Perfect Match

by Jodi Picoult

  He hesitates. "This morning, as you were driving to court, at least one of you came upon a four-way intersection with a traffic light that was turning yellow. You needed to make a decision about whether or not to take your foot off the gas and stop ... or whether you should speed through it. I don't know what choice you made; I don't need to. All I need to know--all you need to know--is that the split second when you made the decision to stop or to go was premeditation. That's all it takes. And when Mrs. Frost told you yesterday that at the moment she held the gun to Father Szyszynski's head, she was thinking that she needed to keep him from leaving the courtroom alive in order to protect her son--that, too, was premeditation."

  Quentin walks back toward the defense table and points at Nina. "This is not a case about emotions; this is a case about facts. And the facts in this case are that an innocent man is dead, that this woman killed him, and that she believed her son deserved special treatment that only she could give." He turns toward the jury one last time. "Don't give her any special treatment for breaking the law."

  "I have two daughters," Fisher says, standing up beside me. "One's a high school junior; the other goes to Dartmouth." He smiles at the jury. "I'm crazy about them. I'm sure many of you feel the same about your kids. And that's the way Nina Frost feels about her son, Nathaniel." He puts his hand on my shoulder. "However, one completely ordinary morning, Nina found herself facing a horrible truth no parent ever wants to face: Someone had anally raped her little boy. And Nina had to face a second horrible truth--she knew what a molestation trial would do to her son's fragile emotional balance."

  He walks toward the jury. "How did she know? Because she'd made other parents' children go through it. Because she had witnessed, time after time, children coming to court and dissolving into tears on the witness stand. Because she had seen abusers walk free even as these children were trying to fathom why they had to relive this nightmare all over again in front of a room full of strangers." Fisher shakes his head. "This was a tragedy. Adding to it is the fact that Father Szyszynski was not the man who had hurt this little boy, after all. But on October thirtieth, the police believed that he was the abuser. The prosecutor's office believed it. Nina Frost believed it. And on that morning, she also believed that she had run out of options. What happened in court that morning was not a premeditated, malicious act but a desperate one. The woman you saw shooting that man might have looked like Nina Frost, might have moved like Nina Frost--but ladies and gentlemen, that woman on the videotape was someone different. Someone not mentally capable of stopping herself at that moment."

  As Fisher takes another breath to launch into the definition of not guilty by reason of insanity, I get to my feet. "Excuse me, but I'd like to finish."

  He turns around, the wind gone from his sails. "You what?"

  I wait until he is close enough for me to speak privately. "Fisher, I think I can handle a closing argument."

  "You are not representing yourself!"

  "Well, I'm not misrepresenting myself either." I glance at the judge, and at Quentin Brown, who is absolutely gaping. "May I approach, Your Honor?"

  "Oh, by all means, go right ahead," Judge Neal says.

  We all go up to the bench, Fisher and Quentin sandwiching me. "Your Honor, I don't believe this is the wisest course of action for my client," Fisher says.

  "Seems to me that's an issue she needs to work on," Quentin murmurs.

  The judge rubs his brow. "I think Mrs. Frost knows the risks here better than other defendants. You may proceed."

  Fisher and I do-si-do for an awkward moment. "It's your funeral," he mutters, and then he steps around me and sits down. I walk up to the jury, finding my footing again, like a long-ago sailor stepping back on the deck of a clipper. "Hello," I begin softly. "I think you all know who I am by now. You've certainly heard a lot of explanations for what brought me here. But what you haven't heard, straight out, is the truth."

  I gesture toward Quentin. "I know this, because like Mr. Brown, I was a prosecutor. And truth isn't something that makes its way into a trial very often. You've got the state, tossing facts at you. And the defense, lobbing feelings. Nobody likes the truth because it's subject to personal interpretation, and both Mr. Brown and Mr. Carrington are afraid you might read it the wrong way. But today, I want to tell it to you.

  "The truth is, I made a horrible mistake. The truth is, on that morning, I was not the vigilante Mr. Brown wants you to believe I was, and I wasn't a woman having a nervous breakdown, like Mr. Carrington wants you to believe. The truth is I was Nathaniel's mother, and that took precedence over everything else."

