Harvesting the Heart

by Jodi Picoult

  My first confession was in fourth grade. We had been coached by the nuns, and we waited in line, saying our act of contrition before going into the confessional. The chamber was tiny and brown and gave me the sinking sense that the walls were coming in around me. I could hear the breathing of Father Draher, coming through the latticed metal that separated us. That first time, I said that I had taken the Lord's name in vain and that I had fought with Mary Margaret Riordan over who would get the last chocolate milk in the cafeteria. But when Father Draher didn't say anything, I began to make up sins: I had cheated on a spelling quiz; I had lied to my father; I had had an impure thought. At that last one Father Draher coughed, and I did not know why at the time, since I hadn't any idea what an impure thought was--it was a phrase I'd heard in a TV movie. "For your penance," he said, "say one Our Father and three Hail Marys." And that was that; I was starting with a clean slate.

  How many years has it been since I have had to make up sins? How many years since I realized that an endless number of rosaries can't take away the guilt?

  The lights are all off at the house, even in Nicholas's study. Then

  I remember what Astrid said. He is trying to get a good night's sleep. I feel a pang of conscience: maybe this would be better done some other time. But I don't want to put it off anymore.

  I stub my toe on Max's walker, which is stuffed into the corner of the hallway. Soundlessly I move up the s'tairs and tiptoe past the nursery to the door of our bedroom. It is ajar: Nicholas will be able to hear Max if he cries.

  This is what I have planned: I will sit on the edge of the bed and fold my hands in my lap and poke Nicholas so that he wakes up. I will tell him everything he should have known from the start, and I will say that I couldn't let it go any longer and that I'll leave him now to think about it. And I'll pray for kindness the whole way home.

  I am betting it all on one turn, I know that. But I don't see any other way out. Which is why when I creep into the bedroom and see Nicholas, half naked and wrapped in our pale-blue comforter, I don't just sit on the edge of the bed. I can't do that. If things don't work out for the best, at least I'll be able to know where his heart lies.

  I kneel beside the bed and tangle my fingers in the thick sheaf of Nicholas's hair. I put my other hand on his shoulder, amazed at how warm his skin is to the touch. I slip my hand down to his chest and feel the hair spring against my palm. Nicholas groans and stretches, rolling over on his side. His arm falls across my own.

  Moving very slowly, I touch my fingertips to his eyebrows, his cheekbones, his mouth. I lean forward until I can feel his breath on my eyelids. Then I inch closer until my lips brush his. I kiss him until he begins kissing me back, and before I can step away he wraps his arms around me and pulls me to him. His eyes fly open, but he does not seem surprised to find me there. "You cleaned my house," he whispers.

  "Our house," I say. His hands are hot against me. I stiffen and pull away, sitting back on my heels.

  "It's okay," Nicholas murmurs, propping himself against his pillows. "We're already married." He looks at me sideways and gives me a lazy smile. "I could get used to this," he says. "You sneaking into my bed."

  I stand up and catch my reflection in the mirror. Then I rub my palms on the legs of my jeans and sit gingerly on the edge of the bed. I wrap my arms close, hugging myself tight. Nicholas sits next to me and slides an arm around my waist. "What's the matter?" he whispers. "You look like you've seen a ghost."

  I shrug his hand away. "Don't touch me," I say. "You aren't going to want to touch me." I turn and sit cross-legged opposite him. Over his shoulder, I watch myself in the mirror. "Nicholas," I say, seeing my own lips move over words I never wanted to hear. "I had an abortion."

  His back stiffens, and then his face sets, and finally he seems to be able to exhale. "You what?" he says. He moves closer, and the rage that darkens his features terrifies me. I wonder if he will grab me by the throat. "Is that where you were for three months? Getting rid of my child?"

  I shake my head. "It happened before I met you," I say. "It wasn't your child."

  I watch expressions flicker across his face as he remembers. Finally, he shakes his head. "You were a virgin," he says. "That's what you told me."

