The Mask (16 page)

“Don’t worry about it,” Paul said. “The lightning wasn’t your doing, and neither was the problem with my car. Carol and I have waited a long, long time to adopt a child. Another two weeks isn’t much in the scheme of things.”

“When your papers
are
presented to the committee, you’ll be approved quickly,” O’Brian said. “I’ve never been more sure about a couple than I am about you. That’s what I’m going to tell them.”

“I appreciate that,” Paul said.

“If we can’t make Wednesday’s meeting—and I assure you we’ll try our best—then it’s only a minor, temporary setback. Nothing to be concerned about. Just a bit of bad luck.”

Dr. Brad Templeton was a fine veterinarian. However, to Grace, he always looked out of place when he was ministering to a cat or dog. He was a big man who would have looked more at home treating horses and farm animals in a country practice, where his massive shoulders and muscular arms would be of more use. He stood six-five, weighed about two hundred and twenty pounds, and had a ruddy, rugged, but pleasing face. When he plucked Aristophanes out of the padded travel basket, the cat looked like a toy in his enormous hands.

“He looks fit,” Brad said, putting Ari on the stainless-steel table that stood in the middle of the sparkling clean surgery.

“He’s never been one to tear up the furniture, not since he was just a kitten,” Grace said. “He’s never been a climber, either. But now, every time I turn around, he’s perched on top of something, peering down at me.”

Brad examined Ari, feeling for swollen glands and enlarged joints. The cat cooperated docilely, even when Brad used a rectal thermometer on him. “Temperature’s normal.”

“
Something’s
wrong,” Grace insisted.

Aristophanes purred, tolled onto his back, asking for his belly to be rubbed.

Brad rubbed him and was rewarded with an even louder purr. “Is he off his food?”

“No,” Grace said. “He stills eats well.”

“Vomiting?”

“No.”

“Diarrhea?”

“No. He hasn’t shown any symptoms like those.
It’s just that he’s…different. He’s not at all like he was. Every symptom I can point to is a symptom of a
personality
change, not an indication of physical deterioration. Like destroying the pillows. Leaving the mess on the armchair. The sudden interest he’s taken in climbing. And he’s gotten very sneaky lately, always creeping around, hiding from me, watching me when he thinks I don’t see him.”

“All cats are a bit sneaky,” Brad said, frowning. “That’s the nature of the beast.”

“Ari didn’t used to sneak,” Grace said. “Not like he’s been doing the last couple of days. And he’s not as friendly as he used to be. The last two days, he hasn’t wanted to be petted or cuddled.”

Still frowning, Brad lifted his gaze from the cat and met Grace’s eyes. “But dear, look at him.”

Ari was still on his back, getting his belly rubbed, and clearly relishing all the attention being directed at him. His tail swished back and forth across the steel table. He raised one paw and batted playfully at the doctor’s large, leathery hand.

Sighing, Grace said, “I know what you’re thinking. I’m an old woman. Old women get funny ideas.”

“No, no, no. I wasn’t thinking any such thing.”

“Old women become obsessively attached to their pets because sometimes their pets are the only company they have, their only real friends.”

“I am perfectly aware that doesn’t apply to you, Grace. Not with all the friends you’ve got in this town. I merely—”

She smiled and patted his cheek. “Don’t protest too strongly, Brad. I know what’s going through your mind. Some old women are so afraid of losing their pets that they think they see signs of illness where
there are none. Your reaction is understandable. It doesn’t offend me. It
does
frustrate me because I know something
is
wrong with Ari.”

Brad looked down at the cat again, continued stroking its belly, and said, “Have you changed his diet in any way?”

“No. He gets the same brand of cat food, at the same times of day, in the same quantities he’s always gotten it.”

“Has the company changed the product recently?”

“How do you mean?”

“Well, does the package say ‘new, improved,’ or ‘richer flavor,’ or anything like that?”

She thought about it for a moment, then shook her head. “I don’t think so.”

“Sometimes, when they change a formula, they add a new preservative or a new artificial flavoring or coloring agent, and some pets have an allergic reaction to it.”

“But wouldn’t that be a physical reaction? Like I said, this seems to be strictly a personality change.”

Brad nodded. “I’m sure you know food additives can cause behavioral problems in some children. A lot of hyperactive kids calm down when they’re put on a diet free of the major additives. Animals can be affected by these things, too. From what you’ve told me, it sounds like Aristophanes is intermittently hyperactive and may be responding to a subtle change in the formulation of his cat food. Switch him to another brand, wait a week for his system to purge itself of whatever additives have offended it, and he’ll probably be the old Ari again.”

“If he isn’t?”

“Then bring him in, leave him with me for a couple
of days, and I’ll give him a really thorough going over. But I strongly recommend that we try changing his diet first, before we go to all that trouble and expense.”

