Harvesting The Heart Part 10

Even as the squeaky wheels of the ba.s.sinet b.u.mped and ground their way out the door, I was sinking into my pillow. I began to see the face of my mother. I was two, maybe three, and it was her birthday, and my father had given her a plant. It was tall and green in its plastic pot, and it had orange b.a.l.l.s at the junctures of its leaves. When he gave it to her, she read the card out loud, although I was the only other person in the kitchen. "Happy Birthday, May," it said. "I love you." It wasn't signed, I guess, because my mother didn't read anything else aloud, such as my father's name. She kissed him, and he smiled and went down to his workshop.

When he left, she tapped the card on the counter and then gave it to me to play with. "What am I going to do with a plant?" she said, talking to me the way she always did, as if I were an adult. "He knows all I do is kill these things." She reached into the uppermost cabinet over the fridge, into the never-used ice bucket that held her forbidden packs of cigarettes. My father did not know she smoked-I realized this even though I was a baby, since she went to great pains to hide the cigarettes and she acted guilty when she lit one and she sprayed the air with cinnamon freshener after she'd flushed the ashes and the b.u.t.t down the toilet. I don't know why she hid her smoking from him; maybe, like most other things, it was a game for her to play.

She pulled one from the wrinkled pack and lit it, drawing in deeply. When she exhaled she stared at me, sitting on the linoleum with my blocks and my favorite doll. It was a cloth one, with practice snaps and zippers and b.u.t.tons, strategically placed through ten wrappings of bright cotton clothes. I could do everything but the shoe-laces. Cigarette ashes dropped on my doll. I looked up and saw a perfect red ring left by my mother's lipstick, just above the V of her fingers. "Two weeks," she said, nodding at the orange tree. "That thing'll be dead in two weeks." She stubbed the cigarette out in the sink and sighed, and then she pulled me up by the hands. "See here, Paige-boy," she said, using her pet name for me. She settled me on her hip. "I'm no good at taking care of things," she whispered confidentially, and then she began to hum. "Supercalifragilisticexpialidocious," she sang, whirling me around and around in a fast, stomping polka. I giggled as we flushed the evidence away. I wondered just how much I knew about my mother that my father never would have guessed.

The wheels of the ba.s.sinet throbbed in my head, and I knew Max was coming long before the night nurse arrived. He was screaming. "Hard to believe they were worried about his lungs," she said, holding him out to me. For a moment I did not reach for him. I stared angrily at this greedy thing, who had twice in one night taken me away from all I had left of my mother.

chapter 14

Paige When G.o.d wanted to punish me, He granted my prayers. I spent a year in the circle of Jake's arms, long enough to believe it was where I really belonged. I spent many evenings at the Flanagans', clapping along as Jake's father sang old Gaelic songs and the littlest children hopped and jigged. I was accepted at RISD, and Jake took me out to dinner to celebrate. Later that night, when we wrapped the heat of our bodies around each other like a blanket, Jake told me he would wait for me through college, or grad school, or the rest of my life.

In May I came down with the flu. It was strange, because the bug had pa.s.sed around the school in early January, but I had all the same symptoms. I was weak and chilled, and I could not keep anything down. Jake brought me heather he'd picked from the side of the road and sculptures he made with wire and old c.o.ke cans at work. "You look like h.e.l.l," he said, and he leaned down to kiss me.

"Don't," I warned him. "You'll catch it."

Jake had smiled. "Me?" he said. "I'm invincible."

On the fifth morning I had the flu, I stumbled into the bathroom to throw up, and I heard my father walking by the door. He paused, and then he went down the stairs. I looked into the mirror for the first time in days, and I saw the thin, drawn face of a ghost: pale cheeks, red eyes, cracks at the corners of my mouth. And that's when I knew I was pregnant.

Because I was not sick, I forced myself to get dressed in my school uniform, and I went down to the kitchen. My father was eating cornflakes, staring at the bare wall as if there were something there he could see. "I'm better, Dad," I announced.

My father lifted his eyes, and I saw a flicker of something-relief?-as he gestured to the other chair. "Eat something," he said, "or you'll blow away."

I smiled and sat down, trying to block out the smell of the cereal. I concentrated on my father's voice, laced with the sounds of his homeland. One day, Paige, he used to say, we'll be takin' you to Ireland. It's the only place on G.o.d's great earth where the air is pure as fine crystal and the hills are a green magic carpet, streaked with blue-jewel streams. I One day, Paige, he used to say, we'll be takin' you to Ireland. It's the only place on G.o.d's great earth where the air is pure as fine crystal and the hills are a green magic carpet, streaked with blue-jewel streams. I reached for the cornflakes and ate several out of the box, knowing I had learned the lesson he hadn't: there was no going back. reached for the cornflakes and ate several out of the box, knowing I had learned the lesson he hadn't: there was no going back.

