Harvesting The Heart Part 7

The dream always started with Nicholas running; he never knew what it was he was running from. But sometime during the sheer physical concentration of sprinting, of balancing and dodging thick trees, he'd realize that he was no longer being chased. All of a sudden he was running toward toward something, just as faceless and forbidding as his pursuer had been. He gasped; he grabbed at a st.i.tch in his side, but he couldn't move quickly enough. Hot b.u.t.terflies slapped against his neck and leaves striped his shoulders as he tried to move faster. Finally, he hurled himself against a sandstone altar, carved with the leers of naked pagan G.o.ds. Panting, Nicholas slid to his knees in front of the altar, and beneath his fingers it turned into a man, a person made of warm skin and twisted bone. He looked up and saw his own face, older and broken and blind. something, just as faceless and forbidding as his pursuer had been. He gasped; he grabbed at a st.i.tch in his side, but he couldn't move quickly enough. Hot b.u.t.terflies slapped against his neck and leaves striped his shoulders as he tried to move faster. Finally, he hurled himself against a sandstone altar, carved with the leers of naked pagan G.o.ds. Panting, Nicholas slid to his knees in front of the altar, and beneath his fingers it turned into a man, a person made of warm skin and twisted bone. He looked up and saw his own face, older and broken and blind.

He always woke up screaming; he always woke up in Paige's arms. Last night when he had become fully conscious of his surroundings, she had been hovering over him with a damp washcloth, wiping his sweaty neck and chest. "Sssh," she said. "It's me."

Nicholas let a choked sound escape from his throat and pulled Paige to him. "Was it the same?" she asked, her words m.u.f.fled against his shoulder.

Nicholas nodded. "I couldn't see," he said. "I don't know what I was running from."

Paige ran her cool fingers up and down his arm. It was in these moments, when his defenses were down, that he would cling to her and think of her as the one constant in his life and let himself give in completely. Sometimes when he reached for her after the nightmares, he would grasp her arms so tightly he left bruises. But he never told her the end of the dream. He couldn't. Whenever he had tried, he'd started shaking so badly he couldn't finish.

Paige wrapped her arms around him, and he leaned into her, still warm and soft with sleep. "Tell me what I can do for you," she whispered.

"Hold me," Nicholas said, knowing she would; knowing, with the unswerving faith of a child at Christmastime, that she would never let go.

Paige hadn't wanted to tell anyone she was pregnant. In fact, if Nicholas hadn't known better, he would have thought she was avoiding the inevitable. She didn't run out to buy maternity clothes; they really didn't have the extra money, she said. In spite of Nicholas's urging, when she called her father she did not tell him the news. "Nicholas," she had told him, "one out of every three pregnancies ends in miscarriage. Let's just wait and see."

"That's only true through the first trimester," Nicholas had said. "You're almost five months along."

And Paige had turned on him. "I know that," she said. "I'm not stupid. stupid. " "

"I didn't say you were stupid," Nicholas said gently. "I said you were pregnant." pregnant."

He drove home quickly, hoping Paige had remembered this dinner party even if he hadn't. She'd have to, after the way they'd fought over it. Paige insisted the house was too small, that she couldn't cook anything worthy of a dinner party, that they didn't have fine china and crystal. "Who cares?" Nicholas had said. "Maybe they'll feel bad and give me more money."

He opened the back door and found his wife sitting on the kitchen floor. She wore an old shirt of his and a pair of his pants rolled to the knee. She held a bottle of Drano in one hand and a gla.s.s in the other, ringed brown. "Don't do it," Nicholas said, grinning. "Or if you do, wouldn't sleeping pills be more pleasant?"

Paige sighed and put the gla.s.s down on the floor. "Very funny," she said. "Do you know what this means?"

Nicholas pulled open his tie. "That you don't want to have a dinner party?"

Paige held up her hand and let Nicholas pull her to her feet. "That it's a boy."

