Harvesting The Heart Part 5

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 stop-lights, 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 bra.s.s 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 s.h.i.+rt; it was his presence. Nicholas should have been born born wearing a tuxedo. He could carry it off-the status, the n.o.bility. 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 Ma.s.s General by now. wearing a tuxedo. He could carry it off-the status, the n.o.bility. 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 Ma.s.s General by now.

Nicholas leaned over me and kissed my shoulder. "h.e.l.lo," 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 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 bypa.s.s 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. 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 bypa.s.s 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 felt rich. He'd been wealthy too long to change now. And according to Nicholas, if you were rich-or if you rich. He'd been wealthy too long to change now. And according to Nicholas, if you were rich-or if you wanted wanted to be-you lived a certain way. 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 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. 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 absentmindedly. "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 G.o.d himself. I didn't care about missing the sumptuous shrimp fountain at the c.o.c.ktail 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. on. You look You look fine." 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 b.a.l.l.s. 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 cla.s.smates 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, Buried somewhere in this muck, he had written, he had written, you do have some qualified ideas. Find your voice, Ms. Prescott. you do have some qualified ideas. Find your voice, Ms. Prescott. Find your voice. 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.

Ma.s.s 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 s.h.i.+rt 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. Arlene. "Fritz van der Hoff?" "Fritz van der Hoff?" Bridget. Bridget. "Alan Masterson," Nicholas said, and I told him that was a trick question, since Alan had been divorced the previous year. "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 Ma.s.s Pike and stopped at the corner of Dart-mouth. 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 b.l.o.o.d.y stump. He cradled the blus.h.i.+ng 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, s.h.i.+fting 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 conversations about Wellesley reunions and six-figure book deals and the merits of low-E gla.s.s 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 embarra.s.sed, he'd a.s.sured 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 a.s.sumed Nich olas 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. Well, this explains a lot. "Excuse me," I said, pus.h.i.+ng my chair from the table. My knees shook, but I walked slowly to the bathroom. "Excuse me," I said, pus.h.i.+ng my chair from the table. My knees shook, but I walked slowly to the bathroom.

There were several people inside, but n.o.body 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 h.e.l.l 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 n.o.body asked if I was all right. I rinsed my mouth with water and then I stepped into the hallway, where Nich olas 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 c.u.mmerbund over the footboard, and in the play of the moonlight they seemed to s.h.i.+ft 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.

I got up as usual at 4:30 A.M. and made Nicholas coffee to take on the road, and I packed a light lunch, as I did every day, because I knew he'd need it between his operations. Just because my husband was being an a.s.shole, I told myself, was no reason for patients to suffer. He came downstairs with two ties. "Which one?" he said, holding them to his throat. I pushed past him and walked back upstairs. "Oh, for Christ's sake, Paige," he muttered, and then I heard the door slam behind him.

I ran to the bathroom and threw up. This time I was so dizzy I had to lie down, and I did, right on the fuzzy white bath mat. I fell asleep, and when I woke I called in sick to Mercy. I would not have gone to Dr. Thayer's, either, that afternoon, but I had a hunch. I waited until she had a lull between patients, and then I left the reception desk and stood beside her at the counter where we kept the jars for urine samples, the Pap smear gla.s.s slides, and the information sheets on breast self-examination. Dr. Thayer stared up at me as if she already knew. "I need you to do me a favor," I said.

This was not the way it was supposed to happen. Nicholas and I had discussed it a million times: I would support us until Nicholas's salary began to pay off the loans; then it was my turn. I was going to go full time to art school, and then after I got my degree we would start a family.

It shouldn't have happened, because we were careful, but Dr. Thayer shrugged and said nothing was completely effective. "Be happy," she told me. "At least you're married."

That was what brought it all back. As I drove slowly through the traffic in Cambridge, I wondered how I could have missed the signals: the swollen b.r.e.a.s.t.s and spread nipples, the way I'd been so tired. After all, I had been through this before. I hadn't been ready then, and in spite of what Dr. Thayer said, I knew that I wasn't ready now.