You
are
humoring me, Grace thought. Just coddling an old lady.

“Very well,” she said. “I’ll try changing his food. But if he’s still not himself a week from now, I’ll want you to give him a complete battery of tests.”

“Of course.”

“I’ll want an answer.”

On the stainless-steel table, Aristophanes purred, happily twitched his long tail, and looked infuriatingly
normal
.

Later, at home, just inside the front door, when Grace slipped the latch on the padded travel basket and opened the lid, Aristophanes exploded out of confinement with a hiss and a snarl, his fur bristling, his ears laid back against his head, eyes wild. He clawed her hand and squealed as she thrust him away from her. He sprinted down the hall, disappeared into the kitchen, where the pet door gave him access to the rear yard.

Shocked, Grace stared at her hand. Ari’s claws had made three short furrows in the meaty edge of her palm. Blood welled up and began to trickle down her wrist.

Carol’s last appointment on Friday was at one o’clock: a fifty-minute session with Kathy Lombino, a fifteen-year-old
girl who was gradually recovering from anorexia nervosa. Five months ago, when she had first been brought to Carol, Kathy had weighed only seventy-five pounds, at least thirty pounds below her ideal weight. She had been teetering on the edge of starvation, repelled by the sight and even the thought of food, stubbornly refusing to eat more than an occasional soda cracker or slice of bread, often gagging on even those bland morsels. When she was put in front of a mirror and forced to confront the pathetic sight of her emaciated body, she still berated herself for being fat and could not be convinced that she was, in fact, frighteningly thin. Her prospects for survival had seemed slight. Now she weighed ninety pounds, up fifteen, still well below a healthy weight for a girl of her height and bone structure, but at least she was no longer in danger of dying. A loss of self-respect and self-confidence was nearly always the seed from which anorexia nervosa grew, and Kathy was beginning to like herself again, a sure sign that she was on her way back from the brink. She hadn’t yet regained a normal appetite; she still experienced mild revulsion at the sight and taste of food; but her attitude was far better than it had been, for now she recognized the
need
for food, even though she didn’t have any desire for it. The girl had a long way to go before she would be fully recovered, but the worst was past for her; in time she would learn to enjoy food again, and she would gain weight more rapidly than she had done thus far, stabilizing around a hundred and five or a hundred and ten pounds. Kathy’s progress had been immensely satisfying to Carol, and today’s session only added to that satisfaction. As had become customary, she and the girl hugged each other at the end of the session, and Kathy held on tighter and longer
than usual. When the girl left the office, she was smiling.

A few minutes later, at two o’clock, Carol went to the hospital. In the gift shop off the lobby, she bought a deck of playing cards and a miniature checkerboard with nickle-sized checkers that all fit neatly into a vinyl carrying case.

Upstairs, in 316, the television was on, and Jane was reading a magazine. She looked up when Carol entered, and she said, “You really came.”

“Said I would, didn’t I?”

“What’ve you got?”

“Cards, checkers. I thought maybe they’d help you pass the time.”

“You promised you wouldn’t buy me anything else.”

“Hey, did I say I was
giving
these to you? No way. You think I’m a soft touch or something? I’m
lending
them, kid. I expect them back. And whenever you return them, they’d better be in as good condition as they are now, or I’ll take you all the way to the Supreme Court to get compensated for the damage.”

Jane grinned. “Boy, you’re tough.”

“I eat nails for breakfast.”

“Don’t they get stuck in your teeth?”

“I pluck ‘em out with pliers.”

“Ever eat barbed wire?”

“Never for breakfast. I have it for lunch now and then.”

They both laughed, and Carol said, “So do you play checkers?”

“I don’t know. I don’t remember.”

“Cards?”

The girl shrugged.

“Nothing’s come back yet?” Carol asked.

“Not a thing.”

“Don’t worry. It will.”

“My folks haven’t shown up, either.”

“Well, you’ve only been missing for one day. Give them time to find you. It’s too soon to start worrying about that.”

They played three games of checkers. Jane remembered all of the rules, but she couldn’t recall where or with whom she had played before.

The afternoon passed quickly, and Carol enjoyed every minute of it. Jane was charming, bright, and blessed with a good sense of humor. Whether the game was checkers, hearts, or five-hundred rummy, she played to win, but she never pouted when she lost. She was very good company.

The girl’s charm and pleasing personality made it highly unlikely that she would go unclaimed for long. Some teenagers are so self-centered, spaced out on drugs, bullheaded, and destructive that when one of them decides to run away from home, his decision often elicits only a sigh of relief from his mother and father. But when a good kid like Jane Doe disappears, a lot of people start sounding alarms.

There must be a family that loves her, Carol thought. They’re probably crazy with worry right now. Sooner or later they’ll turn up, crying and laughing with relief that their girl has been found alive. So why not sooner? Where
are
they?