Harvesting the Heart (68 page)

I
start to move my pencil restlessly over a fresh page, and not daring
to meet Astrid's eyes, I tell her the truth. The words come fresh as
a new wound, and once again I can clearly smell the Magic Markers in
my tiny hand; feel my mother's fingers close around my ankles for
balance on the stool. I can sense my mother's body pressed beside
mine as we watch our unfettered stallions; I can remember the freedom
of assuming—just
knowing
—that
she would be there the next day, and the next.

"I
wish my mother had been around to teach me how to draw," I say,
and then I fall silent. My pencil has stopped flying over the page,
and as I stare at it, Astrid's hand comes to cover mine where it
lies. Even as I am wondering what has made me say these things to
her, I hear myself speak again. "Nicholas was lucky," I
say. "I wish I'd had someone like you around when I was growing
up."

"Nicholas
was doubly lucky, then." Astrid shifts closer to me on the grass
and slips her arms around my shoulders. It feels awkward —not
like my mother's embrace, which I fit into so neatly by the summer's
end. Still, before I can stop myself, I lean toward Astrid. She sighs
against my hair. "She didn't have a choice, you know." I
close my eyes and shrug, but Astrid will not leave it be. "She's
no different from me," Astrid says, and then she hesitates. "Or
you."

Instinctively
I pull away, putting the reason of distance between us. I open my
mouth to disagree, but something stops me.
Astrid,
my mother, myself.
I
picture, like a collage, the grinning rows of white frames on
Astrid's contact sheets; the dark press of hoofprints in my mother's
fields; the line of men's shirts I'd flung from the car on the day I
had to leave. The things we did, we did because we
had
to.
The things we did, we did because we had a
right
to.
Still, we each left markers of some kind—a public trail that
either led others to us or became, one day, the road upon which we
returned.

I
exhale slowly. God, I'm more relaxed than I've been in days. To win
over Nicholas, I may be fighting a force that is greater than myself,
but I'm beginning to see that I'm
part
of
a force that is greater than myself. Maybe I do have a chance after
all.

I
smile at Astrid and pick up the pencil again, quickly fashioning on
paper the naked knot of branches that hangs above Astrid's head. She
peers at the pad, then up at the tree, and then she nods. "Can
you do me?" she asks, settling herself back in a pose.

I
rip the top sheet off my pad and start to draw the slopes of Astrid's
face, the gray strands laced with the gold in her hair. With her
bearing and her expression, she should have been a queen.

The
shadows of the peach tree color her face with a strange Scrollwork
that reminds me of the insides of confessionals at Saint
Christopher's. The leaves that are starting to fall dance across
my pad. When I am finished, I pretend that my pencil is still moving
just so I can see what I have really drawn, before Astrid has a
chance to look.

In
each leaf-patterned shadow of her face, I have drawn a different
woman. One looks to be African, with a thick turban wrapped around
her head and gold hoops slicing her ears. One has the bottomless eyes
and the black roped hair of a Spanish
puta.
One
is a bedraggled girl, no older than twelve, who holds her hands
against her swollen, pregnant belly. One is my mother; one is
myself.

"Remarkable,"
Astrid says, lightly touching each image. "I can see why
Nicholas was impressed." She cocks her head. "Can you draw
from memory?" I nod. "Then do one of yourself."

I
have done self-portraits before but never on command. I do not know
if I can do it, and I tell her this. "You never know until you
try," Astrid chides, and I dutifully turn to a blank page. I
start with

the
base of my neck, working my way up the lines of my chin and my jaw. I
stop for a second and see it is all wrong. I tear it off and turn to
the next page, start at the hairline, working down. Again, I have to
begin all over. I do this seven times, making each drawing a little
more complete than the last. Finally, I put the pencil down and press
my fingers against my eyes. "Some other time," I say.

But
Astrid is leafing through the discarded drawings I've ripped off the
pad. "You've done better than you think," she says, holding
them out to me. "Look." I riffle through the papers,
shocked that I didn't see this before. On every one, even the
pictures made of threadbare lines, instead of myself I have
drawn Nicholas.

^chapter
3
8

Paige

For
the past three days Nicholas has been the talk of the hospital, and
it's all because of me. In the morning when he arrives, I help ready
his patient for surgery. Then I sit on the floor in front of his
office in my pale pinafore and draw the portrait of the person he is
operating upon. They are simple sketches that take only minutes. Each
shows the patient far away from a hospital, in the prime of his or
her life. I have drawn Mrs. Comazzi as a dance hall girl, which she
was in the forties; I have drawn Mr. Goldberg as a dapper pin-striped
gangster; I have drawn Mr. Allen as Ben-Hur, robust and perched on
his chariot. I leave them taped to the door of the office, usually
with a second picture, of Nicholas himself.

