Perfect Match (9 page)

Today, we have worked our way through practical signs for food-cereal, milk , pizza, ice cream, breakfast. The terms in the ASL book are grouped like th at-in units that go together. There is a picture of the word, the written le tters, and then a sketch of a person making the sign. Nathaniel gets to pick what we study. He has jumped from the seasons, to things to eat, and is now flipping the pages again.

“Where he'll stop nobody knows . . .” Dr. Robichaud jokes. The book falls open to a page with a family on it. “Oh, that's a good one,” I say, trying the sign at the top-the F handshapes making a circle away from o neself.

Nathaniel points to the child. “Like this, Nathaniel,” Dr. Robichaud says. “B oy.” She mimics touching the bill of a baseball cap. Like many of the signs I 've learned, this one is a perfect match to the real thing.

“Mother,” the psychiatrist continues, helping Nathaniel hold out his hand, to uch the thumb to the side of his chin, and wiggle the fingers.

“Father.” The same sign, but the thumb touches the side of the forehead. “Y ou do it,” Dr. Robichaud says.

Doit.

All those thin black lines on the page have tangled together, a fat snake th at's coming toward him, grabbing him by the neck. Nathaniel can't breathe. H e can't see. He hears Dr. Robichaud's voice all around him, father father fa ther.

Nathaniel lifts his hand, puts a thumb to his forehead. He wiggles the finge rs of his hand. This sign looks like he's making fun of someone. Except it isn't funny at all.

“Look at that,” the psychiatrist says, “he's better than we are, already.” Sh e moves on to the next sign, baby. “That's good, Nathaniel,” Dr. Robichaud sa ys after a moment. “Try this one.”

But Nathaniel doesn't. His hand is jammed tight to the side of his head, his thumb digging into his temple. “Honey, you're going to hurt yourself,” I tell him. I reach for his hand and he jumps back. He will not stop signing this w ord.

Dr. Robichaud gently closes the ASL book. “Nathaniel, do you have someth ing you want to say?”

He nods, his hand still fanning out from the side of his head. All the air l eaves my body. “He wants Caleb-”

Dr. Robichaud interrupts. “Don't speak for him, Nina.”

“You can't think that he-”

“Nathaniel, has your daddy ever taken you somewhere, just the two of you?” the psychiatrist asks.

Nathaniel seems confused by the question. He nods slowly.

“Has he ever helped you get dressed?” Another nod. “Has he ever hugged yo u, in your bed?”

I am frozen in my seat. My lips feel stiff when I speak. “It's not what you're thinking. He just wants to know why Caleb isn't here. He misses his father. H e wouldn't have needed a sign if it was ... if it was ...” I can't even say it . “He could have pointed, a thousand times over,” I whisper.

“He might have been afraid of the consequences of such a direct identificat ion,” Dr. Robichaud explains. “A label like this gives him an extra layer o f psychological protection. Nathaniel,” she continues gently. “Do you know who hurt you?”

He points to the ASL book. And signs father again.

Be careful what you wish for. After all these days, Nathaniel has given a na me, and it is the one I would never have expected to hear. It is the one tha t renders me as immobile as a stone, the very material Caleb prefers to work with.

I listen to Dr. Robichaud make the call to BCYF; I hear her tell Monica ther e is a suspect, but I am a hundred miles away. I'm watching with the objecti vity of someone who knows what will happen next. A detective will be put on the case; Caleb will be called in for questioning. Wally Moffett will contac t the Portland DAs office. Caleb will either confess and be convicted on the strength of that statement; or else Nathaniel will have to accuse him in op en court.

This nightmare is only just beginning.

He could not have done it. I know this as well as I know anything about Cale b after so many years. I can still see him walking the halls at midnight, ho lding an infant Nathaniel by his feet, the only position in which our colick y baby would stop screaming. I can see him sitting next to me at Nathaniel's graduation from the two-day class in preschool, how he'd cried without sham e. He is a good, strong, solid man; the kind of man you would trust with you r life, or your child's.

