Perfect Match

by Jodi Picoult

  I wish I had his patience, but I cannot sit here and watch Nathaniel struggle. I can't stop thinking that for every single moment Nathaniel is silent, there is someone else in this world who should have been rendered speechless, stopped in his tracks.

  Today, we have worked our way through practical signs for food--cereal, milk, pizza, ice cream, breakfast. The terms in the ASL book are grouped like that--in units that go together. There is a picture of the word, the written letters, and then a sketch of a person making the sign. Nathaniel gets to pick what we study. He has jumped from the seasons, to things to eat, and is now flipping the pages again.

  "Where he'll stop nobody knows ..." Dr. Robichaud jokes.

  The book falls open to a page with a family on it. "Oh, that's a good one," I say, trying the sign at the top--the F handshapes making a circle away from oneself.

  Nathaniel points to the child. "Like this, Nathaniel," Dr. Robichaud says. "Boy." She mimics touching the bill of a baseball cap. Like many of the signs I've learned, this one is a perfect match to the real thing.

  "Mother," the psychiatrist continues, helping Nathaniel hold out his hand, touch the thumb to the side of his chin, and wiggle the fingers.

  "Father." The same sign, but the thumb touches the side of the forehead. "You do it," Dr. Robichaud says.

  Do it.

  All those thin black lines on the page have tangled together, a fat snake that's coming toward him, grabbing him by the neck. Nathaniel can't breathe. He can't see. He hears Dr. Robichaud's voice all around him, father father father.

  Nathaniel lifts his hand, puts a thumb to his forehead. He wiggles the fingers of his hand. This sign looks like he's making fun of someone.

  Except it isn't funny at all.

  "Look at that," the psychiatrist says, "he's better than we are, already." She moves on to the next sign, baby. "That's good, Nathaniel," Dr. Robichaud says after a moment. "Try this one."

  But Nathaniel doesn't. His hand is jammed tight to the side of his head, his thumb digging into his temple. "Honey, you're going to hurt yourself," I tell him. I reach for his hand and he jumps back. He will not stop signing this word.

  Dr. Robichaud gently closes the ASL book. "Nathaniel, do you have something you want to say?"

  He nods, his hand still fanning out from the side of his head. All the air leaves my body. "He wants Caleb--"

  Dr. Robichaud interrupts. "Don't speak for him, Nina."

  "You can't think that he--"

  "Nathaniel, has your daddy ever taken you somewhere, just the two of you?" the psychiatrist asks.

  Nathaniel seems confused by the question. He nods slowly.

  "Has he ever helped you get dressed?" Another nod. "Has he ever hugged you, in your bed?"

  I am frozen in my seat. My lips feel stiff when I speak. "It's not what you're thinking. He just wants to know why Caleb isn't here. He misses his father. He wouldn't have needed a sign if it was ... if it was ..." I can't even say it. "He could have pointed, a thousand times over," I whisper.

  "He might have been afraid of the consequences of such a direct identification," Dr. Robichaud explains. "A label like this gives him an extra layer of psychological protection. Nathaniel," she continues gently. "Do you know who hurt you?"

  He points to the ASL book. And signs father again.

  Be careful what you wish for. After all these days, Nathaniel has given a name, and it is the one I would never have expected to hear. It is the one that renders me as immobile as a stone, the very material Caleb prefers to work with.

  I listen to Dr. Robichaud make the call to BCYF; I hear her tell Monica there is a suspect, but I am a hundred miles away. I'm watching with the objectivity of someone who knows what will happen next. A detective will be put on the case; Caleb will be called in for questioning. Wally Moffett will contact the Portland DA's office. Caleb will either confess and be convicted on the strength of that statement; or else Nathaniel will have to accuse him in open court.

  This nightmare is only just beginning.

  He could not have done it. I know this as well as I know anything about Caleb after so many years. I can still see him walking the halls at midnight, holding an infant Nathaniel by his feet, the only position in which our colicky baby would stop screaming. I can see him sitting next to me at Nathaniel's graduation from the two-day class in preschool, how he'd cried without shame. He is a good, strong, solid man; the kind of man you would trust with your life, or your child's.