The cornflakes tasted like cardboard, and I kept staring at my father, wondering exactly how much he knew. My eyes began to swim with tears. I had been his biggest hope. He would be so ashamed.

I went through the motions of school that day like rituals, numbly going to my cla.s.ses and taking notes from teachers I did not hear. Then I walked slowly to Jake's garage. He was bent over the hood of a Toyota, changing spark plugs. When he saw me, he smiled and wiped his hands on his jeans. In his eyes I could see the rest of my life. "You're all better," he said.

"That," I told him, "isn't quite true."

I did not need parental consent for an abortion, but I did not want my father to know what I had done, so I committed the greatest sin of my life one hundred miles away from my hometown. Jake had found the name of a clinic in Racine, Wisconsin-far enough from Chicago that no one would recognize us or pa.s.s along rushed whispers. We would drive there early on Thursday, June 3, the first available appointment. When Jake had told me of the wait, I had stared at him in disbelief. "How many people," I whispered, "could there possibly be?"

The hardest part was surviving the weeks between when I first knew and when we left for Racine. Jake and I did not make love, as if this was our punishment. We'd go outside every night, and I would sit in the valley of his legs, and Jake would cross his hands over my stomach as if there were something he could truly feel.

The first night, Jake and I had walked for miles. "Let's get married," he said to me, for the second time in my life.

But I did not want to enter a marriage because of a child. Even if Jake and I wanted to marry someday, a baby would have changed the entire reason behind it. After every argument and every petty disagreement in years to come, we would both blame the child that brought us into the mess. And besides, I was going to college. I was going to be an artist. This was the reason I gave Jake. "I'm only eighteen," I said. "I can't be a mother now." I did not add the other reason that ran through my mind: I don't know if I ever can be one. I don't know if I ever can be one.

Jake had swallowed hard and turned away. "We'll have others," he said, resigning himself. He lifted his face to the sky, and I knew that traced among the stars, he saw-as I did-the face of our unborn child.

On the morning of June 3 I got up before six o'clock and slipped out of the house. I walked down the street to Saint Christopher's, praying that I wouldn't see Father Draher, or an altar boy who went to Pope Pius. I knelt in the last pew and whispered to my twelve-week-old baby. "Sweetheart," I murmured, "Love. My darling." I said all the things I never would get to say.

I did not enter a confessional, remembering my old friend Priscilla Divine and her knowing voice: "There are certain things you just don't tell a priest." Instead I silently recited a string of Hail Marys, until the words all ran together and I couldn't distinguish the syllables in my mind from the sound of my pain.

Jake and I did not touch on the way to Racine. We pa.s.sed thick rolling farmland and fat spotty Holsteins. Jake followed the directions the woman on the phone had given him, sometimes p.r.o.nouncing the names of the highways out loud. I unrolled the window and closed my eyes into the wind, still seeing the rush of green, black, and white; the flat, level land and its ornaments, ta.s.sels of new corn.

The small gray building had very little to mark it for what it was. The entrance was at the back, so Jake helped me out of the car and led me around the corner. Surrounding the front door was an angry, snaking cord of picketers. They wore black raincoats splashed with red, and they carried looming signs that said MURDER. As they saw Jake and me they thronged about us, crying out gibberish I could not understand. Jake put his arm around me and pushed me through the door. "Jesus Christ," he said.

The tired blond woman who served as a receptionist asked me to fill out my personal information on a white card. "You pay up front," she said, and Jake removed his wallet and, from it, three hundred dollars he'd taken from the cash register at his father's garage the night before. An advance, he'd called it, and he'd told me not to worry.

The woman disappeared for a moment. I looked around the white walls of the room. They were free of posters; there was only a handful of dated magazines for people to read. The waiting area held at least twenty people-mostly women-all looking as if they'd stumbled in by mistake. In the corner was a small paper carton filled with plastic blocks and Sesame Street dolls, just in case, but there were no children to play with them.

"We're a little backed up today," the blond woman said, returning with a pink information sheet for me. "If you want to take a walk or something, it will be at least two hours."

