by Jodi Picoult
Astrid doesn't say anything. She looks at me--no, actually she looks into me, as if she is sizing me up for the best lighting and direction and angle. Max is balanced on her hip. He watches me with eyes that the color blue must have been named for. His hair is matted with sweat on the side of his head, and a crinkled line from a sheet is imprinted on his cheek.
Max has changed so much in just three months.
Max is the image of Nicholas.
He figures out that I am a stranger, and he burrows his face in Astrid's blouse, rubbing his nose back and forth on the fibbing.
Astrid makes no move to give him to me, but she also doesn't shut the door in my face. To make sure of this, I take a tiny step forward. "Astrid," I say, and then I shake my head. "Mom."
As if the word has triggered a memory, which I know is impossible, Max lifts his face. He tilts his head, as his grandmother did at first, and then he reaches out one balled fist. "Mama," he says, and the fingers of the fist open one by one like a flower, stretching and coming to rest on my cheek.
His touch--it's not what I've expected, what I've dreamed. It is warm and dry and gentle and brushes like a lover. My tears slip down between his fingers, and he pulls his hand away. He puts it back into his mouth, drinking in my sorrow, my regrets.
Astrid Prescott hands Max to me so that his arms wrap around my neck and his warm, solid form presses the length of my chest. "Paige," she says, not at all surprised to see me. She steps back so that I can enter her home. "Whatever took you so long?"
chapter 34
Nicholas
Paige has single-handedly ruined Nicholas's day. Nicholas knows he has nothing else to complain about--his surgery went well enough; his patients are bearing up--but discovering Paige tripping along at his heels has unnerved him. It is a public hospital, and she has every right to be inside it; his threat about calling security was only that--a threat. Seeing her outside his patient's door rattled him, and he never gets rattled at the hospital. For several minutes after he walked away from her, he had felt his pulse jumping irregularly, as if he'd received a shock to the system.
At least she wouldn't find Max. She hadn't followed him to the hospital; surely he would have noticed. She must have showed up later. Which meant that she didn't know Max was at his parents', and never, never would she guess that Nicholas had swallowed his pride and in fact was starting to enjoy having Robert and Astrid Prescott back in his life. On the outside chance that Paige did go over
there, well, his mother certainly wouldn't let her in, not after all the pain she'd caused to Astrid's own son.
Nicholas stops at his office to pick up his suit jacket before heading home. In spite of the name on the door and the fact that he has his own secretary, it is still really Alistair's place. The art on the walls is not what Nicholas would have picked; the nautical paraphernalia like that sextant and the brass captain's wheel are not his style. He would like a forest-green office with fox-and-hound prints, a banker's shaded lamp on his desk, an overstuffed cranberry damask couch. Anything but the pale white and beige that predominate in his house--which Paige, with her predilection for color, has always hated and which, all of a sudden, Nicholas is starting to see that he doesn't like himself.
Nicholas rests his hand on the brass wheel. Maybe one day. He is doing a good job as chief of cardiac surgery; he knows that. Saget has as much as told him that if Alistair decides to cut back his schedule or retire completely, the position is Nicholas's for keeps. It is a dubious honor. Nicholas has wanted it for so long that he has slipped into the schedule naturally, joining the proper hospital committees and giving lectures to the residents and visiting surgeons. But all the extra hours and the grueling pressure to succeed keep him apart from Max and from Paige.
Nicholas shakes his head. He wants to be apart from Paige. He doesn't need her anymore; he wants her to choke on a taste of her own medicine. Setting his jaw, he pulls together the files he needs to review before tomorrow and locks his office door behind him.
At eight o'clock, there isn't much traffic on Storrow Drive, and Nicholas makes it to his parents' house in fifteen minutes. He lets himself in and steps into the hall. "Hello," he calls, listening to his echo in the cupola above. "Where are you guys?"
He wanders into the parlor, which is primarily a playroom now, but no one is there. He peeks into the library, where his father usually spends the evenings, but the room is dark and cool. Nicholas starts up the stairs, his feet falling onto the worn track of the Oriental runner. "Hello," he says again, and then he hears Max giggle.
