Harvesting the Heart

  "I've just gotten older," I said. "I guess I've seen more." Together we stared at the penciled lines of surprise in his eyes, the beating heat of the sun reflecting off the white page. He took my hand and touched my fingers to a spot on the paper where damp curls met the nape of his neck. There I had drawn, in silhouette, a couple embracing. In the distance, reaching toward the woman, was a man who looked like Nicholas; reaching toward the man was a girl with Ellen's face.

  "It worked out the way it should have," Jake said. He put his hand on my shoulder, and all I felt was comfort. "Yes," I murmured. "It has."

  We sat on Eddie Savoy's throw pillows, poring through a soiled manila folder that pieced together the past twenty years of my mother's life. "Piece of cake," Eddie said, picking his teeth with a letter opener. "Once I figured out who she was, she was a cinch to track down."

  My mother had left Chicago under the name Lily Rubens. Lily had died three days before; my mother had written the obituary for the Tribune. She was twenty-five, and she'd died--according to my mother's words--of a long, painful illness. My mother had copies of her Social Security card, driver's license, even a birth certificate from the Glenwood Town Hall. My mother had not gone to Hollywood. She'd somehow gotten to Wyoming, where she'd worked for Billy DeLite's Wild West Show. She had been a saloon dancer until Billy DeLite himself spotted her cancan and talked her into playing Calamity Jane. According to Billy's fax, she'd taken to riding and target shooting as if she'd been doing it since she was a tadpole. Five years later, in 1977, she disappeared in the middle of the night with the most talented rodeo cowboy in the Wild West show and most of the previous day's earnings.

  Eddie's records blanked out here for a while, but they picked up again in Washington, D.C., where my mother worked for a while doing telemarketing surveys for consumer magazines. She saved up enough commission money to buy a horse from a man named Charles Crackers, and because she was living in a Chevy Chase condo at the time, she boarded the horse at his stable and came to ride three times a week.

  The pages went on to record my mother's move from Chevy Chase to Rockville, Maryland, and then a switch of jobs, including a brief stint at a Democratic senator's campaign office. When the senator didn't win reelection, she sold her horse and bought a plane ticket to Chicago, which she did not use at the time.

  In fact, she hadn't traveled for pleasure at all over the past twenty years, except once. On June 10, 1985, she did come to Chicago. She stayed at the Sheraton and signed in as Lily Rubens. Eddie watched over my shoulder as I read that part. "What happened on June tenth?" he said.

  I turned to Jake. "My high school graduation." I tried to remember every detail: the white gowns and caps all the girls of Pope Pius had worn, the blazing heat of the sun burning the metal rims of our folding chairs, Father Draher's commencement address about serving God in a sinful world. I tried to see the hazy faces of the audience seated on the bleachers of the playing field, but it had been too long ago. The day after graduation, I left home. My mother had come back to see me grow up, and she had almost missed me.

  Eddie Savoy waited until I came to the last page of the report. "She's been here for the last eight years," he said, pointing to the circle on the map of North Carolina. "Farleyville. I couldn't get no address, though, not in her name, and there ain't a phone listing. But this here's the last recorded place of employment. It was five years ago, but something tells me that in a town no bigger than a toilet stall, you ain't gonna have any trouble tracking her down." I looked at the scribbled humps of Eddie's shorthand. He grimaced and then sat down behind his low desk. He held out a piece of ripped paper on which he'd written "Bridal Bits" and a phone number. "It's some boutique, I guess," he said. "They knew her real well."

  I thought about my mother, apparently single except for that rodeo cowboy, and wondered what would compel her to move to the hills of North Carolina to work in a bridal salon. I imagined her walking around the tufts of Alencon lace, the thin blue garters and the satin beaded pumps, touching them as if she had a right to wear them. When I looked up, Jake was pumping Eddie Savoy's hand. I dug into my wallet and pulled out his four-hundred-dollar fee, but Eddie shook his head. "It's already been taken care of," he said. Jake led me outside and didn't say a word as we settled into our respective seats in my car. I drove slowly down the rutted road that led to Eddie's, spraying bits of gravel left and right and flustering the chickens that had gathered in front of the fender. I pulled over less than a hundred yards from Eddie's and put my head down on the steering wheel to cry.

