Harvesting the Heart (7 page)

Astrid
blew a kiss to the opposite end of the table, where Robert Prescott
sat. "That awful thing got me my own darkroom in the house,"
she said.

"Fair
trade," Robert called, saluting his wife with a fork-speared
potato.

Paige
turned her head from Nicholas's mother to Nicholas's father and then
back again. She felt lost in the easy volley between them. She
wondered how Nicholas had ever managed to get noticed while growing
up. "Paige, dear," Astrid said, "where did you meet
Nicholas?"

Paige
toyed with her silverware, seizing her salad fork; something only
Nicholas noticed. "We met at work," Paige said.

"So
you're a . . ." Astrid left the sentence hanging, waiting for
Paige to fill in
medical
student,
or
registered
nurse,
or
even
lab
technician.

"Waitress,"
Paige said flatly.

"I
see," said Robert.

Paige
watched Astrid Prescott's warmth curl in around her, retreating
like tentacles; she saw the hooded look Astrid passed to her husband:
She's
not what we expected.
"Actually,"
Paige said, "I doubt you do."

Nicholas,
whose stomach had been in knots since they sat down to dinner, did
something else forbidden to Prescotts: he laughed out loud. His
mother and father looked at him, but he only turned to Paige and gave
her a smile. "Paige is a fabulous artist," he said.

"Oh?"
Astrid said, leaning forward to offer Paige a second chance. "What
an admirable hobby for a young lady. You know, that's how it all
began for me." She snapped her fingers, and a maid appeared,
whisking away her empty plate. Astrid leaned forward, placing her
tanned elbows on the fine linen cloth. She smiled smoothly, but the
light did not quite reach her eyes. "Where did you go to
college, dear?"

"I
didn't," Paige said evenly. "I was going to go to RISD, but
something came up." She pronounced the name of the school as an
acronym, as it was known.

"Riz-dee,"
Robert repeated coolly, staring at his wife. "Haven't heard much
about that one."

"Nicholas,"
Astrid said sharply, "how is Rachel?" Nicholas saw Paige's
face fall at the mention of another woman, one whose name she'd never
heard before. He crumpled his napkin into a ball and stood up. "Why
do you care, Mother?" he said. "You ever have before."
He moved to Paige's chair and pulled it out, lifting her by her
shoulders until she was standing. "I'm sorry," Nicholas
said, "but I'm afraid we have to go."

In
the car, they drove in circles. "What the hell was that all
about?" Paige demanded when he'd finally reached a major
highway. "Am I some kind of pawn or something?"

Nicholas
did not answer her. She stared at him for a few minutes with her arms
crossed, but finally sank back against the seat.

As
soon as Nicholas reached the outskirts of Cambridge, she opened the
door of the car. He came to a sudden stop. "What are you doing?"
he asked, incredulous.

"I'm
getting out. I can walk the rest of the way." She stood up, the
moon looming behind her, soaking into the edge of the Charles River
like a bloodstain. "You know, Nicholas," Paige said, "you
sure aren't what I thought you were."

And
as she walked away, a muscle throbbed along the edge of Nicholas's
jaw.
She's
just like the rest of them,
he
thought, and just to prove her wrong, he sped past her on Route 2,
screaming like a madman, shrieking until he thought his lungs would
burst.

The
next day Nicholas was still seething. He met Rachel after her anatomy
class and suggested they go for coffee. He knew a place, he said,
where they do portraits of you while you eat. It was a bit of a hike,
all the way across the river, but it was relatively close to his
apartment, for afterward. And then he walked beside her to the car,
counting the stares of other men as they took notice of Rachel's
honey hair, her soft curves. At the door of the diner, he pulled her
into his arms and kissed her hard.

"Well,"
Rachel said, smiling. "Welcome back."

He
led her to the booth he always took, and she almost immediately
disappeared to the bathroom. He couldn't see Paige, which made him
angry. After all, why else had he come? He was still questioning
himself when she came up behind him. She was as quiet as a breeze,
and he would not have sensed her if not for the clean scent of pears
and willows he had come to know her by. When she stood in front of
him, her eyes were wide and tired. "I'm sorry," she said.
"I didn't mean to piss you off."

"Who's
pissed?" Nicholas said, grinning, but he distinctly felt the
pinching of his heart, and he began to wonder if this was what
cardiac patients always tried to describe.

At
that point Rachel came out and slid into the booth across from
Nicholas. "I'm sorry," Paige said, "but this booth is
taken."

"Yes,
I know," Rachel said coolly. She looked at Nicholas and then
glared at Paige. She reached across the table and took Nicholas's
hand, weaving her fingers through his with the quiet power of
possession.

Nicholas
couldn't have planned it better, but he didn't expect it to hurt
quite so much. It wasn't that Paige stood rooted before him, her lips
parted, as if she hadn't heard correctly. It was that when she
turned, Nicholas did not see disappointment or betrayal. Instead, he
realized she was looking at him, still, as if he were mythic. "What
did you come here for?" she asked.

