Harvesting The Heart Part 20

"No," I said, avoiding her eyes. "I didn't date."

My mother shrugged. "Well, the point is I never got over your father. Never really wanted to. Wolliston and I, well, more than anything we were in business together. Until one morning I woke up and he'd taken all our cash and savings, plus the toaster oven and even the stereo. Just disappeared, like that."

I rolled onto my back and remembered Eddie Savoy. "People don't just disappear," I told her. "You of all people should know that."

Overhead, stars shifted and winked against the dark night sky. I opened my eyes wide and tried to see the other galaxies that hid at the edges of ours. "There was n.o.body else?" I asked.

"No one worth mentioning," my mother said.

I looked at her. "Don't you-you know-miss it?"

My mother shrugged. "I have Donegal."

I smiled into the darkness. "That's not really the same," I said.

My mother frowned, as if she was thinking about this. "You're right; it's more fulfilling. See, I'm the one who trained him, so I'm the one who can take credit for whatever Donegal does. With a horse I've made a name for myself. With a husband I was n.o.body." Barely moving a muscle, my mother covered my hand with her own. "Tell me what Nicholas is like," she said.

I sighed and tried to do with words what I would ordinarily do in a sketch. "He's very tall, and he has hair as dark as Donegal's mane. His eyes are the same color as yours and mine-"

"No, no, no," my mother interrupted. "Tell me what Nicholas is like. "

I closed my eyes, but nothing came clearly to mind. I seemed to be seeing my life with him through shadows, and even after eight years I could barely hear the patterns of his voice or feel the touch of his hands on me. I tried to picture those hands, their long, surgeon's fingers, but couldn't even imagine them holding the base of a stethoscope. I felt a hollow pit in the base of my chest, where I knew these memories should be, but it was as if I had married someone a long time ago and hadn't kept contact since. "I really don't know what Nicholas is like," I said. I could feel my mother's eyes on me, so I tried to explain. "He's just a different man these days; he works extremely hard, and that's important, you know, but because of that I don't get to see him all that much. A lot of the time when I do see him I'm not at my best-I'm at a fund-raising dinner table and he's sitting beside a Radcliffe girl making comparisons, or I've been up half the night with Max and I look like the wild woman of Borneo."

"And that's why you left," my mother finished for me.

I sat up abruptly. "That's not not why I left," I said. "I left because of you." why I left," I said. "I left because of you."

It was a what came first, the chicken or the egg dilemma. I had left because I needed time to catch my breath and get my bearings and start with a clean slate. But obviously, this tendency had been bred into me. Hadn't I known all along I would grow up to be just like my mother? Hadn't I worried about this very thing happening when I was pregnant with Max-and with my other baby? I still believed these events were all linked together. I could honestly say that my mother was the reason I'd run away, but I wasn't sure if she had been the cause or the consequence of my actions.

My mother crawled into her sleeping bag. "Even if that was true," she said, "you should have waited until Max was older."

I rolled away from her. The scent of the pine trees on the ridge behind us was so overwhelming I was suddenly dizzy. "That's the pot calling the kettle black," I murmured.

From behind me came my mother's voice. "When you were born, they were just starting to let men in the delivery room, but your father didn't want any part of it. He actually wanted me to give birth at home, like his mother had, but I vetoed that. So he took me to the hospital, and I begged him not to leave me. Told him I couldn't go through with it. I was all alone for twelve hours, until you decided to make your appearance. It was another hour until they let him in to see you and me together-it took that long for the nurses to comb my hair and give me my makeup so I'd look like I hadn't been doing anything at all for the past day." My mother was so close I could feel her breath against my ear. "When your father came in and saw you, he stroked your cheek and said, 'Now, May, now that you've got her, where's the sacrifice?' And do you know what I told him? I looked at him and I said, 'Me.' "

My heart constricted as I remembered staring at Max and wondering how he could possibly have come from inside me and what I could do to make him go back. "You resented me," I said.

"I was terrified of you," my mother said. "I didn't know what I'd do if you didn't like me."

