Harvesting the Heart

hands and knees, thinking to surprise Max by crouching like a tiger. “Max, Max, Maximilian,” Nicholas growls, pawing his way into the half-open door.

Astrid is sitting on the only chair in the room, an oversize white rocker. Max is in the middle of the pale-blue carpeted floor, tugging at tufts of the rug with one fist. His free hand is used for balance and is propped comfortably against Paige’s knee.

Although Astrid looks up, Paige doesn’t seem to notice that Nicholas has crawled into the room. She reaches for Max’s bare toes and pulls them one by one, the pinkie last, and then runs her fingers up the length of his leg. He squeals and giggles again, leaning back his head so that he can see her upside down. “More?” she says, and Max slaps his hands against her thighs.

Somewhere in the back of Nicholas’s mind, behind the red haze, something snaps. He stares at Paige, dumbfounded that she is actually in the same room as his son. She looks impossibly young, with her red hair spilling down over her shoulders and her shirt untucked in the back, her sneakered feet just out of Max’s reach. It wasn’t supposed to happen this way. But Max, who wails when the UPS man comes to the door these days, has taken to Paige as if she’s been there all his life, instead of only half. And Paige makes it look so easy. Nicholas remembers the nights he had to walk up and down the halls of the house, letting Max cry in his arms because he didn’t know how else to put him to sleep. He even took books out of the library to learn the words to “Patty-Cake” and “Three Blind Mice.” But Paige walks in from nowhere, sits down, spreadslik±€† her legs in a circular playground for Max, and she’s got him crowing.

Out of the blue, a vision of Paige flashes across Nicholas’s mind -Paige with her hand in the Miracle Whip jar, scraping together the last of the stuff for his sandwich. It was four-thirty in the morning, and he was leaving for surgery, but she, as always, had got up to make his lunch. “Well,” she said, ringing the knife against the empty jar, “we can call this one quits.” And she looked around the kitchen for a dish towel and couldn’t find one and wiped her hands on the soft white cotton of her angel’s nightgown when she thought, incorrectly, that Nicholas wasn’t looking.

Paige hasn’t made his lunch since Max was born, and although he isn’t about to blame a newborn or admit to jealousy, he suddenly realizes that Paige hasn’t been his since Max was born. He clenches his fists in the carpet, just like Max. Paige hasn’t come back here for him; she’s come for Max. She probably traced Nicholas to the hospital only to make sure he wouldn’t be around when she found Max. And although this shouldn’t bother him, because he’s pushed away all his feelings for her, it still smarts.

Nicholas takes a deep breath, waiting for brilliant anger to replace the pain. But it is slow in coming, especially when he looks at Paige, at the picture she makes with his son. He narrows his eyes and tries to remember what is familiar about this, and then he sees the connection. The way Max looks at her-as if she is a deity-is exactly the way Paige used to look at Nicholas.

Nicholas jumps to his feet and glares at his mother. “Who the hell told you to let her in here?” he seethes.

Astrid stands calmly. “Who the hell told me not to?” she says.

Nicholas runs a hand through his hair. “For Christ’s sake, Mom, I didn’t think I had to spell it out. I told you she was back. You know how I feel. You know what she’s done.” He points to Paige, still wrapped around the baby and tickling his sides. “How do you know she isn’t going to steal him away when your back is turned? How do you know she isn’t going to hurt him?”

Astrid lays a hand on her son’s arm. “Nicholas,” she says, “do you really think she’s going to do that?”

At that, Paige looks up. She stands and pulls Max up on his feet. “I just had to see him, Nicholas. I’ll go now. It’s not your mother’s fault.” She scoops Max into her embrace, and he locks his dimpled arms around her neck.

Nicholas takes a step forward, so close he can feel the warm rush of Paige’s breath. “I don’t want to see your car at home,” he says in his quiet, steely surgeon’s voice. “I’ll get a restraining order.”

He expects Paige to turn and slink away, intimidated, like everyone else does when he speaks that way. But she stands her ground and rubs her hands over Max’s back. “It’s my house too,” she says quietly, “and it’s my son.”

