EIGHT
These are the things he takes: his Yomega Brain yo-yo; the starfish arm he found on a beach. His Bravest Boy ribbon, a flashlight, a Batman trading card. Seventy-six pennies, two dimes, and a Canadian quarter. A granola bar and a bag of jellybeans left over from Easter. They are treasures he brought with him when he moved to the motel with his father; he cannot leave them behind now. Everything fits in the white pillowcase and thumps lightly against Nathaniel’s stomach when he zips it up inside his coat.
“You all set?” his father asks, the words lobbed like a stick into a field and forgotten. Nathaniel wonders why he’s even bothered to try to keep this a secret, when his dad is too busy to notice him anyway. He climbs into the passenger seat of the truck and fastens the seat belt—then on second thought, unlatches it.
If he’s going to be really bad, he might as well start now.
Once, the man at the cleaner’s offered to take Nathaniel to see where the big moving millipede of pressed clothes began. His dad had lifted him over the counter and he’d followed Mr. Sarni into the way back, where the clothes were being cleaned. The air was so heavy and wet that Nathaniel wheezed as he pushed the big red button; started the conveyor of hangers chugging in its loop again. The air in the courthouse, it reminds Nathaniel of that. Maybe it’s not as hot here, or as sticky, but it is hard to breathe all the same.
When his dad brings him to the playroom downstairs with Monica, they speak in marshmallow bites of words that they think Nathaniel cannot hear. He does not know what a hostile witness is, or juror bias. But when his father talks the lines on his face appear on Monica’s, like it is a mirror.
“Nathaniel,” she says, fake-bright, as soon as his dad goes upstairs. “Let’s take off that coat.”
“I’m cold,” he lies, and he hugs his pack against his middle.
She is careful to never touch Nathaniel, and he wonders if that’s because Monica has the X-ray vision to see how dirty he is on the inside. She looks at him when she thinks he doesn’t see, and her eyes are as deep as a pond. His mom stares at him with the same expression. It is all because of Father Gwynne; Nathaniel wishes just once someone would come up to him and think of him as some kid, instead of The One This Happened To.
What Father Gwynne did was wrong—Nathaniel knew it then, from the way his skin shivered; and he knows it now, from talking to Dr. Robichaud and Monica. They have said over and over that it isn’t Nathaniel’s fault. But that doesn’t keep him from turning around sometimes, really fast, sure that he’s felt someone’s breath on his neck. And it doesn’t keep him from wondering if he cut himself open at the belly, like his father does when he catches a trout, would he find that black knot that hurts all the time?
“So, how are we doing this morning?” Fisher asks, as soon as I sit down beside him.
“Shouldn’t you know that?” I watch the clerk set a stack of files on the judge’s bench. The jury box, without its members, looks cavernous.
Fisher pats my shoulder. “It’s our turn,” he assures me. “I’m going to spend the whole day making the jurors forget what Brown told them.”
I turn to him. “The witnesses—”
“—will do a good job. Trust me, Nina. By lunchtime, everyone in this court is going to think you were crazy.”
As the side door opens and the jury files in, I look away and wonder how to tell Fisher that’s not what I want, after all.
· · ·
“I have to pee,” Nathaniel announces.
“Okay.” Monica puts down the book she has been reading to him and stands up, waiting for Nathaniel to follow her to the door. They walk down the hall together to the restrooms. Nathaniel’s mother doesn’t let him in the boy’s room by himself, but it’s okay here, because there’s only one potty and Monica can check before he goes inside. “Wash your hands,” she reminds him, and she pushes open the door so Nathaniel can go inside.
Nathaniel sits on the cold seat of the toilet to muddle it all out. He let Father Gwynne do all those things—and it was bad. He was bad; but he didn’t get punished. In fact, ever since he was so bad, everyone’s been paying extra attention to Nathaniel, and being extra nice.
His mother did something really bad, too—because, she said, it was the best way to fix what happened.
Nathaniel tries to make sense of all this, but the truths are too tangled in his head. All he knows is that for whatever reason, the world is upside-down. People are breaking rules like crazy—and instead of getting into trouble, it’s the only way to make things right again.
