Perfect Match

by Jodi Picoult

  My language makes a blush rise above the collar of his button-down shirt. "Ms. Frost--Nina--I need to ask you some questions about the day that ... that everything happened."

  I start to pull at the sleeves of my turtleneck. Not a lot, just so that fabric covers my hands. I look into my lap. "I had to do it," I whisper.

  I am getting so good at this.

  "How were you feeling that day?" Dr. Storrow asks. Doubt ices his voice; just moments ago, I was perfectly lucid.

  "I had to do it ... you understand. I've seen this happen too many times. I couldn't lose him to this." I close my eyes, thinking of every successful insanity defense I've ever heard proposed to a court. "I didn't have a choice. I couldn't have stopped myself ... it was like I was watching someone else do it, someone else reacting."

  "But you knew what you were doing," Dr. Storrow replies, and I have to catch myself before my head snaps up. "You've prosecuted people who've done horrible things."

  "I didn't do a horrible thing. I saved my son. Isn't that what mothers are supposed to do?"

  "What do you think mothers are supposed to do?" he asks.

  Stay awake all night when an infant has a cold, as if she might be able to breathe for him. Learn how to speak Pig Latin, and make a pact to talk that way for an entire day. Bake at least one cake with every ingredient in the pantry, just to see how it will taste.

  Fall in love with your son a little more every day.

  "Nina?" Dr. Storrow says. "Are you all right?"

  I look up and nod through my tears. "I'm sorry."

  "Are you?" He leans forward. "Are you truly sorry?"

  We are not talking about the same thing anymore. I imagine Father Szyszynski, on his way to Hell. I think of all the ways to interpret those words, and then I meet Dr. Storrow's gaze. "Was he?"

  Nina has always tasted better than any other woman, Caleb thinks, as his lips slip down the slope of one shoulder. Like honey and sun and caramel--from the roof of her mouth to the hollow behind her knee. There are times Caleb believes he could feast on his wife and never feel that he is getting enough.

  Her hands come up to clutch his shoulder, and in the half dark her head falls back, making the line of her throat a landscape. Caleb buries his face there, and tries to navigate by touch. Here, in this bed, she is the woman he fell in love with a lifetime ago. He knows when she is going to touch him, and where. He can predict each of her moves.

  Her legs fall open to either side of him, and Caleb presses himself against her. He arches his back. He imagines the moment he will be inside her, how the pressure will build and build and explode like a bullet.

  At that moment Nina's hand slips between their bodies to cup him, and just like that, Caleb goes soft. He tries grinding against her. Nina's fingers play over him like a flutist's, but nothing happens.

  Caleb feels her hand come up to his shoulder again, feels the cold air of its absence on his balls. "Well," Nina says, as he rolls to his back beside her. "That's never happened before."

  He stares at the ceiling, at anything but this stranger beside him. It's not the only thing, he thinks.

  On Friday afternoon, Nathaniel and I go grocery shopping. The P&C is a gastronomic fest for my son: I move from the deli counter, where Nathaniel gets a free slice of cheese; to the cookie aisle, where we pick up the box of Animal Crackers; to the breads, where Nathaniel works his way through a plain bagel. "What do you think, Nathaniel?" I ask, handing him a few grapes from the bunch I've just put in the cart. "Should I pay $4.99 for a honeydew?"

  I pick up the melon and sniff at the bottom. In truth, I have never been a good judge of fruit. I know it's all about softness and scent, but in my opinion some with the sweetest insides have been hard as a rock on the surface.

  Suddenly, the bagel Nathaniel's been eating falls into my hand. "Peter!" he yells, waving from his harness in the shopping cart. "Peter! Hey, Peter!"

  I look up to find Peter Eberhardt walking down the produce aisle, holding a bag of chips and a bottle of Chardonnay. Peter, whom I have not seen since the day I had my restraining order against Caleb vacated. There is so much I want to say to him--to ask him, now that I am not in the office to find out myself--but the judge has specifically prohibited me from speaking to my own colleagues as a condition of bail.

  Nathaniel, of course, doesn't know that. He just understands that Peter--a man who keeps Charms lollipops on his desk, who can do the best impression of a duck sneezing, whom he hasn't seen in weeks--is suddenly standing six feet away. "Peter," Nathaniel calls again, and holds out his arms.

