Harvesting the Heart (64 page)

"I
know what you're thinking," Astrid says. "Robert and I
owe
you.
I was wrong in believing that you and Nicholas shouldn't be married.
You're just what Nicholas needs, even if he's too stupid to realize
it himself. He'll come around."

"I'm
not what Nicholas needs," I say, still looking at Max.

Astrid
leans forward so that her face is inches from mine and I am forced to
turn to her. "You listen to me, Paige. Do you know what my first
reaction was when Nicholas told me you'd left? I thought,
Hallelujah!
I
didn't think you had it in you. When Nicholas brought you here
originally, it wasn't your past or your life-style that I objected
to. I won't speak for Robert, although he's far beyond that now. I
wanted someone for Nicholas who had determination and
tenacity—someone with a little bit of pluck. It rubs off, you
know. But all I saw when I first looked at you was someone who
idolized him, someone who tagged at his heels like a puppy and was
willing to put her whole life in his hands. I didn't think you had
the gumption to stand up in the wind, much less in a marriage.
But he's had you running around for years at his beck and call, and
finally you've given him a reason for pause. What you've gone through
is not, in the long run, a tragedy—just a hiccup. You both will
survive, and there will be two or three other little Maxes and a
string of graduations and weddings and grandchildren. You're a
fighter, every bit as much as Nicholas. I'd say, actually, that
you're a very even match." She puts down her coffee cup and
takes mine too. "Imelda is making up the room," she says.
"Shall we go take a look?"

Astrid
stands, but I do not. I knot my hands together in my lap and wonder
if this is really what I want to do. It's going to make Nicholas
furious. It's going to backfire in my face.

Max
is making loud slurping noises and chewing on something that looks
like a card. "Hey," I say, pulling it out of his hand.
"Should you have this thing?" I wipe off the saliva and
hand Max a different toy. Then I notice what I am holding. It is a
key ring that holds three laminated photographs, eight-by-ten
glossies. I know they are Astrid's work. The first is a picture of
Nicholas giving his half-smile, his mind miles away. The second is a
picture of Max taken about two months ago. I find myself staring at
it greedily, drinking in the subtle changes that I have missed. Then
I flip to the last card. It is a picture of me, fairly recent,
although I don't know how Astrid could have taken it. I am sitting at
an outdoor cafe at Faneuil Hall. I may even have been pregnant. I
have a distant look in my eyes, and I know that even then I was
plotting my escape.

"Mama,"
Max says, reaching for the card that I hold. On the back, written in
permanent marker in Astrid's handwriting, is the word he's just
spoken.

Imelda
is just smoothing the bedspread when Astrid leads me into what will
be my room. "Senora Paige," she says, smiling at me and
then at Max when he grabs her long, dark braid. "This one, he
has a bit of the devil in him," she says.

"I
know," I say. "It comes from his father's side of the
family."

Astrid
laughs and opens an armoire. "You can keep your things here,"
she says, and I nod and look around. The room is simple by Prescott
standards. It is furnished with a pale-peach sofa and a canopy bed;
its sheets are the shades of a rainy Arizona sunset. The floor-length
window curtains are Alencon lace, held back by brass pineapples.
The mirror is an antique cheval glass and matches the armoire. "Is
this all right?" Astrid asks.

I
sink down on the bed and place Max next to me, rubbing his belly. I
will miss the wet stars and the hydrangeas, but this will be just
fine. I nod at her, and then I shyly stand and pass her the baby. "I
think these were your terms," I say quietly. "I'll be back
later."

"Come
for supper," Astrid says. "I know Robert will want to see
you."

She
follows me down the steps and leads me to the front door. Max
whimpers and reaches out when I start to leave, and she gives him to
me for a moment. I trace the whorl of hair on the back of

Max's
head and squeeze the spare flesh of his upper arms. "Why are you
on my side?" I ask.

Astrid
smiles. In the fading light, in just that instant, she reminds me of
my mother. Astrid takes back my baby. "Why shouldn't I be?"
she says.

"Robert,"
Astrid Prescott says as we walk into the dining room, "you
remember Paige."

Robert
Prescott folds his newspaper and his reading glasses and stands up
from his seat. I hold out my hand, but he ignores it and, after a
moment's hesitation, sweeps me into his arms. "Thank you,"
he says.

"For
what?" I whisper, unsure of what I've done now.

"For
that kid," he tells me, and he smiles. I realize that in all the
time I was taking care of Max, those were words Nicholas never said.

I
sit down, but I am too nervous to eat the soup or the salad that
Imelda brings from the kitchen. Robert sits at one end of the
enormous table, Astrid at the other, and I am somewhere in
between. There is an empty place setting across from me, and I stare
at it anxiously. "It's just for balance," Astrid says when
she sees me looking. "Don't worry."

Nicholas
has already come for Max. He has a twenty-four-hour shift coming up
and wanted to get to sleep early, according to Astrid. Usually during
dinner, Max sits in a high chair next to Robert, who feeds him pieces
of Parker House rolls.