He pulls up his pants, cinches the bottom of his jacket, and flushes. Then he closes the lid and climbs from the tank to the toilet tissue holder to the little ledge up high. The window there is tiny, only for fancy, because this is a basement floor. But Nathaniel can open it and he’s small enough to slip through.
He finds himself behind the courthouse, in one of the window wells. Nobody notices a kid his size. Nathaniel skirts the trucks and vans in the parking lot, crosses the frozen lawn. He starts walking aimlessly down the highway, not holding an adult’s hand, intent on running away. Three bad things, he thinks, all at once.
“Dr. O’Brien,” Fisher asks, “when did Mrs. Frost first come to your office?”
“On December twelfth.” At ease on the stand—as he should be, for all the testimony he’s given in his career—the psychiatrist relaxes in the witness chair. With the silver hair at his temples and his casual pose, he looks like he could be Fisher’s brother.
“What materials had you received before you met with her?”
“An introductory letter from you, a copy of the police report, the videotape taken by WCSH-TV, and the psychiatric report prepared by Dr. Storrow, the state’s psychiatrist, who had examined her two weeks earlier.”
“How long did you meet with Mrs. Frost that first day?”
“An hour.”
“What was her state of mind when you met?”
“The focus of the conversation was on her son. She was very concerned about his safety,” O’Brien says. “Her child had been rendered mute; she was frantic with worry; she was feeling guilt as a working mother who hadn’t been around enough to see what had been going on. Moreover, her specialized knowledge of the court system made her aware of the effects of molestation on children … and more anxious about her son’s ability to survive the legal process without significant trauma. After considering the circumstances that led Mrs. Frost to my office, as well as meeting with her in person, I concluded that she was a classic example of someone suffering from post-traumatic stress disorder.”
“How might that have affected her mental stability on the morning of October thirtieth?”
O’Brien leans forward to address the jury. “Mrs. Frost knew she was heading to court to face her son’s abuser. She believed wholeheartedly that her son was permanently scarred by the event. She believed that testifying—as a witness, or even at a competency hearing—would be devastating to the child. Finally, she believed that the abuser would eventually be acquitted. All this was going through her mind, and as she drove to the courthouse, she became more and more agitated—and less and less herself—until she finally snapped. By the moment she put the gun to Father Szyszynski’s head, she could not consciously stop herself from shooting him—it was an involuntary reflex.”
The jury was listening, at least; some of them were brave enough to sneak glances at me. I tried for an expression that fell somewhere between Contrite and Shattered.
“Doctor, when was the last time you saw Mrs. Frost?”
“A week ago.” O’Brien smiles kindly at me. “She feels more capable of protecting her son now, and she understands that her means of doing it was not right. In fact, she is filled with remorse for her previous actions.”
“Does Mrs. Frost still suffer from post-traumatic stress disorder?”
“PTSD isn’t like chicken pox, which can be cured forever. In my opinion, however, Mrs. Frost is at a point where she understands her own feelings and thoughts and can keep herself from letting them overwhelm her. With subsequent outpatient therapy, I believe she will function quite normally.”
This lie cost Fisher, and therefore me, two thousand dollars. But it is worth it: Several members of the jury are nodding. Maybe honesty is overvalued. What’s truly priceless is picking out from a stream of falsehoods the ones you most need to hear.
Nathaniel’s feet hurt, and his toes are frozen in his boots. His mittens are in the playroom, so the tips of his fingers have turned pink, even buried in the pockets of his jacket. When he counts out loud, just to have something to do, the numbers hang in front of him, curled in the cold.
Because he knows better, he climbs over the guardrail and runs into the middle of the highway. A bus zooms by, its horn flaring as it swerves into the distance.
Nathaniel spreads his arms for balance, and begins to walk the tight-rope of the dotted line.
“Dr. O’Brien,” Quentin Brown says. “You believe Mrs. Frost feels capable of protecting her son now?”
“Yes, I do.”
“So who’s she going to pull a gun on next?”
The psychiatrist shifts in the chair. “I don’t believe she’ll go to that extreme.”
The prosecutor purses his lips, considering. “Maybe not now. But what about in two months … two years? Some kid on the playground threatens her son. Or a teacher looks at him the wrong way. Is she going to spend the rest of her life playing Dirty Harry?”
