The Third Eye (12 page)

Three days later, having shoved the dream firmly to the back of her mind, Karen started her job at the Heights Day Care Center.

“Are you sure that’s what you want to do?” her mother asked doubtfully. “You’ve worked at that place for two whole summers. It was a good enough job when you were in high school, but now that you’ve graduated, I should think you’d want to look for something more exciting.”

“I’ll keep my eyes open,” Karen assured her. “If something irresistible comes along, I can always change jobs.”

She had made a conscious decision to avoid arguing with her mother. It had become obvious on the night of her graduation that the two of them had reached a point at which they could not continue to live together. In September, Karen would be moving into a college dorm, which would provide them with an automatic separation point. Next summer, if things went as she anticipated, she would find a job, perhaps in another town, and get her own apartment.

Meanwhile, she would try to avoid confrontations. Since these would be the last few weeks in which they would be living in the same home, she hoped that she and her mother could manage to get through it with a minimum amount of conflict.

Despite this resolution, she had no intention of sacrificing
her final summer at the day care center, no matter what other jobs might present themselves. She loved the center and everyone connected with it: Mrs. Dunn, the director; plump, efficient Jane Roebuck, who taught the four-and five-year-olds; pretty, round-faced Maria Torres, who cared for the infants. Most of all, she loved the atmosphere—the warmth and good cheer that pervaded the clean, airy rooms, the clatter and clutter and whimpers and giggles, the shouts on the playground, the chortles and squeals and cooing in the Baby Room.

“Am I ever glad to see
you
!” Mrs. Dunn, silver-haired and bustling, greeted Karen with unconcealed relief when she reported to work the Monday after graduation. “Things are absolutely chaotic around here! We lost our playground help—both girls fell through on us without a word of warning—and you did know, didn’t you, that Maria got married?”

“No!” exclaimed Karen. “I didn’t even know she was engaged!”

“She wasn’t. That is, not officially. It was one of those love-at-first-sight things, a wild, romantic elopement. Which was lovely for Maria, but devastating for us. I’ve hired one new person, and I’m looking for two others, and I’ve been living in terror that you might change your mind about coming back this year.”

“No way,” Karen told her. “You can stop worrying. And I’m definitely not running off to get married.”

“Thank god for small favors,” Mrs. Dunn said. “What I was hoping was that you would take over the Baby Room.
That would leave me free to take the toddlers, and poor Jane will just have to manage as best she can with the preschoolers until I can hire some extra help.”

“How many babies do we have this year?” Karen asked her.

“Eight to ten regulars, which is too many, I know, but you’ll have Deedee, our new girl, to help you. She’s only fifteen, but she has little brothers. That should make her an expert at diaper changing.”

“That’s great,” said Karen. “You know how much I like the babies.”

The previous year, she had been Maria’s assistant in the Baby Room, so this year, as she entered the familiar environment, it was with the happy feeling that she was coming home. The cribs and infant seats were not yet occupied, but the room itself held the sweet, residual odor of Pampers and talcum powder. A pile of towels and crib sheets, fresh from the laundry, sat out on the changing table. Colored mobiles swirled lazily in a current of air from an open window, and the yellow walls and bright, checkered curtains threw off a glow like reflected sunlight.

Deedee proved to be a skinny, freckled girl who announced a bit sullenly that this was her first job and that she had applied for it under duress.

“My mother said she didn’t want me sitting around all summer,” she grumbled. “I don’t see why that would have been so terrible. After beating my brains out at school all year, I deserve a vacation.”

“You’ll have fun working here,” Karen assured her. “I started two summers ago at almost the same age you are, and I liked it so much I’ve come back every year.”

Their conversation was interrupted by the tinkle of the bell in the front office, announcing the beginning of the first rush hour of the day.

The day care center opened its doors at seven on weekday mornings, and clients began bringing in children almost immediately. By seven fifteen on this particular day, a line of parents stood waiting at the admissions desk, and six small inhabitants had already been installed in the Baby Room. Two of these were too young to do much of anything but sleep. The other four, who were in various stages of mobility, had been placed in playpens and bouncy chairs and were soon busily engaged in gumming graham crackers.

