by Jodi Picoult
Max watched as I cut the twine around the box and pulled out the staples. He caught a length of string in his fist and tried to work it into his mouth. I laid the knife beside the couch and pulled out of the box a little stool with cut-out yellow letters that spelled max and could be removed like a jigsaw puzzle. "Love, Grandma and Grandpa," read the note. Somewhere, Max had another grandpa and possibly another grandma. I wondered if he'd ever meet either.
I stood up to throw away the box, but a smaller, flat pink box caught my eye. It had been packed in the bottom of the larger one. I broke the gold-foil seals at its sides and opened it to reveal a beautiful silk scarf printed with linked brass horse bits and braided reins and U-shaped silver shoes. "For Paige," the card said, "because not only the baby deserves gifts. Mother." I thought about this. Astrid Prescott was not my mother; she never would be. For a moment my breath caught, and I wondered if it was possible that my real mother, wherever she was, had sent me this beautiful scarf through the Prescotts. I rumpled the thin silk and held it to my nose, breathing in the fragrance of a fine boutique. It was from Astrid, I knew that, and inside I was fluttering because she had thought of me. But just for today, I was going to pretend this had come from the mother I never got to know.
Max, who could not crawl, had wriggled himself over to the knife. "Oh, no you don't," I said, lifting him by his armpits. His feet kicked a mile a minute, and little bubbles of spit formed at the corners of his mouth. Standing, I held him to my chest, one arm out like a dance partner. I whirled into the kitchen, humming a Five Satins song, watching his unsteady head bob left and right.
We watched the bottle heat up in the saucepan--the only bottle of formula Max got each day, because in some ways I was still afraid that the La Leche woman would come back and find out and point a damning finger at me. I tested the liquid on my hand. We danced back to the couch in the living room and turned on Oprah, then I gently placed him on a pillow across the couch.
I liked to feed Max this way, because when I held him in my arms he could smell the breast milk and sometimes he refused to take the bottle. He wasn't a stupid little thing; he knew the real McCoy. I'd prop him on the pillow and tuck a cloth burping diaper under his chin to catch the runoff; then I'd even have a free hand to flip through channels with the remote or to scan the pages of a magazine.
Oprah had on women who had been pregnant and given birth without even knowing they'd been carrying a child. I shook my head at the screen. "Max, my boy," I said, "where could she even find six people like this?" One woman was saying that she had had a child already and then one night she felt a little gassy and she went to lie down in bed and ten minutes later she realized a squalling infant was between her legs. Another woman nodded her head; she'd been in the back seat of her friend's van and all of a sudden she just gave birth through her underwear and her shorts, and the baby was lying on the floor mat. "How couldn't they feel it kicking?" I said out loud. "How couldn't they notice a contraction?"
Max lifted his chin, and the diaper-bib fell to the floor, twisting over my leg to land behind me. I sighed and turned away for half a second to grab it, and that was when I heard the hard crack of Max's head striking the side of the coffee table as he rolled off the couch and onto the floor.
He lay on the pale-beige carpet, scant inches from the knife I'd used to cut the twine of the box. His arms and legs were flailing, and he was facedown. I could not breathe. I lifted him into my arms, absorbing his screams into the shallows of my bones. "Oh, God," I said, rocking him back and forth tightly as he howled with pain. "Dear God."
I lifted my head to see if Max was quieting down, and then I saw the blood, staining my shirt and a corner of the beautiful new scarf. My baby was bleeding.
I put him on the pale couch, not caring, running my fingers over his face and his neck and his arms. The blood was coming out of his nose. I had never seen so much blood. He didn't have any other cuts; he must have fallen face-first onto the hard oak of the table. His cheeks were puffed and beet red; his fists beat the air with the fury of a warrior. He would not stop bleeding. I did not know what to do.
I called the pediatrician, the number etched into my heart. "Hello," I said, breathless, over Max's cries. "Hello? No, I can't be put on hold--" But they cut me off. I pulled the phone into the kitchen, still trying to rock my child, and picked up Dr. Spock's book. I looked up Nosebleeds in the index. Get on the phone, I thought. This is a goddamned emergency. I have hurt my child. There ... I read the whole paragraph, and at the end it said to tilt him forward so he wouldn't choke on the blood. I positioned Max and watched his face get even redder, his cries louder. I curled him into my shoulder again and wondered how I had done it wrong.