  I walk up to one juror, a young kid wearing a backward baseball cap. "What if your best friend was being held at gunpoint, and you had a revolver in your own hand? What would you do?" Turning to an older gentleman, I ask, "What if you came home and found your wife being raped?" I step back. "Where is the line? We're taught to stand up for ourselves; we're taught to stand up for others we care about. But all of a sudden, there's a new line drawn by the law. You sit back, it says, and let us deal with this. And you know that the law won't even do a very good job--it will traumatize your child, it will set free a convict in only a few years. In the eyes of this law that's dealing with your problem, what's morally right is considered wrong ... and what's morally wrong, you can get away with."

  I level my gaze at the jury. "Maybe I knew that the judicial system would not work for my son. Maybe I even knew, on some level, that I could convince a jury I looked crazy even though I wasn't. I wish I could tell you for sure--but if I've learned anything, it's that we don't know half of what we think we do. And we know ourselves least of all."

  I turn toward the gallery and look, in turn, at Caleb and Patrick. "For each of you sitting there, condemning me for my actions: How can you know that you wouldn't have done the same thing, if put to the test? Every day, we do little things to keep the people we love from being hurt--tell a white lie, buckle a seat belt, take away car keys from a buddy who's had one drink too many. But I've also heard of mothers who find the strength to lift cars off trapped toddlers; I've read of men who jump in front of bullets to save women they can't live without. Does that make them insane ... or is that the moment when they are painfully, 100 percent lucid?" I raise my brows. "It's not for me to say. But in that courtroom, the morning I shot Father Szyszynski, I knew exactly what I was doing. And at the same time, I was crazy." I spread my hands, a supplicant. "Love will do that to you."

  Quentin stands up to rebut. "Unfortunately for Mrs. Frost, there are not two systems of justice in this country--one for people who think they know everything, and one for everyone else." He glances at the jury. "You heard her--she's not sorry that she killed a man ... she's sorry she killed the wrong man.

  "Enough mistakes have been made lately," the prosecutor says wearily. "Please don't make another one."

  When the doorbell rings, I think it might be Fisher. He hasn't spoken to me since we left court, and the three hours the jury deliberated after closing arguments does tend to support his belief that I shouldn't have gotten up to speak my mind. But when I open it, ready to defend myself--again--Nathaniel pitches into me. "Mom!" he yells, squeezing me so tightly I stumble back. "Mom, we checkered out!"

  "Did you?" I say, and then repeat it over his head to Caleb. "Did you?"

  He sets down his small duffel bag, and Nathaniel's. "I thought it might be a good time to come home," he says quietly. "If that's okay?"

  By now Nathaniel has his arms around the barrel of our golden retriever's stomach; while Mason, wriggling, licks every spare inch of skin he can find. His thick tail thumps on the tile, a joyous tattoo. I know how that dog feels. Only now--in the presence of company--do I realize how lonely I have been.

  So I lean against Caleb, my head tucked beneath his chin, where I cannot fail to listen to his heart. "Perfect," I reply.

  The dog was a pillow breathing underneath me. "What happened to Mason's mom?"

  My mot
her looked up from the couch, where she was reading papers with big words printed so tiny it made my head hurt just thinking about them. "She's ... somewhere."

  "How come she doesn't live with us?"

  "Mason's mother belonged to a breeder in Massachusetts. She had twelve puppies, and Mason was the one we took home."

  "Do you think he misses her?"

  "I guess he used to, at first," she answered. "But it's been a long time, and he's happy with us. I bet he doesn't remember her anymore."

  I slid my finger past Mason's licorice gums, over his teeth. He blinked at me.

  I bet she was wrong.

  NINE

  "Did you want the milk?" Nathaniel's mother asks.

  "I already had a bowl of cereal," his father replies.

  "Oh." She starts to put it back in the refrigerator, but his father takes it out of her hand. "Maybe I'll have a little more."

