Hush (29 page)

pushing and probing, asking questions and holding back; and insinuating that

Davy was a liar and that his birth father was responsible for whatever signs of

abuse she'd found, saying that he might have "got to the boy." What an odd way

to put it, she thought, though hardly unusual. Still, it did suggest that sex

with a child was somehow a prize you received after you'd cleared a series of

obstacles. Of course Davy might have been traumatized by his real father, and

Celia knew she would have considered this more seriously if Mr. Boyce hadn't

wanted to have it both ways: if he hadn't blamed Davy's father and Davy too. But

what she found most revealing was that he hadn't expressed much concern over the

real possibility that his stepson had been hurt. Only that defensiveness,

tossing around blame like seeds, hoping desperately that one of them would take

root. Sorry, Mr. Boyce, not with me.
But as she walked back to the bathroom she again worried that his suspicions of

her would make him flee with the boy. Christ, it's not like they have any ties

to anyone. Wait a second, she corrected herself, that's not true. Davy

definitely has responded to me. He's still keeping a flat affect with everyone

else at work, but I'm making headway with him. She recalled that not only had he

drawn for her, but he'd nodded and pointed on their way to his trailer

yesterday, and then snuggled beside her on the couch. If she could persuade Tony

to let her keep working with Davy, she was sure that one of these days he'd

start talking too. She wondered for a moment what he'd say, what his first words

would be.
No, Davy has ties here. It's his stepfather who seems so rootless.
She turned on the tap and closed the drain. Now it was time to listen to the

only language the boy had shown a willingness to use. She placed Davy's drawings

and file on a simple wooden tray that fit across the tub, then added a scratch

pad and pen to her portable desk. She liked to work while she soaked.
Despite her misgivings about Davy's pictures, she found it fascinating to study

the lines in a drawing to see how they shaped a whole, how the themes written in

the language of form related to one another and composed the larger story of an

individual life.
She straightened up, saw the window shade, and quickly pulled it down. Most of

the time it seemed silly to do this— no one else lived on the ridge— but

whenever Jack traveled she felt a little less safe, so little that in the past

she had hardly paid it any mind. But tonight was different. An uneasiness had

crept over her as she'd hiked out of the meadow. She'd heard branches snapping

at least twice, but hadn't been able to spot any animals. Or people. The fear

she'd felt had prompted her to take a different trail back home. She felt more

comfortable now, in no small part because she'd closed the shades and locked the

doors, the common-sense things anybody would do.
She took off her bra and scratched her sides and shoulders where the straps had

been itching her all day. What a relief. She struggled to get her snug jeans

past her slim hips, and finally had to sit on the toilet seat to pull them all

the way off. Into the hamper. Her socks and panties soon followed, along with

her top and bra.
She relieved herself, then stepped into the tub and sank into the warm water,

taking a moment to relax before starting to work.
*
Chet crouched on the deck right below the bathroom window. It was open an about

an inch, and he'd heard the pssssss of that hot stream and that horrible

tinkling too; and then that goddamn toilet paper, the sound of it unrolling

and...and what she did with it.
Now he listened to the water sloshing up against the sides of the tub as she

settled in, so close...so close he could almost...touch her. He could even see

the panicky look she'd give him if he walked in right now, and he heard the rank

horror that would darken her voice:
What are you doing here, Mr. Boyce!
Mr.BoyceMr.BoyceMr.BoyceMr.Boyce.
She'd be curled up in the corner of the tub trying to hide her nakedness,

shaking or shouting or both. But not for long, not the shouting.
He wiped his palms on his pants, then looked up at the stars and moon. The night

started to drain like an open wound.
42
Celia opened Davy's file and pulled out his first assignment, the pencil sketch

of a person. As she had pointed out to Tony earlier in the week, Davy's decision

to draw a woman was highly unusual. Boys almost always drew boys, and girls drew

girls. When she first looked over the picture she'd been reluctant to attribute

great significance to this. Besides, other compelling elements competed for her

attention: the absence of a nose, for instance, which strongly indicated a lack

of emotional release for the boy; the distinct disconnection between the head

and neck that she'd often seen in the artwork of clients who feared their

bodies, for whatever reasons; the large feet, a feature that sometimes showed up

in portraits by children who felt trapped; and of course the single line that

Davy had penciled in for a mouth, which made the woman in this picture appear no

more willing to speak than the boy who had drawn her.
But even as the week progressed and Davy had produced other work, Celia's

thoughts kept returning to his original decision to draw a woman. This

transparent gender confusion made sense only if the boy was questioning his own

sexual identity, if he felt like a woman; and she knew Davy would feel like a

woman if he'd been forced to act like one. Suspicions that had been forming all

week, greatly underscored by the Batman drawings, now began to harden, along

with a sense of dread. Celia had worked with dozens of sexually abused children,

and had never been spared the unpleasant jolt that accompanied the stark

recognition of pain. Her revulsion was only exacerbated by her understanding of

just how difficult it would be for most of them to stitch their lives back

together. It had taken her years to recover from the beatings she had suffered,

and at times she would still come across remnants of her tattered childhood that

needed mending.
She put aside Davy's first drawing and tried to do the same with her own