  But if I believe that Caleb is innocent, it means I don't believe Nathaniel.

  Small memories prick at my mind. Caleb, suggesting that Patrick might be the one to blame. Why bring up his name, if not to take the heat off himself? Or Caleb telling Nathaniel he didn't have to learn sign language if he didn't want to. Anything, to keep the child from confessing the truth.

  I have met convicted child molesters before. They don't wear badges or brands or tattoos announcing their vice. It's hidden under a soft, grandfatherly smile; it's tucked in the pocket of a button-down shirt. They look like the rest of us, and that's what makes it so frightening--to know that these beasts move among us, and we are none the wiser.

  They have girlfriends and wives who have loved them, unaware.

  I used to wonder how mothers wouldn't have some inkling that this was going on in their homes. There had to have been a moment where they made a conscious decision to turn away before they saw something they didn't want to. No wife, I used to think, could sleep next to a man and not know what was playing through the loop of his mind.

  "Nina." Monica LaFlamme touches my shoulder. When did she even arrive? I feel like I'm coming awake from a coma; I shake myself into consciousness and look for Nathaniel right away. He's playing in the psychiatrist's office, still, with a Brio train set.

  When the social worker looks at me, I know that this is what she's suspected all along. And I cannot blame her. In her shoes, I would have thought the same thing. In fact, in the past, I have.

  My voice is old, stripped. "Have the police been called?"

  Monica nods. "If there's anything I can do for you ..."

  There is somewhere I need to go, and I cannot have Nathaniel with me. It hurts to have to ask, but I have lost my barometer for trust. "Yes," I ask. "Will you watch my son?"

  I find him at the third job site, making a stone wall. Caleb's face lights up as he recognizes my car. He watches me get out, and then he waits, expecting Nathaniel. It's enough to propel me forward, so that by the time I reach him I am nearly at a dead run, and I slap him as hard as I can across the face.

  "Nina!" Caleb catches my wrists and holds me away from him. "What the hell!"

  "You bastard. How could you, Caleb? How could you?"

  He pushes me away, rubbing his fingers against his cheek. My hand rises on it, a bright print. Good. "I don't know what you're talking about," Caleb says. "Slow down."

  "Slow down?" I spit out. "I'll make it really simple: Nathaniel told us. He told us what you did to him."

  "I didn't do anything to him."

  For a long moment, I don't say a word, just stare. "Nathaniel said I ... I ...," Caleb falters. "That's ridiculous."

  It is what they all say, the guilty ones, and it makes me unravel. "Don't you dare tell me that you love him."

  "Of course I do!" Caleb shakes his head, as if to clear it. "I don't know what he said. I don't know why he said it. But Nina, Jesus Christ. Jesus Christ."

  When I don't respond, every year we've spent together unspools, until we are both standing knee deep in a litter of memories that don't matter. Caleb's eyes are wide and wet. "Nina, please. Think about what you're saying."

  I look down at my hands, one fist gripping the other tightly. It is the sign for in. In trouble. In love. In case. "What I think is that kids don't make this up. That Nathaniel didn't make this up." I raise my gaze to his. "Don't come home tonight," I say, and I walk back to my car with great precision, as if my heart has not gone to pieces inside me.

&
nbsp; Caleb watches the taillights of Nina's car disappear down the road. The dust that's kicked up in her wake settles, and the scene still looks like it did a minute ago. But Caleb knows things are completely different now; that there is no going back.

  He will do anything for his son. Always has, always will.

  Caleb looks down at the wall he's been crafting. Three feet, and it took him the better part of the day. While his son was in a psychiatrist's office, turning the world inside out, Caleb has been lifting stone, fitting it side by side. Once when he'd been dating Nina he'd shown her how to set together rocks with proportions that did not seem to meet. All you need is one edge in common, he'd told her.

  Case in point, this jagged piece of quartz, kitty-corner to a fat, low block of sandstone. Now, he lifts the piece of sandstone and hurls it into the road, where it breaks into pieces. He raises the quartz and sends it spinning into the woods behind him. He demolishes the wall, all this work, piece by careful piece. Then he sinks into the pile of rubble and presses his dusty hands to his eyes, crying for what cannot be put back together.

