Perfect Match

by Jodi Picoult

  "Maybe the psychiatrist is wrong," Caleb says.

  I turn in my seat. "You don't believe Nathaniel?"

  "What I believe is that he hasn't said anything yet." He glances in the rearview mirror. "I don't want to keep talking about this, in front of him."

  "Do you think that'll make it go away?"

  Caleb doesn't respond, and there is my answer. "The next exit's ours," I say stiffly, because Caleb is still driving in the left lane.

  "I know where I'm going, Nina." He brings the car to the right, signals at the exit sign. But a minute later, he misses the turnoff.

  "You just--" The accusation dies as I see his face, striped by grief. I don't think he even knows he's crying. "Oh, Caleb." I reach out to touch him, but that goddamned elephant is in the way. Caleb throws the car into park and gets out, walking along the road's shoulder, drawing huge breaths that make his chest swell.

  A moment later, he returns. "I'll turn around and go back," he announces--to me? To Nathaniel? To himself?

  I nod. And think, If only it were that easy.

  Nathaniel bites down hard on his back teeth so that the hum of the road goes right through him. He isn't asleep, but he is pretending to be, which is almost as good. His parents are talking, the words so soft at the corners that he can't quite hear. Maybe he will never sleep again. Maybe he will just be like a dolphin, and stay half-asleep.

  Miss Lydia taught them about dolphins last year, after they'd turned the classroom into an ocean of blue crepe paper and glitter-glue starfish. So Nathaniel knows these things: that dolphins shut an eye and half their brain, sleeping on one side, while the other side watches out for danger. He knows that mommy dolphins swim for their resting babies, pulling them along in an underwater current, as if they are attached by invisible threads. He knows that the plastic rings which rope six-packs of Coke can hurt dolphins, make them wash up weak on shore. And that even though they breathe air, they'll die there.

  Nathaniel also knows that if he could, he would roll down the window and jump out, so far that he'd cross the highway barrier and the tall fence to plummet along the rocky cliff, landing in the ocean below. He'd have sleek silver skin and a smile curved permanently on his mouth. He'd have a special body part--like a heart, but different--filled with oil and called a melon, just like the thing you eat in the summertime. Except this would be in the front of his head and would help him find his way even in the blackest ocean, on the blackest night.

  Nathaniel imagines swimming off the coast of Maine toward the other end of the world, where it already feels like summer. He squinches his eyes as tight as he can, concentrates on making a joyful noise, of navigating by those notes, of hearing them bounce back to him.

  Although Martin Toscher, MD, is considered an authority in his field, he would gladly trade his laurels to completely eliminate his area of expertise. Examining one child for evidence of sexual abuse is more than enough; the fact that he's logged hundreds of cases in Maine is phenomenally disturbing.

  The subject of the examination lies on the OR table, anesthetized. It would be his suggestion, given the traumatic nature of the exam, but before he had even proposed it to the parents, the mother asked if it could be done that way. Now, Martin walks through the procedure, speaking aloud as he works so that his findings can be recorded. "The glans penis appears normal, Tanner 0." He repositions the child. "Looking at the anal verge ... there are multiple obvious healing abrasions, about one to one and a half centimeters up, that are approximately one centimeter in diameter, on average."

  He takes an anal speculum from the table nearby. Chances are if there are additional mucosal tears higher up in the bowel wall, they'd know--the child would be physically ill by now. But he lubricates the instrument and gently inserts it, attaches the light source, and cleans out the rectum with a long cotton swab. Well, thank God for that, Martin thinks. "The bowel is clean to eight centimeters."

  He strips off his gloves and mask, washes up, and leaves the nurses to fuss over the child in recovery. It's a light anesthesia, it will wear off quickly. The moment he walks out of the operating room, he is approached by the parents.

  "How is he?" asks the father.

  "Nathaniel's doing well," Martin replies, the words everyone wants to hear. "He may be a little drowsy this afternoon, but that's perfectly normal."

  The mother pushes past all these platitudes. "Were there any findings?"

  "There did seem to be evidence consistent with an assault," the doctor says gently. "Some rectal abrasions that are healing. It's hard to say when they were incurred, but they're certainly not fresh. Maybe a week or so's gone by."

