Perfect Match

by Jodi Picoult

  I pick up the phone to call Fisher. But then I hang it up. He needs to hear this; he could very well find out by himself. But I don't know how it will play in my trial, yet. It could make the prosecution more sympathetic, since their victim is a true victim. Then again, an insanity defense is an insanity defense. It doesn't matter if I killed Father Szyszynski or the judge or every spectator in that courtroom--if I were insane at the time, I still wouldn't be guilty.

  In fact, this might make me look crazier.

  I sit down at the kitchen table and bury my face in my hands. The doorbell rings and suddenly Patrick is in the kitchen, too big for it, frantic from the message I've left on his beeper. "What?" he demands, absorbing in a single glance my position, and the quiet of the household. "Did something happen to Nathaniel?"

  It is such a loaded question, that I can't help it--I start to laugh. I laugh until my stomach cramps, until I cannot catch my breath, until tears stream from my eyes and I realize I am sobbing. Patrick's hands are on my shoulders, my forearms, my waist, as if the thing that has broken inside me might be as simple as a bone. I wipe my nose on the back of my sleeve and force myself to meet his gaze. "Patrick," I whisper, "I screwed up. Father Szyszynski ... he didn't ... he wasn't--"

  He calms me down and makes me tell him everything. When I finish, he stares at me for a full thirty seconds before he speaks. "You're kidding," Patrick says. "You shot the wrong guy?"

  He doesn't wait for an answer, just gets up and starts to pace. "Nina, wait a second. Things get screwed up in labs; it's happened before."

  I grab onto this lifeline. "Maybe that's it. Some medical mistake."

  "But we had an ID before we ever had the semen evidence." Patrick shakes his head. "Why would Nathaniel have said his name?"

  Time can stop, I know that now. It is possible to feel one's heart cease beating, to sense the blood hover in one's veins. And to have the awful, overwhelming sense that one is trapped in this moment, and there is just no way out of it. "Tell me again." My words spill like stones. "Tell me what he told you."

  Patrick turns to me. "Father Glen," he replies. "Right?"

  Nathaniel remembers feeling dirty, so dirty that he thought he could take a thousand showers and still need to clean himself again. And the thing of it was, the dirty part of him was under his skin; he would have to rub himself raw before it was gone.

  It burned down there, and even Esme wouldn't come near him. She purred and then hopped onto the big wooden desk, staring. This is your fault, she was saying. Nathaniel tried to get his pants, but his hands were like clubs, unable to pick up anything. His underwear, when he finally managed to grab it, was all wet, which made no sense because Nathaniel hadn't had an accident, he just knew it. But the priest had been looking at his underpants, holding them. He'd liked the baseball mitts.

  Nathaniel didn't want to wear them again, ever.

  "We can fix that," the priest said, in a voice soft as a pillow, and he disappeared for a moment. Nathaniel counted to thirty-five, and then did it again, because that was as high as he could go. He wanted to leave. He wanted to hide under the desk or in the file cabinet. But he needed underpants. He couldn't get dressed without them, they came first. That was what his mom said when he forgot sometimes, and she made him go upstairs to put them on.

  The priest came back with a baby pair, not like his dad's, which looked like shorts. He'd gotten these, Nathaniel was sure, from the big box that held all the greasy coats and smelly sneakers people had left behind in the church. How could you leave without your sneakers, and never notice? Nathaniel always had wanted to know. For that matter, how could you forget your underpants?

  These were clean and had Spiderman on them. They were too tight, but Nathaniel didn't care. "Let me take the other pair," the priest said. "I'll wash them and give them back."

  Nathaniel shook his head. He pulled on his sweatpants and tucked the boxers into the kangaroo part of his sweatshirt, turning the icky side so that he didn't have to touch it. He felt the priest pet his hair and he went perfectly still, like granite, with the same thick, straight feelings inside.

  "Do you need me to walk you back?"

  Nathaniel didn't answer. He waited until the priest had picked up Esme and left; then he walked down the hall to the boiler room. It was creepy inside--no light switch, and cobwebs, and once even the skeleton of a mouse that had died. No one ever went in there, which is why Nathaniel did, and stuffed the bad underwear way behind the big machine that hummed and belched heat.

