The Babysitter Murders - By Janet Ruth Young Page 0,20
she might start selling T H E B A B Y S I T T E R M U R D E R S
office buildings. But she still likes houses a lot. She can afford to hire painters and she knows the best ones, but she says she finds painting relaxing. Once Dani heard Beth tell their neighbor Lynette that when she touched all the walls with her own hands she felt like she was making love to her house.
“I have no complaints about that ceiling,” Dani says.
“That’s because you’re never home.” A drip forms at the edge of the roller. Beth smushes the drippy edge against the ceiling.
“Mom, I’m asking when you’ll be done because I need to talk.”
“You do?” She places her wet roller in the paint pan and climbs down. She appears concerned but also excited—she and Dani haven’t had a good mother-daughter talk in a while. “Should I make us some tea?”
“No, thanks,” Dani says. “Let’s talk here, like this.”
Now that she’s built up some momentum, Dani wants to keep going. On her way home Dani rehearsed what she would say to her mother. She decided that when she spoke to her mom she would use the word hurt early on, but to prevent her mother from panicking, she would not use the words stab or kill.
“Mom,” she begins, “do you ever worry that you’ll lose control?”
“What do you mean, with men?”
Dani takes a rag and wipes the paint from Beth’s nose. In a world full of nasty events, her mother can think of only one way things can go wrong.
“I mean, do you ever worry that you’ll hurt someone, that you’ll get this urge to do the wrong thing and it will happen 71
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without your controlling it and later everything will be awful and the whole world will be ruined?”
“I used to.”
“You did?”
Beth puts on the old eyeglasses that are hanging around her neck.
“When I started in the business, I stayed awake nights worrying that I had snapped at someone or poached on somebody’s turf or moved too quickly or hurt someone’s feelings. I thought I was making a bad impression and it was all going to come back to me in the end. I ago-nized over those things. But eventually I saw that I kept getting calls and people seemed to like working with me, so I figured I was doing okay. I’m not sure we should all worry about that stuff as much as we do. Other people can take care of themselves. We don’t have to be overprotective. It’s up to us to take care of ourselves.”
“Right,” Dani says. She has that feeling, like a premonition, that a line exists between the real world and the world inside her mind, and that someday she will cross the line and the two worlds will become one. Her mother is so innocent and naive, with her freckle phobia and business ethics and paint colors. At the same moment that her mother says “Don’t be overprotective,” Dani feels that she needs to protect her. But then she gets an image of Beth being up on the ladder. In her mind, Dani knocks over the ladder by nudging it with her shoulder. Her mother falls, her head strikes the table. Blood seeps from her reddish-blond hair into the ball cap and overwhelms the smell of paint and Beth’s avocado-cucumber skin lotion. What does blood smell like? Dani’s heart pounds and she feels unsteady. Dani folds her hands in front of her like 72
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an old-fashioned girl in an old picture. She squeezes her hands to make sure she isn’t touching the ladder. She has already said hurt.
How can she explain what she means without saying stab or kill?
“Do you feel all right, Dani?” Beth asks. She comes closer.
Dani ruffles her mother’s hair to see if there’s blood on her scalp.
“What’s that, paint?” Beth says. “I’m such a slob when I do this.
I just love getting my hands dirty.”
Dani squeezes the rag between her hands. “I guess I’ll go to bed,” she tells Beth. Dani has noticed that when she’s babysitting, if she gets sleepy she doesn’t have the thoughts. Maybe she’ll go to her room and pick the most boring music or TV show. Sleep will get her away from Mom and the ladder.
“So early? No tea?”
“Not tonight.”
Beth checks her arm for paint and presses it