Caleb feels her hand come up to his shoulder again, feels the cold air of its absence on his balls.
"Well," Nina says, as he rolls to his back beside her. "That's never happened before."
He stares at the ceiling, at anything but this stranger beside him. It's not the only thing, he thinks.
On Friday afternoon, Nathaniel and I go grocery shopping. The P&C is a gastronomic fest for my son: I move from the deli counter, where Nathaniel gets a free slice of cheese; to the cookie aisle, where we pick up the box of Animal Crackers; to the breads, where Nathaniel works his way through a plain bagel. "What do you think, Nathaniel?" I ask, handing him a few grapes from the bunch I've just put in the cart. "Should I pay $4.99 for a honeydew?"
I pick up the melon and sniff at the bottom. In truth, I have never been a good judge of fruit. I know it's all about softness and scent, but in my opinion some with the sweetest insides have been hard as a rock on the surface.
Suddenly, the bagel Nathaniel's been eating falls into my hand. "Peter!" he yells, waving from his harness in the shopping cart. "Peter! Hey, Peter!"
I look up to find Peter Eberhardt walking down the produce aisle, holding a bag of chips and a bottle of Chardonnay. Peter, whom I have not seen since the day I had my restraining order against Caleb vacated. There is so much I want to say to him-to ask him, now that I am not in the office to find out myself-but the judge has specifically prohibited me from speaking to my own colleagues as a condition of bail.
Nathaniel, of course, doesn't know that. He just understands that Peter-a man who keeps Charms lollipops on his desk, who can do the best impression of a duck sneezing, whom he hasn't seen in weeks-is suddenly standing six feet away. "Peter," Nathaniel calls again, and holds out his arms.
Peter thinks twice. I can see it in his face. But then again, he adores Nathaniel. All the reason in the world cannot stand up to my son's smile. Peter lays his bag of chips and bottle of wine on top of a display of Red Delicious apples and gives Nathaniel a bear hug. "Listen to you!" he crows. "That voice is back to a hundred percent working order, isn't it?"
Nathaniel giggles when Peter opens up his mouth to check inside. "Does the volume work too?" he asks, pretending to twist a knob on Nathaniel's belly, so that he laughs louder and louder.
Then Peter turns to me. "He sounds great, Nina." Four words, but I know what he is really saying: You did the right thing.
"Thanks."
We look at each other, measuring what can and cannot be said. And because we are so busy making a commodity of our friendship, I never notice another grocery cart approaching. It pings against the rear of mine gently, just loud enough to make me look up, so that I can see Quentin Brown smiling beside a sea of navel oranges. "Well, well," he says. "Aren't things ripe here?" He pulls a cell phone out of his breast pocket and dials. "Get a squad car down here now. I'm making an arrest."
"You don't understand," I insist, as he puts away his phone.
"What's so difficult to grasp? You're in blatant violation of your bail agreement, Ms. Frost. Is this or is this not a colleague from the district attorney's office?"
"For Christ's sake, Quentin," Peter interjects. "I was talking to the kid. He called me over."
Quentin grabs my arm. "I took a chance on you, and you made me look like a fool."
"Mommy?" Nathaniel's voice rises to me like steam.
"It's okay, sweetie." I turn to the assistant attorney general and speak through my teeth. "I will come with you," I say in an undertone. "But please have the decency to do this without traumatizing my child any more."
"I didn't speak to her," Peter yells. "You can't do this."
When Quentin turns, his eyes go as dark as plums. "I believe, Mr. Eberhardt, that the exact words you didn't speak were: 'He sounds great, Nina.' Nina. As in the name of the woman you weren't talking to.
And frankly, even if you were stupid enough to approach Ms. Frost, it was her responsibility to take her cart and walk away from you."
"Peter, it's all right." I talk fast, because I can hear the sirens outside the store already. "Get Nathaniel home to Caleb, will you?"
Then two policemen come running into the aisle, their hands on the butts of their guns. Nathaniel's eyes go wide at the show, until he realizes what they are doing. "Mommy!" he screams, as Quentin orders me to be handcuffed.
I face Nathaniel, smiling so hard my face may break. "It's fine. See? I'm fine." My hair falls out of its clip as my hands are pulled behind me. "Peter? Take him now."
"Come on, bud," Peter soothes, pulling Nathaniel out of the cart. His shoes get caught on the metal rungs, and Nathaniel starts fighting in earnest. His arms reach out to me and he starts crying so violently he begins to hiccup. "Mommeeeee!"
I am marched past the gaping shoppers, past the slack-jawed stock-boys, past the cashiers who pause in midair with their electronic scanners. The whole way, I can hear my son. His shrieks follow me through the parking lot, to the squad car. The lights are spinning on its roof. Once, long before all this, Nathaniel pointed to a cruiser in pursuit, and called it a zooming holiday.
"I'm sorry, Nina," one of the policemen says as he ducks me inside. Through the window I can see Quentin Brown, arms crossed. Orange juice, I think. Roast beef and sliced American cheese.
Asparagus, Ritz crackers, milk. Vanilla yogurt. This is my litany the whole way back to jail: the contents of my abandoned shopping cart, slowly going bad, until some kind soul has the inclination to put them back where they belong.
Caleb opens the door to find his son sobbing in Peter Eberhardt's arms. "What happened to Nina?" he immediately asks, and reaches for Nathaniel.
