The Nanny (2 page)

Dr. Bee knew she was worried tonight. He knew everything, she told herself. He might be a bull in the china shop physically, but
psychically
Dr. Bee was a ballet dancer, always on his toes, always
en pointes
. Now he plucked at each of his trouser legs to ease their pull, then extended the figure of Joey toward the others.

“It is because of this that we are here tonight, Mrs. Wilson. Sarah, Joey asked you if he could send it to his mother for her birthday present, didn't he?”

“Yes, Dr. Bee.”

“Now, since there is no doubt that this is supposed to be Joey, I think we can assume that he wants to know whether his mother wants
him
for a birthday present, and in my experience this tells us that he is now convinced she does want him. Joey would not ask this question if he were not sure of the answer; rejection would be unbearable. This is good, good!” He nodded at the figure he was holding. “When we remember this child who was brought here two years ago, I imagine all of us consider it remarkable. It means …” he paused and pointed at the figure with his pipestem … “that all of us have done our work well. Joey has now forgiven himself for what he now recognizes as an accident and therefore he knows that his parents have forgiven him. However, when Joey was asked whether he would like to go home, he couldn't decide.”

“Ambivalent!” Mrs. Wilson said excitedly.

“Yes. He wants to go but he doesn't want to go.” Dr. Bee's pipe had gone out. He set the figure down on the desk and went to the wastepaper basket and knocked out the ashes. He went to the mantelpiece and helped himself to fresh tobacco from his humidor, tamping it down with his spatulate thumb, and struck a match … xz—z—z—on the brick of the fireplace … and lighted his pipe, puff, puff, puff. Sarah watched him closely, as if something were about to happen.

“Now, we must take the step Joey cannot take. In my opinion, Joey is ready to go home. (Puff, puff.) He is no longer disturbed. He is a normal boy of eight who suffered a traumatic experience from which he has recovered. I would now like to hear any reasons why he shouldn't go home.” He went round to the front of the desk again and wagged his pipe to the left side of his red mouth. “Olaf first. You have Joey in crafts. Any objections?”

“No. We have often found that the only way to end the ambivalence is to make such decisions for the child.”

“Ethel?” She shook her head. “Georgie?”

“Uh, uh, Dr. Bee.”

“Bob? Francis?” He went down the list. “Well, what do you say, Sarah?”

All of them were aware that if Joey went home there would be room for the little girl, Sophie, in whom Mrs. Wilson was interested. They all knew that they were much more likely to be endowed by Mrs. Wilson if they proved they could help this Sophie, but that was unworthy, Sarah thought. Not one of them would let this sway him.
Shame on me
. They were all waiting for her, but she didn't know what to say. How could they all be so sure that by making the ceramic figure of himself and asking if he could give it to his mother it meant Joey wanted to be given to his mother? The room was so still. Dr. Bee would not hurry her. It was against his principles. He picked up the ceramic figure again and turned it in his big hands and said reflectively, “We will all miss Joey very much. He's a damned lovable kid. We must admit truth. It is hard for all of us here to give Joey up precisely because, unlike the rest, he
doesn't
belong with us. He is …” Dr. Bee chuckled down at the figure … “he is a rose among thorns.”

Sarah tried to smile at the picture of Joey as a rose. Rose he was not. She knew that Dr. Bee was telling her that she didn't want Joey to leave because she didn't want to give him up, but was it that simple? “Dr. Bee, if Joey is ambivalent, why? Why, if he is all right, doesn't he want to go home … one hundred per cent?”

Turning the figure, Dr. Bee said, “Well, for one thing, life is so easy for him here, Sarah. It's such a nice padded life. Understandable he should be tempted to stay, but as I said, he
can
go now. He
can
face real life because we have taught him that adults are not dangerous to him, so … do you have any objections, Sarah?”

But she still couldn't speak, and watching Dr. Bee with the pipe drooping, his right hand on the figure of Joey's head, his left on the body, she thought of what he had just said, “… we have taught him that adults are not dangerous to him.”
It was that
, Sarah thought.
That was it
. She saw the hair on the top of Dr. Bee's bent head, pepper and salt; she saw the black hair on the back of his big hands holding the figure of Joey. And then she screamed because now Joey's severed head was in Dr. Bee's big right hand and Joey's body in his left hand. For a queer moment the scream lingered in the air while everyone stared at Dr. Bee holding the two pieces of Joey, and Sarah knew that this was why she had wanted them to see Joey while they decided his fate. She realized that she was afraid that someone was going to break Joey. Then Olaf jumped up and took the pieces of the figure from Dr. Bee, holding the head close to his near-sighted eyes to study the break.

