Things I Shouldn't Think

by Janet Ruth Young

  “Is she quitting?” Alex whispers on the stairs.

  Dani waits while Mrs. Alex settles Alex upstairs. She hears him crying, then becoming quiet when the cartoon starts. Mrs. Alex makes a phone call upstairs, probably to Alex’s grammy.

  “I do need to quit,” Dani says when Mrs. Alex comes back and sits opposite her. Dani drops the certificate onto the coffee table.

  “I was afraid so,” Mrs. Alex replies, getting a set look to her face. It’s the kind of look that says, Why me? Why doesn’t anything go right in my life? She’s probably numbering the two or three other nurses who quit the hospital and haven’t been replaced, the boyfriend who came along after Tarzan Daddy and looked serious but went back to his ex-wife. Dani hates to put more on Mrs. Alex’s plate. But leaving is the best for Alex and, ultimately, for everybody.

  “I’m sorry, Cynthia,” Dani says. “I’m just so sorry.”

  “What’s wrong?” Mrs. Alex asks. “Somebody else is offering you more? Will you at least tell me how much they’re offering so I can try to match it?”

  “It’s not that.”

  “Grammy and I discussed it and she said she’d help. We both agree you’re the best possible sitter Alex could have. With Grammy contributing, and if I stretch a little, I can offer you—nine dollars an hour.”

  “It’s not that.” Dani squeezes her hands together. I don’t want to hurt anyone. “Other stuff is going on in my life.”

  “Are you not getting your schoolwork done? You know, you don’t have to spend every minute with Alex. I’ve talked to him. He knows you need homework time and you can’t entertain him twenty-four-seven.”

  Dani shakes her head. “It’s not that. School is fine. I mean, I might hand in a late assignment like everyone else, but school is normal.”

  “Then what is it? Tell me. Maybe we can work something out.” She puts on a listening face. This is going to be rough, Dani thinks. I didn’t expect kindness and understanding. It’s clever of Mrs. Alex, who is a tough, wily survivor of difficult situations.

  “It’s not practical stuff. It’s something with me. An emotional thing I’m going through. I need to get away from here for a while.”

  Mrs. Alex tucks one leg under her. She seems eager for a chat, the way Beth had been. Dani imagines her sitting like that with her sorority in nursing school. Her crowd club-hopped around Boston with guys from the nearby pharmacology school. At least if Dani was going to wreck her schedule by talking, Mrs. Alex probably thought, it would be a fun talk. “I hope you know you can always talk to me about emotional stuff. I was seventeen once, you know. Is it that boy you’ve been telling me about? The singer?”

  Dani had mentioned that Gordy called and invited her over, but she had told Mrs. Alex no more than that.

  Dani pauses. In the pause Mrs. Alex seems cheerful but impatient. Her eyes drift upstairs, where the phone has started ringing. It must be Grammy, calling to find out what’s taking so long. Alex’s voice comes on in the recording.

  Dani’s eyes flick upstairs to make sure Alex is still in his room and not coming down the steps. She doesn’t want him to overhear, ever; she never wants him to know. Dani wanted to be businesslike and impersonal and not reveal any bad stuff. Life is bad for her, but the badness shouldn’t spread onto anyone else. There’s no reason to alarm anyone if Dani can go away and deal with it on her own.

  But Mrs. Alex isn’t letting Dani go. Mrs. Alex isn’t letting Dani handle it the way she thinks it should be handled. No matter what, this has to be the last time Dani comes here. What can Dani do or say to make sure she isn’t in this living room at this time tomorrow? There’s only one way to protect Alex. The only way out is through the middle.

  “Okay . . . ,” she starts, and she’s as nervous as she’s ever been, that flying-up-out-of-your-body adrenaline fear that she and Shelley talked about, that occurs when you’re summoned to the principal’s office or have to speak in front of hundreds of people. She needs a suitable expression on her face. She’s about to say something surprising and upsetting, and she needs to make it less scary. How can she put Mrs. Alex at ease? Try smiling when you say it, her mind tells her. Maybe that will help. That’s right, she thinks. I’ll try smiling. She hopes it isn’t the nervous smile she had as a kid when her mom was angry or caught her in a lie, because then she’ll seem like a complete psycho. She looks Mrs. Alex right in the face.