The realization sent a s.h.i.+ver through my body: I was never going to art school. It would not be my turn for many years. It might never actually happen.

I had made my decision to attend art school after I had taken just one formal art course, connected with the Chicago Art Inst.i.tute. I was only in ninth grade; I had won free tuition for a course through a city-wide student art contest. Figure Drawing was the only cla.s.s offered after school hours, so I signed up. On the first night, the teacher, a wiry man with purple gla.s.ses, made us go around the room telling who we were and why we were there. I listened to the others say they were taking the cla.s.s for college credit or for updating a portfolio. When it was my turn I said, "I'm Paige. I don't know what I'm doing here."

The model that night was a man, and he came in in a satin robe printed with theater ticket stubs. He had a steel bar he used as a prop. When the teacher nodded, he stepped onto a platform and shrugged off the robe as if it didn't bother him in the least. He bent and twisted and settled with his arms overhead, holding the bar like the Cross. He was the first man I'd seen completely naked.

When everyone began drawing, I sat still. I was certain I'd made a mistake in taking this course. I could feel the model's eyes on me, and that's when I touched the conte stick to the sketch pad. I looked away, and I drew from the heart: the knotted shoulders, the stretched chest, the flaccid p.e.n.i.s. The teacher came over shortly before cla.s.s ended. "You've got something," he said to me, and I wanted to believe him.

For the night of the last cla.s.s, I bought a piece of fine gray marbled paper from an art supply store, hoping to draw something I'd want to keep. The model was a girl no older than I, but her eyes were weary and jaded. She was pregnant, and when she lay on her side, her belly swelled into the curve of a frown. I drew her furiously, using white conte for the s.h.i.+ne of the studio lights on her hair and her forearms. I did not stop during the ten-minute coffee break, although the model got up to stretch and I had to draw from memory. When I was finished, the teacher took my drawing around to show the other students. He pointed out the quiet planes of her hips, the slow roll of her heavy b.r.e.a.s.t.s, the spill of shadow between her legs. The teacher brought the picture back to me and told me I should think about art school. I rolled the drawing into a cylinder and smiled shyly and left.

I never hung up the drawing, because my father would have killed me if he'd known I'd willingly sinned by taking a course that exposed the bodies of men and women. I kept the picture hidden in the back of my closet and looked at it from time to time. I did not notice the obvious thing about the drawing until several weeks afterward. The images that came out in my sketches were not even hidden in the background this time. I had drawn the model, yes, but the face-and the fear upon it-was mine.

"Hey," Marvela said to me as I walked into Mercy. She had a pot of coffee in one hand and a bran m.u.f.fin in the other. "I thought you was sick today." She pushed past me, shaking her head. "Girl, don't you know you makin' me look bad? When you play hooky you supposed to stay away, not get them Catholic guilt feelings and show up mid-s.h.i.+ft."

I leaned against the cash register. "I am sick," I said. "I've never felt worse in my life."

Marvela frowned at me. "Seems if I was married to a doctor, I'd probably be ordered to bed."

"It's not that kind of sick," I told her, and Marvela's eyes widened. I knew what she was thinking; Marvela had a thing for National Enquirer National Enquirer gossip and larger-than-life stories. "No," I told her before she could ask, "Nicholas isn't having an affair. And my soul hasn't been stolen by aliens." gossip and larger-than-life stories. "No," I told her before she could ask, "Nicholas isn't having an affair. And my soul hasn't been stolen by aliens."

She poured me a cup of coffee and leaned her elbows against the counter. "I s'pose I'm gonna have to play Twenty Questions," she said.

I heard her, but I didn't answer. At that moment, a woman stumbled through the door holding a baby, a shopping bag, and a huge paisley satchel. As she crossed the threshold, she dropped the satchel and hoisted the baby higher on her hip. Marvela swore under her breath and stood up to help, but I touched her arm. "How old is that kid?" I asked, trying to sound casual. "You figure six months?"