But if I believe that Caleb is innocent, it means I don't believe Nathaniel. Small memories prick at my mind. Caleb, suggesting that Patrick might be t he one to blame. Why bring up his name, if not to take the heat off himself? Or Caleb telling Nathaniel he didn't have to learn sign lan guage if he didn't want to. Anything, to keep the child from confessing the t ruth.

I have met convicted child molesters before. They don't wear badges or brand s or tattoos announcing their vice. It's hidden under a soft, grandfatherly smile; it's tucked in the pocket of a button-down shirt. They look like the rest of us, and that's what makes it so frightening-to know that these beast s move among us, and we are none the wiser.

They have girlfriends and wives who have loved them, unaware. I used to wonder how mothers wouldn't have some inkling that this was goi ng on in their homes. There had to have been a moment where they made a c onscious decision to turn away before they saw something they didn't want to. No wife, I used to think, could sleep next to a man and not know wha t was playing through the loop of his mind.

“Nina.” Monica LaFlamme touches my shoulder. When did she even arrive? I fe el like I'm coming awake from a coma; I shake myself into consciousness and look for Nathaniel right away. He's playing in the psychiatrist's office, still, with a Brio train set.

When the social worker looks at me, I know that this is what she's suspected all along. And I cannot blame her. In her shoes, I would have thought the sam e thing. In fact, in the past, I have.

My voice is old, stripped. “Have the police been called?” Monica nods. “If there's anything I can do for you . . .” There is somewhere I need to go, and I cannot have Nathaniel with me. It hur ts to have to ask, but I have lost my barometer for trust. “Yes,” I ask. “Wi ll you watch my son?”

I find him at the third job site, making a stone wall. Caleb's face lights up as he recognizes my car. He watches me get out, and then he waits, expecting Nathaniel. It's enough to propel me forward, so that by the time I reach him I am nearly at a dead run, and I slap him as hard as I can across the face.

“Nina!” Caleb catches my wrists and holds me away from him. “What the he ll!”

“You bastard. How could you, Caleb? How could you?” He pushes me away, rubbing his fingers against his cheek. My hand rises on it, a bright print. Good. “I don't know what you're talking about,” Caleb s ays. “Slow down.”

“Slow down?” I spit out. “I'll make it really simple: Nathaniel told us. He t old us what you did to him.”

“I didn't do anything to him.”

For a long moment, I don't say a word, just stare. “Nathaniel said I. . . I . . .” Caleb falters. “That's ridiculous.”

It is what they all say, the guilty ones, and it makes me unravel. “Don't you dare tell me that you love him.”

“Of course I do!” Caleb shakes his head, as if to clear it. “I don't know what he said. I don't know why he said it. But Nina, Jesus Christ. Jesus Christ.” When I don't respond, every year we've spent together unspools, until we are both standing knee deep in a litter of memories that don't matter. Caleb's eyes are wide and wet. “Nina, please. Think about what you're saying.” I look down at my hands, one fist gripping the other tightly. It is the sign f or in. In trouble. In love. In case. “What I think is that kids don't make thi s up. That Nathaniel didn't make this up.” I raise my gaze to his. “Don't come home tonight,” I say, and I walk back to my car with great precision, as if m y heart has not gone to pieces inside me.

Caleb watches the taillights of Nina's car disappear down the road. The dust that's kicked up in her wake settles, and the scene still looks like it did a minute ago. But Caleb knows things are completely different now; that there is no going back.

He will do anything for his son. Always has, always will.

Caleb looks down at the wall he's been crafting. Three feet, and it took him the better part of the day. While his son was in a psychiatrist's office, tur ning the world inside out, Caleb has been lifting stone, fitting it side by s ide. Once when he'd been dating Nina he'd shown her how to set together rocks with proportions that did not seem to meet. All you need is one edge in comm on, he'd told her.