  “I keep having these thoughts about killing Alex.”

  Mrs. Alex’s head tilts to the side.

  Her eyes widen.

  part 3

  THE OTHER SIDE

  24

  Oh no, Dani thinks. I never wanted to say kill.

  Mrs. Alex sits with her head tilted and her chin pulled in.

  “I guess I should go,” Dani says, reaching for her backpack. Tonight could have gone better, but she’s leaving this nightmare behind, and the only person who shared it was Mrs. Alex. More people could have been dragged into it—Shelley, Gordy, Beth, maybe even Alex—but they weren’t. A contained nightmare of one night, with a beginning and end as crisp as a calendar.

  “No,” Mrs. Alex says. “Stay a minute. Sit right there.” She glances up, hearing footsteps on the stairs. “I’ll deal with Alex.”

  “All right,” Dani says. She drops onto the couch, sitting à la Mrs. Alex with one foot beneath her. She had not predicted this calm reaction. She wonders if Mrs. Alex is about to go into adult mode, surrogate-mother mode, and offer a reasonable talk and some advice. Or will she—oh no, not again—ask her to stay on? Maybe, for the third time, offer more money?

  Mrs. Alex shoos Alex back up the stairs, and Dani hears them talking in the hall. Mrs. Alex says, “Do you need to pee?” and Alex says, “I don’t know,” and Mrs. Alex says, “Let’s go together.” The bathroom door closes.

  Ten minutes later, the doorbell rings. Mrs. Alex doesn’t come down. Dani goes to the foot of the stairs.

  “Do you want me to get it?” she calls up.

  “If you don’t mind,” Mrs. Alex shouts from the bathroom.

  Dani opens the door. Two policemen stand outside.

  “Is Mrs. Draper present?” one asks.

  “She’s upstairs,” Dani says. “She should be down in a minute.”

  “We’d like to speak with her. Is Alex here also?”

  “He’s up with his mom. Can I tell her who’s . . . ?”

  The police show their badges. “I’m Sergeant Mason of the Hawthorne Police,” the older one says, “and this is Officer Pinto. What’s your name, miss?”

  “Dani Solomon.”

  “Would you come outside with me, Dani, so I can talk to you?”

  “Sure.” So this is how it plays out, she thinks as she realizes what’s happening. In the arrest scenario she’d imagined so many times, Mrs. Alex and the police didn’t act so normal, so calm and quiet. She had pictured screaming, blood, and sirens.

  “I’ll check on them upstairs,” Officer Pinto says, going to the second floor where Alex’s cartoons still play.

  Dani steps outside onto the mat where she used to hesitate before ringing the bell.

  “How old are you, Dani?” Sergeant Mason asks. He’s tall and stocky with a gray goatee. His cruiser is parked in the Alexes’ driveway.

  “I’m seventeen.”

  “Do you know why we’re here?”

  “Because Mrs. Draper called you?”

  So Dani is being arrested now. She doesn’t have to panic or even worry. She doesn’t think of Mrs. Alex’s phone call as a betrayal. The relief of having told Mrs. Alex overwhelms everything that’s happening now or could happen in the future. Cause and effect, as she learned in school. Everything that occurs in the world is due to cause and effect.

  Mason hands her a small yellow card, and he recites what the card says. “You have the right to remain silent. If you give up the right to remain silent, anything you say can and will be used against you in a court of law. You have the right to an attorney. If you desire an attorn
ey and cannot afford one, an attorney will be obtained for you before police questioning.”

  “You can question me if you want to,” Dani says.

  “Do you know why Mrs. Draper may have called 911?”

  “I told her I had thoughts about hurting Alex.”

  “That’s her little boy?”

  “Yes.”

  “That’s a little unsettling, don’t you think?”

  “I know. I agree with you.”

  “You had thoughts about harming Alex?”

  “Exactly.” Dani stands up straight. She answers in a calm, even voice. She has always liked police officers, and she feels that they and she are on the same side. She wants them to know that she has no desire to obstruct the law.

  “In what specific way would you harm Alex?” Sergeant Mason continues.