Marvela snorted. "He's a year if he's a day," she said. "Ain't you never baby-sat?"

Impulsively, I stood up and pulled an ap.r.o.n from behind the counter. "Let me serve her," I said. Marvela was hesitating. "You get the tip."

The woman had left her satchel in the middle of the diner floor. I pulled it over to the booth she'd gone to-the one that had been Nicholas's. The woman had the baby on the tabletop and was taking off its diaper. Without bothering to thank me, she unzipped the satchel, withdrew a clean diaper and a chain of plastic rings, which she handed to the baby. "Dah," he said, pointing to the light.

"Yes," the woman said, not even looking up. "That's right. Light." She rolled up the dirty diaper and fastened the new one and caught the rings before the baby threw them on the floor. I was fascinated; she seemed to have a hundred hands. "Can I get some bread?" she said to me, like I hadn't been doing my job, and I ran into the kitchen.

I didn't stay long enough for Lionel to ask me what the h.e.l.l I was doing at work. I grabbed a basket of rolls and strode to the woman's table. She was joggling the baby on her knee and trying to keep him from reaching the paper place mat. "Do you have a high chair?" she asked.

I nodded and dragged over the little half-seat. "No," she sighed, as if she had been through this before. "That's a booster booster seat. That's not a high chair." seat. That's not a high chair."

I stared at it. "Won't it work?"

The woman laughed. "If the President of the United States was a woman," she said, "every d.a.m.n restaurant would have a high chair, and mothers with infants would be allowed to park in handicapped zones." She had been balling up a roll into bite-size nuggets that the baby was stuffing into his mouth, but she sighed and rose to her feet, gathering her things. "I can't eat if there's no high chair for him," she said. "I'm sorry to have wasted your time."

"I can hold him," I said impulsively.

"Pardon?"

"I said I could hold him," I repeated. "While you eat."

The woman stared at me. I noticed how exhausted she seemed, trembling almost, as if she hadn't slept for a very long time. Her eyes, an unsettled shade of brown, were locked onto mine. "You would do that?" she murmured.

I brought her a spinach quiche and gingerly lifted the baby into my arms. I could feel Marvela watching me from the kitchen. The baby was stiff and didn't fit on my hip. He kept twisting to grab my hair. "Hey," I said, "no," but he just laughed.

He was heavy and sort of damp, and he squirmed until I put him on the counter to crawl. Then he overturned a mustard jar and wiped the serving spoon into his hair. I couldn't turn away for a minute, even, and I wondered how I-how anyone anyone-could do this twenty-four hours a day. But he smelled of powder, and he liked me to cross my eyes at him, and when his mother came to take him back, he held on tight to my neck. I watched them leave, amazed that the woman could carry so much and that, though nothing had gone wrong, I felt so relieved to give the baby back to her. I saw her move down the street, bowed to the left-the side she carried the baby on-as if he was sapping her balance.

Marvela came to stand beside me. "You gonna tell me what that's about," she said, "or do I got to p.i.s.s it out of you?"

I turned to her. "I'm pregnant."

Marvela's eyes opened so wide I could see white all the way around the jet irises. "No s.h.i.+t," she said, and then she screamed and hugged me.

When I didn't embrace her back, she released me. "Let me guess," she said. "You ain't jumpin' for joy."

I shook my head. "This isn't the way it was supposed to happen," I explained. I told her about my plan, about our loans and Nicholas's interns.h.i.+p and then about college. I talked until the phrases in my native tongue were foreign and unfamiliar, until the words just fell out of my mouth like stones.