  When Nathaniel went back to his class, Father Glen was still reading the Bible story. Nathaniel sat down, tried to listen. He paid careful attention, even when he felt someone's eyes on him. When he looked up, the other priest was standing in the hallway, holding Esme and smiling. With his free hand he raised a finger to his lips. Shh. Don't tell.

  That was the moment Nathaniel lost all his words.

  The day my son stopped speaking, we had gone to church. Afterward, there was a fellowship coffee--what Caleb liked to call Bible Bribery, a promise of doughnuts in return for your presence at Mass. Nathaniel moved around me as if I were a maypole, turning this way and that as he waited for Father Szyszynski to call the children together to read.

  This coffee was a celebration, of sorts--two priests who had come to study at St. Anne's for some sort of Catholic edification were going back to their own congregations. A banner blew from the base of the scarred table, wishing them well. Since we were not regular churchgoers, I had not really noticed the priests doing whatever it was they were supposed to be doing. Once or twice I'd seen one from behind and made the assumption it was Father Szyszynski, only to have the man turn around and prove me wrong.

  My son was angry because they had run out of powdered sugar doughnuts. "Nathaniel," I said, "stop pulling on me."

  I'd tugged him off my waist, smiling apologetically at the couple that Caleb was speaking to; acquaintances we had not seen in months. They had no children, although they were our ages, and I imagine that Caleb liked talking to them for the same reason I did--there was that amazing What if permeating the conversation, as if Todd and Margaret were a funhouse mirror in which Caleb and I could see who else we might have become, had I never conceived. Todd was talking about their upcoming trip to Greece; how they were chartering a boat to take them from island to island.

  Nathaniel, for reasons I could not fathom, sank his teeth into my hand.

  I jumped, more shocked than hurt, and grabbed Nathaniel by the wrist. I was caught in that awful limbo of public discipline--a moment when a child has done something truly punishable but escapes without penalty because it isn't politically correct to give him the quick smack on his behind that he deserves. "Don't you ever do that again," I said through my teeth, trying for a smile. "Do you hear me?"

  Then I noticed all the other kids hurrying down the stairs after Father Szyszynski, a Pied Piper. "Go," I urged. "You don't want to miss the story."

  Nathaniel buried his face underneath my sweater, his head swelling my belly again, a mock pregnancy. "Come on. All your friends are going."

  I had to peel his arms from around me, push him in the right direction. Twice he looked back, and twice I had to nod, encouraging him to get a move on. "I'm sorry," I said to Margaret, smiling. "You were talking about Corsica?"

  Until now, I did not remember that one of the other priests, the taller one who carried a cat as if it were part of his clerical attire, hurried down the steps after the children. That he caught up to Nathaniel and put his hand on his shoulder with the comfort of someone who had done it before.

  Nathaniel said his name.

  A memory bursts and stings my eyes: What's the opposite of left?

  White.

  What's the opposite of white?

  Bwack.

  I remember the priest at Father Szyszynsk's funeral who had stared through my veil as he handed me the Host, as if my features were familiar. And I remember the sentences printed carefully on a banner beneath th
e coffee table on that last day, before Nathaniel stopped speaking. PEACE BE WITH YOU, FATHER O'TOOLE. PEACE BE WITH YOU, FATHER GWYNNE.

  Tell me what he told you, I'd asked Patrick.

  Father Glen.

  Maybe that is what Patrick heard. But that isn't how Nathaniel would have said it.

  "He wasn't saying Father Glen," Nina murmurs to Patrick. "He was saying Father Gwynne."

  "Yeah, but you know how Nathaniel talks. His L's always come out wrong."

  "Not this time," Nina sighs. "This time he was saying it right. Gwen. Gwynne. They're so close."

  "Who the hell is Gwynne?"

  Nina rises, her hands splayed through her hair. "He's the one, Patrick. He's the one who hurt Nathaniel and he's still, he could still be doing this to a hundred other boys, and--" She wilts, stumbling against the wall. Patrick steadies her with one hand, and he is startled to feel her shaking so hard. His first instinct is to reach for her. His second, smarter response is to let her take a step away.

  She slides down the side of the refrigerator until she is sitting on the floor. "He's the bone marrow donor. He has to be."

  "Does Fisher know about this yet?" She shakes her head. "Caleb?"

