Babysitter, page 4
Surprisingly, Jenny drew quickly, unhesitatingly. Then she stopped and for a moment all the new qualities of her face—the strange eyes, the foaming mouth, the angular cheeks—were masked again by Jenny’s real face.
The eight-year-old was beginning to cry. “I’m not supposed to tell anybody,” Jenny said. “Not anybody.”
Now she sounded as frightened as Ruth Peary herself had been a little bit ago.
“What aren’t you supposed to tell me?”
The low, rumbling sound came up from Jenny’s chest again. Suddenly the little girl, her mouth once more running with spittle, her eyes crazed now, jumped up from the couch and flung the steno pad in the doctor’s face.
The metal spirals of the pad caught Ruth Peary across the mouth. The pad had been flung so hard that the impact was painful enough to draw blood from the doctor’s lip.
The pad falling to her lap, Ruth Peary looked at the page Jenny had last drawn on.
She couldn’t believe what she saw there.
The sketch had been rendered with real skill, enough so that when Ruth Peary saw what the sketch depicted, she shuddered as she had shuddered few times in her life.
Sketched on the pad was two women, one clearly larger and older, and in the hand of the smaller, younger woman, was a long knife. Drops of blood ran from it and there was a huge puddle of it on the floor at the larger figure’s feet. Even without color, it was terrifyingly clear what it was. And at the bottom of the drawing was a symbol, sort of a quadruple cross with a circle around it.
The doctor looked up just in time to see that Jenny had raised one of the patient chairs over her head and was throwing it through the window.
The sound of shattering glass was incredibly loud and amazing on the soft summer air.
Then Jenny spun around and faced Ruth Peary.
Ruth Peary, unable to help herself any longer, screamed as the little girl lunged at her like an attacking animal.
Chapter Two
1
On the late afternoon air, the screams from the second floor had the impact of gunshots.
Jody, whose hand had been resting on the handle, now threw the door back and proceeded to pound up the steps two at a time, vaguely aware that David Fairbain was following her.
The screams continued, joined now by smashing sounds, as if burglars were trashing offices on the second floor.
Somehow, Jody knew with terrible certainty that the sounds could only be coming from Dr. Peary’s office. But she couldn’t guess as to what was going on.
Hot and breathless by the time she reached Dr. Peary’s door, Jody leaned her weight into turning the knob and flung the door inwards.
The reception area with its desk, couch, and Chagall prints was empty.
The furious sounds of battle and occasional screams came from the interior office. By now—and surprisingly —she had realized that the person screaming was not Jenny but Dr. Peary.
David Fairbain beat her to the second door. He flung it open, and just had time to duck as a heavy ceramic coffee mug flew out of the doorway, narrowly missing his head, and smashed into three large, jagged pieces against the jamb.
At this close range, Dr. Peary’s screams were shrill. Jody, following them like a beacon, hurried into the interior office.
The place was a ruin of smashed and overturned furniture, wallpaper stained with ink, coffee, and blood, and a large window shattered into a crystal cobweb.
In the center of the office stood Jenny. At first Jody did not recognize her. Her face was angular, her eyes somehow not the same color, and the low, guttural sounds she made unimaginable coming from an eight-year-old girl.
Behind the overturned couch, Jody found Dr. Peary. The woman looked dazed. Blood streamed down the left side of her head from a good-sized wound above her temple. She alternated sobbing with shrieking.
Near her, laid out as if ready for her coffin, was Dr. Peary’s nurse. Apparently, like the psychologist, the receptionist had been struck in the head. In the receptionist’s case, the blow had been enough to render her unconscious.
David Fairbain went over to the nurse— crawling behind the overturned couch so he would not be hit by the cups and drinking glasses Jenny was furiously dispatching—and reached the nurse. The first thing he did was lift her wrist and check her pulse. He nodded okay to Jody. Fairbain next went to Dr. Peary and took her in his arms, cradling her as he would a child.