Nicholas shrugged. The ultrasound had said the same thing; the waitresses at Mercy said she was carrying out in front, the way you carry a boy. Even the old wives' tale had confirmed it-the wedding ring dangling from a string had moved back and forth. "Drano probably isn't the definitive test," he said.

Paige went to the refrigerator and began pulling out trays of food covered by aluminum foil. "You pee into a cup, and then you add two tablespoons of Drano," she said. "It's like ninety percent foolproof. The Drano people have even written to OB/GYNS, asking them to tell their patients this is not a recommended use for their product." She closed the door and leaned against it, her hands pressed against her forehead. "I'm having a boy," she said.

Nicholas knew that Paige did not want a boy. Well, she wouldn't admit it, at least not to him, but it was as if she just a.s.sumed that being the kind of person she was, it was impossible for her to be carrying anything other than a tiny replica of herself. "Now, really," Nicholas said, putting his hands on her shoulders, "would a boy really be so awful?"

"Can I still name him after my mother?"

"It would be hard," Nicholas said, "to be the only boy in first grade named May."

Paige gave him a smug look and picked up two of her platters. She stuffed one into the oven and took the other into the living room, which had been turned into a dining room for the night. The tiny kitchen table was bolstered on both sides by card tables, and every chair in the house had been dragged into service. Instead of their usual dishes and gla.s.sware, there were ten places set with bright dinner plates, each one different and each with a matching gla.s.s. Painted on the surfaces were simple, fluid line drawings of diving porpoises, glacial mountains, turbaned elephants, Eskimo women. Curled in the gla.s.ses were paper napkins, each fanned in a different shade of the rainbow. The table spilled with color: vermilion and mango, bright yellow and violet. Paige looked uneasily at Nicholas. "It's not quite Limoges, is it," she said. "I figured that since we only have service for eight, this would be better than two place settings that looked entirely wrong. I went to the secondhand stores in Allston and picked up the plates and gla.s.ses, and I painted them myself." Paige reached for a napkin and straightened its edge. "Maybe instead of saying we're poor, they'll say we're funky."

Nicholas thought of the dinner tables he'd grown up with: the cool white china from his mother's family rimmed in gold and blue; the crystal Baccarat goblets with their twisted stems. He thought of his colleagues. "Maybe," he said.

The Fogertys were the first to arrive. "Joan," Nicholas said, taking both of Alistair's wife's hands, "you look lovely." Actually, Joan looked as though she'd had a run-in at Quincy Market: her tailored suit was a silk print of larger-than-life cherries and bananas and kiwis; her shoes and her earrings sported cl.u.s.ters of purple clay grapes. "Alistair," Nicholas said, nodding. He looked over his shoulder, waiting for Paige to arrive and take over the role of hostess.

She stepped into the room then, his wife: a little pale, even swaying, but still beautiful. Her hair had become thick during pregnancy and covered her shoulders like a shining, dark shawl. Her blue silk blouse curved over her back and her b.r.e.a.s.t.s and then billowed, so that only Nicholas would know that beneath it, her black trousers were secured with a safety pin. Joan Fogerty flew to Paige's side and pressed her hand against her belly. "Why, you're not even showing!" Joan exclaimed, and Paige looked up at Nicholas, furious.

Nicholas smiled at her and shrugged: What could I do What could I do? He waited until Paige lowered her gaze, and then he led Alistair into the living room, apologizing for the lack of s.p.a.ce.

Paige served dinner to the Fogertys, the Russos, the van Lindens, and the Walkers. She had prepared Lionel's secret recipes: split-pea soup, roast beef, new potatoes, and glazed carrots. Nicholas watched her move from guest to guest, talking softly as she replenished the plates with spinach salad. Nicholas knew his wife well. She hoped that if she kept the plates full, no one would remember that they weren't a matched set.

Paige was in the kitchen, getting together the main course, when Renee Russo and Gloria Walker ducked their heads together and began to whisper. Nicholas was in the middle of a discussion with Alistair about immunosuppressive drugs and their effect on transplanted tissue, but he was listening to the wives with half an ear. After all, this was his home. Whatever transpired at his first dinner party could make or break him in the political ranks of the hospital as much as a brilliant piece of research. "I bet," Renee said, "she paid a fortune for these."

