Perfect Match

by Jodi Picoult

  The guard hands me a pair of scrubs. "Get undressed," she orders.

  I have to do this, I think, as I hear her snap on the rubber gloves. I have to do whatever it takes to get out of here. So I force my mind to go blank, like a screen at the close of a movie. I feel the guard's fingers probe my mouth and my ears, my nostrils, my vagina, my anus. With a jolt, I think of my son.

  When it is over, the guard takes my clothes, still damp with the blood of the priest, and bags them. I slowly put on the scrubs, tying them so tight at the waist that I find myself gasping for breath. My eyes dart back and forth as we walk back down the hall. The walls, they're watching me.

  In the booking room at the front of the jail again, the female guard leaves me standing in front of a phone. "Go ahead," she instructs. "Make your call."

  I have a constitutional right to a private phone call, but I can feel the weight of their stares. I pick up the receiver and play with it, stroking its long neck. I stare at it as if I have never seen a telephone before.

  Whatever they hear, they won't admit to hearing. I have tried to pressure enough correctional officers to come testify, and they never will, because they have to go back and guard these prisoners every day.

  For the first time, this works to my advantage.

  I meet the gaze of the nearest correctional officer, then slowly shake off the act. Dialing, I wait to be connected to something outside of here. "Hello?" Caleb says, the most beautiful word in the English language.

  "How's Nathaniel?"

  "Nina. Jesus Christ, what were you doing?"

  "How's Nathaniel?" I repeat.

  "How the hell do you think he is? His mother's been arrested for killing someone!"

  I close my eyes. "Caleb, you need to listen to me. I'll explain everything when I see you. Have you talked to the police?"

  "No--"

  "Don't. Right now, I'm at the jail. They're holding me here overnight, and I'm going to be arraigned tomorrow." There are tears coming. "I need you to call Fisher Carrington."

  "Who?"

  "He's a defense attorney. And he's the only person who can get me out of this. I don't care what you have to do, but get him to represent me."

  "What am I supposed to tell Nathaniel?"

  I take a deep breath. "That I'm okay, and that I'll be home tomorrow."

  Caleb is angry; I can hear it in his pause. "Why should I do this for you, after what you just did to us?"

  "If you want there to be an us," I say, "you'd better do it."

  After Caleb hangs up on me, I hold the phone to my ear, pretending he is still on the other end of the line. Then I replace the receiver, turn around, and look at the correctional officer who is waiting to take me to a cell. "I had to do it," I explain. "He doesn't understand. I can't make him understand. You would have done it, wouldn't you? If it was your kid, wouldn't you have done it?" I make my eyes flicker from left to right, lighting on nothing. I chew my fingernail till the cuticle bleeds.

  I make myself crazy, because this is what I want them to see.

  It is no surprise when I am led to the solitary cells. In the first place, new prisoners are often put on a suicide watch; in the second place, I put half the women in this jail. The correctional officer slams the door shut behind me, and this becomes my new world: six feet by eight feet, a metal bunk, a stained mattress, a toilet.

  The guard moves off, and for the first time this day, I let myself unravel. I have killed a man. I have walked right up to his lying face and shot four bullets into it. The recollection comes in bits and pieces--the click of the trigger past the point of no return; the thunder of the gun; the backward leap of my hand as the gun recoiled, as if it were trying, too late, to stop itself.

  His blood was warm where it struck my shirt.

  Oh, my God, I have killed a man. I did it for all the right reasons; I did it for Nathaniel; but I did it.

  My body starts shaking uncontrollably, and this time, it is no act. It is one thing to seem insane for the sake of the witnesses that will be called to testify against me; it is another thing entirely to sift through my own mind and realize what I have been capable of all along. Father Szyszynski will not preside over Mass on Sunday. He will not have his nightly cup of tea or say an evening prayer. I have killed a priest who was not given Last Rites; and I will follow him straight to Hell.

  My knees draw up, my chin tucks tight. In the overheated belly of this jail, I am freezing.

  "Are you all right, girlfriend?"

