Jodi Picoult - Harvesting the Heart

Nicholas mutters something under his breath and turns the key in the doorknob. “Paige,” Elliot Saget says to me, “the hospital’s communications director would like very much to talk to you about your artwork. Her name is Nancy Bianna, and she asked me to tell you to stop by when you aren’t busy.” He smiles then, and I know immediately that I can trust him if need be. “Nicholas,” he says into the open doorway. He nods and then he lopes away down the hall.

Nicholas bends over, trying to touch his fingers to his toes. It helps his back; I’ve seen him do it before, after a very long day on his feet. When he looks up and sees that I am still here, he grimaces. He crosses to the door and rips off the two pictures I’ve drawn, crumples them into a ball, and tosses them into the garbage.

“You don’t have to do that,” I say, angry. The pictures-however simple they are-are my work. I hate watching my work be destroyed. “If you don’t want yours, well, fine. But maybe Mr. Olsen would like to see his portrait.”

Nicholas’s eyes darken, and his fingers tighten on the doorknob. “This isn’t a garden party, Paige. Mr. Olsen died twenty minutes ago on the opery. ñ€†ating table. Maybe now,” he says quietly, “you can leave me alone.”

It takes me forty minutes to get back to the Prescotts’, and when I do I am still shaking. I pull off my jacket and sag against a highboy, which jabs into my ribs. Wincing, I move away and stare at myself in an antique mirror. For the past week, no matter where I am, I’ve been uncomfortable. And deep down I know this has nothing to do with the sharp edges of the furniture, or with any other piece of decor. It’s just that the cool hospital and the elegant Prescott mansion are not places where I feel at home.

Nicholas is right. I don’t understand his life. I don’t know the things that everyone else takes for granted, like how to read a doctor’s mood after surgery, or which side to lean to when Imelda takes the dishes away. I’m killing myself to be part of a world where I’m always two steps behind.

A door opens, and classical music floods the hallway. Robert holds Max, letting him chew on the plastic CD case. I give my best smile, but I am still shivering. My father-in-law steps forward and narrows his eyes. “What’s happened to you?” he asks.

The whole day, this past month, all of it crowds and chokes in my throat. The last person in the world I want to break down in front of is Robert Prescott, but still, I start to cry. “Nicholas,” I sob.

Robert frowns. “Never did learn to pick on someone his own size,” he says. He takes my elbow and guides me into his study, a dark room that makes me think of fox hunts and stiff British lords. “Sit down and unwind,” he says. He settles into a huge leather chair and sets Max on the top of his desk to play with brass paperweights.

I lean back against the burgundy couch and obediently close my eyes, but I feel too conspicuously out of place to unwind. A crystal brandy decanter rests on a mahogany table beneath the frozen smile of a mounted buck. A set of dueling pistols, just for show, are crossed above the arch of the door. This room-dear God, this whole house -is like something straight out of a novel.

Real people do not live like this, surrounded by thousands of volumes of books and ancient paintings of pale women and thick silver varsity mugs. Real people do not take tea as seriously as if it were Communion. Real people do not make five-figure donations to the Republican party-

“Do you like Handel?”

At the sound of Robert’s voice, my eyes fly open and every muscle in my body goes on the alert. I stare at him carefully, wondering if this is a test, a trap set for me so I’ll slip up and show how little I understand. “I don’t know,” I say bitterly. “Should I?” I wait to see his eyes flare, or his mouth tighten, and when it doesn’t, the fight goes out of me. It’s your own fault, Paige, I think. He’s only trying to be nice. “I’m sorry,” I say. “I haven’t had a very good day. I didn’t mean to snap at you. It’s just that when I was growing up, the only antique we had was my father’s family Bible, and the music we listened to had words.” I smile hesitantly. “This kind of life takes a little getting used to, although you couldn’t really undey wñ€†rstand that-”

I break off, recalling what Nicholas told me years ago about his father, what I’d forgotten when I’d seen Robert, and all his trappings, again. Something flickers across his eyes-regret, or maybe relief-but just as quickly, it disappears. I stare at him, fascinated. I wonder how he could have come from my kind of background but still know, so easily, the right way to move and to act in a house like this.

“So Nicholas told you,” Robert says, and he doesn’t sound disappointed or furious; it’s simply a statement of fact.

Suddenly I remember what had tugged at the corner of my mind when Nicholas said his father had grown up poor. Robert Prescott was the one who had objected to Nicholas’s marrying me. Not Astrid-which I could understand-but Robert. He had been the one to drive Nicholas away. He had been the one who said Nicholas would be ruining his life.

I tell myself I’m not angry anymore, just curious. But I pick Max up anyway, taking him away from my father-in-law. “How could you?” I whisper.

Robert leans forward, resting his elbows on the desk. “I worked so hard for this. All of this.” He gestures, sweeping his hands in the directions of the four walls. “I could never stand the thought of someone throwing it all away. Not Astrid, and especially not Nicholas.”

Max squirms, and I set him down on the floor. “Nicholas didn’t have to throw it all away,” I point out. “You could have paid for his education.”

Robert shakes his head. “It wouldn’t have been the same. Eventually you’d have held him back. You could never move in these circles, Paige. You wouldn’t be comfortable living like this.”

It isn’t the truth that stings; it is hearing Robert Prescott, once again, decide what is best for me. I curl my hands into fists. “How the hell can you be so sure?”

“Because I’m not,” he says quietly. Shocked, I sink back into the couch. I stare at Robert’s cashmere sweater, his neat white hair, the pride gracing his jaw. But I also notice that his hands are clenched tight together and that a pulse beats fast at the base of his neck. He’s terrified, I think. He’s as scared of me as I’ve been of him.

I think about this for a moment, and about why he is telling me something it obviously hurts him to discuss. I remember something my mother said in North Carolina when I asked her why she had never come back. “You make your own bed,” she told me. “You have to lie in it.”

I smile gently and sweep Max off the floor. I hand him to his grandfather. “I’ll change for dinner,” I say, and I start toward the hall.

Robert’s voice stops me. His words trip over Handel’s sweet violins and reaching flutes. “It’s worth it,” he says quietly. “I would do it all over again.”

I do not turn around. “Why?”

“Why would you?” he says, and his question follows me up the stairs and slips into the cool quiet of my room. It demands an answer, and it knocks me off center.

Nicholas.

Sometimes I sing Max to sleep. It doesn’t seem to matter what I sing-gospel or pop, Dire Straits or the Beatles. I usually skip the lullabies, because I figure Max will hear those from everyone else.