Marvela smiled gently. "Lord, girl," she said, "whatever does does happen the way it's supposed to? You don't happen the way it's supposed to? You don't plan plan life, you just life, you just do do it." She looped an arm over my shoulder. "If the past ten years had gone accordin' to plan for me, I'd be eatin' bonbons and growin' prize roses and livin' in a house as big as sin, with my handsome son-a-b.i.t.c.h ihusband sittin' next to me." She stopped, looking out the window and, I figured, into her past. Then she patted my arm and laughed. "Paige, honey," she said, "if I'd stuck to my grand plan, I'd be livin' it." She looped an arm over my shoulder. "If the past ten years had gone accordin' to plan for me, I'd be eatin' bonbons and growin' prize roses and livin' in a house as big as sin, with my handsome son-a-b.i.t.c.h ihusband sittin' next to me." She stopped, looking out the window and, I figured, into her past. Then she patted my arm and laughed. "Paige, honey," she said, "if I'd stuck to my grand plan, I'd be livin' your your very life." very life."

For a long time I sat on the porch outside the house, ignoring neighbors who stared at me briefly from the sidewalk or from car windows. I didn't know how to be a good mother. I hadn't had one. I mostly saw them on TV. My mind brought up pictures of Marion Cunningham and Laura Petrie. What did those women do do all day? all day?

Nicholas's car came into the driveway hours later, when I was thinking of all the things I wouldn't have access to that I needed for having a child. I couldn't tell Dr. Thayer about my mother's family history. I didn't know the details of her labor. And I would not tell Nicholas that there had been a baby before this and that I was someone else's before I was his.

Nicholas swung out of his car when he saw me, his body unfolding and straightening for an attack. But as he came closer he realized the fight had gone out of me. I sagged against the pillar of the porch and waited until he stepped in front of me. He seemed impossibly tall. "I'm pregnant," I said, and I burst into tears.

He smiled, and then he bent down and lifted me up, carrying me into the house in his arms. He danced over the threshold. "Paige," he said, "this is great. Absolutely great." He set me down on the skin-colored couch, smoothing my hair away from my eyes. "Hey," he said, "don't worry about the money."

I didn't know how to tell him that I was not worried, just scared. I was scared about not knowing how to hold an infant. I was scared that I might not love my own child. More than anything, I was scared that I was doomed before I began, that the cycle my mother had started was hereditary and that one day I would just pack up and disappear off the face of the earth.

Nicholas put his arms around me. "Paige," he said, holding my thoughts in the palm of his hand, "you're going to be a terrific mother."

"How do you know?" I cried, and then I said it again, softly: "How do you know?" I stared at Nicholas, who had done everything he'd ever set out to do. I wondered when I had lost control of my own life.

Nicholas sat down beside me and slipped his hand underneath my sweater. He unzipped the waistband of my pants. He spread his fingers across my abdomen as if whatever was growing inside needed his protection. "My son," he said, his voice thick at the edges.

It was as if a window opened, showing me the rest of my life as it lay, dissected and piecemeal. I considered my future, stunted and squeezed into boundaries defined by two men. I imagined being in a house where I was always the odd one out. "I'm not making any promises," I said.

chapter 8

Paige The first person I fell in love with was Priscilla Divine. She had come from Texas to Chicago and enrolled in Our Lady of the Cross, my grade school, when I was in sixth grade. She was a year older than the rest of us, though she'd never been left back. She had long blond hair the color of honey, and she never walked but glided. It was said by some of the other girls that she was the reason her family had to move.

There was such an aura of mystery surrounding Priscilla Divine that she probably could have picked just about anyone she wanted to be her friend, but she happened to choose me. One morning during religion cla.s.s she raised her hand and told Sister Theresa that she thought she might throw up and she'd like it very much if Paige could help her down to the nurse's office. But once we were in the hall she didn't look sick at all, and in fact she pulled me by the hand into the girls' bathroom and took a pack of cigarettes out of the waistband of her skirt and matches from her left sock. She lit up, inhaled, and offered the cigarette to me like a peace pipe. With my reputation hanging in the balance, I drew in deeply, knowing enough not to let myself cough. Priscilla was impressed, and those were the beginnings of my bad years.