"Hello?" A voice returned to the pediatrician's line.
"Oh, God, please help me. My baby just fell. He's bleeding through his nose, and I can't make it stop--"
"Let me get you a nurse," the woman said.
"Hurry," I shouted into the phone, into Max's ear.
The nurse told me to tilt Max forward, just like Dr. Spock said, and to hold a towel to his nose. I asked her if she'd hang on, and then I tried that, and this time the bleeding seemed to ebb. "It's working," I yelled into the receiver, lying on its side on the kitchen table. I picked it up. "It's working," I repeated.
"Good," the nurse told me. "Now, watch him for the next couple of hours. If he seems content, and if he's eating all right, then we don't need to see him."
At this, a flood of relief washed through me. I didn't know how I'd ever manage to get him to the doctor by myself. I could barely make it out of the neighborhood with him yet.
"And check his pupils," the nurse continued. "Make sure they aren't dilated or uneven. That's a sign of concussion."
"Concussion," I whispered, unheard over Max's cries. "I didn't mean to do it," I told the nurse.
"Of course," the nurse assured me. "No one does."
When I hung up the phone, Max was still crying so hard that he'd begun to gag on his sobs. I was shaking, rubbing his back. I tried to sponge the clotted blood around his nostrils so that he'd be able to breathe. Even after he was cleaned, faint red blotches remained, as if he'd been permanently stained. "I'm so sorry, Max," I whispered, my words rattling in my throat. "It was just a second, that's all I turned away for; I didn't know that you were going to move that fast." Max's cries waned and then became louder again. "I'm so sorry," I said, repeating the words like a lullaby. "I'm so sorry."
I carried him to the bathroom and ran the faucet and let him peek into the mirror--all the things that usually calmed him down. When Max didn't respond, I sat down on the toilet lid and rocked him closer. I had been crying too, high keening notes that tore through my body and ripped shrilly through Max's screams. It took me a moment to realize that suddenly I was the only one making a sound.
Max was still and quiet on my shoulder. I stood and moved to the mirror, afraid to look. His eyes were closed; his hair was matted with sweat. His nose was plugged with dried sienna blood, and two bruises darkened his skin just beneath his eyes. I shivered with the sudden thought: I was just like those women. I had killed my child.
Still hiccuping with sobs, I carried Max to the bedroom and placed him on the cool blue bedspread. I sighed with relief: his back rose and fell; he was breathing, asleep. His face, though brutally marked, held the peace of an angel.
I put my face into my hands, trembling. I had known that I wouldn't be a very good mother, but I assumed that my sins would be forgetfulness or ignorance. I didn't know I would hurt my own son. Surely anyone else would have lifted the baby to retrieve the diaper. I was too stupid to think of it. And if I had done it once, it could happen again.
I had a sudden memory of my mother the night before she disappeared from my life. She wore a pale-peach bathrobe and fuzzy bunny slippers. She sat on the edge of my bed. "You know I love you, Paige-boy," she said, because she thought I was asleep. "Don't you let anyone tell you otherwise."
I laid my
hand on my son's back, smoothing out his ragged breathing. "I love you," I said, tracing the letters of his name on his cotton playsuit. "Don't let anyone tell you otherwise."
Max woke up smiling. I was leaning over his crib, as I had been for the hour he'd been asleep, praying for the first time since he was born that he'd wake up soon. "Oh, sweetie," I said, reaching for his chubby fingers.
I changed his diaper and took out his little bathtub. I sat him in it fully clothed but filled the basin with Baby Magic and warm water.
Then I washed off his face and his arms where they were still splattered from the nosebleed. I changed his outfit, rinsing the old one as best I could and hanging it over the shower rod to dry.
I gave him the breast instead of the bottle he'd never finished, figuring he deserved a little pampering. I cuddled him close, and he smiled and rubbed his cheek against me. "You don't remember a thing, do you?" I said. I closed my eyes and leaned my head against the couch. "Thank heaven."
