Jake pulled me into his arms, awkwardly twisting my body around the center console. “Now what do I do?” I said.
He ran his hands over my ponytail, tugging just a little. “You go to Farleyville, North Carolina,” he said.
Finding her had been the easy part. I was terrified of meeting my mother, a woman I’d remade in the image of myself. I didn’t know what was worse: stirring up memories that might make me hate her at first sight, or finding out that I was exactly like her, destined to keep running, too unsure of myself to be somebody’s mother. That was the risk I was taking. In spite of what I had promised myself or pleaded to Nicholas, if I really had turned out like May O’Toole, I might never feel whole enough to go home.
I looked up at Jake, and the message was clear in my eyes. He smiled gently. “You’re on your own now.”
I remembered the last time he’d said that to me, silently, in slightly different words. I lifted my chin, resolved. “Not for long,” I said.
chapter 24
When her voice came over the line, crackling at the edges, the bottom dropped out of Nicholas’s world. “Hello, Nicholas,” Paige said. “How are you?”
Nicholas had been changing Max, and he had carried him to the phone in the kitchen with his snaps all undone. He placed the baby on the kitchen table, cradling his head on a stack of napkins. At the cadence of his wife’s voice, he had suddenly becohatnter"andme very still. It was as if the air had stopped circulating, as if the only motion was the quick kick of Max’s legs and the insistent pounding of blood behind Nicholas’s ears. Nicholas tucked the phone in the crook of his neck and laid the baby facedown on the linoleum. He pulled the cord as far as it could stretch. “Are you calling to apologize to me?”
When she didn’t answer at first, his mouth became dry. What if she was in trouble? He had cut off her money. What if she’d had a problem with the car, had had to hitchhike, was running away from some lunatic with a knife? “I’m in Chicago,” Paige said. “I’m going to find my mother.”
Nicholas ran his hand through his hair and almost laughed. This was a joke. This did not happen to real people. This was something you’d see on the Sunday Movie of the Week or read about in a True Confessions magazine. He had always known that Paige was haunted by her mother; she was so guarded when speaking about her that she gave herself away. But why now?
When she didn’t say anything, Nicholas stared out the tiny kitchen window and wondered what Paige was wearing. He pictured her hair, loose and framing her face, rich with the colors of autumn. He saw the ragged pink tips of her bitten fingernails and the tiny indentation at the base of her neck. He opened the refrigerator and let the cool gust of air clear her image from his mind. He did not care. He simply would not let himself.
When he heard her ask about Max, his anger started to boil again. “Apparently you don’t give a damn,” he said, and he walked back toward Max, planning to slam down the phone. She was babbling about how long she’d been away from Chicago, and suddenly Nicholas was so tired he could not stand. He sank into the nearest chair and thought of how today could possibly have been the worst day of his life. “Let me tell you what I did today, dear,” Nicholas said, biting off each word as if it were a bitter morsel. “After getting up with Max three times during the night, I took him to the hospital this morning. I had a quadruple bypass scheduled, which I almost didn’t complete because I couldn’t stay on my feet.” He spit out the rest of his words, barely even hearing them himself. “Someone could have died because of your need for a-what did you call it?-a vacation.” He held the receiver away from his mouth. “Paige,” he said softly, “I don’t want to see your face again.” And closing his eyes, he put the phone back in its cradle.
When the phone rang again, minutes later, Nicholas picked it up and yelled right into it, “Goddammit, I’m not going to say it again.”
He paused long enough to catch his breath, long enough for Alistair Fogerty’s control to snap on the other end of the line. The sharp edge of his voice made Nicholas take a step backward. “Six o’clock, Nicholas. In my office.” And he hung up.
By the time Nicholas drove back to the hospital, he had a splitting headache. He had forgotten to bring a pacifier, and Max had yelled the entire way. He trudged up the stairs to the fifth floor, the administrative wing, because the elevator from the parking garage was broken. Fogerty was in his office, systematically spitting into the spider plants that edged his window. “Nicholas,” he said, “and, of course, Max. How could I forget? Everywhere Dr. Prescott goes, the little Prescott isn’t far behind.”
Nicholas continued to look at the potted plant that Alistair had been leaning over. “Oh,” Fogerty said, dismissing his actions with a wave of his hand. “It’s nothing. For unexplained reasons, my office flora react favorably to sadism.” He stared at Nicholas with the predatory eyes of a hawk. “What we are here to talk about, however, is not me, Nicholas, but you.”
Nicholas had not known what he was going to say until that moment. But before Alistair could open his mouth about the hospital not being a day care facility to meet Nicholas’s whims, he sat in a chair and settled Max more comfortably on his lap. He didn’t give a damn about what Alistair had to tell him. The son of a bitch didn’t have a heart. “I’m glad you wanted to see me, Alistair,” he said, “since I’ll be taking a leave of absence.”
“A what?” Fogerty stood and moved closer to Nicholas. Max giggled and reached out his hand toward the pen in Fogerty’s lab coat pocket.
“A week should do it. I can have Joyce reschedule my planned surgeries; I’ll double up the next week if I have to. And the emergencies can be handled by the residents. What’s-his-name, that little skunky one with the black eyes-Wollachek-he’s decent. I won’t expect pay, of course. And”-Nicholas smiled-“I’ll come back better than ever.”
“Without the infant,” Fogerty added.
Nicholas bounced Max on his knee. “Without the infant.”
Saying it all out loud lifted a tremendous pressure from Nicholas’s chest. He had no idea what he’d do in the span of a week, but surely he could find a nanny or a full-time sitter to stay in the house. At the very least, he could figure Max out-which cry meant he was hungry and which meant he was tired; how to keep his undershirts from riding up to his armpits; how to open the portable stroller. Nicholas knew he was grinning like an idiot, and he didn’t give a damn. For the first time in three days, he felt on top of the world.
Fogerty’s mouth contorted into a black, wiry line. “This will not reflect well upon your record,” he said. “I had expected more from you.”
I had expected more from you. The words brought back the image of his father, standing over him like an impenetrable basilisk and holding out a prep school physics exam bearing the only grade lower than an A that Nicholas had received in his whole life.
Nicholas grabbed Max’s leg so tightly that the baby started to cry. “I’m not a goddamned machine, Alistair,” he yelled. “I can’t do it all.” He tossed the diaper bag over his shoulder and walked to the threshold of the office. ALISTAIR FOGERTY, it said on the door. DIRECTOR, CARDIOTHORACIC SURGERY. Maybe Nicholas’s name would never make it to that door, but that wasn’t going to change his mind. You couldn’t put the cart before the horse. “I’ll see you,” he said quietly, “in a week.”