Case in point, this jagged piece of quartz, kitty-corner to a fat, low block of sandstone. Now, he lifts the piece of sandstone and hurls it into the road, where it breaks into pieces. He raises the quartz and sends it spin ning into the woods behind him. He demolishes the wall, all this work, piece by careful piece. Then he sinks into the pile of rubble and presses his dusty hands to his eyes, crying for what cannot be put back together. I have one more place to go. In the clerk's office of the East District Court , I move like an automaton. Tears keep coming, no matter how I try to will th em away. This is not a professional demeanor, but I couldn't care less. This is not a professional matter, it's a personal one.

“Where do you keep the protective order forms for juveniles?” I ask the cl erk, a woman who is new to the court, and whose name I have forgotten. She looks at me as if she's afraid to answer. Then she points to a bin. She fill s it out for me, as I feed her the answers in a voice that I can't place. Judge Bartlett receives me in chambers. “Nina.” He knows me, they all do.

“What can I do for you?”

I hold the form out for him and lift my chin. Breathe, speak, focus. “I am fil ing this on behalf of my son, Your Honor. I'd prefer not to do it in open cour t.”

The judge's eyes hold mine for a long second, then he takes the paper from my hands. “Tell me,” he says gently.

“There is physical evidence of sexual abuse.” I am careful not to say Nathani el's name. That, I cannot bear yet. “And today, he identified the abuser as h is father.” His father, not my husband.

“And you?” Judge Bartlett asks. “Are you all right?” I shake my head, my lips pressed tight together. I grasp my hands so tightly t hat I lose feeling in the fingers. But I don't say a word.

“If there's anything I can do,” the judge murmurs. But there is nothing he can do, or anyone else, no matter how many times the offer is extended. Eve rything has already been done. And that is the problem.

The judge scrawls the craggy landscape of his signature across the bottom o f the form. “You know this is only temporary. We'll have to have a hearing in twenty days.”

“That's twenty days I have to figure this out.”

He nods. “I'm sorry, Nina.”

71 So am I. For not seeing what was under my nose. For not knowing how to prot ect a child in the world, but only in the legal system. For every choice I'

ve made that has brought me to this moment. And, yes, for the restraining o rder that burns a hole in my pocket the entire drive back to my son. 72 These are the rules at home:

Make your bed in the morning. Brush your teeth twice a day. Don't pull the do g's ears. Finish your vegetables, even if they're not as good as the spaghett i.

These are the rules at school:

Don't climb up the outside of the slide. Don't walk in front of the swings w hile a friend is swinging. Raise your hand in Circle if you have something t o say. Everybody gets to play a game, if they want to. Put on a smock if you 're going to paint.

I know other rules, too: Buckle your seat belt. Never speak to a stranger. Don'

t tell, or you'll burn in Hell.

74 index

Life, it turns out, goes on. There is no cosmic rule that grants you immunity from the details just because you have come face-to-face with a catastrophe. The garbage cans still overflow, the bills arrive in the mail, telemarketers interrupt dinner.

Nathaniel comes into the bathroom just as I put the cap back on the tube of Preparation H. I read once that rubbing it into the skin around the eyes mak es the swelling go down, the red fade. I turn to him with a smile so bright he backs away. “Hey, sweetie. Did you brush your teeth?” He nods, and I take his hand. “Let's read a book, then.”

Nathaniel scrambles onto his bed like any other five-year-old-it is a jungle, and he is a monkey. Dr. Robichaud has said that the children bounce back fas t, faster even than their parents do. I hold onto this excuse as I open the b ook-one about a pirate blind in one eye who cannot see that the parrot on his shoulder is actually a poodle. I make it through the first three pages, and then Nathaniel stops me, his hand splayed across the bright painted pictures. His index finger waggles, and then he holds that hand up to his forehead aga in, making a sign I wish I could never see again.

Where's Daddy?

I take the book and set it on the nightstand. “Nathaniel, he's not coming ho me tonight.” He's not coming home any night, I think.

