by Jodi Picoult
I read a "Dear Abby" column years ago in which a man had written about having an affair with his secretary. It had been over for years, but he had never told his wife, and although they had a happy marriage, he felt he should reveal what had happened. I was surprised by Abby's answer. You're opening a can of worms, Abby wrote. What she does not know she cannot be hurt by.
I do not know how long I can wait. I would never take Max and flee in the night, like I know Nicholas is thinking. I couldn't do it to Max, and I especially couldn't do it to Nicholas. Being with Max for three months has softened him around the edges. The Nicholas I left in July would never have crept around a corner on his hands and knees, pretending to be a grizzly bear to entertain his son. But practically, I cannot keep sleeping on the front lawn. It's mid-October, and already the leaves have come off the trees. We've had a frost at night. Soon there will be snow.
I walk to Mercy, hoping to get a cup of coffee from Lionel. The first familiar face is Doris's, and she drops two blue-plate specials at a booth and comes to hug me. "Paige!" She cries into the kitchen pass-through: "Paige is back again!"
Lionel runs in front and makes a big show of sitting me at the counter on a cracked red stool. The diner is smaller than I have remembered it, and the walls are a sickly shade of yellow. If I did not know the place, I would not feel comfortable eating here. "Where's that precious baby?" Marvela says, leaning in front of me so that her earbobs sway against the edges of my hair. "You got to have pictures, at least."
I shake my head and gratefully accept the cup of coffee that Doris brings. Lionel ignores the small line that has formed by the cash register and sits down beside me. "That doctor boy of yours came in here some months back. Thought you'd up and run off, and come to us for help." Lionel stares straight at me, and the line of his jagged scar darkens with emotion. "I tell him you ain't that kind of person," he says. "I know these things."
He looks for a moment as if he is going to hug me, but then he remembers himself and hoists his frame off the neighboring stool. "What you lookin' at?" he snaps at Marvela, who is wringing her hands beside me. "We got us a business, sweet pea," he says to me, and he stomps toward the cash register.
When the waitresses and Lionel have settled back into their routines, I let myself look around. The menus haven't changed, though the prices have. They have been rewritten on tiny fluorescent stickers. The men's bathroom is still out of order, as it was the last day I had worked there. And tacked above the cash register, dangling above the counter, are all the portraits I drew of the customers.
I cannot believe Lionel hasn't thrown them out. Surely some of the people have died by now. I scan the portraits: Elma the bag lady; Hank the chemistry professor; Marvela and Doris and Marilyn Monroe; Nicholas. Nicholas. I stand up, and then I crawl onto the countertop to get a closer look. I crouch with my hands pressed against Nicholas's portrait, feeling the stares of the customers. Lionel and Marvela and Doris, true friends, pretend they do not notice.
I remember this one very well. In the background I had drawn the face of a little boy, sitting in a twisted tree and holding the sun. At first I thought I'd drawn my favorite Irish legend, the one about Cuchulainn leaving the sun god's palace when his mother went home to her original husband. I did not understand why I would have drawn this particular scene, something from my own childhood, on Nicholas's portrait, but I thought it had something to do with my running away. I had stared at the drawing, and I imagined my father telling me the story while he smoked a bayberry pipe. At the time, I could easily see my father's hands, studded with glue and bits of twine from his workshop, waving in the air as he mimicked the passage of Cuchulainn back to ordinary earth. I wondered if Cuchulainn missed that other life.
Months afterward, when Nicholas and I were sitting in the diner and looking at his portrait, I told him the story of Dechtire and the sun god. He laughed. When I'd drawn it he had seen something completely different in the picture. He said he'd never even heard of Cuchulainn, but that as a kid he believed that if he climbed high enough he could truly catch the sun. I guess, he said, in a way, we all do.
