Harvesting The Heart Part 3

"You've never had to," Paige said quietly.

Nicholas opened his mouth to speak but didn't say anything. He never had to. But he had wanted wanted to. to.

Both of Nicholas's parents had, in some way, changed their circ.u.mstances. Astrid, who could trace her lineage to Plymouth Rock, had tried to downplay her Boston Brahmin ties. "I don't see all the fuss about the Mayflower," Mayflower," she had said. "For G.o.d's sake, the Puritans were she had said. "For G.o.d's sake, the Puritans were outcasts outcasts before they got here." She grew up surrounded by wealth that was so old it had always just been there. Her objections were not to a life of privilege, really, only to the restrictions that came with it. She had no intention of becoming the kind of wife who blended into the walls of a house that defined her, and so, on the day she graduated from Va.s.sar, she flew to Rome without telling a soul. She got drunk and danced at midnight in Trevi fountain, and she slept with as many different dark-haired men as she could until her Visa ran out. Months later, when she was introduced to Robert Prescott at a tailgate party, she almost dismissed him as one of those rich, have-it-all boys with whom her parents were forever throwing her together. But when their eyes met over a cup of spiked cider, she realized that Robert wasn't what he appeared to be. He seethed below the surface with that h.e.l.l-or-high-water pledge to escape that Astrid recognized running through her own blood. Here was her mirror image-someone trying to get before they got here." She grew up surrounded by wealth that was so old it had always just been there. Her objections were not to a life of privilege, really, only to the restrictions that came with it. She had no intention of becoming the kind of wife who blended into the walls of a house that defined her, and so, on the day she graduated from Va.s.sar, she flew to Rome without telling a soul. She got drunk and danced at midnight in Trevi fountain, and she slept with as many different dark-haired men as she could until her Visa ran out. Months later, when she was introduced to Robert Prescott at a tailgate party, she almost dismissed him as one of those rich, have-it-all boys with whom her parents were forever throwing her together. But when their eyes met over a cup of spiked cider, she realized that Robert wasn't what he appeared to be. He seethed below the surface with that h.e.l.l-or-high-water pledge to escape that Astrid recognized running through her own blood. Here was her mirror image-someone trying to get in in as badly as she was trying to get as badly as she was trying to get out. out.

Robert Prescott had been born without a dime and, apparently, without a father. He had sold magazines door to door to pay his way through Harvard. Now, thirty years later, he had honed his image to a point where he had such financial holdings no one dared remember if it was old money or new. He loved his acquired status; he liked the combination of his own glossy, crystalline tastes b.u.t.ted up against Astrid's cluttered seventh-generation antiques. Robert understood the part well-acting stuffy and bored at dinner parties, cultivating a taste for port, obliterating the facts of his life that could incriminate. Nicholas knew that even if his father couldn't convince himself he'd been to the manner born, he believed he rightfully belonged there, and that was just as good.

There had been a bitter argument once, when his father insisted Nicholas do something he had no inclination to do-the actual circ.u.mstances now forgotten: probably escorting someone's sister to a debutante ball or giving up a Sat.u.r.day game of neighborhood baseball for formal dancing lessons. Nicholas had stood his ground, certain his father would strike him, but in the end Robert had sunk into a wing chair, defeated, pinching the bridge of his nose. "You would play the game, Nicholas," he had said, sighing, "if you knew there was something to lose."

Now that he was older, Nicholas understood. Truth be told, as much as he fantasized about living the simple life of a lobster fisherman in Maine, he enjoyed the perks of his station too much to turn his back and walk away. He liked being on a first-name basis with the governor, having debutantes leave their lace bras on the back seat of his car, getting admitted to college and medical school without even a half second of self-doubt or worry about his chances. Paige might not have grown up the same way, but still, she'd left something something behind. She was a study in contrasts: as fragile as she seemed on the outside, she still had the kind of confidence it took to make a clean break. Nicholas realized that he had less courage in his whole body than Paige had in her little finger. behind. She was a study in contrasts: as fragile as she seemed on the outside, she still had the kind of confidence it took to make a clean break. Nicholas realized that he had less courage in his whole body than Paige had in her little finger.

Paige looked up from the anatomy book. "If I quizzed you, would you know every little thing?"

