Jodi Picoult - Harvesting the Heart

The first day he’d brought Max, he had been sitting alone on a chipped green bench, watching the women across the way spoon sand over the bare legs of the toddlers. Judy had spoken to him first. “We don’t get many dads,” she had said. “And never on weekdays.”

“I’m on vacation,” Nicholas had replied uncomfortably. Max then let forth a burp that shook his entire body, and everyone laughed.

That first day, Judy and Nikki and Fay had set him straight about day care and nanny services. “You can’t buy good help these days,” Fay had said. “A British nanny-and that’s the one you want-they take six months to a year to get. And even so, didn’t you see Donahue? The ones with the highest references could still drop your kid on the head or abuse her or God knows what.”

Judy, who was going back to work in a month, had found a day care center when she was six months pregnant. “And even then,” she had said, “I was only on a waiting list.”

And so Nicholas’s week was almost up, and he still didn’t know what to do with the baby when Monday came. On the other hand, it had been worth it-these women had taught him more about his own son in the span of three days than he had ever hoped to know. When Nicholas went home from the park, he almost felt as if he was in control.

Nicholas pushed Max higher on the swing, but he was whining. He’d been crabby for the past three days. “I called your baby-sitter,” he told Nikki, “but she’s got a summer job as a counselor and said she can’t sit for me until the end of August, when camp lets out.”

“Well, I’ll keep asking around for you,” Nikki said. “I bet you can find somebody.” Her little girl, a thirteen-month-old with wispy strawberry-blond bangs, fell on her face in the sandbox and came up crying. “Oh, Jessica.” Nikki sighed. “You’ve got to figure out this walking thing.”

He liked Nikki best. She was funny and smart, and she made being a mother seem as easy as chewing gum. Nicholas pulled Max out of the swing and sat down on the edge of the sandbox, letting Max squish the sand through his toes. Max looked up at Judy and began to scream. Shent.¡€† held out her hands. “Let me,” she said.

Nicholas nodded, secretly thrilled. He was amazed when people asked to hold the baby. He would have given him to a complete stranger, the way he’d been acting these past few days; that’s how big a relief it was to see him in someone else’s arms. Nicholas traced his initials in the soft, cool sand and, from the corner of his eye, watched Max perched over Judy’s shoulder.

“I fed him cereal for the first time yesterday,” Nicholas said. “I did it the way you said, mostly formula, but he kept pushing out his tongue like he couldn’t figure out what a spoon was. And no matter what you told me, he did not sleep through the night.”

Fay smiled. “Wait till he’s having more than a teaspoon a day,” she said. “Then come back so I can say, ‘I told you so.’ ”

Judy walked toward them, still bouncing Max. “You know, Nich olas, you’ve really come along. Hell, if you were my husband, I’d kiss your feet. Imagine having someone who could take care of the kids and not ask every three minutes why they’re crying.” She leaned close to Nicholas and batted her eyelashes, smiling. “You give me a sign, and I’ll get a divorce lawyer.”

Nicholas smiled, and the women fell quiet, watching their children overturn plastic buckets and build free-form castles. “Tell me if this bothers you,” Nikki said hesitantly. “I mean, we haven’t really known you very long, and we barely know anything about you, but I have this friend who’s divorced, with a kid. and I was wondering if sometime you might… you know…

“I’m married.” The words came so quickly to Nicholas’s lips that they surprised him more than the mothers. Fay, Judy, and Nikki exchanged a look. “My wife… she isn’t around.”

Fay smoothed her hand over the edge of the sandbox. “We’re sorry to hear that,” she said, assuming the worst.

“She’s not dead,” Nicholas said. “She sort of left.”

Judy came to stand behind Fay. “She left?”

Nicholas nodded. “She took off about a week ago. She, well, she wasn’t very good at this-not like you all are-and she was a little overwhelmed, I think, and she cracked under the pressure.” He looked at their blank faces, wondering why he felt he had to make explanations for Paige when he himself couldn’t forgive her. “She never had a mother,” he said.

“Everyone has a mother,” Fay said. “That’s the way it happens.”

“Hers left her when she was five. Last I heard, actually, she was trying to find her. Like that might give her all the answers.”

Fay pulled her son toward her and restrapped the hanging front of his overalls. “Answers, jeez. There aren’t any answers. You should have seen me when he was three months old,” she said lightly. “I had scared away all my friends, and I was almost declared legally dead by my family doctor.”

Nikki sucked in her breath and stared at Nicholas, her eyes wide and liquid with pity. “Still,” she whispered, “to leave your own child.”

Nicholas felt the silence crowding in on him. He didn’t want their stares; he didn’t want their sympathy. He looked at the toddlers, wishing for one of them to start crying, just to break the moment. Even Max was being quiet.

Judy sat down beside Nicholas and balanced Max on her lap. She touched Nicholas’s wrist and lifted his hand to the baby’s mouth. “I think I’ve found out what’s making him such a monster,” she said gently. “There.” She pressed Nicholas’s finger to the bottom of Max’s gums, where a sharp triangle of white bit into his flesh.

Fay and Nikki crowded closer, eager to change the subject. “A tooth!” Fay said, as animated as if Max had been accepted to Harvard; and Nikki added, “He’s just over three months, right? That’s awfully early. He’s in a hurry to grow up; I bet he crawls soon.” Nicholas stared at the downy crown of black hair on his son’s head. He pressed down with his finger, letting Max bite back with his jaws, with his brand-new tooth. He looked up at the sky, a day without clouds, and then let the women run their fingers over Max’s gums… Paige would have wanted to be here, he thought suddenly, and then he felt anger searing through him like a brush fire. Paige should have wanted to be here.

I had never been there, but this was the way I had pictured Ireland from my father’s stories. Rich, rolling hills the deep green of emeralds; grass thicker than a plush rug, farms notched into the slopes and bordered by sturdy stone walls. Several times I stopped the car, to drink from streams cleaner and colder than I had ever imagined possible. I could hear my father’s brogue in the cascade and the current, and I could not believe the irony: my mother had run away to the North Carolina countryside, a land my father would have loved.

If I hadn’t known better, I would have assumed the hills were virgin territory. Paved roads were the only sign that anyone else had been here, and in the three hours I’d been driving across the state, I hadn’t passed a single car. I had rolled down all the windows so that the air could rush into my lungs. It was crisper than the air in Chicago, lighter than the air in Cambridge. I felt as if I were drinking in the endless open space, and I could see how, out here, someone could easily get lost.

Since leaving Chicago, I had been thinking only of my mother. I ran through every solid memory I’d ever had and froze each of them in my mind like an image from a slide projector, hoping to see something I hadn’t noticed before. I couldn’t come up with an image of her face. It drifted in and out of shadows.