Harvesting the Heart (58 page)

My
mother came into my bedroom late that night when the heaviest
stars had dripped like a chain of diamonds over the sill of my
window. She put her hand over my forehead, and I sat up and thought
for a moment that I was five years old and that this was the night
before she left.
Wait,
I
tried to tell her, but nothing came out of my throat.
Don't
do it again.
Instead
I heard myself say, "Tell me why you left."

My
mother lay down beside me on the narrow bed. "I knew this was
coming," she said. Nearby, the face of the porcelain doll
gleamed like a Cheshire cat. "For six years I believed in your
father. I bought into his dreams and I went to Mass for him and I
worked at that stinking paper to help pay the mortgage. I was the
wife he needed me to be and the mother I was supposed to become. I
was so busy being everything he wanted that there was too little left
of Maisie Renault. If I didn't get away, I knew I'd lose myself
completely." She wrapped her arms around my shoulders and pulled
me back against her chest. "I hated myself for feeling that way.
I didn't understand why I wasn't like Donna Reed."

"I
didn't understand that, either," I said quietly, and I wondered
if she thought I was talking about her or about me.

My
mother sat up and crossed her legs. "You're happy here,"
she said. "And you fit. I saw it in the way you rode Donegal. If
you lived here you could teach some of the beginner kids. If you
want, you could even start to show." Her voice trailed off as
she stared out the window, and then she turned her gaze back to me.
"Paige," she said, "why don't you just stay here with
me?"

Just
stay here with me.
As
she spoke, something inside me burst and coursed warm through my
veins, and I realized that all along I must have been a little bit
cold. Then that rush stopped, and there was nothing. This was what I
had wanted, wasn't it? Her stamp of approval, her need for me. I'd
waited twenty years. But something was missing.

She
said she wanted me to stay, but I was the one who'd found her. If I
did stay, I'd never know the one thing I really wanted to know. Would
she ever have come looking for me?

It
was a choice, a simple choice. If I stayed, I would not be with
Nicholas and Max. I wouldn't be around when Max threw his first loopy
pitch; I wouldn't run my fingers over the plaque on Nicholas's office
door. If I stayed, it was for good; I would never be going home.

Then
it struck me for the first time: the meaning of the words I'd been
saying over and over since I'd arrived. I really
did
have
to go home, although I was only now beginning to believe it. "I
have to go back," I said. The words fell heavy, a wall between
my mother and myself.

I
saw something flicker across my mother's eyes, but just as quickly it
was gone. "You can't undo what's done, Paige," she said,
squaring her shoulders the same way I did when I fought with
Nicholas. "People forgive, but they never forget. I made a
mistake, but if I had come back to Chicago, I never would have been
able to live it down. You always would have been throwing that up at
me, like you are now. What do you think Nicholas is going to do? And
Max, when he's old enough to understand?"

"I
didn't run away from them," I said stubbornly. "I ran to
find you."

"You
ran to remind yourself you still
had
a
self," my mother said, getting up from the bed. "Be honest.
It's about
you,
isn't
it?"

She
stood beside the window, blocking out the reflected light so that I
was left in almost total darkness. All right, I was at my mother's
horse farm and we were catching up and all that was good, but it
hadn't been the reason I'd left home. In my mind, both actions were
tangled together, but one hadn't caused the other. Still, no matter
what, leaving home had to do with more than just me. It may have
started out that way, but I was beginning to see how many chain
reactions had been set off and how many people had been hurt. If the
simple act of my disappearance could unravel my whole family, I must
have held more power—been more important—than I'd ever
considered.

Leaving
home was all about
us.
I
realized this was something that my mother had never stopped to
learn.

I
stood up and rounded on her so quickly she fell back against the pale
glass of the window. "What makes you think it's that simple?"
I said. "Yes, you walk out—but you leave people behind.
You fix your life—but at someone else's expense. I waited for
you," I said quietly. "I needed you." I leaned closer.
"Did you ever wonder what you missed? You know, all the little
things, like teaching me to put on mascara and clapping at my school
plays and seeing me fall in love?"

My
mother turned away. "I would have liked to see that," she
said softly. "Yes."

"I
guess you don't always get what you want," I said. "Do you
know that when I was seven, eight, I used to keep a suitcase, all
packed and ready, hidden in my closet? I used to write to you two or
three times a year, begging you to come and get me, but I never knew
where to send the letters."

"I
wouldn't have taken you away from Patrick," my mother said. "It
wouldn't have been fair."

"Fair?
By whose standards?" I stared at her, feeling worse than I had
in a very long time. "What about me?
Why
didn't you ever ask me?"

My
mother sighed. "I couldn't have forced you to make that kind of
choice, Paige. It was a no-win situation."

