Harvesting the Heart Read online

  I got up as usual at 4:30 a.m. and made Nicholas coffee to take on the road, and I packed a light lunch, as I did every day, because I knew he'd need it between his operations. Just because my husband was being an asshole, I told myself, was no reason for patients to suffer. He came downstairs with two ties. "Which one?" he said, holding them to his throat. I pushed past him and walked back upstairs. "Oh, for Christ's sake, Paige," he muttered, and then I heard the door slam behind him.

  I ran to the bathroom and threw up. This time I was so dizzy I had to lie down, and I did, right on the fuzzy white bath mat. I fell asleep, and when I woke I called in sick to Mercy. I would not have gone to Dr. Thayer's, either, that afternoon, but I had a hunch. I waited until she had a lull between patients, and then I left the reception desk and stood beside her at the counter where we kept the jars for urine samples, the Pap smear glass slides, and the information sheets on breast self-examination. Dr. Thayer stared up at me as if she already knew. "I need you to do me a favor," I said.

  This was not the way it was supposed to happen. Nicholas and I had discussed it a million times: I would support us until Nicholas's salary began to pay off the loans; then it was my turn. I was going to go full time to art school, and then after I got my degree we would start a family.

  It shouldn't have happened, because we were careful, but Dr. Thayer shrugged and said nothing was completely effective. "Be happy," she told me. "At least you're married."

  That was what brought it all back. As I drove slowly through the traffic in Cambridge, I wondered how I could have missed the signals: the swollen breasts and spread nipples, the way I'd been so tired. After all, I had been through this before. I hadn't been ready then, and in spite of what Dr. Thayer said, I knew that I wasn't ready now.

  The realization sent a shiver through my body: I was never going to art school. It would not be my turn for many years. It might never actually happen.

  I had made my decision to attend art school after I had taken just one formal art course, connected with the Chicago Art Institute. I was only in ninth grade; I had won free tuition for a course through a city-wide student art contest. Figure Drawing was the only class offered after school hours, so I signed up. On the first night, the teacher, a wiry man with purple glasses, made us go around the room telling who we were and why we were there. I listened to the others say they were taking the class for college credit or for updating a portfolio. When it was my turn I said, "I'm Paige. I don't know what I'm doing here."

  The model that night was a man, and he came in in a satin robe printed with theater ticket stubs. He had a steel bar he used as a prop. When the teacher nodded, he stepped onto a platform and shrugged off the robe as if it didn't bother him in the least. He bent and twisted and settled with his arms overhead, holding the bar like the Cross. He was the first man I'd seen completely naked.

  When everyone began drawing, I sat still. I was certain I'd made a mistake in taking this course. I could feel the model's eyes on me, and that's when I touched the conte stick to the sketch pad. I looked away, and I drew from the heart: the knotted shoulders, the stretched chest, the flaccid penis. The teacher came over shortly before class ended. "You've got something," he said to me, and I wanted to believe him.

  For the night of the last class, I bought a piece of fine gray marbled paper from an art supply store, hoping to draw something I'd want to keep. The model was a girl no older than I, but her eyes were weary and jaded. She was pregnant, and when she lay on her side, her belly swelled into the curve of a frown. I drew her furiously, using white conte for the shine of the studio lights on her hair and her forearms. I did not stop during the ten-minute coffee break, although the model got up to stretch and I had to draw from memory. When I was finished, the teacher took my drawing around to show the other students. He pointed out the quiet planes of her hips, the slow roll of her heavy breasts, the spill of shadow between her legs. The teacher brought the picture back to me and told me I should think about art school. I rolled the drawing into a cylinder and smiled shyly and left.

  I never hung up the drawing, because my father would have killed me if he'd known I'd willingly sinned by taking a course that exposed the bodies of men and women. I kept the picture hidden in the back of my closet and looked at it from time to time. I did not notice the obvious thing about the drawing until several weeks afterward. The images that came out in my sketches were not even hidden in the background this time. I had drawn the model, yes, but the face-- and the fear upon it--was mine.

  "Hey," Marvela said to me as I walked into Mercy. She had a pot of coffee in one hand and a bran muffin in the other. "I thought you was sick today." She pushed past me, shaking her head. "Girl, don't you know you makin' me look bad? When you play hooky you supposed to stay away, not get them Catholic guilt feelings and show up mid-shift."

  I leaned against the cash register. "I am sick," I said. "I've never felt worse in my life."

  Marvela frowned at me. "Seems if I was married to a doctor, I'd probably be ordered to bed."

  "It's not that kind of sick," I told her, and Marvela's eyes widened. I knew what she was thinking; Marvela had a thing for National Enquirer gossip and larger-than-life stories. "No," I told her before she could ask, "Nicholas isn't having an affair. And my soul hasn't been stolen by aliens."

  She poured me a cup of coffee and leaned her elbows against the counter. "I s'pose I'm gonna have to play Twenty Questions," she said.

  I heard her, but I didn't answer. At that moment, a woman stumbled through the door holding a baby, a shopping bag, and a huge paisley satchel. As she crossed the threshold, she dropped the satchel and hoisted the baby higher on her hip. Marvela swore under her breath and stood up to help, but I touched her arm. "How old is that kid?" I asked, trying to sound casual. "You figure six months?"

  Marvela snorted. "He's a year if he's a day," she said. "Ain't you never baby-sat?"

  Impulsively, I stood up and pulled an apron from behind the counter. "Let me serve her," I said. Marvela was hesitating. "You get the tip."

  The woman had left her satchel in the middle of the diner floor. I pulled it over to the booth she'd gone to--the one that had been Nicholas's. The woman had the baby on the tabletop and was taking off its diaper. Without bothering to thank me, she unzipped the satchel, withdrew a clean diaper and a chain of plastic rings, which she handed to the baby. "Dah," he said, pointing to the light.

  "Yes," the woman said, not even looking up. "That's right. Light." She rolled up the dirty diaper and fastened the new one and caught the rings before the baby threw them on the floor. I was fascinated; she seemed to have a hundred hands. "Can I get some bread?" she said to me, like I hadn't been doing my job, and I ran into the kitchen.

  I didn't stay long enough for Lionel to ask me what the hell I was doing at work. I grabbed a basket of rolls and strode to the woman's table. She was joggling the baby on her knee and trying to keep him from reaching the paper place mat. "Do you have a high chair?" she asked.

  I nodded and dragged over the little half-seat. "No," she sighed, as if she had been through this before. "That's a booster seat. That's not a high chair."

  I stared at it. "Won't it work?"

  The woman laughed. "If the President of the United States was a woman," she said, "every damn restaurant would have a high chair, and mothers with infants would be allowed to park in handicapped zones." She had been balling up a roll into bite-size nuggets that the baby was stuffing into his mouth, but she sighed and rose to her feet, gathering her things. "I can't eat if there's no high chair for him," she said. "I'm sorry to have wasted your time."

  "I can hold him," I said impulsively.

  "Pardon?"

  "I said I could hold him," I repeated. "While you eat."

  The woman stared at me. I noticed how exhausted she seemed, trembling almost, as if she hadn't slept for a very long time. Her eyes, an unsettled shade of brown, were locked onto mine. "You would do that?" she murmured.

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