He frowns at me. He doesn't know how to ask why yet, but that is what's caught in his head. Is he thinking that he's responsible for Caleb's ex ile? Has he been told there will be some kind of retribution, for confessing?

Holding his hands between mine-to keep him from interrupting-I try to make this as easy as I can. “Right now, Daddy can't be here.” Nathaniel tugs his arms free, curls his fingers up and in. I want. God, I want, too. Nathaniel, angry, turns away from me. “What Daddy did,” I say brokenly, “was wrong.”

At that, Nathaniel bolts upright. He shakes his head vehemently. This, I've seen before. If a parent is the one sexually abusing a child, the c hild is often told that it's a measure of love. But Nathaniel keeps shaking hi s head, so hard that his hair flies from side to side. “Stop. Nathaniel, pleas e stop.” When he does, he looks at me with the strangest expression, as if he does not understand me at all.

It is why I say the words out loud. I need to hear the truth. I need confir mation from my son. “Did Daddy hurt you?” I whisper, the leading question D r. Robichaud would not ask, would not let me ask.

Nathaniel bursts into tears and hides under his covers. He will not come out, not even when I say I'm sorry.

Everything in the motel room is the color of wet moss-the frayed rug, the bow l of the sink, the bilious bedspread. Caleb turns on the heat and the radio. He takes off his shoes and sets them neatly beside the door.

This is not a home; this is barely a residence. Caleb wonders about the other people staying at these efficiency cabins here in Saco. Are they all in limb o like him?

He cannot imagine sleeping here one night. And yet he knows he will live here a lifetime, if that is what it takes to help his son. He would give anything , for Nathaniel. Even, apparently, himself.

Caleb sits on the edge of the bed. He picks up the phone, then realizes he ha s no one to call. But he holds the receiver to his ear for a few moments, unt il the operator gets on and reminds him that no matter what, on the other end , someone is listening.

There is nothing for it: Patrick can't start his day without a chocolate crois sant. The other cops rib him about it constantly-Too upscale for hnuts, are you, Ducharme? He brushes it off, willing to suffer some teasing a s long as the police secretary who orders the daily tray of baked goods inclu des his personal favorite. But that morning, when he walks into the cafeteria to grab his snack and fill his coffee cup, Patrick's croissant is missing.

“Aw, come on,” he says to the beat cop standing next to him. “Are you guys being assholes? Did you hide it in the ladies' room again?”

“We didn't touch it, Lieutenant, swear.”

Sighing, Patrick walks out of the cafeteria to the desk where Mona is check ing her e-mail. “Where's my croissant?”

She shrugs. “I placed the same order as always. Don't ask me.” Patrick begins to walk through the police station, scanning the desks of the other detectives and the room where the street officers relax during their br eaks. He passes the chief in the hall. “Patrick, you got a second?”

“Not right now.”

“I have a case for you.”

“Can you leave it on my desk?”

The chief smirks. “Wish you were half as single-minded about your police work as you are about your damn doughnuts.”

“Croissants,” Patrick calls to his retreating back. “There's a difference.” In the booking room, seated next to the bored desk sergeant, he finds the p erp: a kid who looks like he was playing cop in his dad's uniform. Brown ha ir, bright eyes, chocolate on his chin. “Who the hell are you?” Patrick dem ands.

“Officer Orleans.”

The desk sergeant folds his hands over his ample stomach. “And the detectiv e who's about to rip your head off, here, is Lieutenant Ducharme.”

“Why's he eating my breakfast, Frank?”

The older cop shrugs. “Because he's only been here a day-”

“Six hours!” the kid proudly corrects.

Frank rolls his eyes. “He don't know better.”

“You do.”

“Yeah, but if I told him so I wouldn't have gotten to see all this excitement.” The rookie holds out the remaining bite of the croissant, his peace offering.

“I, uh, I'm sorry, Lieutenant.”

