Paige looks to Nicholas, who shakes his head. She stuffs her hands into the pockets of her jeans and turns them inside out to reveal an unshelled pecan, three nickels, and a ball of lint. She picks up each object as if it is coated in gold and presses the treasures one by one into the palms of the waiting children. They frown at her, disappointed.
“Let’s go,” Nicholas says, pushing her through the tangle of costumed kids. He goes the back way, coming from the service elevator, and walks straight to the nurses’ station. It is empty, but Nicholas steps behind the desk as if it is his right and flips through a chart. He turns to tell Paige where Max is, but she has already moved away.
He finds her standing in the recovery room, partially obscured by the thin white curtains. She is absolutely rigid as she stares into the oval hospital crib that holds Max.
Nothing could have prepared Nicholas for this. Underneath the sterile plastic dome, Max is lying perfectly still on his back, arms pointed over his head. An IV needle stabs into him. A thick white bandage covers his stomach and chest, stopping at his penis, which is blanketed with gauze but not restricted by a diaper. A nasogastric tube feeds into a mask that covers his mouth and nose. His chest rises and falls almost imperceptibly. His hair looks obscenely black against the alabaster of his skin.
If Nicholas didn’t know better, he would think that Max was dead.
He has fo ha¡€†rgotten that Paige is there too, but then he hears a choked sound beside him. Tears are streaming down her face when she steps forward to touch the side rail of the crib. Reflected light bathes her face in silver, and with her ringed, haggard eyes she looks very much like a phantom when she turns to Nicholas. “You liar,” she whispers. “This is not my son.” And she runs out of the room and down the hall.
chapter 42
They’ve killed him. He’s so still and pale and tiny that I know it beyond a doubt. Once again there has been a baby and it did not live and it is all because of me.
I run out of the room where they’ve laid Max out, down the hall and the staircase and through the nearest door I can find. I am suffocating, and when the automatic door slides open I gulp in the night air of Boston. I can’t get enough. I fly down Cambridge Street, passing teenagers dressed in bright neon rags and lovers entwined-Rhett and Scarlett, Cyrano and Roxanne, Romeo and Juliet. An old woman with wrinkled skin the shade of a prune stops me with a withered hand on my arm. She holds out an apple. “Mirror, mirror on the wall,” she says. “Take it, dearie.”
The whole world has changed while I have been inside. Or maybe I’m not where I think I am. Maybe this is purgatory.
The night sweeps from the sky to wrap my feet. When I laugh because my lungs are bursting, the dark streets echo my shrieks. Surely, I think, I am going to hell.
Somewhere in the back of my mind I am aware of the place I’ve come to. It is in the business district of Boston, filled with pin-striped executives and sweaty hot dog carts during the day; but at night, Government Center is nothing more than a flat gray wasteland, a stage for the dance-crazed wind. I am the only person here. In the background I hear the flutter of the wings of pigeons, beating like a heart.
I have come here with a purpose in mind. I am thinking of Lazarus and of Christ Himself. It isn’t right for Max to die for my sins. Nobody ever asked me. Tonight, in return for a miracle, I am willing to sell my own soul.
“Where are You?” I whisper, choking on my words. I close my eyes against the gusts that blow across the plaza. “Why can’t I see You?”
I spin wildly. “I grew up with You,” I cry. “I believed in You. I even trusted You. But You are not a forgiving God.” As if in answer, the wind whistles over the glowing windows of an office building. “When I needed Your strength, You were never there. When I prayed for Your help, You turned away. All I ever wanted was to understand You,” I shout. “All I ever wanted were the answers.”
I fall to my knees and feel the unforgiving cement, wet and cold. I lift my face to the scrutiny of the sky. “What kind of God are You?” I say, sinking lower to the pavement. “You took away my mother. You made me give up my first baby. You’ve stolen my second.” I press my cheek against the rough concrete surface and know the moment it scrapes and bleeds. “I never knew any of them,” I whisper. “Just h thgn="jay ow much can one person take?”
I can feel Him before I raise my head. He is standing inches behind me. When I see Him, haloed by my pure white faith, it suddenly makes sense. He calls my name, and I fall right into the arms of the man who, I know, has always been my savior.
chapter 43
“ Paige,” Nicholas says, and she turns around slowly. Her shadow, stretching ten skinny feet in front of her, approaches him first. Then she comes forward and falls right against him.
For a moment Nicholas does not know what to do. His arms, acting on their own, fold around her. He buries his face in her hair. It is fragrant and warm and jumps at the ends, as if there are live sparks. He is amazed that after all this time, she fits so well.
The only way he can get her to walk is by bracing her against his side, one arm locked around her shoulders. He is really just dragging her. Paige’s eyes are open, and she seems to be looking at Nicholas but not seeing him. Her lips move, and when Nicholas leans close enough he can hear the hot whisper of her breath. He thinks she is saying a prayer.
The streets of Boston are dotted with costumed clusters of people-Elvira and the Lone Ranger and PLO terrorists and Marie Antoinette. A tall man dressed as a scarecrow hooks his arm into Paige’s free one and starts to skip, pulling Paige and Nicholas off to the left. “Follow the yellow brick road,” he sings at the top of his lungs, until Nicholas shrugs him off. Sputtering lamps cast shadows that creep down the alleys on the backs of dead October leaves. Nich olas can smell winter.
When he reaches the parking garage at Mass General, he picks Paige up in his arms and carries her to his car. He sets her down on her feet while he slides Max’s car seat over to one side, pushing a little terry-cloth clown rattle and a sticky pacifier. Then he helps Paige into the back seat, laying her on her side and covering her with his jacket. As he pulls the collar up under her neck, she grabs his hand and holds it with the strength of a vise. She is staring over his shoulder, and that’s when she begins to scream.
Nicholas turns around and comes face-to-face with Death. Standing beside the door is an impossibly tall person in the flowing black robes of the Grim Reaper. His eyes are hidden in the folds of his hood, and the point of his tinfoil scythe just grazes Nicholas’s shoulder. “Get out of here,” Nicholas says, and then he shouts the words. He pushes at the cloak, which seems as insubstantial as ink. Paige stops screaming and sits up, struggling to get out. Nicholas closes her door and pulls himself into the car. He drives past the gaping face into the tangled streets of Boston, toward the sanctuary of his home.
“Paige,” Nicholas says. She doesn’t answer. He peeks into the rearview mirror, and her eyes stare wide. “Paige,” he says again, louder. “Max is going to be fine. He’s going to be fine.”
He watches her eyes as he says this, and he thinks he can see a glimmer of recogshaneral finition, but that might just be the murky light in the car. He wonders what pharmacies are open in Cambridge, what he could prescribe that might snap Paige out of this. Normally he’d suggest Valium, but Paige is calm now. Too calm, really. He wants to see her scratching and crying out again. He wants to see a sign of life.
When he pulls into the driveway, Paige sits up. Nicholas helps her out of the car and starts to walk up the steps of the porch, expecting her to follow. But as he puts the key into the lock of the front door, he realizes that Paige is not standing beside him. He sees her walking across the front lawn to the blue hydrangeas, the place where she slept when she was camping outside the house. She lies down on the grass, melting the early frost with the heat of her skin.