by Jodi Picoult
I took a deep breath. "I'm in Lancaster, Pennsylvania."
"You're where?" In the background, I heard Max start to cry, and then the sounds became louder, so I knew Nicholas was jiggling the baby in his arms.
"I was headed to the Stop & Shop, and I kind of kept going. I just need a little time--"
"Well, hey, Paige, so does the rest of the free world, but we don't just up and run away!" Nicholas was yelling; I held the receiver away from my ear. "Let me get this straight," he said, "you left us on purpose?"
"I didn't run away," I insisted. "I'm coming back."
"When?" Nicholas demanded. "I have a life, you know. I have a job to get back to."
I closed my eyes and leaned my head against the glass of the phone booth. "I have a life too."
Nicholas did not answer, and for a moment I thought he'd hung up, but then I heard Max babbling in the background. "Your life," Nicholas said, "is right here. Not in Lancaster, Pennsylvania."
What I wanted to tell him was: I'm not ready to be a mother. I can't even be your wife, not until I patch together the pieces of my own life and fill in all the holes. I will come home, and we'll pick up where we left off. I won't forget you; I love you. But what I said to Nicholas was: "I'll be back soon."
Nicholas's voice was hoarse and low. "Don't bother," he said, and he slammed down the phone.
I drove all night and all day, and by 4:00 p.m. I was on the Loop, heading into Chicago. Knowing that my father wouldn't be home for a couple of hours, I headed toward the old art supply store I used to go to. It felt strange driving through the city. When I had been here last, I had no car; I had always been escorted. At a stoplight I thought about Jake--the angles of his face and the rhythm of his breathing. Once, that was all it had taken to make him appear. I drove carefully when the light turned green, expecting him to be on the next street corner, but I was mistaken. That telepathy had been severed years ago by Jake, who knew we could never go back.
The owner of the art store was Indian, with the smooth brown skin of an onion. He recognized me right away. "Missy O'Toole," he said, his voice running over my name like a river. "What can I get for you?" He clasped his hands in front of himself, as if I had last stepped into the store a day or two before. I did not answer him at first. I walked to the carved statues of Vishnu and Ganesh, running my fingers over the cool stone elephant's head. "I'll need some conte' sticks," I whispered, "a newsprint pad, and charcoal." The words came so easily, I might as well have been seventeen again.
He brought me what I had asked for and held out the conti sticks for my approval. I took them into my palm as reverently as I'd taken the Host at Communion. What if I couldn't do it anymore? It had been years since I'd drawn anything substantial.
"I wonder," I said to the man, "if maybe you would let me draw you."
Pleased, the man settled himself between the Hindu sculptures of the Preserver of Life and the God of Good Fortune. "What better place for me to be sitting myself," he chattered. "If you please, missy, this place would be very good, very good indeed."
I swallowed hard and picked up the newsprint pad. With hesitant lines I drew the oval of the man's face, the fierce glitter of his eyes. I used a white conti stick for relief shading, creating a fine web of wrinkles at his temples and his chin. I mapped the age of his smile and the slight swell of his pride. When I finished, I stepped away from the pad and observed it critically. I was a little off on the likeness, but it was good enough for a first try. I peered into the background and the shadows of his face, expecting to see one of my hidden pictures, but there was nothing except for the calm brush of charcoal. Maybe I had lost my other talent, and I thought that this might not be so bad.
"Missy, you have finished? You do not want to keep such work all to yourself." The man scurried toward me and beamed at my sketch. "You will leave it here for me, yes?"
I nodded. "You can have it. Thank you."
I handed him the sketch, and a twenty to pay for the supplies, but he waved me away. "You give me a gift," he said, "I give you one in return."
