The clock has not moved. Not even a second, I'd swear it.
"Tell me about your son," Adrienne says when she sees me looking down the hallway again. "I always wanted to have me one of them. "
"I would have figured you'd want a girl."
"Honey, us ladies, we're high maintenance. A boy, you know exactly what you're getting."
I try to think of the best way to describe Nathaniel. It is like trying to hold the ocean in a paper cup.
How do I explain a boy who eats his food color by color; who wakes me in the middle of the night with a burning need to know why we breathe oxygen instead of water; who took apart a microcassette recorder to find his voice, trapped inside? I know my son so well, I surprise myself-there are too many words to choose from.
"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 l-L-Y combination that means / 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."