Max was so good-natured for the rest of the afternoon that I knew God was punishing me. I wallowed in my guilt, tickling Max's belly, blowing wet kisses onto his fat thighs. When Nicholas came home, a knot tightened in my stomach, but I did not get up off the floor with the baby. "Paige, Paige, Paige!" Nicholas sang, stepping into the hallway. He sashayed into the living room with his eyes half closed. He'd been on call for thirty-six straight hours. "Don't mention the words Mass General to me--don't even say the word heart. For the next twenty-four glorious hours I'm going to sleep and eat greasy food and be a sloth right here in my own house." He walked down the hall toward the stairs, his voice trailing behind. "Did you get to the cleaners?" he called.
"No," I whispered. I had an excuse this time for not leaving the house, but he wouldn't want to hear it.
Nicholas reappeared in the living room, holding his shirt by the collar. His good mood had vanished. He'd asked me to go to the dry cleaners two days ago, but I hadn't felt comfortable taking Max by myself, and Nicholas hadn't been home to watch him, and I didn't know how to even begin to find a baby-sitter. "It's a good thing I have off tomorrow, then, since this is the last goddamned clean shirt I had. Come on, Paige," he said, his eyes turning dark. "You can't possibly be busy every minute of the day."
"I was thinking," I said, not looking up, "that maybe you'd watch the baby while I go to the laundry and grocery shopping." I swallowed. "I was kind of waiting for you to get home."
Nicholas glared at me. "This is the first break I've had in thirty-six hours and you want me to watch Max?" I did not say anything.
"For Christ's sake, Paige, it's my only day off in the past two weeks. You're here every single goddamned day."
"I can wait till you take a nap," I suggested, but Nicholas was already starting back down the hall.
I held Max's little fists in my hands and braced myself for what I knew was to come. Nicholas ran down the stairway with Max's bloody outfit, wet, wrapped around his fingers. "What the hell is this?" Nicholas said, his voice hot and low.
"Max had an accident," I said as calmly as I could. "A nosebleed. I didn't mean to do it. The diaper fell--" I looked up at Nicholas, at the storm in his eyes, and I started to cry again. "I twisted around for a second--well, not even; more like half a second--to get it, and Max rolled the wrong way and hit his nose on the table--"
"When," Nicholas said, "were you planning on telling me?"
He crossed the room in three long strides and picked Max up roughly. "Be careful," I said, and Nicholas made a strange sound in the back of his throat.
His eyes swept the kidney-shaped bruises below Max's eyes, the traces of blood on the pads of his nose. He looked at me for a moment, as if he were piercing through to my soul and knew I was marked for hell. He clutched the baby tighter in his arms. "You go," he said quietly. "I'll take care of Max."
His words, and the accusation behind them, stung me as violently as a slap to the face. I stood and walked to the bedroom, collecting the heap of Nicholas's shirts. I pulled them into my arms, feeling their sleeves wrap and bind my wrists. I pulled my purse and my sunglasses from the kitchen table, and then I stood in the doorway of the living room. Nicholas and Max looked up at the same time. They sat together on the pale couch, looking as if they were carved from the same block of marble. "I didn't mean to," I whispered, and then I turned away.
At the cash machine, I was crying so hard that I didn't realize I had pressed the wrong buttons until a thousand dollars came out, instead of the hundred I needed for grocery shopping and prepayment on Nicholas's shirts. I did not bother to redeposit it. Instead I tore out of the fire zone I'd parked in, rolled down all the windows, and headed to the nearest highway. It felt good to hear the wind scream in my ears and lighten the weight of my hair. The band in my chest began to ease, and my headache was disappearing. Maybe, I thought, what I needed all along was a little time alone. Maybe I just needed to get away.
The supermarket's flashing sign appeared at the horizon. And it struck me then that Nicholas was right to doubt me, to hold Max as far away from me as he could. Here I was smiling into the rushing air, thinking about my freedom, when just hours before I had watched my child bleed because of my own carelessness.
