Nicholas explodes. He grabs the baby so roughly, Max begins to cry. “What the hell do you think you’re going to do? Take the kid the next time you decidehei±€† to bolt? Or maybe you already have a plan to leave.”
Paige knots her hands in front of her. “I am not going to bolt. All I want is to be let back in my house again. I’m not going to run anywhere unless I’m forced to.”
Nicholas laughs, a strange sound that comes through his nose. “Right,” he says. “Just like last time. Poor Paige, driven away by a twist of Fate.”
In that moment, Nicholas knows he has won. “How come you have to see it like that?” Paige whispers. “How come you can’t just see that I came home?” She steps back, speaking through a broken smile. “Maybe you’re perfect, Nicholas, and everything you do turns out right the first time. The rest of us ordinary humans have to try over and over again and hope that we’ll keep getting second chances until we figure it out.” She turns and runs out of the room before a single tear falls, and Nicholas can hear the heavy oak front door pulled shut behind her.
Max fidgets in Nicholas’s arms, so he sets him down on the carpet. The baby stares out the open bedroom door as if he is waiting for Paige to come back. Astrid, whom Nicholas has forgotten about, reaches down to pull the dying leaf of a potted palm out of Max’s hand. When she straightens, she looks Nicholas right in the eye. “I’m ashamed of you,” she says, and she walks out of the room.
Paige is at the house when Nicholas returns with Max. She sits quietly in front of the porch with her sketch pad and her charcoal. In spite of his threat, Nicholas does not call the police. He does not even acknowledge that he sees her when he carries Max and his diaper bag and the files from the hospital into the house. From time to time that night when he is playing with Max on the living room floor he can see Paige peering in through the window, but he doesn’t bother to close the drapes or to move Max into another room.
When Max has trouble falling asleep, Nicholas tries the one thing that always works. Dragging the vacuum cleaner out of the front hall closet, he sets it over the threshold of the nursery and flips the switch so that the whir of the motor drowns out the choked cries of Max’s screams. Eventually Max quiets down and Nicholas pulls the vacuum away. It works because of the white noise that distracts Max, but Nicholas thinks it might be genetic. He can remember coming home from thirty-six-hour shifts, falling asleep to the hum of the vacuum as Paige cleaned the house.
Nicholas walks to the front hall and turns out the light. Then he steps to the window, knowing that he’ll be able to see Paige without her being able to see him. Her face is silver in the moonlight, her hair a rich bronze glow. Puddled around her are scores of drawings: Max sitting, Max sleeping, Max rolling over. Nicholas can not see among them a single image of himself.
The wind blows a couple of the drawings up the steps of the porch. Before he can even think to stop himself, Nicholas opens the front door in time for them to fly into the hall. He picks them up -one of Max playing with a rattle, one of Max grabbing his own feet-and walks onto the porch. “I think these are yours,” he says, coming to stand beside her.
Paige is on her hands and knees, trying to keep the other drawings from blowing away. She has secured a stack of them under a big rock and has pinned the rest with her elbow. “Thanks,” she says, rolling awkwardly onto her side. She gathers the pictures up and stuffs them inside the front cover of her sketch pad, as if she is embarrassed. “If you want to stay out here,” she says, “I can sit in the car.”
Nicholas shakes his head. “It’s cold,” he says. “I’m going to go inside.” He sees Paige draw in her breath, waiting for an invitation, but he’s not about to let that happen. “You’re very good with Max,” he says. “He’s going through this stranger thing now, and he doesn’t take to just anybody.”
Paige shrugs. “I think I’ve grown into him. This is more what I pictured when I thought of a baby-something that sits up and smiles and laughs with you, not just something that eats and sleeps and poops and completely ignores you.” She peers up at him. “I think that you’re the one who’s very good with Max. Look at what he’s turned into. He’s like a whole different kid.”
Nicholas thinks of many things he could say, but instead he just nods his head. “Thanks,” he says. He leans against the step of the porch and stretches out his legs. “You can’t stay here forever,” he says.
“I hope I don’t have to.” Paige tilts her head back and lets the night wash over her face. “When I was in North Carolina, I slept outside with my mother.” She sits up and laughs. “I actually liked it.”
“I’ll have to take you camping in Maine,” Nicholas says.
Paige stares at him. “Yes,” she says, “you’ll have to.”
A chill sweeps across the lawn, beading the dew and sending a shiver down Nicholas’s spine. “You’re going to freeze out here,” he says, and he stands before he can say anything else. “I’m going to get you a coat.”
He runs up the porch as if it is a refuge and pulls the first coat he can find out of the hall closet. It is a big woolen overcoat, one of his, and as he holds it out to Paige he sees it will sweep her ankles. Paige steps into the coat and pulls the lapels together. “This is nice,” she says, touching Nicholas’s hand.
Nicholas pulls away. “Well,” he says, “I don’t want you to get sick.”
“No,” Paige says, “I mean this.” She gestures between herself and Nicholas. “Not yelling.” When Nicholas does not say anything, she picks up her sketch pad and her charcoal, and as a second thought she offers a half-smile. “Give Max a kiss for me,” she says.
When Nicholas steps into the safety of the house and stands in the folds of the dark hallway, he is momentarily disoriented. He has to lean against the doorframe and let the room settle before his memory returns. Maybe he believed that at some point he’d stop playing the game and let Paige back; but he can see that isn’t going to happen. She’s come for Max, only for Max, and something about that is driving him crazy. The feeling is like a fist being driven into his gut, and he knows exactly why. He still loves her. As stuiv ±€†pid as it seems, as much as he hates her for what she has done, he can’t quite stop that.
He peeks out the window and sees Paige settled in his overcoat and a sleeping bag she’s borrowed from some goddamned neighbor. Part of him hates her for being given that comfort, and part of him hates himself for wanting to give her even more. With Paige, there have never been easy answers, only impulses, and Nicholas is beginning to wonder if it has all been a huge mistake. He can’t keep doing this; not to himself and not to Max. There has to be a reconciliation or a clean break.
The moon slips under the front door, filling the hallway with a spectral glow. Suddenly exhausted, Nicholas pulls himself up the stairs. He will have to sleep on it. Sometimes things look different in the morning. He crawls into bed with his clothes still on and envisions Paige lying like a sacrifice beneath that stifling moon. His last conscious thought is of his bypass patients, of the moment during surgery when he stops their hearts from beating. He wonders if they ever feel it.
chapter 35
Anna Maria Santana, whom I had never met, was born and died on March 30, 1985. OUR FOUR HOUR ANGEL, the tombstone reads, still fairly new among the grave markers in the Cambridge graveyard I had last walked through when I was pregnant. I do not know why I didn’t notice Anna Maria’s grave back then. It is tidy and trimmed, and violets grow at the edges. Someone comes here often to see their little girl.