Harvesting the Heart Read online

  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 album. I used to wonder what would happen to that album 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 Saturday, 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 Japanese 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 grassy 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 grass 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 scrapes 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 identity 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.

  I ran my hands over the smooth graves, trying to picture the face of my mother. Finally, I came to a flat marker, and I lay down with my head upon it, crossing my hands over the life in my belly, staring at the ice in the sky. I stretched out on the frozen ground until it seeped into my bones: the rain, the cold, these ghosts.

  More than anything else in the world, my mother had hated opening the refrigerator and finding the juice pitcher empty. It was always my father's fault; I was too little to pour for myself. It wasn't as though my father did it on purpose. His mind was usually on other things, and since it wasn't a priority, he never checked to see how low the lemonade was when he stuck it back inside the Frigidaire. Three times a week, at least, I would find my mother standing in the slice of cold air from the open refrigerator, waving the blue juice pitcher. "What is so damned difficult about mixing a can of frozen Minute Maid?" she would yell. She'd stare at me. "What am I supposed to do with a half inch of juice?"

  It was a simple little mistake, which she fashioned into a crisis, and if I had been older I might have suspected the larger illness for the symptoms, but as it happened I was five, and I didn't know any better. I'd follow her as she tramped down the stairs to accost my father in his workshop, brandishing the pitcher and crying and asking nobody in particular what she had done to deserve a life like this.

  The year that I was five was the first time I was truly conscious of Mother's Day. I had made cards before, sure, and I suppose I even had my name tacked onto a present that my dad had bought. But that year I wanted to do something that was straight from the heart. My father suggested making a painting, or a box of homemade fudge, but that wasn't the kind of gift I wanted to give. Those other things might have made my mother smile, but even at five I knew that what she really needed was something to take the ragged edge off the pain.

  I also knew I had an ace up my sleeve--a father who could make anything my mind conjured up. I sat on the old couch in his workshop one night late in April, my knees folded up, my chin resting on them. "Daddy," I said, "I need your help." My father had been gluing rubber paddles onto a cogwheel for some contraption that measured chicken feed. He stopped immediately and faced me, giving me his complete attention. He nodded slowly while I explained my idea--an invention that would register when the lemonade in the pitcher needed to be refilled.

  My father leaned forward and held both my hands. "Are you sure that's the kind of thing your mother would be wantin'?" he asked. "Not a handsome sweater, or some perfume?"

  I shook my head. "I think she wants something . . ." My voice trailed off as I struggled to pick the right words. "She wants something to make her stop hurting."

  My father looked at me so intently that I thought he was expecting me to say more. But he squeezed my hands and tipped his head closer, so our brows were touching. When he spoke, I could smell his sweet breath, laced with the flavor of Wrigley's gum. "So," he said, "you've been seein' it too."

  Then he sat on the couch beside me and pulled me onto his lap. He smiled, and it was so contagious I could feel my legs already bouncing up and down. "I'm thinkin' of a sensor," he said, "with some kind of alarm."

  "Oh, Daddy, yes!" I agreed. "One that keeps ringing and ringing and won't let you get away with just sticking the pitcher back."

  My father laughed. "I've never invented something before that will mean more work for me." He cupped my face in his palms. "But it's worth it," he said. "Aye, well worth it."

  My father and I worked for two weeks in a row, from right after dinner until my bedtime. We'd run to the workshop and try out buzzers and alarms, electronic sensors and microchips that reacted to degrees of wetness. My mother would knock from time to time on the door that led to the basement. "What are you two doing?" she'd call. "It's lonely up here."

  "We're making a Frankenstein monster," I'd cry out, pronouncing the long, strange word the way my father had told me to. My father would start banging hammers and wrenches around on the workbench, making an awful racket. "It's an unsightly mess down here,

  May," he'd yell, laughter threaded through his voice like a gold filament. "Brains and blood and gore. You wouldn't want to see this."

  She must have known. After all, she never did come down, in spite of her gentle threats. My mother was like a child in that respect. She never peeked early for her Christmas presents or tried to eavesdrop on conversa
tions that would give her a hint. She loved a surprise. She would never spoil a surprise.

