The Perfect Child

by Berry, Lucinda

  I listened as Hannah described all the articles she’d read about getting an only child a pet to help with new-baby jealousy and ease the transition. She was fixated on a story from one of her favorite mommy bloggers, because her daughter was the same age as Janie, and they were only a few months ahead of us on the journey.

  “They got her a dog, and it worked wonders for everything she was going through. Isn’t that amazing?” she asked without waiting for me to respond. She’d already told me the story twice, but I let her tell it a third time since she was so excited about it. “Her jealousy disappeared almost right away because she had something special to take care of that was all hers. I think it really might help Janie if we got her a pet. What do you think?” This time she paused and waited for an answer.

  I could tell she already had her mind set on the idea, but I wasn’t so sure. “How about we get her a goldfish?” I asked. Unlike her, I wasn’t so keen on adding another being to take care of to our list.

  Hannah burst out laughing. “A goldfish? What is she going to do with a goldfish? Just sit and stare at it while it swims in a bowl? That will last all of two minutes before she’s bored with it. We need to get her something that she can take care of. Something new that’s just for her. What about a cat?”

  I frowned. “I’m not really a cat person.”

  She punched me in the arm playfully. “We’re not getting the cat for you. We’re getting it for her. Think about it. They’re easy to train. You don’t have to worry about any of the house-training stuff; just plop them in the litter box, and it’s done. It’ll be something she can sleep with. I think she’ll love it.”

  “As long as I don’t have to sleep with it.” I smiled.

  That weekend we trekked to Petco for their kitten adoptions. We didn’t tell Janie where we were going or what we were doing because we wanted to surprise her.

  “I don’t wanna go shopping,” she whined when we pulled into the mall parking lot.

  “Just wait,” I said, opening her door. “You’re going to like it.”

  “I hate shopping,” she said with a scowl, but she got out of the car and followed us inside.

  There was a line wrapped all the way through the store. Apparently, everyone had had the same idea as us.

  “Wow,” I said. “Why don’t I grab a number and wait in line while you take a look around? I bet Janie would love to see the turtles in the back. What do you say—you want to see the turtles?”

  “Turtles! Turtles!” Janie squealed.

  They skipped off while I waited in line. The line went much faster than I had thought it would. Most people just wanted to cuddle and play with the kittens, but they weren’t interested in taking one home. I texted Hannah when I was close to the front. They scurried from the back of the store to join me.

  “We saw turtles and snakes and puppies! Can we get a puppy? Please, can we get a puppy?” Janie bounced up and down.

  I smiled down at her. “You can’t get a puppy. Not today. But . . .”

  “No puppy?” Her eyes filled with tears. “I want a puppy.”

  “How about a new baby kitty?” I asked.

  Her tears instantly disappeared. “A kitty? I love kitties! I can get a kitty?”

  “You can,” I said, ruffling her hair.

  She stood on her tiptoes, trying to see inside the room where they had the cats. Hannah lifted her up to give her a better look.

  “Kitties! I see them! Look, Mommy, look. There’s kitties.” She pointed to the kittens tumbling over each other in the separate crates. They were so tiny and cute. My heart swelled like it did every time she got excited. I loved experiencing the world through her eyes.

  “I see them too. It’s almost our turn,” I said.

  It was only a couple more minutes before they called our number, and we stepped inside the room. There were four different litters. Janie immediately went to the litter closest to the door and started picking each kitten up. She held them up one at a time and looked in their eyes. “Nope,” she’d say and then drop the kitten back in the bin before picking up the next one. She picked up one of the black ones with a tiny white spot on the end of its tail. “This one. I want this one.”

  “Are you sure that’s the one you want? You don’t want to look at any of the other kittens?” I asked. There were three more crates filled with kittens.

  “Nope. This one. This is the one I want.” She cuddled it against her chest.

  I looked at Hannah and shrugged. She smiled back at me.

  Janie and I went through the rest of the store and gathered the supplies we’d need for the kitten while Hannah filled out the adoption paperwork. Janie held the kitten while we shopped and ran through a list of names, changing her mind every three seconds until she settled on Blue.

  “Blue. Yep. Her name is going to be Blue,” she announced proudly.

  “How come Blue?” I asked.

  She held her out for me to see. “Her eyes are blue just like me.”

  She carried Blue on her lap during the drive home, and I’d never seen her look so happy. She was fascinated by Blue, even when she was trying to jump out of Janie’s hands because Blue was terrified of the car. I made sure Hannah carried Blue inside, though, because I was afraid she might freak out and jump out of Janie’s arms when we stepped out of the car.

  Janie spent the rest of the afternoon chasing Blue around the house. I couldn’t stop snapping pictures because the two of them were so adorable together.

  “It was a great idea,” I whispered to Hannah as we watched the two of them together cuddled up on the couch. Blue had fallen asleep on Janie’s lap.

  “And she didn’t get in trouble all day,” Hannah whispered back.

  Later that night, Janie and Blue were playing in her bedroom when suddenly we heard awful squealing sounds. We rushed into her room. Janie was sitting on her rug. Pathetic meows came from underneath her bed.

  “Where’s Blue?” Hannah asked.