  “Specifically, I would get one of the big knives from the kitchen and stab him while he was sleeping.” Dani hopes that didn’t sound sarcastic. Having never been interrogated before, she wants to answer the questions as completely as she can.

  “That’s unsettling,” Sergeant Mason says again, reaching for his notebook.

  “I don’t really want to, though,” Dani says quickly. “I’m actually glad Mrs. Draper called you, because I had been trying and trying to get out of babysitting, but I couldn’t get her to take my calls.”

  “You don’t want to hurt Alex? Then why did you tell Mrs. Draper that?”

  “Because I kept thinking about it, and I figured she should know, just so Alex would be safe.”

  “Tell me exactly what happened when you threatened Alex. What did you say or do to him?”

  “I never threatened Alex.”

  “Did you tell him you wanted to harm him?”

  “No. Oh God, no.” Dani squeezes her hands. She still has that up-in-the-air feeling.

  “Did you tell Mrs. Draper you want to harm Alex?”

  “I don’t want to harm Alex. But I had these pictures in my mind. So I told Mrs. Alex I should leave. I didn’t even want to come today. I wanted to quit. I did just quit babysitting and I wanted to leave, except that she told me to wait.”

  He closes his notebook, seeming to have decided something. “I see no intent to commit a crime here. I’m going to pop upstairs and tell Mrs. Draper. She seems pretty shaken up. Wait here. I want a few more words with you.” He goes to the stairs, swinging his broad shoulders. He does a little skip on the bottom step that suggests to Dani her situation is not serious.

  Almost over, she thinks. A few more words and I’m free. A little awkwardness, that’s all, and a promise to never see the Alexes again. I can handle that. I can find plenty of ways to fill my time.

  Sergeant Mason returns with his radio in hand. “Do you live with your parents?”

  “With my mom.”

  “Beth Solomon, the real estate broker, right? How much does she know about this?”

  “Nothing. I tried to tell her, but she didn’t understand.”

  “Is she home right now?”

  “She could be home. She’s been painting the house.”

  “I think we should get you home and make sure she knows what’s going on.”

  “May I go home alone and tell her?” Dani asks. “I think I would rather handle this myself.”

  He smiles without showing his teeth—a little sarcastic or smug, patronizing, as Gordy would say. “Why don’t we give you a ride home to see if she’s there? I’d like to talk with your mom and get this straightened out. Dot all the i’s.”

  “But I’m not arrested?”

  “No. Unless there’s something you haven’t told me, you haven’t committed any crime.”

  “So the siren won’t be on or the lights flashing? That would freak my mom out.”

  “Nope. It’ll look like we’re giving you a ride home.”

  “All right, then. Can I get my pack from the living room?”

  Dani sees no sign of Alex or Mrs. Alex, so she doesn’t say good-bye. Good-bye forever. They seem as far inside as you can get, like the house is a chambered nautilus and they’ve spiraled to the innermost point. She wants to tell them both that she hopes they’ll be able to find a good sitter. If Mrs. Alex had listened to her before, they might have found someone by now. Grammy will probably have to fill in for a while.

  Dani walks to the cruiser. She’s aware of cars slowing down to rubberneck. She wonders if Mrs. Alex has called friends or neighbors, and what she may have told them. Dani wonders about calling Beth to warn her what’s about to happen.

  She squeezes the handle of the passenger door but finds it locked.

  Sergeant Mason is behind her. “Here you go, dear,” he says, opening the door to the backseat. Dani laughs—of course she’ll ride in back. She slides in. A Plexiglas window separates front seat from back, like in a taxi.

  The passenger seat is for Officer Pinto, who climbs in next but doesn’t look at her. He squints and shakes his head at Mason as they pull out. Maybe Mrs. Alex told him something terrible, something Mrs. Alex believed but wasn’t true.

  Dani taps the glass and Officer Pinto slides a panel open. The Plexiglas makes her feel like a perp, like they might be afraid of her. Pinto looks angry. Maybe they’re doing that thing from the movies, where they take two roles. Good cop, bad cop.

  “Are you going to tell my mother what I told Alex’s mom?” she asks the friendly cop.