  They look at each other, and then his mother steps back with a funny too-tight smile. "All right," she says.

  Nathaniel watches this the way he would watch a cartoon--knowing in the back of his head that something is not quite real or right, but attracted to the show all the same.

  Last summer when he was outside with his father he'd chased an electric green dragonfly all the way across the garden and the pumpkin patch and into the birdbath. There it found a bright blue dragonfly, and for a while they'd watched the two of them nip and thrust at each other, their bodies swords. "Are they fighting?" Nathaniel had asked.

  "No, they're mating." Before Nathaniel could even ask, his father explained: It was the way animals and bugs and things made babies.

  "But it looks like they're trying to kill each other," Nathaniel pointed out.

  Almost as soon as he said it, the two dragonflies hitched together like a shimmering space station, their wings beating like a quartet of hearts and their long tails quivering.

  "Sometimes it's like that," his father had answered.

  *

  Quentin had spent the night tossing on that godawful mattress, wondering what the hell was keeping the jury. No case was a sure thing, but for God's sake, they had this murder on tape. It should have been pretty simple. Yet the jury had been deliberating since yesterday afternoon; and here it was nearly twenty-four hours later with no verdict.

  He has walked past the jury room at least twenty times, trying ESP to will them toward a conviction. The bailiff posted outside the door is an older man with the ability to sleep on his feet. He snorts his way back to a deadpan position of authority as the prosecutor passes. "Anything?" Quentin asks.

  "Lot of yelling. They just ordered lunch. Eleven turkey sandwiches and one roast beef."

  Frustrated, Quentin turns on his heel and heads down the hall again, only to crash into his son coming around the corner. "Gideon?"

  "What's up."

  Gideon, in court. For a moment Quentin's heart stops, like it did a year ago. "What are you doing here?"

  The boy shrugs, as if he can't figure it out himself. "I didn't have basketball practice today, and I figured I'd just come over and chill out." He drags his sneaker on the floor to make it squeak. "See what it looks like from the other side, and all."

  A slow smile itches its way across Quentin's face as he claps his son on the shoulder. And for the first time in the ten years that Quentin Brown has been in a courthouse, he is rendered speechless.

  Twenty-six hours; 1,560 minutes; 93,600 seconds. Call it what you like; waiting in any denomination takes a lifetime. I have memorized every inch of this conference room. I have counted the linoleum tiles on the floor, marked the scars on the ceiling, measured off the width of the windows. What are they doing in there?

  When the door opens, I realize that the only thing worse than waiting is the moment that you realize a decision has been made.

  A white handkerchief appears in the doorway, followed by Fisher.

  "The verdict." The words cut up my tongue. "It's in?"

  "Not yet."

  Boneless, I sink back in the chair as Fisher tosses the handkerchief at me. "Is this in preparation for their finding?"

  "No, it's me, surrendering. I'm sorry about yesterday." He glances at me. "Although a little advance notice that you wanted to do the closing would have been nice."

  "I know." I look up at him. "Do you think that's why the jury didn't come back fast with an acquittal?"

  Fisher shrugs. "Maybe it's why they didn't come back fast with a conviction."

  "Yeah, well. I've always been best at closings."

  He smiles at me. "I'm a cross-examination man, myself."

  We look at each other for a moment, in complete accord. "What's the part you hate most about a trial?"

  "Now. Waiting for the jury to come back." Fisher exhales deeply. "I always have to calm down the client, who only wants a prediction about the outcome, and no one can predict that. You prosecutors are lucky; you just win or lose, and you don't have to reassure someone that he's not going to go to prison for the rest of his life when you know perfectly well that he ..." He breaks off, because all the color has drained from my face. "Well. Anyway. You know that no one can guess a jury's outcome."

  When I don't look particularly encouraged, he asks, "What's the hardest part for you?"

  "Right before the state rests, because that's the last chance I have to make sure I got all the evidence in and that I did it right. Once I say those three words ... I know I'm going to find out whether or not I screwed up."

  Fisher meets my eye. "Nina," he says gently, "the state rests."