Patrick shakes his head. He considers going to the fridge and raiding the lu nch the kid's mom has probably packed him. “Don't let it happen again.” Hell of a way to start a day; he counts on the combination of caffeine in the chocolate and his coffee to get him jump-started. By ten o'clock, no doubt, he'll have a monster headache. Patrick stalks back to his desk and plays his voice mail-three messages; the only one he really cares about is Nina's. “Cal l me,” it says-that's all, no name, nothing. He picks up the phone, then noti ces the file that the chief has left on his desk.

Patrick opens the manila folder, reads the report from BCYF. The telephone re ceiver falls to the desk, where it lies buzzing long after he has run out of his office.

“All right,” Patrick says evenly. “I'm going to get right on this. I'll go and t alk to Caleb the minute I leave here.”

It's about all I can take, the incredible level calm of his voice. I drive my hands through my hair. “For God's sake, Patrick. Will you just stop being such a ... such a cop?”

“You want me to tell you that I feel like beating him unconscious for doing this to Nathaniel? That then I'd beat him up all over again for what he's do ne to you?”

The fury in his voice takes me by surprise. I tilt my head, playing his anger over in my mind. “Yes,” I answer softly. “I do want you to tell me that.” He rests his hand on the back of my head. It feels like a prayer. “I don't know what to do.”

Patrick's fingers cup my skull, separate the strands of my hair. I give mysel f up to this; imagine that he's unraveling my thoughts. “That's why you've go t me,” he says.

Nathaniel balks when I tell him where we're going. But if I stay inside for another minute, I am going to lose my mind.

Light falls through the stained-glass ceiling panels of St. Anne's, washing N athaniel and me in a rainbow. At this hour, on a weekday, the church is as qu iet as a secret. I walk with great care, trying not to make any more of a sound than is absolutely necessary. Nathaniel drags his feet, s cuffing his sneakers along the mosaic floor.

“Stop that,” I whisper, and immediately wish I hadn't. My words reverberat e against the stone arches and the polished pews and come running back to me. Trays of white votives glow; how many of these have been lit for my so n?

“I'll only be a minute,” I tell Nathaniel, settling him in one of the pews w ith a handful of Matchbox cars. The polished wood makes a perfect racetrackto prove this, I send a hot rod speeding to the other end. Then I walk towar d the confessionals before I change my mind.

The booth is tight and overheated. A grate slides open against my shoulder; a lthough I cannot see him, I can smell the starch Father Szyszynski uses on hi s clerical shirts.

There is a comfort to confession, if only because it follows rules that are n ever broken. And no matter how long it's been, you remember, as if there is a collective Catholic subconscious. You speak, the priest answers. You begin w ith the littlest sins, stacking them like a tower of alphabet blocks, and the priest gives you a prayer to knock them all down, so that you can start over .

“Bless me, Father, for I have sinned. It has been four months since my last c onfession.”

If he's shocked, he does a good job of hiding it.

“I ... I don't know why I'm here.” Silence. “I found out something, recently, t hat is tearing me apart.”

“Go on.”

“My son . . . he's been hurt.”

“Yes, I know. I've been praying for him.”

“I think ... it seems . . . it's my husband who did this to him.” On the sm all folding chair, I am doubled over. Sharp pains move through me, and I we lcome them-by now, I had thought myself incapable of feeling anything. There is such a long silence I wonder if the priest has heard me. Then: “And what is your sin?”

“My . . . what?”

“You can't confess for your husband.”

Anger bubbles up like tar, burning my throat. “I didn't intend to.”

“Then what did you want to confess today?”

I have come to simply speak the words aloud to someone whose job is to listen. But instead I say, “I didn't keep my son safe. I didn't see it at all.”

“Innocence isn't a sin.”

“How about ignorance?” I stare at the latticework between us. “How about b eing naive enough to think that I actually knew the man I fell in love wit h? How about wanting to make him suffer the way Nathaniel's suffering?” Father Szyszynski lets this statement stand. “Maybe he is.” My breath catches. “I love him,” I say thickly. “I love him just as much as I hate him.”