Jake nodded, and because we'd been told to, we shuffled outside again. This time the picketers cleared a path for us and started to cheer, a.s.suming we'd changed our minds. We hurried out of the parking lot and walked three blocks before Jake turned to me. "I don't know anything about Racine," he said. "Do you?"

I shook my head. "We could walk in circles," I said, "or we could just go straight and keep track of the time."

But the clinic was in a strange area, and though Racine wasn't all that big a town, we walked for what seemed like miles and all we saw were sectioned farms and a waste-water treatment plant and fields empty of cows. Finally, I pointed to a small fenced-in area.

The little playground was oddly misplaced in the middle of this town; we hadn't seen any houses. It had a string of swings, the cloth kind that hugged your bottom when you sat down. There was a jungle gym and monkey bars and a hexagon of painted wood that you could spin like a merry-go-round. Jake looked at me and smiled for the first time that day. "Race you," he said, and he started to run toward the swings.

But I couldn't. I was so tired. I had been told not to eat anything that morning, and anyway, just being there made me feel as heavy as lead. I walked slowly, carefully, as if I had something to protect, and I picked a swing next to Jake's. He was pumping as high as he could; the entire metal frame seemed to shake and hump, threatening to come loose from the ground. Jake's feet grazed the low, flat clouds, and he kicked at them. Then, when he'd gone higher than I'd thought possible, he jumped from the swing in midair, arching his back and landing, scuffed, in the sand. He looked up at me. "Your turn," he said.

I shook my head. I wanted his energy; G.o.d, I wanted to put this behind me and do what he had just done. "Push me," I said, and Jake came to stand behind me, pressing his hands at the small of my back every time I returned to him. He pushed me so forcefully that for a moment I was suspended horizontally, grasping the chains of the swing, staring into the sun. And before I knew it, I was on my way back down.

Jake climbed on the monkey bars, hanging from his knees and scratching his armpits. Then he put me on the merry-go-round. "Hold on," he said. I pressed my face into the smooth green surface of the wood, feeling the sheen of warm paint against my cheek. Jake spun the merry-go-round, faster and faster. I lifted my head but felt my neck get whipped by the force, and I laughed, dizzy, trying to search out Jake's face. But I couldn't make sense of anything, so I tucked my head back down against the wood. My insides were spinning, and I did not know which way was up. I heard Jake's labored breathing, and I laughed so hard that I crossed the fine line and started to cry.

I did not feel anything, except the hot lights of the clean white room and the cool hands of a nurse and the distant suck and tug of instruments. In recovery, they gave me pills and I drifted in and out of sleep. When I came to, a pretty young nurse was standing next to me. "Is there someone here with you?" she asked, and I thought, Not anymore.

Much later, Jake came to me. He did not say a word. He leaned down and kissed my forehead, the way he used to from time to time before we became lovers. "Are you okay?" he asked.

It was when he spoke that I saw it: the image of a child, hovering just over his shoulder. I saw it as clearly as I saw Jake's face. And I knew by the storm of his eyes that he saw the same thing near me. "I'm fine," I said, and I realized then that I would have to get away.

When we arrived at my house, my father was not yet home; we had planned it this way. Jake helped me up to bed and sat on the edge of the comforter and held my hand. "I'll see you tomorrow," he said, but he made no move to go.

Jake and I had always been able to say things without words. I knew he heard it in the silence too: We would not see each other tomorrow. We would not see each other ever again; and we would not get married and we would not have other children, because every time we looked at each other the memory of this would be staring back at us. "Tomorrow," I echoed, forcing the word past the lump in my throat.

I knew that somewhere G.o.d was laughing. He had taken the other half of my heart, the one person who knew me better than I knew myself, and He had done what nothing else could do. By bringing us together, He had set into motion the one thing that could tear us apart. That was the day I lost my religion. I knew that I could no longer pa.s.s away in a state of grace, no longer make it to heaven. If there was a Second Coming, Jesus would no longer die for my sins. But suddenly, compared to everything I had been through, it didn't matter much at all.

Even as Jake was stroking the skin of my arm, making me promises he knew he would not keep, I was forming a plan. I could not stay in Chicago and know that Jake was minutes away. I could not hide my shame from my father for very long. After graduation, I would disappear. "I won't be going to college after all." I spoke the words aloud. The sentence hung, visible, black printed letters stretched across the s.p.a.ce before me. "I won't be going."

"What did you say?" Jake asked. He looked at me, and in his eyes I saw the pain of a hundred kisses and the healing power of his arms around me.

"Nothing," I told him. "Nothing at all."