  The voice floats from across the hall, the second solitary confinement cell. Whoever has been in there watching me has been doing it from the shadows. I feel heat rise to my face and look up to see a tall black woman, her scrubs knotted above her bellybutton, her toenails painted to orange to match her jail uniform.

  "My name's Adrienne, and I'm a real good listener. I don't get to talk to many people."

  Does she think I'm going to fall for that setup? Stoolpigeons are as common in here as professions of innocence, and I should know--I have listened to both. I open my mouth to tell her this, but at second glance, realize I've been mistaken. The long feet, the rippled abdomen, the veins on the backs of the hands--Adrienne isn't a woman at all.

  "Your secret," the transvestite says. "It's safe with me."

  I stare right at her--his--considerable chest. "Got a Kleenex?" I ask flatly.

  For just a moment, there is a beat of silence. "That's just a technicality," Adrienne responds.

  I turn away again. "Yeah, well, I'm still not talking to you."

  Above us, there is the call for lights out. But it never gets dark in jail. It is eternally dusk, a time when creatures crawl from swamps and crickets take over the earth. In the shadows, I can see Adrienne's smooth skin, a lighter shade of night between the bars of her cell. "What did you do?" Adrienne asks, and there is no mistaking her question.

  "What did you do?"

  "It's the drugs, it's always the drugs, honey. But I'm trying to get off them, I truly am."

  "A drug conviction? Then why did they put you in solitary?"

  Adrienne shrugs. "Well, the boys, I don't belong with them; they just want to beat me up, you know? I'd like to be in with the girls, but they won't let me, because I haven't had the operation yet. I been taking my medicine regular, but they say it don't matter, so long as I've got the wrong kind of plumbing." She sighs. "Quite frankly, honey, they don't know what to do with me in here."

  I stare at the cinderblock walls, at the dim safety light on the ceiling, at my own lethal hands. "They don't know what to do with me either," I say.

  The AG's office puts Quentin up at a Residence Inn that has a small efficiency kitchen, cable TV, and a carpet that smells like cats. "Thank you," he says dryly, handing the teenager who doubles as bellman a dollar. "It's a palace."

  "Whatever," the kid responds.

  It amazes Quentin, the way adolescents are the only group that doesn't blink twice upon seeing him. Then again, he sometimes believes they wouldn't blink twice if a herd of mustangs tore past inches from their Skechered feet.

  He doesn't understand them, either as a breed or individually.

  Quentin opens the refrigerator, which gives off a dubious odor, and then sinks onto the spongy mattress. Well, it could be the Ritz-Carlton and he'd hate it. Biddeford, in general, makes him edgy.

  Sighing, he picks up his car keys and leaves the hotel. Might as well get this over with. He drives without really thinking about where he's going. He knows she's there, of course. The address for the checks has stayed the same all this time.

  There is a basketball hoop in the driveway; this surprises him. Somehow, he hasn't thought past last year's debacle to consider that Gideon might have a hobby less embarrassing to a prosecutor. A beat-up Isuzu Trooper with too many rust holes in the running board is parked in the garage. Quentin takes a deep breath, draws himself up to his full height, and knocks on the door.

  When Tanya answers, it still hits him like a blow to the chest--h
er cognac skin; her chocolate eyes, as if this woman is a treat to be savored. But, Quentin reminds himself, even the most exquisite truffles can be bitter on the inside. He takes small comfort in the fact that she steps back when she sees him, too. "Quentin Brown," Tanya murmurs, shaking her head. "To what do I owe this honor?"

  "I'm here on a case," he says. "Indefinitely." He's trying to peer behind her, to see what her home looks like inside. Without him in it. "Thought I'd stop by, since you'd probably be hearing my name around town."

  "Along with other, four letter words," Tanya mutters.

  "Didn't catch that."

  She smiles at him, and he forgets what they were discussing. "Gideon around?"

  "No," she says, too quickly.

  "I don't believe you."

  "And I don't like you, so why don't you take your sorry self back to your little car and--"

  "Ma?" The loping voice precedes Gideon, who suddenly appears behind his mother. He is nearly Quentin's height, although he's just turned sixteen. His dark face draws even more closed as he sees who's standing at the doorway. "Gideon," Quentin says. "Hello again."

