Perfect Match Read online

  "Sometimes when I hold his hand," I answer slowly, finally, "it's like it doesn't fit anymore. I mean, he's only five, you know? But I can feel what's coming. Sometimes his palm's just a little too wide, or his fingers are too strong." Glancing at Adrienne, I shrug. "Each time I do it, I think this may be the last time I hold his hand. That next time, he may be holding mine."

  She smiles softly at me. "Honey, he ain't coming today."

  It is 12:46 P.M., and I have to turn away, because Adrienne is right.

  The CO wakes me up in the late afternoon. "Come on," he mutters, and slides open the door of my cell. I scramble upright, rubbing the sleep from my eyes. He leads me down a hallway to a part of the jail I have not yet visited. A row of small rooms, mini-prisons, are on my left. The guard opens one and guides me inside.

  It is no bigger than a broom closet. Inside, a stool faces a Plexiglas window. A telephone receiver is mounted to the wall at its side. And on the other side of the glass, in a twin of a room, sits Caleb.

  "Oh!" The word comes on a cry, and I lurch for the telephone, picking it up and holding it to my ear. "Caleb," I say, knowing he can see my face, read my words. "Please, please, pick up the phone." I pantomime over and over. But his face is chiseled and hard; his arms crossed tight on his chest. He will not give me this one thing.

  Defeated, I sink onto the stool and rest my forehead against the Plexiglas. Caleb bends down to pick something up, and I realize that Nathaniel has been there all along, beneath the counter where I could not see him. He kneels on the stool, eyes wide and wary. He hesitantly touches the glass, as if he needs to know that I am not a trick of the light.

  At the beach once, we found a hermit crab. I turned it over so that Nathaniel could see its jointed legs scrambling. Put him on your palm, I said, and he'll crawl. Nathaniel had held out his hand, but every time I went to set the crab on it, he jerked away. He wanted to touch it, and he was terrified to touch it, in equal proportions.

  So I wave. I smile. I fill my little cubicle with the sound of his name.

  As I did with Caleb, I pick up the telephone receiver. "You too," I mouth, and I do it again, so Nathaniel can see how. But he shakes his head, and instead raises his hand to his chin. Mommy, he signs.

  The receiver falls out of my hand, a snake that strikes the wall beside it. I do not even need to look at Caleb for verification; just like that, I know.

  So with tears running down my face, I hold up my right hand, the I-L-Y combination that means I love you. I catch my breath as Nathaniel raises one small fist, unfurls the fingers like signal flags to match mine. Then, a peace sign, the number two handshape. I love you too.

  By now, Nathaniel is crying. Caleb says something to him that I cannot hear, and he shakes his head. Behind them, the guard opens the door.

  Oh, God, I am losing him.

  I rap on the glass to get his attention. Push my face up against it, then point to Nathaniel and nod. He does what I've asked, turning his cheek so that it touches the transparent wall.

  I lean close, kiss the barrier between us, and pretend it isn't there. Even after Caleb's carried him from the visiting room, I sit with my temple pressed to the glass, convincing myself I can still feel Nathaniel on the other side.

  It didn't happen just that once. Two Sundays afterward, when Nathaniel's family went to Mass, the priest came into the little room where Miss Fiore was reading everyone a story about a guy with a slingshot who took down a giant. "I need a volunteer," he said, and even though all the hands went up, he looked right at Nathaniel.

  "You know," he said in the office, "Esme missed you."

  "She did?"

  "Oh, absolutely. She's been saying your name for days now."

  Nathaniel laughed. "She has not."

  "Listen." He cupped his ear, leaned in to the cat on the couch. "There you go."

  Nathaniel listened, but only heard a faint mew.

  "Maybe you have to get closer," the priest said. "Climb up here."

  For just a moment, Nathaniel hesitated, remembered. His mother had told him about going off alone with strangers. But this wasn't really a stranger, was it? He sat down in the priest's lap, and pressed his ear right against the belly of the cat. "That's a good boy."

  The man shifted his legs, the way Nathaniel's father sometimes did when he was sitting on his knee and his foot fell asleep. "I could move," Nathaniel suggested.

  "No, no." The priest's hand slipped down Nathaniel's back, over his bottom, to rest in his own lap. "This is fine."

  But then Nathaniel felt his shirt being untucked. Felt the long fingers of the priest, hot and damp, against his spine. Nathaniel did not know how to tell him no. His head was filled with a memory: a fly caught in the car one day when they were driving, which kept slamming itself into the windows in a desperate effort to get out. "Father?" Nathaniel whispered.

  "I'm just blessing you," he replied. "A special helper deserves that. I want God to know that every time He sees you." His fingers stilled. "You do want that, don't you?"

  A blessing was a good thing, and for God to keep an extra eye on him--well, it was what his mother and father would want, Nathaniel was sure of it. He turned his attention back to the lazy cat, and that was when he heard it--just a puff of breath--Esme, or maybe not Esme, sighing his name.

  The second time I am called out by a correctional officer is Sunday afternoon. He takes me upstairs to the conference rooms, where inmates meet privately with their attorneys. Maybe Fisher has come to see how I am holding up. Maybe he wants to discuss tomorrow's hearing.

  But to my surprise, when the door is unlocked, Patrick is waiting inside. Spread out on the conference table are six containers of take-out Chinese food. "I got everything you like," he says. "General Cho's chicken, vegetable lo mein, beef with broccoli, Lake Tung Ting shrimp, and steamed dumplings. Oh, and that crap that tastes like rubber."

  "Bean curd." I lift my chin a notch, challenging him. "I thought you didn't want to talk to me."

  "I don't. I want to eat with you."

  "Are you sure? Think of all the things I could say while your mouth is full, before you have a chance to--"

  "Nina." Patrick's blue eyes seem faded, weary. "Shut up."

  But even as he scolds me, he holds out his hand. It rests on the table, extended, an offering more tantalizing than anything else before me.

  I sit across from him and grab on. Immediately, Patrick squeezes, and that's my undoing. I lay my cheek on the cold, scarred table, and Patrick strokes my hair. "I rigged your fortune cookie," he confesses. "It says you'll be acquitted."

  "What does yours say?"

  "That you'll be acquitted." Patrick smiles. "I didn't know which one you'd pick."

  My eyes drift shut as I let down my guard. "It's okay," Patrick tells me, and I believe him. I place his palm against my burning face, as if shame is something he might carry in the cup of his hand, fling someplace far away.

  When you call someone on the prison pay phone, they know it. Every thirty seconds a voice gets on the line, informing the person on the other end that this transmission is taking place from the Alfred County Jail. I use the fifty cents Patrick gave me that afternoon, and make the call on my way to the shower. "Listen," I say, the minute I reach Fisher at his home number. "You wanted me to tell you what to say on Monday morning."

  "Nina?" In the background I hear the laughter of a woman. The sound of glasses, or china, in a sink.

  "I need to talk to you."

  "You've caught us in the middle of dinner."

  "Well, for God's sake, Fisher." I turn my back as a line of men straggles in from the outside courtyard. "Why don't I just call back then when it's more convenient for you, because I'm sure I'll have another opportunity, in, oh, three or four days."

  I hear the distant noise growing more faint; the click of a door. "All right. What is it?"

  "Nathaniel isn't speaking. You need to get me out of here, because he's falling apart."

  "He isn't speaki