I drove to the lake and parked illegally. Carrying my pad and my box of charcoal under my arm, I went to sit on the shore. It was a cool day, and not many people were in the water, just some children with bubble floats around their waists, whose mothers watched with lioness stares in case they drifted away. I sat on the edge of the water and brought Max to mind, trying to conjure a clear enough image to draw him. When I couldn't, I was shocked. No matter how hard I tried, I couldn't catch in his eyes the way he looked at the world, the way everything was a series of first times. And without that, a picture of Max just wasn't a picture of Max. I tried to imagine Nicholas, but it was the same. His fine aquiline nose, the thick sheen of his hair-- they appeared and receded in waves, as if I were looking at him lying on the bottom of a rippled pond. When I touched the charcoal to the paper, nothing happened at all. It struck me how strong the slam of that phone might have been. As Jake had done once before, it was possible that Nicholas had broken all of our connections.
Determined not to start crying, I stared across the dappled surface of the lake and began to move the charcoal over the blank page. Diamonds of sunlight and shifting currents appeared. Even though the picture was black and white, you could clearly see how blue the water was. But as I continued, I realized that I was not drawing Lake Michigan at all. I was drawing the ocean, the Caribbean ring that banded Grand Cayman Island.
When I was twelve I had gone with my father to Grand Cayman for an Invention Convention. He used up most of our savings for the plane ticket and the rental condo. He was setting up a booth of rocks, the fake ones he'd created that held a secret compartment for a key and could be placed on the dirt right outside your front door just in case. The convention lasted for two days, during which I was left at the condo to roam the beach. I made snow angels in the white sand and I snorkeled around the reefs and dove to grab at fire-colored coral and neon-streaked angelfish. The third day, our last, my father sat on a chaise longue on the beach. He didn't want to go into the water with me, because, he said, he'd barely even seen the sun. So I went in alone, and to my surprise, a sea turtle came swimming beside me. It was two feet long and had a tag under its armpit. It had black beaded eyes and a leathery smile; its shell was curved down like a topaz horizon. It seemed to grin at me, and then it swam away.
I followed. I was always a few strokes behind. Finally, when the turtle disappeared behind a wall of coral, I stopped. I floated on my back and rubbed the stitch in my side. When I opened my eyes, I was at least a mile away from where I'd started.
I breast-stroked back, and by that time my father was frantic. He asked where I'd gone, and when I told him he said it had been a stupid thing to do. But I went into the ocean again anyway, hoping to find that sea turtle. Of course it was a big ocean and the turtle was long gone, but I had known--even at twelve--that I had to take the chance.
I laid down the drawing. A familiar breathlessness came when I finished the sketch, as if I'd had a spirit channeling through me and was only just returning now. In the middle of Lake Michigan I'd drawn that vanishing turtle. Its back was made up of a hundred hexagons. And very faintly, in every single polygon, I had drawn my mother.
I knew before I even turned onto my old block that I would not be staying long enough to remember all the things about my childhood that I'd trapped in some dark corner of my mind. I would not be able to remember the bus route to the Institute of Art. I would not have time to recall the name of the Jewish bakery with fresh onion bagels. I would stay only until I had gathered the information I needed to find my mother.
I realized that in a way I'd always been trying to find her. Except I hadn't been chasing her; she'd been chasing me. She was always there when I looked over my shoulder, reminding me of who I was and how I got to be that way. Until today I had believed she was
the reason I had lost Jake, the reason I'd run from Nicholas, the reason I'd left Max. I saw her at the root of ev
ery mistake I'd ever made. But now I wondered if she really was the enemy. After all, I seemed to be following in her footsteps. She had run away too, and maybe if I knew her reasons I'd understand mine. For all I knew, my mother could be just like me.
I walked up the steps to my childhood home, my feet falling into the sunken brick patterns. Behind me lay Chicago, winking at dusk and spread like a destiny. I knocked on the front door for the first time in eight years.
My father opened it. He was shorter than I remembered, and his hair, streaked with gray, fell over his eyes. "May," he whispered, frozen.
My love. He had spoken in Gaelic, which he almost never did, an endearment I remembered him saying to my mother. And he had called me by my mother's name.
I did not move. I wondered if this was an omen. My father blinked several times and took a step backward, and then he stared at me again. "Paige," he said, shaking his head as if he still could not believe it was me. My father held out his hands and, with them, everything he could offer. "Lass," he said, "you're the image of your mother."
chapter 20
Nicholas
been pacing and calling hospital emergency rooms she'd been running away. In one fell swoop, Paige had overturned his entire life. This was not the way Nicholas liked things. He liked neat sutures, very little bleeding, OR schedules that did not waver. He liked organization and precision. He did not enjoy surprises, and he hated being shocked.
