I'm ready to give Caleb a piece of my mind for missing the arraignment, but it's going to have to wait until after I've held Nathaniel so close that he starts to melt into me. Fidgety, I wait for the deputy to unlock the holding cell and escort me into the anteroom of the sheriff's department. There is a familiar face there, but it's the wrong one.
"I posted bail," Patrick says. "Caleb gave me a check."
"He . . ."I start to speak, and then remember who is standing in front of me. It may be Patrick, but still.
I turn to him, wide-eyed, as he leads me out the service entrance of the courthouse, to avoid the press.
"Is he really dead? Do you promise me he's really dead?"
Patrick grabs my arm and turns me toward him. "Stop." Pain pulls his features tight. "Please, Nina. Just stop."
He knows; of course he knows. This is Patrick. In a way it is a relief to no longer have to pretend with him; to have the opportunity to talk to someone who will understand. He leads me through the bowels of the building to a service entrance, and ducks me into his waiting Taurus. The parking lot is filled with news vans, satellite dishes mounted on top like strange birds. Patrick tosses something heavy in my lap, a thick edition of the Boston Globe.
ABOVE the LAW, the headline reads. And a subtitle: Priest Murdered in Maine; A District Attorney's Biblical Justice. There is a full-color photo of me being tackled by Patrick and the bailiffs. In the right-hand corner is Father Szyszynski, lying in a pool of his own blood. I trace Patrick's grainy profile.
"You're famous," I say softly.
Patrick doesn't answer. He stares out at the road, focused on what lies ahead.
I used to be able to talk to him about anything. That cannot have changed, just because of what I've done. But as I look out the window I see it is a different world-two-legged cats prance down the street, Gypsies twirl up driveways, zombies knock on doors. Somehow I've forgotten about Halloween; today nobody is the person he was just a day ago. "Patrick," I begin.
He cuts me off with a slash of his hand. "Nina, it's already bad enough. Every time I think about what you did, I remember the night before, at Tequila Mockingbird. What I said to you."
People like that, they ought to be shot. I hadn't remembered his words until now. Or had I? I reach across the seat to touch his shoulder, to reassure him that this isn't his fault, but he recoils from me.
"Whatever you're thinking, you're wrong. I-"
Suddenly Patrick wrenches the car to the shoulder of the road. "Please, don't tell me anything. I'm going to have to testify during your trial."
But I have always confided in Patrick. To crawl back behind my shell of insanity seems even crazier; a costume two sizes too small. I turn with a question in my eyes, and as usual, he responds before I can even put it into words. "Talk to Caleb instead," he says, and he pulls back into the midday trickle of traffic.
Sometimes when you pick up your child you can feel the map of your own bones beneath your hands, or smell the scent of your skin in the nape of his neck. This is the most extraordinary thing about motherhood- finding a piece of yourself separate and apart that all the same you could not live without.
It is the feeling you get when you place the last scrap of the thousand-piece jigsaw puzzle; it is the last footfall in a photo-finish race; exhilaration and homecoming and stunned wonder, caught between those stubby fingers and the spaces where baby teeth have given way. Nathaniel barrels into my arms with the force of a hurricane, and just as easily sweeps me off my feet. "Mommy!"
Oh, I think, this is why.
Over my son's head, I notice Caleb. He stands at a distance, his face impassive. I say, "Thank you for the check."
"You're famous," Nathaniel tells me. "Your picture was in the paper."
"Buddy," Caleb asks, "you want to pick out a video and watch it in my room?"
Nathaniel shakes his head. "Can Mommy come?"
"In a little while. I have to talk to Daddy first."
So we go through the motions of parenting; Caleb settling Nathaniel on the great ocean of our bedspread, while I push the buttons that set a Disney tape into motion. It seems natural that while he waits here, entranced by fantasy, Caleb and I go into his little boy's room to make sense of what's real.
We sit on the narrow bed, surrounded by a bevy of appliqued Amazon tree frogs, a rainbow of poisonous color. Overhead, a caterpillar mobile drifts without a care in the world. "What the hell were you doing, Nina?" Caleb says, the opening thrust. "What were you thinking?"
"Have the police talked to you? Are you in trouble?"
"Why would I be?"
"Because the police don't know you weren't planning this with me."
Caleb folds in on himself. "Is that what you did? Plan it?"