Nicholas laughed. "No. Yes. Well, it depends on what you ask me." He leaned forward. "But don't tell anyone, or I'll never get my degree."

Paige sat up, cross-legged. "Take my medical history," she said. "Isn't that good practice? Wouldn't that help you?"

Nicholas groaned. "I do it about a hundred times a day," he said. "I could do it in my sleep." He rolled onto his back. "Name? Age? Date of birth? Place of birth? Do you smoke? Exercise? Do you or does anyone in your family have a history of heart disease... diabetes ... breast cancer. Do you or does anyone in your family ..." He let his words trail off, and then he slid off the couch to sit next to Paige. She was looking into her lap. "I'd have a little problem with a medical history, I guess," she said. "If it's my my medical history, why do you focus on everyone else in my family?" medical history, why do you focus on everyone else in my family?"

Nicholas reached for her hand. "Tell me about your mother," he said.

Paige jumped to her feet and picked up her purse. "I've got to go," she said, but Nicholas grabbed her wrist before she could move away.

"How come every time I mention your mother you run away?"

"How come every time I'm with you you bring it up?" Paige stared down at him and then tugged her wrist free. Her fingers slipped over Nicholas's until their hands rested tip to tip. "It's no big mystery, Nicholas," she said. "Did it ever occur to you that I have nothing to tell?"

The dim light of Nicholas's green-shaded banker's lamp cast shadows of him and of Paige on the opposite wall, images that were nothing more than black and white and were magnified, ten feet tall. In the shadow, where you couldn't see the faces, it almost looked as if Paige had reached out her hand to help Nicholas up. It almost looked as if she were the one supporting him.

He pulled her down to sit next to him, and she didn't really resist. Then he cupped his hands together and fas.h.i.+oned a shadow alligator, which began to eat its way across the wall. "Nicholas!" Paige whispered, a smile running across her face. "Show me how you do it!" Nicholas folded his hands over hers, twisting her fingers gently and cupping her palms just so until a rabbit was silhouetted across the room. "I've seen it done before," she said, "but no one ever showed me how."

Nicholas made a serpent, a dove, an Indian, a Labrador. With each new image, Paige clapped, begged to be shown the position of the hands. Nicholas couldn't remember the last time someone had got so excited about shadow animals. He couldn't remember the last time he'd made them.

She couldn't get the beak right on the bald eagle. She had the head down pat, and the little open knot for the eye, but Nicholas couldn't mold her fingers just so for the hook in the beak. "I think your hands are too small," he said.

Paige turned his hands over, tracing the life lines of his palms. "I think yours are just right," she said.

Nicholas bent his head to her hands and kissed them, and Paige watched their silhouette, mesmerized by the movement of his head and the sleek outline of his nape and the spot where his shadow melted into hers. Nicholas looked up at her, his eyes dark. "We never finished your medical history," he said, and he slid his palms up her rib cage.

Paige leaned her head into his shoulder and closed her eyes. "That's because I don't have a history," she said.

"We'll skip that part," Nicholas murmured. He pressed his lips against her throat. "Have you ever been hospitalized for major surgery?" he said. "Say, a tonsillectomy?" He kissed her neck, her shoulders, her abdomen. "An appendectomy?"

"No," Paige breathed. "Nothing." She lifted her head as Nicholas grazed her b.r.e.a.s.t.s with his knuckles.

Nicholas swallowed, feeling as though he were seventeen all over again. He wasn't going to do something he'd regret. After all, it wasn't as if she'd done this before. "Intact," he whispered. "Perfect." He lowered his hands, still shaking, to Paige's hips and pushed her back several inches. He brushed her hair away from her eyes.

Paige made a sound that started low in her throat. "No," she said, "you don't understand."

Nicholas sat on the couch, curling Paige close beside him. "Yes I do," he said. He stretched out lengthwise, pulling Paige down so that their bodies were pressed together from shoulder to ankle. He could feel her breath, a warm circle on the front of his s.h.i.+rt.