Gloria nodded. "I saw almost the same thing in The Gifted Hand."

Nicholas did not see Paige enter the room behind him, frozen by the gossip. "It's the in in thing," Gloria added, "crayon drawings that look like they were done by monkeys, and then someone has the gall to sell them as original art." Gloria saw Paige standing in the doorway and offered a tight smile. "Why, Paige," she said, "we were just admiring your dishes." thing," Gloria added, "crayon drawings that look like they were done by monkeys, and then someone has the gall to sell them as original art." Gloria saw Paige standing in the doorway and offered a tight smile. "Why, Paige," she said, "we were just admiring your dishes."

And just like that, Paige dropped the roast beef so that it rolled onto the pale beige carpet, steeped in a pool of its own blood.

The year that Nicholas was seven, his parents did not not split up. In fact, just a week after the Red Sox game, Nicholas's life-and that of his parents-miraculously moved back on track. For three days Nicholas ate by himself at the kitchen table while his father drank Dewar's in the library and his mother hid in the darkroom. He walked through the halls only to hear the echo of his own footsteps. The fourth day, he heard banging and sawing in the bas.e.m.e.nt, and he knew his mother was making a frame. She had done it before when she mounted her originals, like the famous Endangered exhibit, which hung at odd intervals in the hallway and up the staircase. She said she wouldn't trust her prints to some crackpot frame store, and so she bought her own wood, nails, and matting. Nicholas sat at the foot of the main staircase for hours, rolling a basketball over his bare toes, knowing he wasn't allowed to have a basketball in the house and wishing someone were around to tell him that. split up. In fact, just a week after the Red Sox game, Nicholas's life-and that of his parents-miraculously moved back on track. For three days Nicholas ate by himself at the kitchen table while his father drank Dewar's in the library and his mother hid in the darkroom. He walked through the halls only to hear the echo of his own footsteps. The fourth day, he heard banging and sawing in the bas.e.m.e.nt, and he knew his mother was making a frame. She had done it before when she mounted her originals, like the famous Endangered exhibit, which hung at odd intervals in the hallway and up the staircase. She said she wouldn't trust her prints to some crackpot frame store, and so she bought her own wood, nails, and matting. Nicholas sat at the foot of the main staircase for hours, rolling a basketball over his bare toes, knowing he wasn't allowed to have a basketball in the house and wishing someone were around to tell him that.

When his mother came up from the bas.e.m.e.nt she carried her framed print below her right arm. She brushed past Nicholas as if he weren't there, and she hung the photograph at the head of the stairs, at eye level, a place you couldn't help but notice. Then she turned and went into her bedroom, closing the door behind her.

It was a photo of his father's hands, large and work-rough, with a surgeon's blunt nails and sharp knuckles. Superimposed on them were the hands of his mother: cool, smooth, curved. Both sets of hands were very dark, silhouettes traced in a line of white light. The only detailed things in the picture were the wedding bands, gleaming and sparkling, swimming in the black. The strange thing about the picture was the angle of his mother's hands. You looked at it one way, and his mother's hands were simply caressing his father's hands. But when you blinked, it was clear that her hands were neatly folded in prayer.

When Nicholas's father came home, he pulled himself up the stairs by the banister, ignoring the small form of his own son in the shadows. He stopped at the photo at the top of the stairs and sank to his knees.

Next to the spot where Astrid Prescott had signed her name, she had printed the t.i.tle: "Don't."

Nicholas watched his father go into the room where he knew his mother was waiting. That was the night that he stopped hoping he'd grow up with his father's glory and started wishing, instead, that he'd have his mother's strength.