It was left to Jody to stop Jenny.
She proceeded deeper into the office, ducking left and right as the child continued to hurl objects as various as paperweights and telephones.
She had an inappropriately funny thought as she moved closer and closer to her granddaughter: how she must have looked like Superman dodging bullets, the way he used to on the TV show of the fifties.
But there was nothing funny here. Nothing.
“Jenny,” she said.
But she had the distinct impression that she was not talking to the Jenny she knew. The Jenny she knew did not have bulging, red-streaked eyes and silver-spittle lips; nor was the Jenny she knew psychotically destructive.
Jenny hit her with the corner of a heavy book she threw. It sailed past with its white pages flapping like the wings of a game bird that had just been shot.
The blow was sufficient to stun Jody, but not enough to knock her down or draw blood.
“Jenny,” she said again.
Her answer this time was the low, animal growl she’d heard before.
Turning slightly, following Jenny’s gaze, she saw David Fairbain coming up from behind her. “We’ll both grab her,” Fairbain whispered.
But just as he said that, Jenny threw, with great force and precision, a laptop computer right at David Fairbain’s face.
The impact was enough to knock him over backwards, his arms flailing wildly, blood already streaming from his forehead.
Jody knew she didn’t have any choice now. Her plan had been to soothe and calm Jenny. That would never work. She had no idea what was going on here, but soothing and calming were not going to stop it, whatever it was.
She dove for Jenny, virtually tackling her, slamming the youngster to the floor, and then putting her weight on top of her so she couldn’t move.
“Jenny! Jenny!” Jody shouted. “Don’t you know who I am? I’m your grandmother!”
Once more, the grumbling sound came from within the child’s chest.
At the sound, Jody felt goose bumps cover her body as if she were in ice.
Jenny’s fingers were like talons on Jody’s cheek. She drew a tiny line of blood at once and tried to dig more deeply but Jody jerked her head away.
David Fairbain, appearing as if from nowhere, knelt next to the girl now and pinioned her arms on either side of her head. Jenny cursed and lashed her legs out at the air, trying to get out from under their grasp. Her eyes had clouded over to a milky blue color, one that Jody could not bear to see.
Almost at once, and for no reason that Jody could understand, Jenny stopped.
Just like that.
For a horrible moment, Jody had the impression that perhaps the eight-year-old had suffered a fatal heart attack.
Quickly, Jody put her head to Jenny’s chest. The heartbeat was there, but faint.
“Do you know a doctor to call?” she said to David Fairbain. She was half-aware that she was shrieking.
David got up and tried to put the phone back together. Jenny had torn it into several parts.
“I’ll have to use the receptionist’s phone,” David said, and disappeared.
Jody stayed there with Jenny. Behind the couch, Dr. Peary and her assistant were moaning and getting to their feet.
2
An hour later, a doctor named Fred Cummins finished examining Jenny. He gave her a sedative that put her quickly to sleep. David Fairbain lifted the girl in his arms and then took her down to the car, where he laid her gently on the back seat of Jody’s Buick SUV.
Jody stayed in the shambles of the office, talking with Ruth Peary, who looked as if she were in need of a sedative herself.
Jody felt embarrassed for all of them—herself included —but even more she felt a desperate need to understand what could have caused her granddaughter to behave this way.
Dr. Cummins, a paunchy man in a tan summer-weight suit grown too small for him, stood with the two women as Ruth Peary recounted her session with Jenny.
“She started making these—sounds,” Ruth Peary said, obviously still shaken by it all.
They stood in the receptionist’s office. There was no place to sit. All the furniture had been destroyed.
“In her chest?” Jody asked, recalling the peculiar noises Jenny had made as Jody had tried to approach her. Ruth Peary nodded.
Dr. Cummins, who constantly adjusted his eyeglasses, said, “What brought on the violence?”
Ruth Peary shrugged. “I just asked her what was troubling her.”
“And she didn’t say?” Dr. Cummins asked.
