Facility

         Beth watched her son David through the two-way mirror, allowing her to observe his therapy without being seen by him. He was adorable. The blond highlights in his light brown hair provided was typical for David, he loved to play outside. His locks were noticeably tussled, he loved to play hard at recess. His blue eyes were filled with admiration for his therapist. As he smiled at something his therapist said, Beth could not help but smile a little at his missing front teeth, still not in despite David’s mightiest wishes. Her son. Her adorable son, who she was thinking of sending away.

         As if sensing her hesitation, the state social worker placed a hand on her shoulder. The social worker was attempting to offer her support in Beth’s tough decision. Beth knew this, but the truth was nothing was going to make this decision easy. Beth turned her head to offer the social worker a courtesy thank-you smile, and then once again returned her attention to the therapy room. This therapy session was the last she would see before making an important decision. The decision to follow the team’s recommendation to send David away to a facility. The team consisted of people who had worked with David, and other people Beth did not even know. They had all agreed to give her one more chance to decide. Another observation. One last moment with her David.

          Because the microphone in the therapy room connected to the headphones that she and the social worker wore, they were both able to hear the therapy session as it progressed.

         “I see that you have red playdough on the animals.” The therapist observed.

          “That’s cuz it’s the blood,” David stated. His voice seemed so small. So incapable of being the monster that Beth knew that he was. She had to bring herself to be able to accept that he was dangerous.

          “The blood?” the therapist had a way of restating what David had already said. She always had wondered why he did that. It annoyed Beth, but it somehow seemed to work for David. Even she had to admit that David talked more with his therapist than he did with anyone else, including her. At home he seemed to have shut down, and closed into himself. She had long since given up understanding the best ways to help David.

          “Yeah, like the squirrels. They all died. They were in my sister’s room.”

          “I heard about that David. I heard there were dead squirrels in your sister Allison’s room.” Again restating. Maybe it was some type of prompt to try and get David to say more.

         David continued to play with the animals. Carefully laying the plastic toy animals around with precision, in a pattern that Beth could not understand, but seemed very deliberate for David. He continued to affix red playdough to the animals and adorned them with miniature plastic weapons, such as swords and axes.

         The therapist continued, “The squirrels were dead. And someone had hurt the squirrels. There was a lot of blood.” Beth could still see it in her mind. The way the therapist described it sounded tame in comparison. Clinical perhaps. She remembered her the blood smeared all over her daughter’s white bed set. Numerous squirrels had been mangled and mutilated. Heads smashed, skin ripped off, eyes gouged out, wood nails impaled little squirrel heads, abdomens and rectums. Each squirrel had been destroyed, impaled and arranged uniquely, as if an artist was carefully displaying each inimitable piece of grotesque art in a deranged gallery.

         I wonder where the squirrels came from. She remembered having the detached thought, as if it had mattered.

         Allison had snuck into the bedroom, before they could stop her from seeing. She was inconsolable. She cried and kept repeating, “Who hurt the squirrels mommy? Daddy, why would they hurt the squirrels?” Allison had run to Beth for comfort, and sobs racked her little body as she unloaded her terror and revulsion into her mother’s shoulder. She knew her daughter needed to be comforted and to know that she would be protected from harm. Beth knew that Allison needed to know that she would be protected from David’s sick compulsions.

         Her husband Rob had not said a word, obviously in shock; he just quietly started to clean up the mess. David had stared at Allison. Hate had filled his eyes. He had done this to scare her somehow. To show her something, perhaps. Something threatening. Something wicked.

         Beth had not been able to bring herself to understand how David could betray his family like this. She wanted to understand him. She wanted to know how he could come to threaten harm toward his own little sister and tear apart his family. A wickedness brought on by some cold rage she wished she could understand.

         In the therapy room, David continued to play quietly. Beth could not help but feel as if he was caught up in something so much bigger than himself. So much bigger than a seven-year-old should even have to know about.

          “David, everyone at your house needs to be safe. Can you tell me what happened to the squirrels David?”

         Her son’s only response was to pick up the doll beside him, a girl doll she noticed, and tear off the head. He threw it across the play therapy room and screamed, “I HATE her!”