There had to be something wrong with me, deep down, that made me to blame for Max's fall. There had to be something that made me such an incompetent mother. Maybe it was the same reason my own mother had left--she was afraid of what more she could do wrong. It was possible that Max was better off the way he was, in the solid, strong arms of his father. It was possible that given the option, Max would do better with no mother at all.
At the very least, this much was true: I was no good to Max, or to Nicholas, the way I was right now.
As I drove straight past the market, the plan began to form in my head. I wouldn't be gone for long, just for a little while. Just until I had got a full night's sleep, and I felt good about myself and about being Max's mother, and I could make a long self-help list of all the things I could do, without running out of ideas. I would come back with all the answers; I would be a whole new person. I would call Nicholas in a few hours and tell him my idea, and he would agree and say in his calm, brook-steady voice, "Paige, I think it's just what you need."
I started to laugh, my spirit bubbling up from where it had been buried deep inside. It was really so easy. I could keep driving and driving and pretend that I had no husband, no baby. I could keep going and never look back. Of course I would go back, as soon as I had my life in order again. But right now, I deserved this. I was taking back the time I had been cheated of.
I drove faster than I'd ever driven in my life. I ran my fingers through my hair and grinned until the wind cracked my lips. My cheeks grew flushed and my eyes stung from the brisk rush of the air. One by one, I tossed Nicholas's shirts out the window, leaving behind on the highway a trail of white, yellow, pink, powder blue, like a fine string of pale scattered pearls.
Part II: Growth
Summer 1993
chapter 1 9
Paige
The thick sateen curtains at Ruby's House of Fate blocked out the hot midday sun. Ruby herself, a mountain of copper flesh, sat across from me. She held my hands in her own. Her cheeks reddened, her chins trembled. Suddenly her thick eyelids opened, to reveal startling green eyes that had, just minutes before, been brown. "Girl," Ruby said, "yo' future is yo' past."
I had come to Ruby's House of Fate out of hunger. Driving all day away from Cambridge had brought me to Pennsylvania--to Amish country. For a time I had parked the car and watched the neat black buggies, the fresh-capped girls. Something told me to keep on driving, in spite of the burning in the pit of my stomach. I hadn't eaten since breakfast, and it was now almost eight o'clock at night. So I had continued west, and at the outskirts of Lancaster I discovered Ruby. Her little row house was marked by a big billboard in the shape of a palm, covered with glittering moons and gold stars, ruby's house of fate, the sign read. your place to find answers.
> I wasn't certain what my questions were, but that didn't seem important. I wasn't a believer in astrology, but that also seemed to be beside the point. Ruby answered the door as if she had been expecting me. I was confused. What was a black woman doing reading fortunes in Amish country? "You'd be amazed," she said, as if I had spoken aloud. "So many people pass through."
Ruby did not tear her green eyes from mine. I had been driving aimlessly all day, but at Ruby's words I suddenly realized where I was headed. "I'm going to Chicago?" I asked softly, for confirmation, and Ruby grinned.
I tried to pull away from her grasp, but she held fast to my hand. She rubbed her smooth thumb over my palm and spoke quietly in a language I did not understand. "You'll find her," she said, "but she isn't what you think she is."
"Who?" I asked, although I knew she meant my mother.
"Sometimes," she said, "bad blood skips a generation."
I waited for her to explain, but she released my hand and cleared her throat. "That'll be twenty-five," she said, and I rummaged through my purse. Ruby walked me outside, and I swung open the hot, heavy door of the car. "You need to call him too," she said, and by the time I looked up at her, she was gone.
"Nicholas?" I pulled at the collar of my shirt and ran my fingers over the smooth silk scarf from Astrid, trying to escape the phone booth's heat.
"My God, Paige. Are you hurt? I called the supermarket--I called six of them, because I didn't know where you'd gone, and I tried the nearest gas stations. Was there an accident?"
"Not really," I said, and I heard Nicholas draw in his breath. "How's the baby?" I asked, feeling tears prick the back of my throat. It was strange; for almost three months, all I'd thought about was getting away from Max, and now I couldn't stop thinking about him. He was always in the corner of my mind, clouding my vision, his gummy fists reaching toward me. I actually missed him.
"The baby's fine. Where are you? When are you coming home?"
