Perfect Match

by Jodi Picoult

  Bright spots of color rise to my cheeks. Have I been that transparent? "All I want, all Dr. Robichaud wants, is to give Nathaniel a chance to communicate. Because being like this is frustrating him. Today I taught him to say 'I want the dog.' Maybe you'd like to explain to me how that's going to lead to a conviction. Maybe you'd like to explain to your son why you're so dead set on taking away the only method he has to express himself."

  Caleb spreads his splayed hands like an umpire. It is the sign for don't, although I am sure he does not know this. "I can't fight with you, Nina. You're too good at it." He opens the door and kneels down in front of Nathaniel. "You know, it's an awfully nice day to be sitting here, studying. You could play on the swings, if you want--"

  Play: two Y handshapes, caught at the pinkies to shake. "--or build a road in your sandbox ..."

  Build: U handshapes, stacking one on top of the other over and over.

  "... and you don't have to say anything, Nathaniel, if you're not ready. Not even with words that you make with your hands." Caleb smiles at Nathaniel. "Okay?" When Nathaniel nods, Caleb picks him up, swinging him high over his head to sit on his shoulders. "What do you say we go pick the crab apples in the woods?" he asks. "I'll be your ladder."

  Just before he breaks the edge of our property, Nathaniel twists on his father's shoulders. It's hard to see from this distance, but it seems that he's holding up a hand. To wave? I start to wave back, and then realize that his fingers are making that I, L, Y combination, then reconfiguring into what looks like a peace sign.

  It may not be technically right, but I can understand Nathaniel, loud and clear.

  I love you, too.

  Myrna Oliphant, the secretary shared by all five assistant district attorneys in Alfred, is a woman nearly as wide as she is high. Her sensible shoes squeak when she walks, she smells of Brylcreem, and she can allegedly type an astounding hundred words a minute, although no one has ever actually seen her do it. Peter and I always joke that we see more of Myrna's back than her front, since she seems to have a sixth sense about disappearing the moment any of us need her.

  So when I walk into my office eight days after Nathaniel stops speaking, and she comes right up to me, I know everything's wrong. "Nina," she says, tsking. "Nina." She puts her hand to her throat--there are real tears in her eyes. "If there's anything ..."

  "Thank you," I say, humbled. It does not surprise me that she knows what has happened; I told Peter and I'm sure he filled everyone else in on the relevant details. The only sick days I've ever used have been when Nathaniel had strep or chicken pox; in a way my absence from work now has been no different, except that this illness is more insidious. "But you know, right now, I just need to get things taken care of here, so that I can go back home."

  "Yes, yes." Myrna clears her throat, going professional. "Your messages, of course, Peter's been taking care of. And Wallace is expecting you." She heads back to her desk, but hesitates a moment, remembering. "I put a note up at the church," she says, and that's when I remember she, too, is a member of the congregation at St. Anne's. There is a small roped square on the News and Notes bulletin board, where people can request that a Hail Mary or Our Father be said for family members or friends in need. Myrna smiles at me. "Maybe God's listening to those prayers even now."

  "Maybe." I do not say what I'm thinking: And where was God when it happened?

  My office is just the way I left it. I sit gingerly in my swivel chair, push the papers around on my desk, scan my phone messages. It is good to come back to a place that looks, and is, exactly the way I've remembered it in my mind.

  A knock. Peter comes in, then shuts the door behind him. "I don't know what to say," he admits.

  "Then don't say anything. Just come in and sit down."

  Peter sprawls in the chair on the other side of my desk. "Are you sure, Nina? I mean, is it possible that the psychiatrist is jumping to conclusions?"

  "I saw the same behaviors she did. And I jumped to the same conclusions." I look up at him. "A specialist found physical proof of penetration, Peter."

  "Oh, Jesus." Peter clasps his hands between his knees, at a loss. "What can I do for you, Nina?"

  "You've been doing it. Thanks." I smile at him. "Whose brain matter was it, in the car?"

  Peter's eyes are soft on my face. "Who the hell cares? You shouldn't be thinking about that. You shouldn't even be here."

  I am torn between confiding in him, and ruining his good impression of me. "But Peter," I admit quietly, "it's easier."