  "I never told you anything," I say quietly. "That's what you wanted to believe." I hold my breath and tell myself that maybe it won't make a difference; after all, Nicholas had been living with his other girlfriend before he decided to marry me, and these days very few women come to marriage untouched. But then again, not all women are Nicholas's wife.

  "You're Catholic," he says, trying to fit the pieces together. I nod. "That's why you left Chicago," he says.

  "And that's why," I add softly, "I left Max. The day that I went--the day he fell off the couch and got that nosebleed--I figured I had to be the worst mother around. I had killed my first child; I had hurt my second. I figured no mother was better than someone like me."

  Nicholas stands up, and I see in his eyes something I've never seen before. "You may be right about that," he says, speaking so loud I think the baby will wake. He grabs me by the shoulders and shakes

  me violently, so hard that my neck wrenches and I cannot see straight.

  "Get out of my house," he says, "and do not come back.

  What else do you want to get off your chest? Are you wanted for a murder rap? Are you hiding a lover in the closet?" He lets go of my arms, and even in the dark I can see the ten perfect bruises left by his clenched fingers, still glowing with his pain.

  He sinks onto the edge of the bed as if his weight has suddenly become too much for him to bear. He bends down and holds his face in his hands. I want to touch him, to take away the ache. Looking at him, I wish I had never spoken. I reach out my hand, but Nicholas flinches before my skin brushes his. Ego te absolvo. "Forgive me," I say.

  He takes the words like a brutal blow. When he lifts his head, his eyes are red-rimmed and brimming with fury. He stares at me, seeing me for what I really am. "God damn you," he says.

  chapter 36

  Nicholas

  their sleeping resident dorm adviser. They were put on probation for a year and then had gone their separate ways. When Nicholas entered Harvard Med, Oakie entered Harvard Law, and years before Nicholas had ever done surgery, Oakie was already an associate at a Boston law firm.

  Nicholas takes a sip of his lemon water and tries to find the slightest resemblance between the Oakie he knew and the matrimonial attorney who sits across from him at the restaurant table. He was the one to call and ask about a lunch date, and Oakie, over the phone, said, "Hell, yeah," and penciled him in that afternoon. Nicholas thinks about Harvard and its connections. He watches the cool confidence of his old roommate as he settles his napkin on his lap, the

  shifting indifference of his eyes. "It's great to see you, Nicholas," Oakie says. "Amazing, isn't it, how you work in the same town and still never get the chance to see your old friends."

  Nicholas smiles and nods. He does not consider Oakie Peterborough an old friend; he hasn't since he was nineteen and found him with a hand down Nicholas's own girlfriend's pants. "I'm hoping you can give me some answers," Nicholas says. "You practice family law, don't you?"

  Oakie sighs and leans back. "Family law--what a crock. What I do doesn't keep families together. Sort of a contradiction in terms." He stares at Nicholas, and his eyes widen in realization. "You don't mean for yourself," he says.

  Nicholas nods, and a muscle jumps at his jaw. "I want to find out about getting a divorce." Nicholas has lost a lot of sleep over this and has come to a decision with blinding clarity. He doesn't give a damn what it costs him, as long as he gets Paige out of his life and gets to keep Max. He is angry at himself for letting down his guard when Paige came into the bedroom last night. Her touch, the lilac smell of her skin--for a moment he was lost in the past, pretending she'd never left. He almost forgave the past three months. And then she told him the one thing he would never forget.<
br />
  He starts shaking when he thinks of another man's hands on her body, another man's child in her womb, but he believes that with time the shock will pass. It's not really the abortion that upsets him. As a doctor, Nicholas spends so much time and effort saving lives that he can't personally support the decision to have an abortion, although he understands the motives of the pro-choice camp. No, what unnerves him is the secrecy. Even if he could listen to Paige's reasons for terminating a pregnancy, he couldn't understand hiding something like that from one's own husband. He had a right to know. It might have been her body, but it was their shared past. And in eight years, she never thought enough of him to mention the truth.

  Nicholas spent the early morning trying to push from his mind the image of Paige begging for mercy. She had been shadowed by the mirror, so that there were two of her, her words and actions mocking her like a clown's silhouette. She had looked so fragile that Nicholas couldn't help but think of the wispy heads of dried dandelions, vulnerable to a breath. One word from him, and he knew she would fall apart.