Everyone laughed. Paige ran upstairs to the bedroom and slammed the door shut. Rose van Linden washed the beef in the sink, made some new gravy; and Alistair Fogerty carved, making scalpel jokes. Nicholas mopped up the mess on the carpet and laid a white dish towel over it when the stain would not come out. When he stood up, his guests seemed to have forgotten he was there. "Please excuse my wife," Nicholas said. "She's very young, and if that isn't enough, she's also pregnant." At this, the women brightened and began to tell stories of their own labors and deliveries; the men clapped Nicholas on the back.

Nicholas stood apart, watching these people in his chairs, eating at his own table, and wondered when he'd lost control of the situation. Alistair was now sitting in his his spot at the head of the table. Gloria was pouring wine. The Bordeaux curled into a gla.s.s meant for Paige, a crimson wave behind the painted image of a conch sh.e.l.l. spot at the head of the table. Gloria was pouring wine. The Bordeaux curled into a gla.s.s meant for Paige, a crimson wave behind the painted image of a conch sh.e.l.l.

Nicholas walked up the stairs to the bedroom, wondering what he could possibly do. He wouldn't yell, not with everyone in the living room, but he was going to let Paige know she couldn't get away with this. For G.o.d's sake, he had an image to present. He needed Paige to attend these things; it was expected. He knew she wasn't brought up this way, but that wasn't a reason to fall apart every time she faced his colleagues and their wives. She wasn't one of them, but Jesus, in many ways he wasn't, either. At least, like him, she could pretend.

For a fleeting moment he remembered the way Paige had softened the edges of his apartment-h.e.l.l, the edges of his whole life life-just hours after he'd asked her to marry him. He remembered his wedding day, when he'd stood beside Paige and realized, giddy, that she was going to take him away. He'd never have to sit through another stuffy six-course meal with brittle, false rumors about people who hadn't been invited. He'd promised to love her and honor her, for richer and for poorer, and at the time, he really had believed that as long as he had Paige, either outcome would be fine. What had happened in the past seven years to change his mind? He'd fallen in love with Paige because she was the kind of person he'd always wanted to be: simple and honest, blissfully ignorant of silly customs and obligations and kiss-a.s.s rituals. Yet he was poised at the edge of the doorway, ready to drag her back to his colleagues and their politically correct jokes and their feigned interest in the origins of the draperies.

Nicholas sighed. It wasn't Paige's fault; it was his own. Somewhere along the way he'd been tricked into thinking, again, that the only life worth living was the one waiting for him downstairs. He wondered what Alistair Fogerty would say if he took Paige and crawled out the window and shimmied down the drainpipe and ran out to the Greek pizza place in Brighton. He wondered how he had wound up coming full circle.

When he pushed open the bedroom door, he couldn't find his wife. Then he saw her, blended into the blue bedspread, tucked into the upper right corner. She was lying on her side, with her knees drawn up. "They made fun of me," she said.

"They didn't know it was you," Nicholas pointed out. "You know, Paige," he said, "not everything is about you." you." He reached for her shoulder, pulling her roughly to face him, and saw the mapped silver lines tears had cut across her cheeks. "About these dinner parties," he said. He reached for her shoulder, pulling her roughly to face him, and saw the mapped silver lines tears had cut across her cheeks. "About these dinner parties," he said.

"What about them?" Paige whispered.

Nicholas swallowed. He imagined Paige as she might have looked earlier that day, painstakingly painting the dishes and the gla.s.sware. He saw himself at age ten, learning table etiquette and patterned waltzes on Sat.u.r.day mornings at Miss Lillian's Finishing Sessions. Well, like it or not, he thought, it all was a game. And if you had any intention of winning, you had to at least play. play. "You're going to go to these stupid dinners, whether or not you like them, for a long time. You're going to go out there tonight and apologize and blame it on hormones. And when you say goodbye to those two b.i.t.c.hes, you're going to smile and tell them you can't wait to see them again." He watched Paige's eyes fill with tears. "My life, and your life, doesn't only depend on what I do in an operating suite. If I'm going to get anywhere I have to kiss a.s.s, and it's sure as h.e.l.l not going to help if I have to spend half the time making excuses for you." "You're going to go to these stupid dinners, whether or not you like them, for a long time. You're going to go out there tonight and apologize and blame it on hormones. And when you say goodbye to those two b.i.t.c.hes, you're going to smile and tell them you can't wait to see them again." He watched Paige's eyes fill with tears. "My life, and your life, doesn't only depend on what I do in an operating suite. If I'm going to get anywhere I have to kiss a.s.s, and it's sure as h.e.l.l not going to help if I have to spend half the time making excuses for you."

