by Jodi Picoult
Nicholas pulled on his jacket and wandered toward his car in the parking garage, wondering if he'd ever be given a bypass to do again. He searched his memory to find something he'd overlooked, a torn capillary or an additional blockage, something Fogerty smugly hadn't mentioned after the operation that day, something that might have saved the guy. He pictured the still amber eyes of Serena LeBeauf's youngest son, mirrors of what her own used to be like. He thought about the Navajo Hand Trembler and wondered what potions and blessings and magic decrees might fall between the cracks of common knowledge.
When he turned the key in the apartment door, Paige was sitting on the floor of the living room, stringing cranberries on black thread. The television had been moved to make room for an enormous blue spruce, thick at the middle, which swelled across half of the little room. "We don't really have any ornaments," she said, and then she looked up and saw him.
Nicholas had not gone straight home. He'd headed into Cambridge, to a seedy bar, where he'd had six straight shots of Jack Daniel's and two Heinekens. He'd bought a bottle of J & B from the bartender and driven home with it by his side, swilling at the stoplights, almost hoping he'd get caught.
"Oh, Nicholas," Paige said. She came to stand in front of him, and she put her arms around him. Her hands were sticky with tar, and he wondered how she'd managed to get that enormous thing into the wobbly tree stand all by herself. Nicholas stared down at her white face, the thin brass hoops dangling from her earlobes. He hadn't even known it was near Christmas.
He seemed to fall forward at the same moment Paige put her arms around him. Staggering under his weight, she helped him sit on the floor, knocking over the bowl of cranberries. Nicholas crushed some as he sat, grinding them into the cheap yellow throw rug, a stain that looked suspiciously like blood. Paige knelt beside him, moving her fingers through his hair, telling him softly it was all right. "You can't save them all," she whispered.
Nicholas gazed up at her. He saw, swimming, the planes of an angel's face, the spirit of a lion. He wanted to make it all go away, everything else, to just cling to Paige until the days ran into each other. He dropped the bottle of J & B and watched it roll with a shudder under the fragrant skirt of Paige's naked Christmas tree. He pulled his wife toward him. "No," he said. He breathed in the quiet clean of her as though it were oxygen. "I can't."
chapter 7
Paige
When Nicholas was dressed in a tuxedo, I would have done anything he asked. It was not just the sleek line of his shoulders or the striking contrast of his hair against a snowy shirt; it was his presence. Nicholas should have been born wearing a tuxedo. He could carry it off--the status, the nobility. He commanded attention. If this were his everyday uniform, instead of the simple white coat or scrubs of a senior surgical fellow, he'd probably have been the head of Mass General by now.
Nicholas leaned over me and kissed my shoulder. "Hello," he said. "I think I knew you in a different life."
"You did," I said, smiling at him in the mirror. I slipped the clasp onto one of my earrings. "Before you were a doctor." I had not seen Nicholas--really seen him--in a long time. Hours of surgery and rounds, plus hospital committee meetings and politically necessary dinners with superiors, kept him away. He had slept on call at the
hospital last night, and he'd had a triple bypass and an emergency surgery during the day, so he hadn't had time to phone. I hadn't been sure he'd remember the fund-raising dinner. I'd dressed and gone downstairs, watching the clock move closer to six, and as usual I waited in silence, impatient for Nicholas to get home.
I hated our house. It was a little place with a nice yard in a very prestigious pocket of Cambridge--one with an awful lot of lawyers and doctors. When we first saw the neighborhood, I had laughed and said the streets must be paved with old money, which Nicholas did not find very funny. Despite everything, I knew that in his heart Nicholas still felt rich. He'd been wealthy too long to change now. And according to Nicholas, if you were rich--or if you wanted to be--you lived a certain way.
