Harvesting the Heart (53 page)

Paige
smiled. "You know I don't smoke," she said. "Doris
doesn't even have a fireplace." She tossed them back into the
ashtray, and then she noticed the letters, PMO. Nicholas sat back,
watching Paige's eyes darken and grow wide. Then, like a little kid,
she glanced around and sneaked to an empty table next to them. She
lifted the matchbook out of the ashtray and her face fell, but only
for a second. "It's just this one," she said, breathless.
"But how do they
know?"

As
the meal progressed, Nicholas began to question his motive for an
elegant dinner. Paige had urged him to order, since she hadn't had
any of the dishes before, and he'd done that. The appetizer—a
bird's nest filled with chicken and vegetables—had been
delicious, but Paige had no more than touched a straw mushroom to her
mouth when her lip began to swell like a balloon. She had held ice to
it with her napkin, and it subsided a little, but she must have been
allergic. Then when the waiter had brought the complimentary
palate-cleansing sorbet, frothed in dry ice that spilled over onto
your lap like the mist of a Scottish moor, Paige had argued with the
man, insisting that since they hadn't ordered it, they shouldn't have
to pay. She had watched Nicholas eating throughout the entire meal,
refusing to pick up one of the three forks or spoons until he did.
More than once Nicholas caught her with her guard down, staring at
her dish as if it were another wall to scale in an obstacle course.

When
the check came, the waiter brought Paige a long-stemmed rose, and she
smiled across the table at Nicholas. She looked exhausted.
Nicholas couldn't believe he hadn't thought of it from this angle: to
Paige, this had all been work, almost a kind of test. After
Nicholas's credit card had been returned, Paige bolted from her chair
before he could even pull it out for her. She walked quickly through
the path of least resistance toward the door, head down, not looking
at the other diners she passed.

When
she was in the hallway by the elevator, she leaned against the wall
and closed her eyes. Nicholas stood beside her, his hands jammed into
his trousers pockets. "I guess a drink upstairs is out of the
question," he murmured.

Paige
opened her eyes, momentarily confused, as if Nicholas were the last
person she'd expected to find beside her. A smile fixed itself on her
face. "It was delicious, Nicholas," she said, and Nicholas
couldn't help it, he kept staring at the puffy outline of her
still-swollen lower lip, which made her look like a 1930s screen
siren. She covered her mouth with her hand.

Nicholas
grabbed her fingers and pulled them down to her side. "Don't do
that," he said. "Don't ever do that." He slipped his
suit jacket over her shoulders.

"Do
what?"

Nicholas
paused for a fraction of a second and then picked up again. "Lie
to me."

He
expected her to deny it, but Paige turned to him. "It was
awful," she admitted. "I know you didn't mean it, Nicholas,
but that isn't really my speed."

Nicholas
didn't believe it was really
bis
speed,
either, but he'd been doing it for so long he had never really
considered anything else. He rode down the fourteen stories in the
elevator in silence, holding Paige's hand, thinking about what Taylor
Street in Chicago might look like and whether, in fact, he
wouldn't
be
caught dead on it.

It
wasn't that he doubted Paige; in spite of his parents' reaction, he
knew that they were going to get married. But he wondered how very
different two worlds had to be before they kept people apart. His
parents had come from opposite sides of the proverbial tracks, but
that didn't count, since they'd wanted to swap places anyway. In
Nicholas's mind, that sort of equalized them. His mother had married
his father to thumb her nose at society, and his father had married
his mother to gain entry into a tight circle of wealth that all the
new money in the world couldn't buy. He really didn't know how—or
if—love ever figured into it, and that was the biggest
difference between his parents' relationship and the feelings he
had for Paige. He loved Paige because she was simple and sweet,
because her hair was the color of an Indian summer, and because she
could do an impres

sion
of Elmer Fudd that was nearly flawless. He loved her because she had
made it to Cambridge on less than a hundred dollars, because she knew
how to say the Lord's Prayer backward without stopping, because she
could draw exactly what he could never quite put into words. With an
overwhelming fervor that surprised Nicholas himself, he believed in
her ability to land on her feet; in fact, Paige was the closest thing
to a religion he'd had in years. He didn't give a damn whether or not
she could tell a fish knife from a salad fork, if she'd be able to
pick a waltz from a polka. That wasn't what marriage was about.

But
on the other hand, Nicholas couldn't help but remember that marriage
was a man-made thing, a statute created by society itself. Two souls
that were meant to be together—and Nicholas wasn't saying
that was the case with him; he was too scientific to be so
romantic—well, two people like that could just mate for life
with no need for a paper certificate. Marriage didn't really seem to
be about love; it was about the ability to
live
together
for a long period of time, and that was something completely
different. That was something he just wasn't sure about when it came
to him and Paige.