Paige stared over Nicholas's shoulder to the blank wall, haloed in pale light, empty of shadows. She tried to picture their hands, knotted together, fingers indistinguishable in the far reflection. Nothing she could conjure in her mind was quite right; she knew she'd miscalculated the length of the fingers, the curve of the wrist. She wanted to get that eagle right. She wanted to try it again, and again, and again, until she could commit it, faultless, to memory. "Nicholas," she said. "Yes. I'll marry you."

chapter 4

Paige I should have known better than to begin my marriage with a lie. But it seemed so easy at the time. That someone like Nicholas could want me was still overwhelming. He held me the way a child holds a snowflake, lightly, as if he knew in the back of his mind I might disappear in the blink of an eye. He wore his self-a.s.surance like a soft overcoat. I was not just in love with him; I wors.h.i.+ped him. I had never met anyone like him, and, amazed that it was should have known better than to begin my marriage with a lie. But it seemed so easy at the time. That someone like Nicholas could want me was still overwhelming. He held me the way a child holds a snowflake, lightly, as if he knew in the back of his mind I might disappear in the blink of an eye. He wore his self-a.s.surance like a soft overcoat. I was not just in love with him; I wors.h.i.+ped him. I had never met anyone like him, and, amazed that it was me me he had chosen, I made up my mind: I would be whatever he wanted; I would follow him to the ends of the earth. he had chosen, I made up my mind: I would be whatever he wanted; I would follow him to the ends of the earth.

He thought I was a virgin, that I'd been saving myself for someone like him. In a way he was right-in eighteen years I'd never met anyone like Nicholas. But what I hadn't hadn't told him grated against me every day leading up to our wedding. It was a nagging noise inside my head, and outside too, in the hot hum of traffic. I kept remembering Father Draher speaking of lies of omission. So each morning I woke up resolving that this would be the day I told Nicholas the truth, but in the end there was one thing more terrifying than telling him I was a liar, and that was facing the chance I'd lose him. told him grated against me every day leading up to our wedding. It was a nagging noise inside my head, and outside too, in the hot hum of traffic. I kept remembering Father Draher speaking of lies of omission. So each morning I woke up resolving that this would be the day I told Nicholas the truth, but in the end there was one thing more terrifying than telling him I was a liar, and that was facing the chance I'd lose him.

Nicholas came out of the bathroom in the little apartment, a towel wrapped around his waist. The towel was blue and had pictures of primary-colored hot-air balloons. He walked to the window, shameless, and pulled dourn the shades. "Let's pretend," he said, "that it isn't the middle of the day."

He sat on the edge of the mattress. I was tucked under the covers. Although it was over ninety degrees outside, I had been s.h.i.+vering the whole day. I also wished it were nighttime, but not out of modesty. This had been such a tense, awful day that I wanted it to be tomorrow already. I wanted to wake up and find Nicholas and get on with the rest of my life. Our life.

Nicholas leaned over me, bringing the familiar scent of soap and baby shampoo and fresh-cut gra.s.s. I loved the way he smelled, because it wasn't what I had expected. He kissed my forehead, the way you would a sick child. "Are you scared?" he asked.

I wanted to tell him, No; in fact, you'd be surprised to know that when it comes to s.e.x I can hold my own. No; in fact, you'd be surprised to know that when it comes to s.e.x I can hold my own. Instead I felt myself nodding, my chin bobbing up and down. I waited for him to rea.s.sure me, to tell me he wasn't going to hurt me, at least not any more than he needed to this first time. But Nicholas stretched out beside me, linked his hands behind his head, and admitted, "So am I. " Instead I felt myself nodding, my chin bobbing up and down. I waited for him to rea.s.sure me, to tell me he wasn't going to hurt me, at least not any more than he needed to this first time. But Nicholas stretched out beside me, linked his hands behind his head, and admitted, "So am I. "

I didn't tell Nicholas right away that I would marry him. I gave him time to back out. He asked that night in the diner after he'd brought his witch of a girlfriend in for coffee. I was terrified at first, because I thought I'd have to face all the secrets I had been running from. For a day or so, I even fought against the idea, but how could I stand in the way of something that was meant to be?