"I can't do it," Paige said. "I can't keep going to your stupid parties and fund-raisers and watch everyone pointing at me like I'm the freak at the sideshow."

"You can," Nicholas said, "and you will."

Paige raised her eyes to his, and for a long minute they stared at each other. Nicholas watched new tears well up and spill over, spiking her lashes. Finally, he pulled her into his arms, burying his face in her hair. "Come on, Paige," he whispered. "I'm only doing this for you."

Nicholas did not have to look to know that Paige was staring straight ahead, still sobbing. "Are you," she said quietly.

They sat on the edge of the bed, Nicholas curling his body around Paige's, and they listened to the laughter of their guests and the ting ting of gla.s.ses being raised in toasts. Nicholas brushed a tear off Paige's cheek. "Jesus, Paige," he said quietly. "You think I like making you upset? It's just that this is important." Nicholas sighed. "My father used to tell me that if you want to win, you have to play by the rules." of gla.s.ses being raised in toasts. Nicholas brushed a tear off Paige's cheek. "Jesus, Paige," he said quietly. "You think I like making you upset? It's just that this is important." Nicholas sighed. "My father used to tell me that if you want to win, you have to play by the rules."

Paige grimaced. "Your father probably wrote wrote the rules." the rules."

Against his will, Nicholas felt his shoulders stiffen. "As a matter of fact," he said, "my father didn't have any family money. He worked to get what he has now, but he was born flat broke."

Paige pulled away to stare at him. Her jaw dropped open as if she was about to say something, but she only shook her head.

Nicholas caught her chin with his fingers. Maybe he had been wrong about Paige. Maybe money and breeding were as important to her as they were to his old girlfriends. He shivered, wondering what this admission had cost him. "What?" he said. "Tell me."

"I don't believe it."

"You don't believe what? That my father had no money?"

"No," Paige said slowly. "That he chose chose to live the way he does now." to live the way he does now."

Nicholas smiled, relieved. "It has its advantages," he pointed out. "You know where the next mortgage payment is coming from. You know who your friends are. You don't worry nearly as much about what everyone else thinks of you."

"And that's what you care about?" Paige shifted away from him. "Why didn't you tell me this before?"

Nicholas shrugged. "It never came up."

In the distance, someone shouted out a punch line. "I'm sorry," Paige said tightly, balling her hands into fists. "I didn't know you made such a sacrifice to marry me."

Nicholas pulled her into his arms and stroked her back until he felt her relax. "I wanted wanted to marry you," he said. "And besides," he added, grinning, "I didn't give it all up. I put it on hold. A few more dinner parties, a few less roasts on the floor, and we'll be in the black." He helped her stand. "Would it really be so awful? I want our baby to have the things I did when I was growing up, Paige. I want you to live like a queen." to marry you," he said. "And besides," he added, grinning, "I didn't give it all up. I put it on hold. A few more dinner parties, a few less roasts on the floor, and we'll be in the black." He helped her stand. "Would it really be so awful? I want our baby to have the things I did when I was growing up, Paige. I want you to live like a queen."

Nicholas started to lead her into the hall. "What about what I want?" Paige whispered, so soft that even she could not clearly hear herself.

When they walked back into the living room, Paige held on to Nicholas's hand so tightly that when she stepped away, marks from her fingernails were pressed into his palm. He watched her lift her chin. "I'm so sorry," she said. "I'm not feeling too well these days." She stood with the grace of a madonna while the women took turns holding their hands up to her stomach, prodding and pressing and guessing the s.e.x of their child. She saw each pair of guests out, and as Nicholas stood on the porch, talking to Alistair about tomorrow's schedule, she went to clean up the dirty dishes.