  "You come to haul my ass back to rehab?" He snorts. "Don't do me any favors."

  Quentin feels his hands balling into fists. "I did do you a favor. I pulled enough strings with a judge to keep you out of a juvenile detention facility, even though I took heat for it in my own department."

  "Am I supposed to thank you for that?" Gideon laughs. "Just like I get down on my knees every night and thank you for being my daddy?"

  "Gideon," Tanya warns, but he shoves past her.

  "Later." He pushes Quentin hard, a threat, as he passes down the steps and gets into the Isuzu. Moments later, the car peels down the street.

  "Is he still clean?" Quentin asks.

  "Are you asking because you care, or because you don't want that stain on your career again?"

  "That's not fair, Tanya--"

  "Life never is, Quentin." For the slightest moment, there is a sadness caught in the corners of her eyes, like the seeds of a dream. "Go figure."

  She closes the door before he can respond. Moments later Quentin backs carefully out of the driveway. He drives for a full five minutes before he realizes that he has no idea where he is headed.

  Lying on his side, Caleb can see the night sky. The moon is so slender it might not even be there the next time he blinks, but those stars, they're flung wide. One bright beacon catches his eye. It's fifty, maybe a hundred light-years away from here. Looking at it, Caleb is staring right into the past. An explosion that happened ages ago, but took this long to affect him.

  He rolls onto his back. If only they were all like that.

  All that day he's been thinking that Nina is sick; that she needs help, the way someone with a virus or a broken leg needs help. If something in her mind has snapped, Caleb will be the first to understand--he has come close to that himself, when thinking of what has been done to Nathaniel. But when Nina called, she was rational, calm, insistent. She meant to kill Father Szyszynski.

  That, in and of itself, doesn't shock Caleb. People are able to hold the greatest scope of emotions inside them--love, joy, determination. It only stands to reason that negative feelings just as staggering can elbow their way in and take over. No, what surprises him is the way she did it. And the fact that she actually thinks this is something she did for Nathaniel.

  This is about Nina, through and through.

  Caleb closes his eyes to that star, but he still sees it etched on the backs of his eyelids. He tries to remember the moment that Nina told him she was pregnant. "This wasn't supposed to happen," she said to him. "So we can't ever forget that it has."

  There is a rustle of blankets and sheets, and then Caleb feels heat pressed along the length of his body. He turns, hopeful, praying that this has all been a bad dream and that he can wake up to find Nina safe and sleeping. But on her pillow lies Nathaniel, his eyes shining with tears. "I want Mommy back," he whispers.

  Caleb thinks of Nina's face when she was carrying Nathaniel, how it was as bright as any star. Maybe that glory faded long ago, maybe it has taken all these light-years to only reach him now. He turns to his son and says, "I want that too."

  Fisher Carrington stands with his back to the door of the conference room, looking out onto the exercise courtyard. When the correctional officer closes the door behind himself, leaving me there, he turns slowly. He looks just the way he did the last time I saw him, during Rachel's competency hearing: Armani suit, Bruno Magli shoes, thick head of white hair combed away from his sympathetic blue eyes. Those eyes take in my oversize jail scrubs, then immediately return to my face. "Well," he says gravely. "I never imagined I'd talk to you here."

  I walk to one of the chairs in the room and throw myself into it. "You know what, Fisher? Stranger things have happened."

  We stare at each other, trying to adjust to this role reversal. He is not the enemy anymore; he is my only hope. He is calling the shots; I am just along for the ride. And over this is a veneer of professional understanding: that he will not ask me what I've done, and that I will not have to tell him.

  "You need to get me home, Fisher. I want to be back by the time my son sits down for lunch."

  Fisher just nods. He's heard this before. And it doesn't really matter what I want, when all is said and done. "You know they're going to ask for a Harnish hearing," he says.

  Of course I know this; it is what I would do if I were prosecuting. In Maine, if the state can show probable cause that a capital crime was committed, then the defendant can be held without bail. In jail until the trial.

  For months.

  "Nina," Fisher says, the first time he has called me anything other than counselor. "Listen to me."