I knew all along he was the one. I could fall into step walking beside him, even though his legs were much longer. I could sense when he came into the diner by the way the sleigh bells on the door rang. I could think of him and smile in just a heartbeat. Although I would have loved Nicholas if he never had proposed, I surprised myself by thinking of tree-lined residential streets and soccer car pools and Good Housekeeping Good Housekeeping recipes curled into handmade sanded boxes. I envisioned a normal life, the kind I'd never had, and even if I would be living it as a wife now, I figured it was better late than never. recipes curled into handmade sanded boxes. I envisioned a normal life, the kind I'd never had, and even if I would be living it as a wife now, I figured it was better late than never.

The dean of students at Harvard gave Nicholas a one-week hiatus from cla.s.ses and hospital rotations, during which we would move into married student housing and set a date with a justice of the peace. There would be no honeymoon, because there wasn't any money anymore.

Nicholas pulled the sheet away from me. "Where did you get that?" he asked, running his hands over the white satin. He slipped his fingers beneath the thin straps. His breath brushed the hollow of my neck, and I could feel us touching at so many points-our shoulders, our stomachs, our thighs. He moved his head lower and circled my nipple with his tongue. I ran my hands through his hair, watching a shaft of sun bring out the blue base under thick black.

Marvela and Doris, the only two friends I had in Cambridge, took me shopping at a small discount-clothing store in Brighton called The Price of Dreams. They seemed to carry everything there for a woman's wardrobe: underwear, accessories, suits, pants, blouses, sweats. I had one hundred dollars. Twenty-five came from Lionel, a wedding bonus, and the rest was from Nicholas himself. We had moved into married student housing the day before, and when Nich olas realized that I had more art supplies in my knapsack than clothes, and that I had only four pairs of underpants, which I kept was.h.i.+ng out, he said I needed to get myself some things. Although we couldn't afford it, he gave me money. "You can't get married in a pink uniform from Mercy," he had said, and I had laughed and answered, "Just watch me."

Doris and Marvela flew around the store like seasoned shoppers. "Girl," Marvela called to me, "you lookin' for something formal like, or you gonna go with funky?"

Doris pulled several pairs of panty hose off a rack. "Whaddya mean, funky," she muttered. "You don't do funky at weddings."

Neither Doris nor Marvela was married. Marvela had been, but her husband was killed in a meat-packing incident that she did not like to talk about. Doris, who was somewhere between forty and sixty and guarded her age as if it were the crown of Windsor, said she didn't like men, but I wondered if it was just that men didn't like her.

They made me try on leather-trimmed day dresses and two-piece outfits with polka-dotted lapels and even one slinky sequined cat suit that made me look like a banana. In the end, I got a simple white satin nightgown for the wedding night and a pale-pink cotton suit for the wedding. It had a straight skirt and a peplum on the jacket and, truly, it seemed to have been made for me. When I tried it on, Doris gasped. Marvela said, shaking her head, "And they say redheads ain't supposed to wear pink." I stood in front of the three-way mirror, holding my hands in front of me as if I were carrying a spilling bouquet. I wondered what it might have been like to have a heavy beaded dress hanging from my shoulders, to feel a train tug behind me down a cathedral aisle, to know the s.h.i.+ver of my breath beneath the veil when I heard the march from Lohengrin. Lohengrin. But it wasn't going to happen, and anyway it didn't matter. Who cared about the trappings of one stupid day when you had the rest of your life to make perfect? And just in case I needed rea.s.surance, when I turned again to look at my friends, I could see my future s.h.i.+ning in their eyes. But it wasn't going to happen, and anyway it didn't matter. Who cared about the trappings of one stupid day when you had the rest of your life to make perfect? And just in case I needed rea.s.surance, when I turned again to look at my friends, I could see my future s.h.i.+ning in their eyes.

Nicholas's mouth traced its way down my body, leaving behind a hot line that made me think of Lionel's scar. I moved beneath him. He had never touched me like this. In fact, once the decision was made to be married, Nicholas had done little more than kiss me and caress my b.r.e.a.s.t.s. I tried to concentrate on what Nicholas must be thinking: if it stuck in his mind that my body-which had a will of its own-was not behaving in the shy, frightened manner of a virgin. But Nicholar said nothing, and maybe he was used to this kind of response.

He had been touching me for so long and so well that when he stopped, it took me a moment to notice, and then it was because of the terrifying rush of cold air that came instead in his absence. I pulled him closer, a hot human blanket. I was willing to do anything to keep myself from shaking all over again. I clung to him as if I were drowning, which I suppose I was.

