Jodi Picoult - Harvesting the Heart

He didn’t understand Paige’s problem. He was the one on his feet all goddamned day; he was the one with a reputation on the line; he was the one whose missteps could cost lives. If anyone had a right to be exhausted or short-tempered, it was Nicholas. All Paige did was sit in the house with a baby.

And from the time he’d spent with his son, it didn’t seem so difficult. Nicholas would sit on the floor and pull at Max’s toes, laughing when Max opened his eyes wide and stared around, trying to figure out who’d done that. A month or so ago, he’d been whirling Max around over his head and then hanging him from his feet-he loved that kind of thing-as Paige watched from a corner, her mouth turned down. “He’s going to puke on you,” she said. “He just drank.” But Max had kept his eyes open, watching his world spin. When Nicholas had righted the baby and cradled him, Max turned his gaze up and stared directly at his father. Then a slow smile spread across his face, blushing into his cheeks and straightening his little shoulders. “Look, Paige!” Nicholas had said. “Isn’t that his first real smile?” And Paige had nodded and looked at Nicholas in awe. She had left the room to find Max’s baby book, so she could record the date.

Nicholas patted his breast pocket. They were still there, the pictures of Max he’d just had developed. He would leave one with his mother if he was feeling charitable by the time he left. He hadn’t wanted to come in the first place. It was Paige who had suggested he call his parents and let them know they had a grandson. “Absolutely not,” Nicholas had said. Of course, Paige still believed he hadn’t talked to his parents in eight years, but maybe that was true. Speaking to someone was not the same as really talking. Nicholas didn’t know if he was willing to be the one to back down first.

“Well,” Paige had said, “maybe it’s time for all of you to let bygones be bygones.” He’d found this a little hypocritical, but then she had smiled at him and ruffled his hair. “Besides,” she had said, “with your mom around, think of the fortune we’ll save on baby pictures.”

Nicholas leaned his head back against the car seat. Overhead, clouds moved lazily across the hot spring sky. Once, when their lives were still uncluttered, Paige and Nicholas had lain on the banks of the Charles and stared at the clouds, trying to find images in their shapes. Nicholas could see only geometric figures: triangles, thin arcs, and polygons. Paige had to hold his hand against the backdrop of blue, tracing the soft fleeced white edges with his finger. There, she’d said, there’s an Indian chief. And far to the left is a bicycle. And a tbumbtack, a kangaroo. At first Nicholas had laughed, falling in love with her all over again for her imagination. But little by little he’d begun to see what she was talking about. Sure enough, it wasn’t a cumulonimbus but the thick flowing headdress of a Sioux chief. In the corner of the sky was a wallaby’s joey. When he’d looked through her eyes, there were so many things he could suddenly see.

“What’s the matter with him?”

“I don’t know. The doctor said it’s probably colic.”

“Colic? But he’s practically three months old. Colic is supposed to end when they’re three months old.”

“Yes, I know. It’s supposed to end. The doctor also told me that research says colicky babies grow up to be more intelligent.”

“Should that make it easier to block out his screaming?”

“Don’t take it out on me, Nicholas. I was just answering your question.”

“Don’t you want to get him?”

“I guess.”

“Well, Christ, Paige. If it’s such a big deal, I’ll go get him.”

“No. You stay. I’m the one who has to feed him. There’s no point in you getting up.”

“All right, then.”

“All right.”

Nicholas counted the number of steps he took in crossing the street and reaching the path to his parents’ house. Lining the neat slate stones were rows of tulips: red, yellow, white, red, yellow, white, in organized succession. His heart was pounding to the beat of his footsteps; his mouth was unnaturally dry. Eight years was a very long time.

He thought about ringing the bell, but he didn’t want to face one of the servants. He pulled his key chain from his pocket and looked through the many hospital keys to find the old, tarnished one he’d kept on the brass ring since grade school. He had never thrown it away; he wasn’t quite sure why. And he wouldn’t have expected his parents to ask for it back. A lot might have passed between Nicholas Prescott and his parents, but in his family even hiÁ€ it bitter estrangements had to follow certain civil rules.

Nicholas was not prepared for the rush of heat that crept up his back and his neck the moment his key fit into the lock of his parents’ home. He remembered, all at once, the day he’d fallen from the tree-house and snapped his leg bone through his skin; the time he’d come home drunk and weaved through the kitchen and into the house-keeper’s bedroom by mistake; the morning he carried the world on his shoulders-his college graduation. Nicholas shook his head to force away the emotions and pushed himself into the massive foyer.

The black marble on the floor reflected a perfect image of his set face, and the fear in his eyes was mirrored in the high-polished frames of his mother’s Endangered exhibit. Nicholas took two steps that sounded like primal thunder, certain that everyone now knew he was here. But no one came. He tossed his jacket onto a gilded chair and walked down the hall to his mother’s darkroom.

Astrid Prescott was developing her photos of the Moab, nomads who lived among hills of sand, but she couldn’t get her red right. The color of the ruby dust was still clouding her mind, but no matter how many prints she made, it wasn’t the right shade. It didn’t fix angry enough to whirl around the people, framing them in their nightmares. She put down the last set of photos and pinched the bridge of her nose. Maybe she would try again tomorrow. She pulled several contact sheets from her hanging line, and then she turned and saw the image of her son.

“Nicholas,” his mother whispered.

Nicholas did not move a muscle. His mother looked older, frailer. Her hair was wound in a tight knot at the nape of her neck, and the veins on her clenched fists stood out prominently, marking her hands like a well-traveled map. “You have a grandchild,” he said. His words were tight and clipped and sounded foreign on his tongue. “I thought you should know.”

He turned to leave, but Astrid Prescott rushed forward, scattering the elusive prints of the desert onto the floor. Nicholas was stopped by the touch of his mother’s hand. Her fingertips, coated with fixer, left traces of burns up the length of his arm. “Please stay,” she said. “I want to catch up. I want to look at you. And you must need so much for the baby. I’d love to see him-her?-and Paige too.”

Nicholas regarded his mother with all the cold reserve she’d proudly bred into him. He pulled a snapshot of Max from his pocket and tossed it onto the table, on top of a print of a turbaned man with a face as old as honesty. “I’m sure it isn’t as good as yours,” Nicholas said, staring down into the startled blue eyes of his son. When they’d taken that picture, Paige had stood behind Nicholas with a white sock pulled onto her hand. She had drawn eyes on the top of it and a long forked tongue and had hissed and made rattlesnake noises, pretending to bite Nicholas’s ear. In the end, Max had smiled after all.