Perfect Match (8 page)

There is a long moment of silence. And then: “Best year,” Peter dares. I grab the lifeline. That's simple-I was promoted, and had Nathaniel, within months of each other. “1996. Best victim?”

“Polly Purebred, from the Underdog cartoon.” Peter glances up as our boss, Wally Moffett, comes into my office. “Hey, chief,” he says to Wally, and then to me, “Best friend?” Peter gets up, heads for the door. “The answer is me. Whatever, whenever. Remember that.”

“Good man,” Wally says, as Peter leaves. Wally is the standard-issue distric t attorney: lean as a shark, with a full head of hair and a mouthful of capp ed movie-star teeth that could win him reelection all by themselves. He's al so an excellent lawyer; he can cut to the heart before you realize the first incision has even been made. “Needless to say, this job is here when you're ready,” Wally begins, “but I'll personally bar the door if you plan on comi ng back anytime soon.”

“Thanks, Wally.”

“I'm sorry as hell, Nina.”

“Yeah.” I glance down at my blotter. There's a calendar underneath it. No p ictures of Nathaniel are on my desk-a long habit I kept from District.Court , when the scum of the earth would come in to plead their cases in my offic e. I didn't want them to know I had a family. I didn't want that to come ba ck and haunt me.

“Can I ... can I try the case?”

The question is so small, it takes a moment to realize I've asked it. The pit y in Wally's eyes makes me drop my own gaze to my lap. “You know you can't, N ina. Not that I'd rather have anyone else lock this sick fuck up. But no one in our office can do it. It's a conflict of interest.”

I nod, but I still can't speak. I wanted that, I wanted it so badly.

“I've already called the district attorney's office in Portland. There's a guy up there who's good.” Wally smiles crookedly. “Almost as good as you ar e, even. I told them what was going on, and that we might need to borrow To m LaCroix.”

There are tears in my eyes when I thank Wallace. For him to have gone out on a limb like this-before we even have a perp to prosecute-is extr aordinary.

“We take care of our own,” Wally assures me. “Whoever did this is going to pay.”

It is a line I've used myself, to appease frantic parents. But I know, even as I say it, that there will be an equal cost extracted from their child. Still, bec ause it is my job, and because I usually have no case without a testifying witne ss, I tell the parents I'd do anything to get that monster into jail. I tell the parents that in their shoes I'd do whatever it takes, including putting their c hildren on the stand.

But now I'm the parent, and it is my child, and that changes everything. One Saturday I took Nathaniel to my office, so that I could finish up some work. It was a ghost town-the Xerox machines sleeping like beasts, the co mputers blinking blind, the telephones quiet. Nathaniel occupied himself w ith the paper shredder while I reviewed files. “How come you named me Nath aniel?” he asked, out of the blue.

I checked off the name of a witness on a pad. “It means 'Gift from God.'” The jaws of the paper shredder ground together. Nathaniel turned to me. “ Did I come wrapped and everything?”

“You weren't quite that kind of a gift.” As I watched, he turned off the shr edder and began to play with the collection of toys I kept in the corner for children who had the misfortune of being brought to my office. “What name w ould you rather have?”

When I was pregnant, Caleb would end each day by saying good night to his ba by with a different name: Vladimir, Grizelda, Cuth-bert. Keep this up, I had told him, and this baby's going to arrive with an identity crisis. Nathaniel shrugged. “Maybe I could be Batman.”

“Batman Frost,” I repeated, completely serious. “It's got a nice ring to it.”

“There are four Dylans in my school-Dylan S. and Dylan M. and Dylan D. an d Dylan T-but there isn't another Batman.”

“Which is an important consideration.” All of a sudden I felt Nathaniel crawling under the hollow of my desk, a warm weight on my feet . “What are you doing?”

“Batman needs a cave, Mom, duh.”

“Ah. Right.” I folded my legs underneath me to give Nathaniel more room, an d scrutinized a police report. Nathaniel's hand stretched up to grab a stap ler, an impromptu walkie-talkie.

The case was a rape, and the victim had been found comatose in the bathtub. Unfortunately, the perp had been smart enough to run the water, thereby ob literating nearly any forensic evidence we might have gotten. I turned the page in the file and stared at gruesome police photos of the crime scene, t he sunken eggplant face of the woman who had been assaulted.