  Jake pulled me into his arms, awkwardly twisting my body around the center console. "Now what do I do?" I said.

  He ran his hands over my ponytail, tugging just a little. "You go to Farleyville, North Carolina," he said.

  Finding her had been the easy part. I was terrified of meeting my mother, a woman I'd remade in the image of myself. I didn't know what was worse: stirring up memories that might make me hate her at first sight, or finding out that I was exactly like her, destined to keep running, too unsure of myself to be somebody's mother. That was the risk I was taking. In spite of what I had promised myself or

  pleaded to Nicholas, if I really had turned out like May O'Toole, I might never feel whole enough to go home.

  I looked up at Jake, and the message was clear in my eyes. He smiled gently. "You're on your own now."

  I remembered the last time he'd said that to me, silently, in slightly different words. I lifted my chin, resolved. "Not for long," I said.

  chapter 24

  Nicholas

  When her voice came over the line, crackling at the edges, the bottom dropped out of Nicholas's world. "Hello,

  Nicholas," Paige said. "How are you?"

  Nicholas had been changing Max, and he had carried him to the phone in the kitchen with his snaps all undone. He placed the baby on the kitchen table, cradling his head on a stack of napkins. At the cadence of his wife's voice, he had suddenly become very still. It was as if the air had stopped circulating, as if the only motion was the quick kick of Max's legs and the insistent pounding of blood behind Nicholas's ears. Nicholas tucked the phone in the crook of his neck and laid the baby facedown on the linoleum. He pulled the cord as far as it could stretch. "Are you calling to apologize to me?"

  When she didn't answer at first, his mouth became dry. What if she was in trouble? He had cut off her money. What if she'd had a problem with the car, had had to hitchhike, was running away from

  some lunatic with a knife? "I'm in Chicago," Paige said. "I'm going to find my mother."

  Nicholas ran his hand through his hair and almost laughed. This was a joke. This did not happen to real people. This was something you'd see on the Sunday Movie of the Week or read about in a True Confessions magazine. He had always known that Paige was haunted by her mother; she was so guarded when speaking about her that she gave herself away. But why now?

  When she didn't say anything, Nicholas stared out the tiny kitchen window and wondered what Paige was wearing. He pictured her hair, loose and framing her face, rich with the colors of autumn. He saw the ragged pink tips of her bitten fingernails and the tiny indentation at the base of her neck. He opened the refrigerator and let the cool gust of air clear her image from his mind. He did not care. He simply would not let himself.

  When he heard her ask about Max, his anger started to boil again. "Apparently you don't give a damn," he said, and he walked back toward Max, planning to slam down the phone. She was babbling about how long she'd been away from Chicago, and suddenly Nicholas was so tired he could not stand. He sank into the nearest chair and thought of how today could possibly have been the worst day of his life. "Let me tell you what I did today, dear," Nicholas said, biting off each word as if it were a bitter morsel. "After getting up with Max three times during the night, I took him to the hospital this morning. I had a quadruple bypass scheduled, which I almost didn't complete because I couldn't stay on my feet." He spit out the rest of his words, barely even
hearing them himself. "Someone could have died because of your need for a--what did you call it?--a vacation." He held the receiver away from his mouth. "Paige," he said softly, "I don't want to see your face again." And closing his eyes, he put the phone back in its cradle.

  When the phone rang again, minutes later, Nicholas picked it up and yelled right into it, "Goddammit, I'm not going to say it again."

  He paused long enough to catch his breath, long enough for Alistair Fogerty's control to snap on the other end of the line. The sharp edge of his voice made Nicholas take a step backward. "Six o'clock, Nicholas. In my office." And he hung up.

  By the time Nicholas drove back to the hospital, he had a splitting headache. He had forgotten to bring a pacifier, and Max had yelled the entire way. He trudged up the stairs to the fifth floor, the administrative wing, because the elevator from the parking garage was broken. Fogerty was in his office, systematically spitting into the spider plants that edged his window. "Nicholas," he said, "and, of course, Max. How could I forget? Everywhere Dr. Prescott goes, the little Prescott isn't far behind."

