Yesterday I accidentally let him get away. I never thought of following him; I assumed that he’d found someone to watch Max at home when he went to work. But at 6:30 A.M., there he had been, toting the baby and a diaper bag, stuffing both into his car with the carelessness that comes from constant practice. I was very impressed. I could never carry both Max and the diaper bag-in fact, I could barely summon enough courage to take Max out of the house. Nicholas-well, Nicholas made it look so easy.
He had come out the front door and pretended I wasn’t there. “Good morning,” I had said, but Nicholas didn’t even nod his head. He got into his car, sitting for a minute behind the wheel. Then he unrolled the window on the passenger side and leaned toward it. “You will be gone,” he said, “by the time I get home.”
I assumed he was going to the hospital, but I wasn’t about to go there looking the way I did. Embarrassing Nicholas in his own front yard was one thing; making him look bad in front of his superiors was another. That I knew he would never forgive. And I had looked awful yesterday. I’d driven seventeen hours straight, slept on my front lawn, and skipped showers for two days. I would slip into the house, wash up, change my clothes, and then go to Mass General. I wanted to see Max without Nicholas around, and how difficult could it be to find the day care facility there?
After Nicholas left, I crawled into the front seat of my car and fished my keys from my pocketbook. I felt sure that Nicholas had forgotten about those. I opened the front door and stepped into my house for the first time in three full months.
It smelled of Nicholas and Max and not at all of me. It was a mess. I didn’t know how Nicholas, who loved order, could live like this, much less consider it sanitary for Max. There were dirty dishes piled on every pristine surface in the kitchen, and the Barely White tiles on the floor were streaked with muddy footprints and scribbles of jelly. In the corner was a dead plant, and fermenting in the sink was half a melon. The hallway was dark and littered with stray socks and boxer shorts; the living room was gray with dust. Max’s toys-most of which I’d never seen before-were covered with tiny smudged handprints.
My first instinct had been to clean up. But if I did that, Nicholas would know I had been inside, and I didn’t want him yelling again. So I made my way to the bedroom and pulled a pair of khaki pants and a green cotton sweater out of my closet. After a quick shower, I put them on and threw my dirty clothes into the bathroom hamper.
When I thought I heard a noise, I ran out of the bathroom, stopping only in the nursery to get a quick scent of Max-soiled diapers and baby powder and sweet milky skin. I slipped out the back door just in case, but I didn’t see anybody. With my hair still wet, I drove to Mass General and inquired about staff child care, but they told me there was no facility ify¡€†on the hospital grounds. “Good Lord,” I said to the receptionist at the information desk. “Nicholas has him in a day care center.” I laughed out loud then, thinking about how ridiculous this had all turned out. If Nicholas had agreed to consider day care before the baby was born, I wouldn’t have been home all day with him. I would have been taking classes, maybe drawing again-I would have been doing something for myself. If I hadn’t been home with Max, I might never have needed to get away.
I wasn’t about to search through the Boston phone book for day care centers, so I had gone home and resigned myself to the fact that I’d lost a day. Then Nicholas showed up and told me again to get the hell off his lawn. But late last night, he had come outside. He wasn’t angry, at least not as angry as he had been. He stepped down to the porch, sitting so close that I could have touched him. He was wearing a robe I had not seen before. As I watched him, I pretended that we were different, that it was years ago, and we were eating bagels and chive cream cheese and reading the real estate listings of the Sunday Globe. For a moment, just a moment, something passed behind the shadows in his eyes. I could not be sure, but I thought it took the shape of understanding.
That’s why today I am bright-eyed and bushy-tailed, ready to follow Nicholas to the ends of the earth. He’s late-it’s past seven o’clock-and I’m already in the car. I have moved out of the driveway and parked down the block, because I want him to think I have disappeared. When he drives away I am going to tail him, like in the movies, always keeping a couple of cars between us.
He walks out the front door with Max tucked beneath his arm like a Federal Express package, and I start the engine. I unroll my window and stare, just in case Nicholas does anything I can use as a clue. I hold my breath as he locks the door, saunters to his car, and settles Max into the car seat. It’s a different car seat now, facing forward, instead of the little bucket that faced the back. On the plastic bar across the car seat is a circus of plastic animals, each holding a different jingling bell. Max giggles when Nicholas buckles him in, and he grabs a yellow rubber ball that hangs from an elephant’s nose. “Dada,” he says-I swear I can hear it-and I smile at my baby’s first word.
Nicholas looks over the top of the car before he slips into his seat, and I know he is trying to find me. I have an unobstructed view of him: his glinting black hair and his sky-colored eyes. It has been quite a while since I’ve really looked at him; I have been making up images from a composite of memories. Nicholas really is the most handsome man I have ever seen; time and distance haven’t changed that. It isn’t his features as much as their contrast; it isn’t his face as much as his ease and his presence. When he puts the car in gear and begins to drive down the block, I count, whispering out loud. “One Mississippi, two Mississippi,” I say. I make it to five, and then I start to follow him.
As I expected, Nicholas doesn’t take the turn to Mass General. He takes a route that I recognize from somewhere but that I can’t quite place. It is only when I hide my car in a driveway three houses down from Nicholas’s parents’ house that I realize what has happened while I’ve been away.
I can see Astrid only from a distance. Her shirt is a blue splotch against the wood door. Nicholas holds out the baby to her, and I feel my own arms ache. Hed s¡€† says a few words, and then he walks back to the car.
I have a choice: I can follow Nicholas to wherever he’s going next, or I can wait until he leaves and hope that I have the advantage of surprise and try to get Astrid Prescott to let me hold my baby, which I want more than anything. I see Nicholas start the car. Astrid closes the heavy front door. Without thinking about what I am doing, I pull out of the neighbor’s driveway and follow Nicholas.
I realize then that I would have come back to Massachusetts no matter what. It has to do with more than Max, with more than my mother, with more than obligation. Even if there were no baby, I would have returned because of Nicholas. Because of Nicholas. I’m in love with Nicholas. In spite of the fact that he is no longer the man I married; in spite of the fact that he spends more time with patients than with me; in spite of the fact that I have never been and never will be the kind of wife he should have had. A long time ago, he dazzled me; he saved me. And out of every other woman in the world, Nicholas chose me. We may have changed over the years, but these are the kinds of feelings that last. I know they’re still there in him, somewhere. Maybe the part of his heart that he’s using now to hate me used to be the part that loves.