“Mom?”

Immediately I whipped the photo facedown. This was precisely why I did not mix my work life and my home life. “Hmm?”

“Do you always catch the bad guys?”

I thought of the victim's mother, who could not stop crying long enough to g ive a statement to the police. “Not always,” I answered.

“Most of the time?”

“Well,” I said. “At least half.”

Nathaniel considered this for a moment. “I guess that's good enough to be a superhero,” he said, and that was when I realized this had been an interview for the position of Robin. But I didn't have time to be a cartoon sidekick.

“Nathaniel,” I sighed. “You know why I came in here.” Specifically, to get ready for Monday's opening arguments. To go over my strategy and my witne ss list.

I looked at Nathaniel's waiting face. Then again, maybe justice was best served from a Batcave. An oxymoron chased through my mind: I am going to get nothing done today. I am doing everything I want to. “Holy Guacamole, Batman,” I said, kicking off my shoes and crawling underneath my desk. H ad I ever known that the interior wall was made of cheap pine, and not ma hogany? “Robin reporting for duty, but only if I get to drive the Batmobile.”

“You can't be Robin for real.”

“I thought that was the point.”

Nathaniel stared at me with great pity, as if someone like me really ought to have learned the rules of the game this far along in life. Our shoulders bumped in the confines of my desk. “We can work together and everything, b ut your name has to be Mom.”

“Why?”

He rolled his eyes. “Because,” Nathaniel told me. “It's who you are.”

“Nathaniel!” I call out, blushing a little. It's not a sin, is it, to have no c ontrol over one's child? “I'm sorry, Father,” I say, holding the door wide to l et him inside. “He's been . . . shy lately with visitors. Yesterday, when the U PS man came, it took me an hour to find where he was hiding.“ Father Szyszynski smiles at me. ”I told myself I should have called first, i nstead of dropping in unannounced.”

“Oh, no. No. It's wonderful that you came.” This is a lie. I have no idea wha t to do with a priest in my house. Do I serve cookies? Beer? Do I apologize f or all the Sundays I don't make it to Mass? Do I confess to lying in the firs t place?

“Well, it's part of the job,” Father Szyszynski says, tapping his collar. “The only thing I have to do on Friday afternoons is eavesdrop on the ladies' auxi liary meeting.”

“Is that considered a perk?”

“More like a cross to bear,” the priest says, and smiles. He sits down on the couch in the living room. Father Szyszynski is wearing high-tech running sne akers. He does local half-marathons; his times are posted on the News and Not es boards, next to the index cards that request prayers for the needy. There is even a photo of him there, lean and fit, without his collar, crossing a fi nish line-in it, he looks nothing like a priest; just a man. He's in his fift ies, but he appears to be ten years younger. Once, I heard him say that he'd tried to make a pact with Satan for eternal youth, but he couldn't find the d evil's extension in the diocese phone book.

I wonder which nosy gossip in the church rumor mill told the priest about us . “The Sunday school class misses Nathaniel,” he tells me. He's being politi cally correct. If he wanted to be more accurate, he'd say that the Sunday sc hool class misses Nathaniel more than half the Sundays of the year, since we don't make it regularly to Mass. Still, I know that Nathaniel likes colorin g pictures in the basement during the service. And he especially likes afterward, when Father Szyszynski reads to the kids from a great, old illustrated children's Bible while the rest of the congregation is upstairs having coffee. He gets right down onto the floor in their circle, and according to Nathaniel, acts out floods and plagues and prophecies.

“I know what you're thinking,” Father Szyszynski says.

“Do you.”

He nods. “That in the year 2001 it's archaic to assume the Church is such a la rge part of your life it could offer you comfort at a time like this. But it c an, Nina. God wants you to turn to Him.”

I stare right at the priest. “These days I'm not too high on God,” I say bluntly .

“I know. It doesn't make much sense, sometimes, God's will.” Father Szysz ynski shrugs. “There have been times I've doubted Him myself.”

“You've obviously gotten over it.” I wipe the corner of my eyes; why am I cr ying? “I'm not even really a Catholic.”

“Sure you are. You keep coming back, don't you?”

But that's guilt, not faith.

“Things happen for a reason, Nina.”