Nicholas
cleared his throat, and Rachel kicked him under the table. "Rachel
heard about the pictures and would like to have one done."

Paige
nodded and left to get a pad. She sat at the front of the booth on a
little stool, holding the pad tilted up the way she always did so the
picture would be a surprise when she was finished. She drew clean,
quick strokes and blended with her thumb, and as she drew, other
diners peeked over her shoulder and laughed and whispered. When
she finished, she threw the pad in front of Nicholas and walked into
the kitchen. Rachel turned it over. There was her hair, her
glittering eyes, and even the gist of her lovely features, but quite
clearly the picture was that of a lizard.

Although
he was scheduled to be on call that night at the hospital,
Nicholas did something he had never done before: he phoned in sick.
Then he grabbed a bite at McDonald's and walked through Harvard
Square after the sun went down. He sat on a brick wall on the corner
of Brattle and watched a juggler with flaming torches, wondering if
the guy worried about what might happen. Nicholas put a faded dollar
bill in the case of a jazz guitarist, and he stood at the window of a
toy store, where stuffed alligators wearing rain slickers
tumbled in tinfoil puddles. When it was five to eleven, he walked to
Mercy, wondering what he would do if Doris or Marvela or anyone other
than Paige was locking up that night. He realized that he would just
keep walking, then, until he found her.

Paige
was emptying the ketchup bottles when he came in. Over her head,
taped to the wall, was the picture of Rachel as a lizard. "I
like it," he said, making her jump.

In
spite of herself, Paige smiled a little. "I'm sure I've lost us
one
customer,"
she said.

"So
what," Nicholas said. "You made
me
come
back." "And just what do I get?" Paige said. Nicholas
smiled. "Whatever you want."

Many
years later, when Nicholas thought of that exchange, he realized he
shouldn't have made promises he couldn't have kept. But he did
believe that no matter what Paige wanted, he could be it. He had a
feeling about this, a feeling that all Paige really needed
was
him,
not his trappings and not his success, and that was so new
to
Nicholas
that he felt as if the weight of the world had been lifted from his
shoulders. He pulled Paige closer and saw her stiffen and then relax.
He kissed her ear, her temple, the corner of her mouth. In her hair
he smelled bacon and waffles, but also sunshine and September,
and he wondered how he could be thinking the things he was.

When
she put her arms around him, as if she was testing the water, he put
his hands on her waist and felt the hint of her hips below. "Is
Lionel still here?" he whispered, and when she shook her head he
took the keys from her pocket and locked the front door, turned off
the light. He sat on one of the counter stools and pulled Paige to
stand between his legs, and he kissed her, letting his hands run from
her neck to her breasts to her belly. Softly he kissed her, this
child-woman, and when he stroked her thighs and she tensed, he had to
smile.
She
must be a virgin,
he
realized, and he was overwhelmed by a sudden thought: I
want
to be her first. I want to be the only one.
"Marry
me," he said, as surprised as she was by the words. He wondered
if this was the way his luck would run out; if his career would start
its disintegration, if this would be the first downslide to the
avalanche. But he held Paige and decided that the hollow in his heart
was just the fanning of love. Nicholas marveled at the luck of
finding someone who so needed his security, never considering that
although the dangers could be different, maybe he needed to be
protected too.

^chapter
3

_Nicholas

hen
Nicholas was four years old, his mother taught him about trusting
strangers. She sat him down and told him twenty times in a row not to
speak to someone on the street unless it was a friend of the family;
not to take the hand of just anyone to cross the street; never, under
any circumstances, to get into someone's car. Nicholas remembered
fidgeting on the chair and wishing he could be outside; he'd wanted
to check the tin of beer he'd left overnight on the porch to catch
slugs. But his mother would not let him leave, would not let him even
take a break for the bathroom—not until Nicholas could repeat,
verbatim, her lesson. And by that time, Nicholas had conjured images
of dark, stinking phantoms wearing ratty black capes, hiding in cars
and in the creases of the sidewalk and in the alleys between stores,
waiting to pounce on him. When his mother finally told him he could
go outside to play, he'd chosen to remain indoors. For weeks after
that, when the postman rang the doorbell, he had hidden beneath the
couch.

Although
he had got over his fear of strangers, he had never forgotten the
consequences, which made Nicholas the one person in a group to stand
off to the side. He could be charming if the situation called for it,
but he was more likely to feign interest in a frieze on the ceiling
than to be drawn into a conversation with people he didn't know. In
some individuals this was passed off as shyness; but in someone of
Nicholas's background and stature and classic features, it seemed
more like aloof conceit. Nicholas found he didn't mind the label. It
gave him time to size up a situation and to respond more
intelligently than those who spoke too quickly.

None
of which explained why he impulsively asked Paige O'Toole to marry
him, or why he gave her the spare key to his apartment even before
hearing her answer.