is
silence for a moment. "Who knows," she murmurs. "Maybe
one day I'll even see him."

I
look around at the mutated, hunkering shapes of chairs and end tables
in the dark library. I rub my hands over my shoulders. I am beginning
to feel hope. Maybe, after twenty years, this is what my mother and I
can do for each other. It is not the way other mothers and daughters
are—we will not talk about seventh-grade boys, or French-braid
my hair on a rainy Sunday; my mother will not have the chance to heal
my cuts and bruises with a kiss. We cannot go back, but we can keep
surprising each other, and I suppose this is better than nothing at
all.

Suddenly
I really believe that if I stick it out long enough, Nicholas
will understand. It's just a matter of time, and I have a lot of that
on my hands. "I'm a volunteer at the hospital now," I tell
my mother proudly. "I work wherever Nicholas works. I'm closer
than his shadow."

My
mother pauses, as if she is considering this. "Stranger things
have happened," she says.

Max
wakes up screaming, his legs bent close to his chest. When I rub his
stomach, it only makes him scream harder. I think that maybe he needs
to burp, but that doesn't seem to be the problem. Finally, I walk
around with him perched on my shoulder, pressing his belly flush
against me. "What's wrong?" Astrid says, her head at the
nursery doorway.

"I
don't know," I say, and to my surprise, uttering those words
doesn't throw me into a panic. Somehow I know I will figure it out.
"It might be gas."

Max
squeezes up his face and turns red, the way he does when he's trying
to go to the bathroom. "Ah," I say. "Are you leaving
me a present?" I wait until he looks as if he's finished, and
then I pull down his sweatpants to change his diaper. There is
nothing inside, nothing at all. "You fooled me," I say, and
he smiles.

I
rediaper him and sit him on the floor with a Busy Box, rolling and
turning the knobs until he catches on and follows. From time to time
he screws up his face again. He seems to be constipated. "Maybe
we'll have prunes for breakfast," I say. "That ought to
make you feel better."

Max
plays quietly with me for a few minutes, and then I notice that he
isn't really paying attention. He's staring off into space, and the
curiosity that flames the blue in his eyes seems to have dulled. He
sways a little, as if he's going to fall. I frown, tickle him, and
wait for him to respond. It takes a second or two longer than usual,
but eventually he comes back to me.

He's
not himself,
I
think, although I cannot put my finger on what the problem really is.
I figure I will watch him closely. I tenderly rub his chunky
forearms, feeling a satisfied flutter in my chest. I
know
my own son,
I
think proudly. I
know
him well enough to catch the subtle changes.

"I'm
sorry I haven't called," I tell my father. "Things have
been a little crazy."

My
father laughs. "I had thirteen years with you, lass. I think
your mother deserves three months."

I
had written my father postcards from North Carolina, just as 1 had
written Max. I'd told him about Donegal, about the rye rolling over
the hills. I told him everything I could on a
three-and-a-half-by-five-and-a-half-inch card, without mentioning my
mother.

"Rumor
has it," my father says, "you've been sleepin' with the
enemy." I jump, thinking he means Nicholas, and then I realize
he is talking about living at the Prescotts'.

I
glance at the Faberge' egg on the mantel, the Civil War Sharps
carbine rifle hanging over the fireplace. "Necessity makes
strange bedfellows," I say.

I
wind the telephone cord around my ankles, trying to find a safe route
for conversation. But there is little I
have
to
say, and so much I
want
to.
I take a deep breath. "Speaking of rumors," I say, "I
hear Mom called."

"Aye."

My
mouth drops open. "That's it? 'Aye'? Twenty-one years go by, and
that's all you have to say?"

"I
was expectin' it," my father says. "I figured if you had
the fortune to find her, sooner or later she'd return the favor."

"The
favor?"
I
shake my head. "I thought you wanted nothing to do with her. I
thought you said it was too late."

For
a moment my father is silent. "Paige," he says finally,
"how did you find her to be?"

I
close my eyes and sink back on the leather couch. I want to choose my
words very carefully. I imagine my mother the way she would have
wanted me to: seated on Donegal, galloping him across a field faster
than a lie can spread. "She wasn't what I expected," I say
proudly.

My
father laughs. "May never was."

"She
thinks she's going to see you someday," I add.

"Does
she now," my father answers, but his thoughts seem very far
away. I wonder if he is seeing her the way he did the first time he
met her, dressed in her halter top and carrying her practice
suitcase. I wonder if he can remember the tremor in his voice when he
asked her to marry him, or the flash across her eyes as she said yes,
or even the ache in his throat when he knew she was gone from his
life.

It
may be my imagination, but for the breadth of a moment everything in
the room seems to sharpen in focus. The contrasting colors in the
Oriental carpet become more striking; the towering windows
reflect a devil's glare. It makes me question if, all this time, I
haven't really been seeing clearly.

"Dad,"
I whisper, "I want to go back."

"God
help me, Paige," my father says. "Don't I know it."

Elliot
Saget is pleased with my gallery at Mass General. He is so convinced
that it is going to win some kind of humanitarian Best of Boston
award that he promises me the stars on a silver platter. "Well,
actually," I say, "I'd rather watch Nicholas in surgery."

I
have never seen Nicholas truly doing his job. Yes, I have seen him
with his patients, drawing them out of their fear and being more
understanding with them than he has been with his own family. But I
want to see what all the training is for; what his hands are so
skilled at. Elliot frowns at me when I ask. "You may not like it
very much," he says. "Lots of blood and battle scars."

But
I stand my ground. "I'm much tougher than I look," I say.

And
so this morning there will be no picture of Nicholas's patient tacked
to his door. Instead I sit alone in the gallery above the operating
suite and wait for Nicholas to enter the room. There are already
seven other people: anesthesiologists, nurses, residents, someone
sitting beside a complicated machine with coils and tubes. The
patient, lying naked on the table, is painted a strange shade of
orange.

Nicholas
enters, still stretching the gloves on his hands, and all the heads
in the room turn toward him. I stand up. There is an audio monitor in
the gallery, so I can hear Nicholas's low voice, rustling behind his
paper mask, greeting everyone. He checks beneath the sterile drapes
and watches as a tube is set in the patient's throat. He says
something to a nearby doctor, youngish-looking, his hair in a neat
ponytail. The young doctor nods and begins to make an incision in the
patient's leg.

All
of the doctors wear weird glasses on their heads, which they flip
down to cover their eyes when they bend over the patient. It makes me
smile: I keep expecting this to be some kind of joke costume,
with googly eyeballs popping out on springs. Nicholas stands to the
side while two doctors work over the patient's leg. I cannot see very
well what they are doing, but they take different instruments from a
cloth-covered tray, things that look like nail scissors and eyebrow
tweezers.