O’Brien raises a brow. “Mr. Brown, this wasn’t a situation where someone looked at her son the wrong way. He had been sexually molested. She believed that she knew beyond a reasonable doubt who’d done it. I also understand that the individual who was eventually identified as the real perpetrator has since died of natural causes, so she certainly no longer has an alleged vendetta to fulfill.”
“Doctor, you reviewed the state psychiatrist’s report. Isn’t it true that you reached the exact opposite conclusion that he did, regarding Mrs. Frost’s mental state? That he not only deemed her competent to stand trial but also believed she was sane at the time of the offense?”
“Yes, Dr. Storrow did indicate that. But this is the first evaluation he’s done for a court. On the other hand, I’ve been a forensic psychiatrist for over forty years.”
“And you don’t come cheap, do you?” Brown says. “Isn’t the defense paying you for your testimony today?”
“My fee is two thousand dollars per day, plus expenses,” O’Brien answers, shrugging.
There is a stir in the back of the courtroom. “Doctor, I believe you used the words ‘she finally snapped.’ Is that correct?”
“That’s not the clinical term, of course, but it’s the way I would describe it in conversation.”
“Did she snap before or after she drove to the gun store?” Brown asks.
“Clearly, that was part of her continuing mental decline …”
“Did she snap before or after she loaded six rounds into a nine millimeter semiautomatic handgun?”
“As I said earlier, that would be part—”
“Did she snap before or after she slipped past the metal detector, knowing the bailiff wouldn’t stop her?”
“Mr. Brown—”
“And, Doctor, did she snap before or after she very carefully aimed at one person and only one person’s head in a crowded courtroom?”
O’Brien’s mouth flattens. “As I told the court before, at that point Mrs. Frost had no control over her actions. She could no more stop herself from shooting the priest than she could stop herself from breathing.”
“She sure managed to stop someone else from breathing, though, didn’t she?” Brown crosses toward the jury box. “You’re an expert on post-traumatic stress disorder, aren’t you?”
“I’m considered to be rather knowledgeable in the field, yes.”
“And PTSD is triggered by a traumatic event?”
“That’s correct.”
“You first met Mrs. Frost after Father Szyszynski’s death?”
“Yes.”
“And,” Brown says, “you believe that it was the molestation of Mrs. Frost’s son that triggered her PTSD?”
“Yes.”
“How do you know it wasn’t shooting the priest?”
“It’s possible,” O’Brien concedes. “It’s just that the other trauma came first.”
“Isn’t it true that Vietnam veterans can be plagued by PTSD their whole lives? That thirty years later these men still wake up with nightmares?”
“Yes.”
“Then you can’t, with any degree of scientific certainty, tell this jury that the defendant is over the illness that—in your words—caused her to snap?”
More raised voices from the rear of the courtroom. I focus my attention forward.
“I doubt that Mrs. Frost will ever completely forget the events of the past few months,” O’Brien says diplomatically. “However, in my personal opinion, she is not dangerous now … nor will she be dangerous in the future.”
“Then again, Doctor,” Brown says, “you’re not wearing a white collar.”
“Please,” a familiar voice shouts, and then Monica shoves away from the bailiff restraining her and runs up the central aisle of the courtroom. Alone. She crouches down beside Caleb. “It’s Nathaniel,” she sobs. “He’s gone missing.”
The judge grants a recess, and the bailiffs in the courtroom are sent to look for Nathaniel. Patrick calls in the county sheriff and the state police. Caleb drives off, too, and Fisher volunteers to appease the frenzy of media that’s caught wind of a new problem.
I can’t go, because I am still wearing that fucking electronic bracelet.
I think of Nathaniel, kidnapped. Of him wandering into the boxcar of an old train and freezing to death. Of the ship where he might stow away when no one is looking. He could travel the world, and I would still be imprisoned by these four walls.
“He told me he had to go to the bathroom,” Monica says tearfully. We wait in the lobby, which has been emptied of reporters. I know she wants absolution, but I’ll be damned if I am going to give it to her. “I thought maybe he was feeling sick, because it was taking so long. But when I went in, that window was open.” She grabs my sleeve. “I don’t think he was taken by anyone, Nina. I think he just did this for the attention.”