troubled feelings. The time had come to examine his second picture of a woman,

the one he'd rendered when she asked him to draw the "opposite sex," a term

she'd had to explain to him. He had duplicated his first effort in virtually

every detail, but filled more of the page. The longer lines and larger

dimensions indicated to Celia that he had started to relax with his art, giving

breadth to his portrait as he began to breathe easier. Even after a decade of

study she was still amazed by the enthusiasm that most children eventually

brought to their artwork, and it was true in almost every culture around the

world. A child would fill pages, given the opportunity. Art brought out the

innocence in even the most hardened children, and art therapy revealed the

brutal truths hidden in the undergrowth of their fears. Celia saw the first

hints of this in Davy's gender confusion, and in the way he'd drawn the woman's

features. Subtle signs of distress. Nothing terribly obvious yet. Nothing like

the holes in the Batman pictures.
She moved on to his House, Tree, Person Drawing. Weird, she thought, very weird.
The House, Tree, Person Drawing had become a standard technique among most art

therapists. The house stood for an individual's family, the tree for his sense

of purpose, and the person was how he viewed himself. Celia quickly realized

that Davy's was one of the strangest examples she had ever seen.
First of all, his sky held a sun as well as a large dark cloud that spilled a

smudgy, harsh-looking rain. She saw nothing nurturing in the cloud with its

filthy rain, nor did she see how any sustenance could be derived from the sun.

It resembled a fried egg with misshapen borders and an oblong yoke, the kind of

sun that can't provide warmth; for a boy, she thought, who can't conceive of

any.
She chewed on the tip of her pen and looked away for a moment, and as she did,

something shifted deep inside, as if an old emotion had fallen off a shelf and

landed a little lower in her stomach. She knew why this happened, and every time

she worked with an abused child the realization grew stronger: though trained as

an academic and blessed with the refined tools of the intellect, Celia remained

an abused child herself. The years were not mileposts on a highway taking her

farther from her childhood home, they were merely markers along the never-ending

path of a memory that never dulled and certainly never died. When she looked at

a picture she saw more than a client's loneliness, terror, or absence of love,

she felt some of their anguish too. And when her own arms and legs and stomach

grew leaden as she worked, she knew it was the added weight of her own childhood

that she carried. So Davy's fight had become her fight. She couldn't help this.

Despite years of therapy, professional distance had been closed to her by

painful personal experience. It made her work tougher but it also made her very

good at her job. Anger and outrage had turned her into a relentless

investigator. Her tenacity already had led to four criminal convictions under

Oregon's rape and sodomy laws. Three of the men had done time. Not much, but

some. The fourth, a local middle school teacher, committed suicide the day after

he'd received a two-year sentence.
She studied the house in Davy's House, Tree, Person Drawing, a square box with a

triangle on top for a roof. Not at all unusual for most children, but Davy lived

in a trailer. Celia quickly concluded that the picture illustrated the boy's

sense of dislocation, and perhaps a desire to be in any house but the one he had

to call home. Yet even this drawing contained powerful clues. For starters, it

did not have a path leading to the front door, and even more revealing to Celia

was the fact that the front door did not have a handle. Entering this house

would be difficult, and no one, she believed, would learn its secrets easily.
Next, she checked the windows. He'd drawn one on each side of the door, and

divided them with crossbars as boys generally do. This was different from girls,

who typically included curtains that were parted in the middle and pulled to the

sides. But unlike most boys, Davy had drawn so many crossbars that he'd created

the appearance of a prison cell, which is probably how he feels about his house,

she thought. That's the pits. But then she suddenly grew irritated because as

she studied Davy's drawing she realized that she also felt like a prisoner of

fear. In her own home, her own bathroom, no less. She looked at the window shade

and felt a tremendous desire to tug on it and send it spinning back up so she

could see the stars and the milky glow of the full moon. That's one of the

reasons we live up here, so we can have all that.
The bottom of the shade dangled right above her, about an inch from the base of

the window. It formed a narrow strip of darkness that teased her with the

wide-open possibilities of the night sky. But she never reached for the shade.

Not even the allure of the heavens could overcome the caution that guided her

now.
43
Chet was pressed against the wall looking up at that one-inch opening in the

bottom of the bathroom window. He couldn't take his eyes off it, the way it

beckoned him, welcomed him, said, She's waiting for you, Chet. She's waiting.
He loved the power of seeing them...naked...when they didn't want you to see

them, when they'd grab a towel, a goddamn rag if that's all they had, and hold

it against themselves. Hiding when there's no place to hide.
Let me see you.
When they shook their heads he'd hold the razor high above him with both hands,

the sacred host with its single edge, and he would feel the power invested in

Him through our Lord Jesus Christ, amen.
The naked truth.
Dominus vobiscum.
Yes, He was God, getting to see what He wants when He wants.
Chet put his hands on the bottom of the window frame and started to move out of

his crouch. He'd have to breathe softly or she'd hear his excitement. The

goddamn window was open just enough to give him away...or get him inside.
No, you're just going to look. That's all. Go in later, when she's asleep. But

his words formed weak links in the chain of restraint.
He heard scratching noises from inside the window. A moment later something

splashed in the water and she said, "Oh shit." He liked it when they talked like

that. Sometimes he'd make them do it.
He'd whisper in their ears, anything, anything that came to mind, though some

things always came to mind, and he'd make them say it:
"I'm dirty."
"I'm dirty."
"Whisper, goddamn it."
And they'd whisper, you bet.
"Faster."
They'd whisper so fast they'd shake and run out of breath, so furiously they

wouldn't hear him when he told them to stop. That's when he'd have to shut them

up. He did, too, so they couldn't say anything at all.
He raised himself up and a board creaked under his feet. He fucking froze.

Nothing. Silence, the kind that sucks the goddamn life out of you. Two, three

minutes of deep, dead silence. Then a meow. The goddamn cat again. She said