  But I don't want to listen to him. I want him to listen to me. With great self-control I raise a blank face to his. "What's next, Fisher?"

  He can see right through me, but Fisher Carrington is a gentleman. And so he pretends, just the way I am pretending. He smiles, as if we are old friends. "Next," he replies, "we go to court."

  Patrick stands in the back, behind the throngs of reporters that have come to film the arraignment of the prosecutor who shot a priest in cold blood. This is the stuff of TV movies, of fiction. It is a story to debate at the water cooler with colleagues. In fact, Patrick has been listening to the commentary on more than one channel. Words like retribution and reprisal slide like snakes from these journalists' mouths. Sometimes, they don't even mention Nina's name.

  They talk about the angle of the bullet, the number of paces it took to cross from her seat to the priest's. They give a history of child molestation convictions involving a priest. They do not say that Nina learned the difference between a front-end loader and a grader to satisfy the curiosity of her son. They do not mention that the contents of her pocketbook, catalogued at the jail, included a Matchbox car and a plastic glow-in-the-dark spider ring.

  They don't know her, Patrick thinks. And therefore, they don't know why.

  A reporter in front of him with a helmet of blond hair nods vigorously as her cameraman films her impromptu interview of a physiologist. "The amygdala influences aggression via a pathway of neurons that leads to the hypothalamus," he says. "It sends bursts of electrical excitation down the stria terminalis, and that's the trigger of rage. Certainly, there are environmental factors, but without the preexisting pattern ..."

  Patrick tunes them out. A tangible awareness sweeps the gallery, and people begin to take their seats. Cyclopsian cameras blink. Hanging behind, Patrick tucks himself against the wall of the courtroom. He does not want to be recognized, and he isn't quite sure why. Is he ashamed of bearing witness at Nina's shame? Or is he afraid of what she might see in his face?

  He should not have come. Patrick tells himself this as the door to the holding cell opens and two bailiffs appear, flanking Nina. She looks tiny and frightened, and he remembers how she shivered against him, her back to his front, as he pushed her f
rom the fray yesterday afternoon.

  Nina closes her eyes and then moves forward. On her face is the exact expression she wore at age eleven, a few feet up from the base on a ski lift, the moment before Patrick convinced the operator to let Nina off lest she pass out.

  He should not have come, but Patrick also knows he could not have stayed away.

  I am to be arraigned in the same courtroom where, yesterday, I murdered a man. The bailiff puts his hand on my shoulder and escorts me through the door. Hands cuffed behind my back, I walk where the priest walked. If I look hard enough, I can see his footsteps glowing.

  We march past the prosecutor's table. Five times as many reporters are present today; there are even faces I recognize from Dateline and CNN. Did you know that television cameras running in unison sound like the song of cicadas? I turn to the gallery to find Caleb, but behind Fisher Carrington's table there is only a row of empty seats.

  I am wearing my prison scrubs and low-heeled pumps. They cannot give you shoes in jail, so you wear whatever you were arrested in. And just yesterday, a lifetime ago, I was a professional woman. But as the heel of my shoe catches on the natty nap of a mat, I stumble and glance down.

  We are at the spot where the priest lay dead, yesterday. Where, presumably, the cleaning people who scoured this courtroom could not completely remove the stain of blood from the floor, and covered it with an industrial carpet remnant.

  Suddenly I cannot take a single step.

  The bailiff grabs my arm more firmly and drags me across the mat to Fisher Carrington's side. There, I remember myself. I sit down in the same seat the priest was sitting in yesterday when I walked up and shot him. It's warm beneath my thighs--lights beating down on the wood from the courtroom ceiling, or maybe just an old soul that hasn't had the time to move on. The moment the bailiff steps away, I feel a rush of air at the nape of my neck, and I whip around, certain there will be someone waiting with a bullet for me.

  But there is no bullet, no sudden death. There are only the eyes of everyone in that courtroom, burning like acid. For their viewing pleasure, I start to bite my nails, twitch in my seat. Nervousness can pass for crazy.

  "Where is Caleb?" I whisper to Fisher.

  "I have no idea, but he came to my office this morning with the retainer. Keep your head straight." Before I can answer, the judge raps his gavel.