I remembered that the year I was enrolled in Bible preschool my mother had bought me a special coat for Easter, as pink as the inside lip of a lily. I had bothered her and begged and pleaded to wear it to school after Easter. "Just once," I had cried, and finally she let me. But it rained on the way home from school, and I was afraid she'd be angry if the coat got wet, so I took it off and stuffed it into a little ball. The neighbor's daughter, who walked me home every day because she was nine years old and responsible, helped me jam the coat inside my Snoopy book bag. "You little fool," my mother had said when my friend left me at the door, "you're going to catch pneumonia." I had run up to my room and thrown myself on the bed, angry that I had disappointed her yet again.

But then again, this was the woman who let me take a bus across downtown Chicago when I was five because she thought I was trustworthy. She had tinted clear gelatin with blue food coloring because that was my favorite color. She taught me how to dance the Stroll and how to hang from the monkey bars with my hem tucked a certain way so that my skirt didn't fall up over my head. She had given me my first crayons and coloring book, and had held me when I messed up, a.s.suring me that the lines were for people with no imagination. She had turned herself into someone who was larger than life; someone whose gestures I practiced at night in the bathroom; someone I wanted to be when I grew up.

The night closed around us like a choked throat, suffocating the twitched sounds of the squirrels and the whistling gra.s.s. "You weren't all that bad as a mother," I said.

"Maybe," my mother whispered. "Maybe not."

chapter 30

Nicholas For the first time in years, Nicholas's gloved hands shook as he made the incision in the patient's chest. A neat red line of blood spilled into the hollow left by the scalpel, and Nicholas swallowed the bile that rose in his throat. Anything but this, he thought to himself: climbing Everest, memorizing a dictionary, fighting a war from the front line. Anything had to be easier than doing a quadruple bypa.s.s on Alistair Fogerty himself.

He did not have to look under the sterile drapes to know the face connected with the hideously swabbed orange body. Every muscle and line had been etched into his mind; after all, he'd spent eight years absorbing Fogerty's insults and rallying to meet his boundless expectations. And now the man's life was in his hands.

Nicholas picked up the saw and switched it to life. It vibrated in the circle of his hands as he touched it to the sternum, carving through the bone. He spread the ribs and he checked the solution in which the leg veins, already harvested, were floating. He imagined Alistair Fogerty standing in the background of the operating suite, his presence hovering at Nicholas's neck like the stale breath of a dragon. Nicholas looked up at his a.s.sisting resident. "I think we're all set," he said, watching his words puff out his blue paper mask as if they had meaning or substance.

Robert Prescott was on his hands and knees on the Aubusson rug, rubbing Perrier into a round yellow spot that was part vomit and part sweet potatoes. Now that Max could sit up by himself-at least for a few minutes-he was more likely to spit up whatever he'd last eaten or drunk.

Robert had tried using his baby-sitting time to go over patient files for the next morning, but Max had a habit of pulling them off the couch and wrinkling the papers into his palms. He had gummed one manila binder so thoroughly it fell apart in Robert's hands.

"Ah," he said, sitting back on his heels to survey his work. "I don't think it looks any different from the rosettes." He frowned at his grandson. "You haven't done any more of that, have you?"

Max squealed to be picked up-that was his latest thing, that and a razz sound that sprayed everything within three feet. Robert thought he had lifted his arms too, but that might have been wishful thinking. According to Dr. Spock, whom he'd been rereading in between patients, that didn't come until the sixth month.

"Let's see," he said, holding Max like a football under his arm. He looked around the little parlor, redecorated as a subst.i.tute nursery/ playroom, and found what he had been looking for, an old stethoscope. Max liked to suck on the rubber tubes and to hold the cold metal base against his gums, swollen from teething. Robert stood up and pa.s.sed the toy to Max, but Max dropped it and puckered his lips, getting ready to cry. "Drastic measures," he said, wheeling Max in a circle over his head. He switched on a Sesame Street Sesame Street ca.s.sette he'd bought at the bookstore and started to do a jaunty tango over the clutter of toys on the floor. Max laughed-a wonderful sound, really, Robert thought-every time they whipped around at the corner. ca.s.sette he'd bought at the bookstore and started to do a jaunty tango over the clutter of toys on the floor. Max laughed-a wonderful sound, really, Robert thought-every time they whipped around at the corner.