When Max laughs, it rumbles out of his belly, and it overcomes him so thoroughly that by the time the sound bubbles up through his throat, his little shoulders are shaking and his smile is like the sun. Nicholas loves the sound, just as much as he hates Max's piercing crabby whine. He follows the giggle around the hall and into one of the extra bedrooms, the one that Astrid has redecorated into a gingham nursery. Just outside, Nicholas drops to his hands and knees, thinking to surprise Max by crouching like a tiger. "Max, Max, Maximilian," Nicholas growls, pawing his way into the half-open door.
Astrid is sitting on the only chair in the room, an oversize white rocker. Max is in the middle of the pale-blue carpeted floor, tugging at tufts of the rug with one fist. His free hand is used for balance and is propped comfortably against Paige's knee.
Although Astrid looks up, Paige doesn't seem to notice that Nicholas has crawled into the room. She reaches for Max's bare toes and pulls them one by one, the pinkie last, and then runs her fingers up the length of his leg. He squeals and giggles again, leaning back his head so that he can see her upside down. "More?" she says, and Max slaps his hands against her thighs.
Somewhere in the back of Nicholas's mind, behind the red haze, something snaps. He stares at Paige, dumbfounded that she is actually in the same room as his son. She looks impossibly young, with her red hair spilling down over her shoulders and her shirt untucked in the back, her sneakered feet just out of Max's reach. It wasn't supposed to happen this way. But Max, who wails when the UPS man comes to the door these days, has taken to Paige as if she's been there all his life, instead of only half. And Paige makes it look so easy. Nicholas remembers the nights he had to walk up and down the halls of the house, letting Max cry in his arms because he didn't know how else to put him to sleep. He even took books out of the library to learn the words to "Patty-Cake" and "Three Blind Mice." But Paige walks in from nowhere, sits down, spreads her legs in a circular playground for Max, and she's got him crowing.
Out of the blue, a vision of Paige flashes across Nicholas's mind --Paige with her hand in the Miracle Whip jar, scraping together the last of the stuff for his sandwich. It was four-thirty in the morning, and he was leaving for surgery, but she, as always, had got up to make his lunch. "Well," she said, ringing the knife against the empty jar, "we can call this one quits." And she looked around the kitchen for a dish towel and couldn't find one and wiped her hands on the soft white cotton of her angel's nightgown when she thought, incorrectly, that Nicholas wasn't looking.
Paige hasn't made his lunch since Max was born, and although he isn't about to blame a newborn or admit to jealousy, he suddenly realizes that Paige hasn't been his since Max was born. He clenches his fists in the carpet, just like Max. Paige hasn't come back here for him; she's come for Max. She probably traced Nicholas to the hospital only to make sure he wouldn't be around when she found Max. And although this shouldn't bother him, because he's pushed away all his feelings for her, it still smarts.
Nicholas takes a deep breath, waiting for brilliant anger to replace the pain. But it is slow in coming, especially when he looks at Paige, at the picture she makes with his son. He narrows his eyes and tries to remember what is familiar about this, and then he sees the connection. The way Max looks at her--as if she is a deity--is exactly the way Paige used to look at Nicholas.
Nicholas jumps to his feet and glares at his mother. "Who the hell told you to let her in here?
" he seethes.
Astrid stands calmly. "Who the hell told me not to?" she says.
Nicholas runs a hand through his hair. "For Christ's sake, Mom, I didn't think I had to spell it out. I told you she was back. You know how I feel. You know what she's done." He points to Paige, still wrapped around the baby and tickling his sides. "How do you know she isn't going to steal him away when your back is turned? How do you know she isn't going to hurt him?"
Astrid lays a hand on her son's arm. "Nicholas," she says, "do you really think she's going to do that?"
At that, Paige looks up. She stands and pulls Max up on his feet. "I just had to see him, Nicholas. I'll go now. It's not your mother's fault." She scoops Max into her embrace, and he locks his dimpled arms around her neck.
