Perfect Match

  The sound wakes me. Unmistakable, a celebration of clangs and clatter in ringing tin. Raccoons, but in January?

  In my flannel pajamas I tiptoe downstairs. Stuff my bare feet into boots, my arms into a parka. Just in case, I grab the fireplace poker, and then I slip outside.

  The cover of snow masks my footsteps as I walk the few feet to the garage. As I get closer, the huddled black shape is too large to be a raccoon. The head is bent into the trash. It isn't until I smack the poker against the can like a gong that the man even lifts his head, dizzy and ringing.

  He is dressed like a cat burglar, and my first, too-charitable thought is that he must be freezing. His hands, covered in rubber gloves, are slick with the contents of my refuse. Like condoms, I think--he does not want to catch any dread disease, and who knows what you can contract by looking at the detritus of someone's life?

  "What the hell are you doing?" I ask.

  A war plays across his face. Then he takes a tape recorder out of his pocket. "Would you be willing to give me a statement?"

  "You're a reporter? You're going through my trash, and you're a reporter?" I advance on him. "What did you think you would find? What else could you possibly need to say about my life?"

  Now I notice how young he is: Nathaniel, give or take fifteen years. He is shaking, and I don't know if it is the temperature out here, or the fact that he has come face-to-face with someone as evil as me. "Do your readers want to know that I had my period last week? That I finished a box of Honey Nut Cheerios? That I get too much junk mail?"

  I grab the tape recorder and punch the record button. "You want a statement? I'll give you a statement. You ask your readers if they can account for every minute of their lives, every thought in their heads, and be proud of it. You ask them if they've never jaywalked ... never gone thirty-one miles per hour in a thirty-mile zone ... if they've never sped up when they saw that yellow light. And when you find that single, sorry person who hasn't taken a misstep, that one person with the right to judge me, you tell him he's just as human as I am. That tomorrow, his world could turn upside down and he might find himself capable of actions he'd never believed possible." I turn away, my voice breaking. "You tell him ... he could have been me."

  Then I take the tape recorder and throw it as hard and far as I can, into a high drift of snow. I walk inside and lock the door behind me, lean against it, and catch my breath.

  Nothing I do will bring back Father Szyszynski. But nothing I do will ever wipe from my mind the error I've made. No jail sentence can punish me more than I will punish myself, or turn back time, or keep me from thinking that Arthur Gwynne deserved to die as much as his half-brother didn't.

  I have been moving in slow motion, waiting for an inevitable ax to fall, listening to testimony as if these witnesses are discussing the destiny of a stranger. But now, I feel myself waking. The future may unfold in indelible strokes, but it doesn't mean we have to read the same line over and over. That's exactly the fate I didn't want for Nathaniel ... so why should I want it for me?

  Snow starts to fall, like a blessing.

  I want my life back.

  The bird looked like a tiny dinosaur, too small to have feathers or know how to open its eyes. It was on the ground next to a stick shaped like a V, and a yellow-hatted acorn. Its mouth folded back, a hinge, and one stub of a wing flopped. I could see the outline of its heart.

  "It's okay." I got down on the ground so I wouldn't be so scary. But it just lay there on its side, its belly swelled like a balloon.

  When I looked up, I could see its brothers and sisters in the nest.

  With one finger I pushed it onto my hand. "Mom!"

  "What's the matter? Oh, Nathaniel!" She made that click with her tongue and grabbed my wrist, pushing it back to the ground. "Don't pick it up!"

  "But ... but ..." Anyone could see how sick it was. You were supposed to help people who were too sick or sad to take care of themselves; Father Glen said so all the time. So why not birds, too?

  "Once a human touches the baby, its mother doesn't want it anymore." And just like she said, the big robin came out of the sky and hopped right past the baby. "Now you know better," she said.

  I kept staring at the bird. I wondered if it would stay there next to the V stick and the acorn until it died. I covered it with a big leaf, so that it would stay warm.. "If I was a bird and someone touched me, would I die?"

  "If you were a bird," she said, "I never would have let you fall out of the nest."