"Yes.
Well," I said bitterly, "I know all about those."
Suddenly I was so tired that all the rage rushed out of my body. I
wanted to sleep for months; for, maybe, years. "There are some
things you can't tell your father," I said, sinking onto the
bed. My voice was even and matter-of-fact, and in a moment of courage
I lifted my eyes to see, quicksilver, my soul fly out of hiding. "I
had an abortion when I was eighteen," I said flatly. "You
weren't there."

Even
as my mother reached for me, I could see her face blanch. "Oh,
Paige," she said, "you should have come to me."

"You
should have been there," I murmured. But really, what difference
could it have made? My mother would have believed it was her duty to
tell me of the choices. She might have whispered about the certain
smell of a baby, or reminded me of the spell we had woven, mother and
daughter, lying beside each other on a narrow kitchen table, wrapping
our future around us like a hand-worked shawl. My mother might have
told me the things I didn't want to hear back then and could not bear
to hear right now.

At
least my baby never knew me,
I
thought.
At
least I spared her all that pain.

My
mother lifted my chin. "Look at me, Paige. You can't go back.
You can't
ever
go
back." She moved her hands to rest on my shoulders like gripped
clamps. "You're just like me," she said.

Was
I? I had spent the past three months trying to find all the easy
comparisons—our eyes, our hair, and the less obvious traits,
like the tendency to run and to hide. But there were some traits I
didn't want to admit I shared with her. I had given up the gift of a
child because I was so scared that my mother's irresponsibility would
be passed on in my bloodline. I had left my family and chalked it up
to Fate. For years I had convinced myself that if I could find my own
mother, if I could just see what might have been, I would possess all
the answers.

"I'm
not like you," I said. It wasn't an accusation but a statement,
curled at the end in surprise. Maybe I had expected to be like her,
maybe I had even secretly hoped to be like her, but now I wasn't
going to lie down and just let it happen. This time I was fighting
back. This time I was choosing my own direction. "I'm not like
you," I said again, and I felt a knot tighten at the base of my
stomach, now that all of a sudden I had no excuse.

I
stood up and walked around the little-girl's bedroom, already knowing
what I was going to do. I had spent my life wondering what I could
have done wrong that made the one person I loved more than anything
leave me behind; I wasn't going to pin that blame like a scarlet
letter on Nicholas or Max. I pulled my underwear out of a drawer. I
stuffed my jeans, still covered with hay and manure, into

the
bottom of the small overnight bag I'd arrived with. I carefully
wrapped up my sticks of charcoal. I started to envision the quickest
route home, and I counted off the hours in my mind. "How can you
even ask me to stay?" I whispered.

My
mother's eyes glowed like a mountain cat's. She shook with the effort
of holding her tears at bay. "They won't take you back,"
she said.

I
stared at her, and then I slowly smiled.
"You
did,"
I said.

^chapter
32

_Nicholas

ax
had his first cold. It was amazing that he'd made it this long—the
pediatrician said it had something to do with breast-feeding and
antibodies. Nicholas had got almost no sleep in the past two
days, which were supposed to be his time off from the hospital. He
sat helpless, watching Max's nose bubble and run, scrubbing
clean the cool-mist vaporizer, and wishing he could breathe for his
son.

Astrid
was the one to diagnose the cold. She had taken Max to the
pediatrician because she thought he'd swallowed a willow pod—
which was an entirely different story—and she wanted to know if
it was poisonous. But when the doctor listened to his chest and heard
the upper-respiratory rattle and hum, he'd prescribed PediaCare and
rest.

Nicholas
was miserable. He hated watching Max choke and sputter over his
bottle, unable to drink since he couldn't breathe through his nose.
He had to rock him to sleep, a lousy habit, because Max

couldn't
suck on a pacifier and if he cried himself to sleep he wound up
soaked in mucus. Every day Nicholas called the doctor, a colleague at
Mass General who'd been in his graduating class at Harvard. "Nick,"
the guy said over and over, "no baby's ever died of a cold."

Nicholas
carried Max, who was blessedly quiet, to the bathroom to check his
weight. He placed Max on the cool tile and stood on the digital
scale, getting a reading before he stepped back onto it holding Max.
"You're down a half pound," Nicholas said, holding Max up
to the mirror so he could see himself. He smiled, and the mucus in
his nostrils ran into his mouth.

"This
is disgusting," Nicholas muttered to himself, tucking the baby
under his arm and carrying him to the living room. It had been an
endless day of carrying Max when he cried, cuddling him when he got
frustrated and batted at his nose, washing his toys in case he could
reinfect himself.

He
propped Max up in front of the TV, letting him watch the evening
news. "Tell me what the weather's going to be like this
weekend," Nicholas said, walking upstairs. He needed to raise
one end of the crib and to get the vaporizer going so that if, God
willing, Max fell asleep, he could carry him into the dark nursery
without waking him. He was bound to fall asleep. It was almost
midnight, and Max hadn't napped since morning.