  In that moment, he thinks of a story he read long ago in school, about the start of the Trojan War. Paris was given a choice to be the richest man in the world, the smartest man in the world, or the chance to love another man's wife. Patrick, fool that he is, would make the same mistake. For with her hair in knots, her eyes red and swollen, her sorrow cracked open in her lap, Nina is every bit as beautiful to him now as Helen was back then.

  She lifts her face to his. "Patrick ... what am I going to do?"

  It shocks him into a response. "You," Patrick says clearly, "are not going to do anything. You are going to sit in this house because you're on trial for a man's murder." When she opens her mouth to argue, Patrick holds up his hand. "You've already been locked up once, and look what happened to Nathaniel. What do you think's going to happen to him if you walk out that door for more vigilante justice, Nina? The only way you can keep him safe is to stay with him. Let me ..." He hesitates, knowing that on the edge of this cliff, the only way out is to retreat, or to jump. "Let me take care of it."

  She knows exactly what he has just vowed. It means going against his department, going against his own code of ethics. It means turning his back on the system, like Nina has. And it means facing the consequences. Like Nina. He sees the wonder in her face, and the spark that lets him know how tempted she is to take him up on his offer. "And risk losing your job? Going to jail?" she says. "I can't let you do something that stupid."

  What makes you think I haven't already? Patrick doesn't say the words aloud, but he doesn't have to. He crouches down and puts his hand on Nina's knee. Her hand comes up to cover his. And he sees it in her eyes: She knows how he feel about her, she has always known. But this is the first time she has come close to admitting it.

  "Patrick," she says quietly, "I think I've already ruined the lives of enough people I love."

  When the door bursts open and Nathaniel tumbles into the kitchen on a whirl of cold air, Patrick comes to his feet. The boy smells of popcorn and is carrying a stuffed frog inside his winter coat. "Guess what," he says. "Daddy took me to the arcade."

  "You're a lucky guy," Patrick answers, and even to his own ears, his voice sounds weak. Caleb comes in, then, and closes the door behind him. He looks from Patrick to Nina, and smiles uncomfortably. "I thought you were visiting with Marcella."

  "She had to go. She was meeting someone else. As she was leaving, Patrick stopped by."

  "Oh." Caleb rubs the back of his neck. "So ... what did she say?"

  "Say?"

  "About the DNA."

  Before Patrick's very eyes, Nina changes. She flashes a polished smile at her husband. "It's a match," she lies. "A perfect match."

  From the moment I step outside, the world is magic. Air cold enough to make my nostrils stick together; a sun that trembles like a cold yolk; a sky so wide and blue that I cannot keep it all in my eyes. Inside smells different from outside, but you don't notice until one of them is taken away from you.

  I am on my way to Fisher's office, so my electronic bracelet has been deactivated. Being outside is so glorious that it almost supersedes the secret I am hiding. As I slow for a stoplight I see the Salvation Army man swinging his bell, his bucket swaying gently. This is the season of charity; surely there will be some left for me.

  Patrick's offer swims through my mind like smoke, making it difficult to see clearly. He is the most moral, upstanding man I know--he would not have offered lightly to become my one-man posse. Of course, I cannot let him do this. But I also can't stop hoping that maybe he will ignore me and do it anyway. And immediately, I hate myself for even thinking such a thing.

  I tell myself, too, that I don't want Patrick to go after Gwynne for another reason, although it is one I will admit only in the darkest corners of the night: Because I want to be the one. Because this was my son, my grievance, my justice to mete out.

  When did I become this person--a woman who has the capacity to commit murder, to want to murder again, to get what she wants without caring who she destroys in the process? Was this always a part of me, buried, waiting? Maybe there is a seed of malfeasance even in the most honest of people--like Patrick--that requires a certain combination of circumstances to bloom. In most of us, then, it lies dormant forever. But for others, it blossoms. And once it does, it takes over like loosestrife, choking out rational thought, killing compassion.

  So much for Christmas spirit.

  Fisher's office is decorated for the holidays too. Swaths of garland drape the fireplace; there is mistletoe hanging square over the secretary's desk. Beside the coffee urn sits a jug of hot mulled cider. While I wait for my attorney to retrieve me, I run my hand over the leather cushion of the couch, simply for the novelty of touching something other than the old sage chenille sofa in my living room at home.