  EIGHT

  These are the things he takes: his Yomega Brain yo-yo; the starfish arm he found on a beach. His Bravest Boy ribbon, a flashlight, a Batman trading card. Seventy-six pennies, two dimes, and a Canadian quarter. A granola bar and a bag of jellybeans left over from Easter. They are treasures he brought with him when he moved to the motel with his father; he cannot leave them behind now. Everything fits in the white pillowcase and thumps lightly against Nathaniel's stomach when he zips it up inside his coat.

  "You all set?" his father asks, the words lobbed like a stick into a field and forgotten. Nathaniel wonders why he's even bothered to try to keep this a secret, when his dad is too busy to notice him anyway. He climbs into the passenger seat of the truck and fastens the seat belt--then on second thought, unlatches it.

  If he's going to be really bad, he might as well start now.

  Once, the man at the cleaner's offered to take Nathaniel to see where the big moving millipede of pressed clothes began. His dad had lifted him over the counter and he'd followed Mr. Sarni into the way back, where the clothes were being cleaned. The air was so heavy and wet that Nathaniel wheezed as he pushed the big red button; started the conveyor of hangers chugging in its loop again. The air in the courthouse, it reminds Nathaniel of that. Maybe it's not as hot here, or as sticky, but it is hard to breathe all the same.

  When his dad brings him to the playroom downstairs with Monica, they speak in marshmallow bites of words that they think Nathaniel cannot hear. He does not know what a hostile witness is, or juror bias. But when his father talks the lines on his face appear on Monica's, like it is a mirror.

  "Nathaniel," she says, fake-bright, as soon as his dad goes upstairs. "Let's take off that coat."

  "I'm cold," he lies, and he hugs his pack against his middle.

  She is careful to never touch Nathaniel, and he wonders if that's because Monica has the X-ray vision to see how dirty he is on the inside. She looks at him when she thinks he doesn't see, and her eyes are as deep as a pond. His mom stares at him with the same expression. It is all because of Father Gwynne; Nathaniel wishes just once someone would come up to him and think of him as some kid, instead of The One This Happened To.

  What Father Gwynne did was wrong--Nathaniel knew it then, from the way his skin shivered; and he knows it now, from talking to Dr. Robichaud and Monica. They have said over and over that it isn't Nathaniel's fault. But that doesn't keep him from turning around sometimes, really fast, sure that he's felt someone's breath on his neck. And it doesn't keep him from wondering if he cut himself open at the belly, like his father does when he catches a trout, would he find that black knot that hurts all the time?

  "So, how are we doing this morning?" Fisher asks, as soon as I sit down beside him.

  "Shouldn't you know that?" I watch the clerk set a stack of files on the judge's bench. The jury box, without its members, looks cavernous.

  Fisher pats my shoulder. "It's our turn," he assures me. "I'm going to spend the whole day making the jurors forget what Brown told them."

  I turn to him. "The witnesses--"

  "--will do a good job. Trust me, Nina. By lunchtime, everyone in this court is going to think you were crazy."

  As the side door opens and the jury files in, I look away and wonder how to tell Fisher that's not what I want, after all.

  *

  "I have to pee," Nathaniel announces.

  "Okay." Monica puts down the book she has been reading to him and stands up, waiting
for Nathaniel to follow her to the door. They walk down the hall together to the restrooms. Nathaniel's mother doesn't let him in the boy's room by himself, but it's okay here, because there's only one potty and Monica can check before he goes inside. "Wash your hands," she reminds him, and she pushes open the door so Nathaniel can go inside.

  Nathaniel sits on the cold seat of the toilet to muddle it all out. He let Father Gwynne do all those things--and it was bad. He was bad; but he didn't get punished. In fact, ever since he was so bad, everyone's been paying extra attention to Nathaniel, and being extra nice.

  His mother did something really bad, too--because, she said, it was the best way to fix what happened.

  Nathaniel tries to make sense of all this, but the truths are too tangled in his head. All he knows is that for whatever reason, the world is upside-down. People are breaking rules like crazy--and instead of getting into trouble, it's the only way to make things right again.

  He pulls up his pants, cinches the bottom of his jacket, and flushes. Then he closes the lid and climbs from the tank to the toilet tissue holder to the little ledge up high. The window there is tiny, only for fancy, because this is a basement floor. But Nathaniel can open it and he's small enough to slip through.