When his hands skittered over my thighs, I stiffened. I didn't mean for it to happen, and of course Nicholas read it the wrong way, but the last time I'd been touched there, there had been a doctor, and a clinic, and a terrible tightening in my chest that I know now was emptiness. Nicholas murmured something that I did not hear but that I felt against my legs, and then he began to kiss the s.p.a.ces in between his fingers, and finally his mouth came over me like a whisper.

"They said congratulations," Nicholas told me when he'd hung up the phone after telling his parents about us. "They want us to come out tomorrow night."

It was clear to me after our first visit that Astrid Prescott liked me about as much as she'd like a Hessian army overrunning her darkroom. "They did not say that," I answered. "Tell me the truth."

"That is the truth," Nicholas admitted, "and that's what bothers me."

We drove to Brookline in near silence, and when we rang the doorbell Astrid and Robert Prescott answered together. They were dressed fas.h.i.+onably in shades of gray, and they had dimmed the lights in the house. If I had not known better, I would have a.s.sumed I'd arrived at a wake.

During dinner, I kept waiting for something to happen. When Nicholas dropped his fork, I jumped out of my seat. But there was no screaming, no earth-shattering announcement. A maid served roast duck and fiddleheads; Nicholas and his father talked about bluefis.h.i.+ng off the Cape. Astrid toasted our future, and we all lifted our gla.s.ses so that the sun, still coming through the windows, splintered through the twisted stems and littered the walls with rainbows. I spent the main course being choked by the fear of the unknown, which lurked in the corners of the dining room with the stale breath and slitted eyes of a wolf. I spent dessert staring at the ma.s.sive crystal chandelier balanced above the lily centerpiece. It was suspended by a thin gold chain, light as the hair of a fairy-tale princess, and I wondered just what it could take before it broke.

Robert led us into the parlor for coffee and brandy. Astrid made sure we all had a gla.s.s. Nicholas sat beside me on a love seat and put his arm over my shoulders. He leaned over and whispered to me that dinner had gone so well he wouldn't be surprised if his parents now offered us a huge, extravagant wedding. I knotted my hands in my lap, noticing the small framed photos tucked in every spare inch of s.p.a.ce in the parlor-in the bookshelves, on the piano, even beneath the chairs. All were photos of Nicholas, at different ages: Nicholas on a tricycle, Nicholas's face turned up to the sky, Nicholas sitting on the front steps with a ratty black puppy. I was trying so hard to see these pieces of his life, the things I had missed, that I almost did not hear Robert Prescott's question. "Just how old," he said, "are you really." really."

I was caught off guard. I had been examining the ice-blue satin paper on the walls, the overstuffed white wing chairs, and the Queen Anne side tables, tastefully highlighted with antique vases and painted copper boxes. Nicholas had told me that the portrait over the fireplace, a Sargent which had held my interest, was not anyone he knew. It wasn't the subject that had led his father to purchase it, he said; it was the investment. I wondered how Astrid Prescott had found the time to create a name for herself and a house that could put a museum to shame. I wondered how a boy could possibly grow up in a home where sliding down the banister or walking the dog on a yo- yo could unintentionally destroy hundreds of years of history.

"I'm eighteen," I said evenly, thinking that in my house-our house-furniture would be soft, with curved edges, colored bright to remind you you were alive, and everything, house-furniture would be soft, with curved edges, colored bright to remind you you were alive, and everything, everything, everything, would be replaceable. would be replaceable.

"You know, Paige," Astrid said, "eighteen is such an age. Why, I didn't know what I really wanted to do with my life until I was at least thirty-two."

Robert stood and paced in front of the fireplace. He stopped directly in the middle, blocking the face of the Sargent so that from where I sat it seemed he was the painting's center, hideously larger than life. "What my wife is trying to say is that of course you two have the right to decide what you'd like-"

"We already have," Nicholas pointed out.