  There is a long moment of silence. And then: "Best year," Peter dares.

  I grab the lifeline. That's simple--I was promoted, and had Nathaniel, within months of each other. "1996. Best victim?"

  "Polly Purebred, from the Underdog cartoon." Peter glances up as our boss, Wally Moffett, comes into my office. "Hey, chief," he says to Wally, and then to me, "Best friend?" Peter gets up, heads for the door. "The answer is me. Whatever, whenever. Remember that."

  "Good man," Wally says, as Peter leaves. Wally is the standard-issue district attorney: lean as a shark, with a full head of hair and a mouthful of capped movie-star teeth that could win him reelection all by themselves. He's also an excellent lawyer; he can cut to the heart before you realize the first incision has even been made. "Needless to say, this job is here when you're ready," Wally begins, "but I'll personally bar the door if you plan on coming back anytime soon."

  "Thanks, Wally."

  "I'm sorry as hell, Nina."

  "Yeah." I glance down at my blotter. There's a calendar underneath it. No pictures of Nathaniel are on my desk--a long habit I kept from District Court, when the scum of the earth would come in to plead their cases in my office. I didn't want them to know I had a family. I didn't want that to come back and haunt me.

  "Can I ... can I try the case?"

  The question is so small, it takes a moment to realize I've asked it. The pity in Wally's eyes makes me drop my own gaze to my lap. "You know you can't, Nina. Not that I'd rather have anyone else lock this sick fuck up. But no one in our office can do it. It's a conflict of interest."

  I nod, but I still can't speak. I wanted that, I wanted it so badly.

  "I've already called the district attorney's office in Portland. There's a guy up there who's good." Wally smiles crookedly. "Almost as good as you are, even. I told them what was going on, and that we might need to borrow Tom LaCroix."

  There are tears in my eyes when I thank Wallace. For him to have gone out on a limb like this--before we even have a perp to prosecute--is extraordinary.

  "We take care of our own," Wally assures me. "Whoever did this is going to pay."

  It is a line I've used myself, to appease frantic parents. But I know, even as I say it, that there will be an equal cost extracted from their child. Still, because it is my job, and because I usually have no case without a testifying witness, I tell the parents I'd do anything to get that monster into jail. I tell the parents that in their shoes I'd do whatever it takes, including putting their children on the stand.

  But now I'm the parent, and it is my child, and that changes everything.

  One Saturday I took Nathaniel to my office, so that I could finish up some work. It was a ghost town--the Xerox machines sleeping like beasts, the computers blinking blind, the telephones quiet. Nathaniel occupied himself with the paper shredder while I reviewed files. "How come you named me Nathaniel?" he asked, out of the blue.

  I checked off the name of a witness on a pad. "It means 'Gift from God.' "

  The jaws of the paper shredder ground together. Nathaniel turned to me. "Did I come wrapped and everything?"

  "You weren't quite that kind of a gift." As I watched, he turned off the shredder and began to play with the collection of toys I kept in the corner for children who had the misfortune of being brought to my office. "What name would you rather have?"

  When I was pregnant, Caleb would end each day by saying good night to his baby with a different name: Vladimir,
Grizelda, Cuthbert. Keep this up, I had told him, and this baby's going to arrive with an identity crisis.

  Nathaniel shrugged. "Maybe I could be Batman."

  "Batman Frost," I repeated, completely serious. "It's got a nice ring to it."

  "There are four Dylans in my school--Dylan S. and Dylan M. and Dylan D. and Dylan T.--but there isn't another Batman."

  "Which is an important consideration." All of a sudden I felt Nathaniel crawling under the hollow of my desk, a warm weight on my feet. "What are you doing?"

  "Batman needs a cave, Mom, duh."

  "Ah. Right." I folded my legs underneath me to give Nathaniel more room, and scrutinized a police report. Nathaniel's hand stretched up to grab a stapler, an impromptu walkie-talkie.

  The case was a rape, and the victim had been found comatose in the bathtub. Unfortunately, the perp had been smart enough to run the water, thereby obliterating nearly any forensic evidence we might have gotten. I turned the page in the file and stared at gruesome police photos of the crime scene, the sunken eggplant face of the woman who had been assaulted.