Nicholas takes a step forward, so close he can feel the warm rush of Paige's breath. "I don't want to see your car at home," he says in his quiet, steely surgeon's voice. "I'll get a restraining order."
He expects Paige to turn and slink away, intimidated, like everyone else does when he speaks that way. But she stands her ground and rubs her hands over Max's back. "It's my house too," she says quietly, "and it's my son."
Nicholas explodes. He grabs the baby so roughly, Max begins to cry. "What the hell do you think you're going to do? Take the kid the next time you decide to bolt? Or maybe you already have a plan to leave."
Paige knots her hands in front of her. "I am not going to bolt. All I want is to be let back in my house again. I'm not going to run anywhere unless I'm forced to."
Nicholas laughs, a strange sound that comes through his nose. "Right," he says. "Just like last time. Poor Paige, driven away by a twist of Fate."
In that moment, Nicholas knows he has won. "How come you have to see it like that?" Paige whispers. "How come you can't just see that I came home?" She steps back, speaking through a broken smile. "Maybe you're perfect, Nicholas, and everything you do turns out right the first time. The rest of us ordinary humans have to try over and over again and hope that we'll keep getting second chances until we figure it out." She turns and runs out of the room before a single tear falls, and Nicholas can hear the heavy oak front door pulled shut behind her.
Max fidgets in Nicholas's arms, so he sets him down on the carpet. The baby stares out the open bedroom door as if he is waiting for Paige to come back. Astrid, whom Nicholas has forgotten about, reaches down to pull the dying leaf of a potted palm out of Max's hand. When she straightens, she looks Nicholas right in the eye. "I'm ashamed of you," she says, and she walks out of the room.
Paige is at the house when Nicholas returns with Max. She sits quietly in front of the porch with her sketch pad and her charcoal.
In spite of his threat, Nicholas does not call the police. He does not even acknowledge that he sees her when he carries Max and his diaper bag and the files from the hospital into the house. From time to time that night when he is playing with Max on the living room floor he can see Paige peering in through the window, but he doesn't bother to close the drapes or to move Max into another room.
When Max has trouble falling asleep, Nicholas tries the one thing that always works. Dragging the vacuum cleaner out of the front hall closet, he sets it over the threshold of the nursery and flips the switch so that the whir of the motor drowns out the choked cries of Max's screams. Eventually Max quiets down and Nicholas pulls the vacuum away. It works because of the white noise that distracts Max, but Nicholas thinks it might be genetic. He can remember coming home from thirty-six-hour shifts, falling asleep to the hum of the vacuum as Paige cleaned the house.
Nicholas walks to the front hall and turns out the light. Then he steps to the window, knowing that he'll be able to see Paige without her being able to see him. Her face is silver in the moonlight, her hair a rich bronze glow. Puddled around her are scores of drawings: Max sitting, Max sleeping, Max rolling over. Nicholas can not see among them a single image of himself.
The wind blows a couple of the drawings up the steps of the porch. Before he can even think to stop himself, Nicholas opens the front door in time for them to fly into the hall. He picks them up --one of Max playing with a rattle, one of Max grabbing his own feet--and walks onto the porch. "I think these are yours," he says, coming to stand beside her.
Paige is on her hands and knees, trying to keep the other drawings from blowing away. She has secured a stack of them under a big rock and has pinned the rest with her elbow. "Thanks," she says, rolling awkwardly onto her side. She gathers the pictures up and stuffs them inside the front cover of her sketch pad, as if she is embarrassed. "If you want to stay out here," she says, "I can sit in the car."
Nicholas shakes his head. "It's cold," he says. "I'm going to go inside." He sees Paige draw in her breath, waiting for an invitation, but he's not about to let that happen. "You're very good with Max," he says. "He's going through this stranger thing now, and he doesn't take to just anybody."
Paige shrugs. "I think I've grown into him. This is more what I pictured when I thought of a baby--something that sits up and smiles and laughs with you, not just something that eats and sleeps and poops and completely ignores you." She peers up at him. "I think that you're the one who's very good with Max. Look at what he's turned into. He's like a whole different kid."