He was not sure whom he was more pissed off at: Paige, for running away, or himself, for not seeing it coming. What kind of woman was she, anyway, to abandon a three-month-old baby? A shudder ran across Nicholas's shoulders. Surely this was not the woman he'd fallen in love with eight years ago. Something had happened, and Paige was not what she used to be.
This was inexcusable.
Nicholas glanced at Max, still chewing on the piece of telephone cord that dipped into his playpen. He picked up the telephone and called the twenty-four-hour emergency number of the bank. Within minutes he'd put a hold on his assets, frozen his checking account, and revoked Paige's charge cards. This made him smile, with a feeling of satisfaction that snaked all the way down to his belly. She wasn't going to get very far.
Then he called Fogerty's office at the hospital, expecting to leave a message for Alistair to call him later that evening. But to Nicholas's surprise, it was Fogerty's brusque, icy voice that answered the phone. "Well, hello," he said, when he heard Nicholas. "Shouldn't you be sleeping?"
"Something's come up," Nicholas said, swallowing the bitterness that lodged in his mouth. "It seems that Paige is gone."
Alistair didn't respond, and then Nicholas realized he probably thought Paige was dead. "She's left, I mean. She just sort of picked up and disappeared. Temporary insanity, I think."
There was silence. "Why are you telling me this, Nicholas?"
Nicholas had to think about that. Why was he calling Fogerty? He turned to watch Max, who had rolled onto his back and was biting his own feet. "I need to do something with Max," Nicholas said. "If I have surgery tomorrow I'll need someone to watch him."
"Perhaps the past seven years haven't clarified my position at the hospital for you," Fogerty said. "I'm the head of cardiothoracic, not day care."
"Alistair--"
"Nicholas," Fogerty said, "this is your problem. Good night." And he hung up the phone.
Nicholas stared at the receiver in his hand in disbelief. He had less than twelve hours to find a baby-sitter. "Shit," he said, rummaging through the kitchen drawers. He tried to find an address book of Paige's, but there seemed to be nothing around. Finally, tucked against the microwave, he found a thin black binder. He opened it and riffled through the pages, alphabetically thumb-indexed. He looked for unfamiliar female names, friends of Paige's he might prevail upon. But there were only three numbers: Dr. Thayer, the obstetrician; Dr. Rourke, the pediatrician; and Nicholas's beeper number. It was as if Paige didn't know anyone else.
Max began to cry, and Nicholas realized he hadn't changed the baby's diaper since Paige disappeared. He carried him into the nursery, holding him away from his chest as if he might get soiled. Nicholas pulled at the crotch of the playsuit until the snaps all freed themselves, and then he untaped the disposable diaper. He went to reach for another and was holding it in the air, trying to determine if the little Mickey and Donald faces went in the front or the back, when he felt something warm strike him. A thin arc of urine jetted from between Max's kicking legs and soaked Nicholas's neck and collar.
"God damn you," Nicholas said, looking squarely at his son but speaking to Paige. He loosely tacked on the new diaper and left the playsuit to hang free, unwilling to bother with the snaps. "We're going to feed you," Nicholas said, "and then you're going to sleep."
Nicholas didn't realize until he reached the kitchen that Max's primary source of food was hundreds of miles away. He seemed to remember Paige mentioning formula. He put Max into the high chair wedged into a corner of the kitchen and pulled cereals, pasta, and canned fruit from the cabinets in an effort to find the Enfamil.
It was a powdered mix. He knew something should be sterilized, but there wasn't time for that now. Max was starting to cry, and without even checking him, Nicholas put the water up to boil and found three empty plastic bottles that he assumed were clean. He read the back of the Enfamil bucket. One scoop for every two ounces. Surely in this kitchen he could find a measuring cup.