"Nicholas
hasn't told us very much about your trip," Robert says, making
it sound as if I've been on the
QE2
for
a holiday.

I
swallow hard and wonder how much I can say without incriminating
myself. After all, these
are
Nicholas's
parents, however nice they are being. "I don't know if Nicholas
ever told you," I say hesitantly. "I grew up without
my mother. She left us when I was five, and somehow, when I wasn't
doing a very good job taking care of Max, I figured if I could find
her I'd automatically know how to do it all right."

Astrid
clucks. "You did a fine job," she says. "In fact, you
did all the hard work. You nursed, didn't you? Yes, I remember
Nicholas found that out the hard way when Max was weaned in a day. We
never bothered when you all were children. In our circles, nursing
wasn't the proper thing to do."

Robert
turns away and picks up the thread of the conversation. "Ignore
Astrid," he says, smiling. "She sometimes spends weeks and
months in huts without any other humans. She has a lot of practice
talking only to herself."

"And
sometimes," Astrid says pleasantly from the other end of the
table, "I go away and I can't tell the difference between
talking to myself and dinner conversation with you." She stands
and walks toward Robert. She leans over him until he turns toward
her. "Have I told you today that I love you?" she says,
kissing his forehead.

"No,
as a matter of fact," Robert says.

"Ah."
Astrid pats his cheek. "So you
have
been
listening." She looks up at me and grins. "I'm going to see
what's happened to our steak."

It
turns out that Robert Prescott actually knows of Donegal, my mother's
horse. Well, not really of Donegal, but of his sire, the one with
bloodlines to Seattle Slew. "She does this all by herself?"
he asks.

"She
rents space from a larger farm, and she has some kid come in to help
her muck stalls," I say. "It's a beautiful place. So much
green, and there are the mountains right behind her—it's a nice
place to live."

"But
you didn't stay," Robert points out. "No," I say. "I
didn't."

At
that moment, when the conversation is starting to fit a little too
tightly around me, Astrid comes back through the swinging door to the
kitchen. "Another five minutes," she says. "Would you
believe that after twenty years of living with us, Imelda still
doesn't know that you like your steak burned to a crisp?"

"Well
done," Robert says.

"Yes,"
Astrid says, laughing. "I
am
good,
aren't I?"

Watching
them, I feel my stomach tighten. I would never have expected this
kind of warmth to exist between Nicholas's parents, and it makes me
realize what I missed as a child. My father wouldn't remember how my
mother prefers her steak; my mother couldn't tell you my father's
favorite color or breakfast cereal. I had never seen my mother stand
behind my father in the kitchen to kiss him upside down. I had never
seen the jigsaw puzzle their hands made when they fit together, like
Robert's and Astrid's, as if they'd been cut for each other.

The
night that Nicholas asked me to marry him at Mercy, I did not really
know him at all. I knew that I wanted his attention. I knew that he
commanded respect wherever he went. I knew that he had eyes that took
my breath away, the shifting color of the sea. I said yes because I
thought he'd be able to help me forget, about Jake, and the baby, and
my mother, and Chicago. And in the long run I had blamed him because
he lived up to all my expectations, making me forget about my old
self so well that I panicked and ran again.

I
said yes to Nicholas, but I did not know that I really wanted to
marry him until the night we ran out of his parents' house after the
argument about the marriage. That was the first time I noticed that
in addition to my needing Nicholas, Nicholas needed me. Somehow
I'd always just pictured him as the hero, the accessory to my plan.
But that night, Nicholas had wavered beneath his father's words and
turned his back on his family. Suddenly the man who had the world
wrapped around his little finger found himself in absolutely
unfamiliar territory. And to my surprise, it turned out to be a road
I
had
traveled. For the first time in my life, someone needed my
experience. It made me feel the way nothing ever had before.

That
wasn't something that went away easily.

As
I watch Astrid and Robert for the remainder of the meal, I think of
all the things I know about Nicholas. I know that he absolutely
will not eat squid or snails or mussels or apricot jam. I know that
he sleeps on the right side of the bed and that no matter what
precautions I take, the top sheet always becomes untucked on his
side. I know that he won't come within a mile of a martini. I know
that he folds his boxer shorts in half to fit into his dresser. I
know that he can smell the rain a day before it comes, that he can
sense snow by the color of the sky. I know that nobody else will ever
know him as I do.

I
also know that there are many facts Nicholas can list about me and
still the most important truths will be missing.

Bless
me, Nicholas, for I have sinned.
The
words run through my mind with every footstep that leads me out of
the Prescotts' house. I drive down the streets of Brookline and make
familiar turns to our own house. For the last half mile I turn off
the headlights and let the moon cut my path, wishing not to be seen.

I
have not been to confession in eight and a half years. This makes me
smile—how many rosaries would Father Draher pin on me to
absolve me of my sins if it were him I was turning to instead of
Nicholas?