by Jodi Picoult
"Red."
"That's very good! How about this color?" She touched her finger to the yellow stripe.
Eli rolled his eyes in her direction. "Red," he said.
"Is that red, or is it a different color than the other stripe?"
"I want my mommy," Eli shouted. "I don't want to talk to you. You are a big fat fart."
"All right," Monica said evenly. "Do you want to go get your mommy?"
"No, I don't want my mommy."
After about five more minutes, Monica terminated the interview. She raised her brows at me through the glass and shrugged. Mrs. Grady leaned forward immediately. "What happens next? Do we set a date for court?"
At that, I took a deep breath. "I'm not sure what happened to your son," I said diplomatically. "Probably, there was some abuse involved; his behavior seems to indicate that. And I think you would be wise to assess your husband's involvement with Eli. However, we can't prosecute this case criminally."
"But ... but you just said it. There was abuse. What more does there have to be?"
"You saw Eli now. There's no way he's going to be able to come into a courtroom and sit down on a chair and answer questions."
"If you spend more time with him--"
"Mrs. Grady, it's not just me. He's going to have to answer questions posed by the defense attorney and the judge, and there's going to be a jury a few feet away staring at him, too. You understand better than anyone does what Eli's behavioral issues are, because you see them on a daily basis. But unfortunately, the legal system doesn't work for people who can't respond within its framework."
The woman's face was white as a sheet. "Well ... what do you do, then, with cases like this? How do you protect children like Eli?"
I turned to the one-way mirror, where Eli was breaking crayons in half. "We can't," I admitted.
I bolt upright in bed, my heart racing. A dream. It has only been a dream. My heart is pounding, sweat covers me like a veil, but my house is still.
Caleb lies on his side, facing me, breathing deeply. There are silver tracks crossing his face; he has been crying in his sleep. I touch my finger to a tear, bring it to my mouth. "I know," I whisper, and then lie awake for the rest of the night.
I doze off as the sun comes up, and wake to the first frost of the winter. It comes early in Maine, and it changes the landscape. Hoary and barbed, the world is a place that might shatter the moment you step into it.
Caleb and Nathaniel are nowhere to be found; the house is so quiet it throbs around me as I dress and make my way downstairs. The cold sneaks in through the crack beneath the door and wraps itself around my ankles while I drink a cup of coffee and stare at the note on the table. WE'RE IN THE BARN.
When I find them, they are mixing mortar. Well, Caleb is. Nathaniel crouches on the floor of the workshop, using bits of brick to outline the dog sleeping on the cement slab floor. "Hey," Caleb grins, glancing up. "We're building a brick wall today."
"So I see. Has Nathaniel got a hat and gloves? It's too cold out for--"
"I've got them right here." Caleb jerks his chin to the left; there are the blue fleece accessories.
"Well. I have to go out for a little while."
"So go." Caleb drags the hoe through the cement, mixing it.
But I don't want to. I'm not needed here; I know that. For years, I've been the main breadwinner; the odd wheel out. Lately, though, I've gotten used to my own house. Lately, I haven't much wanted to leave.
"Maybe I--"
Whatever I'm about to say is interrupted as Caleb leans down and yells right into Nathaniel's face. "No!" Nathaniel quails, but not before Caleb grabs his arm and pulls him away.
"Caleb--"
"You don't touch the antifreeze," Caleb yells at Nathaniel. "How many times do I have to tell you that? It's poison. It can hurt you badly." He picks up the bottle of Prestone he's been mixing into the mortar to keep it from freezing in this temperature, and then covers the mess Nathaniel's made with a cloth. A stain, alien green, seeps through and spreads. The dog laps at the sweet spill, until Caleb shoves it away. "Get out of there, Mason."
In the corner, Nathaniel's on the verge of tears. "Come here," I say, opening up my arms. He flies into them, and I kiss the top of his head. "Why don't you go get a toy from your room to play with while Daddy's working?"
Nathaniel runs off to the house with Mason at his heels, both of them smart enough to know a reprieve when it comes up and grabs them. Caleb shakes his head in disbelief. "Just undermine me, Nina, you go right ahead."