He looked under the sink and over the refrigerator. Finally, under a collection of spatulas and slotted spoons he found one. He tapped his foot impatiently, willing the teakettle to whistle. When it did he poured eight ounces of water into each bottle and added four scoops of powder. He did not know that a baby Max's age could not finish an eight-ounce bottle in one sitting. All that Nicholas cared about was getting Max fed, getting Max to go to sleep, and then crawling into bed himself.
Tomorrow he'd find a way to keep Max at the hospital with him. If he showed up at the OR with a baby on his shoulder, someone would give him a hand. He couldn't think about it now. His head was pounding, and he was so dizzy he could barely stand.
He stashed two bottles in the refrigerator and took the third to Max. Except he couldn't find Max. He'd left him in the high chair, but suddenly he was gone. "Max," Nicholas called. "Where'd you go, buddy?" He walked out of the kitchen and ran up the stairs, so wiped out he half expected his son to be standing at the bathroom sink, shaving, or in the nursery getting dressed for a date. Then he heard the cries.
It had never occurred to him that Max couldn't sit up well enough to go into a high chair. What the hell was the thing doing in the kitchen, then? Max had slipped down in the seat until his head was wedged under the plastic tray. Nicholas tugged at the tray, unsure which latch would release it, and finally pulled hard enough to dislodge the whole front section. He tossed it across the room. As soon as he picked up his son, the baby quieted, but Nicholas couldn't help noticing the red welted pattern pressed into Max's cheek by the screws and grooves of the high chair.
"I only left him for half a second," Nicholas muttered, and in the back of his mind he heard Paige's soft, clear words: That's all it takes. Nicholas hiked the baby higher on his shoulder, hearing Max's muffled sigh. He thought about the nosebleed and the way Paige's voice shook when she told Nicholas about it. Half a second.
He took the baby into the bedroom and fed him the bottle in the dark. Max fell asleep almost immediately. When Nicholas realized that the baby's lips had stopped moving, he pulled away the bottle and adjusted Max so that he was cradled in his arms. Nicholas knew that if he stood up to bring Max to his crib, he'd wake up. He had a vision of Paige nursing Max in bed and falling asleep. You don't want him to get used to sleeping here, he'd told her. You don't want to create bad habits. And she'd stumble into the nursery, holding her breath so the baby wouldn't wake.
Nicholas unbuttoned his shirt with one hand and settled a pillow under the arm that held Max. He closed his eyes. He was bone
tired; he felt worse after taking care of Max than he did after performing open-heart surgery. There were similarities: both required quick thinking, both required intense concentration. But he was good at one, and as for the other, well, he didn't have a clue.
This was all Paige's fault. If it was her idea of some stupid little lesson, she wasn't going to get away with it. Nicholas didn't care if he never saw Paige again. Not after she'd pulled this stunt.
Out of nowhere, he remembered being eleven years old, his lip split by a bully in a playground fight. He had lain on the ground until the other kids left, but he would not let them see him cry. Later, when he'd told his parents about it, his mother had held her hand against his cheek and smiled at him.
He would not let Paige see him cry, or complain, or be in any way inconvenienced. Two could play the same game. And he'd do what he did to that bully--he'd ignored him so completely in the days following the fight that other children began to follow Nicholas's lead, and in the end the boy had come to Nicholas and apologized, hoping he'd win back his friends.
Of course, that was a kids' competition. This was his life. What Paige had done was somewhere beyond forgiveness.
Nicholas expected to toss and turn, racked by black thoughts of his wife. But he was asleep before he reached the pillow. He did not remember, the next morning, how quickly sleep had come. He did not remember the dream he had of his first Christmas with Paige, when she'd given him the children's game Operation! and they'd played for hours. He did not remember the coldest part of the night, when out of pure instinct Nicholas had pulled his son closer and given him his heat.
chapter 2 1
Paige
My mother's clothes didn't fit. They were too long in the waist and tight at the chest. They were made for someone taller and thinner. When my father brought up the
old trunk filled with my mother's things, I had held each musty scrap of silk and cotton as if I were touching her own hand. I pulled on a yellow halter top and seersucker walking shorts, and then I peeked into the mirror. Reflected back was the same face I'd always seen. This surprised me. By now my mother and I had grown so similar in my mind, I believed in some ways I had become her.