  He finds himself behind the courthouse, in one of the window wells. Nobody notices a kid his size. Nathaniel skirts the trucks and vans in the parking lot, crosses the frozen lawn. He starts walking aimlessly down the highway, not holding an adult's hand, intent on running away. Three bad things, he thinks, all at once.

  "Dr. O'Brien," Fisher asks, "when did Mrs. Frost first come to your office?"

  "On December twelfth." At ease on the stand--as he should be, for all the testimony he's given in his career--the psychiatrist relaxes in the witness chair. With the silver hair at his temples and his casual pose, he looks like he could be Fisher's brother.

  "What materials had you received before you met with her?"

  "An introductory letter from you, a copy of the police report, the videotape taken by WCSH-TV, and the psychiatric report prepared by Dr. Storrow, the state's psychiatrist, who had examined her two weeks earlier."

  "How long did you meet with Mrs. Frost that first day?"

  "An hour."

  "What was her state of mind when you met?"

  "The focus of the conversation was on her son. She was very concerned about his safety," O'Brien says. "Her child had been rendered mute; she was frantic with worry; she was feeling guilt as a working mother who hadn't been around enough to see what had been going on. Moreover, her specialized knowledge of the court system made her aware of the effects of molestation on children ... and more anxious about her son's ability to survive the legal process without significant trauma. After considering the circumstances that led Mrs. Frost to my office, as well as meeting with her in person, I concluded that she was a classic example of someone suffering from post-traumatic stress disorder."

  "How might that have affected her mental stability on the morning of October thirtieth?"

  O'Brien leans forward to address the jury. "Mrs. Frost knew she was heading to court to face her son's abuser. She believed wholeheartedly that her son was permanently scarred by the event. She believed that testifying--as a witness, or even at a competency hearing--would be devastating to the child. Finally, she believed that the abuser would eventually be acquitted. All this was going through her mind, and as she drove to the courthouse, she became more and more agitated--and less and less herself--until she finally snapped. By the moment she put the gun to Father Szyszynski's head, she could not consciously stop herself from shooting him--it was an involuntary reflex."

  The jury was listening, at least; some of them were brave enough to sneak glances at me. I tried for an expression that fell somewhere between Contrite and Shattered.

  "Doctor, when was the last time you saw Mrs. Frost?"

  "A week ago." O'Brien smiles kindly at me. "She feels more capable of protecting her son now, and she understands that her means of doing it was not right. In fact, she is filled with remorse for her previous actions."

  "Does Mrs. Frost still suffer from post-traumatic stress disorder?"

  "PTSD isn't like chicken pox, which can be cured forever. In my opinion, however, Mrs. Frost is at a point where she understands her own feelings and thoughts and can keep herself from letting them overwhelm her. With subsequent outpatient therapy, I believe she will function quite normally."

  This lie cost Fisher, and therefore me, two thousand dollars. But it is worth it: Several members of the jury are nodding. Maybe honesty is overvalued. What's truly priceless is picking out from a stream of falsehoods the ones you most need to hear.

  Nathaniel's feet hurt, and his toes are frozen in his boots. His mittens are in the playroom, so the tips of his fingers have turned pink, even buried in the pockets of his jacket. When he counts out loud, just to have something to do, the numbers hang in front of him, curled in the cold.

  Because he knows better, he climbs over the guardrail and runs into the middle of the highway. A bus zooms by, its horn flaring as it swerves into the distance.

  Nathaniel spreads his arms for balance, and begins to walk the tight-rope of the dotted line.

  "Dr. O'Brien," Quentin Brown says. "You believe Mrs. Frost feels capable of protecting her son now?"

  "Yes, I do."

  "So who's she going to pull a gun on next?"

  The psychiatrist shifts in the chair. "I don't believe she'll go to that extreme."

  The prosecutor purses his lips, considering. "Maybe not now. But what about in two months ... two years? Some kid on the playground threatens her son. Or a teacher looks at him the wrong way. Is she going to spend the rest of her life playing Dirty Harry?"

