The Jodi Picoult Collection #2 Read online

  “I’ll get Nathaniel at four-thirty,” Caleb says, a line that, in the language of parenting, means what I love you once did.

  I feel his lips brush the top of my head as I work the clasp on the back of my skirt. “I’ll be home by six.” I love you, too.

  He walks toward the door, and when I look up I am struck by pieces of him—the breadth of his shoulders, the tilt of his grin, the way his toes turn in in his big construction boots. Caleb sees me watching. “Nina,” he says, and that smile, it tips even more. “You’re late too.”

  • • •

  The clock on the nightstand says 7:41. I have nineteen minutes to rouse and feed my son, stuff him into his clothes and his car seat, and make the drive across Biddeford to his school with enough time to get myself to the superior court in Alfred by 9:00.

  My son sleeps hard, a cyclone in his sheets. His blond hair is too long; he needed a haircut a week ago. I sit on the edge of the bed. What’s two seconds more, when you get to watch a miracle?

  I wasn’t supposed to get pregnant five years ago. I wasn’t supposed to get pregnant, ever, thanks to a butcher of an OB who removed an ovarian cyst when I was twenty-two. When I had been weak and vomiting for weeks, I went to see an internist, certain I was dying from some dread parasite, or that my body was rejecting its own organs. But the blood test said there was nothing wrong. Instead, there was something so impossibly right that for months afterward, I kept the lab results taped to the inside of the medicine cabinet of the bathroom: the burden of proof.

  Nathaniel looks younger when he’s asleep, with one hand curled under his cheek and the other wrapped tight around a stuffed frog. There are nights I watch him, marveling at the fact that five years ago I did not know this person who has since transformed me. Five years ago I would not have been able to tell you that the whites of a child’s eyes are clearer than fresh snow; that a little boy’s neck is the sweetest curve on his body. I would never have considered knotting a dish towel into a pirate’s bandanna and stalking the dog for his buried treasure, or experimenting on a rainy Sunday to see how many seconds it takes to explode a marshmallow in the microwave. The face I give to the world is not the one I save for Nathaniel: After years of seeing the world in absolutes, he has taught me how to pick out all the shades of possibility.

  I could lie and tell you that I never would have gone to law school or become a prosecutor if I’d expected to have children. It’s a demanding job, one you take home, one you cannot fit around soccer games and nursery school Christmas pageants. The truth is, I have always loved what I do; it’s how I define myself: Hello, I’m Nina Frost, assistant district attorney. But I also am Nathaniel’s mother, and I wouldn’t trade that label for the world. There is no majority share; I am split down the middle, fifty-fifty. However, unlike most parents, who lie awake at night worrying about the horrors that could befall a child, I have the chance to do something about them. I’m a white knight, one of fifty lawyers responsible for cleaning up the state of Maine before Nathaniel makes his way through it.

  Now, I touch his forehead—cool—and smile. With a finger I trace the slight bow of his cheek, the seam of his lips. Asleep, he bats my hand away, buries his fists under the covers. “Hey,” I whisper into his ear. “We need to get moving.” When he doesn’t stir, I pull the covers down—and the thick ammonia scent of urine rises from the mattress.

  Not today. But I smile, just like the doctor said to when accidents happen for Nathaniel, my five-year-old who’s been toilet trained for three years. When his eyes open—Caleb’s eyes, sparkling and brown and so engaging that people used to stop me on the street to play with my baby in his stroller—I see that moment of fear when he thinks he’s going to be punished. “Nathaniel,” I sigh, “these things happen.” I help him off the bed and start to peel his damp pajamas from his skin, only to have him fight me in earnest.

  One wild punch lands on my temple, driving me back. “For God’s sake, Nathaniel!” I snap. But it’s not his fault that I’m late; it’s not his fault that he’s wet the bed. I take a deep breath and work the fabric over his ankles and feet. “Let’s just get you cleaned off, okay?” I say more gently, and he defeatedly slides his hand into mine.

  My son tends to be unusually sunny. He finds music in the stifled sounds of traffic, speaks the language of toads. He never walks when he can scramble; he sees the world with the reverence of a poet. So this boy, the one eyeing me warily over the lip of the tub, is not one I recognize. “I’m not mad at you.” Nathaniel ducks his head, embarrassed. “Everyone has accidents. Remember when I ran over your bike last year, with the car? You were upset—but you knew I didn’t mean to do it. Right?” I might as well be talking to one of Caleb’s granite blocks. “Fine, give me the silent treatment.” But even this backfires; I cannot tease him into a response. “Ah, I know what will make you feel better . . . you can wear your Disney World sweatshirt. That’s two days in a row.”

  If he had the option, Nathaniel would wear it every day. In his room, I overturn the contents of every drawer, only to find the sweatshirt tangled in the pile of soiled sheets. Spying it, he pulls it free and starts to tug it over his head. “Hang on,” I say, taking it away. “I know I promised, but it’s got pee all over it, Nathaniel. You can’t go to school in this. It has to be washed first.” Nathaniel’s lower lip begins to tremble, and suddenly I—the skilled arbitrator—am reduced to a plea bargain. “Honey, I swear, I’ll wash this tonight. You can wear it for the rest of the week. And all of next week, too. But right now, I need your help. I need us to eat fast, so that we can leave on time. All right?”

  Ten minutes later, we have reached agreement, thanks to my complete capitulation. Nathaniel is wearing the damn Disney World sweatshirt, which has been hand-rinsed, hastily spun through the dryer, and sprayed with a pet deodorizer. Maybe Miss Lydia will have allergies; maybe no one will notice the stain above Mickey’s wide smile. I hold up two cereal boxes. “Which one?” Nathaniel shrugs, and by now I’m convinced his silence has less to do with shame than getting a rise out of me. Incidentally, it’s working.

  I set him down at the counter with a bowl of Honey Nut Cheerios while I pack his lunch. “Noodles,” I announce with flair, trying to boost him out of his blue funk. “And . . . ooh! A drumstick from dinner last night! Three Oreos . . . and celery sticks, so that Miss Lydia doesn’t yell at Mommy again about nutrition pyramids. There.” I zip up the insulated pack and put it into Nathaniel’s backpack, grab a banana for my own breakfast, then check the clock on the microwave. I give Nathaniel two more Tylenol to take—it won’t hurt him this once, and Caleb will never know. “Okay,” I say. “We have to go.”

  Nathaniel slowly puts on his sneakers and holds out each small foot to me to have the laces tied. He can zip up his own fleece jacket; shimmy into his own backpack. It is enormous on those thin shoulders; sometimes from behind he reminds me of Atlas, carrying the weight of the world.

  Driving, I slide in Nathaniel’s favorite cassette—the Beatles’ White Album, of all things—but not even “Rocky Raccoon” can snap him out of this mood. Clearly, he’s gotten up on the wrong side of the bed—the wet side, I think, sighing. A tiny voice inside me says I should just be grateful that in approximately fifteen minutes it will be someone else’s problem.

  In the rearview mirror, I watch Nathaniel play with the dangling strap of his backpack, pleating it into halves and thirds. We come to the stop sign at the bottom of the hill. “Nathaniel,” I whisper, just loud enough to be heard over the hum of the engine. When he glances up, I cross my eyes and stick out my tongue.

  Slowly, slow as his father, he smiles at me.

  On the dashboard, I see that it is 7:56. Four minutes ahead of schedule.

  We are doing even better than I thought.

  • • •

  The way Caleb Frost sees it, you build a wall to keep something unwanted out . . . or to hold something precious in. He considers this often when he builds, fitting sparkling granite and