  "Is the evidence consistent with penetration?" Nina Frost demands.

  Martin nods. "It's not from falling down on a bicycle, for example."

  "Can we see him?" This from the boy's father.

  "Soon. The nurses will page you when he's awake in recovery."

  He starts to leave, but Mrs. Frost stops him with a hand on his arm. "Can you tell if it was penile penetration? Digital? Or some foreign object?"

  Parents ask whether their children still feel the pain from the assault. If the scar is something that will affect them later on. If they will remember, in the long term, what happened to them. But these questions, well, they make him feel as if he is being cross-examined.

  "There's no way to know that level of detail," the doctor says. "All we can say at this point is, yes, something happened."

  She turns away and stumbles against the wall. Wilts. Within seconds she is a small, keening ball on the floor, her husband's arms wrapped around her for support. As Martin heads back to the operating suite, he realizes it's the first time that day he has seen her act like a mother.

  It's foolish, I know, but I've lived my life believing in superstitions. Not throwing spilled salt over my shoulder or wishing on eyelashes or wearing lucky shoes to trials--instead, I've considered my own good luck directly correlated to the misfortunes of others. Starting out as a lawyer, I begged for the sexual assaults and molestations, the horrors no one wants to face. I told myself that if I faced the problems of strangers on a daily basis, it would magically keep me from having to face my own.

  Visiting violence repeatedly, you become inured to atrocity. You can look at blood without blinking, you can say the word rape and not wince. It turns out, though, that this shield is a plastic one. That all defenses break down when the nightmare happens in your own bed.

  On the floor of his bedroom, Nathaniel is playing quietly, still groggy from the anesthesia. He guides Matchbox cars around a track. They zoom to a certain spot, a booster, and suddenly shoot with great speed up a ramp through the jaws of a python. If the car is just the tiniest bit too slow, the snake snaps its mouth shut. Nathaniel's car passes through with flying colors every time.

  My ears are filled with all the things Nathaniel is not saying: What's for dinner; can I play on the computer; did you see how fast that car went? His hands close around the Matchbox like the claw of a giant; in this make-believe world he is the one calling the shots.

  The python's jaws ratchet shut, so loud in this silence that it makes me jump. And then I feel it, the softest jelly-roll along my leg, the bumping up my spine. Nathaniel is holding the Matchbox car, running it up the avenue of my arm. He parks in the hollow of my collarbone, then touches one finger to the tears on my cheek.

  Nathaniel puts the car onto the track and climbs into my lap. His breath is hot and wet on my collar as he burrows close. This makes me feel sick--that he should choose me to keep him safe, when I have already failed miserably. We stay like this for a long time, until evening comes and stars fall onto his carpet, until Caleb's voice climbs the stairs, searching for us. Over the penance of Nathaniel's head I watch the car on its track, spinning in circles, driven by its own momentum.

  Shortly after seven o'clock, I lose Nathaniel. He isn't in any of his favorite haunts: his bedroom, the playroom, on the jungle gym outside. I had thought Caleb was with him;
Caleb thought he was with me. "Nathaniel!" I yell, panicked, but he can't answer me--he couldn't answer me even if he felt like giving away his hiding place. A thousand scenes of horror sprint through my mind: Nathaniel being kidnapped from the backyard, unable to scream for help; Nathaniel falling down our well and sobbing in silence; Nathaniel lying hurt and unconscious on the ground. "Nathaniel!" I cry again, louder this time.

  "You take the upstairs," Caleb says, and I hear the worry in his voice, too. Before I can answer he heads for the laundry room; there is a sound of the dryer door opening and then closing again.

  Nathaniel is not hiding under our bed, or in his closet. He isn't curled underneath cobwebs in the stairwell that leads to the attic. He isn't in his toy chest or behind the big wing chair in the sewing room. He isn't beneath the computer table or behind the bathroom door.

  You'd think I've run a mile, I'm panting that hard. I lean against the wall outside the bathroom and listen to Caleb slam cabinets and drawers in the kitchen. Think like Nathaniel, I tell myself. Where would I be if I were five?

  I would be climbing rainbows. I would be lifting rocks to find crickets sleeping underneath; I would be sorting the gravel in the driveway by weight and color. But these are all the things Nathaniel used to do, things that fill the mind of a child before he has to grow up. Overnight.