“I'll glue it back right,” he said. “Sarah, don't worry. If I can't, I'll copy it and Joey won't know the difference. Even if it takes all night, I'll copy it.”

Sarah nodded at Olaf, but didn't he know, she wondered, that he couldn't put it together again? That once Joey was broken, all the King's horses and all the King's men couldn't put him together again?

The staff went back upstairs quickly, in case Sarah's scream had awakened any of the children, but Dr. Bee asked Sarah to stay. “Will you call Joey's mother for me, Sarah? Mrs. Wilson and I want to have a talk.”

Dr. Bee thought that everything she felt could be attributed to her desire to hold on to Joey. “Yes, Dr. Bee.” He was trying to be kind and at the same time to tell her that if she continued in this kind of work this was to be her reward, to be able to telephone a child's parent to say that her child was coming home. “I'll call her.”

Dr. Bee frowned, then smiled at Mrs. Wilson and asked her if she could excuse him. He took her to the door and closed it after her. “What's the trouble, Sarah?”

Dr. Bee knew it wasn't just possessiveness. “You said Joey trusted adults again.”

“This is bad?” He grinned. “Perhaps you would prefer me to be the papa in the old joke: Papa lifts his son up and sets him on the mantelpiece.” Dr. Bee pointed to the mantelpiece, where his tobacco humidor was. “‘Jump!' Papa says, but Sonny is frightened. He holds back. ‘Jump,' the father says. ‘Papa is here. Papa will catch you; jump!' So, reassured, Sonny jumps and Papa steps aside and Sonny falls flat on his face. ‘That,' Papa says, ‘will teach you not to trust anybody.'” He put his hand on Sarah's shoulder. “But we can't live without trust.”

“I know it,” she said miserably.

He pushed his glasses back to see her expression. “You are thinking that Dr. Bee is a stupid psychiatrist who deals so much with paranoid delusions of danger that he believes all danger is imaginary? No, Sarah, no. I do not. But I do not see any danger here. Call,” he said, and walked out.

“Miss Schwartz of the High House School? I will see if Madam is at home,” the English voice said. “One moment, please.”

Sarah could hardly wait until Joey's mother had expressed her happiness to ask her who had answered the telephone.

“Why, Nanny, of course. You must remember Nanny, Miss Schwartz.”

“I certainly do,” Sarah said grimly. “You're not going to keep her on now that Joey is coming home, are you?”

“What do you mean? I depend on Nanny. I couldn't do without Nanny.”

“What do I mean? I mean I've seen this woman when she has come up to the School with you. Three times. I mean she and Joey … I mean they're incongruous!”

“I don't understand,” Virgie said, but she did. When Joey and Ralphie and Nanny used to come home from the park with Nanny in her uniform and little Ralphie, smiling and blond, holding one hand, wearing the Eton suits Nanny used to order from Best's Lilliputian Bazaar (because
she
had been too sick to do anything), Joey
had
seemed incongruous. Nanny had bought the Eton suits for Joey as well, of course, but he simply would not wear them, putting on the T-shirts and jeans he had until they were in rags. And he never would hold Nanny's hand. And no matter how often Nanny tidied him, he looked thrown together, yes, wrong, with his dark hair generally unkempt because he rebelled against haircuts, but, oh, what difference did looks make? Nanny and Joey aren't going to be posing for a picture! But this reminded her of the picture for which little Ralphie had posed and her thoughts skittered away from that. “Really, Miss Schwartz, Joey and Nanny will be fine,” Virgie said, trying through her trembling lips to sound decisive. “I can't wait to tell Nanny that Joey is coming home to us at last.”

The minute the telephone call was finished, Sarah went to find Dr. Bee, but he had gone to drive Mrs. Wilson to the airport and had left a message that she was to tell Joey first thing in the morning.