Nicholas found her in the living room, throwing the plates and the gla.s.ses into the fireplace. He stood very still as she hurled the ceramic and watched her smile when the shards, littered with fragments of clouds and flamingos, fell at her feet. He had never seen her destroy her own work; even the little doodles on the telephone pad were tucked into a folder somewhere for future ideas. But Paige shattered dish after dish, gla.s.s after gla.s.s, and then she lit a fire underneath the pieces. She stood in front of the hearth, flames dancing in shadow over her face, while the colors and friezes were ashed over in black. And then she turned to face Nicholas, as if she knew he had been standing there all along.

If Nicholas had been frightened by her actions before, he was shocked by what he saw in Paige's eyes. He had seen it once before, when he was fifteen, the one and only time he had gone hunting with his father. They had walked in the mist of a Vermont morning, stalking deer, and Nicholas had spotted a buck. He had tapped his father's shoulder, as he'd been taught to do, and watched Robert raise the barrel of his Weatherby. The buck had been a distance away, but Nicholas could clearly see the tremble of its rack, the rigidity of its stance, the way the life had gone out of its gaze.

Nicholas took a step back into the safety of his living room. His wife was framed by fire; her eyes were those of an animal trapped.

chapter 10

Paige Spread around my kitchen were the travel brochures. I was supposed to be planning my family, painting the nursery and knitting pale-peach sacque sets, but instead I had become obsessed with places where I had never been. The leaflets were spilled like a rainbow across the counter, they covered the length of the window seat in splashes of aqua, magenta, and gold. Progressive Travels. Smuggler's Notch. Civilized Adventures.

Nicholas was starting to get annoyed. "What the h.e.l.l are these," he'd said, sweeping them off the black gla.s.s stovetop.

"Oh, you know," I had hedged. "Junk mail."

But they weren't. I had sent away for them, a dollar here and fifty cents there, knowing I would receive in the mail a new destination every day. I read the brochures from cover to cover, rolling the names of the cities in my mouth. Dordogne, Pouilly-sur-Loire. Verona and Helmsley, Sedona and Banff. Bhutan, Manaslu, Ghorapani Pa.s.s. They were tours that were impossible for someone who was pregnant; most involved intense hiking or bicycling, preventive inoculations. I think I read them because they were exactly what I couldn't do. I would lie on my back on the floor of my pristine kitchen, and I'd imagine valleys heavy with the scent of rhododendrons, the lush parks and canyons where guanacos, serows, and pandas made their homes. I imagined sleeping in the Kalahari bush, listening to the distant thunder of antelope, buffalo, elephants, cheetahs. I thought about this baby, weighing me down more and more each day, and I pretended that I was anywhere but here.

My baby was eight inches long. He could smile. He had eyebrows and eyelashes; he sucked his thumb. He had his own set of fingerprints and footprints. His eyes were still closed, heavy-lidded, waiting to see.

I knew everything I could about this baby. I read so many books on pregnancy and birth that I memorized certain sections. I knew what the signs of false labor were. I learned the terms "b.l.o.o.d.y show" and "effacement and dilatation." Sometimes I actually believed that studying every possible fact about pregnancy might make up for the shortcomings I would have as a mother.

My third month had been the hardest. After those first few episodes, I was never sick, but the things I learned cramped my gut and took my breath away. At twelve weeks, my baby had been one and a half inches long. He weighed one twenty-eighth of an ounce. He had five webbed fingers, hair follicles. He could kick and move. He had a tiny brain, one that could send and receive messages. I spent much of that month with my hands spread over my abdomen, as if I could hold him in. Because once, a long long time ago, I had had another baby twelve weeks old. I tried not to compare, but that was inevitable. I told myself to be happy I did not know the facts about it then, as I did now.