A week later, after graduation, I packed my knapsack and left my father a note that told him I loved him. I boarded a bus and got off at Cambridge, Ma.s.sachusetts-a place I chose because it sounded, like its namesake, an ocean away-and I left my childhood behind.

In Ohio I reached into my knapsack and rummaged for an orange, but I came up instead with an unfamiliar worn yellow envelope. My name was printed on the outside, and when I opened it I read an old Irish blessing I'd seen a million times, cross-st.i.tched on a faded violet sampler that hung on the wall over Jake's bed: May the road rise to meet you.

May the wind be always at your back.

May the sun s.h.i.+ne warm upon your face.

May the rains fall soft upon your fields.

And 'til we meet again, May G.o.d hold you in the palm of His hand.

As I read the careful, rolling script of Jake's handwriting, I started to cry. I had no idea when he had left this for me. I had been awake the entire time he was in my room that final evening, and I had not seen him since. He must have known I would leave Chicago, that I would leave him.

I stared out the clouded window of the bus, trying to picture Jake's face, but all I could see was the strip of granite lining an unfamiliar highway. He was already fading from me. I fingered the note gently and ran my hands over the letters and pressed the curling edges of the paper. With these words, Jake had let go of me, which proved that he knew more about why I was leaving than even I did. I had believed that I was running away from what had happened. I did not know-not until I met Nicholas days later-that the whole time I was really running toward what was yet to be.

chapter 15

Nicholas Nicholas watched his wife turn into a wraith. She never really slept, since Max wanted to nurse every two hours. She was afraid to leave him alone for even a minute, so she showered only every other day. Her hair hung down her back like tangled yarn, her eyes were ringed with shadows. Her skin seemed frail and transparent, and sometimes Nicholas reached out to touch her just to see if she would vanish at the brush of his hand.

Max cried all the time. Nicholas wondered how Paige could stand it, the constant shrieking right in her ear. She didn't even seem to notice, but these days Paige wasn't noticing much of anything. Last night, Nicholas had found her standing in the dark of the nursery, staring at Max in his wicker ba.s.sinet. He watched from the doorway, feeling a knot come into his throat at the sight of his wife and his son. When he came forward, his footsteps hushed on the carpet, he touched Paige's shoulder. She turned to him, and he was shocked by the look in her eyes. There was no tenderness, no love, and no longing. Her gaze was riddled with questions, as if she simply didn't understand what Max was doing there at all.

Nicholas had been at the hospital for twenty consecutive hours, and he was exhausted. Driving home, he had pictured three things over and over in his mind: his Shower Ma.s.sage, a steaming plate of fettuccine, his bed. He pulled into the driveway and stepped out of the car, already hearing through sealed doors and windows the high-pitched screams of his son. At that one sound, all the spring left his body. He moved sluggishly onto the porch, reluctant to enter his own house.

Paige stood in the center of the kitchen, balancing Max on her shoulder, a Nuk pacifier in her hand and the telephone tucked beneath one ear. "No," she was saying, "you don't understand. I don't want daily delivery of the Globe. Globe. No. We can't afford it." Nicholas slipped behind her and lifted the baby from her shoulder. She could not see Nicholas, but she did not instinctively resist him when he took her child. Max hiccuped and vomited over the back of Nicholas's s.h.i.+rt. No. We can't afford it." Nicholas slipped behind her and lifted the baby from her shoulder. She could not see Nicholas, but she did not instinctively resist him when he took her child. Max hiccuped and vomited over the back of Nicholas's s.h.i.+rt.

Paige set the telephone into its cradle. She stared up at Nicholas as if he were fas.h.i.+oned of gold. She was still wearing her nightgown. "Thank you," she whispered.

Nicholas understood the clinical explanations for postpartum blues, and he tried to remember the best course of treatment. It was all hormonal, he knew that, but surely a little praise would help speed it along and would bring back the Paige he used to know. "I don't know how you do it," he said, smiling at her.

Paige looked at her feet. "Well, I'm obviously not doing it right," she said. "He won't stop crying. He can't ever get enough to eat, and I'm so tired, I just don't know what to try next." On cue, Max began to wail. Paige straightened her spine, and a quick glimmer in her eyes told Nicholas how hard she was working simply to keep on her feet. She smiled stiffly and said, over Max's cries, "And how was your day?"

