Harvesting the Heart (6 page)

His
day off happened to fall on the Fourth of July, and Nicholas planned
the outing carefully—dinner at a famous steakhouse north of
Boston, followed by fireworks on the banks of the Charles.

They
left the restaurant at seven, plenty of time, Nicholas said, to get
to the Esplanade. But a car fire on the highway blocked traffic for a
good hour. He hated when things didn't go according to plan,
especially when they moved beyond the realm of his control. Nicholas
sat back and sighed. He switched on the radio, then he shut it off.
He honked his horn, even though they weren't moving at all. "I
can't believe this," Nicholas said. "We're never going to
get there in time."

Paige
was sitting cross-legged on the seat. "It doesn't matter,"
she said. "Fireworks are fireworks."

"Not
these," Nicholas said. "You've never seen these." He
told her about the barges in the basin of the Charles and the way the
explosions were orchestrated to the "1812 Overture."

"The
'1812 Overture'?" Paige said. "What's that?" And
Nicholas had looked at her and honked again at the immobile car ahead
of him.

After
they'd played six games of Geography and three rounds of Twenty
Questions, the traffic started to move. Nicholas drove like a madman
toward Boston but couldn't get any closer to the Esplanade than
Buckingham, Browne, and Nichols, a prep school that was miles away.
He parked in the faculty lot and told Paige it would be worth the
walk.

By
the time they got to the Esplanade, it was a sea of people. Over the
bobbing heads, in the distance, Nicholas could make out the Hatch
Shell and the orchestra beneath it. A woman kicked him in the shin.
"Hey, mister," she said, "I been camping out here
since five in the morning. You ain't cutting in." Paige wrapped
her arms around Nicholas's waist as a man pulled at the back of her
shirt and told her to sit down. He felt her whisper against his
chest. "Maybe," she said, "we should just go."

They
didn't have a choice. They were pushed farther back by the heaving
throng of people until they were standing underneath a highway
tunnel. It was long and dark, and they could not see a thing. "I
can't believe this," Nicholas said, and just as he was wondering
how things could possibly get worse, a convoy of helmeted bikers cut
him off, one ten-speed running over his left foot.

"Are
you okay?" Paige asked, touching his shoulder as he hobbled
around and winced at the pain. In the background, Nicholas heard the
beginning bursts of fireworks. "Jesus Christ," he said.

Beside
him, Paige leaned against the damp concrete wall of the tunnel. She
crossed her arms. "Your problem, Nicholas," she said, "is
that you always see the glass half empty instead of half full."
She turned to stand in front of him, and even in the darkness he
could see the bright glow of her eyes. From somewhere came the
whistle of a Roman candle. "That's a red one," Paige said,
"and it's climbing higher and higher, and now—there—it's
shimmering across the sky and falling like a shower of hot sparks
from a soldering iron."

"For
God's sake," Nicholas muttered. "You can't see a thing.
Don't be ridiculous, Paige."

He
had snapped at her, but Paige only smiled.
"Who's
being
ridiculous?" she said. She moved in front of him and placed
her hands on his shoulders. "And who says I can't see a thing?"
she said.

Two
loud booms sounded. Paige turned so that her back was pressed against
him and they were both staring at the same blank tunnel wall. "Two
circles exploding," Paige said, "one inside the other.
First blue streaks and then white streaks reaching over them, and
now, just as they're fading, little silver spirals are showing up at
the edges like dancing fireflies. And here's a fountain of gold
spouting like a volcano, and this one is an umbrella, raining tiny
blue spots like confetti."

Nicholas
felt the silk of Paige's hair beneath his cheek; the tremble of
her shoulders when she spoke. He wondered how one person's
imagination could possibly hold so much color. "Oh, Nicholas,"
Paige said, "this is the finale. Wow! Huge bursts of blue and
red and yellow splashing over the sky, and just as they're fading,
the biggest one yet is exploding—it covers
everything
—it's
a huge silver fan, and its fingers are stretching and
stretching, and they hiss and they sizzle and fill the sky with a
million new glowing pink stars." Nicholas thought he could
listen to Paige's voice forever. He pulled her tightly against him,
closed his eyes, and saw her fireworks.

"I
won't embarrass you," Paige said. "I know which one is the
salad fork."

Nicholas
laughed. They were driving to his parents' home for dinner, and
Paige's understanding of table etiquette had been the last thing on
his mind. "Do you know," he said, "you are the only
person in the world who can make me forget about atrial
fibrillation?"

"I'm
a girl of many talents," Paige said. She looked at him.
"J
know
the butter knife too."

Nicholas
grinned. "And who taught you all these grand things?"

"My
dad," Paige said. "He taught me everything."

At
a red light, Paige leaned out the open window to catch a better
glimpse of herself in the side mirror. She stuck out her tongue.
Nicholas looked appreciatively at the white curve of her neck
and the tips of her bare feet, curled beneath her. "And what
other things did your father teach you?"