Which meant that we'd taken out a large mortgage in spite of the fact that we had tremendous loans from medical school to repay. Nicholas's parents had never come back groveling, as I knew he'd hoped they would. Once, they had sent a polite Christmas card, but Nicholas never filled me in on the details and I didn't know if he was protecting my feelings or his own. But in spite of the Prescotts, we were working our way back into the black. With Nicholas's salary--a finally respectable $38,000--we had started to make a dent in the interest we owed. I wanted to save a little just in case, but Nicholas insisted that we were going to have more than we needed. All I had wanted was a little apartment, but Nicholas kept talking about building equity. And so we bought a house beyond our means, one that Nicholas believed would be his ticket toward becoming chief of cardiothoracic surgery.
Nicholas was never at the house, and he probably knew when we bought the place that he wouldn't be, but he insisted on having it decorated a certain way. We had almost no furniture, because we couldn't afford it, but Nicholas said it just made the place look Scandinavian. The entire house was the color of skin. Not beige and not pink, but that strange pale in-between. The wall-to-wall carpeting matched the wallpaper, which matched the shelving and the track of recessed lighting. The only exception was the kitchen, which was painted a color called Barely White. I don't know who the decorator thought she was kidding; it most certainly was white--white tiles, white Corian counters, white marble floor, white pickled wood. "White is in," Nicholas had told me. He'd seen white leather couches and white carpets like spilled foam all over the mansions of doctors he worked with. I gave in. After all, Nicholas knew about this kind of life; I didn't. I didn't mention how dirty I felt sitting in my own living room; or how I stuck out like a sore thumb. I didn't tell him how I thought the kitchen was just crying out to be colored in, and how sometimes, while chopping carrots and celery in that seamless room, I wished for an accident--some splash of blood or stripe of grime that would let me know I'd left my mark.
I was wearing red to the hospital benefit, and both Nicholas and I seemed starkly drawn against the fading beige lines of the bedroom. "You should wear red more often," he said, running his hand over the bare curve of my shoulder.
"The nuns used to tell us never to wear red," I said absentmind-edly. "Red attracts boys."
Nicholas laughed. "Let's go," he said, pulling my hand. "Fogerty's going to be counting every minute I'm late."
I didn't care about Alistair Fogerty, Nicholas's attending physician and, according to Nicholas, the son of God himself. I didn't care about missing the sumptuous shrimp fountain at the cocktail hour. If the choice had been mine, I wouldn't have gone. I didn't like mingling with the surgeons and their wives. I had nothing to contribute, so I didn't see why I had to be there at all. "Paige," Nicholas said, "come on. You look fine." When I married Nicholas, I truly believed--like a fool--that I had him and he had me and it was plenty. Maybe it would have been if Nicholas didn't move in the circles he did. The better Nicholas became at his job, the more I was confronted with people and situations I didn't understand: jacket-and-tie dinners at someone's home; drunk divorcees leaving hotel keys in Nicholas's tuxedo pockets; prying questions about the background I'd worked so hard to forget. I was not nearly as smart as these people, not nearly as savvy; I never got their jokes. I went, I mingled, because of Nicholas, but he knew as well as I did that we had been kidding ourselves, that I would never fit in.
When we had been married for a couple of years, I tried to do something about it. I applied to Harvard's Extension School and signed up for two night courses. I picked architecture for me and intro to lit for Nicholas. I figured that if I knew Hemingway from Chaucer and Byron, I'd be able to follow the subtle artsy references that Nicholas's friends batted across dinner conversations like Ping-Pong balls. But I couldn't do it. I couldn't stay on my feet all day at Mercy and have dinner ready for Nicholas and still have time to read about
rococo ceilings and J. Alfred Prufrock. I was scared of my professors, who spoke so quickly they might as well have been lecturing in Swedish.
Most of my classmates dabbled in schooling; nearly all had already graduated from somewhere. They didn't have a future at stake, like me. I realized that at the rate I could afford to take courses, it would take nine years for me to get a college degree. I never told Nicholas, but I got an F on the only paper I ever wrote for one of those courses. I can't remember if it was architecture or lit, but I will never forget the professor's comments: Buried somewhere in this muck, he had written, you do have some qualified ideas. Find your voice, Ms. Prescott. Find your voice.
I had made some excuse to Nicholas and dropped out. To punish myself for being a failure, I took on a second job, as if working twice as hard could make me forget just how different my life had turned out from what I had imagined as a child.