  We finished the juice sensor the night before Mother's Day. My father filled a water glass and dipped in the thin silver stick and then slowly suctioned away the liquid. When less than an inch was left in the bottom of the glass, the stick began to beep. It was a high, shrill note--downright annoying--since we figured you'd need that kind of prodding to force you to replace the juice. It didn't stop until the water was refilled. And just for desperate measure, the top of the stick glowed blood red the whole time it was beeping, casting shadows on my fingers and my father's as we clutched the rim of the glass.

  "This is perfect," I whispered. "This will fix everything." I tried to remember a time when, every day at four o'clock, my mother had not been chased into the bedroom by her own shadow. I tried to remember weeks when I had not caught her staring at the closed front door as if she was expecting Saint Peter.

  My father's voice startled me. "At the very least," he said, "this will be a beginning."

  My mother went out after Mass that Sunday, but we barely noticed. The minute she was out the door, we were pulling the fine linen and the fancy china from the closets, setting a table that wept with celebration. By six o'clock, the roast my father had made was wading in its own gravy; the green beans were steaming; the juice pitcher was full.

  At six-thirty, I was squirming in my chair. "I'm hungry, Daddy," I said. At seven, my father let me lie down in the living room to watch TV. As I left, I saw him rest his elbows on the table and bury his face in his hands. By eight, he had removed all traces of the meal, even the ribboned package we'd set on my mother's chair.

  He brought me a plate of beef, but I was not hungry. The television was on, but I'd rolled over on the couch so that my head was buried in the pillows. "We had a present and everything," I said when my father touched my shoulder.

  "She's at her friend's place," he said, and I turned to look up at him. My mother, to my knowledge, had no friends. "She just called to tell me she was sorry she couldn't make it, and she asked me to kiss the most beautiful lass in Chicago good night for her."

  I stared at my father, who had never in my life lied to me. We both knew that the telephone had not rung all day.

  My father bathed me and combed through my tangled hair and pulled a nightgown over my head. He tucked me in and sat with me until he thought I had fallen asleep.

  But I stayed awake. I knew the exact moment when my mother walked through the door. I heard my father's voice asking where the hell she had been. "It's not like I disappeared," my mother argued, her words angrier and louder than my father's. "I just needed to be by myself for a little while."

  I thought there might be yelling, but instead I heard the rustle of paper as my father gave my mother her present. I listened to the paper tear, and then to the sharp gasp of my mother drawing in her breath as she read the Mother's Day card I'd dictated to my father. This is so we won't forget, it read. Love, Patrick. Love, Paige.

  I knew even before I heard her footsteps that she was coming to me. She threw open the door of my room, and in the silhouetted light of the hall I could see her trembling. "It's okay," I told her, although it was not what I had wanted or planned to say. She crouched down at the foot of the bed as if she were awaiting a sentence. Unsure what to do, I just watched her for a moment. Her head was bowed, as though she was praying. I stayed perfectly still until I couldn't do it anymore, and then I did what I wanted her to do: I put my arms around my mother and held her like I couldn't for the life of me let go.

  My father came to stand at the door. He caught my eye as I looked up over my mother's dark, bent head. He tried to smile at me, but he couldn't quite do it. Instead he moved closer to where I held my mother. He rested his cool hand on the back of my neck, just as Jesus did in those pictures where He was healing the crippled and the blind. He kept his hold on me, as though he really thought that might make it hurt any less.

  When I was little, my father wanted me to call him Da, like every little girl in Ireland. But I had grown up American, calling him Daddy and then Dad when I got older. I wondered what my child would call Nicholas, would call me. This is what I was thinking about when I called my father--ironically, from the same underground pay phone I had first used when I got to Cambridge. The bus station was cold, deserted. "Da," I said, on purpose, "I miss you."

  My father's voice changed, the way it always did when he realized it was me on the phone. "Paige, lass," he said. "Twice in one week! There must be some occasion."

  I wondered why it was so hard to say. I wondered why I hadn't told him before. "I'm having a baby," I said.

  "A baby?" My father's grin filled the spaces between his words. "A grandchild. Well, now, that is an occasion."

  "I'm due in May," I said. "Right around Mother's Day."

  My father barely skipped a beat. "That's fittin'," he said. He laughed, deep. "I take it you've known for a while," he said, "or else I did a poor job teachin' you the birds and the bees."