“Monica.” I am holding onto the thinnest filament of control. I remind myself that she could not have known what Nathaniel would do. That nobody is perfect; and that I had not protected him any better, apparently, than she could. But still.
Irony: I will be acquitted, and my son will be gone.
Out of a crowd of cries, I have always been able to hear Nathaniel’s. As an infant; on a playground full of children; even with my eyes closed, playing Marco Polo in the shallow end of a pool. Maybe if I cry loud enough, now, Nathaniel will be able to hear me.
Two bright circles of color have appeared on Monica’s cheeks. “What can I do?” she whispers.
“Bring him back.” Then I walk away, because guilt is not only contagious but also deadly.
Caleb watches the police speed away in their cruisers, the lights flashing. Maybe they’ll attract Nathaniel; maybe not. He knows one thing—these officers have forgotten what it is like to be five. To this end, he puts his back up against the window that leads into the basement bathroom. He kneels, until he is Nathaniel’s height. Then he squints, taking into account everything that might capture his attention.
A clump of matted bushes, bare and shaking. An umbrella, turned inside out by the wind and discarded. A handicapped ramp painted with yellow zigzagged lines.
“Mr. Frost.” The deep voice startles Caleb. He gets to his feet and turns to find the prosecutor standing there, shoulders hunched against the cold.
When Monica ran into the courtroom to deliver the bad news, Fisher Carrington took one look at Nina’s face and requested a recess. Brown, on the other hand, stood up and asked the judge if this might not be a ploy for sympathy. “For all we know,” he said, “the boy is safe and sound in a conference room upstairs.”
It didn’t take him long to realize his tactical error, as the jury watched Nina become hysterical. But all the same, he is the last person Caleb expects to see out here.
“I just wanted to tell you,” Brown says now, “if there’s anything I can do …”
He lets his sentence trail off. “You can do something, all right,” Caleb replies. Both men know what it is; know it has nothing to do with Nathaniel.
The prosecutor nods and walks inside. Caleb gets down on his knees again. He begins to move in a spiral around the court building, like the way he lays stone in a round patio—widening his circles so that he leaves out no space and maintains the arc of the ring. He does this as he does everything—slowly and tenaciously—until he is certain that he’s seeing the world through the eyes of his son.
On the other side of the highway is a steep hill that Nathaniel slides down on his bottom. His pants snag on a branch and rip and it doesn’t matter, because no one will punish him. He steps in melting puddles of icy water and through the ragged seam of the treeline, where he walks until he stumbles over a piece of the forest that has been left out by mistake.
It is the size of his bed at home and has been flattened by the tracks of animals. Nathaniel sits down on a log at the edge and pulls his pillowcase out from inside his coat. He takes out his granola bar and eats halfway, then decides to save the rest. He turns on his flashlight and holds it up to his palm so that the back of his hand glows red.
When the deer come, Nathaniel holds his breath. He remembers what his father told him—they are more afraid of us than we are afraid of them. The big one, a doe, has a coat the color of caramels and tiny high-heeled hoofs. Her baby looks the same, with white spots on her back, as if she has not been colored in the whole way. They bend their long throats to the ground, pushing through the snow with their noses.
It is the mother deer who finds the grass. Just a tuft, hardly a bite. But instead of eating it she shoves the fawn closer. She watches the baby eat, although it means she herself will get nothing.
It makes Nathaniel want to give her the other half of his granola bar.
But the minute he reaches into his pillowcase the heads of the deer jerk up, and they leap from all four feet, their tails white sails as they disappear farther into the woods.
Nathaniel examines the rip on the back of his pants; the muddy tops of his boots. He places the half of the granola bar on the log, in case the deer come back. Then he gets up and slowly heads back toward the road.
Patrick has canvassed a one-mile square around the courthouse, certain that Nathaniel left of his own free will, and even more certain that the kid couldn’t have gotten much farther. He picks up his radio to place a call to the Alfred dispatch, asking if anyone’s found anything yet, when a movement at the side of the road strikes his eye. As he watches, a quarter mile up the road, Nathaniel crawls over the iron horse of the guardrail and starts walking along the shoulder of the highway.