"If you please," Robert said, "just hear me out. You certainly have the right to decide what you'd like out of life. But I wonder if perhaps your thoughts have been clouded by faulty judgment. Now, Paige, you've barely even lived. And Nicholas, you're still in school. You can't support yourself yet, much less a family, and that's to say nothing of the hours you'll spend doing your residency." He came to stand in front of me and placed his hand, cold, on my shoulder. "Surely Paige would prefer more than the shadow of a husband."

"Paige needs time to discover herself," Astrid said, as if I were not in the room. "I know, believe me, that it's virtually impossible to sustain a marriage when-"

"Mother," Nicholas interrupted. His lips were pressed together in a thin white gash. "Cut to the chase," he said.

"Your mother and I think you ought to wait," Robert Prescott said. "If you still feel the same way in a few years, well, of course you'll have our blessing."

Nicholas stood up. He was two inches taller than his father, and when I saw him like that my breath caught in my throat. "We're getting married now," he said.

Astrid cleared her throat and hit her diamond wedding band against the rim of her gla.s.s. "This is so difficult to bring up," she said. She looked away from us, this woman who had journeyed into the Australian bush, who, armed only with a camera, had faced Bengal tigers, who had slept in the desert beneath saguaros, searching out the perfect sunrise. She looked away, and all of a sudden she changed from the mythic photographer to the shadow of an aging debutante. She looked away, and that was when I knew what she was going to say.

Nicholas stared past his mother. "Paige is not pregnant," he said, and when Astrid sighed and sank back in the chair, Nicholas flinched as if he had fielded a blow.

Robert turned his back on his son and put his brandy snifter on the mantel of the fireplace. "If you marry Paige," he said quietly, "I will withdraw financial support for your education."

Nicholas took a step backward, and I did the only thing I could: I stood up beside him and gave him my weight to lean on. Across the room, Astrid was looking blindly out the window into the night, as though she would do anything in her power to avoid watching this scene. Robert Prescott turned around. His eyes were tired, and in the corners were the beginnings of tears. "I'm trying to keep you from ruining your life," he said.

"Don't do me any favors," Nicholas said, and he pulled me across the room. He led me out of the house, leaving the door wide open behind us.

When we were outside, Nicholas started to run. He ran around the side of the house into the backyard, past the white marble bird-bath, past the trellised grape arbor, deep into the cool woods that edged his parents' property. I found him sitting on a bed of dying pine needles. His knees were drawn up, and his head was bent, as if the air around him was too heavy to keep it upright. "Listen," I said. "Maybe you need to think this through."

It killed me to say those words, to think that Nicholas Prescott might disappear into his parents' million-dollar house and wave goodbye and leave my life what it used to be. I had come to the point where I truly did not think I could exist without Nicholas. When he was not around, I spent my time imagining him with me. I depended on him to tell me the dates of upcoming holidays, to make sure I got home from work safely, to fill my free time till I felt I would burst. It seemed so easy to blend into his life that at times I wondered if I had been anyone at all before I met him.

"I don't need to think this through," Nicholas said. "We're getting married."

"And I suppose Harvard is going to keep you on because you're G.o.d's gift to medicine?"

I realized after I said it that it was not phrased the way it should have been. Nicholas looked up as if I had slapped him. "I could drop out," he said, turning the words over like he was speaking a foreign language.

But I would not spend the rest of my life married to a man who, at least a little, hated me because he never got to be what he had wanted. I didn't love Nicholas because he was going to be a doctor, but I did love him because he was, unquestionably, the best. And Nicholas wouldn't have been Nicholas if he had to compromise. "Maybe there's a dean you can talk to," I said softly. "Not everyone at Harvard is made of money. They've got to have scholars.h.i.+ps and student aid. And next year, between your salary as a resident and mine at Mercy, we could make ends meet. I could get a second job. We could take out a loan based on your future income."

Nicholas pulled me down beside him on the pine needles and held me. In the distance I heard a blue jay trill. Nicholas had taught me, a city girl, these things: the differences between the songs of blue jays and starlings, the way to start a fire with birch bark, the humming sound of a faraway flock of geese. I felt Nicholas's chest shake with every breath. I made a mental list of the people we would have to contact tomorrow to figure out our finances, but I felt confident. I could put off my own future for a while; after all, art school would always be there, and you could very well be an artist without ever having attended one. Besides, some part of me believed that I was getting something just as good. Nicholas loved me; Nicholas had chosen to stay with me. "I will work for you," I whispered to him, and even as I said it I had the dark thought of the Old Testament, of Jacob, who labored seven years for Rachel and still did not get what he wanted.

