Jodi Picoult - Harvesting the Heart

When I was little, my father wanted me to call him Da, like every little girl in Ireland. But I had grown up American, calling him Daddy and then Dad when I got older. I wondered what my child would call Nicholas, would call me. This is what I was thinking about when I called my father-ironically, from the same underground pay phone I had first used when I got to Cambridge. The bus station was cold, deserted. “Da,” I said, on purpose, “I miss you.”

My father’s voice changed, the way it always did when he realized it was me on the phone. “Paige, lass,” he said. “Twice in one week! There must be some occasion.”

I wondered why it was so hard to say. I wondered why I hadn’t told him before. “I’m having a baby,” I said.

“A baby?” My father’s grin filled the spaces between his words. “A grandchild. Well, now, that is an occasion.”

“I’m due in May,” I said. “Right around Mother’s Day.”

My father barely skipped a beat. “That’s fittin’,” he said. He laughed, deep. “I take it you’ve known for a while,” he said, “or else I did a poor job teachin’ you the birds and the bees.”

“I’ve known,” I admitted. “I just figured-I don’t know-I’d have more time.” I had a crazy impulse to tell him everything I’d carefully hidden for years; the circumstances I sensed he knew about anyway. The words were right there at the back of my throat, so deceptively casual: You remember that night I left your home? I swallowed hard and forced my mind into the present. “I guess I’m still getting used to the idea myself,” I said. “Nicholas and I didn’t expect this, and, well, he’s thrilled, but I… I just need a little more time.”

Miles away, my father exhaled slowly, as if he were remembering, out of the blue, everything I hadn’t had the courage to say. “Don’t we all,” he sighed.

By the time I reached the neighborhood where Nicholas and I lived, the sun had set. I moved through the streets, quiet as a cat. I peeked into the lit windows of town houses and tried to catch the warmth and the dinnertime smell that they held. Because I misjudged my size, I slipped against a hedge and fell flush against a mailbox, which was lolling open like a blackened tongue. On the top of a pile of letters was a pink envelope with no return address. It was made out to Alexander LaRue, 20 Appleton Lane, Cambridge. The handwriting was sloped and gentle, somewhat European. Without a second thought, I looked up and down the street and tucked the letter into my coat.

I had committed a federal offense. I did not know Alexander LaRue, and I did not plan to give him back his letter. My heart pounded as I walked as quickly as possible down the block; my face flushed scarlet. What was I doing?

I flew up the porch steps and slammed the door behind me, locking both locks. I shrugged off my coat and pulled off my boots. My heart choked at the back of my throat. With trembling fingers, I slit the envelope open. There was the same sloped hand, the same spiked letters. The paper was a torn corner from a grocery bag. Dear Alexander, it read, I have been dreaming of you. Trish. That was all. I read the note over and over again, checking the edges and the back to make sure that I hadn’t missed anything. Who was Alexander? And Trish? I ran up to the bedroom and stuffed the letter into a box of maxipads in the bottom of my closet. I thought about the kinds of dreams Trish might be having. Maybe she closed her eyes and saw Alexander’s hands running over her hips, her thighs. Maybes sÑhighs. Ma she remembered their sitting on the edge of a riverbank, shoes and socks off, feet blurred in the water by a frigid rushing stream. Maybe Alexander had also been dreaming of her.

“There you are.”

I jumped when Nicholas came in. I raised my hand, and he looped his tie around my wrist and knelt on the edge of the bed to kiss me. “Barefoot and pregnant,” he said, “just the way I like ’em.”

I struggled into a sitting position. “And how was your day?” I asked.

Nicholas’s voice came to me from the bathroom, interrupted by the splash of the faucet. “Come and talk to me,” he said, and I heard the shower being turned on.

I went to sit on the toilet lid, feeling the steam curl my hair over the back of my neck where it had fallen from my ponytail. My shirt, too tight at the bust, misted and clung to my stomach. I considered telling Nicholas what I had done that day, about the cemetery, about Trish and Alexander. But before I could even run through my thoughts, Nicholas turned off the water and pulled his towel into the stall. He knotted it around his hips and stepped out of the shower, leaving the bathroom in a cloud of fresh steam.

I followed Nicholas and watched him part his hair in the mirror over my dresser, using my brush and stooping so that he could see his face. “Come over here,” he said, and he reached behind him for my hand, still holding my eyes with his reflection.

He sat me down on a corner of the bed, and he pulled the barrette from my hair. With the brush, he began to make slow, lazy strokes from my scalp to my shoulders, fanning my hair from the nape of my neck to spread like silk. I tilted my head back and closed my eyes, letting the brush catch through damp tangles and feeling Nicholas’s quiet hand smoothing the static electricity away a moment later. “It feels good,” I said, my voice thick and unfamiliar.

I was vaguely aware of my clothes being pulled away, of being pushed back on the cold quilted comforter. Nicholas kept running his hands through my hair. I felt light, I felt supple. Without those hands weighing me down, I was certain I could float away.

Nicholas moved over me and came inside in one quick stroke, and my eyes flashed open with a white streak of pain. “No,” I screamed, and Nicholas tensed and pulled away from me.

“What?” he said, his eyes still hooded and wild. “Is it the baby?”

“I don’t know,” I murmured, and I didn’t. I just knew there was a barrier where there hadn’t been one days ago; that when Nicholas had entered me I felt resistance, as if something was willing him out just as strongly as he wanted himself in. I met his eyes shyly. “I don’t think it’s all right-that way-anymore.”

Nicholas nodded, his jaw clenched. A pulse beat at the base of his neck, and I watched it for a moment while he regained control of himself. I pulled the comforter over the swell of my stomach, feeling guilty. I never meant to scream. “Of course,” Nicholas saidichÑicholas s, his thoughts a million miles away. He turned and left the room.

I sat in the dark, wondering what I had done wrong. Groping across the bed, I found Nicholas’s discarded button-down shirt, glowing almost silver. I pulled it over my head and rolled up the sleeves, and I slipped underneath the covers. From the nightstand I pulled a travel brochure, and I flicked on a reading light.

Downstairs, I heard the refrigerator being opened and slammed shut; a heavy footstep and a quiet curse. I read aloud, my voice swelling to fill the cold spaces of the colorless room. “ ‘The Land of the Masai,’ ” I said. “ ‘The Masai of Tanzania have one of the last cultures on earth unaffected by modern civilization. Imagine the life of a Masai woman living much as her ancestors did thousands of years ago, dwelling in the same mud-and-dung huts, drinking sour milk mixed with cow’s blood. Initiation rites, such as the circumcision of adolescent boys and girls, continue today.’ ”

I closed my eyes; I knew the rest by memory. “ ‘The Masai exist in harmony with their peaceful environment, with daily and seasonal cycles of nature, with their reverence for God.’ ” The moon rose and spilled yellow into the bedroom window, and I could clearly see her -the Masai woman, kneeling at the foot of my bed, her skin dark and gleaming, her eyes like polished onyx, gold hoops ringing her ears and her neck. She stared at me and stole all my secrets; she opened her mouth and she sang of the world.