I unlock the house and spend a full hour pulling dirty socks and Onesies and fuzzy blanket sleepers from unimaginable places: the microwave, the wine rack, a soup tureen. When I have gathered a pile of laundry, I start a wash. In the meantime I dust the living room and the bedroom and scrub the white counters in the bathroom. I scour the toilet and vacuum the skin-colored rugs and try my best to get the jelly stains off the ivory tiles in the kitchen. I change the sheets on the bed and the ones in Max's crib, and I empty his diaper pail and spray perfume into the carpet so that some of the smell is masked. All the while, the TV is on, tuned to the soap operas I watched when my mother's ankle was first broken. I tell Devon to leave her husband and I cry when Alana's baby is stillborn and I watch, riveted, a love scene between a rich girl named Leda and Spider, a street-smart hustler. I am just setting the table for two when the telephone rings, and out of force of habit, I pick it up.
"Paige," the voice says. "I can't tell you how glad I am to find you."
"It's not what you think," I say, hedging, while I try to figure out who is on the other end.
"Aren't you coming to see Max? He's been waiting all day." Astrid. Who else would call? I don't have any friends in this city. "I--I don't know," I say. "I'm cleaning the house."
"Nicholas didn't say that you'd moved back in," she says. "I haven't."
"Paige," Astrid says, her voice as sharp as the edges of her black-and-white stills. "We need to have a little talk."
She is waiting for me at the front door with Max. He's dressed in Osh-Kosh overalls and is wearing the tiniest Nike sneakers I have ever seen. "Imelda has coffee waiting for us in the parlor," she says, handing Max over to me. She turns and walks into the imposing hall, expecting me to follow.
The parlor, just a room full of toys now, is much less intimidating than it was the first time I was there with Nicholas. If the rocking horse and the Porta-Crib had been there eight years ago, I wonder if things would have turned out this way. I set Max down on the floor, and he immediately gets onto his hands and his knees, rocking back and forth. "Look," I say, breathless. "He's going to crawl!"
Astrid hands me a cup and saucer. "Not to burst your bubble, but he's been doing that for two weeks. He can't seem to figure out the coordination." I watch Max bounce for a while; I accept cream and sugar. "I have a proposition for you," Astrid says.
I look up, a little afraid. "I don't know," I say.
Astrid smiles. "You haven't even heard it yet." She moves a fraction of an inch closer to me. "Listen. It's freezing these nights, and I know you can't stay much longer on your lawn. God only knows how long it's going to take my stubborn son to come to his senses. I want you to move in here. Robert and I have discussed it; we have more rooms than a small hotel. Now, out of deference to Nicholas, I'll have to ask you to leave during the day, so that Max is still in my care--he's a bit uptight about you being around him, as you've probably noticed. But I don't see why every now and then you and I and Max might not just cross paths."
I gape at Astrid, my mouth hanging open. This woman is offering me a gift. "I don't know what to say," I murmur, tugging my gaze away to rest on Max on the floor. A million things are running through my mind: There has to be a catch. She's worked something out with Nicholas, something to prove that I'm an unfit mother, something to keep me even further away from Max. Or else she wants something in return. But what could I possibly give her?
"I know what you're thinking," Astrid says. "Robert and I owe you. I was wrong in believing that you and Nicholas shouldn't be married. You're just what Nicholas needs, even if he's too stupid to realize it himself. He'll come around."
"I'm not what Nicholas needs," I say, still looking at Max.
Astrid leans forward so that her face is inches from mine and I am forced to turn to her. "You listen to me, Paige. Do you know what my first reaction was when Nicholas told me
you'd left? I thought, Hallelujah! I didn't think you had it in you. When Nicholas brought you here originally, it wasn't your past or your life-style that I objected to. I won't speak for Robert, although he's far beyond that now. I wanted someone for Nicholas who had determination and tenacity--someone with a little bit of pluck. It rubs off, you know. But all I saw when I first looked at you was someone who idolized him, someone who tagged at his heels like a puppy and was willing to put her whole life in his hands. I didn't think you had the gumption to stand up in the wind, much less in a marriage. But he's had you running around for years at his beck and call, and finally you've given him a reason for pause. What you've gone through is not, in the long run, a tragedy--just a hiccup. You both will survive, and there will be two or three other little Maxes and a string of graduations and weddings and grandchildren. You're a fighter, every bit as much as Nicholas. I'd say, actually, that you're a very even match." She puts down her coffee cup and takes mine too. "Imelda is making up the room," she says. "Shall we go take a look?"