The reason I had had an abortion was that I wasn't ready to be a mother; I couldn't have given a child the kind of life it deserved to have. Adoption wasn't an alternative, either, since that would have meant I'd be pregnant full term-I couldn't bring that kind of shame to my father. Seven years later, I had almost convinced myself that these were good excuses. But sometimes I would sit in my Barely White kitchen, run my fingers over the cool, smooth travel photos, and I would wonder if things were so different. Yes, I now had the means to support a baby. I could afford to buy the beautiful blond Scandinavian nursery furniture, the bright googly-eyed fish mobile. But I had two strikes against me: I still had no mother of my own as a model. I had killed my first child.

I went to stand and ground my belly into the edge of the kitchen table, wincing at the pain. My stomach was round but rock hard, and it seemed to have a million nerve endings. My body, curved in places where it never had been, was a hazard. I found myself stuck in tight spots-backed against walls, caught between closely placed restaurant chairs, trapped in the aisles of buses. I couldn't judge the s.p.a.ce I needed anymore, and I willed myself to believe that this would change in time.

Restless, I pulled on my boots and went to stand on the porch. It was raining, but I didn't particularly care. It was my only day off all week, Nicholas was at the hospital, and I had to go somewhere-anywhere-even if it wasn't to Borneo or Java. These days, I seemed always to want to be moving. I twitched all night in bed, never staying asleep for a full eight hours. I paced behind the receptionist's desk at work. When I sat down to read, my fingers fluttered at my sides.

I pulled on my coat without bothering to b.u.t.ton it and headed down the street. I kept walking until I reached the heart of Cambridge. I stood under the plexigla.s.s hood of the T station, beside a black woman with three children. She placed her hands on my stomach, the way everyone did these days. A pregnant woman, I had discovered, was public property. "You been sick?" the woman asked, and I shook my head. "Then it's a boy." She pulled her children out into the rain, and they walked toward Ma.s.s. Ave., jumping in puddles.

I wrapped my scarf around my head and moved into the rain again. I walked down Brattle, stopping at a tiny fenced-in play yard attached to a church. It was wet and empty, the slide still coated with last week's snow. I turned away and kept moving down the street until the storefronts and brick buildings faded into residential clapboard mansions with spotty naked trees. I walked until I realized I was going to the graveyard.

It was a famous one, full of Revolutionary soldiers and startling tombstones. My favorite was a thin slate, jagged and broken, that announced the body of Sarah Edwards, who died of a bullet wound given by a man not her husband. The graves, placed irregularly and close together, looked like crooked teeth. Some of the markers had fallen onto their sides and were strewn with vines and brambles. Here and there a footprint was pressed into the frozen ground, making me wonder who, other than me, came to a place like this.

As a child, I had gone to graveyards with my mother. "It's the only place I can think," she once told me. Sometimes she went just to sit. Sometimes she went to pay her respects to near strangers. Often we went together and sat on the smooth hot stones, worn down by praying hands, and we spread between us a picnic.

My mother wrote obituaries for the Chicago Tribune. Chicago Tribune. Most of the time, she sat at a phone and took down the information for the cheapest obituaries, the ones that were published in tiny black print, like cla.s.sifieds: PALERMO, of Arlington, July 13, 1970. Antonietta (Rizzo), beloved wife of the late Sebastian Palermo, devoted mother of Rita Fritzski and Anthony Palermo. Funeral from the Della Rosso Funeral Home, 356 South Main St., Chicago, Monday at 9 A.M., followed by a funeral Ma.s.s celebrated in Our Lady of the Immaculate Conception Church, Chicago. Friends and relatives are respectfully invited to attend. Interment Highland Memorial Cemetery, Riverdale. Most of the time, she sat at a phone and took down the information for the cheapest obituaries, the ones that were published in tiny black print, like cla.s.sifieds: PALERMO, of Arlington, July 13, 1970. Antonietta (Rizzo), beloved wife of the late Sebastian Palermo, devoted mother of Rita Fritzski and Anthony Palermo. Funeral from the Della Rosso Funeral Home, 356 South Main St., Chicago, Monday at 9 A.M., followed by a funeral Ma.s.s celebrated in Our Lady of the Immaculate Conception Church, Chicago. Friends and relatives are respectfully invited to attend. Interment Highland Memorial Cemetery, Riverdale.