  But Nicholas had enough anger pulsing through his blood to block out any residual feelings. He was going to beat her at her own game, taking Max before she could use the poor kid to absolve her of guilt. He was going to get a divorce and drive her as far from him as possible, and maybe in five, in ten years, he wouldn't see her face every time he looked at his son.

  Oakie Peterborough blots his meaty lips with his napkin and takes a deep breath. "Look," he says, "I'm a lawyer, but I'm also your friend. You ought to know what you're getting into."

  Nicholas stares him down. "Just tell me what I have to do."

  Oakie exhales, a sick sound like that of an overboiled kettle. "Well, Massachusetts is a state that permits fault in divorce cases. That means you don't have to prove fault to get a divorce, but if you can, the property and assets will be divided accordingly."

  "She abandoned me," Nicholas interrupts. "And she lied for eight years."

  Oakie rubs his hands together. "Was she gone for more than two years?" Nicholas shakes his head. "She wasn't the primary breadwinner, was she?" Nicholas snorts and throws his napkin on the table. Oakie purses his lips. "Well, then it's not desertion--at least not legally. And lying . . . I'm not sure about lying. Usually, just cause for fault is things like excessive drinking, beating, adultery."

  "I wouldn't be surprised," Nicholas mutters.

  Oakie does not hear him. "Fault would not include a change of religion, say, or moving out of the house."

  "She didn't move," Nicholas clarifies. "She left." He stares up at Oakie. "How long is this going to take?"

  "I can't know yet," he says. "It depends on whether we can find grounds. If not, you get a separation agreement, and a year later it can be finalized into a divorce."

  "A year," Nicholas yells. "I can't wait a year, Oakie. She's going to do something crazy. She just up and left three months ago, remember--she's going to take my kid and run."

  "A kid," Oakie says softly. "You didn't say there was a kid."

  When Nicholas leaves the restaurant, he is seething. What he has learned is that although courts no longer assume that a woman should have custody, Max will go wherever his best interests lie. With Nicholas working so many hours a day, there is no guarantee of custody. He has learned that since Paige supported him through medical school, she is entitled to a portion of his future earnings. He has learned that this procedure will take much longer than he ever thought possible.

  Oakie has tried to talk him out of it, but Nicholas is certain he has no choice. He cannot even think about Paige without feeling his spine stiffen or his fingers turn to ice. He cannot stand knowing that he has been played for a fool.

  He walks into Mass General and ignores everyone who says hello to him. When he reaches his office, he shuts and locks the door behind him. With a sweep of his arm, he clears all the files off his desk. The one that lands on top of the pile on the floor is Hugo Albert's. That morning's surgery. It was also, he noted from the patient history, Hugo Albert's golden wedding anniversary. When he told Esther Albert that her husband was doing well, she cried and thanked Nicholas over and over, said that he would always be in her prayers.

  He puts his head down on the desk and closes his eyes. He wishes he had his father's private practice, or that the association with surgical patients lasted as long as it does in internal medicine. It is too hard to deal with such intense relationships for such a short period of time and then move on to another patient. But Nicholas is starting to see that this is his lot in life.

  With fierce self-control, he opens the top drawer and takes out a piece of the Mass General stationery that now bears his name. "Oakie wants a list," he mutters, "I'll give him a list." He starts to write down all the things that he and Paige own. The house. The cars. The mountain bikes and the canoe. The barbecue and the patio furniture and the white leather couch and the king-size bed. It is the same bed they had in the old apartment; it had too much of a history to justify replacement. Nicholas and Paige had ordered the handcrafted bed on the understanding that it would be theirs by the end of the week. But it was delayed, and they slept on a mattress on the floor for months. The bed had been burned in a warehouse fire and had to be built all over again. "Do you think," Paige said one night, curled against him, "God is trying to tell us this was all a mistake?"