Astrid stands, but I do not. I knot my hands together in my lap and wonder if this is really what I want to do. It's going to make Nicholas furious. It's going to backfire in my face.
Max is making loud slurping noises and chewing on something that looks like a card. "Hey," I say, pulling it out of his hand. "Should you have this thing?" I wipe off the saliva and hand Max a different toy. Then I notice what I am holding. It is a key ring that holds three laminated photographs, eight-by-ten glossies. I know they are Astrid's work. The first is a picture of Nicholas giving his half-smile, his mind miles away. The second is a picture of Max taken about two months ago. I find myself staring at it greedily, drinking in the subtle changes that I have missed. Then I flip to the last card. It is a picture of me, fairly recent, although I don't know how Astrid could have taken it. I am sitting at an outdoor cafe at Faneuil Hall. I may even have been pregnant. I have a distant look in my eyes, and I know that even then I was plotting my escape.
"Mama," Max says, reaching for the card that I hold. On the back, written in permanent marker in Astrid's handwriting, is the word he's just spoken.
Imelda is just smoothing the bedspread when Astrid leads me into what will be my room. "Senora Paige," she says, smiling at me and then at Max when he grabs her long, dark braid. "This one, he has a bit of the devil in him," she says.
"I know," I say. "It comes from his father's side of the family."
Astrid laughs and opens an armoire. "You can keep your things here," she says, and I nod and look around. The room is simple by Prescott standards. It is furnished with a pale-peach sofa and a canopy bed; its sheets are the shades of a rainy Arizona sunset. The floor-length window curtains are Alencon lace, held back by brass pineapples. The mirror is an antique cheval glass and matches the armoire. "Is this all right?" Astrid asks.
I sink down on the bed and place Max next to me, rubbing his belly. I will miss the wet stars and the hydrangeas, but this will be just fine. I nod at her, and then I shyly stand and pass her the baby. "I think these were your terms," I say quietly. "I'll be back later."
"Come for supper," Astrid says. "I know Robert will want to see you."
She follows me down the steps and leads me to the front door. Max whimpers and reaches out when I start to leave, and she gives him to me for a moment. I trace the whorl of hair on the back of
Max's head and squeeze the spare flesh of his upper arms. "Why are you on my side?" I ask.
Astrid smiles. In the fading light, in just that instant, she reminds me of my mother. Astrid takes back my baby. "Why shouldn't I be?" she says.
"Robert," Astrid Prescott says as we walk into the dining room, "you remember Paige."
Robert Prescott folds his newspaper and his reading glasses and stands up from his seat. I hold out my hand, but he ignores it and, after a moment's hesitation, sweeps me into his arms. "Thank you," he says.
"For what?" I whisper, unsure of what I've done now.
"For that kid," he tells me, and he smiles. I realize that in all the time I was taking care of Max, those were words Nicholas never said.
I sit down, but I am too nervous to eat the soup or the salad that Imelda brings from the kitchen. Robert sits at one end of the enormous table, Astrid at the other, and I am somewhere in between. There is an empty place setting across from me, and I stare at it anxiously. "It's just for balance," Astrid says when she sees me looking. "Don't worry."
Nicholas has already come for Max. He has a twenty-four-hour shift coming up and wanted to get to sleep early, according to Astrid. Usually during dinner, Max sits in a high chair next to Robert, who feeds him pieces of Parker House rolls.
"Nicholas hasn't told us very much about your trip," Robert says, making it sound as if I've been on the QE2 for a holiday.
I swallow hard and wonder how much I can say without incriminating myself. After all, these are Nicholas's parents, however nice they are being. "I don't know if Nicholas ever told you," I say hesitantly. "I grew up without my mother. She left us when I was five, and somehow, when I wasn't doing a very good job taking care of Max, I figured if I could find her I'd automatically know how to do it all right."