  She looked up at us. “She ran away under my bed.”

  Hannah was too big to bend over and look under the bed, so I ducked down and lay flat. Blue cowered in the far corner. She scurried away every time my hand got close to her and wouldn’t stop whimpering. I finally coaxed her forward and pulled her out. Her entire body shook like she was freezing. I went to hand her to Janie, and Blue arched her back, hissing at her.

  “That’s weird,” I said, looking down. There were bright-red spots on my hands. “What is this?”

  “Let me see her,” Hannah said.

  I went over to Hannah, who touched her carefully. Blue was still shaking. Parts of her fur were sticky.

  “She’s bleeding,” Hannah said. “Janie, what happened?”

  Janie held up a safety pin. “I poked Blue.”

  Hannah’s mouth dropped open. “You what?”

  “I poked her. I wanted to see if she’d bleed.” Janie looked back and forth between us, gauging by our faces that she’d done something wrong.

  Hannah’s face paled.

  “You wanted to see if she’d bleed,” I repeated robotically.

  “Yep. And she did. Red. Can I hold her now?” she asked.

  I held her close to my body, afraid to give her back. “I’m having a turn.”

  Hannah struggled to regain her composure. She took a seat next to her on the bed, and Janie crawled up on her lap. “You can’t hurt Blue. It hurts the kitten when you poke her. Do you understand?”

  She nodded. “No poking the kitty.”

  “That’s right. Don’t do that again.”

  CASE #5243

  INTERVIEW:

  PIPER GOLDSTEIN

  Ron found the story of Janie poking Blue deeply unsettling. He hadn’t shown any emotion during all the other questioning, even when we’d looked at the crime scene photos in the trailer, and they were brutal. But something about her hurting animals really got to him.

  “Isn’t hurting animals a sign of a sociopath?” he asked, rearranging his face
to look unbothered.

  “It’s one of the signs, but other things have to be present too,” I said.

  “And none of those things were present?” Luke asked. He wasn’t nearly as moved by the Blue story. He was actually starting to look bored. I couldn’t blame him. It felt like we’d been in this room for days going round and round in the same circles.

  “It’s not my area of specialization, and I don’t like to comment on things outside my area of expertise,” I said just like my supervisor had instructed me to. It’s what they’d made us say to the reporters, too, when they’d asked. The police weren’t the only ones asking questions.

  “But you’ve got to at least have an opinion. Everyone has an opinion. What do you think was going on with Janie?” he asked.

  “She was a little girl who’d been hurt badly, and she hurt other people. It always seemed that simple to me,” I said.

  Luke set down his file and peered at me from across the table. “But it wasn’t that simple, was it?”

  THIRTY-THREE

  CHRISTOPHER BAUER

  We scheduled an emergency session with Dr. Chandler after the incident with Blue. She listened attentively as we told her the story, then asked us to wait while she stepped into her reception area. She carried papers on clipboards when she came back in the room and handed each of us a pen.

  “I want you to take a minute and fill these out,” she instructed.

  I settled on the floor, and Hannah tried to arrange her body on one of the huge beanbag chairs. She was so pregnant that it looked painful. I skimmed through the paperwork. There were thirty questions about Janie’s behavior. We had to read each statement and circle the number that best described her on a scale of one to five. The questionnaire was filled with statements like “my child acts cute and charms others to get what he/she wants” and “my child throws screaming fits for hours” and “my child teases, hurts, or is cruel to animals.” It was like someone had created a list of Janie’s problem areas. Hannah finished before I did. We handed them back to Dr. Chandler and waited anxiously while she went through them. She set the clipboards next to her after she finished.

  “I think it’s time we started to talk about disorders that might be affecting her behavior. The questionnaire I just gave you is called the RADQ, and it’s designed to assess the symptoms for reactive attachment disorder. Are either of you familiar with it?”

  I’d never heard of it. I looked to Hannah, and she was shaking her head too.

  “It’s a bit of a controversial disorder in the mental health field, but I’m fairly certain Janie has reactive attachment disorder. I’ve always had my suspicions, but I was hoping her symptoms would lessen over time. Unfortunately, they seem to be increasing and getting worse.”

  “What is it?” I asked.

  “What’s wrong with her?” Hannah asked at the same time.

  “It’s a disorder caused by a child’s inability to form attachments to a caregiver at an early age and results in difficulties forming attachments with other people. It sounds pretty straightforward and commonsense for a child who’s been abused, right? Like, of course their relationships with other people are going to be damaged. But in kids with reactive attachment disorder, it goes much deeper than that. Sometimes they’re unable to form any sort of connection with another human being. They have problems with empathy, so we see them do things like hurting other children or animals, just like you’ve been describing. At times, they don’t seem like they have a conscience. One of the most common characteristics we hear from parents whose children have reactive attachment disorder is how charming and delightful their children are in public.”

  I couldn’t help but think of all the times Hannah had said that Janie was different when she had an audience. I couldn’t deny that she behaved differently. I’d just thought she liked to be out in the real world and interacting with others. Maybe there was some truth to what Hannah had always said. My heart sank.