  I have one more place to go. In the clerk's office of the East District Court, I move like an automaton. Tears keep coming, no matter how I try to will them away. This is not a professional demeanor, but I couldn't care less. This is not a professional matter, it's a personal one.

  "Where do you keep the protective order forms for juveniles?" I ask the clerk, a woman who is new to the court, and whose name I have forgotten.

  She looks at me as if she's afraid to answer. Then she points to a bin. She fills it out for me, as I feed her the answers in a voice that I can't place.

  Judge Bartlett receives me in chambers. "Nina." He knows me, they all do. "What can I do for you?"

  I hold the form out for him and lift my chin. Breathe, speak, focus. "I am filing this on behalf of my son, Your Honor. I'd prefer not to do it in open court."

  The judge's eyes hold mine for a long second, then he takes the paper from my hands. "Tell me," he says gently.

  "There is physical evidence of sexual abuse." I am careful not to say Nathaniel's name. That, I cannot bear yet. "And today, he identified the abuser as his father." His father, not my husband.

  "And you?" Judge Bartlett asks. "Are you all right?"

  I shake my head, my lips pressed tight together. I grasp my hands so tightly that I lose feeling in the fingers. But I don't say a word.

  "If there's anything I can do," the judge murmurs. But there is nothing he can do, or anyone else, no matter how many times the offer is extended. Everything has already been done. And that is the problem.

  The judge scrawls the craggy landscape of his signature across the bottom of the form. "You know this is only temporary. We'll have to have a hearing in twenty days."

  "That's twenty days I have to figure this out."

  He nods. "I'm sorry, Nina."

  So am I. For not seeing what was under my nose. For not knowing how to protect a child in the world, but only in the legal system. For every choice I've made that has brought me to this moment. And, yes, for the restraining order that burns a hole in my pocket the entire drive back to my son.

  These are the rules at home:

  Make your bed in the morning. Brush your teeth twice a day. Don't pull the dog's ears. Finish your vegetables, even if they're not as good as the spaghetti.

  These are the rules at school:

  Don't climb up the outside of the slide. Don't walk in front of the swings while a friend is swinging. Raise your hand in Circle if you have something to say. Everybody gets to play a game, if they want to. Put on a smock if you're going to paint.

  I know other rules, too:

  Buckle your seat belt.

  Never speak to a stranger.

  Don't tell, or you'll burn in Hell.

  THREE

  Life, it turns out, goes on. There is no cosmic rule that grants you immunity from the details just because you have come face-to-face with a catastrophe. The garbage cans still overflow, the bills arrive in the mail, telemarketers interrupt dinner.

  Nathaniel comes into the bathroom just as I put the cap back on the tube of Preparation H. I read once that rubbing it into the skin around the eyes makes the swelling goes down, the red fade. I turn to him with a smile so bright he backs away. "Hey, sweetie. Did you brush your teeth?" He nods, and I take his hand. "Let's read a book, then."

  Nathaniel scrambles onto his bed like any other five-year-old--it is a jungle, and he is a monkey. Dr. Robichaud has said that the children bounce back fast, faster even than their parents do. I hold onto this excuse as I open the book--one about a pirate blind in one eye who cannot see that the parrot on his shoulder is actually a poodle. I make it through the first three pages, and then Nathaniel stops me, his hand splayed across the bright painted pictures. His index finger waggles, and then he holds that hand up to his forehead again, making a sign I wish I could never see again.

  Where's Daddy?

  I take the book and set it on the nightstand. "Nathaniel, he's not coming home tonight." He's not coming home any night, I think.

  He frowns at me. He doesn't know how to ask why yet, but that is what's caught in his head. Is he thinking that he's responsible for Caleb's exile? Has he been told there will be some kind of retribution, for confessing?

  Holding his hands between mine--to keep him from interrupting--I try to make this as easy as I can. "Right now, Daddy can't be here."

  Nathaniel tugs his arms free, curls his fingers up and in. I want.

  God, I want, too. Nathaniel, angry, turns away from me. "What Daddy did," I say brokenly, "was wrong."