Robert heard the jingle of keys in the door and jumped over the walker so that he could push the Stop b.u.t.ton on the tape deck. He slipped Max into the Sa.s.sy Seat that was balanced on the edge of the low walnut coffee table and handed him a colander and a plastic mixing spoon. Max stuck the spoon in his mouth and then dropped it on the floor. "Don't say anything that might give me away," Robert warned, leaning close to Max, who grabbed his grandfather's finger and pulled it into his mouth.

Astrid walked into the room, to find Robert thumbing through a patient file and Max sitting quietly with a colander on his head. "Everything's all right?" she asked, sliding her pocketbook onto the nearest chair.

"Mmm," Robert said. He noticed that the file he was supposed to be reading was upside down. "Not a peep out of him the whole time."

When the hospital grapevine made it known that Fogerty had collapsed while doing an aortic valve replacement, Nicholas postponed his afternoon rounds and went straight to his chief's office. Alistair had been sitting with his feet propped up on the radiator, facing out the window toward the stacks and bricks of the hospital's incinerator. He was absentmindedly breaking the spiked leaves off his spider plant. "I've been thinking," he said, not bothering to turn around. "Hawaii. Or maybe New Zealand, if I can stand the flight." He swiveled in the wide leather chair. "Do call out the eighth-grade English teachers. Definition of irony: irony: getting into a car accident while you're putting on your seat belt. Or the cardiac surgeon discovering he needs a quadruple bypa.s.s." getting into a car accident while you're putting on your seat belt. Or the cardiac surgeon discovering he needs a quadruple bypa.s.s."

Nicholas sank down into the chair that sat across from the desk. "What?" he murmured.

Alistair smiled at him, and Nicholas suddenly realized how very old he seemed. He didn't know Alistair at all, out of this context. He didn't know if he golfed, or if he took his Scotch neat; he didn't know if he had cried at his son's graduation or his daughter's wedding. Nicholas wondered if anyone knew Alistair that well; if, for that matter, anyone knew him, either. "Dave Goldman ran the tests," Fogerty said. "I want you to do the surgery."

Nicholas swallowed. "I-"

Fogerty held up a hand. "Before you humble yourself, Nicholas, keep in mind that I'd rather do it myself. But since I can't and since you're the only other a.s.shole I trust in this entire organization, I wonder if you might pencil me into your busy schedule."

"Monday," Nicholas said. "First thing."

Fogerty sighed and leaned his head against the chair. "d.a.m.n right," he said. "I've seen you in the afternoon; you're sloppy." He ran his thumbs over the armrests of the chair, worn smooth by the habit. "You'll take on as many of my patients as you can," he said. "There will have to be a leave of absence."

Nicholas stood. "Consider it done."

He watched as Alistair Fogerty turned his chair to the window again, charting the rise and fall of the chimney smoke. His echo was simply a whisper. "Done," he said.

Astrid and Robert Prescott sat on the floor of their dining room under the magnificent cherry table that, with all the leaves in place, could seat twenty. Max seemed to like it under there, as if it were some kind of natural cave that deserved exploration. Spread in front of his chubby feet was an array of eight-by-ten glossies, laminated so that his saliva wouldn't stain the surfaces. Astrid pointed to the smiling picture of Max himself. "Max," she said, and the baby turned toward her voice. "Ayee," he said, drooling.

"Close enough." She patted his shoulder and pointed to the picture of Nicholas. "Daddy. Daddy."

Robert Prescott straightened abruptly and slammed his head on the underside of the table. "s.h.i.t," he said, and Astrid poked him with an elbow.

"Your language," she snapped. "That's not the first word I want to hear from him." She picked up the portrait of Paige she had shot from a distance, the one Nicholas had balked at the first day he'd left Max. "This is your mommy," she said, running her fingertips over Paige's delicate features. "Mommy."

"Muh," Max said.

Astrid turned to Robert, her mouth wide. "You did hear that, didn't you? Muh?"

Robert nodded. "It could have been gas."