  He speaks into the rearview mirror. “She should know what’s going on, don’t you think?”

  Officer Pinto exhales through his lower teeth: Sssss. This makes Dani nervous. He must be Malcolm’s father or uncle. They have the same last name and the same blue-black hair, except he has a bald spot she can see from the backseat. She hopes that all this will end without Malcolm finding out. She hopes there is a law that grants confidentiality to people who are just driven home and not arrested.

  “Mom’s going to be surprised,” Dani says.

  “I imagine so,” Mason replies. “You say you didn’t confide in her about any of this?”

  “I tried to talk to her, but she didn’t understand.”

  The cop shrugs. “Something tells me we’re about to get her attention. Give me your address, dear.”

  Dani gives her address, and Sergeant Mason repeats it to someone—presumably headquarters—on the radio.

  “Rich kid,” Officer Pinto mutters.

  They drive along the depot, where the afternoon train from Boston spills its briefcased commuters. The siren isn’t on and the lights aren’t flashing.

  Officer Pinto slides the panel open. He speaks to Dani for the first time, without smiling.

  “Is there anything else you need to tell us? Anything you may have said or done to that little boy? We have to call Social Services, you know. They’ll question him, and anything that needs to come out is going to come out. It might be better if you tell us now.”

  “Nothing,” Dani says. She pictures Alex being questioned by a stiff-backed lady in a suit. She doubts he has anything damaging to say other than that she sometimes talked to Shelley on her cell phone when she was supposed to be playing with Louie. She doesn’t want anyone to talk to Alex about her if they don’t really have to, but she doesn’t know how to stop them.

  “Dear, answer me honestly,” Sergeant Mason asks. “Is this stabbing business something you cooked up? Is it a cock-and-bull story you made up just to get out of babysitting?”

  “No,” Dani answers. “I didn’t make it up. I didn’t make up any of it.”

  “No further questions until we see the mother,” Sergeant Mason tells his partner. “They might want to get somebody.”

  “Get somebody who?” Dani asks.

  “Your mom may want to hire a lawyer. I would advise you not to tell me or Officer Pinto or anyone else any more about this, if you can help it. That’s what that yellow card says.”

  They’re a few blocks from school, and Dani sees three guys she knows walking with a basketball. She considers ducking, but that wo
uld make it look like she’s done something wrong.

  “Wait. Officer? Sir?” she asks the one driving.

  “What’s that, dear?”

  “Can we not go past the high school? I don’t want to see anybody I know. I mean, would they really believe you were only giving me a ride home?”

  The policeman signals and turns left, avoiding the school by a couple of blocks.

  “That’s the kind of thing you’re supposed to consider beforehand,” Officer Pinto tells Dani.

  25

  Beth sees the cruiser in the driveway and opens the front door. The police officers follow Dani.

  “Dani! What’s wrong?”

  “I’m okay, Mom.” The odor of wet paint restores Dani. Like avocado-and-cucumber lotion, it’s the smell of Beth and home. Dani feels the corners of her mouth sag, but she doesn’t cry. She’ll wait till the officers leave. Then she’ll cry as much as she wants.

  “What happened, Dani?” Beth turns to address the officers. “Was there an accident? Is she hurt?”

  “I’ve been through a rough time, Mom,” she says, “but now it’s done and I’m just glad it’s over.”

  “Oh my God, are you all right?” Beth scans Dani for signs of trouble—cuts, bruises, bandages, torn clothing. “What’s going on? Did someone hurt Dani?”

  “Your daughter’s having some problems, ma’am. Why don’t we go inside and talk about it?”

  Beth lets them in. “What kind of problems is she having?”

  “Apparently she indicated to the mother of the child she babysits for—,” Officer Pinto begins.

  Sergeant Mason stops him and nods at Dani. “Why don’t you tell your mother yourself?”

  “Mom, my mind has been feeling funny. I was having all these thoughts I didn’t really want to have.” Dani’s voice sounds childish, even to her. She didn’t realize how relieved she would feel to be home with Beth.

  “Your mind? Oh, Dani, what’s wrong? Are you depressed? Do you need to see a doctor?” Beth gets between Dani and the police and wraps her arms around her.