"I'm not undermining you. I'm ... well, look at him, Caleb, you scared him to death. He wasn't doing it on purpose."
"It doesn't matter. He was told and he didn't listen."
"Don't you think he's been through enough lately?"
Caleb wipes his hands on a towel. "Yes, I do. So how's he going to take it when the dog he loves drops dead, because he broke the rules and did something he was expressly told not to do?" He caps the Prestone, sets it high on a shelf. "I want him to feel like a normal kid again. And if Nathaniel had done this three weeks ago, you can bet I would have punished him."
This logic I can't even follow. Biting down on my response, I turn and walk out. I am still angry with Caleb by the time I reach the police department and find Patrick asleep at his desk.
I slam the door of his office, and he nearly falls out of his chair. Then he winces, holds his hand to his head. "I'm just glad to see that you public servants are really earning all my tax dollars," I say sourly. "Where's the digital lineup?"
"I'm working on it," Patrick responds.
"Oh, yeah, I can see that you're really exerting yourself."
He stands up and frowns at me. "Who peed in your coffee?"
"I'm sorry. Just some domestic bliss spilling over. No doubt I'll find my manners by the time you find probable cause to lock up Szyszynski."
Patrick looks me right in the eye. "How's Caleb?"
"Fine."
"Doesn't sound like things are fine ..."
"Patrick. I'm here because I need to know that something's going on. Anything. Please. Show me."
He nods and takes my arm. We move through corridors I have never navigated at the Biddeford Police Department, and finally wind up in a back room not much bigger than a closet. The lights are off, a green screen hums on a computer, and the boy who sits in front of the keyboard has acne and a fistful of Munchos. "Dude," he says to Patrick.
I turn to Patrick, too. "You're kidding."
"Nina, this is Emilio. Emilio helps us with digital imaging. He's a computer whiz."
He leans over Emilio and hits a button on the keyboard. Ten photos appear on the screen, one of them Father Szyszynski's.
I lean forward, look close. There is nothing in the priest's eyes or his easy smile that would make me believe he is capable of such an abomination. Half of the people in the photos are dressed in the vestments of priests; the other half are wearing the standard issue jumpsuit of the local jail. Patrick shrugs. "The only picture I could find of Szyszynski was in his clerical collar. So I have to make the convicts look like priests, too. That way there won't be any cause for question later on, after Nathaniel makes his ID."
He says it like it is going to happen. For that, I adore him. As we watch, Emilio superimposes a collar over a picture of a ham-faced thug. "Got a minute?" Patrick asks me, and when I nod, he leads me out of the little makeshift office, through a side door, and into a courtyard.
There is a picnic table, a basketball hoop, and around this, a high chain link fence. "All right," I say immediately. "What's wrong?"
"Nothing's wrong."
"If nothing was wrong, you would have been able to talk to me in front of your teenage hacker."
Patrick sits down on the bench of the picnic table. "It's about the lineup."
"I knew it."
"Will you just stop?" Patrick waits until I sit down, then looks right into me. Those eyes, they've got a history with mine. They were the firs
t things I saw when I came to, after being hit in the skull with a baseball thrown by Patrick at Little League. They were the fortification I needed at sixteen to ride the chair lift at Sugarloaf, although I am terrified of heights. For almost my whole life, they've told me I'm doing all right, during moments when it was not in my own power to answer. "You need to understand something, Nina," Patrick says. "Even if Nathaniel points right to Szyszynski's picture ... it's a weak disclosure. Surveying a lineup isn't something a five-year-old can really understand. It could be he picks the only familiar face; it could be he points to anyone, just to get us to leave him alone."
"Don't you think I know that?"
"You understand what it takes to secure a conviction. We can't lead him into making an ID just because you want this case to move faster. All I'm saying is that Nathaniel might be able to talk a week from now. Maybe even tomorrow. Eventually, he's going to be able to say the name of the perp, and that's going to be a much stronger accusation."
Leaning forward, I bury my hands in my hair. "And then what am I supposed to do? Let him testify?"
"That's the way it works."
"Not when my child's the victim," I snap.