Shortly before nine, an attractive young woman rushed in with a ten-month-old named Matthew, announcing frantically that she was late for class. Several other college-bound parents, all equally harried, arrived just behind her.

There was a lull until midmorning, when some mothers who were headed for luncheons or country-club activities brought in a rash of new arrivals.

For identification purposes, the names of the babies were printed on cards and pinned to their shirts. “Adam, Sara, Matthew, another Adam.” Deedee reviewed them aloud. “They’re all straight from the Bible.”

“This is the year for that,” said Mrs. Dunn, who had stuck
her head in through the doorway to review the situation. “The names seem to come in batches. Last season’s babies were Heathers and Brookes and Skyes.”

She glanced worriedly around the room, which was churning like an anthill.

“You’re over your quota here, aren’t you? I’ve put out a sign, saying that we’re filled, which is something I should have done a half-hour ago. It’s time for me to take the toddlers out to the playground. Are the two of you going to be able to handle things here?”

“We’re doing all right,” Karen said. “The problem will come at lunchtime.”

“It will be hectic, for sure,” Mrs. Dunn agreed. “I’m sorry to overload you like this. Damn that Maria! Why couldn’t she have picked a more convenient time to find her Prince Charming?”

Serving lunch in the Baby Room made the remembered task of feeding one lone Stephanie Zenner seem like nothing. Even back when Maria had been there to supervise, lunch hour had been known to stretch from late morning until early afternoon. Food had to be spooned in turn into first one gaping mouth and then another, while the children who were old enough to feed themselves splashed and splattered and dumped their least favorite items off their trays. Slumbering infants woke and cried and were changed and given bottles, and older babies went down for or got up from naps, overlapping each other’s sleep schedules in rapid succession.

“What a madhouse!” Deedee gasped. “And I thought that feeding twin brothers was bad!”

“You’ll get used to it,” Karen said.

“Not if I can help it, I won’t.” She was attempting to administer a bottle with one hand and unscrew the top of a jar of applesauce with the other. “How can you keep coming back here summer after summer?”

“I enjoy it,” Karen told her. “I can’t explain it. It just feels like the right place for me to be.”

At midafternoon things suddenly became more peaceful. By now, several parents had returned to pick up their children, and many of the remaining infants were sleeping. The others were resting quietly in their cribs, content for the moment to be hypnotized by the motion of the dangling mobiles and the shifting pattern of shadows they created on the wall behind them.

With a sigh of exaggerated exhaustion, Deedee collapsed into a chair.

“I’m dead,” she moaned. “How am I supposed to stay awake?”

“There’s a convenience store across the street,” Karen said. “Since things have quieted down, I guess you could go get a Coke.”

As if on cue, one of the babies gave a demanding grunt and began to haul himself to a standing position in his crib.

“Oh, no!” Deedee exclaimed. “Now that one’s going to wake up all the rest of them! Doesn’t it ever stop? I’m going to have a nervous breakdown!”

“You sit there and rest,” Karen told her. “I don’t seem to be as tired as you are.”

She crossed to the struggling youngster, who was straining and puffing like a mountain climber attempting to scale Mount Everest.

“Hello, there, Matthew,” she said, impressed by his perseverance. “You’re not much of a sleeper, are you?”

The child paused at half-mast, knees bent, hands gripping the railing, and regarded her thoughtfully with brilliant blue eyes. Then, as though it had suddenly occurred to him that this unfamiliar person might be in a position to release him from his confinement, he broke into an ingratiating grin, displaying a set of four tiny white teeth.

“Aren’t you a charmer!” exclaimed Karen, reaching into the crib to hoist him to her shoulder. “With that smile and those eyes, your parents ought to get you work as a model.”

“No way,” Deedee said. “He’d never sit still long enough to pose.”

“Well, maybe he could make it in television. Would you like that, Matthew? Would it be fun to be in a Pampers commercial?”

Karen hugged the little boy against her, enjoying the sweet smell of his downy skin and the feathery touch of the soft hair. Until this moment, she had not fully realized how much she missed cuddling a baby.

