Perfect Match (12 page)

“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 yell ow 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 cour t?”

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 husba nd'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 cour troom 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 E li's behavioral issues are, because you see them on a daily basis. But unfor tunately, 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, wit h 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 c rossing 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 o f 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 wo rld 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 ba rn.

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 sleepi ng on the cement slab floor. “Hey,” Caleb grins, glancing up. “We're buildin g 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-”

Whatever I'm about to say is interrupted as Caleb leans down and yells right into Nathaniel's face. “No!” Nathaniel quails, but not before Caleb grabs h is arm and pulls him away.

“Caleb-”

“You don't touch the antifreeze,” Caleb yells at Nathaniel. “How many times d o I have to tell you that? It's poison. It can hurt you badly.” He picks up t he bottle of Prestone he's been mixing into the mortar to keep it from freezi ng in this temperature, and then covers the mess Nathaniel's made with a clot h. A stain, alien green, seeps through and spreads. The dog laps at the sweet spill, until Caleb shoves it away. “Get out of there, Mason.” In the corner, Nathaniel's on the verge of tears. “Come here,” I say, openi ng up my arms. He flies into them, and I kiss the top of his head. “Why don 't you go get a toy from your room to play with while Daddy's working?“ Nathaniel runs off to the house with Mason at his heels, both of them smar t enough to know a reprieve when it comes up and grabs them. Caleb shakes his head in disbelief. ”Just undermine me, Nina, you go right ahead.”

“I'm not undermining you. I'm . . . well, look at him, Caleb, you scared him to death. He wasn't doing it on purpose.”

“It doesn't matter. He was told and he didn't listen.”

“Don't you think he's been through enough lately?”

Caleb wipes his hands on a towel. “Yes, I do. So how's he going to take it when the dog he loves drops dead, because he broke the rules and did someth ing he was expressly told not to do?” He caps the Prestone, sets it high on a shelf. “I want him to feel like a normal kid again. And if Nathaniel had done this three weeks ago, you can bet I would have punished him.” This logic I can't even follow. Biting down on my response, I turn and walk o ut. I am still angry with Caleb by the time I reach the police department and find Patrick asleep at his desk.

I slam the door of his office, and he nearly falls out of his chair. Then he wi nces, holds his hand to his head. “I'm just glad to see that you public servant s are really earning all my tax dollars,” I say sourly. “Where's the digital li neup?”

“I'm working on it,” Patrick responds.

“Oh, yeah, I can see that you're really exerting yourself.” He stands up and frowns at me. “Who peed in your coffee?”

“I'm sorry. Just some domestic bliss spilling over. No doubt I'll find my ma nners by the time you find probable cause to lock up Szyszynski.” Patrick looks me right in the eye. “How's Caleb?”

“Fine.”

“Doesn't sound like things are fine . . .”

“Patrick. I'm here because I need to know that something's going on. Anyth ing. Please. Show me.”

He nods and takes my arm. We move through corridors I have never navigated at the Biddeford Police Department, and finally wind up in a back room no t much bigger than a closet. The lights are off, a green screen hums on a computer, and the boy who sits in front of the keyboard has acne and a fis tful of Munchos. “Dude,” he says to Patrick.

I turn to Patrick, too. “You're kidding.”

“Nina, this is Emilio. Emilio helps us with digital imaging. He's a computer whiz.”

He leans over Emilio and hits a button on the keyboard. Ten photos appear o n the screen, one of them Father Szyszynski's.

I lean forward, look close. There is nothing in the priest's eyes or his easy smile that would make me believe he is capable of such an abomination. Half of the people in the photos are dressed in the vestments of priests; the othe r half are wearing the standard issue jumpsuit of the local jail. Patrick shr ugs. “The only picture I could find of Szyszynski was in his clerical collar. So I have to make the convicts look like priests, too. That way there won't be any cause for question later on, after Nathaniel makes his ID.” He says it like it is going to happen. For that, I adore him. As we watch, E milio superimposes a collar over a picture of a ham-faced thug. “Got a minut e?” Patrick asks me, and when I nod, he leads me out of the little makeshift office, through a side door, and into a courtyard.

There is a picnic table, a basketball hoop, and around this, a high chain lin k fence. “All right,” I say immediately. “What's wrong?”

“Nothing's wrong.”

“If nothing was wrong, you would have been able to talk to me in front of y our teenage hacker.”

Patrick sits down on the bench of the picnic table. “It's about the lineup.”

“I knew it.”

“Will you just stop?” Patrick waits until I sit down, then looks right into m e. Those eyes, they've got a history with mine. They were the first things I saw when I came to, after being hit in the skull with a baseball thrown by Pa trick at Little League. They were the fortification I needed at sixteen to ri de the chairlift at Sugarloaf, although I am terrified of heights. For almost my whole life, they've told me I'm doing all right, during moments when it w as not in my own power to answer. “You need to understand something, Nina,” P atrick says. “Even if Nathaniel points right to Szyszynski's picture . . . it 's a weak disclosure. Surveying a lineup isn't something a five-year-old can really understand. It could be he picks the only familiar face; it could be h e points to anyone, just to get us to leave him alone.”