“Not really. Just that something happened the other night.” Now the psychologist looked at Jody. “Has she said anything at all to you? Given any hint?”
Jody shook her head. “No. Nothing.” She felt hollowed out. A certain deadness came over her as she looked once more around the two offices and the destruction an eight-year-old girl had visited on them. Could Jenny really have done this? Her own little granddaughter?
Dr. Cummins said, “I’d at least give some consideration to putting her in the hospital temporarily. St. Ignatius has a very good third floor.”
Jody turned back to the doctor, understanding and half-resenting the unspoken implication of his words. “Third floor,” of course, was code for mental hospital. Many hospitals had them but somehow they were never called that. Instead they were referred to as “special wings” or “third floors.” Jody was familiar with the parlance because of all she’d gone through with her daughter Sam over the past few years. Cocaine addicts often ended up on the third floor.
Jody said, “What do you think about that, Ruth?”
Ruth Peary sighed. “To be honest, Jody, I’m afraid of what’s going to happen when she comes out of the sedative. She’s very disturbed. Much more so than I thought initially.”
To Dr. Cummins, Jody said, “Can you give me some kind of oral sedatives?”
Dr. Cummins touched a pudgy hand to his gray, carefully sprayed hair. “I suppose I could. If you feel adequate to—”
“She’s my granddaughter.”
Dr. Cummins grimaced. “You’re getting defensive here, and there’s no need to. We’re just trying to help Jenny.”
“I’m not sure that putting her in a hospital is the first solution we should try,” Jody said. “I assume she’d feel a lot better waking up in familiar surroundings than in a strange room with nurses all over the place.”
Ruth Peary patted Jody’s hand gently. “I think she’s right, Dr. Cummins. Maybe we should try to keep her at home if at all possible. Jody can bring her back in a day or so, and we can try to talk again. Sedatives should help us work through our session without—” She glanced around the room. It was a depressing sight.
Dr. Cummins went over to an end table and righted it. “What if she gets destructive again?” he asked Jody. “Are you going to be able to handle it?”
“I think so,” Jody said. But obviously there was some hesitancy in her voice.
Dr. Cummins remained skeptical. “I can see you love your granddaughter, but shouldn’t you be consulting her mother on this decision?”
“Her mother is—indisposed,” Jody said.
Dr. Cummins glanced at Ruth Peary. “I see.” Then, “Do you still think it’s worth a chance, Dr. Peary---sending Jenny home, I mean?”
Ruth nodded.
Dr. Cummins, who obviously did not agree, sighed. “I’ll write you a prescription for two different kinds of medicine. If anything should keep her calm, these should. But you’ll have to watch for side effects—rashes on her arms or sores in her mouth. If either of these develop, let me know, and we’ll try something else.” Dr. Cummins’s manner was growing more cordial now that the final decision had been made.
“Thank you, Doctor.”
“Also, if you wouldn’t mind, I’d like to speak with Dr. Peary alone for a moment.”
“Of course.” Jody looked into the inner office. “I’ll just go in there and start trying to pick things up.”
Dr. Cummins nodded.
Five minutes later, when Jody had finished putting all the furniture back on its legs and had picked up much of the broken glass and smashed office items, she saw that only the smaller things had been broken. The furniture was mostly intact. The check she would have to write Ruth Peary would not be as much as she’d first feared. Jody did not exactly have cash to burn.
She was just putting a chair back in place when the spiral notebook fell from inside the overturned chair to the floor.
A cold jolt of recognition rocked Jody as she gazed down at the unmistakable pencil drawing on the page the notepad was turned to.
Almost reluctantly, she knelt down and picked the pad up, flipping through the pages at once. There were other drawings, but none of any particular interest. She flipped back to the last page.
Just then Ruth Peary came into the office.
“Well,” she said, smiling. “This doesn’t look bad at all. Thanks so much, Jody.”
Jody nodded. “I’d appreciate it if you’d add up the damages and let me know what I should make the check out for.”