Nicholas looked around the kitchen. On the table were baby gifts from his colleagues, some unwrapped; paper and ribbons were strewn across the floor. A breast pump ringed with milk sat on the counter beside an open tub of yogurt. Three books on child care were propped up against dirty gla.s.ses, open to the sections on "Crying" and "The First Weeks." Stuffed into the unused playpen were the dress s.h.i.+rts he needed brought to the laundry. Nicholas glanced at Paige. There would be no fettuccine.

"Listen," he said. "How about you lie down for an hour or two and I'll take care of the baby?"

Paige sank back against the wall. "Oh," she said, "would you really?"

Nicholas nodded, pus.h.i.+ng her toward the bedroom with his free hand. "What do I have to do with him?" he asked.

Paige turned around, poised on the edge of the doorway. She raised her eyebrows, then she threw back her head and laughed.

Fogerty had called Nicholas into his office two days after Paige gave birth. He offered a gift that Joan had picked out-a baby monitor-which Nicholas thanked him for, in spite of the fact that it was a ridiculous present. But how could Fogerty have realized that in a house as small as his, Max's shattering cries could be heard anywhere? "Sit down," Fogerty said, an atypical courtesy. "If I'm not mistaken, it's more rest than you've had in a while."

Nicholas had fallen gratefully into the leather wing chair, running his hands over the smooth worn arms. Fogerty paced the length of his office and finally perched on a corner of his desk. "I wasn't much older than you when we had Alexander," Fogerty said. "But I didn't have quite so much responsibility riding on my shoulders. I can't do it all over again, but you have the chance to do it right the first time."

"Do what?" Nicholas asked, tired of Fogerty and his obtuse riddles.

"Separate yourself," Fogerty said. "Don't lose sight of the fact that people outside your home are also depending on you, on your stamina, on your ability. Don't let yourself be compromised."

Nicholas had left the office and gone directly to Brigham and Women's, to visit Paige and Max. He had held his son, and felt the gentle swell of the baby's chest with each breath, and marveled at the fact that he had helped create a living, thinking thing. He had believed Fogerty was a sanctimonious old fool, until the night when Paige and Max came home. Then he had slept with a pillow wrapped over his head, trying to block out Max's cries, his noisy suckling, even the rustle of Paige getting in and out of bed to tend to him. "Come on, on, Paige," he demanded after being awakened for the third time. "I've got a triple bypa.s.s at seven in the morning!" Paige," he demanded after being awakened for the third time. "I've got a triple bypa.s.s at seven in the morning!"

But in spite of Fogerty's cautions, Nicholas knew his wife was falling apart. He had always seen her as such a model of strength-working two jobs to pay his way through Harvard, scrounging together money to make the endless interest payments, and, before that, leaving her life behind to start again in Cambridge. It was hard to believe that something as tiny as a newborn child could throw Paige for a loop.

"Okay, buddy," Nicholas said, taking a howling Max to the couch. "Do you want to play?" He held up a rattle that protruded from between two cus.h.i.+ons and shook it in front of his son. Max didn't seem to see it. He kicked his legs and waved his small red hands. Nicholas bounced the baby up and down on his knee. "Let's try something else," he said. He picked up the television remote and flipped through the channels. The whir of color seemed to calm Max down, and he settled like a sleeping puppy in the hollow of Nicholas's chest.

Nicholas smiled. This wasn't so hard after all.

He slipped his hand under Max's legs and scooped the baby up, carrying him upstairs to the nursery. Silently, Nicholas moved past the closed door of the master bedroom. If he put Max down now, he could probably take a shower before the baby woke again.

The minute Max's head touched the soft ba.s.sinet mattress, he began to scream. "s.h.i.+t," Nicholas said, grabbing the baby roughly. He rocked him against his chest, holding Max's ear against his heart. "There," he said. "You're okay."

Nicholas took Max to the changing table and surveyed the arrangement of Pampers and A&D and cornstarch powder. He un-snapped the terry-cloth sleeper and pulled the edges of the tape from the corners of the diaper with a loud rasp. Max started to scream again, his face turning round and tomato red, and Nicholas began to hurry. He lifted the diaper, but when he saw a stream of urine arch from the raw, newly circ.u.mcised p.e.n.i.s, he slapped the pad back in place. He took deep breaths, plugging an ear with one hand and holding Max's squirming body with the other. Then he slipped the old diaper away and put the new one on, knowing it was too low in the back but not caring enough to fix it.