Astrid scooped the baby into her arms and kissed the folds of his neck. "You, my love, are a genius. Don't listen to your dotty old grandfather."

"Nicholas would pitch a fit if he knew you were showing him Paige's picture, you know," Robert said. He stood and straightened, rubbing the small of his back. "I'm too d.a.m.n old for this," he said. "Nicholas should have had Max ten years ago, when I could really enjoy him." He held out his arms for Max, so that Astrid could pull herself up. She gathered together the photos. "Max isn't all yours, Astrid," he said. "You really should get Nicholas's go-ahead."

Astrid pulled the baby back into her arms. Max pressed his lips to her neck and made razzing sounds. She slid him into the high chair that sat at the head of the table. "If we'd always done what Nicholas wanted," she said, "he'd have been a teenage vegetarian with a crew cut who bungee-jumped from hot-air balloons."

Robert opened two jars of baby food, pear-pineapple and plums, and sniffed at them to see which might taste better. "You have a point," he said.

Nicholas had planned to do the entire operation, with the exception of the vein harvest, from start to finish, out of deference to Alistair. He knew that if the positions were reversed, he would want it that way. But by the time he had threaded the ribs with wire, he was unsteady on his feet. He had been concentrating too hard too long. The placement of the veins had been perfect. The sutures he'd made around Alistair's heart were microscopically minute. He just couldn't do any more.

"You can close," he said, nodding to the resident who had been a.s.sisting him. "And you'd better do the best G.o.dd.a.m.ned job of your surgical career." He regretted the words as soon as he'd said them, seeing the slight tremor in the girl's fingers. He leaned down below the sterile drapes that hid Alistair's face. There was a lot he had planned to say, but just seeing him there with the life temporarily drained out of him reminded Nicholas too much of his own mortality. He held his wrist against Alistair's cheek, careful not to mark him with his own blood. He felt the tingle coming back to Fogerty's skin as the un.o.bstructed heart began to do its work again. Satisfied, he left the room with all the dignity Fogerty had told him he would one day command.

Robert didn't like it when Astrid took Max into the darkroom. "Too many wires," he said, "too many toxic chemicals. G.o.d only knows what gets into his system in there." But Astrid wasn't stupid. Max couldn't crawl yet, so there was no danger of his getting into the stop bath or the fixer. She didn't do any developing when he was around; she just scanned contact sheets for the prints she'd make later. If she placed him just right, on a big striped beach towel, he was perfectly content to play with his chunky plastic shapes and the electronic ball that made farm animal noises.

"Once upon a time," Astrid said, telling the story over her shoulder, "there was a girl named Cinderella, who hadn't lived the most charmed life but had the good fortune to meet a man who had. The kind of man, by the way, you're going to grow up to be." She leaned down and handed him a rubber triangle he'd inadvertently tossed away. "You're going to open doors for girls and pay for their dinners and do all the chivalrous things men used to do before they slacked off under the excuse of equal rights."

Astrid circled a tiny square with her red grease pen. "This one's good," she murmured. "Anyway, Max, as I was saying... oh, yes, Cinderella. Well, someone else will probably tell you the story at a later date, so I'm just going to skip ahead a little. You see, a book doesn't always end at the final page." She squatted down until she was sitting across from Max, and then she took his hands in her own, kissing the tips of his stubby wet fingers.

"Cinderella had liked the idea of living in a castle, and she was actually rather good at being a princess until one day she started to think about what she might be doing if she hadn't gotten married to the handsome prince. All her old friends were kicking up their heels at banquet halls and entering Pillsbury Bake-Offs and dating Chippendale's dancers. So she took one of the royal horses and traveled to the far ends of the earth, taking photographs with this camera she'd gotten from a peddler in exchange for her crown."

The baby hiccuped, and Astrid pulled him to a standing position. "No, really," she said, "it wasn't a rip-off. After all, it was a Nikon. Meanwhile, the prince was doing everything he could to get her out of his mind, because he was the laughingstock of the royal community for not being able to keep a leash on his wife. He went hunting three times a day and organized a croquet tournament and even took up taxidermy, but staying busy all the time still couldn't occupy his thoughts. So-"

Max waddled forward, supported by Astrid's hands, just as Nicholas appeared at the darkroom's curtain. "I don't like when you take him in here," he said, reaching for Max. "What if you turn your back?"