  When Nicholas runs out of possessions, he takes a blank sheet of paper and writes his name at the top left and Paige's name at the top right. Then he makes a grid. date of birth, place of birth, education. length of marriage. He can fill it all in easily, but he is shocked at how much space his own schooling takes up and how little is written in Paige's column. He looks at the length of marriage and does not write anything.

  If she had married that guy, would she have had the child?

  Nicholas pushes away the papers, which suddenly feel heavy enough to threaten the balance of the desk. He leans his head back in the swivel chair and stares at the clouds manufactured by the hospital smokestacks, but all he sees are the lines of Paige's wounded face. He blinks, but the image does not clear. He half expects that if he whispers her name, she will answer. He thinks he must be going crazy.

  He wonders if she loved this other guy, and why the question, still unspoken, makes him feel as if he will be sick.

  When he turns the chair around, his mother is standing in front of the desk. "Nicholas," she says, "I've brought you a present." She holds a large, flat, paper-wrapped square. Even before he pulls at the string, Nicholas knows it is a framed photograph. "It's for your office," she says. "I've been working on it for weeks."

  "It isn't my office," Nicholas says. "I can't really hang anything up." But even as he is speaking, he finds himself staring at the photograph. It is a pliant willow tree on the shore of a lake, bent into an inverted U by an angry wind. Everything in the background is one shade or another of purple; the tree itself is molten red, as if it is burning at the core.

  Astrid comes to his side of the desk and stands at his shoulder. "Striking, isn't it?" she says. "It's all in the lighting." She glances at the papers on Nicholas's desk, pretending not to notice what they say.

  Nicholas runs his fingers across his mother's signature, carved at the bottom. "Very nice," he says. "Thanks."

  Astrid sits on the edge of the desk. "I didn't come just to give you the photograph, Nicholas; I'm here to tell you something you aren't going to like," she says. "Paige has moved in with us."

  Nicholas stares at her as if she has stated that his father was really a gypsy or that his medical diploma is a fraud. "You've got to be kidding," he says. "You can't do this to me."

  "As a matter of fact, Nicholas," Astrid says, standing and pacing the room, "you have very little say as to what we do in our own house. Paige is a lovely girl--better to realize it late than never, I think--and she's a charming guest. Imelda says she even makes her own bed. Imagine."

  Nicholas's fingers itch; he has a savage urge to strike out
or to strangle. "If she lays a hand on Max--"

  "I've already taken care of it," Astrid says. "She's agreed to leave the house during the day while I've got Max. She only comes back to sleep, since a car or a front lawn isn't really suitable."

  Nicholas thinks that maybe he will remember this moment forever: the wrinkled empty smile of his mother; the flickering track light overhead; the scrape of wheels as something is rolled by the door. This, he will say to himself in years to come, was the moment my life fell apart. "Paige isn't what you think she is," he says bitterly.

  Astrid walks to the far side of the office as if she hasn't heard him. She removes a yellowed nautical map from the wall, smoothing her fingers over the glass and tracing the whorls of eddies and currents. "I'm thinking about right here," she says. "You'll see it every time you look up." She crosses the room to put the old frame on the desk and picks up the picture of the willow. "You know," she says casually, reaching up on her toes to hang the picture correctly, "your father and I almost got a divorce. I think you remember her--she was a hematologist. I knew about it, and I fought him every step of the way, trying to be very difficult and spilling drinks on him to make a scene and threatening once or twice to run away with you. I thought that being quiet about the whole thing was the biggest mistake I could make, because then he'd think I was weak and he could walk all over me. And then one day I realized that I would have much more power if I decided to be the one to yield." Astrid straightens the picture and steps back. "There. What do you think?"

  Nicholas's eyes are slitted, dark and angry. "I want you to throw Paige out of the house, and if she comes within a hundred feet of Max, I swear to God I'll have you brought up on charges. I want you to get out of my office and call me later and apologize profusely for butting into my life. I want you to put back that goddamned ocean map and leave me alone."

  "Really, Nicholas," Astrid says lightly, although every muscle in her body is quivering. She has never seen him like this. "The way you're acting, I wouldn't recognize you as my son." She picks up the sailing chart and hooks it on the wall again, but she does not turn around.