Patrick touches my arm. "Nina, without Nathaniel's testimony against Szyszynski, you have no case." He shakes his head, certain I haven't really thought this through.
But I have never been more sure of anything in my life. I will do what it takes to keep my son from being a witness. "You're right," I tell Patrick. "And that's why I'm counting on you to get the priest to confess."
Before I realize it, I've driven to St. Anne's. I pull into the parking lot and get out of my car, avoiding the front walk to tiptoe, instead, around to the back of the building. The rectory is here, attached to the main body of the church. My sneakers leave prints in the frost, the trail of an invisible man.
If I climb onto the ridge of a drainage well, I can see into the window. This is Father Szyszynski's personal apartment, the living room. A cup of tea sits, the bag still draining, on a side table. A book--Tom Clancy--is cracked open on the couch. All around are gifts he's received from parishioners: a handmade afghan, a wooden Bible stand, a framed drawing by a child. All of these people believed him, too; I have not been the only sucker.
What I am waiting for, exactly, I don't know. But as I stand there I remember the day before Nathaniel had stopped speaking, the last time we had all gone to Mass. There had been a reception for the two clergymen who'd come to visit, a banner hung from the serving table wishing them a safe journey home. I remember that the flavored coffee that morning was hazelnut. That there were no powdered sugar doughnuts left, though Nathaniel had wanted one. I remember talking to a couple I had not seen in several months, and noticing that the other children were following Father Szyszynski downstairs for his weekly storytime. "Go, Nathaniel," I'd said. He had been hiding behind me, clinging to my legs. I fairly pushed him into joining the others.
I pushed him into it.
I stand here on the drainage ditch for over an hour, until the priest comes into his living room. He sits down on the couch and picks up his tea and he reads. He doesn't know I'm watching him. He doesn't realize that I can slide into his life, just as surreptitiously as he has slid into mine.
As Patrick has promised, there are ten photos--each the size of a baseball card, each with a different "priest" portrayed on the front. Caleb examines one. "The San Diego Pedophiles," he murmurs. "All that's missing are the stats."
Nathaniel and I come into the room, holding hands. "Well," I say brightly. "Look who's here."
Patrick gets to his feet. "Hiya, Weed. Remember when I talked to you the other day?" Nathaniel nods. "Will you talk to me today, too?"
He is already curious about the photos; I can feel it in the way he's tugging toward the couch. Patrick pats the cushion beside him, and Nathaniel immediately climbs up. Caleb and I sit on either side of them, in two overstuffed chairs. How formal we look, I think.
"I brought some pictures for you, just like I said I would." Patrick takes the rest from the manila envelope and arranges them on the coffee table, as if he is going to play solitaire. He looks at me, and then at Caleb--a silent warning that now this is his show. "You remember telling me that someone hurt you, Weed?"
Yes.
"And you said you knew who it was?"
Another nod, this one longer in coming.
"I want to show you some pictures, and if one of these people is the one who hurt you, I want you to point to it. But if the person who hurt you isn't in one of the pictures, you just shake your head no, so I know he's not there."
Patrick has phrased this perfectly--an open, legally valid invitation to make a disclosure; a question that does not lead Nathaniel to believe there's a right answer.
Even though there is.
We all watch Nathaniel's eyes, dark and boundless, moving from one face to another. He is sitting on his hands. His feet don't quite reach the floor.
"Do you understand what I need you to do, Nathaniel?" Patrick asks.
Nathaniel nods. One hand creeps out from beneath a thigh. I want him to be able to do this, oh, I want it so badly it aches, so that this case will be set into motion. And just as badly, for the same reasons, I want Nathaniel to fail.
His hand floats over each card in succession, a dragonfly hovering over a stream. It lights, but doesn't settle. His finger brushes Szyszynski's face, moves on. With my eyes, I try to will him back. "Patrick," I blurt out. "Ask him if he recognizes anyone."
Patrick smiles tightly. Through his teeth, he says, "Nina, you know I can't do that." Then, to Nathaniel: "What do you think, Weed? Do you see the person who hurt you?"