"I don't," Astrid said. "How was your surgery?"

Nicholas hoisted Max onto his shoulder and smelled his bottom. "Jeez," he said. "When did Grandma change you last?"

Standing, Astrid frowned at her son and plucked Max off his shoulder. "It only takes him a minute," she said, walking past Nicholas from her darkroom into the muted light of the Blue Room.

"The surgery was fine," Nicholas said, picking at a tray of olives and c.o.c.ktail onions that Imelda had set out for Astrid hours before. "I'm just here to check in because I know I'll be late. I want to be there when Fogerty wakes up." He stuffed three olives into his mouth and spit the pimentos into a napkin. "And what was that trash you were telling Max?"

"Fairy tales," Astrid said, unsnapping Max's outfit and pulling free the tapes of the diaper. "You remember them, I'm sure." She swabbed Max's backside and handed Nicholas the dirty bundle to dispose of. "They all have happy endings."

When Alistair Fogerty awoke from a groggy sleep in surgical ICU, the first words he uttered were, "Get Prescott."

Nicholas was paged. Since he had been expecting this summons, he was at Fogerty's bedside in minutes. "You b.a.s.t.a.r.d," Alistair said to him, straining to shift his weight. "What have you done to me?"

Nicholas grinned at him. "A very tidy quadruple bypa.s.s," he said. "Some of my best work."

"Then how come I feel like I have an eighteen-wheeler on my chest?" Fogerty tossed against the pillows. "G.o.d," he said. "I've been listening to patients tell me that for years, and I never really believed them. Maybe we should all go through open heart, like psychiatrists have to be a.n.a.lyzed. A humbling experience."

His eyes began to close, and Nicholas stood up. Joan Fogerty was waiting at the door. He crossed to speak to her, to tell her that all the preliminary signs were very good. She had been crying; Nicholas could tell by the racc.o.o.n rings of mascara under her eyes. She sat beside her husband and spoke softly, words Nicholas could not hear.

"Nicholas," Fogerty whispered, his voice barely audible above the steady blip of the cardiac monitor. "Take care of my patients, and don't f.u.c.k with my desk."

Nicholas smiled and walked out of the room. He took several steps down the hall before he realized what Alistair had been telling him: that he was now the acting chief of cardiothoracic surgery at Ma.s.s General. Without realizing it, he took the elevator to the floor where Fogerty's office was located, and he turned the unlocked door. Nothing had changed. The files were still piled high, their coded edges bright like confetti. The sun fell across the forbidding swivel chair, and Nicholas was almost certain he could see Alistair's impression on the soft leather.

He walked to the chair and sat down, placing his hands on the arms as he had seen Fogerty do so many times. He turned to face the window but closed his eyes to the light. He didn't even hear Elliot Saget, Ma.s.s General's chief of surgery, enter. "And the seat isn't even cold yet," Saget said sarcastically.

Nicholas whipped around and stood up, sending the chair flying into the radiator behind. "I'm sorry," he said. "I was just down checking on Alistair-"

Saget held up a hand. "I'm only here to make it official. Fogerty's on six months leave. You're the acting director of cardiothoracic. We'll let you know what kind of meetings and committees we'll be cluttering your evenings with, and I'll get your name on the door." He turned to leave and then paused at the threshold of the door to smile. "We've known about your skills for a long time, Nicholas. You've got quite a reputation for spit and fire. If you're the one who gave Alistair his heart trouble, then G.o.d help me," he said, and he walked out.

