by Jodi Picoult
Nathaniel shakes his head and hands Patrick a card. “Is this for me?” Patrick asks, then reads the name and smiles broadly. “Mike Schmidt, rookie. I’m sure your dad will be thrilled you’ve been so generous.” He tucks it into his pocket and takes out a pad and pen at the same time. “Nathaniel, you think it would be all right if I asked you some questions?”
Well. He is tired of questions. He is tired, period. But Patrick climbed all the way up here. Nathaniel jerks his head, yes.
Patrick touches the boy’s knee, slowly, so slowly that it doesn’t even make Nathaniel jump, although these days everything does. “Will you tell me the truth, Weed?” he asks softly.
Slower this time, Nathaniel nods.
“Did your daddy hurt you?”
Nathaniel looks at Patrick, then at his mother, and emphatically shakes his head. He feels something open up in his chest, making it easier to breathe.
“Did somebody else hurt you?”
Yes.
“Do you know who it was?”
Yes.
Patrick’s gaze is locked with Nathaniel’s. He won’t let him turn away, no matter how badly Nathaniel wants to. “Was it a boy or a girl?”
Nathaniel is trying to remember—how is it said again? He looks at his mother, but Patrick shakes his head, and he knows that, now, it is all up to him. Tentatively, his hand comes up to his head. He touches his brow, as if there is a baseball cap there. “Boy,” he hears his mother translate.
“Was it a grown-up, or a kid?”
Nathaniel blinks at him. He cannot sign those words.
“Well, was he big like me, or little like you?”
Nathaniel’s hand hovers between his own body, and Patrick’s. Then falls, deliberately, in the middle.
That makes Patrick grin. “Okay, it was a medium guy, and it was someone you know?”
Yes.
“Can you tell me who?”
Nathaniel feels his whole face tighten, muscles bunching. He squeezes his eyes shut. Please please please, he thinks. Let me. “Patrick,” his mother says, and she takes a step forward, but Patrick holds out a hand and she stops.
“Nathaniel, if I brought you a bunch of pictures”—he points to the baseball cards—“like these . . . do you think you could show me who this person was?”
Nathaniel’s hands flutter over the piles, bumblebees choosing a place to light. He looks from one card to the other. He cannot read, he cannot speak, but he knows that Rollie Fingers had a handlebar moustache, Al Hrabosky looked like a grizzly bear. Once something sticks in his head, it stays there; it’s just a matter of getting it back out again.
Nathaniel looks up at Patrick; and he nods. This, this he can do.
• • •
Monica has been in accommodations far worse than the efficiency suite where she finds Caleb Frost, but this is almost more jarring, and she thinks it is because she has seen the sort of home where he is supposed to be. The minute Caleb recognizes her face through the keyhole of the door, he throws it open. “What’s the matter with Nathaniel?” he asks, true fear washing over his features.
“Nothing. Nothing at all. He’s made another disclosure. A new ID.”
“I don’t understand.”
“It means you’re no longer a suspect, Mr. Frost,” Monica says quietly.
Questions rise in him like a bonfire. “Who,” Caleb manages, the word tasting of ash.
“I think you should go home and speak to your wife about it,” she answers, then turns briskly and walks away, her purse tucked primly beneath her arm.
“Wait,” Caleb calls out. He takes a deep breath. “Is . . . is Nina okay with that?”
Monica smiles, lets the light reach her eyes. “Who do you think asked me to come?”
• • •
Peter agrees to meet me at the district court, where I’m going to have the restraining order vacated. The process takes all of ten minutes, a rubber stamp, with the judge asking only one question: How is Nathaniel?
By the time I come into the lobby, Peter is racing through the front door. He immediately comes toward me, concern drawing down the corners of his mouth. “I got here as soon as I could,” he says breathlessly. His eyes dart to Nathaniel, holding my hand.
He thinks I need him to twist the letter of the law for me, squeeze blood from the stone heart of a judge, do something to stack the scales of justice in my favor. Suddenly I am embarrassed by the reason I called him.
“What is it?” Peter demands. “Anything, Nina.”
I slip my hands in my coat pockets. “I really just wanted to get a cup of coffee,” I admit. “I wanted to feel, for five minutes, like everything was back the way it used to be.”