He had to snap and unsnap the terry-cloth sleeper three times before he got it right. His hands were too big to secure the little silver circles, and there always seemed to be one snap he'd missed. Finally, he picked Max up and hung him upside down from his shoulder, just grasping his feet. If Paige could see me, If Paige could see me, Nicholas thought, Nicholas thought, she'd murder me. she'd murder me. But Max became quiet. Nicholas paraded around the nursery in a circle, holding his son upside down. He felt sorry for the kid. All of a sudden, without warning, he was thrown into a world where nothing seemed familiar. Not much different from his parents. But Max became quiet. Nicholas paraded around the nursery in a circle, holding his son upside down. He felt sorry for the kid. All of a sudden, without warning, he was thrown into a world where nothing seemed familiar. Not much different from his parents.

He carried Max down to the living room, settling him on the couch in a nest of stuffed pillows. The baby had Nicholas's eyes. After the first day, the dark black had given way to cool sky blue, startling against the red oval of his face. Other than that, Nicholas couldn't tell. It remained too early to see whom Max would take after.

Max's glazed eyes roamed blindly over Nicholas's face, seeming for a moment to come into focus. He started to cry again.

"Jesus f.u.c.king Christ," Nicholas muttered, picking the baby up and starting to walk. He bounced Max on his shoulder as he moved. He sang Motown. He twirled around and around, very fast, and he tried hanging the baby upside down again. But Max would not stop crying.

Nicholas couldn't get away from the sound. It pounded behind his eyes, over his ears. He wanted to put the baby down and run. He was just thinking about it when Paige came downstairs, groggy but resigned, like a prisoner on death row. "I think he's hungry," Nicholas said. "I couldn't make him stop."

"I know," Paige said. "I heard." She took the baby from Nicholas and rocked him back and forth. Nicholas's shoulders throbbed with relief, as if a huge weight had been removed. Max quieted a little, his crying now a soft, grating whine. "He just ate," Paige said. She went to sit on the couch and flipped the television on. "Nickelodeon," she said to n.o.body. "Max seems to like Nickelodeon."

Nicholas slipped into the bedroom and set off the test b.u.t.ton on his beeper. The soft chirps vibrated against his hip. He opened the door, to find Paige waiting. "I've got to go back to the hospital," he lied. "Complications on a heart-lung transplant."

Paige nodded. He pushed past her, fighting the urge to take her into his arms and say, Let's get away. Just you and I, let's go, and everything will be different. Let's get away. Just you and I, let's go, and everything will be different. Instead he went into the bathroom, showering quickly and then changing his s.h.i.+rt, his pants, his socks. Instead he went into the bathroom, showering quickly and then changing his s.h.i.+rt, his pants, his socks.

When he left, Paige was sitting in the rocking chair in the nursery. She had her nightgown opened to her belly, still soft and round. Max's mouth was clamped to her right breast. With every tug of his lips he seemed to be pulling in more and more of her. Nicholas's gaze strayed to Paige's face, which was turned to the window. Her eyes held the ragged edge of pain. "It hurts?" Nicholas asked.

"Yes." Paige did not look at him. "That's what they don't tell you."

Nicholas drove quickly to Ma.s.s General, weaving in and out of traffic. He opened all the windows in the car, and he turned on the radio, some rap station, as loud as possible. He tried to drown out the sound of Max's cries in his ears, the image of Paige when he walked out the door. At least he was able to leave.

When he pa.s.sed the nurses' station in the ER, Phoebe, who had known him for years, raised her eyebrows. "You're not on call tonight, Dr. Prescott," she said. "Did you miss me again?"

Nicholas smiled at her. "I can't live without you, Phoebe," he said. "Run away with me to Mexico."

Phoebe laughed and opened a patient file. "Such words from a man with a new baby boy."

Nicholas moved through the halls with the confidence people expected of him. He ran his fingers over the smooth aqua tiles lining the walls of the corridors, heading for the small room kept for the residents on call overnight. It was no more than a closet, but Nicholas welcomed the familiar smell of formaldehyde and antiseptic and blue woven cotton as if he had entered a palatial estate. His eyes swept the neat cot that filled up the room, and then he pulled back the covers. He turned off his beeper and set it on the floor below his head. He drew into his memory the only Lamaze cla.s.s he had attended, the nurse's low voice was.h.i.+ng over the temples of the pregnant women: Imagine a long, cool white beach. Imagine a long, cool white beach. Nicholas could see himself stretched out on the sand, under a feverish sun. He fell asleep to the music of an invented ocean, beating like a heart. Nicholas could see himself stretched out on the sand, under a feverish sun. He fell asleep to the music of an invented ocean, beating like a heart.

chapter 16