Harvesting the Heart

by Jodi Picoult

  "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, becau
se 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.

  He finished in the nursery and came back downstairs. He leaned over Max from behind. "Don't tell me," he said. "Rain?"

  Max reached up his hands. "Dada," he said, and then he coughed.

  Nicholas sighed and settled Max into the crook of his arm. "Let's make a deal," he said. "If you go to sleep within twenty minutes I'll tell Grandma you don't have to eat apricots for the next five days." He uncapped the bottle that had been leaking onto the couch and rubbed it against Max's lips until his mouth opened like a foundling's. Max could take three strong sucks before he had to break away and breathe. "You know what's going to happen," Nicholas said. "You're going to get all better, and then I'm going to get sick. And I'll give it back to you, and we'll have this damn thing until Christmas."

  Nicholas watched the commentator talk about the consumer price index, the DJIA, and the latest unemployment figures. By the time the news was over, Max had fallen asleep. He was cradled in Nicholas's arms like a little angel, his arms resting limp over his stomach. Nicholas held his breath and contorted his body, pushing himself up from the heels, then the calves, then the back, finally snapping his head up. He tiptoed up the stairs toward the nursery, and then the doorbell rang.

  Max's eyes flew open, and he started to scream. "Fuck," Nicholas muttered, tossing the baby against his shoulder and jiggling him up and down until the crying slowed. The doorbell rang again. Nicholas headed back down the hall. "This better be an emergency," he muttered. "A car crash on my front lawn, or a fire next door."

  He unlocked and pulled open the heavy oak door and came face-to-face with his wife.

  At first Nicholas didn't believe it. This didn't really look like Paige, at least not as she had looked when she left. She was tanned and smiling, and her body was trim. "Hi," she said, and he almost fell over just hearing the melody wrapped around her voice.

  Max stopped crying, as if he knew she was there, and stretched out his hand. Nicholas took a step forward and extended his palm, trying to ascertain whether he would be reaching toward a vision, coming up with a handful of mist. His fingertips were inches away from her collarbone, and he could see the pulse at the base of her throat, when he snapped his wrist back and stepped away. The space between them became charged and heavy. What had he been thinking? If he touched her, it would start all over again. If he touched her, he wouldn't be able to say what had been building inside him for three months; wouldn't be able to give her her due.

  "Nicholas," Paige said, "give me five minutes."

  Nicholas clenched his teeth. It was all coming back now, the flood of anger he'd buried under his work and his care of Max. She couldn't just step in as though she'd been on a getaway weekend and play the loving mother. As far as Nicholas was concerned, she didn't have the right to be there anymore at all. "I gave you three months," he said. "You can't just breeze in and out of our lives at your pleasure, Paige. We've done fine without you."

  She wasn't listening to him. She reached forward and touched her hand to the baby's back, brushing the side of Nicholas's thumb. He turned so that Max, asleep again on his shoulder, was out of reach. "Don't touch him," he said, his eyes flashing. "If you think I'm going to let you walk back in here and pick up where you left off, you've got another thing coming. You aren't getting into this house, and you're not getting within a hundred feet of this baby."

  If he decided to talk to Paige, if he let her see Max, it would be in his own sweet time, on his own agenda. Let her stew for a little while. Let her see what it was like to be powerless all of a sudden. Let her fall asleep fitfully, knowing she had absolutely no idea what tomorrow held in store.

  Paige's eyes filled with tears, and Nicholas schooled himself not to move a muscle. "You can't do this," she said thickly.

  Nicholas stepped back far enough to grab the edge of the door. "Watch me," he said, and he slammed it shut in his wife's face.

  Part III: Delivery

  Fall 1993

  chapter 33

  Paige

  The front door has grown larger overnight. Thicker, even. It is the biggest obstacle I've ever seen. And I should know. For hours at a time, I focus all my concentration on it, waiting for a miracle.