Nicholas thinks of many things he could say, but instead he just nods his head. "Thanks," he says. He leans against the step of the porch and stretches out his legs. "You can't stay here forever," he says.
"I hope I don't have to." Paige tilts her head back and lets the night wash over her face. "When I was in North Carolina, I slept outside with my mother." She sits up and laughs. "I actually liked it."
"I'll have to take you camping in Maine," Nicholas says.
Paige stares at him. "Yes," she says, "you'll have to."
A chill sweeps across the lawn, beading the dew and sending a shiver down Nicholas's spine. "You're going to freeze out here," he says, and he stands before he can say anything else. "I'm going to get you a coat."
He runs up the porch as if it is a refuge and pulls the first coat he can find out of the hall closet. It is a big woolen overcoat, one of his, and as he holds it out to Paige he sees it will sweep her ankles. Paige steps into the coat and pulls the lapels together. "This is nice," she says, touching Nicholas's hand.
Nicholas pulls away. "Well," he says, "I don't want you to get sick."
"No," Paige says, "I mean this." She gestures between herself and Nicholas. "Not yelling." When Nicholas does not say anything, she picks up her sketch pad and her charcoal, and as a second thought she offers a half-smile. "Give Max a kiss for me," she says.
When Nicholas steps into the safety of the house and stands in the folds of the dark hallway, he is momentarily disoriented. He has
to lean against the doorframe and let the room settle before his memory returns. Maybe he believed that at some point he'd stop playing the game and let Paige back; but he can see that isn't going to happen.
She's come for Max, only for Max, and something about that is driving him crazy. The feeling is like a fist being driven into his gut, and he knows exactly why. He still loves her. As stupid as it seems, as much as he hates her for what she has done, he can't quite stop that.
He peeks out the window and sees Paige settled in his overcoat and a sleeping bag she's borrowed from some goddamned neighbor. Part of him hates her for being given that comfort, and part of him hates himself for wanting to give her even more. With Paige, there have never been easy answers, only impulses, and Nicholas is beginning to wonder if it has all been a huge mistake. He can't keep doing this; not to himself and not to Max. There has to be a reconciliation or a clean break.
The moon slips under the front door, filling the hallway with a spectral glow. Suddenly exhausted, Nicholas pulls himself up the stairs. He will have to sleep on it. Sometimes things look different in the morning. He crawls into bed with his clothes still on and envisions Paige lying like a sacrifice beneath that stifling moon. His l
ast conscious thought is of his bypass patients, of the moment during surgery when he stops their hearts from beating. He wonders if they ever feel it.
chapter 3 5
Paige
Anna Maria Santana, whom I had never met, was born and
died on March 30, 1985. OUR FOUR HOUR ANGEL, the
tombstone reads, still fairly new among the grave markers in the Cambridge graveyard I had last walked through when I was pregnant. I do not know why I didn't notice Anna Maria's grave back then. It is tidy and trimmed, and violets grow at the edges. Someone comes here often to see their little girl.
It does not pass my notice that Anna Maria Santana died at just about the same time I conceived my first child. Suddenly I wish I had something to leave--a silver rattle or a pink teddy bear--and then I realize that both Anna Maria and my own baby would have been eight now, growing out of baby gifts and into Barbies and bicycles. I hear my mother's voice: You were stuck in my mind at five years old. Before I knew it, you were all grown up.
Something has to come to a head soon. Nicholas and I can't keep
stepping around each other, moving closer and then ripping apart as though we're following a strange tribal dance. I have not even attempted going to Mass General today, and I do not plan to go to the Prescotts' to see Max. I can't push Nicholas any more, because he is at the breaking point, but that makes me restless. I won't just sit around and let him decide my future the way I used to. But I can't make him see what I want him to see.
I am in the graveyard to clear my mind--it worked for my mother, so I hope it will work for me. But seeing Anna Maria's tombstone doesn't help much. I have told Nicholas the truth about leaving, but I still haven't really come clean. What if, when I get home, Nicholas is standing on the porch with open arms, willing to pick up where we left off? Can I let myself make the same mistakes all over again?