  Nicholas continued to look at the potted plant that Alistair had been leaning over. "Oh," Fogerty said, dismissing his actions with a wave of his hand. "It's nothing. For unexplained reasons, my office flora react favorably to sadism." He stared at Nicholas with the predatory eyes of a hawk. "What we are here to talk about, however, is not me, Nicholas, but you."

  Nicholas had not known what he was going to say until that moment. But before Alistair could open his mouth about the hospital not being a day care facility to meet Nicholas's whims, he sat in a chair and settled Max more comfortably on his lap. He didn't give a damn about what Alistair had to tell him. The son of a bitch didn't have a heart. "I'm glad you wanted to see me, Alistair," he said, "since I'll be taking a leave of absence."

  "A what?" Fogerty stood and moved closer to Nicholas. Max giggled and reached out his hand toward the pen in Fogerty's lab coat pocket.

  "A week should do it. I can have Joyce reschedule my planned surgeries; I'll double up the next week if I have to. And the emergencies can be handled by the residents. What's-his-name, that little skunky one with the black eyes--Wollachek--he's decent. I won't expect pay, of course. And"--Nicholas smiled--"I'll come back better than ever."

  "Without the infant," Fogerty added.

  Nicholas bounced Max on his knee. "Without the infant."

  Saying it all out loud lifted a tremendous pressure from Nicholas's chest. He had no idea what he'd do in the span of a week, but surely he could find a nanny or a full-time sitter to stay in the house. At the very least, he could figure Max out--which cry meant he was hungry and which meant he was tired; how to keep his undershirts from riding up to his armpits; how to open the portable stroller. Nicholas knew he was grinning like an idiot, and he didn't give a damn. For the first time in three days, he felt on top of the world.

  Fogerty's mouth contorted into a black, wiry line. "This will not reflect well upon your record," he said. "I had expected more from you."

  I had expected more from you. The words brought back the image of his father, standing over him like an impenetrable basilisk and holding out a prep school physics exam bearing the only grade lower than an A that Nicholas had received in his whole life.

  Nicholas grabbed Max's leg so tightly that the baby started to cry. "I'm not a goddamned machine, Alistair," he yelled. "I can't do it all." He tossed the diaper bag over his shoulder and walked to the threshold of the office, alistair fogerty, it said on the door, director, cardiothoracic surgery. Maybe Nicholas's name would never make it to that door, but that wasn't going to change his mind. You couldn't put the cart before the horse. "I'll see you," he said quietly, "in a week."

  Nicholas sat in the park, surrounded by mothers. It was the third day he'd come, and he was triumphant. Not only had he discovered how to open the portable stroller; he'd figured out a way to hook on the diaper bag so that even when he lifted Max out, it wouldn't tip over. Max was too little to go into the sandbox with the other kids, but he seemed to like the sturdy infant swings. Nikki, a pretty blond woman with legs that went on forever, smiled up at him. "And how's our little Max doing today?" she said.

  Nicholas didn't understand why Paige wasn't like these three women. They all met in the park at the same time and talked animatedly about stretch marks and sales on diapers and the latest gastrointestinal viruses running through the day care centers. Two of them were on maternity leave, and one was staying home with the kids until they went to school. Nicholas was fascinated by them. They could see with the backs of their heads, knowing by instinct when their kid had swatted another in the face. They could pick out their own child's cry from a dozen others. They effortlessly juggled bottles and jackets and bibs, and their babies' pacifiers never fell to the dirt. These were skills, Nicholas believed, that he could never learn in a million years.

  The first day he'd brought Max, he had been sitting alone on a chipped green bench, watching the women across the way spoon sand over the bare legs of the toddlers. Judy had spoken to him first. "We don't get many dads," she had said. "And never on weekdays."

  "I'm on vacation," Nicholas had replied uncomfortably. Max then let forth a burp that shook his entire body, and everyone laughed.