  At that, Nathaniel bolts upright. He shakes his head vehemently.

  This, I've seen before. If a parent is the one sexually abusing a child, the child is often told that it's a measure of love. But Nathaniel keeps shaking his head, so hard that his hair flies from side to side. "Stop. Nathaniel, please stop." When he does, he looks at me with the strangest expression, as if he does not understand me at all.

  It is why I say the words out loud. I need to hear the truth. I need confirmation from my son. "Did Daddy hurt you?" I whisper, the leading question Dr. Robichaud would not ask, would not let me ask.

  Nathaniel bursts into tears and hides under his covers. He will not come out, not even when I say I'm sorry.

  Everything in the motel room is the color of wet moss--the frayed rug, the bowl of the sink, the bilious bedspread. Caleb turns on the heat and the radio. He takes off his shoes and sets them neatly beside the door.

  This is not a home; this is barely a residence. Caleb wonders about the other people staying at these efficiency cabins here in Saco. Are they all in limbo like him?

  He cannot imagine sleeping here one night. And yet he knows he will live here a lifetime, if that is what it takes to help his son. He would give anything, for Nathaniel. Even, apparently, himself.

  Caleb sits on the edge of the bed. He picks up the phone, then realizes he has no one to call. But he holds the receiver to his ear for a few moments, until the operator gets on and reminds him that no matter what, on the other end, someone is listening.

  There is nothing for it: Patrick can't start his day without a chocolate croissant. The other cops rib him about it constantly--Too upscale for doughnuts, are you, Ducharme? He brushes it off, willing to suffer some teasing as long as the police secretary who orders the daily tray of baked goods includes his personal favorite. But that morning, when he walks into the cafeteria to grab his snack and fill his coffee cup, Patrick's croissant is missing.

  "Aw, come on," he says to the beat cop standing next to him. "Are you guys being assholes? Did you hide it in the ladies' room again?"

  "We didn't touch it, Lieutenant, swear."

  Sighing, Patrick walks out of the cafeteria to the desk where Mona is checking her e-mail. "Where's my croissant?"

  She shrugs. "I placed the same order as always. Don't ask me."

  Patrick begins to walk through th
e police station, scanning the desks of the other detectives and the room where the street officers relax during their breaks. He passes the chief in the hall. "Patrick, you got a second?"

  "Not right now."

  "I have a case for you."

  "Can you leave it on my desk?"

  The chief smirks. "Wish you were half as single-minded about your police work as you are about your damn doughnuts."

  "Croissants," Patrick calls to his retreating back. "There's a difference."

  In the booking room, seated next to the bored desk sergeant, he finds the perp: a kid who looks like he was playing cop in his dad's uniform. Brown hair, bright eyes, chocolate on his chin. "Who the hell are you?" Patrick demands.

  "Officer Orleans."

  The desk sergeant folds his hands over his ample stomach. "And the detective who's about to rip your head off, here, is Lieutenant Ducharme."

  "Why's he eating my breakfast, Frank?"

  The older cop shrugs. "Because he's only been here a day--"

  "Six hours!" the kid proudly corrects.

  Frank rolls his eyes. "He don't know better."

  "You do."

  "Yeah, but if I told him so I wouldn't have gotten to see all this excitement."

  The rookie holds out the remaining bite of the croissant, his peace offering. "I, uh, I'm sorry, Lieutenant."

  Patrick shakes his head. He considers going to the fridge and raiding the lunch the kid's mom has probably packed him. "Don't let it happen again."

  Hell of a way to start a day; he counts on the combination of caffeine in the chocolate and his coffee to get him jump-started. By ten o'clock, no doubt, he'll have a monster headache. Patrick stalks back to his desk and plays his voice mail--three messages; the only one he really cares about is Nina's. "Call me," it says--that's all, no name, nothing. He picks up the phone, then notices the file that the chief has left on his desk.

  Patrick opens the manila folder, reads the report from BCYF. The telephone receiver falls to the desk, where it lies buzzing long after he has run out of his office.

  "All right," Patrick says evenly. "I'm going to get right on this. I'll go and talk to Caleb the minute I leave here."