Nicholas explodes. He grabs the baby so roughly, Max begins to cry. “What the hell do you think you’re going to do? Take the kid the next time you decidehei±€† to bolt? Or maybe you already have a plan to leave.”

Paige knots her hands in front of her. “I am not going to bolt. All I want is to be let back in my house again. I’m not going to run anywhere unless I’m forced to.”

Nicholas laughs, a strange sound that comes through his nose. “Right,” he says. “Just like last time. Poor Paige, driven away by a twist of Fate.”

In that moment, Nicholas knows he has won. “How come you have to see it like that?” Paige whispers. “How come you can’t just see that I came home?” She steps back, speaking through a broken smile. “Maybe you’re perfect, Nicholas, and everything you do turns out right the first time. The rest of us ordinary humans have to try over and over again and hope that we’ll keep getting second chances until we figure it out.” She turns and runs out of the room before a single tear falls, and Nicholas can hear the heavy oak front door pulled shut behind her.

Max fidgets in Nicholas’s arms, so he sets him down on the carpet. The baby stares out the open bedroom door as if he is waiting for Paige to come back. Astrid, whom Nicholas has forgotten about, reaches down to pull the dying leaf of a potted palm out of Max’s hand. When she straightens, she looks Nicholas right in the eye. “I’m ashamed of you,” she says, and she walks out of the room.

Paige is at the house when Nicholas returns with Max. She sits quietly in front of the porch with her sketch pad and her charcoal. In spite of his threat, Nicholas does not call the police. He does not even acknowledge that he sees her when he carries Max and his diaper bag and the files from the hospital into the house. From time to time that night when he is playing with Max on the living room floor he can see Paige peering in through the window, but he doesn’t bother to close the drapes or to move Max into another room.

When Max has trouble falling asleep, Nicholas tries the one thing that always works. Dragging the vacuum cleaner out of the front hall closet, he sets it over the threshold of the nursery and flips the switch so that the whir of the motor drowns out the choked cries of Max’s screams. Eventually Max quiets down and Nicholas pulls the vacuum away. It works because of the white noise that distracts Max, but Nicholas thinks it might be genetic. He can remember coming home from thirty-six-hour shifts, falling asleep to the hum of the vacuum as Paige cleaned the house.

Nicholas walks to the front hall and turns out the light. Then he steps to the window, knowing that he’ll be able to see Paige without her being able to see him. Her face is silver in the moonlight, her hair a rich bronze glow. Puddled around her are scores of drawings: Max sitting, Max sleeping, Max rolling over. Nicholas can not see among them a single image of himself.

The wind blows a couple of the drawings up the steps of the porch. Before he can even think to stop himself, Nicholas opens the front door in time for them to fly into the hall. He picks them up -one of Max playing with a rattle, one of Max grabbing his own feet-and walks onto the porch. “I think these are yours,” he says, coming to stand beside her.

Paige is on her hands and knees, trying to keep the other drawings from blowing away. She has secured a stack of them under a big rock and has pinned the rest with her elbow. “Thanks,” she says, rolling awkwardly onto her side. She gathers the pictures up and stuffs them inside the front cover of her sketch pad, as if she is embarrassed. “If you want to stay out here,” she says, “I can sit in the car.”

Nicholas shakes his head. “It’s cold,” he says. “I’m going to go inside.” He sees Paige draw in her breath, waiting for an invitation, but he’s not about to let that happen. “You’re very good with Max,” he says. “He’s going through this stranger thing now, and he doesn’t take to just anybody.”

Paige shrugs. “I think I’ve grown into him. This is more what I pictured when I thought of a baby-something that sits up and smiles and laughs with you, not just something that eats and sleeps and poops and completely ignores you.” She peers up at him. “I think that you’re the one who’s very good with Max. Look at what he’s turned into. He’s like a whole different kid.”

Nicholas thinks of many things he could say, but instead he just nods his head. “Thanks,” he says. He leans against the step of the porch and stretches out his legs. “You can’t stay here forever,” he says.

“I hope I don’t have to.” Paige tilts her head back and lets the night wash over her face. “When I was in North Carolina, I slept outside with my mother.” She sits up and laughs. “I actually liked it.”