“Don't you think I know that?”

"You understand what it takes to secure a conviction. We can't lead him int o making an ID just because you want this case to move faster. All I'm sayi ng is that Nathaniel might be able to talk a week from now.

Maybe even tomorrow. Eventually, he's going to be able to say the name of t he perp, and that's going to be a much stronger accusation.“ Leaning forward, I bury my hands in my hair. ”And then what am I supposed to do? Let him testify?"

“That's the way it works.”

“Not when my child's the victim,” I snap.

Patrick touches my arm. “Nina, without Nathaniel's testimony against Szyszy nski, you have no case.” He shakes his head, certain I haven't really thoug ht this through.

But I have never been more sure of anything in my life. I will do what it tak es to keep my son from being a witness. “You're right,” I tell Patrick. “And that's why I'm counting on you to get the priest to confess.” Before I realize it, I've driven to St. Anne's. I pull into the parking lot and get out of my car, avoiding the front walk to tiptoe, instead, around to the b ack of the building. The rectory is here, attached to the main body of the chur ch. My sneakers leave prints in the frost, the trail of an invisible man. If I climb onto the ridge of a drainage well, I can see into the window. Thi s is Father Szyszynski's personal apartment, the living room. A cup of tea s its, the bag still draining, on a side table. A book-Tom Clancy-is cracked o pen on the couch. All around are gifts he's received from parishioners: a ha ndmade afghan, a wooden Bible stand, a framed drawing by a child. All of the se people believed him, too; I have not been the only sucker. What I am waiting for, exactly, I don't know. But as I stand there I rememb er the day before Nathaniel had stopped speaking, the last time we had all gone to Mass. There had been a reception for the two clergymen who'd come t o visit, a banner hung from the serving table wishing them a safe journey h ome. I remember that the flavored coffee that morning was hazelnut. That th ere were no powdered sugar doughnuts left, though Nathaniel had wanted one. I remember talking to a couple I had not seen in several months, and notic ing that the other children were following Father Szyszynski downstairs for his weekly storytime. “Go, Nathaniel,” I'd said. He had been hiding behind me, clinging to my legs. I fairly pushed him into joining the others. I pushed him into it.

I stand here on the drainage ditch for over an hour, until the priest comes in to his living room. He sits down on the couch and picks up his tea and he read s. He doesn't know I'm watching him. He doesn't realize that I can slide into his life, just as surreptitiously as he has slid into mine.

As Patrick has promised, there are ten photos-each the size of a baseball ca rd, each with a different “priest” portrayed on the front. Caleb examines on e. “The San Diego Pedophiles,” he murmurs. “All that's missing are the stats .”

Nathaniel and I come into the room, holding hands. “Well,” I say brightly.

“Look who's here.”

Patrick gets to his feet. “Hiya, Weed. Remember when I talked to you the ot her day?” Nathaniel nods. “Will you talk to me today, too?” He is already curious about the photos; I can feel it in the way he's tuggin g toward the couch. Patrick pats the cushion beside him, and Nathaniel immed iately climbs up. Caleb and I sit on either side of them, in two overstuffed chairs. How formal we look, I think.

“I brought some pictures for you, just like I said I would.” Patrick takes t he rest from the manila envelope and arranges them on the coffee table, as i f he is going to play solitaire. He looks at me, and then at Caleb-a silent warning that now this is his show. “You remember telling me that someone hur t you, Weed?”

Yes.

“And you said you knew who it was?”

Another nod, this one longer in coming.

“I want to show you some pictures, and if one of these people is the one who hurt you, I want you to point to it. But if the person who hurt you isn't in one of the pictures, you just shake your head no, so I know he's not there.” Patrick has phrased this perfectly-an open, legally valid invitation to make a disclosure; a question that does not lead Nathaniel to believe there's a righ t answer.

Even though there is.

We all watch Nathaniel's eyes, dark and boundless, moving from one face to another. He is sitting on his hands. His feet don't quite reach the floor .

“Do you understand what I need you to do, Nathaniel?” Patrick asks. Nathaniel nods. One hand creeps out from beneath a thigh. I want him to be abl e to do this, oh, I want it so badly it aches, so that this case will be set i nto motion. And just as badly, for the same reasons, I want Nathaniel to fail. His hand floats over each card in succession, a dragonfly hovering over a str eam. It lights, but doesn't settle. His finger brushes Szyszynski's face, mov es on. With my eyes, I try to will him back. “Patrick,” I blurt out. “Ask him if he recognizes anyone.”

Patrick smiles tightly. Through his teeth, he says, “Nina, you know I can't do that.” Then, to Nathaniel: “What do you think, Weed? Do you see the per son who hurt you?”

Nathaniel's finger dips like a metronome, traces the edge of Szyszynski's car d. He hesitates there, then begins to move the other cards. We all wait, wond ering what he is trying to tell us. But he slides one photo up, and another, until he has two columns. He connects them with a diagonal. All this delibera tion, and it turns out he is only making the letter N.