Astrid clucks. "You did a fine job," she says. "In fact, you did all the hard work. You nursed, didn't you? Yes, I remember Nicholas found that out the hard way when Max was weaned in a day. We never bothered when you all were children. In our circles, nursing wasn't the proper thing to do."
Robert turns away and picks up the thread of the conversation. "Ignore Astrid," he says, smiling. "She sometimes spends weeks and months in huts without any other humans. She has a lot of practice talking only to herself."
"And sometimes," Astrid says pleasantly from the other end of the table, "I go away and I can't tell the difference between talking to myself and dinner conversation with you." She stands and walks toward Robert. She leans over him until he turns toward her. "Have I told you today that I love you?" she says, kissing his forehead.
"No, as a matter of fact," Robert says.
"Ah." Astrid pats his cheek. "So you have been listening." She looks up at me and grins. "I'm going to see what's happened to our steak."
It turns out that Robert Prescott actually knows of Donegal, my mother's horse. Well, not really of Donegal, but of his sire, the one with bloodlines to Seattle Slew. "She does this all by herself?" he asks.
"She rents space from a larger farm, and she has some kid come in to help her muck stalls," I say. "It's a beautiful place. So much green, and there are the mountains right behind her--it's a nice place to live."
"But you didn't stay," Robert points out. "No," I say. "I didn't."
At that moment, when the conversation is starting to fit a little too tightly around me, Astrid comes back through the swinging door to the kitchen. "Another five minutes," she says. "Would you believe that after twenty years of living with us, Imelda still doesn't know that you like your steak burned to a crisp?"
"Well done," Robert says.
"Yes," Astrid says, laughing. "I am good, aren't I?"
Watching them, I feel my stomach tighten. I would never have expected this kind of warmth to exist between Nicholas's parents, and it makes me realize what I missed as a child. My father wouldn't remember how my mother prefers her steak; my mother couldn't tell you my father's favorite color or breakfast cereal. I had never seen my mother stand behind my father in the kitchen to kiss him upside down. I had never seen the jigsaw puzzle their hands made when they fit together, like Robert's and Astrid's, as if they'd been cut for each other.
The night that Nicholas asked me to marry him at Mercy, I did not really know him at all. I knew that I wanted his attention. I knew that he commanded respect wherever he went. I knew that he had eyes that took my breath away, the shifting color of the sea. I said yes because I thought he'd be able to help me forget, about Jake, and the baby, and my mother, and Chicago. And in the long run I had blamed him because he lived up to all my expectations, making me
forget about my old self so well that I panicked and ran again.
I said yes to Nicholas, but I did not know that I really wanted to marry him until the night we ran out of his parents' house after the argument about the marriage. That was the first time I noticed that in addition to my needing Nicholas, Nicholas needed me. Somehow I'd always just pictured him as the hero, the accessory to my plan. But that night, Nicholas had wavered beneath his father's words and turned his back on his family. Suddenly the man who had the world wrapped around his little finger found himself in absolutely unfamiliar territory. And to my surprise, it turned out to be a road I had traveled. For the first time in my life, someone needed my experience. It made me feel the way nothing ever had before.
That wasn't something that went away easily.
As I watch Astrid and Robert for the remainder of the meal, I think of all the things I know about Nicholas. I know that he absolutely will not eat squid or snails or mussels or apricot jam. I know that he sleeps on the right side of the bed and that no matter what precautions I take, the top sheet always becomes untucked on his side. I know that he won't come within a mile of a martini. I know that he folds his boxer shorts in half to fit into his dresser. I know that he can smell the rain a day before it comes, that he can sense snow by the color of the sky. I know that nobody else will ever know him as I do.
I also know that there are many facts Nicholas can list about me and still the most important truths will be missing.
Bless me, Nicholas, for I have sinned. The words run through my mind with every footstep that leads me out of the Prescotts' house. I drive down the streets of Brookline and make familiar turns to our own house. For the last half mile I turn off the headlights and let the moon cut my path, wishing not to be seen.
I have not been to confession in eight and a half years. This makes me smile--how many rosaries would Father Draher pin on me to absolve me of my sins if it were him I was turning to instead of Nicholas?