“Oh, yeah? Then do me a favor and ask God what reason there could possibly b e for letting a child get hurt like this. ”

“You ask Him,” the priest says. “And when you're talking, you might want to remember you have something in common-He watched His son suffer, too .”

He hands me a picture book-David and Goliath, watered down for a five-year-o ld. “If Nathaniel ever comes out,” he pitches his voice extra loud, “you tel l him that Father Glen left a present.” That's what they call him, all the k ids at St. Anne's, since they can't pronounce his last name. Heck, the pries t has said, after a few tall ones, I can't pronounce it myself. “Nathaniel p articularly enjoyed this story when I read it last year. He wanted to know i f we could all make slingshots.” Father Szyszynski stands up, leads the way to the door. “If you want to talk, Nina, you know where to find me. You take care.”

He starts down the path, the stone steps that Caleb placed with his own hand s. As I watch him go I clutch the book to my chest. I think of the weak defe ating giants.

Nathaniel is playing with a boat, sinking it, then watching it bob to the sur face again. I suppose I should be grateful that he's in this tub at all. But he has been better, today. He has been talking with his hands. And he agreed to this bath, on the condition that he take off his own clothes. Of course I let him, struggling not to run to his aid when he couldn't work a button thro ugh a hole. I try to remember what Dr. Robichaud told us about power: Nathani el was made helpless; he needs to feel like he's gaining control of himself a gain.

I sit on the lip of the tub, watching his back rise and fall with his breathin g. The soap shimmers like a fish near the drain. “Need help?” I ask, lifting o ne hand up with the other, a sign. Nathaniel shakes his head vigorously. He pi cks up the bar of Ivory and runs it over his shoulder, his chest, his belly. H e hesitates, then plunges it between his legs.

A thin white film covers him, making him otherworldly, an angel. Nathaniel l ifts his face to mine, hands me the soap to put back. For a moment, our fing ers touch-in our new language, these are our lips . . . does that make this a kiss?

I let the soap drop with a splash, then circle my pursed mouth with a finger. I move my index fingers back and forth, touching and retreating. I point to Nathaniel.

Who hurt you?

But my son doesn't know these signs. Instead, he flings his hands out to the sides, proud to show off his new word. Done. He rises like a sea nymph, wat er sluicing down the sides of his beautiful body. As I towel off each limb a nd pull pajamas over Nathaniel, I silently ask myself if I am the only perso n who has touched him at this place, at that one, until every inch of him is covered again.

In the middle of the night Caleb hears a hitch in his wife's breathing.

“Nina?” he whispers, but she doesn't answer. He rolls onto his side, curls her closer. She's awake, he can feel it coming from her pores. “Are you all right?” he asks.

She turns to him, her eyes flat in the dark. “Art you?” He pulls her into his arms and buries his face in the side of her neck. Breathing her calms Caleb; she is his own oxygen. His lips trace her skin, hold over her collarbone. He tilts his head so that he can hear her heart. He is looking for a place to lose himself.

So his hand moves from the valley of her waist to the rise of a hip, slips ben eath the thin strip of her panty. Nina draws in her breath. She is feeling it too, then. She needs to get away from here, from this.

Caleb slides lower and rocks his palm against her. Nina grabs tighter at his h air, almost to the point of pain. “Caleb.”

He is hard now, heavy and pressed into the mattress. “I know,” he murmurs, a nd he goes to slide a finger inside.

She is dry as a bone.

Nina yanks at his hair, and this time he rolls off her, which is what she's w anted all along. “What is the matter with you!” she cries. “I don't want to d o this. I can't, now.” She throws back the covers and pads out of the bedroom into the dark.

Caleb looks down, sees the small drop of semen he's left on the sheets. He g ets out of bed and covers it up, so that he will not have to look at it. The n he follows Nina, searching her out by sheer instinct. For long moments, he stands in the doorway of his son's bedroom, watching her watch Nathaniel. Caleb does not accompany us to the psychiatrist's office for our next appoin tment. He says he has a meeting he cannot reschedule, but I think this is on ly an excuse. After last night, we have been dancing around each other. Plus , Dr. Robichaud is working on signing now, until Nathaniel gets his voice ba ck, and Caleb disagrees with that tactic. He thinks that when Nathaniel is r eady to tell us who hurt him, he will, and until then, we are only pushing. 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, the re is someone else in this world who should have been rendered speechless, st opped in his tracks.