Perfect Match Read online

  "Maybe the psychiatrist is wrong," Caleb says.

  I turn in my seat. "You don't believe Nathaniel?"

  "What I believe is that he hasn't said anything yet." He glances in the rearview mirror. "I don't want to keep talking about this, in front of him."

  "Do you think that'll make it go away?"

  Caleb doesn't respond, and there is my answer. "The next exit's ours," I say stiffly, because Caleb is still driving in the left lane.

  "I know where I'm going, Nina." He brings the car to the right, signals at the exit sign. But a minute later, he misses the turnoff.

  "You just--" The accusation dies as I see his face, striped by grief. I don't think he even knows he's crying. "Oh, Caleb." I reach out to touch him, but that goddamned elephant is in the way. Caleb throws the car into park and gets out, walking along the road's shoulder, drawing huge breaths that make his chest swell.

  A moment later, he returns. "I'll turn around and go back," he announces--to me? To Nathaniel? To himself?

  I nod. And think, If only it were that easy.

  Nathaniel bites down hard on his back teeth so that the hum of the road goes right through him. He isn't asleep, but he is pretending to be, which is almost as good. His parents are talking, the words so soft at the corners that he can't quite hear. Maybe he will never sleep again. Maybe he will just be like a dolphin, and stay half-asleep.

  Miss Lydia taught them about dolphins last year, after they'd turned the classroom into an ocean of blue crepe paper and glitter-glue starfish. So Nathaniel knows these things: that dolphins shut an eye and half their brain, sleeping on one side, while the other side watches out for danger. He knows that mommy dolphins swim for their resting babies, pulling them along in an underwater current, as if they are attached by invisible threads. He knows that the plastic rings which rope six-packs of Coke can hurt dolphins, make them wash up weak on shore. And that even though they breathe air, they'll die there.

  Nathaniel also knows that if he could, he would roll down the window and jump out, so far that he'd cross the highway barrier and the tall fence to plummet along the rocky cliff, landing in the ocean below. He'd have sleek silver skin and a smile curved permanently on his mouth. He'd have a special body part--like a heart, but different--filled with oil and called a melon, just like the thing you eat in the summertime. Except this would be in the front of his head and would help him find his way even in the blackest ocean, on the blackest night.

  Nathaniel imagines swimming off the coast of Maine toward the other end of the world, where it already feels like summer. He squinches his eyes as tight as he can, concentrates on making a joyful noise, of navigating by those notes, of hearing them bounce back to him.

  Although Martin Toscher, MD, is considered an authority in his field, he would gladly trade his laurels to completely eliminate his area of expertise. Examining one child for evidence of sexual abuse is more than enough; the fact that he's logged hundreds of cases in Maine is phenomenally disturbing.

  The subject of the examination lies on the OR table, anesthetized. It would be his suggestion, given the traumatic nature of the exam, but before he had even proposed it to the parents, the mother asked if it could be done that way. Now, Martin walks through the procedure, speaking aloud as he works so that his findings can be recorded. "The glans penis appears normal, Tanner 0." He repositions the child. "Looking at the anal verge ... there are multiple obvious healing abrasions, about one to one and a half centimeters up, that are approximately one centimeter in diameter, on average."

  He takes an anal speculum from the table nearby. Chances are if there are additional mucosal tears higher up in the bowel wall, they'd know--the child would be physically ill by now. But he lubricates the instrument and gently inserts it, attaches the light source, and cleans out the rectum with a long cotton swab. Well, thank God for that, Martin thinks. "The bowel is clean to eight centimeters."

  He strips off his gloves and mask, washes up, and leaves the nurses to fuss over the child in recovery. It's a light anesthesia, it will wear off quickly. The moment he walks out of the operating room, he is approached by the parents.

  "How is he?" asks the father.

  "Nathaniel's doing well," Martin replies, the words everyone wants to hear. "He may be a little drowsy this afternoon, but that's perfectly normal."

  The mother pushes past all these platitudes. "Were there any findings?"

  "There did seem to be evidence consistent with an assault," the doctor says gently. "Some rectal abrasions that are healing. It's hard to say when they were incurred, but they're certainly not fresh. Maybe a week or so's gone by."

  "Is the evidence consistent with penetration?" Nina Frost demands.

  Martin nods. "It's not from falling down on a bicycle, for example."

  "Can we see him?" This from the boy's father.

  "Soon. The nurses will page you when he's awake in recovery."

  He starts to leave, but Mrs. Frost stops him with a hand on his arm. "Can you tell if it was penile penetration? Digital? Or some foreign object?"

  Parents ask whether their children still feel the pain from the assault. If the scar is something that will affect them later on. If they will remember, in the long term, what happened to them. But these questions, well, they make him feel as if he is being cross-examined.

  "There's no way to know that level of detail," the doctor says. "All we can say at this point is, yes, something happened."

  She turns away and stumbles against the wall. Wilts. Within seconds she is a small, keening ball on the floor, her husband's arms wrapped around her for support. As Martin heads back to the operating suite, he realizes it's the first time that day he has seen her act like a mother.

  It's foolish, I know, but I've lived my life believing in superstitions. Not throwing spilled salt over my shoulder or wishing on eyelashes or wearing lucky shoes to trials--instead, I've considered my own good luck directly correlated to the misfortunes of others. Starting out as a lawyer, I begged for the sexual assaults and molestations, the horrors no one wants to face. I told myself that if I faced the problems of strangers on a daily basis, it would magically keep me from having to face my own.

  Visiting violence repeatedly, you become inured to atrocity. You can look at blood without blinking, you can say the word rape and not wince. It turns out, though, that this shield is a plastic one. That all defenses break down when the nightmare happens in your own bed.

  On the floor of his bedroom, Nathaniel is playing quietly, still groggy from the anesthesia. He guides Matchbox cars around a track. They zoom to a certain spot, a booster, and suddenly shoot with great speed up a ramp through the jaws of a python. If the car is just the tiniest bit too slow, the snake snaps its mouth shut. Nathaniel's car passes through with flying colors every time.

  My ears are filled with all the things Nathaniel is not saying: What's for dinner; can I play on the computer; did you see how fast that car went? His hands close around the Matchbox like the claw of a giant; in this make-believe world he is the one calling the shots.

  The python's jaws ratchet shut, so loud in this silence that it makes me jump. And then I feel it, the softest jelly-roll along my leg, the bumping up my spine. Nathaniel is holding the Matchbox car, running it up the avenue of my arm. He parks in the hollow of my collarbone, then touches one finger to the tears on my cheek.

  Nathaniel puts the car onto the track and climbs into my lap. His breath is hot and wet on my collar as he burrows close. This makes me feel sick--that he should choose me to keep him safe, when I have already failed miserably. We stay like this for a long time, until evening comes and stars fall onto his carpet, until Caleb's voice climbs the stairs, searching for us. Over the penance of Nathaniel's head I watch the car on its track, spinning in circles, driven by its own momentum.

  Shortly after seven o'clock, I lose Nathaniel. He isn't in any of his favorite haunts: his bedroom, the playroom, on the jungle gym outside. I had thought Caleb was with him;