          “I know you do David. I know.” The therapist reassured the boy. That was one thing Beth had come to appreciate about David’s therapist. He always supported David, even when David was at his worst. At first she had wondered just how play was going to help her son. She had wondered where she had gone wrong that the therapist was recommending intensive therapy. In time though, she had come to respect and admire the therapist. She knew he cared about David. Not as much as she did, but she knew that he cared about David. Caring about David only made the decision harder though. David was not safe. Allison was not safe from David.

         She squeezed together her eyelids in a futile attempt to keep the tears from escaping. She felt the tears flood her cheek. David was her little boy.

         And he was a monster. He needed to be locked away. She knew that. But he was her little boy!

         She heard the therapist excuse himself from the therapy room with David. She heard the steps down the hall, and the door to the observation room opened. She and the social worked both removed their headphones.

          “Well.” That was what he said when he wanted to give himself time to think, when he was unsure what to say. “I don’t know Beth. I mean he isn’t getting any better. I think he is just getting worse.”

          “He needs to be placed,” was all she could quietly utter in acquiescence. It was all she could bring herself to say. She knew it was true. Allison had to be kept safe from David.

         Beth could feel the relief flood from the social worker and the therapist. She had finally consented to what they had been pushing her to consider for some time. The team would place David in a locked facility where he could be held safe. He would be placed away in a facility, where everyone else would be protected from him. Beth tuned out the others in the room as they eagerly made plans for David’s transport to the facility.

         As she watched him squatted on the floor, playing with the animals, she could not help wondering if she would ever see him act like a little boy again. Morbid, she knew, but would she ever get to see him act carefree ever again? Or would the oppressive weight of what he was, and what he had done begin to change him? Would the treatment he received in the locked facility, the prison for young children, turn him into someone else? Something else. Something never quite innocent, never quite happy. Never quite her son, ever again.

         She asked if she could go see him now, before they took him away. By the way the therapist and social worker immediately looked at each other, she could tell that they saw some problem in this.

         It was the therapist who first responded. “I don’t know Beth. I think it would be better if this was a clean break. Less chance of him going off on us. We don’t want to make this any harder than it needs to be.”

         She nodded. Numbingly trusting them to do what was necessary.

          “Also, I think we might have to start preparing ourselves that he may be a sociopath. In which case, he may never be able to live with you again.” David’s therapist had a way of referring to them as a unit, a team. A we. She had to concede though, it did make her feel less alone.

          “Do you think he knows that I love him? That we all love him?” She had to know.

         The therapist shook his head. “Beth, I don’t think he is capable of feeling love. When he hugs you, or seems affectionate, it is all just an act. He has no ability to connect to other people. People are just something for him to manipulate. Love doesn’t mean anything to him.”

          “So he is a monster then.” She affirmed out loud.

          “I don’t know. I mean, no not really. He is still a little boy. He just is missing those things in his brain that help him connect socially with other people. They keep him from caring about others. So love means nothing to him. It’s not that he doesn’t want to love you. He just can’t”

         After signing the papers consenting to David’s transport and confinement in the facility, Beth felt drained. She left him there in the play therapy room, knowing she would never have the same relationship with him again. He would never be her David again. He would just be David, the monster that had to be locked away. She called her husband to let him know it was over, and that she was coming home to what was left of her family.

* * *

         After he hung up the phone, Rob turned to tell Allison that mommy was coming home. She was playing on the floor next to him in the garage.

          “Is she bringing Davie?” Allison asked.

          “No honey, Davie won’t be coming home.”

          “Good.” She sounded relieved, excited even. “Help me clean this up. And remember that you can’t tell mommy. Not ever. Like teacher says at school, we are a team daddy. You love me don’t you daddy?” She started to sing, “Clean up, clean up, everybody everywhere. Clean up, clean up, everybody do your share.”

         Rob quietly started to help her clean up the dead cats that he had rounded up from the neighborhood so that Allison could torture and mutilate them. He knew he had to get the cats and their blood cleaned up before Beth arrived back home, hiding all of the evidence. Allison wanted it that way. Allison demanded it that way. She smiled and kissed him on the cheek, laughing as the blood on her chin left a dotted blotch of feline blood on his own cheek. She demanded it, and he would obey.