Peter’s gaze is a spotlight; it sees down to my soul. “I can do that too,” he says, and loops his arm through mine.
• • •
Although there are no seats left at the bar at Tequila Mockingbird by the time Patrick arrives, the bartender takes one look at him and hints strongly to a visiting businessman that he take his drink to a booth in the back. Patrick wraps his black mood around him like a parka, hops onto the vacant stool, and signals to Stuyvesant. The bartender comes over pouring his usual, Glenfiddich. But he hands Patrick the bottle, and keeps the glass of scotch behind the bar. “Just in case someone else here wants a shot,” Stuyv explains.
Patrick looks at the bottle, at the bartender. He tosses his car keys on the counter, a fair trade, and takes a long swig of the liquor.
By now, Nina has been to the court and back. Maybe Caleb has made it home in time for dinner. Maybe they’ve gotten Nathaniel to bed early, and are even now lying in the dark next to each other.
Patrick picks up his bottle again. He has been in their bedroom before. Big king-size bed. If he was married to her, they’d sleep on a narrow cot, that’s how close to her he would be.
He’d been married himself for three years, because he believed that if you wanted to get rid of a hole, you filled it. He had not realized at the time that there were all sorts of fillers that took up space, but had no substance. That made you feel just as empty.
Patrick pitches forward as a blond woman hits him hard on the shoulder. “You pervert!”
“What the hell?”
She narrows her eyes. They are green, and caked with too much mascara. “Did you just touch my ass?”
“No.”
Suddenly, she grins, insinuating herself between Patrick and the elderly man on his right. “Well, damn. How many times will I have to walk by before you do?”
Sliding her drink beside Patrick’s bottle, she holds out her hand. Manicured. He hates manicured hands. “I’m Xenia. And you are?”
“Really not interested.” Patrick smiles tightly, turns back to the bar.
“My mom didn’t raise a quitter,” Xenia says. “What do you do for a living?”
“I’m a funeral director.”
“No, really.”
Patrick sighs. “I’m on the vice squad.”
“No, really.”
He faces her again. “Really. I’m a police officer.”
Her eyes widen. “Does that mean I’m busted?”
“Depends. Did you break any laws?”
Xenia’s gaze travels the length of his body. “Not yet.” Dipping a finger in her drink—something pink and frothy—she touches her shirt, and then his. “Wanna go to my place and get out of these wet clothes?”
He blushes, then tries to pretend it didn’t happen. “Don’t think so.”
She props her chin on her fist. “Guess you better just buy me a drink.”
He starts to turn her down again, then hesitates. “All right. What are you having?”
“An Orgasm.”
“Of course,” Patrick says, hiding a smile. It would be so easy—to go home with this girl, waste a condom and a few hours’ sleep, get the itch out of his blood. Chances are, he could fuck her without ever telling her his name. And in return, for just a few hours, he would feel like someone
wanted him. He would be, for a night, someone’s first choice.
Except this particular someone would not be his first choice.
Xenia trails her nails along the nape of Patrick’s neck. “I’m just going to carve our initials in the door of the ladies’ room,” she murmurs, backing away.
“You don’t know my initials.”
“I’ll make them up.” She gives a little wave, then disappears into the crowd.
Patrick calls over Stuyvesant and pays for Xenia’s second drink. He leaves it sweating on a cocktail napkin for her. Then he walks out of Tequila Mockingbird stone sober, facing the fact that Nina has ruined him for anyone else.
• • •
Nathaniel lies on the lower bunk while I read him a book before bedtime. Suddenly, he jackknifes upright and fairly flies across the room, to the doorway where Caleb stands. “You’re home,” I say, the obvious, but he doesn’t hear. He is lost in this moment.
Seeing them together, I want to kick myself again. How could I ever have believed that Caleb was at fault?
The room is suddenly too small to hold all three of us. I back out of it, closing the door behind me. Downstairs, I wash the silverware that sits on the drying rack, already clean. I pick Nathaniel’s toys up from the floor. I sit down on the living room couch; then, restless, stand up and arrange the cushions.
“He’s asleep.”