  There is a thin drip coming from the bathroom. The sink; Nathaniel routinely leaves it on when he brushes his teeth. I suddenly want to see that trickle of water, because it will be the most normal thing I've witnessed all day. But inside, the sink is dry as a bone. I turn to the source of the noise, pull back the brightly-patterned shower curtain.

  And scream.

  The only thing he can hear underwater is his heart. Is it like this for dolphins, too? Nathaniel wonders, or can they hear sounds the rest of us can't--coral blooming, fish breathing, sharks thinking. His eyes are wide open, and through the wet the ceiling is runny. Bubbles tickle his nostrils, and the fish drawn onto the shower curtain make it real.

  But suddenly his mother is there, here in the ocean where she shouldn't be, and her face is as wide as the sky coming closer. Nathaniel forgets to hold his breath as she yanks him out of the water by his shirt. He coughs, he sneezes sea. He hears her crying, and that reminds him that he has to come back to this world, after all.

  Oh, my God, he isn't breathing--he isn't breathing--and then Nathaniel takes a great gulp of air. He is twice his weight in his soaked clothes, but I wrestle him out of the tub so that he lies dripping on the bathmat. Caleb's feet pound up the stairs. "Did you find him?"

  "Nathaniel," I say as close to his face as I can, "what were you doing?"

  His golden hair is matted to his scalp, his eyes are huge. His lips twist, reaching for a word that doesn't come.

  Can five-year-olds be suicidal? What other reason can there be for finding my son, fully dressed, submerged in a tub full of water?

  Caleb crowds into the bathroom. He takes one look at Nathaniel, dripping, and the draining tub. "What the hell?"

  "Let's get you out of these clothes," I say, as if I find Nathaniel in this situation on a daily basis. My hands go to the buttons of his flannel shirt, but he twists away from me, curls into a ball.

  Caleb looks at me. "Buddy," he tries, "you're gonna get sick if you stay like this."

  When Caleb gathers him onto his lap, Nathaniel goes completely boneless. He's wide-awake, he's looking right at me, yet I would swear that he isn't here at all.

  Caleb's hands begin to unbutton Nathaniel's shirt. But instead, I grab a towel and wrap it around him. I hold it close at Nathaniel's neck and lean forward, so that my words fall onto his upturned face. "Who did this to you?" I demand. "Tell me, honey. Tell me so that I can make it better."

  "Nina."

  "Tell me. If you don't tell me, I can't do anything about it." My voice hitches at the middle like a rusting train. My face is as wet as Nathaniel's.

  He's trying; oh, he's trying. His cheeks are red with the effort. He opens his mouth, pours forth a strangled knot of air.

  I nod at him, encouraging. "You can do this, Nathaniel. Come on."

  The muscles in his throat tighten. He sounds like he is drowning again.

  "Did someone touch you, Nathaniel?"

  "Jesus!" Caleb wrenches Nathaniel away from me. "Leave him alone, Nina!"

  "But he was going to say something." I get to my feet, jockeying to face Nathaniel again. "Weren't you, baby?"

  Caleb hefts Nathaniel higher in his arms. He walks out of the bathroom without saying another word, cradling our son close to his chest. He leaves me standing in a puddle, to clean up the mess that's been left behind.

  Ironically, in Maine's Bureau of Children, Youth and Family Services, an investigation into child abuse is not an investigation at all. By the time a caseworker can officially open a case, he or she will already have psychiatric or physical evidence of abuse in the child, as well as the name of a suspected perpetrator. There will be no guesswork involved--all the research will have been completed by that point. It is the role of the BCYF caseworker to simply go along for the ride, so that if by some miracle it reaches the trial stage, everything has been done the way the government likes.

  Monica LaFlamme has worked in the Child Abuse Action Network of the BCYF for three years now, and she is tired of coming in during the second act. She looks out the window of her office, a squat gray cube like every other government office in the complex, to a deserted playground. It is a metal swing set resting on a concrete slab. Leave it to the BCYF to have the one play structure left in the region that doesn't meet updated safety standards.