  Peter thinks twice. I can see it in his face. But then again, he adores Nathaniel. All the reason in the world cannot stand up to my son's smile. Peter lays his bag of chips and bottle of wine on top of a display of Red Delicious apples and gives Nathaniel a bear hug. "Listen to you!" he crows. "That voice is back to a hundred percent working order, isn't it?"

  Nathaniel giggles when Peter opens up his mouth to check inside. "Does the volume work too?" he asks, pretending to twist a knob on Nathaniel's belly, so that he laughs louder and louder.

  Then Peter turns to me. "He sounds great, Nina." Four words, but I know what he is really saying: You did the right thing.

  "Thanks."

  We look at each other, measuring what can and cannot be said. And because we are so busy making a commodity of our friendship, I never notice another grocery cart approaching. It pings against the rear of mine gently, just loud enough to make me look up, so that I can see Quentin Brown smiling beside a sea of navel oranges. "Well, well," he says. "Aren't things ripe here?" He pulls a cell phone out of his breast pocket and dials. "Get a squad car down here now. I'm making an arrest."

  "You don't understand," I insist, as he puts away his phone.

  "What's so difficult to grasp? You're in blatant violation of your bail agreement, Ms. Frost. Is this or is this not a colleague from the district attorney's office?"

  "For Christ's sake, Quentin," Peter interjects. "I was talking to the kid. He called me over."

  Quentin grabs my arm. "I took a chance on you, and you made me look like a fool."

  "Mommy?" Nathaniel's voice rises to me like steam.

  "It's okay, sweetie." I turn to the assistant attorney general and speak through my teeth. "I will come with you," I say in an undertone. "But please have the decency to do this without traumatizing my child any more."

  "I didn't speak to her," Peter yells. "You can't do this."

  When Quentin turns, his eyes go as dark as plums. "I believe, Mr. Eberhardt, that the exact words you didn't speak were: 'He sounds great, Nina.' Nina. As in the name of the woman you weren't talking to. And frankly, even if you were stupid enough to approach Ms. Frost, it was her responsibility to take her cart and walk away from you."

  "Peter, it's all right." I talk fast, because I can hear the sirens outside the store already. "Get Nathaniel home to Caleb, will you?"

  Then two policemen come running into the aisle, their hands on the butts of their guns. Nathaniel's eyes go wide at the show, until he realizes what they are doing. "Mommy!" he screams, as Quentin orders me to be handcuffed.

  I face Nathaniel, smiling so hard my face may break. "It's fine. See? I'm fine." My hair falls out of its clip as my hands are pulled behind me. "Peter? Take him now."

  "Come on, bud," Peter soothes, pulling Nathaniel out of the cart. His shoes get caught on the metal rungs, and Nathaniel starts fighting in earnest. His arms reach out to me and he starts crying so violently he begins to hiccup. "Mommeeeee!"

  I am marched past the gaping shoppers, past the slack-jawed stock-boys, past the cashiers who pause in midair with their electronic scanners. The whole way, I can hear my son. His shrieks follow me through the parking lot, to the squad car. The lights are spinning on its roof. Once, long before all this, Nathaniel pointed to a cruiser in pursuit, and called it a zooming holiday.

  "I'm sorry, Nina," one of the policemen says as he ducks me inside. Through the window I can see
Quentin Brown, arms crossed. Orange juice, I think. Roast beef and sliced American cheese. Asparagus, Ritz crackers, milk. Vanilla yogurt. This is my litany the whole way back to jail: the contents of my abandoned shopping cart, slowly going bad, until some kind soul has the inclination to put them back where they belong.

  *

  Caleb opens the door to find his son sobbing in Peter Eberhardt's arms. "What happened to Nina?" he immediately asks, and reaches for Nathaniel.

  "The guy's an asshole," Peter says desperately. "He's doing this to leave his mark on the town. He's--"

  "Peter, where's my wife?"

  The other man winces. "Back in jail. She violated her bail agreement, and the assistant attorney general had her arrested."

  For a moment, Nathaniel feels like a lead weight. Caleb staggers under the responsibility of bearing him, then finds his footing. Nathaniel is still crying, more quietly now, a river that runs down the back of his shirt. Caleb makes small circles on the child's spine. "Back up. Tell me what happened."

  Caleb picks out select words: grocery, produce, Quentin Brown. But he can barely hear Peter over the roar in his own head, one single phrase: Nina, what have you done now? "Nathaniel called me over," Peter explains. "I was so psyched to hear him talking again, I couldn't just ignore him."