My mother took dozens of these calls every day, and she told me over and over again how she never failed to be surprised by the number of deaths in Chicago. She would come home and reel off the names of the deceased to me, which she had a knack for remembering the way some people have a thing for telephone numbers. She never went to the cemetery to see these people-the "cla.s.sifieds"-at least not intentionally. But from time to time her editor let her write one of the real obituaries, the ones for semifamous people, set in skinny columns like news articles. HERBERT R. QUASHNER, the headline would read. WAS ARMY LAB FOREMAN. My mother liked doing those best. "You get to tell a story," she'd say. "This guy used to be a member of the Destroyer Escort Sailors a.s.sociation. He was in World War II, on a submarine chaser. He belonged to the Elks."

My mother wrote these obituaries at home, sitting at the kitchen table. She used to complain about deadlines, which she said was pretty funny, given her business. When the articles were printed, she clipped them neatly and stored them in a photo alb.u.m. I used to wonder what would happen to that alb.u.m if we all died in a fire; whether the police would think my mother had been a sick serial killer. But my mother insisted on keeping a record of her work, which she left behind, anyway, the day she disappeared.

My mother would make a weekly list of the important names she wrote about. Then on Sat.u.r.day, her day off, we'd go to the closest cemeteries, looking for the freshly turned earth that marked the newest interments. My mother would kneel in front of the graves of these people she hardly knew, still without headstones. She would sift the fine brown dirt through her fingers like a sieve. "Paige," she'd say, throwing back her shoulders, "take a deep breath. What can you smell?"

I would look around and see the lilac bushes and the forsythia, but I wouldn't take a deep breath. There was something about being in the cemetery that made me monitor my breathing, as if without warning I might find that I'd run out of air.

Once, my mother and I sat under the red shade of a j.a.panese maple, having visited the former Mary T. French, a public librarian. We had eaten barbecued chicken and potato salad and had wiped our fingers on our skirts, devil-may-care. Then my mother had stretched out across an old gra.s.sy grave, resting her head on a flat marker. She patted her thighs, encouraging me to lie down as well.

"You're going to crush him," I said, very serious, and my mother obligingly moved to the side. I sat down beside her and put my head in her lap and let the sun wash over my closed eyes and my smile. My mother's skirt blew about, whipping the edge of my neck. "Mommy," I said, "where do you go when you're dead?"

My mother took a deep breath, one that made her body puff like a cushion. "I don't know, Paige," she said. "Where do you think you go?"

I ran my hand over the cool gra.s.s to my right. "Maybe they're all underground, looking up at us."

"Maybe they're in heaven, looking down," my mother said.

I opened my eyes and stared at the sun until bursts of color exploded, orange and yellow and red, like fireworks. "What's heaven like?" I said.

My mother had rolled to her side, sliding me off her lap. "After sticking out life," she had said, "I hope it's whatever you want it to be."

It struck me as I moved through this Cambridge graveyard that my own mother could be in heaven now. If there was a heaven; if she had died. I wondered if she was buried in a state where it never snowed, if she was in a different country. I wondered who came to lay lilies at her grave and who had commissioned the inscription. I wondered if her obituary would mention that she was the devoted mother of Paige O'Toole.

I used to ask my father why my mother left, and he told me over and over the same thing: "Because she wanted to." As the years went by he said it with less bitterness, but that didn't make the words any easier to believe. The mother I imagined over the years, the one with the shy smile and the full skirts, who had the power to heal sc.r.a.pes and bruises with a kiss and who could tell bedtime stories like Scheherazade, would not have left. I liked to think my mother was pulled away by forces greater than herself. Maybe it was some international intrigue she was involved in, and the final chapter meant trading her own ident.i.ty to protect her family. For a time I wondered if she was half of a pair of fated lovers, and I almost forgave her running from my father if it meant being with the man who held her heart. Maybe she was just restless. Maybe she was looking for someone she had lost.