  "I've known," I admitted. "I just figured--I don't know--I'd have more time." I had a crazy impulse to tell him everything I'd carefully hidden for years; the circumstances I sensed he knew about anyway. The words were right there at the back of my throat, so deceptively casual: You remember that night I left your home? I swallowed hard and forced my mind into the present. "I guess I'm still getting used to the idea myself," I said. "Nicholas and I didn't expect this, and, well, he's thrilled, but I ... I just need a little more time."

  Miles away, my father exhaled slowly, as if he were remembering, out of the blue, everything I hadn't had the courage to say. "Don't we all," he sighed.

  By the time I reached the neighborhood where Nicholas and I lived, the sun had set. I moved through the streets, quiet as a cat. I peeked into the lit windows of town houses and tried to catch the warmth and the dinnertime smell that they held. Because I misjudged my size, I slipped against a hedge and fell flush against a mailbox, which was lolling open like a blackened tongue. On the top of a pile of letters was a pink envelope with no return address. It was made out to Alexander LaRue, 20 Appleton Lane, Cambridge. The handwriting was sloped and gentle, somewhat European. Without a second thought, I looked up and down the street and tucked the letter into my coat.

  I had committed a federal offense. I did not know Alexander LaRue, and I did not plan to give him back his letter. My heart pounded as I walked as quickly as possible down the block; my face flushed scarlet. What was I doing?

  I flew up the porch steps and slammed the door behind me, locking both locks. I shrugged off my coat and pulled off my boots. My heart choked at the back of my throat. With trembling fingers, I slit the envelope open. There was the same sloped hand, the same spiked letters. The paper was a torn corner from a grocery bag. Dear Alexander, it read, I have been dreaming of you. Trish. That was all. I read the note over and over again, checking the edges and the back to make sure that I hadn't missed anything. Who was Alexander? And Trish? I ran up to the bedroom and stuffed the letter into a box of maxipads in the bottom of my closet. I thought about the kinds of dreams Trish might be having. Maybe she closed her eyes and saw Alexander's hands running over her hips, her thighs. Maybe she remembered their sitting on the edge of a riverbank, shoes and socks off", feet blurred in the water by a frigid rushing stream. Maybe Alexander had also been dreaming of her.

  "There you are."

  I jumped when Nicholas came in. I raised my hand, and he looped his tie around my wrist and knelt on the edge of the bed to kiss me. "Barefoot and pregnant," he said, "just the way I like 'em."

  I struggled into a sitting position. "And how was your day?" I asked.

  Nicholas's voice came to me from the bathroom, interrupted by the splash of the faucet. "Come and talk to me," he said, and I heard the shower being turned on.

  I went to sit on the toilet lid, feeling the steam curl my hair over the back of my neck where it had fallen from my ponytail. My shirt, too tight
at the bust, misted and clung to my stomach. I considered telling Nicholas what I had done that day, about the cemetery, about Trish and Alexander. But before I could even run through my thoughts, Nicholas turned off the water and pulled his towel into the stall. He knotted it around his hips and stepped out of the shower, leaving the bathroom in a cloud of fresh steam.

  I followed Nicholas and watched him part his hair in the mirror over my dresser, using my brush and stooping so that he could see his face. "Come over here," he said, and he reached behind him for my hand, still holding my eyes with his reflection.

  He sat me down on a corner of the bed, and he pulled the barrette from my hair. With the brush, he began to make slow, lazy strokes from my scalp to my shoulders, fanning my hair from the nape of my neck to spread like silk. I tilted my head back and closed my eyes, letting the brush catch through damp tangles and feeling Nicholas's quiet hand smoothing the static electricity away a moment later. "It feels good," I said, my voice thick and unfamiliar.

  I was vaguely aware of my clothes being pulled away, of being pushed back on the cold quilted comforter. Nicholas kept running his hands through my hair. I felt light, I felt supple. Without those hands weighing me down, I was certain I could float away.

  Nicholas moved over me and came inside in one quick stroke, and my eyes flashed open with a white streak of pain. "No," I screamed, and Nicholas tensed and pulled away from me.

  "What?" he said, his eyes still hooded and wild. "Is it the baby?"

  "I don't know," I murmured, and I didn't. I just knew there was a barrier where there hadn't been one days ago; that when Nicholas had entered me I felt resistance, as if something was willing him out