  I lay on my side on an alphabet rug on the playroom floor, jamming the foot of a penguin into its wooden slot. "If I do this penguin puzzle one more time," I say, "I will save the jury some trouble and hang myself."

  Caleb looks up from where he is sitting with Nathaniel, sorting multicolored plastic teddy bears. "I want to go outside," Nathaniel whines.

  "We can't, buddy. We're waiting for some important news for Mommy."

  "But I want to!" Nathaniel kicks the table, hard.

  "Maybe in a little while." Caleb hands him a batch of bears. "Here, take some more."

  "No!" With one arm, Nathaniel swipes the entire tray off the table. The sorting containers bounce and roll into the block area; the plastic bears scatter to all four corners of the room. The resulting clatter rings inside my head, in the empty spot where I am trying so hard to think of absolutely nothing.

  I get to my feet, grab my son by the shoulders, and shake him. "You do not throw toys! You will pick up every last one of these, Nathaniel, and I mean it!"

  Nathaniel, now, is sobbing at the top of his lungs. Caleb, tight-faced, turns on me too. "Just because you're at the end of your rope, Nina, doesn't mean that you--"

  "'Scuse me."

  The voice at the door makes all three of us turn. A bailiff leans in, nods at us. "The jury's coming in," he says.

  "It's not a verdict," Fisher whispers to me minutes later.

  "How do you know?"

  "Because the bailiff would have said so ... not just that the jury was back."

  I draw back, dubious. "Bailiffs never tell me anything."

  "Trust me."

  I wet my lips. "Then why are we here?"

  "I don't know," Fisher admits, and we both turn our attention to the judge.

  He sits at the bench, looking overjoyed to have finally reached the end of this debacle. "Mr. Foreperson," Judge Neal asks, "has the jury reached a verdict?"

  A man in the front row of the jury box stands up. He takes off his baseball cap and tucks it under his arm, then clears his throat. "Your Honor, we've been trying, but we can't seem to get together on this. There's some of us that--"

  "Hold on, Mr. Foreperson, don't say any more. Have you deliberated about this case and have you taken a vote to see what every juror's position is on the issue of guilt or innocence?"

  "We've done it a bunch of times, but it keeps coming back to a few that won't change their minds."

  T
he judge looks at Fisher, and then at Quentin. "Counsel, approach."

  I stand up, too, and the judge sighs. "All right, Mrs. Frost, you too." At the bench, he murmurs, "I'm going to give them an Allen charge. Any objections?"

  "No objection," Quentin says, and Fisher agrees. As we walk back to the defense table, I meet Caleb's eye, and silently mouth, "They're hung."

  The judge begins to speak. "Ladies and gentlemen, you've heard all the facts, and you've heard all the evidence. I am aware it's been a long haul, and that you have a difficult decision to make. But I also know that you can reach closure ... and that you're the best jury to do it. If the case has to be tried again, another group of jurors will not necessarily do a better job than you are doing." He glances soberly at the group. "I urge you to go back to the jury room, to respectfully consider each other's opinions, and to see if some progress can't be made. At the end of the afternoon, I'm going to ask you to come back and let me know how you're doing."

  "Now what?" Caleb whispers, from behind me.

  I watch the newly energized jury file out again. Now we wait.

  Watching someone tie themselves in a knot makes you squirm in your own seat, or so Caleb discovers after spending two and a half more hours with Nina while the jury is deliberating. She sits hunched forward on a tiny chair in the playroom, completely ignorant of Nathaniel making airplane sounds as he zooms around with his arms extended. Her eyes stare intensely at absolutely nothing; her chin rests on her fist.

  "Hey," Caleb says softly.

  She blinks, comes back to him. "Oh ... hey."

  "You okay?"

  "Yes." A smile stretches her lips thin. "Yes!" she repeats.

  It reminds Caleb of the time years ago that he attempted to teach her to water-ski: She is trying too hard, instead of just letting it happen. "Why don't we all go down to the vending machines?" he suggests. "Nathaniel can get some hot chocolate, and I'll treat you to the dishwater that passes for soup."