I was going to lose control. Nicholas's hands and heat and voice were everywhere. My fingers traveled up his arms, across his back, willing him to come to me. He moved my legs apart and set himself in the middle of them, and I remembered how I was supposed to act. Nicholas kissed me, and then he was moving inside me, and my eyes flew open. He was all that I could see, Nicholas spread across this s.p.a.ce and filling, completely, my sky.

"I'd like to make a collect call," I told the operator. I was whispering although Nicholas was nowhere nearby. We were supposed to meet at the office of the justice of the peace in twenty minutes, but I told him I had to run an errand for Lionel. I was trying not to touch the grimy gla.s.s of the booth with my good pink suit. I tapped the edge of the pay phone with my finger. "Say it's Paige."

It took ten rings, and the operator was just suggesting I try again later, when my father picked up. "h.e.l.lo," he said, and his voice reminded me of his cigarettes, True, and their cool gray package.

"Collect call from Paige. Do you accept?"

"Yes," my father said. "Oh, sure, yes." He waited a second, I suppose to be certain the operator got off the line, and then he called my name.

"Dad," I told him, "I'm still in Ma.s.sachusetts."

"I knew you'd be callin' me, la.s.s," my father said. "I've been thinkin' about you today."

My hope jumped at that. If I didn't listen too closely, I could almost ignore the thickness wrapped around his words. Maybe Nicholas and I would visit him. Maybe one day he would visit me.

"I found a photo of you this mornin', stuck behind my router. D'you remember the time I took you to that pettin' zoo?" I did, but I wanted to hear him talk. I hadn't realized until then how much I missed my father's voice. "You were so lookin' forward to seein' the sheep," he said, "the wee lambs, because I'd told you about the farm in County Donegal. You couldn'a been more than six, I figure."

"Oh, I know the photo," I exclaimed, suddenly remembering the image of myself hugging the fleece of a dun-colored lamb.

"I'd be surprised if you didn't," my father said. "The way you got the wind knocked out of you that day! You went into that pen as brave as Cuchulainn himself with a palm full of feed, and every llama and goat and sheep in the place came runnin' over to you. Knocked you flat on your back, they did."

I frowned, remembering it as though it were yesterday. They had come from all sides like nightmares, with their hollow, dead eyes and their curved yellow teeth. There had been no way out; the world had closed in around me. Now, under my wedding suit, I broke out in a light sweat; I thought how much I felt like that, again, today.

My father was grinning; I could hear it. "What did you do?" I asked.

"What I always did," he said, and I listened to his smile fade. "I picked you up. I came and got you."

I listened to all the things I wanted and needed to say to him racing through my mind. In the silence I could feel him wondering why he hadn't come to get me in Ma.s.sachusetts; why he hadn't picked up the pieces and smoothed it over and made it better. I could sense him running through everything we had said to each other and everything we hadn't, trying to find the thread that made this time different.

I knew, even if he didn't. My father's G.o.d preached forgiveness, but did he? knew, even if he didn't. My father's G.o.d preached forgiveness, but did he?

Suddenly all I wanted to do was take away the pain. It was my sin; it was one thing for me to feel the guilt, but my father shouldn't have to. I wanted to let him know that he wasn't responsible, not for what I had done and not for me. And since he wouldn't believe I could take care of myself-never would, not now-I told him there was someone else to take care of me. "Dad," I said, "I'm getting married." would, not now-I told him there was someone else to take care of me. "Dad," I said, "I'm getting married."

I heard a strange sound, as if I had knocked the wind out of him. "Dad," I repeated.

"Yes." He drew in his breath. "Do you love him?" he asked.

"Yes," I admitted. "Actually, I do."

"That makes it harder," he said.

I wondered about that for a moment, and then when I felt I was going to cry, I covered the mouthpiece with my hand and closed my eyes and counted to ten. "I didn't want to leave you," I said, the same words I spoke every time I called. "It wasn't the way I thought things would happen."

Miles away, my father sighed. "It never is," he said.