Nathaniel's finger dips like a metronome, traces the edge of Szyszynski's card. He hesitates there, then begins to move the other cards. We all wait, wondering what he is trying to tell us. But he slides one photo up, and another, until he has two columns. He connects them with a diagonal. All this deliberation, and it turns out he is only making the letter N.
"He touched the card. The right one," I insist. "That ID's good enough."
"It's not." Patrick shakes his head.
"Nathaniel, try again." I reach over and mess the pictures up. "Show me which one."
Nathaniel, angry that I've ruined his work, shoves at the cards so that half of them fly off the table. He buries his face on his bent knees and refuses to look at me.
"That was useful," Patrick mutters.
"I didn't see you doing anything to help!"
"Nathaniel." Caleb reaches across me to touch our son's leg. "You did great. Don't listen to your mother."
"That's lovely, Caleb."
"I didn't mean it like that and you know it."
My cheeks are burning. "Oh, really?"
Ill at ease, Patrick begins to stuff the pictures back into the envelope. "I think we ought to talk about this somewhere else," Caleb says pointedly.
Nathaniel's hands come up to cover his ears. He burrows sideways, between the sofa pillows and Patrick's leg. "Now look what you've done to him," I say.
The mad in the room is all the colors of fire, and it presses down on him, so that Nathaniel has to make himself small enough to fit in the cracks of the cushions. There is something hard in Patrick's pocket where he's pressed up tight to it. His pants smell like maple syrup and November.
His mother, she's crying again, and his dad is yelling at her. Nathaniel can remember when just waking up in the morning used to make them happy. Now, it seems that no matter what he does, it's wrong.
He knows this is true: What happened happened because of him. And now that he's dirty and different, his own parents do not know what to do with him.
He wishes he could make them smile again. He wishes he had the answers. He knows they are there, but they're dammed up in his throat, behind the Thing He Is Not Supposed to Tell.
His mother throws up her hands and walks toward the fireplace, her back to everyone. She's pretending no one can see, but she's cry
ing hard now. His father and Patrick are trying hard not to look at each other, their eyes bouncing like a Superball off everything in the tiny room.
When his voice returns, it reminds Nathaniel of the time his mother's car would not start last winter. She turned the key and the engine groaned, whining and whining before it kicked to life. Nathaniel feels that same thing now, in his belly. That kindling, that croak, the tiniest bubble rising up his windpipe. It chokes him; it makes his chest swell. The name that gets shoved out is feeble, thin as gruel, not nearly the thick and porous block that has absorbed all his words these past weeks. In fact, now that it sits on his tongue, bitter pill, it is hard to believe something this tiny has filled all the space inside him.
Nathaniel worries no one will hear him, since so many angry words are flying like kites in the room. So he comes up on his knees, presses himself along Patrick's side, cups his hand to the big man's ear. And he speaks, he speaks.
*
Patrick feels the warm weight of Nathaniel on his left side. And no wonder; Patrick himself is ducking from the comments Caleb and Nina are winging at each other; Nathaniel has to be faring just as poorly. He slides an arm around the child. "It's okay, Weed," he murmurs.
But then he feels Nathaniel's fingers brush the hair at his nape. A sound slips into his ear. It's not much more than a puff of breath, but Patrick has been waiting. He squeezes Nathaniel once more, because of what he's done. Then he turns to interrupt Caleb and Nina. "Who the hell," Patrick asks, "is Father Glen?"
The logical time to search the church is during Mass, when Father Szyszynski--a.k.a. Father Glen, to the children like Nathaniel who cannot pronounce his last name--is otherwise occupied. Patrick cannot remember the last time he went on a hunt for evidence wearing a coat and tie, but he wants to blend in with the crowd. He smiles at strangers while they all file into the church before nine A.M.; and when they turn into the main nave of the church he walks in the opposite direction, down a staircase.
Patrick doesn't have a warrant, but then this is a public space, and he does not need one. Still, he moves quietly through the hallway, reluctant to draw attention to himself. He passes a classroom where small children sit wriggling like fish at even smaller tables and chairs. If he were a priest, where would he stash the Goodwill box?