Nicholas sank back into Alistair's leather wing chair-his leather wing chair-and wheeled himself in circles like a little kid. Then he put his feet down and soberly organized the papers on the desk into neat, symmetric piles, not bothering to read the pages, not yet. He picked up the phone and dialed for an outside line, but realized he had no one to call. His mother was taking Max to a petting zoo, his father was still at work, and Paige, well, he didn't know where she was at all. He leaned back and watched the billowed smoke blowing from Ma.s.s General toward Boston. He wondered why, after years of wanting to stand at the very top, he felt so G.o.dd.a.m.ned empty. leather wing chair-and wheeled himself in circles like a little kid. Then he put his feet down and soberly organized the papers on the desk into neat, symmetric piles, not bothering to read the pages, not yet. He picked up the phone and dialed for an outside line, but realized he had no one to call. His mother was taking Max to a petting zoo, his father was still at work, and Paige, well, he didn't know where she was at all. He leaned back and watched the billowed smoke blowing from Ma.s.s General toward Boston. He wondered why, after years of wanting to stand at the very top, he felt so G.o.dd.a.m.ned empty.

chapter 31

Paige My mother said there was no connection, but I knew that Donegal colicked because she had broken her ankle. It hadn't been his feed or water; those had been consistent. There hadn't been any severe temperature changes that could have caused it. But then my mother had been tossed from Elmo over a jump, right into the blue wall. She had landed a certain way and was now wearing a cast. I thought Donegal's colic was a sort of sympathy pain.

My mother, who had been told not to move by the doctor who'd set her ankle, hopped the whole way from the house to the barn on her crutches. "How is he?" she said, falling to her knees in the stall and running her hands over Donegal's neck.

He was lying down, thrashing back and forth, and he kept looking back at his sides. My mother pulled up his lip and looked at his gums. "He's a little pale," she conceded. "Call the vet."

Josh walked to the phone, and I sat by my mother. "Go back to bed," I told her. "Josh and I can take care of this."

"Like h.e.l.l you can," my mother said. "Don't tell me what to do." She sighed and rubbed her face against her shirt sleeve. "In the chest on the table up there you'll find a syringe of Banamine," she said. "Would you get it for me?"

I stood up, clenching my jaw. I only wanted to help her, and she wasn't doing herself any good hobbling around a sick horse that was flailing all over the place and likely to hit her. "I hope to G.o.d he hasn't got a twisted gut," she murmured. "I don't know where I'll get the money for an operation."

I sat on the other side of Donegal while my mother gave him the shot. We both stroked him until he quieted. After a half hour, Donegal suddenly neighed and wriggled his legs beneath him and shuddered to his feet. My mother scooted out of the way on her hands, into a urine-soaked pile of hay, but she didn't seem to care. "That's my boy," she said, beckoning Josh to help her stand.

Dr. Heineman, the traveling vet, arrived with a pickup truck stocked with two treasure chests full of medicine and supplies. "He's looking good, Lily," he said, checking Donegal's temperature. " 'Course, you look like h.e.l.l. Whaddya do to your foot?"

"I didn't do it," my mother said. "It was Elmo."

Josh and I held Donegal in the center aisle of the barn as the vet put a twitch on his nose-a metal clothespin-like thing-and then, when he was distracted by that pain, threaded a thick plastic catheter down his nostril and into his throat. Dr. Heineman waved his nose over the free end and smiled. "Smells like fresh green gra.s.s," he said, and my mother sighed, relieved. "I think he's going to be just fine, but I'll give him a little oil just in case." He began to pump mineral oil from a plastic gallon tub through the tube, blowing the last bit down with his own mouth. Then he unthreaded the catheter, letting loose phlegm splatter at Donegal's feet. He patted the horse's neck and told Josh to lead him back into the stall. "Watch him for the next twenty-four hours," he said, and then he turned to me. "And it couldn't hurt to watch her as well."

My mother waved him away, but he was laughing. "You tried out that cast yet, Lily?" he said, walking down the barn's aisle. "Does it fit into your stirrup?"

My mother leaned against my side and watched the vet go. "I can't believe I pay him," she said.

I walked slowly with my mother back to the house, getting her to promise she'd at least stay on the couch downstairs if I sat in the barn with Donegal. While Josh did the afternoon ch.o.r.es, I ran back and forth between the stable and the house. When Donegal slept, I helped my mother do crossword puzzles. We turned on the TV and watched daytime soaps, trying to figure out the story lines. I cooked dinner and tied a plastic bag around my mother's foot when she wanted to bathe, and then I tucked her into bed.