  “These kids tend to be very manipulative and controlling. They’re constantly trying to pit people against each other, like we’ve talked about before with the ways she tries to triangulate the two of you. They can make friends, but they have a hard time maintaining them once their friends actually get close to them. The biggest concern we have is when they start to hurt other people or animals. It’s a huge red flag. I’m glad you guys came in when you did.”

  I felt like she was handing us a death sentence. “What are we supposed to do? How do we treat it?” I asked.

  Hannah looked like she wanted to cry. She gripped her stomach protectively.

  “Unfortunately, this is where it gets tricky. Treatment is tough, and it’s not always effective. There’re lots of controversial treatments that exist, but sometimes I think they do more damage than they do good.”

  “Is she going to get worse? Like, will she keep hurting other kids? What are we supposed to do?” I asked.

  A million scenarios whirled through my mind. There had to be treatment. There just had to be. She was too young to be broken for life. Nobody was that damaged. I refused to believe that.

  “I’m going to switch the focus of our therapy and move into empathy training. We’ve touched on that briefly before, but I’d like to get back to it. Sometimes with proper training, kids like this can learn empathy. The good news about Janie is that she does have the ability to develop attachments. She’s always had a strong bond with Christopher, and even though she fights you, Hannah, part of the reason she’s so hostile toward you is because she depends on you. If she didn’t have those skills, I would be more concerned, but I think we can build on what is already there.”

  “Tell me the truth. Will she get better?” Hannah asked.

  “Yes, I believe she can. I won’t make any guarantees—nobody can make any guarantees—but she’s been doing great for months. The baby has just set her off. It’s disrupted her and shaken up her world, so she’s reverting to old behaviors and also trying out some new ones. She’s afraid the baby is going to replace her.”

  It was what I’d been afraid of all along. “How do we help her?” I asked.

  “I think we should start meeting at least twice a week, maybe even three times, for as long as we can. She’s going to need lots of help, but we can get her through it.” She smiled at us. “You three have already been through a lot, and this is just a bump in the road.”

  I looked at Hannah again. She stared back at me. She didn’t have to speak to let me know what she was thinking. This was more than a bump in the road. It was a sinkhole.

  THIRTY-FOUR

  HANNAH BAUER

  My eyes snapped open. Searing pain shot through my back. There was water between my legs. I’d wet myself during the night but didn’t have any memory of it. I rolled over and threw my legs over the side of the bed, pain gripping me with each movement.

  I waddled into the bathroom connected to our bedroom. I pulled my underwear down, and that’s when it hit me.

  “Christopher! I think my water broke!”

  He was up and in the bathroom in an instant. “Are you sure?”

  I nodded, in too much pain to speak. I didn’t even care that he was seeing me on the toilet.

  “Let me get you clean clothes. You just wait there,” he said.

  The pain slowly subsided, and as it left, I couldn’t help but smile. Allison and my mom had told me last week when I’d asked them about the Braxton Hicks contractions I was having that I’d know when it was the real thing. There was no mistaking it—this was the real deal.

  Christopher was back in no time, carrying clean underwear and the comfortable outfit we’d picked out months ago.

  “Let me help you,” he said, bending over to hoist me off the toilet.

  I waved him off. “I’m fine at the moment. The contraction stopped.”

  I got dressed while he called Allison. When I was halfway through brushing my teeth, another contraction seized me in its grip. I breathed through it until it passed.

/>   Allison arrived like she’d been up waiting for our phone call. She was breathless as she ran over to me on the couch, the bags we’d packed weeks ago at my feet. She gave me a huge hug. “It’s happening! I’m so excited for you!” She looked like she had on Christmas morning when we were kids and had just run downstairs into the living room to see what Santa had left us underneath the tree. “I’m going to be an auntie.”

  I burst out laughing.

  “Are you in a lot of pain yet?” she asked.

  I shook my head. “Not yet.”

  She gave me another big squeeze as Christopher came out of the bathroom, then pointed at the door. “Okay, go, you two. I’ve got everything under control here. Don’t worry about a thing. Just go have that baby.”

  I’d never felt so acutely alive and present in my body. I wanted to hold on to it and savor the moment before the pain worsened. Christopher held my hand and drove like an eighty-year-old man on the way to the hospital. He knew there was plenty of time to get there, and his biggest fear was someone crashing into us on the way.

  They put me on bed rest as soon as they wheeled us onto the labor and delivery unit because my water had broken. I wanted to walk the halls, do something besides just lie there, but I was stuck flat on my back. Christopher flicked through the TV channels trying to find something to watch, but nothing interested me. Time stood still as we waited for the baby to arrive. They checked me every few hours into the night, but I still wasn’t dilating. They started me on Pitocin somewhere around four a.m., and that’s when everything changed.

  I’d heard the stories about Pitocin making your contractions more painful, and they were all true. Within an hour, I was in mind-numbing pain. It was the only thing I could focus on. My entire body shook. Christopher held my hair back while I puked and tied it up in a ponytail for me afterward. My insides felt like they were being twisted apart.

  I clung to Christopher. His face was covered in sweat. His hair stuck up haphazardly from him running his fingers through it again and again.

  “I can’t do this. I need the drugs,” I cried.