  "Mom?"

  Immediately I whipped the photo facedown. This was precisely why I did not mix my work life and my home life. "Hmm?"

  "Do you always catch the bad guys?"

  I thought of the victim's mother, who could not stop crying long enough to give a statement to the police. "Not always," I answered.

  "Most of the time?"

  "Well," I said. "At least half."

  Nathaniel considered this for a moment. "I guess that's good enough to be a superhero," he said, and that was when I realized this had been an interview for the position of Robin. But I didn't have time to be a cartoon sidekick.

  "Nathaniel," I sighed. "You know why I came in here." Specifically, to get ready for Monday's opening arguments. To go over my strategy and my witness list.

  I looked at Nathaniel's waiting face. Then again, maybe justice was best served from a Batcave. An oxymoron chased through my mind: I am going to get nothing done today. I am doing everything I want to. "Holy Guacamole, Batman," I said, kicking off my shoes and crawling underneath my desk. Had I ever known that the interior wall was made of cheap pine, and not mahogany? "Robin reporting for duty, but only if I get to drive the Batmobile."

  "You can't be Robin for real."

  "I thought that was the point."

  Nathaniel stared at me with great pity, as if someone like me really ought to have learned the rules of the game this far along in life. Our shoulders bumped in the confines of my desk. "We can work together and everything, but your name has to be Mom."

  "Why?"

  He rolled his eyes. "Because," Nathaniel told me. "It's who you are."

  "Nathaniel!" I call out, blushing a little. It's not a sin, is it, to have no control over one's child? "I'm sorry, Father," I say, holding the door wide to let him inside. "He's been ... shy lately with visitors. Yesterday, when the UPS man came, it took me an hour to find where he was hiding."

  Father Szyszynski smiles at me. "I told myself I should have called first, instead of dropping in unannounced."

  "Oh, no. No. It's wonderful that you came." This is a lie. I have no idea what to do with a priest in my house. Do I serve cookies? Beer? Do I apologize for all the Sundays I don't make it to Mass? Do I confess to lying in the first place?

  "Well, it's part of the job," Father Szyszynski says, tapping his collar. "The only thing I have to do on Friday afternoons is eavesdrop on the ladies' auxiliary meeting."

  "Is that considered a perk?"

  "More like a cross to bear," the priest says, and smiles. He sits down on the couch in the living room. Father Szyszynski is wearing high-tech running sneakers. He does local half-marathons; his times are posted on the News and Notes boards, next to the index cards that request prayers for the needy. There is even a photo of him there, lean and fit, without his collar, crossing a finish line--in it, he looks nothing like a priest; just a man. He's in his fifties, but he appears to be ten years younger. Once, I heard him say that he'd tried to make a pact with Satan for eternal youth, but he couldn't find the devil's extension in the diocese phone book.

  I wonder which nosy gossip in the church rumor mill told the priest about us. "The Sunday school class misses Nathaniel," he tells me. He's being politically correct. If he wanted to be more accurate, he'd say that the Sunday school class misses Nathaniel more than half the Sundays of the year, since we don't make it regularly to Mass. Still, I know that Nathaniel likes coloring pictures in the basement during the service. And he especially likes afterward, when Father Szyszynski reads to the kids from a great, old illustrated children's Bible while the rest of the congregation is upstairs having coffee. He gets right down onto the floor in their circle, and according to Nathaniel, acts out floods and plagues and prophecies.

  "I know what you're thinking," Father Szyszynski says.

  "Do you."

  He nods. "That in the year 2001 it's archaic to assume the Church is such a large part of your life it could offer you comfort at a time like this. But it can, Nina. God wants you to turn to Him."

  I stare right at the priest. "These days I'm not too high on God," I say bluntly.

  "I know. It doesn't make much sense, sometimes, God's will." Father Szyszynski shrugs. "There have been times I've doubted Him myself."

  "You've obviously gotten over it." I wipe the corner of my eyes; why am I crying? "I'm not even really a Catholic."

  "Sure you are. You keep coming back, don't you?"

  But that's guilt, not faith.

  "Things happen for a reason, Nina."

  "Oh, yeah? Then do me a favor and ask God what reason there could possibly be for letting a child get hurt like this."