Ruth Peary leaned in and gave her a small hug. “I’m sorry this is all coming down on your shoulders.”
Jody, clear-eyed, her voice almost without emotion, said, “Penance.”
“Penance?”
Jody sighed. “I wasn’t a very good mother—just as Sam’s real father and stepfather weren’t very good fathers. Between the three of us we managed to raise a very beautiful but very insecure young woman who as yet hasn’t been able to cope with the fact that she’s now a mother herself.” Another sigh. “So it’s now my duty—my penance, if you will—to step in and take over with both my daughter and granddaughter.” She laughed. “It took me forty-nine years to grow up. It’s about time, don’t you think?” She pointed to the couch on which Ruth Peary’s patients sat. “I probably should come and see you myself.”
“You know something?”
“What?”
“I’d like that.” Ruth Peary held up a halting hand. “And I don’t mean professionally, either, though we might get around to discussing your past sometime, I suppose.” She tried a small smile that was devoid of humor. “The fact is, I’m in need of a friend myself at the moment. I’m trying to get out of a relationship with one of those men who just can’t make a commitment and—”
Jody said, “Believe me, I’ve been there, Ruth. My second husband was like that. He had a mistress and he kept going back and forth between us. He just couldn’t decide which of us he liked better—the nubile young coed or his rapidly aging wife.”
“But you’re beautiful,” Ruth Peary protested.
“Perhaps. But I was also over forty and had little laugh lines around my mouth and eyes, and all that seemed to bother my husband a great deal. He was just one of those men whose ego needed constant reinforcement.” She smiled. “A lot of times when we’d take Sam out—when she was in her late teens, I mean—he’d always walk closer to her, so people would think she was his woman and not me.”
“That’s pretty sad.”
Jody smiled and not without bitterness. “If you knew Ken, you’d also know it was pretty funny. He was twenty pounds overweight and completely bald.”
“But in his mind,” Ruth Peary said, “he was Robert Redford.”
“Exactly.” Then her eyes fell to the notepad and she said, “I’d like to ask you where this came from.”
“Jenny drew it.”
“I was afraid you’d say that.”
“Sometimes I have patients draw out their word association subjects. I said the word fear to Jenny and this was what she drew.”
“Did she say anything else about it?”
“No.” Ruth Peary thought a moment. “She had just finished saying that she wasn’t supposed to talk about what had happened the other night. Then she drew this and—” Ruth Peary shook her head, obviously remembering Jenny’s sudden and terrifying violence. “Then she got up and lunged at me. I got behind the desk. I felt very foolish for a second. I’m supposed to be the adult and in charge of all the situations in this office—yet there I was hiding from an eight-year-old girl.”
“I would have been hiding, too, believe me.”
Ruth Peary touched the notepad. “Do you know what that represents?”
The page she referred to depicted one woman stabbing the other. The blood and the symbol at the bottom were new, but it was basically the same scene Jody had witnessed herself, all those years ago.
“I’m afraid I do, yes. But I can’t quite believe it.” She paused. “And I’d like to talk to Jenny some more before I go into any more detail. If you don’t mind.”
Ruth Peary seemed vaguely disappointed, but she put on her best professional face and said, “No, that’s fine. Whenever you’re ready to talk, so am I.”
Jody looked up from the pad. “Do you have any clinical sense of what’s going on with Jenny?”
“I wish I did.”
“Can you make any guess as to how she’ll act when she comes out of the sedative?”
“If you keep her on the medication Dr. Cummins prescribed, I don’t think you’ll have too much trouble. The dosage of Xanax he gave her, for instance, will keep her asleep much of the time.”
Jody’s eyes fell to the pad again. As she looked at the hideous drawing and felt all the memories it evoked in her, she said, “Have you ever seen any other young patient behave this way in Winthrop before?”
“Why are you limiting it to Winthrop?”
Jody tapped the notebook and sighed. “I know what this drawing represents.”