  Caleb shakes his head. "You ... you were the one who approached her?"

  Peter is a foot shorter than Caleb and feels every inch of it at that moment. He takes a step backward. "I never would have gotten her in trouble, Caleb, you know that."

  Caleb pictures his son screaming, his wife being sandwiched between policemen, a barrage of fruit spilled on the floor in this fray. He knows it is not Peter's fault, not entirely. It takes two to have a conversation; Nina should have simply walked away.

  But as Nina would tell him, she probably wasn't thinking at the time.

  Peter places a hand on Nathaniel's calf and rubs gently. It only sets the child off again; screams ricochet around the porch and peal off the thick bare branches of trees. "Jesus, Caleb, I'm sorry. It's ridiculous. We didn't do anything."

  Caleb turns so that Peter can see Nathaniel's back, heaving with the force of his fear. He touches the damp cap of his son's hair. "You didn't do anything?" Caleb challenges, and leaves Peter standing outside.

  *

  I move stiffly as I'm led to the solitary cells again, but I cannot tell what's made me numb--my arrest, or the simple cold. The furnace at the jail has broken, and the correctional officers are all wearing heavy coats. Inmates usually clad in shorts or underwear have put on sweaters; having none, I sit shivering in my cell after the door is locked behind me.

  "Honey."

  I close my eyes, turn in to the wall. Tonight, I don't feel like dealing with Adrienne. Tonight I have to find a way to understand that Quentin Brown has screwed me. Getting released on bail the first time was a miracle; good fortune rarely strikes twice in the same spot.

  I wonder if Nathaniel is all right. I wonder if Fisher has spoken to Caleb. This time, being booked, I chose my attorney as my one phone call. It was the coward's way out.

  Caleb will say this is my fault. That is, if he's still speaking to me.

  "Honey, your teeth are chattering so hard you're gonna give yourself a root canal. Here." Something swishes near the bars; I turn to see Adrienne tossing me a sweater. "It's angora. Don't be stretching it out."

  With jerky movements, I tug on the sweater, which I couldn't stretch in my wildest imaginings, Adrienne being six inches and two cup sizes larger than me. I am still shaking, but at least now I know it has nothing to do with the cold.

  As the guards call lights out, I try to think of heat. I remember how Mason, when he was a puppy, would lie on my feet with his soft belly hot against my bare toes. And the beach in St. Thomas, where Caleb buried me up to my neck in the hot sand on our honeymoon. Pajamas, pulled off Nathaniel's body in the early morning, still warm and smelling of sleep.

  Across the corridor Adrienne chews Wintergreen Life Savers. They give off green sparks in the near dark, as if she has learned how to make her own lightning.

  Even in the muffled silence of jail, I can hear Nathaniel screaming for me as I am being handcuffed. Nathaniel, who had been doing so well--edging toward normal--what will this do to him? Will he wait for me at a window, even when I don't come home? Will he sleep next to Caleb, to chase away nightmares?

  I rerun my actions at the grocery store like the loop of a security camera's video--what I did, what I should have done. I might have appointed myself to be Nathaniel's protector, but today I did not do a crackerjack job of it. I assumed that talking to Peter was harmless ... and instead that one action might have set Nathaniel back by leaps and bounds.

  A few feet away, in Adrienne's cell, sparks dance like fireflies. Things aren't always what they seem.

  For example, I have always believed I know what is best for Nathaniel.

  But what if it turns out I've been wrong?

  "I put in some hot chocolate to go with your whipped cream," Caleb says, a lame joke, as he sets the mug down on Nathaniel's nightstand. Nathaniel doesn't even turn to him. He faces the wall, wrapped like a cocoon, his eyes so red from crying that he does not look like himself.

  Caleb pulls off his shoes and gets right onto Nathaniel's bed, then wraps his arms tight around the boy. "Nathaniel, it's okay."

  He feels that tiny head shake once. Coming up on an elbow, Caleb gently turns his son onto his back. He grins, trying so hard to pretend that this is entirely ordinary, that Nathaniel's whole world has not become a snow globe, waved intermittently every time things begin to settle. "What do you say? You want some of this cocoa?"

  Nathaniel sits up slowly. He brings his hands out from underneath the covers and curls them into his body. Then he raises his palm, fingers outstretched, and sets his thumb on his chin. Want Mommy.

