Jodi Picoult - Harvesting the Heart

Astrid walks to the far side of the office as if she hasn’graÑ€†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.

“You don’t know the half of it,” Nicholas murmurs.

By a twist of bad timing, Nicholas and Paige run into each other that afternoon at the Prescotts’. Because of a complication with a patient, Nicholas left the hospital late. He is just packing Max’s toys into the duffel bag when Paige bursts into the parlor. “You can’t do this to me,” Paige cries, and when Nicholas lifts his head, his gaze has carefully been wiped clean of emotion.

“Ah,” Nicholas says, picking up a Big Bird jingle ball. “My mother has been the bearer of bad news.”

“You’ve got to give me a chance,” she says, moving in front of him to catch his eye. “You aren’t thinking clearly.”

Astrid appears in the doorway, with Max in her arms. “Listen to her, Nicholas,” she says quietly.

Nicholas tosses his mother a look that makes Paige remember the basilisk in Irish legend, the monster who killed with a glance. “I think I’ve listened enough,” he says. “In fact, I’ve heard things I never wanted to hear.” He stands and slings the diaper bag over his shoulder, roughly grabbing Max out of Astrid’s arms. “Why don’t you just run upstairs to your guest bedroom,” he sneers. “Cry your little heart out, and then you can come downstairs for brandy with my goddamned parents.”

“Nicholas,” Paige says. Her voice breaks over the syllables. She takes a quick look at Astrid and runs through the hall after Nicholas, swinging open the door and yelling his name again into the street.

Nicholas stops just before his car. “You’ll get a good settlement,” he says quietly. “You’ve earned it.”

Paige is openly crying now, clinging to the frame of the door as if she cannot keep upright by herself. “It isn’t supposed to be this way,” she sobs. “Do you think I really care about the money? Or about who lives in that stupid old house?”

Nicholas thinks about the horror stories he’s heard from other surgeons, whose cutthroat, red-taloned wives have robbed them of half their Midas earnings and all their sterling reputations. He cannot picture Paige in a tailored suit, glaring from the witness stand, replaying a testimony that will support her for life. He can’t truly see her caring about whether $500,000 per year will be enough to cover her cost of living. She’d probably hand him the keys to the house if he asked nicely. In truth, she isn’t like the others; she never has been, and that’s what Nicholas always liked.

Her hair has fallen over her face, and her nose is running; her shoulders are shaking with the effort to stop crying. She is a mess. “Mama,” Max says, reaching out to her. Nicholas turns him away and watches Paige swipe the back of her hand across her eyes. He tells himself it can’t turn out any other way, not with what he knows now; but he quite literally feels his chest burn, swollen tissue irreparably staked, as his heart begins to break.

Nicholas grimaces and shakes his head. He slips inside the car, fastening Max into his seat and then turning the ignition. He tries to trace the sequence, but he cannot figure out how they have made it to this point-the place where you cannot go back. Paige hasn’t moved an inch. He cannot hear her voice over the purr of the engine, but he knows that she is telling him she loves him, she loves Max.

“I can’t help that,” he says, and he drives away without letting himself look back.

W hen I come down to breakfast in the morning, I am carrying my overnight bag. “I want to thank you for your hospitality,” I say stiffly, “but I think I’m going to be leaving today.”

Astrid and Robert look at each other, and it is Astrid who speaks first. “Where are you going?” she asks.

This question, the one I have been expecting, still throws me for a loop. “I don’t know,” I say. “I guess back to my mother’s.”

“Paige,” Astrid says gently, “if Nicholas wants a divorce, he’ll find you even in North Carolina.”

When I do not say anything, Astrid stands up and folds her arms around me. She holds me even though I do not hold her back. She is thinner than I expected, almost brittle. “I can’t change your mind?” she says.

“No,” I murmur, “you can’t.”

She pulls away, keeping me at arm’s length. “I won’t let you leave without something to eat,” she says, already moving toward the kitchen. “Imelda!”

She leaves me alone with Robert, who of all the people in this household makes me most uncomfortable. It isn’t that he’s been rude or even unkind; he has offered his house to me, he goes out of his way to compliment my appearance when I come down to dinner, he saves me the Living section of the Globe before Imelda clips the recipes. I suppose the problem is mine, not his. I suppose some things -like forgiveness-take time.

Robert folds his morning paper and motions for me to sit next to him. “What was the name of that colicky horse?” he says out of nowhere.

“Donegal.” I smooth my napkin across my lap. “But he’s fine now. Or he was when I left.”

Robert nods. “Mmm. Incredible how they bounce back.”

I raise my eyebrows, now understanding where this conversation is headed. “Sometimes they die,” I point out.

“Well, yes, of course,” Robert says, spreading cream cheese on a muffin. “But not the good ones. Never the good ones.”

“You hope not,” I say.

Robert jabs the muffin toward me, making his point. “Exactly.” Suddenly he reaches across the table and covers my wrist with his free hand. His touch, unexpected, is cool and steady, just like Nicholas’s. “You’re making it very easy for him to forget about you, Paige. I’d think twice about that.”

At that moment Nicholas strides into the dining room, carrying Max. “Where the hell is everybody?” he says. “I’m late.”