Nicholas
smiled as Paige's face lit up. She counted off on her fingers. "Never
to leave the house without eating breakfast," she said, "to
always walk with your back to a storm, to try to steer into a skid."
She straightened her legs and slipped her shoes back on. "Oh,
and to bring snacks to Mass, but not things that crunch." She
began to tell Nicholas about her father's inventions—ones that
had succeeded, like the automatic spinning carrot peeler, and
ones that hadn't, like the canine toothbrush. In the middle of her
reverie she cocked her head and looked at Nicholas. "He would
like you," she said. "Yes." She nodded, convincing
herself. "He'd like you very much."

"And
why's that?"

"Because
of what you have in common," Paige said. "Me."

Nicholas
ran his hands around the edges of the steering wheel. "And your
mother?" he said. "What did you learn from her?"

He
remembered after he said it what Paige had told him about her mother
at the diner. He remembered when it was too late, when the words,
heavy and stupid, were hanging almost palpably in the space between
them. For a moment Paige did not answer, did not move. He would have
thought she hadn't even heard him, but then she leaned forward and
switched on the radio, blasting the music so loudly she could only
have been trying to crowd out the question.

Ten
minutes later, Nicholas parked in the shade of an oak tree. He got
out of the car and walked around to Paige's side to help her, but she
was already standing and stretching.

"Which
one is yours?" Paige asked, looking across the street at several
pretty Victorians with white picket fences. Nicholas turned her by
her elbow so that she would notice the house behind her, a tremendous
brick colonial with ivy growing on its north side. "You've got
to be kidding," she said, shrinking back a little. "Are you
a Kennedy?" she murmured.

"Absolutely
not," Nicholas said. "They're all Democrats." He
walked her up the slate path to the front door, which, he thanked
God, was opened not by the maid but by Astrid Prescott herself,
wearing a wrinkled safari jacket, three cameras slung around her
neck.

"Nich-olas,"
she
breathed. She threw her arms around him. "I've
just
gotten
back. Nepal.
Amazing
culture;
can't wait to see what I've got." She patted her cameras,
caressing the one on top as if it were alive. She pulled Nicholas
through the doorway with the force of a hurricane, and then she took
Paige's small, cold hands in her own. "And you must be Paige."
She pulled Paige into a breathtaking mahogany-paneled hallway with a
marble floor that reminded her of the Newport mansions she had seen
when visiting RISD as a junior. "I've been back less than an
hour, and all Robert's told me about is this mysterious, magical
Paige."

Paige
took a step back. Robert Prescott was a well-known doctor, but Astrid
Prescott was a legend. Nicholas didn't like to tell acquaintances
he was related to
"the
Astrid
Prescott," which people said with the same reverent tone they'd
used a hundred years before to murmur
"the
Mrs.
Astor." Everyone knew her story: the rich society girl had
impetuously given up balls and garden parties to toy with
photography, only to become one of the best in the field. And
everyone knew Astrid Prescott's photography, especially her graphic
black-and-white portraits of endangered species, which—Paige
noticed—were placed haphazardly throughout the hall. They were
haunting photos, shadows and light, of giant sea turtles,
bird-wing butterflies, mountain gorillas. In flight, a spotted owl;
the split of a blue whale's tail. Paige remembered a
Newsweek
article
she'd read some years ago on Astrid Prescott, who was quoted as
saying that she wished she'd been around when the dinosaurs died,
because that would have been quite a scoop.

Paige
looked from one photograph to another. Everyone had an Astrid
Prescott calendar, or a small Astrid Prescott day diary, because her
pictures were remarkable. She caught the terror and the pride. Next
to this mythic woman, dwarfed by the monstrous house, Paige felt
herself slipping away.

But
Nicholas was more affected by his father. When Robert Prescott
entered the room, the atmosphere changed, as if the air had become
ionized. Nicholas stood straighter, put on his most winning smile,
and watched Paige from the corner of his eye, wondering for the first
time ever why he had to put on an act in front of his own parents. He
and his father never touched, unless you counted shaking hands. It
had something to do with showing affection, a forbidden thing among
Prescotts, which left family members wondering at funerals why
there were so many things that hadn't been said to the deceased but
that should have been.

Over
cold fruit soup and pheasant with new potatoes, Nicholas told his
parents about his rotations, especially the emergency ward,
downplaying the horrors for the dinner table. His mother kept
bringing the conversation back to her trip. "Everest,"
she said. "You can't even take it with a wide-angle." She
had removed her jacket for the dinner, revealing an old tank top and
baggy khaki pants. "But damn if those Sherpas don't know the
mountain like the back of their hand."

"Mother,"
Nicholas said, "not everyone is interested in Nepal."

"Well,
not everyone is interested in orthopedic surgery, either, darling,
but we all listened very politely." Astrid turned toward Paige,
who was staring at the head of a tremendous buck poised above the
door leading into the kitchen. "It's awful, isn't it?"

Paige
swallowed. "It's just that I can't see you—"

"It's
Dad's," Nicholas interrupted, winking at her. "Dad's a
hunter. Don't get them started," he warned. "They don't
always see eye to eye."