But I had Nicholas. And that meant more than all the college degrees, all the RISD courses in the world. I hadn't changed much in seven years--and I had no one to blame for that but myself--but Nicholas was very different. For a minute, I looked up at my husband and tried to picture what he'd been like back then. His hair had been thicker, and there wasn't the gray that was coming in now, and the lines around his mouth weren't as deep. But the biggest changes were in his eyes. There were shadows there. Once Nicholas had told me that when he watched a patient die, a little piece of him went as well, and that he'd have to work on that, or one day when he was close to retirement he'd have nothing left at all.
Mass General had been having a Halloween ball at the Copley Plaza for ages, although about ten years earlier, costumes had been traded for formal wear. I was sorry about that. I would have given anything for a disguise. Once, when Nicholas was a general surgical resident, we had gone to a costume party at the medical school. I had wanted to be Antony and Cleopatra, or Cinderella and Prince Charming. "No tights," Nicholas had said. "I wouldn't be caught dead." In the end we had gone as a clothesline. Each of us wore a brown shirt and pants, and stretched between our necks was a long white cord, pinned with boxer shorts, stockings, bras. I loved that costume. We were literally tied together. Everywhere Nicholas went, I had followed.
On the drive into Boston, Nicholas quizzed me. "David Goldman's wife," he'd say, and I'd answer, Arlene. "Fritz van der Hoff?" Bridget. "Alan Masterson," Nicholas said, and I told him that was a trick question, since Alan had been divorced the previous year.
We pulled off the Mass Pike and stopped at the corner of Dartmouth. Copley Square danced around us, lit with the glitter and whirl of Halloween. Beside the car stood Charlie Chaplin, a gypsy, and Raggedy Andy. They held out their hands as we slowed, but Nicholas shook his head. I wondered what they had expected and what others had given. A sharp rap on my window surprised me. Standing inches away was a tall man dressed in britches and a waistcoat, whose neck ended in a bloody stump. He cradled the blushing oval of a face under his right arm. "Pardon me," he said, and I think the face smiled, "I seem to have lost my head." I was still staring at him, at his plumed green cape, as Nicholas sped away.
Although there were more than three hundred people in the Grand Ballroom of the Copley Plaza Hotel, Nicholas stood out. He was among the youngest, and he attracted attention for having come so far so fast. People knew he was being groomed; that he was the only resident Fogerty thought was good enough to do transplants. As we moved through the double doors, at least seven people came forward to talk to Nicholas. I gripped his arm until my fingers turned white. "Don't leave me," I said, knowing well that Nicholas would not make promises he couldn't keep.
I heard words in a familiar foreign language: infectious endocarditis, myocardial infarction, angioplasty. I watched Nicholas in his element, and my fingers itched to draw him: tall, half in shadow, steeped in his own confidence. But I had packed away my art supplies when we moved, and I still did not know where they were. I had not sketched in a year; I had been too busy working at Mercy in the morning, at Dr. Thayer's office in the afternoon. I had tried to get other jobs, in sales and management, but in Cambridge I was easily beat out by people with a college education. I had nothing to my name except Nicholas. I was riding on his coattails, which, ironically, I had paid for.
"Paige!" I turned to hear the very high voice of Arlene Goldman, a house cardiologist's wife. After my last experience with Arlene, I had told Nicholas that I physically could not sit through a dinner party at their house, and so we'd declined invitations. But suddenly I was glad to see her. She was someone to cling to, someone who knew me and could justify my presence there. "So good to see you," Arlene lied, kissing the air on both sides of my cheeks. "And there's Nicholas," she said, nodding in his general direction.
Arlene Goldman was so thin she seemed transparent, with wide gray eyes and sunny gold hair that came out of a bottle. She owned a personal shopping service, and her biggest claim to fame was being sent by Senator Edward Kennedy to choose his fiancee's engagement ring at Shreve, Crump and Low. She wore a long peach-colored sheath that made her look naked. "How are you, Arlene," I said quietly, shifting from foot to foot.