“You need to forgive yourself for not being aware of what was happening. Fo r wanting to strike back.”

“I don't know if I can.”

“Well, then.” A pause. “Can you forgive him?” I look at the shadow that is the priest's face. “I am not that godly,” I say, a nd exit the confessional before he can stop me.

What's the point; I am already living my penance.

He doesn't want to be here.

The church, it sounds the way it does inside his head-a whooshing that's lou der than all the words that aren't being spoken. Nathaniel looks at the litt le room his mother has gone into. He pushes a car down the pew. He can hear his heart.

He sets the rest of the Matchbox cars into their parking spots and inches hi s way out of the pew. With his hands burrowed under his shirt like a small a nimal, Nathaniel tiptoes down the main aisle of the church.

At the altar he kneels down on the steps to pray. He'd learned a prayer in S unday school, one he was supposed to do at night that he usually forgot. But he remembers that you can pray for anything. It's like a birthday candle wi sh, except it goes straight to God.

He prays that the next time he tries to say something with his hands, everyo ne will understand. He prays that he will get his daddy back. Nathaniel notices a marble statue beside him-a woman, holding Baby Jesus on her lap. He forgets her name, but she's all over the place her e-on paintings and wall hangings and more stone sculptures. In every one, th ere's a mother with a child.

He wonders if once there was a daddy standing on that pedestal, in that pain ting, portrayed with the rest of the holy family. He wonders if everyone's f ather gets taken away.

Patrick knocks on the door of the cabin that the manager of Coz-E-Cottages has pointed out. When it swings open, Caleb stands on the other side, red-e yed and unshaven. “Look,” Patrick says right away, “this is incredibly awkw ard.”

Caleb looks at the police shield in Patrick's hand. “Something tells me it's a little more awkward for me than for you.”

This is the man who has lived with Nina for seven years. Slept beside her, made a baby with her. This is the man who has had the life Patrick wanted . He had thought that he'd come to terms with the way things had worked ou t. Nina was happy, Patrick wanted her to be happy, and if that meant that he himself was out of the picture, so be it. But that equation only worked when the man Nina chose was worthy. When the man Nina chose didn't make h er cry.

Patrick has always believed Caleb to be a good father, and it stuns him a litt le, now, to realize how badly he wants Caleb to be the perp. If he is, it imme diately discredits Caleb. If he is, there is proof that Nina picked the wrong guy.

Patrick feels his fingers curve into fists, but he tamps down on the urge to in flict pain. In the long run, that's not going to help either Nina or Nathaniel.

“Did you put her up to this?” Caleb says tightly.

“You did this all by yourself,” Patrick answers. “Are you willing to come do wn to the station?”

Caleb grabs a jacket from the bed. “Let's go right now,” he says. At the threshold of the door, he reaches out and touches Patrick's shoulder. Instinct makes Patrick tense; reason forces him to relax. He turns and look s coolly at Caleb. “I didn't do it,” Caleb says quietly. “Nina and Nathaniel , they're the other half of me. Who would be stupid enough to throw that awa y?”

Patrick does not let his eyes betray him. But he thinks, for the first time, that perhaps Caleb is telling the truth.

Another man might not have felt comfortable with the relationship between h is own wife and Patrick Ducharme. Although Caleb had never doubted Nina's f idelity-or even her feelings for him-Patrick wore his tattered heart on his sleeve. Caleb had spent enough dinners watching Patrick's eyes follow his wife around the kitchen; he'd seen Patrick spin Nathaniel in the air and tu ck the boy's giggles into his pockets when he thought no one was looking. B ut Caleb did not mind, really. After all, Nina and Nathaniel were his. If h e felt anything for Patrick, it was pity, because he wasn't as lucky as Caleb. Early on, Caleb had been jealous of Nina's close friendship with Patrick. But she was a woman with a number of male friends. And it quickly became c lear that Patrick was too much a part of Nina's past: Asking her to remove him from her life would have been a mistake, like separating Siamese twin s who grew out from a shared heart.