He
stared at her profile when he pulled up at a red light. Tiny nose,
shining eyes, classic lips. Suddenly she turned to him, smiling.
There had to be a happy medium. "What are you thinking about?"
she asked.

"I
was thinking," Nicholas said, "that I wish you could show
me what Taylor Street is like."

^chapter
29

Paige

took
my mind off the family I had left behind, and I began to see what
held my mother's fascination.

I
was filling the black beveled buckets in Aurora's stall, and as usual
she was trying to bite my back every time I turned away. She was the
eighth horse my mother owned, the white fairy-tale mare. She had said
that she bought her on impulse, because she'd been hoping Prince
Charming would come with the deal, but she'd regretted the
purchase ever since. Aurora was bitchy and foul-tempered and stubborn
to train. "I've done Aurora's water," I called to Josh, who
was mucking farther down in the same barn. I liked him—he was a
little weird, but he made me smile. He did not eat meat because
"somewhere, cows are sacred." He had let me know the second
day I was here that he was already halfway down the eightfold path to
nirvana.

I
picked up the wheelbarrow Josh had filled with manure and went to the
dump pile that composted under the hot Carolina sun. I lifted my face
and felt the grime collecting on the back of my neck although it was
only eight-thirty.

"Paige!"
Josh yelled, "Get here quick! And bring a halter!"

I
threw the wheelbarrow aside and raced back, grabbing the halter
hanging beside Andy's stall. From the far end of the barn I heard
Josh's soothing words. "Come closer," he whispered to me,
"and walk slow."

When
I peeked out the far door, he had Aurora by the mane. "It's
customary to lock the stall when you finish," he said, grinning.

"I
did!" I insisted, and I worked the little clip, just to prove
it. But one of the chain-link spokes had broken, and I realized I had
probably fastened the clip over that one, and the door had sprung
free. "Sorry," I said, and I took Aurora by the halter.
"Maybe you should have just let her go," I said.

"I
don't know," Josh said. "I don't owe Lily any favors this
month."

We
took a break and went to watch my mother lunging Jean-Claude. She
stood in the center of the ring, letting the horse buck and gallop in
circles around her. This time, he had a saddle on his back, simply to
get used to the feeling. "Look at his conformation," she'd
said. "He's a born jumper—nice sloping shoulders, short
back."

"And,"
Josh had said, "an ass like a truck."

My
mother had patted him on the cheek with the same tenderness she
showed her horses. "Just as long as you don't say that about
me," she said.

We
watched the muscles in my mother's arms cord and bunch as she tugged
on the line that Jean-Claude was valiantly trying to shake free. "How
long has she been doing this?" I asked.

"Jean-Claude?"
Josh said. "He's only been here a month. But Jesus, Donegal's
her first horse, and he's a champion, and he's only seven." Josh
bent down and pulled a stalk of grass from the ground and settled it
between his front teeth. He began to tell me the story of my mother
and Fly By Night Farm.

She
had been working as a personal secretary to Harlan Cozackis, a
Kentucky millionaire who had made his fortune in corrugated
cardboard. He was very involved in the racing circuit and bought
a couple of horses who placed well in the Derby and the Preakness.
When he got pancreatic cancer, his wife left him for his business
partner. He had told Lily she ought to go too; who gave a damn if his
company was in order, since the co-owner was banging his own wife?
But Lily hadn't left. She stopped keeping the books and started to
feed Harlan barley soup in bed; she recorded the times he'd taken his
painkillers. He tried chemotherapy for a while, and Lily stayed with
him the nights after the treatments, holding damp washcloths to his
wrinkled chest and mopping up his vomit.

When
he started to die, Lily sat for hours at his side, reading him the
odds for local horse races and placing bets over the phone. She told
him stories of her days as Calamity Jane in the rodeo, and that was
probably what had given him the idea. When he died, he did not leave
her any money but instead gave her the colt that had been born just a
month before, sired by a stallion with bloodlines to Seattle Slew.

Josh
said my mother had laughed long and hard over this one: she had a
nearly priceless horse and not a red cent to her name. She drove to
Carolina, all the way to Farleyville, until she found a stable she
wanted to lease. She brought Donegal out here and for a long time he
was the only one in the barn, but she paid her rent just the same.
Little by little, by giving lessons to people on their own horses and
farms, she saved enough money to buy Eddy, and also Tony, and then
Aurora and Andy. She bought a horse named Joseph right from the
track, like Aurora, and trained him for a year and then sold him for
$45,000—three times her buying price. That was when she started
to show Donegal, and his prize money began to pay for his blue-blood
care: hundred-fifty-dollar plastic shoes, shots every three months,
expensive hay with more clover than timothy. "But we still lost
ten thousand dollars last year," Josh said.