The Zenners had broken contact with her completely. She understood why, of course, and she couldn’t blame them. She
was not the only person who must suffer from nightmares. The vision of their son, unconscious in a car trunk, would remain with Bobby’s parents as long as it would with her.

Matthew took hold of a lock of her hair and yanked it.

“Ow!” Karen exclaimed in mock agony. “Please, Matthew, don’t pull my hair out!”

The baby giggled and made a grab for her left ear. He gave it an experimental tug and paused expectantly.

Extending the game, Karen said, “Ow!” again and shook her head fiercely. The plump little hand gripped her harder, and she was rewarded this time by a whole torrent of mischievous giggles.

“It looks as though Matt-the-Monster has found a new victim!”

The voice spoke unexpectedly from behind her. Karen turned to find the slender, strikingly pretty young woman who had brought Matthew to the center that morning observing them with amusement from the doorway to the kitchen.

“I’m Sue, Matt’s battered mother,” she continued. “I couldn’t park in front because of the laundry truck, so I left the car in the alley and came in through the back.”

The moment he heard his mother’s voice, Matthew had begun to squirm in Karen’s arms. Now he let out an impatient squeal and lunged forward with so much vigor that it was all she could do to keep from dropping him.

“Hi, Matt! Come and see Mommy!” Sue held out her arms for her son. “The truth is, it’s amazing the poor kid knows who
I am, we get so little time together. My days are spent in class, and in the evenings I’m at the law library.”

“You’re in law school?” Karen was unable to hide her surprise. She looked attractive and fun—more like a party girl than a serious student.

“I was a first-year law student when Steve and I got married. Then, surprise! Along came Matt, and I had to drop out for a semester. Now I’m back in class again and wondering if it’s worth it. The career, I mean, not the baby. Or maybe I do mean the baby. Actually, I guess I don’t know
what
I mean.” The woman gave a short, apologetic laugh. “You’ll have to forgive me. I’ve been studying for finals, and I’m in a daze.”

“I know the feeling,” Deedee said. “No one who goes to school full-time should have to do anything else, even in the summers.”

“Matt’s a hunk,” Karen said, changing the subject. “Those incredible eyes!”

“They run in his father’s family,” Matthew’s mother told her. “My husband and brother-in-law both have them, and so does Matt’s grandmother. It’s odd, because the genes for dark eyes are supposed to take precedence over light ones, but in their family blue eyes are a dominant trait.”

Karen said, “Despite the problems, I know you must be happy to have Matt.”

“We adore him,” Sue said defensively. “It would have been easier, though, if he’d come along a few years later.” As if to soften the impact of her words, she gave the baby a hug and
swung him around so that he was straddling one of her narrow hips. “Well, we’re off to buy groceries, and then home to fix dinner. Does that laundry service you use do private deliveries, or is that just for businesses?”

“They deliver to anybody,” Karen told her. “You have to pay extra, though.”

She was so irritated by the woman’s attitude toward motherhood that it didn’t occur to her at that moment to analyze the content of their conversation. Later, when she thought about it, she would realize that there was no reason for a laundry truck to be parked in front of the day care center. The clean sheets and towels had been delivered earlier that morning.

On Thursday, it rained. It didn’t start out as a
heavy rain, and Karen awoke to the smell of it rather than the sound. She lay in bed with her eyes still closed, breathing in the dampness, and knew without looking that the sky outside the window was thick and low and that the leaves of the backyard elm were glistening with drops of silver.

It was one of those on-again, off-again, all-day drizzles, the kind that keep you disconcerted. When she left the house to walk to the bus stop, it had let up completely, and she decided she wasn’t going to bother to take an umbrella. Then, at the last moment, as she was halfway out the door, she hesitated. Maybe she should bring one, but she was already running late… she spotted her mom’s plastic rain scarf hanging by the front door. The thing was ancient, but her mom insisted it
was the only thing that kept her hair dry. Karen knew she would look like a grandma wearing it, but if it did start to pour, it would be better than nothing. She grabbed it and hurried down the street. She was very soon glad she had taken it, for by the time the bus pulled to a stop at the corner of Central Avenue and Hill Street, the softly glowing, mother-of-pearl day had dulled and darkened, and rain had begun to fall again.