Caleb’s voice cuts to the quick. I turn, my arms crossed over my chest. Does that look too defensive? I settle them at my sides, instead. “I’m . . . I’m glad you’re home.”
“Are you?”
His face gives nothing away. Coming out of the shadows, Caleb walks toward me. He stops two feet away, but there might as well be a universe between us.
I know every line of his face. The one that was carved the first year of our marriage, by laughing so often. The one that was born of worries the year he left the contracting company to go into business for himself. The one that developed from focusing hard on Nathaniel as he took his first steps, said his first word. My throat closes tight as a vise, and all the apologies sit bitter in my stomach. We had been naïve enough to believe that we were invincible; that we could run blind through the hairpin turns of life at treacherous speeds and never crash. “Oh, Caleb,” I say finally, through the tears, “these things, they weren’t supposed to happen to us.”
Then he is crying too, and we cling to each other, fitting our pain into each other’s hollows and breaks. “He did this. He did this to our baby.”
Caleb holds my face in his hands. “We’re going to get through it. We’re going to make Nathaniel get better.” But his sentences turn up at the ends, like small animals begging. “There are three of us in this, Nina,” he whispers. “And we’re all in it together.”
“Together,” I repeat, and press my open mouth against his neck. “Caleb, I’m so sorry.”
“Shh.”
“I am, no, I am—”
He cuts me off with a kiss. The action arrests me; it is not what I have been expecting. But then I grab him by the collar of his shirt and kiss him back. I kiss him from the bottom of my soul, I kiss him until he can taste the copper edge of sorrow. Together.
We undress each other with brutality, ripping fabric and popping buttons that roll under the couch like secrets. This is the anger overflowing: anger that this has happened to our son, that we cannot turn back time. For the first time in days I can get rid of the rage; I pour it into Caleb, only to realize that he is doing the same to me. We scratch, we bite, but then Caleb lays me down with the softest touch. Our eyes lock when he moves inside me; neither one of us would dare to blink. My body remembers: This is what it is to be filled by love, instead of despair.
• • •
The last case I worked on with Monica LaFlamme had not been a success. She sent me a report, stating that a Mrs. Grady had called her. Apparently, while drying her seven-year-old off after a bath, Eli grabbed the Mickey Mouse towel and began to simulate sexual thrusting, then named his stepfather as the perp. The child was taken to Maine Medical Center, but there were no physical findings. Oh, and Eli suffered from something called oppositional defiance disorder.
We met at my office, in the room we use to assess children for competency exams. On the other side of a one-way mirror was a small table, tiny chairs, a few toys, and a rainbow painted on the wall. Monica and I watched Eli run around like a hellion, literally climbing the curtains. “Well,” I said. “This should be fun.”
In the adjoining room, Mrs. Grady ordered her son to stop. “You need to calm down, Eli,” she said. But that just made him scream more, run more.
I turned to Monica. “What’s oppositional defiance disorder, anyway?”
The social worker shrugged. “My guess?” she said, gesturing toward Eli. “That. He does the opposite of what you ask him to do.”
I gaped at her. “It’s a real psychiatric diagnosis? I mean, it’s not just the definition of being seven years old?”
“Go figure.”
“What about forensic evidence?” I unrolled a grocery bag, and pulled out a neatly folded towel. Mickey’s face leered up at me. The big ears, the sideways grin—it was creepy on its own merits, I thought.
“The mother washed it after the bath that night.”
“Of course she did.”
Monica sighed as I handed the towel to her. “Mrs. Grady’s intent on going to trial.”
“It’s not her decision.” But I smiled as Eli’s mother took a spot beside me and the police officer who was investigating the case. I gave her my spiel, about seeing what information Ms. LaFlamme could get out of Eli, for the record.
We watched through the mirror as Monica asked Eli to sit down.
“No,” he said, and started running laps.
“I need you to come sit down in this chair. Can you do that, please?”
Eli picked up the chair and threw it in the corner. With supreme patience, Monica retrieved it and set it down beside her own. “Eli, I need you to come sit in this chair for a little while, and then we’ll go get Mommy.”
“I want my mommy now. I don’t want to be here.” But then he sat down.
Monica pointed to the rainbow. “Can you tell me what color this is, Eli?”
“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—”