"Ducky," she said, and she waved over some of the other wives I knew. I smiled around at them and stepped back, listening to conconversations about Wellesley reunions and six-figure book deals and the merits of low-E glass for houses on the ocean.
The wives of surgeons did it all. They were mothers and Nantucket real estate agents and caterers and authors all at once. Of course they had nannies and chefs and live-in maids, but they did not acknowledge these people. They spent galas dropping names of celebrities they'd worked with, places where they'd been, spectacles they'd happened to see. They chained themselves in diamonds and wore blush that threw off sparkles in the subtle light of the chandeliers. They had nothing in common with me.
Nicholas dipped his head into the circle of faces and asked if I was all right; he was going to ask Fogerty about a patient. The other women crowded around me. "Oh, Nick," they said, "it's been too long." They put their cold arms around me. "We'll take care of her, Nick," they said, leaving me to wonder when my husband had decided it was all right to be called something other than Nicholas.
We danced to a swing orchestra, and then the doors were opened for the banquet. As always, dinner was a learning experience. There were so many things I still did not know. I didn't realize that there was something called a fish knife. I didn't realize that you could eat snails. I blew on my leek soup before I figured out it was being served cold. I watched Nicholas move with the practiced ease of a professional, and I wondered how I had ever stumbled into this kind of life.
One of the other doctors at the table turned to me during dinner. "I've forgotten," he said. "What is it you do, again?"
I stared down at my plate and waited for Nicholas to come to my rescue, but he was speaking to someone else. We had discussed it, and I wasn't supposed to let people know where I worked. It wasn't that he was embarrassed, he'd assured me, but in the political scheme of things, he had to present a certain image. Surgeons' wives were supposed to present Rotary plaques, not blue-plate specials. I put on the brightest smile that I could and affected the flip voice of the other women. "Oh," I said, "I go around town breaking hearts so my husband has something to do at work."
It seemed like years before anyone said a word, and I could feel my hands shaking under the fine linen tablecloth, sweat breaking out in the hollow of my back. Then I heard laughter, like shattering crystal. "Wherever did you find her, Prescott?"
Nicholas turned from the conversation he'd been having. A lazy grin slipped across his face to hide the line of his eyes. "Waiting tables," he said.
I didn't move. Everyone at the table laughed and assumed Nicholas was making a joke. But he'd done exactly what we weren't supposed to do. I stared at him, but he was laughing too. I pictured the other doctors' wives, driving home with their husbands, saying, Well, this explains a lot. "Excuse me," I said, pushing my chair from the table
. My knees shook, but I walked slowly to the bathroom.
There were several people inside, but nobody I recognized. I slipped into a stall and sat on the edge of the toilet. I balled up some tissue in my palm, expecting tears, but they didn't come. I wondered what the hell had convinced me to live at the end of someone else's life rather than live my own, and then I realized I was going to throw up.
When I finished I was hollow inside. I could hear the echo of blood running through my veins. Women stared at me as I stepped out of the stall, but nobody asked if I was all right. I rinsed my mouth with water and then I stepped into the hallway, where Nicholas was waiting. To his credit, he looked worried. "Take me home," I said. "Now."
We did not speak during the ride, and when we reached the house I pushed past him at the door and ran to the bathroom and got sick again. When I looked up, Nicholas was standing in the doorway. "What did you have to eat?" he said.
I wiped my face on a towel. The back of my throat was raw and burning. "This is the second time tonight," I told him, and those were the last words I planned to say.
Nicholas left me alone while I undressed. He'd draped his bow tie and cummerbund over the footboard, and in the play of the moonlight they seemed to shift like snakes. He sat on the edge of the bed. "You're not mad, are you, Paige?"
I slid between the covers and turned my back to him. "You know I didn't mean anything by it," he said. He moved beside me and held my shoulders. "You know that, don't you?"
I straightened my back and crossed my arms. I would not speak, I told myself. When I heard Nicholas's even breathing I let the tears come, spilling across my face like hot mercury and burning their path to the pillow.