Rachel Alexander 09 - Without a Word

Shouldn’t I stop wasting my time and poor Mr. Spector’s money?”
    “Well, I’ll give her this. She never started any of the fights. But if another child asked her a personal question,” she pointed to her eye, “or teased her, well, they could be twice her size, it wouldn’t matter to Madison. She’d never back down. She’d go after them like a wild animal.”
    “I don’t understand. Why would a child get teased here?“
    “Not all the children who come here have facial tics, Ms. Alexander. First of all, there are Dr. Edelstein’s patients, who are normal children coming in for checkups and shots. But not all of Dr. Bechman’s children had visible disabilities. Far from it.”
    “I see. So Madison would get teased and she’d react, is that what you’re saying?”
    Ms. Peach snorted. “React? Overreact would be closer to the truth. If you’d seen her . . .“ She flapped a hand at me. “You don’t want to know.”
    But of course I did.
    I’d seen dogs like that, dogs who I’d been told wouldn’t start a fight, but would never shy away from one if challenged. Show me a dog who won’t back down and I’ll show you a dog who starts fights. Was that the way it was for Madison, too, that in one way or another, she’d provoke fights because she needed an excuse for venting her terrible rage?
    “And what was the teasing like?” I asked, thinking of the kids who said that’s why they’d shot up their schools, killed teachers and classmates, because they’d been shunned or teased.
    “Oh, the usual thing. Another child would ask her what was wrong with her eyes,” she said. “Or imitate her.“
    “Anything else you think I should know, Ms. Peach?”
    “If she had to wait for the doctor, she’d pace around the office, or sit and bang her feet against a leg of the chair. Sometimes she’d come over to the desk and pick up my things, examine them, put them down in a different place.” Clever girl, I thought. She knew exactly how to play Ms. Peach into a frenzy. And I’d best be clever, too, because there was no doubt in my mind that Madison Spector would be turning that very cleverness on me the following morning.
    “She filched things, too, at least two times.”
    “Like what?”
    “Money, for one thing. She was here first thing that day and asked me for a glass of water. I hadn’t put my purse away yet and—”
    “How did she do that?”
    “Well, when I went to get her the water, she must have—”
    “No, how did she ask for the glass of water?”
    “Oh, I see what you mean. Let me think. Well, it was very hot out and . . .“
    “She looked all sweaty, is that right? So you offered her a drink of cold water?”
    “Yes, I guess that’s . . .“
    I shook my head. “You read her mind.”
    Ms. Peach flushed.
    “So it wasn’t only Celia who was kind to Madison, was it?”
    “Well, she . . .“ Ms. Peach took a deep breath and let it out slowly. “I did try to …”
    “And what was the other thing she stole?”
    “One of the books from the reading nook. It was there that morning and missing when I cleaned up. It could have been one of the other children, of course, but it was a story about a turtle.”
    “She brought the turtle here?”
    “Emil/Emily? Oh, yes. Mr. Spector even introduced me to the turtle. When I suggested that Madison leave it out here when she went in for her examination, she swept everything off my desk onto the floor.”
    “And what did her father do then?”
    Ms. Peach snorted again. “Her father. Do you see the way he lets that child dress? Whose clothes are those she’s wearing? They’re certainly not hers.”
    I thought I had an idea whose clothes they might be, but I didn’t say.
    “Half the time he’d wait for her in the park, with his...“ So angry she couldn’t say the word; she mimed taking a picture instead. “He cared more about that than—”
    “Oh, I hardly think—”
    “It’s getting late and I have work to do,” checking her watch. “If you want to see the office, you best come in now.”
    She looked at Dashiell, then back at me, her head going from side to side. “But not with...“
    Pointing at him.
    Hadn’t anyone ever told her it was rude to point?
    “You’ll have to tie him up out here,” she said.
    “I can’t do that.”
    “Why on earth not?”
    “Someone might steal him,” I told her.
    “Him?”Staring now. Even worse than pointing.
    “I did,” I said.
    Ms. Peach looked up, reluctantly, as if it were