“I’ll be damned,” Patrick breathes, pulling his truck forward slightly. It looks like Nathaniel knows exactly where he is going; from this spot, even someone as small as Weed would be able to see the high roof of the courthouse. But the boy can’t see what Patrick can, from the high cab of his truck—Caleb, coming closer on the opposite side of the road.
He watches Nathaniel look right and then left, and Patrick realizes what he is planning to do. Sticking his flashing magnetic light on the roof of the truck, Patrick hurriedly swerves to block traffic. He gets out and clears the way, so that by the time Nathaniel sees his father waiting, he can run across the highway and into Caleb’s arms safely.
“Don’t do that again,” I say into Nathaniel’s soft neck, holding him close to me. “Ever. Do you hear me?”
He pulls back, puts his palms on my cheeks. “Are you mad at me?”
“No. Yes. I will be, anyway, when I’m done being so happy.” I hug him tighter. “What were you thinking?”
“That I’m bad,” he says flatly.
Over Nathaniel’s head, I meet Caleb’s eyes. “No you’re not, sweetheart. Running away, that wasn’t good. You could have been hurt; and you worried me and Daddy like you can’t believe.” I hesitate, picking my words. “But you can do a bad thing and not be a bad person.”
“Like Father Gwynne?”
I freeze. “Actually, no. He did a bad thing, and he was a bad person.”
Nathaniel looks up at me. “What about you?”
· · ·
Shortly after Dr. Robichaud, Nathaniel’s psychiatrist, takes the stand, Quentin Brown is on his feet to object. “Your Honor, what does this witness have to offer?”
“Judge, this goes to my client’s state of mind,” Fisher argues. “The information she received from Dr. Robichaud regarding her son’s declining condition was highly relevant to her mental status on October thirtieth.”
“I’ll allow it,” Judge Neal rules.
“Doctor, have you treated other children who were rendered mute after sexual abuse?” Fisher asks.
“Yes, unfortunately.”
“In some of these cases, do children never regain their voices?”
“It can take years.”
“Did you have any way of knowing whether this would be a long-term condition for Nathaniel Frost?”
“No,” Dr. Robichaud says. “In fact, that was why I began to teach him rudimentary sign language. He was becoming frustrated with his inability to communicate.”
“Did it help?”
“For a while,” the psychiatrist admits. “Then he began talking again.”
“Was the progress steady?”
“No. It broke down when Nathaniel lost contact with Mrs. Frost for a week.”
“Do you know why?”
“I understood she was charged with violating her bail conditions and was imprisoned.”
“Did you see Nathaniel during the week that his mother was in jail?”
“Yes, I did. Mr. Frost brought him in, quite upset that the child was no longer speaking. He’d regressed to the point where all he would sign for was his mother.”
“In your opinion, what caused that regression?”
“Clearly, it was the sudden and prolonged separation from Mrs. Frost,” Dr. Robichaud says.
“How did Nathaniel’s condition change when his mother was released again?”
“He cried out for her.” The psychiatrist smiles. “A joyful noise.”
“And, Doctor, were he to undergo a sudden and prolonged separation from his mother again … what do you think the likely outcome would be for Nathaniel?”
“Objection!” Quentin calls.
“Withdrawn.”
Moments later, the prosecutor stands up to cross-examine. “In dealing with five-year-olds, Doctor, don’t you find that they often become confused about events?”
“Absolutely. That’s why courts have competency hearings, Mr. Brown.”
At the very mention, Judge Neal gives him a warning glance. “Dr. Robichaud, in your experience, court cases of this type take several months to several years to come to trial, don’t they?”
“Yes.”
“And the developmental difference between a five-year-old and a seven-year-old is significant, isn’t it?”
“Definitely.”
“In fact, haven’t you treated children who seemed like they might have trouble testifying when they first came to you … yet a year or two later—after therapy and time had healed them a bit—they were able to take the stand without a setback?”
“Yes.”
“Isn’t it true that you have no way of predicting whether Nathaniel would have been able to testify a few years from now without it causing significant psychological harm?”
“No, there’s no way to say what might have happened in the future.”
Quentin turns toward me. “As a prosecutor, Mrs. Frost would certainly be aware of this time lag for court appearances, don’t you think?”