When Sarah came into Joey's dormitory to tell him, he was sitting on the floor quietly playing a word game, and, near him, Simon, as usual, still had his shoes off. Simon, unlike Joey, trusted nobody. He had to be sure he still had his feet every morning. He had to examine his shoes minutely to make sure they were not dangerous, that he could put them on, lace them up, trust his feet to them. Joey raised his head and smiled when Sarah came in and said, “Hi!” Simon only moved closer to Joey.

When she told Joey, he said,
“Home?”
The longing in his voice was so apparent that Sarah acknowledged that whether the ceramic figure meant what Dr. Bee said or not, Joey wanted to go. She also acknowledged her jealousy. “Home?” Joey repeated, and then jumped up and ran around the room saying it, over and over, “Home, home, home! Simon,” he said, waving his arms, “I'm going home!”

For answer, Simon reached out and swept away the word Joey had been making, apparently indicating his reaction to leaving the safe world of the School, sweeping the word “home” away. Seeing this, understanding, because from the day Simon had arrived, mute, almost catatonic, Joey had seemed able to interpret from the slight variation of expression, the tight motions of his limbs, his always destructive acts, what Simon meant, Joey froze. Now his eyes were the eyes of the ceramic figure, deep, deep, unplumbed. They simply did not
know
what those eyes knew. “What is it, darling?” Sarah asked, coming to him, because she could not say, “If you don't want to go home, don't! If something terrifies you at home, don't go!” She told herself that he was eight. When you are eight, you have to go where you're told.

He stood where he was. This, she thought, was the other face of the coin, this was ambivalence, but it wasn't because he wanted to stay in this nice, padded life, but because he was afraid to go home. She said, “We'll be right here, Joey. You can always telephone us if you have a problem.”

He squared his narrow shoulders. “I can always call you,” he said.

He cared most for her. Everybody knew that. It was because he had made such a strong transference to her that Dr. Bee had allowed her to be his special counselor. “I'll be right here, darling,” she said, and held out her arms; and he came into them and she believed she felt his fear. Then she believed she could almost feel him thinking, working it out, as far as an eight-year-old could. “Joey, if anything special is bothering you, tell me and I'll tell Dr. Bee and he'll try to fix it.” She had no idea what she expected him to say.

“Well, one thing …”

“Yes, Joey?”

“You know how I have bad dreams sometimes and I yell out?”

“Yes. And I always come in or Francis does. But if you have a bad dream at home and you yell, your mommy and daddy will come.”

“No.
She'll
come in.”

Sarah knew whom he meant. “You don't want her to come in?” He shook his head violently. “Joey, would you like it better if she weren't there?” For a little, there was such hope in his huge eyes that it made her blink; then the light went out.

“She's got to be there. My mommy needs her. I don't want her coming in when I'm asleep, that's all.”

“I want to tell that to Dr. Bee, darling. You don't want her to come in when you yell in your sleep. Maybe Dr. Bee can fix it.” Sarah saw Francis outside the door and signaled her to keep an eye on this room and hurried down to Dr. Bee's office. He was writing, but he put this aside immediately and left the desk to sit next to her on an Eames chair. She told him what Joey had said.

“Mmm … mmm. We know that after this happened Joey made the nurse into the ‘wicked mother' so that his mother could remain the ‘good mother.' Now you are telling me you think this means he still fears the wicked mother. Well, why aren't you satisfied, Sarah? Last night you were disturbed because I said Joey now trusted adults, so, if he doesn't …”

“You're making fun of me, Dr. Bee! You've seen this woman and talked to her. She's not ordinary. She's a relic, an antique. She's a piece of Victoriana! Oh, Dr. Bee, it's bad enough when a woman like that gets an infant from scratch and brings him up her way … no,
breaks
him into her way!” Sarah blushed because she thought of the figure of Joey with its head severed.

“Breaks them in is right. That's just what nurses like that did do. Okay. Go on.”

“My point is that she didn't get the opportunity to break Joey. He was an
unbroken
four-year-old when she arrived. He was … oh … solid. Joey's been taught the opposite of her beliefs. Children
should
be seen and heard. Children
should
speak back. Children can hit not only other kids but adults without burning in hell. Dirt isn't dirty. Masturbation isn't a sin. Oh, I don't have to tell you, Dr. Bee!”