  What Patrick said about labs making mistakes has stayed with me. I will not tell Fisher about the bone marrow tranpslant, not until I know for sure that Marcella's explanation is right. There is no reason to believe that Quentin Brown will dig up this obscure glitch about DNA; so there is no reason to trouble Fisher yet with information he might never need to know.

  "Nina." Fisher strides toward me, frowning. "You're losing weight."

  "It's called prisoner-of-war chic." I fall into step beside him, measuring the dimensions of this hall and that alcove, simply because they are unfamiliar to me. In his office, I stare out the window, where the fingers of bare branches rap a tattoo against the glass.

  Fisher catches the direction of my gaze. "Would you like to go outside?" he asks quietly.

  It is freezing, nearly zero. But I am not in the habit of handing back gifts. "I would love that."

  So we walk in the parking lot behind the law offices, the wind kicking up small tornadoes of brown leaves. Fisher holds a stack of papers in his gloved hands. "We've gotten the state's psychiatric evaluation back. You didn't quite answer his questions directly, did you?"

  "Oh, come on. Do you know the role of a judge in the courtroom? For God's sake."

  A small grin plays over Fisher's mouth. "All the same, he found you competent and sane at the time of the offense."

  I stop walking. What about now? Is it crazy to want to finish the job once you've found out you didn't succeed the first time? Or is that the sanest thing in the world?

  "Don't worry. I think we can chew this guy up and rip his report to shreds--but I also would like a forensic shrink to say you were insane then, and aren't now. The last thing I want is a jury thinking you're still a threat."

  But I am. I imagine shooting Father Gwynne, getting it right this time. Then I turn to Fisher, my face perfectly blank. "Who do you want to use?"

  "How about Sidwell Mackay?"

  "We joke about him in the office," I say. "Any prosecutor can get through him
in five minutes flat."

  "Peter Casanoff?"

  I shake my head. "Pompous windbag."

  Together we turn our backs to the wind, trying to make a very logical decision about whom we can find to call me insane. Maybe this will not be so difficult after all. What rational woman still sees the wrong man's blood on her hands every time she looks down, but spends an hour in the shower imagining how she might kill the right man?

  "All right," Fisher suggests. "How about O'Brien, from Portland?"

  "I've called him a couple of times. He seems all right, maybe a little squirmy."

  Fisher nods in agreement. "He's going to come off like an academic, and I think that's what you need, Nina."

  I offer him my most complacent smile. "Well, Fisher. You're the boss!"

  He gives me a guarded look, then hands over the psychiatric report. "This is the one the state sent. You need to remember what you told him before you go see O'Brien."

  So defense attorneys do ask their clients to memorize what they said to the state psychiatrist.

  "We've got Judge Neal coming down, by the way."

  I cringe. "Oh, you've got to be kidding."

  "Why?"

  "He's supposed to be incredibly gullible."

  "How lucky for you, then, that you're a defendant," Fisher says dryly. "Speaking of which ... I don't believe we're going to put you on the stand."

  "I wouldn't expect you to, after two psychiatrists testify." But I am thinking, I cannot take the stand now, not knowing what I know.

  Fisher stops walking and faces me. "Before you start telling me how you think your defense ought to be handled, Nina, I want to remind you you're looking at insanity from a prosecutor's perspective, and I--"

  "You know, Fisher," I interrupt, glancing at my watch, "I can't really talk about this today."

  "Is the coach turning into a pumpkin?"

  "I'm sorry. I just can't." My eyes slide away from his.

  "You can't put it off forever. Your trial will start in January, and I'll be gone over the holidays with my family."

  "Let me get examined first," I bargain. "Then we can sit down."

  Fisher nods. I think of O'Brien, of whether I can convince him of my insanity. I wonder if, by then, it will be an act.

  For the first time in a decade, Quentin takes a long lunch. No one will notice at the DA's office; they barely tolerate his presence, and in his absence, probably dance on the top of his desk. He checks the directions he's downloaded from the computer and swings his car into the parking lot of the high school. Teens sausaged into North Face jackets give him cursory glances as he passes. Quentin walks right through the middle of a hackeysack game without breaking stride, and continues around the back of the school.