  It would almost be funny, if it didn't hurt so much. For four years I walked in and out of that door without giving it a second thought, and now--the first time I've really wanted to, the first time I've chosen to--I can't. I keep thinking, Open sesame. I close my eyes and I picture the little hallway, the Chinese umbrella stand, the Persian runner. I've even tried praying. But it doesn't change anything; Nicholas and Max are on one side, and I'm stuck on the other.

  I smile when I can to my neighbors as they go by, but I am very busy. Such concentration takes all my energy. I repeat Nicholas's name silently, and I picture him so vividly I almost believe I can conjure him--magic!--inches from where I sit. And still nothing

  happens. Well, I will wait forever, if it comes to that. I have made my decision. I want my husband to come back into my life. But I will settle for finding a chink in his armor, so that I can slip back into his life and prove that we can go back to normal.

  I don't find it strange that I would give my right arm to be inside the house, watching Max grow up before my eyes--doing, really, the things that made me so crazy three months ago. I'd just been going through the motions then, acting out a role that I couldn't really remember being cast in. Now I'm back by my own free will. I want to spread chutney on Nicholas's turkey sandwiches. I want to stretch socks over Max's sunburned feet. I want to find all my art supplies and draw picture after picture with pastels and oils and hang them on the walls until every dull, pale corner of that house is throbbing with color. God, there is such a difference between living the life you are expected to live and living the life you want to live. I just realized it a little late, is all.

  Okay, so my homecoming hasn't gone quite the way I'd planned. I figured on Nicholas welcoming me with a small parade, kissing me until my knees gave out beneath me, telling me that come hell or high water, he'd never let me go again. Truth is, I was so excited about slipping back into the routine that fit me like a soft old shoe, I never considered that the circumstances might have changed. I had learned the lesson already this past summer, with Jake, but I never thought to apply it here. But of course, if I am different, I shouldn't expect that time has stood still for Nicholas. I understand that he's been hurt, but if I can forgive myself, surely Nicholas can forgive me too. And if he can't, I'll have to make him try.

  Yesterday I accidentally let him get away. I never thought of following him; I assumed that he'd found someone to watch Max at home when he went to work. But at 6:30 a.m., there he had been, toting the baby and a diaper
bag, stuffing both into his car with the carelessness that comes from constant practice. I was very impressed. I could never carry both Max and the diaper bag--in fact, I could barely summon enough courage to take Max out of the house. Nicholas--well, Nicholas made it look so easy.

  He had come out the front door and pretended I wasn't there. "Good morning," I had said, but Nicholas didn't even nod his head. He got into his car, sitting for a minute behind the wheel. Then he unrolled the window on the passenger side and leaned toward it. "You will be gone," he said, "by the time I get home."

  I assumed he was going to the hospital, but I wasn't about to go there looking the way I did. Embarrassing Nicholas in his own front yard was one thing; making him look bad in front of his superiors was another. That I knew he would never forgive. And I had looked awful yesterday. I'd driven seventeen hours straight, slept on my front lawn, and skipped showers for two days. I would slip into the house, wash up, change my clothes, and then go to Mass General. I wanted to see Max without Nicholas around, and how difficult could it be to find the day care facility there?

  After Nicholas left, I crawled into the front seat of my car and fished my keys from my pocketbook. I felt sure that Nicholas had forgotten about those. I opened the front door and stepped into my house for the first time in three full months.

  It smelled of Nicholas and Max and not at all of me. It was a mess. I didn't know how Nicholas, who loved order, could live like this, much less consider it sanitary for Max. There were dirty dishes piled on every pristine surface in the kitchen, and the Barely White tiles on the floor were streaked with muddy footprints and scribbles of jelly. In the corner was a dead plant, and fermenting in the sink was half a melon. The hallway was dark and littered with stray socks and boxer shorts; the living room was gray with dust. Max's toys-- most of which I'd never seen before--were covered with tiny smudged handprints.