  She yawns, pinches her finger and thumb to the bridge of her nose. Monica is exhausted. Not just from staying up for Letterman last night, but in general, as if the gray walls and commercial carpet in her office have somehow seeped into her through osmosis. She is tired of filling out reports on cases that go nowhere. She is tired of seeing forty-year-old eyes in the faces of ten-year-old children. What she needs is a vacation to the Caribbean, where there is so much color exploding--blue surf, white sand, scarlet flowers--that it renders her blind to her daily work.

  When the phone rings, Monica jumps in her chair. "This is Monica LaFlamme," she says, crisply opening the manila folder on her desk, as if the person on the other end of the line has seen her daydreaming.

  "Yes, hello. This is Dr. Christine Robichaud. I'm a psychiatrist up at Maine Medical Center." A hesitation, and that is all Monica needed to know what is coming next. "I need to report a possible case of sexual abuse against a five-year-old male."

  She takes notes as Dr. Robichaud describes behaviors she's seen over and over. She scrawls the name of the patient, the names of his parents. Something nicks the corner of her mind, but she pushes it aside to concentrate on what the psychiatrist is saying.

  "Are there any police reports you can fax me?" Monica asks.

  "The police haven't been involved. The boy hasn't identified the abuser yet."

  At that, Monica puts down her pen. "Doctor, you know I can't open an investigation until there's someone to investigate."

  "It's only a matter of time. Nathaniel is experiencing a somatoform disorder, which basically renders him mute without any physical cause. It's my belief that within a few weeks or so, he'll be able to tell us who did this to him."

  "What are the parents saying?"

  The psychiatrist pauses. "This is all new behavior."

  Monica taps her pen on her desk. In her experience, when the parents claim to be completely surprised by the speech or actions of a child who has been abused, it often ends up that one parent or both is the abuser.

  Dr. Robichaud is well aware of this, too. "I thought that you might want to get in at the ground level, Ms. LaFlamme. I referred the Frosts to a pediatrician trained in child sexual abuse cases, for a detailed medical examination of their son. He should be faxing you a report."

  Monica takes down the information; hangs up the phone. The
n she looks over what she's written, in preparation for beginning yet another case that will most likely fizzle before a conviction is secured.

  Frost, she thinks, rewriting the name. Surely it must be someone else.

  We lay in the dark, not touching, a foot of space between us.

  "Miss Lydia?" I whisper, and feel Caleb shake his head. "Who, then? Who's alone with him, other than the two of us?"

  Caleb is so quiet I think he's fallen asleep. "Patrick watched him for a whole weekend when we went to your cousin's wedding last month."

  I come up on an elbow. "You've got to be kidding. Patrick's a police officer. And I've known him since he was six."

  "He doesn't have a girlfriend--"

  "He's only been divorced for six months!"

  "All I'm saying," Caleb rolls over, "is you may not know him as well as you think."

  I shake my head. "Patrick loves Nathaniel."

  Caleb just looks at me. His response is clear, although he never speaks it aloud: Maybe too much.

  The next morning Caleb leaves while the moon is still hanging crooked on its peg in the sky. We have discussed this plan, trading our time like chips in a poker game: Caleb will finish his wall, then be home by midday. The implication is that I can go to the office when he returns, but I won't. My work, it will have to wait. This all happened to Nathaniel when I wasn't present to bear witness; I cannot risk letting him out of my sight again.

  It's a noble cause to champion--protecting my child. But this morning I am having trouble understanding lionesses that guard their cubs, and relating more to the hamster that devours her offspring. For one thing, my son hasn't seemed to notice that I want to be his hero. For another, I'm not so sure I want to be one, either. Not if it means sticking up for a boy who fights me at every turn.

  God, he has every right to hate me for being so selfish now.

  Yet patience has never been my strong point. I solve problems; I seek reprisal. And even though I know it is not a matter of will for Nathaniel, I am angry that his silence is protecting the person who should be held accountable.

  Today Nathaniel is falling apart at the seams. He insists on wearing his Superman pajamas, although it is nearly noon. Worse, he had an accident in his bed last night, so he stinks of urine. It took Caleb over an hour to get him out of his wet clothes yesterday; it took me two hours to realize I don't have the emotional or physical strength to fight him this morning. Instead, I've moved on to another battle.