  Caleb's whole body goes still. Nathaniel hasn't been very forthcoming since Peter brought him home, except for the crying. He stopped sobbing sometime between when Caleb bathed him and got him into his pajamas. But surely he can talk, if he wants to. "Nathaniel, can you tell me what you want?"

  That hand sign, again. And a third time.

  "Can you say it, buddy? I know you want Mommy. Say it for me."

  Nathaniel's eyes shine, and the tears spill over. Caleb grabs the boy's hand. "Say it," he begs. "Please, Nathaniel."

  But Nathaniel doesn't utter a word.

  "Okay," Caleb murmurs, releasing Nathaniel's hand into his lap. "It's okay." He smiles as best he can, and gets off the bed. "I'm going to be right back. In the meantime, you can start on that hot chocolate, all right?"

  In his own bedroom, Caleb picks up the phone. Dials a number from a card in his wallet. Pages Dr. Robichaud, the child psychiatrist. Then he hangs up, balls his hand into a fist, and punches a hole in the wall.

  Nathaniel knows this is all his fault. Peter said it wasn't, but he was lying, the way grown-ups do in the middle of the night to make you stop thinking about something awful living under the bed. They'd taken the bagel out of the store without letting the machine ring up its numbers; they'd driven to his house without his car seat; even just now, his dad had brought cocoa to the bedroom when no food was ever allowed upstairs. His mother was gone, all the rules were getting broken, and it was because of Nathaniel.

  He had seen Peter and said hi, which turned out to be a bad thing. A very, very bad thing.

  This is what Nathaniel knows: He talked, and the bad man grabbed his mother's arm. He talked, and the police came. He talked, and his mother got taken away.

  So he will never talk again.

  By Saturday morning, they have fixed the heat. They've fixed it so well that it is nearly eighty degrees inside the jail. When I am brought to the conference room to meet Fisher, I'm wearing a camisole and scrub pants, and sweating. Fisher, of course, looks perfectly cool, even in his suit and tie. "The earliest I can even get to a judge for a revocation hearing is Monday," he says.


  "I need to see my son."

  Fisher's face remains impassive. He is just as angry as I would be, in his shoes--I have just complicated my case irreparably. "Visiting hours are from ten to twelve today."

  "Call Caleb. Please, Fisher. Please, do whatever you have to do to make him bring Nathaniel down here." I sink into the chair across from him. "He is five years old, and he saw me being taken away by the police. Now he has to see that I'm all right, even in here."

  Fisher promises nothing. "I don't have to tell you that your bail is going to be revoked. Think about what you want me to say to the judge, Nina, because you don't have any chances left."

  I wait until he meets my eye. "Will you call home for me?"

  "Will you admit that I'm in charge?"

  For a long moment, neither of us blinks, but I break first. I stare at my lap until I hear Fisher close the door behind him.

  Adrienne knows I'm anxious as visiting hours come to an end--nearly noon, and still I have not been called to see anyone. She lies on her stomach, painting her nails fluorescent orange. In honor of hunting season, she's said. As the correctional officer walks past for his quarter-hour check, I stand up. "Are you sure no one's come yet?"

  He shakes his head, moves on. Adrienne blows on her fingers to dry the polish. "I got extra," she says, holding up the bottle. "You want me to roll it across?"

  "I don't have any nails. I bite mine."

  "Now, that is a travesty. Some of us just don't have the sense to make the most of what God gives us."

  I laugh. "You're one to talk."

  "In my case, honey, when it came to passing out the right stuff, God was having a senior moment." She sits down on her lower bunk and takes off her tennis shoes. Last night, she did her toenails, tiny American flags. "Well, fuck me," Adrienne says. "I smudged."

  The clock has not moved. Not even a second, I'd swear it.

  "Tell me about your son," Adrienne says when she sees me looking down the hallway again. "I always wanted to have me one of them."

  "I would have figured you'd want a girl."

  "Honey, us ladies, we're high maintenance. A boy, you know exactly what you're getting."

  I try to think of the best way to describe Nathaniel. It is like trying to hold the ocean in a paper cup. How do I explain a boy who eats his food color by color; who wakes me in the middle of the night with a burning need to know why we breathe oxygen instead of water; who took apart a microcassette recorder to find his voice, trapped inside? I know my son so well, I surprise myself--there are too many words to choose from.