  "You ask him," the priest says. "And when you're talking, you might want to remember you have something in common--He watched His son suffer, too."

  He hands me a picture book--David and Goliath, watered down for a five-year-old. "If Nathaniel ever comes out," he pitches his voice extra loud, "you tell him that Father Glen left a present." That's what they call him, all the kids at St. Anne's, since they can't pronounce his last name. Heck, the priest has said, after a few tall ones, I can't pronounce it myself. "Nathaniel particularly enjoyed this story when I read it last year. He wanted to know if we could all make slingshots." Father Szyszynski stands up, leads the way to the door. "If you want to talk, Nina, you know where to find me. You take care."

  He starts down the path, the stone steps that Caleb placed with his own hands. As I watch him go I clutch the book to my chest. I think of the weak defeating giants.

  *

  Nathaniel is playing with a boat, sinking it, then watching it bob to the surface again. I suppose I should be grateful that he's in this tub at all. But he has been better, today. He has been talking with his hands. And he agreed to this bath, on the condition that he take off his own clothes. Of course I let him, struggling not to run to his aid when he couldn't work a button through a hole. I try to remember what Dr. Robichaud told us about power: Nathaniel was made helpless; he needs to feel like he's gaining control of himself again.

  I sit on the lip of the tub, watching his back rise and fall with his breathing. The soap shimmers like a fish near the drain. "Need help?" I ask, lifting one hand up with the other, a sign. Nathaniel shakes his head vigorously. He picks up the bar of Ivory and runs it over his shoulder, his chest, his belly. He hesitates, then plunges between his legs.

  A thin white film covers him, making him otherworldly, an angel. Nathaniel lifts his face to mine, hands me the soap to put back. For a moment, our fingers touch--in our new language, these are our lips ... does that make this a kiss?

  I let the soap drop with a splash, then circle my pursed mouth with a finger. I move my index fingers back and forth, touching and retreating. I point to Nathaniel.

  Who hurt you?

  But my son doesn't know these signs. Instead, he flings his hands out to the sides, proud to show off his new
word. Done. He rises like a sea nymph, water sluicing down the sides of his beautiful body. As I towel off each limb and pull pajamas over Nathaniel, I silently ask myself if I am the only person who has touched him at this place, at that one, until every inch of him is covered again.

  In the middle of the night Caleb hears a hitch in his wife's breathing. "Nina?" he whispers, but she doesn't answer. He rolls onto his side, curls her closer. She's awake, he can feel it coming from her pores. "Are you all right?" he asks.

  She turns to him, her eyes flat in the dark. "Are you?"

  He pulls her into his arms and buries his face in the side of her neck. Breathing her calms Caleb; she is his own oxygen. His lips trace her skin, hold over her collarbone. He tilts his head so that he can hear her heart.

  He is looking for a place to lose himself.

  So his hand moves from the valley of her waist to the rise of a hip, slips beneath the thin strip of her panty. Nina draws in her breath. She is feeling it too, then. She needs to get away from here, from this.

  Caleb slides lower and rocks his palm against her. Nina grabs tighter at his hair, almost to the point of pain. "Caleb."

  He is hard now, heavy and pressed into the mattress. "I know," he murmurs, and he goes to slide a finger inside.

  She is dry as a bone.

  Nina yanks at his hair, and this time he rolls off her, which is what she's wanted all along. "What is the matter with you!" she cries. "I don't want to do this. I can't, now." She throws back the covers and pads out of the bedroom into the dark.

  Caleb looks down, sees the small drop of semen he's left on the sheets. He gets out of bed and covers it up, so that he will not have to look at it. Then he follows Nina, searching her out by sheer instinct. For long moments, he stands in the doorway of his son's bedroom, watching her watch Nathaniel.

  Caleb does not accompany us to the psychiatrist's office for our next appointment. He says he has a meeting he cannot reschedule, but I think this is only an excuse. After last night, we have been dancing around each other. Plus, Dr. Robichaud is working on signing now, until Nathaniel gets his voice back, and Caleb disagrees with that tactic. He thinks that when Nathaniel is ready to tell us who hurt him, he will, and until then, we are only pushing.