  O'Brien raises a brow. "Mr. Brown, this wasn't a situation where someone looked at her son the wrong way. He had been sexually molested. She believed that she knew beyond a reasonable doubt who'd done it. I also understand that the individual who was eventually identified as the real perpetrator has since died of natural causes, so she certainly no longer has an alleged vendetta to fulfill."

  "Doctor, you reviewed the state psychiatrist's report. Isn't it true that you reached the exact opposite conclusion that he did, regarding Mrs. Frost's mental state? That he not only deemed her competent to stand trial but also believed she was sane at the time of the offense?"

  "Yes, Dr. Storrow did indicate that. But this is the first evaluation he's done for a court. On the other hand, I've been a forensic psychiatrist for over forty years."

  "And you don't come cheap, do you?" Brown says. "Isn't the defense paying you for your testimony today?"

  "My fee is two thousand dollars per day, plus expenses," O'Brien answers, shrugging.

  There is a stir in the back of the courtroom. "Doctor, I believe you used the words 'she finally snapped.' Is that correct?"

  "That's not the clinical term, of course, but it's the way I would describe it in conversation."

  "Did she snap before or after she drove to the gun store?" Brown asks.

  "Clearly, that was part of her continuing mental decline ..."

  "Did she snap before or after she loaded six rounds into a nine millimeter semiautomatic handgun?"

  "As I said earlier, that would be part--"

  "Did she snap before or after she slipped past the metal detector, knowing the bailiff wouldn't stop her?"

  "Mr. Brown--"

  "And, Doctor, did she snap before or after she very carefully aimed at one person and only one person's head in a crowded courtroom?"

  O'Brien's mouth flattens. "As I told the court before, at that point Mrs. Frost had no control over her actions. She could no more stop herself from shooting the priest than she could stop herself from breathing."

  "She sure managed to stop someone else from breathing, though, didn't she?" Brown crosses toward the jury box. "You're an expert on post-traumatic stress disorder, aren't you?"

  "I'm considered to be rather knowled
geable in the field, yes."

  "And PTSD is triggered by a traumatic event?"

  "That's correct."

  "You first met Mrs. Frost after Father Szyszynski's death?"

  "Yes."

  "And," Brown says, "you believe that it was the molestation of Mrs. Frost's son that triggered her PTSD?"

  "Yes."

  "How do you know it wasn't shooting the priest?"

  "It's possible," O'Brien concedes. "It's just that the other trauma came first."

  "Isn't it true that Vietnam veterans can be plagued by PTSD their whole lives? That thirty years later these men still wake up with nightmares?"

  "Yes."

  "Then you can't, with any degree of scientific certainty, tell this jury that the defendant is over the illness that--in your words--caused her to snap?"

  More raised voices from the rear of the courtroom. I focus my attention forward.

  "I doubt that Mrs. Frost will ever completely forget the events of the past few months," O'Brien says diplomatically. "However, in my personal opinion, she is not dangerous now ... nor will she be dangerous in the future."

  "Then again, Doctor," Brown says, "you're not wearing a white collar."

  "Please," a familiar voice shouts, and then Monica shoves away from the bailiff restraining her and runs up the central aisle of the courtroom. Alone. She crouches down beside Caleb. "It's Nathaniel," she sobs. "He's gone missing."

  The judge grants a recess, and the bailiffs in the courtroom are sent to look for Nathaniel. Patrick calls in the county sheriff and the state police. Caleb drives off, too, and Fisher volunteers to appease the frenzy of media that's caught wind of a new problem.

  I can't go, because I am still wearing that fucking electronic bracelet.

  I think of Nathaniel, kidnapped. Of him wandering into the boxcar of an old train and freezing to death. Of the ship where he might stow away when no one is looking. He could travel the world, and I would still be imprisoned by these four walls.

  "He told me he had to go to the bathroom," Monica says tearfully. We wait in the lobby, which has been emptied of reporters. I know she wants absolution, but I'll be damned if I am going to give it to her. "I thought maybe he was feeling sick, because it was taking so long. But when I went in, that window was open." She grabs my sleeve. "I don't think he was taken by anyone, Nina. I think he just did this for the attention."