At
first I drew Nicholas as he was at the hospital, on the telephone or
signing a release form or leading a gaggle of residents into a
patient's room. But then I started to draw Nicholas the way I
wanted to remember him: singing "Sweet Baby James" over
Max's bassinet,

teaching
me how to pitch a Wiffle ball, kissing me on the swan boat in front
of everyone. Every morning at about eleven, Nicholas does the same
thing. He comes back to his office, curses at the door, and rips both
pictures off. He stuffs the one of himself in the trash can or his
upper desk drawer, but he usually takes the one I've done of the
patient and brings that during the postoperative checkup. I was
offering magazines to Mrs. Comazzi when he gave the picture to her.
"Oh, my stars," she exclaimed. "Look at me. Look at
me!"
And
Nicholas, in spite of himself, smiled.

Rumors
spread fast through Mass General, and everyone knows who I am and
when I leave the drawings. At ten-forty, before Nicholas
arrives, a crowd starts to gather. The nurses drift upstairs on their
coffee break to see if they can figure out the likeness and to make
cracks about the Dr. Prescott I tend to draw, the one they never see.
"Jeez," I heard one profusionist say, "I wouldn't have
guessed he even owned casual clothes."

I
hear Nicholas's footsteps coming down the hall, quick and clipped. He
is still wearing his scrubs, which might mean something has gone
wrong. I start to scoot out of his way, but I am stopped by an
unfamiliar voice. "Nicholas," the man says.

Nicholas
stops, his hand on the doorknob. "Elliot," he says, more a
sigh than a word. "Look," he says, "it's been a pretty
bad morning. Maybe we can talk later."

Elliot
shakes his head and holds up a hand. "Didn't come here to see
you. I came to see what the fuss is with the artwork. Your door is
becoming the hospital gallery." He looks down at me and beams.
"Scuttlebutt has it that the phantom artist here is your wife."

Nicholas
pulls the blue paper cap off his head and leans back against the
door, closing his eyes. "Paige, Elliot Saget. Elliot, Paige. My
wife." He exhales slowly. "For now."

If
memory serves me right, Elliot Saget is the chief of surgery. I stand
quickly and offer my hand. "A pleasure," I say, smiling.

Elliot
pushes Nicholas out of the way and stares at the picture I've done of
Mr. Olsen, Nicholas's morning surgery. Next to him is the image of
Nicholas singing karaoke at an Allston bowling alley, something that
to my knowledge he has never tried but that probably would do him
good. "Quite a talent," he says, looking from the picture
to Nicholas and back again. "Why, Nicholas, she almost makes you
seem as human as the rest of us."

Nicholas
mutters something under his breath and turns the key in the doorknob.
"Paige," Elliot Saget says to me, "the hospital's
communications director would like very much to talk to you about
your artwork. Her name is Nancy Bianna, and she asked me to tell you
to stop by when you aren't busy." He smiles then, and I know
immediately that I can trust him if need be. "Nicholas," he
says into the open doorway. He nods and then he lopes away down the
hall.

Nicholas
bends over, trying to touch his fingers to his toes. It helps his
back; I've seen him do it before, after a very long day on his feet.
When he looks up and sees that I am still here, he grimaces. He
crosses to the door and rips off the two pictures I've drawn,
crumples them into a ball, and tosses them into the garbage.

"You
don't have to do that," I say, angry. The pictures—however
simple they are—are my work. I hate watching my work be
destroyed. "If you don't want yours, well, fine. But maybe
Mr. Olsen would like to see his portrait."

Nicholas's
eyes darken, and his fingers tighten on the doorknob. "This
isn't a garden party, Paige. Mr. Olsen died twenty minutes ago on the
operating table. Maybe
now,"
he
says quietly, "you can leave me alone."

It
takes me forty minutes to get back to the Prescotts', and when I do I
am still shaking. I pull off my jacket and sag against a highboy,
which jabs into my ribs. Wincing, I move away and stare at myself in
an antique mirror. For the past week, no matter where I am, I've been
uncomfortable. And deep down I know this has nothing to do with the
sharp edges of the furniture, or with any other piece of decor. It's
just that the cool hospital and the elegant Prescott mansion are not
places where I feel at home.

Nicholas
is right. I don't understand his life. I don't know the things that
everyone else takes for granted, like how to read a doctor's mood
after surgery, or which side to lean to when Imelda takes the dishes
away. I'm killing myself to be part of a world where I'm always two
steps behind.

A
door opens, and classical music floods the hallway. Robert holds Max,
letting him chew on the plastic CD case. I give my best smile, but I
am still shivering. My father-in-law steps forward and narrows his
eyes. "What's happened to you?" he asks.

The
whole day, this past month, all of it crowds and chokes in my throat.
The last person in the world I want to break down in front of is
Robert Prescott, but still, I start to cry. "Nicholas," I
sob.

Robert
frowns. "Never did learn to pick on someone his own size,"
he says. He takes my elbow and guides me into his study, a dark room
that makes me think of fox hunts and stiff British lords. "Sit
down and unwind," he says. He settles into a huge leather chair
and sets Max on the top of his desk to play with brass paperweights.

I
lean back against the burgundy couch and obediently close my eyes,
but I feel too conspicuously out of place to unwind. A crystal brandy
decanter rests on a mahogany table beneath the frozen smile of a
mounted buck. A set of dueling pistols, just for show, are crossed
above the arch of the door. This room—dear God, this whole
house
—is
like something straight out of a novel.