  That first day, Judy and Nikki and Fay had set him straight about day care and nanny services. "You can't buy good help these days," Fay had said. "A British nanny--and that's the one you want--they take six months to a year to get. And even so, didn't you see Donahue? The ones with the highest references could still drop your kid on the head or abuse her or God knows what."

  Judy, who was going back to work in a month, had found a day care center when she was six months pregnant. "And even then," she had said, "I was only on a waiting list."

  And so Nicholas's week was almost up, and he still didn't know what to do with the baby when Monday came. On the other hand, it had been worth it--these women had taught him more about his own son in the span of three days than he had ever hoped to know. When Nicholas went home from the park, he almost felt as if he was in control.

  Nicholas pushed Max higher on the swing, but he was whining. He'd been crabby for the past three days. "I called your baby-sitter," he told Nikki, "but she's got a summer job as a counselor and said she can't sit for me until the end of August, when camp lets out."

  "Well, I'll keep asking around for you," Nikki said. "I bet you can find somebody." Her little girl, a thirteen-month-old with wispy strawberry-blond bangs, fell on her face in the sandbox and came up crying. "Oh, Jessica." Nikki sighed. "You've got to figure out this walking thing."

  He liked Nikki best. She was funny and smart, and she made being a mother seem as easy as chewing gum. Nicholas pulled Max out of the swing and sat down on the edge of the sandbox, letting Max squish the sand through his toes. Max looked up at Judy and began to scream. She held out her hands. "Let me," she said.

  Nicholas nodded, secretly thrilled. He was amazed when people asked to hold the baby. He would have given him to a complete stranger, the way he'd been acting these past few days; that's how big a relief it was to see him in someone else's arms. Nicholas traced his initials in the soft, cool sand and, from the corner of his eye, watched Max perched over Judy's shoulder.

  "I fed him cereal for the first time yesterday," Nicholas said. "I did it the way you said, mostly formula, but he kept pushing out his tongue like he couldn't figure out what a spoon was. And no matter what you told me, he did not sleep through the night."

  Fay smiled. "Wait till he's having more than a teaspoon a day," she said. "Then come back so I can say, 'I told you so.' "

  Judy walked toward them, still bouncing Max. "You know, Nicholas, you've really come along. Hell, if you were my husband, I'd kiss your feet. Imagine having someone who could take care of the kids and not ask every three minutes why they're crying." She leaned close to Nicholas and batted her eyelashes, smiling. "You give me a sign, and I'll get a divorce lawyer."
>
  Nicholas smiled, and the women fell quiet, watching their children overturn plastic buckets and build free-form castles. "Tell me if this bothers you," Nikki said hesitantly. "I mean, we haven't really known you very long, and we barely know anything about you, but I have this friend who's divorced, with a kid. and I was wondering if sometime you might . . . you know ..."

  "I'm married." The words came so quickly to Nicholas's lips that they surprised him more than the mothers. Fay, Judy, and Nikki exchanged a look. "My wife . . . she isn't around."

  Fay smoothed her hand over the edge of the sandbox. "We're sorry to hear that," she said, assuming the worst.

  "She's not dead," Nicholas said. "She sort of left."

  Judy came to stand behind Fay. "She left?"

  Nicholas nodded. "She took off about a week ago. She, well, she wasn't very good at this--not like you all are--and she was a little overwhelmed, I think, and she cracked under the pressure." He looked at their blank faces, wondering why he felt he had to make explanations for Paige when he himself couldn't forgive her. "She never had a mother," he said.

  "Everyone has a mother," Fay said. "That's the way it happens."

  "Hers left her when she was five. Last I heard, actually, she was trying to find her. Like that might give her all the answers."

  Fay pulled her son toward her and restrapped the hanging front of his overalls. "Answers, jeez. There aren't any answers. You should have seen me when he was three months old," she said lightly. "I had scared away all my friends, and I was almost declared legally dead by my family doctor."

  Nikki sucked in her breath and stared at Nicholas, her eyes wide and liquid with pity. "Still," she whispered, "to leave your own child."

  Nicholas felt the silence crowding in on him. He didn't want their stares; he didn't want their sympathy. He looked at the toddlers, wishing for one of them to start crying, just to break the moment. Even Max was being quiet.