Soul Survivor (5 page)

The planes were tall and majestic behind the rope barriers, and James’s eyes glowed with appreciation. Security was never
an issue at the museum, which was seldom crowded, and so there were no guards. And Bruce had a hard time keeping James behind
the barriers. He pulled to get closer to the old World War II Mustangs and Spitfires and Wildcats.

“You’re not allowed in there,” warned Bruce. But James plainly was struck powerfully by something he saw out there on the
hangar floor, and he stood there openmouthed with wonder. Bruce started to move on to the next hangar, where they displayed
the more modern jets, but when he looked down, James was not with him. He had gone back to keep looking at the World War II
planes. He was mesmerized.

“Now, come on, James,” said Bruce, taking his son’s hand.

And then James screamed. It was the piercing shriek of an enraged child. No, something even stronger. A thwarted child. A
child in some form of unfamiliar woe. Not like a spoiled kid who couldn’t get his way—more like a kid who desperately wanted
to express himself clearly but was unable.

Bruce, who normally didn’t give in to such antics, was perplexed. Finally, he tried to drag James to a new exhibit, and the
child still resisted. There was something eerie about this, something that Bruce could not fathom.

And so they revisited the World War II planes twice, three times, and a trip to the museum that was supposed to last an hour
turned into three.

“I don’t wanna go,” brooded James.

“Yes, but we can’t stay here forever,” replied Bruce. “What about some lunch?”

James shook his head.

“Ice cream?”

The only way that Bruce could get him out of that hangar was to promise to take him to a working airfield where they could
watch the planes take off. “We’ll go to Addison Airport,” he said, which was on the grounds of the museum and where there
were Cessnas and corporate jets coming and going all the time. No lure of food or treats would budge James. Just the promise
of live takeoffs.

When they got back home, he spoke to Andrea about it, tried to explain why it was unsettling, but only managed to sound as
if he was complaining about the difficulty of handling James. Of course that wasn’t the point, but he didn’t know what the
point was.

Now, three months later, on Memorial Day, they went back to the air museum. Again James was all but spinning with excitement.
Like a puppy, he pulled Bruce. Outside, they ran into an old guy who said, “That little boy sure is excited. Well, I get excited
every time I come here, too. During World War Two I flew an airplane just like one they have inside.”

It turned out the old guy was Charles R. Bond Jr., who flew a P-40 with the Flying Tigers. He gave James a gift, an Angel
pin, and went off to keep another appointment. It was an odd encounter; Charles clearly recognized a kindred spirit in James.

This time Bruce had a camera, as if he might capture on film some wisp of whatever James was experiencing, and he took pictures
of his son standing and pointing at the WW II aircraft. But the child’s intensity was not something that could be caught on
film—an excitement so fervid that Bruce realized you had to be there to feel it.

They went back to Becky’s house, where everyone was busy fixing up for the party. The theme was “Thomas the Tank Engine.”
The kids all splashed around in an inflatable pool, and there was a piñata in the front of the house, with Andrea keeping
watch to see that no one fractured anyone else’s skull. The bizarre museum experience folded quietly into the happy memories
of the trip.

And it was a splendid trip; it revived the exhausted Bruce and Andrea. On the last morning before they returned to Lafayette,
Bruce and James and Andrea lay out in the sun at the Amerisuite pool, and in that small moment, with the family together and
quiet, it felt like a mini vacation.

On the drive back to Louisiana, they stopped in Shreveport again for lunch, but this time they went to McDonald’s. There was
an indoor play center, and James was given five minutes to play. Bruce had to climb in and pull him out after ten minutes.

As he drove away, Bruce thought, it wasn’t like the museum. The jungle gym was a toy, and James behaved like a child with
a toy. The Cavanaugh had been different—there had been no playfulness there.

Up until now, neither parent had made a connection between James’s obsessive fascination with airplanes and his bad dreams.
Clearly there was a great contrast. James took to airplanes with such pure gusto, such tireless enthusiasm, that it didn’t
seem possible that the terrible dreams had anything to do with his love of airplanes. One was deeply disturbing—terrifying.
The other was a wholesome delight. It didn’t seem possible that something so enjoyable could have anything to do with something
so scary.

Of course, later on they would see that the dots were there all along (the deep passion at the museum, the obsession with
airplanes), but just now, en route home from Becky’s house, lulled by the warm feelings of their holiday, no one in the Leininger
family was connecting those dots.

J
UNE 1 was a bright, sunny day, but not for Andrea Leininger. It was two days since they returned from Dallas. There had been
no bad dreams at the Amerisuite, but there James had slept between them on a king-size bed. Both parents had been lulled into
a kind of breathless optimism by their undisturbed, peaceful rest over the long weekend. But this turned out to be like a
long pause between hiccups.

Now back in his own bed, James was again screaming in his sleep. The nightmares had resumed.

But that wasn’t the only reason Andrea was so upset on this Thursday, a warm, sweet morning with the breath of summer in the
air. What was troubling her was something much more prosaic, something every parent faces sooner or later: that she would
have to give up her precious James, separate herself and leave her only child with complete strangers. It had all seemed so
harmless, so routine when she first agreed to it. She had enrolled James in Mother’s Day Out, a once-a-week preschool program
for toddlers at the Asbury United Methodist Church, where the Leiningers had just become members. What could be more innocent?
A preschool program run by the church and staffed by carefully screened personnel.

The program allowed overstressed mothers to have three full hours to go shopping or have a long, lingering brunch while their
children were in reliable hands. It was not meant to drive mothers to three straight hours of hysterics, which is how Andrea
spent her first holiday from parenthood.

She had packed James’s lunch and his diaper bag and deposited him in the “Angels” class with ten other toddlers. James seemed
happy and excited as they walked down the hallway, brightening even more when he spotted the little kiddie gym and the small
slide in the classroom. He ran over to the play set, and Andrea handed his lunch bag and his diaper kit to Miss Lisa, making
certain to mention his complete health status—his latest shots, his allergies, the name of his pediatrician, her cell phone
number, and his toilet habits.

Then she bravely called out to James, “Bye, buddy, have a great time. Be a good boy and I’ll be back to get you at lunchtime!”

He didn’t even hear her, he was so busy with his new pals and toys.
Fine,
she thought—no tears, no excruciating farewells, no tugging at her, no having to pry his little fingers from her calves.
It was clean and simple. Now all she had to do was kill three childless hours. Three blissful, carefree hours. She would go
shopping and…

But as she pulled out of the parking lot and into Johnston Street, it hit her. She was leaving her baby… to…
whom
?! She didn’t know these people. Not really. For all she knew, they could be paroled child molesters! Ax murderers! Just exactly
what did she know about these so-called teachers who called themselves Miss Lisa and Miss Cheryl? And even if they were as
good as Mother Goose, would they know what to do in a crisis? What if James choked? What if the other kids were mean to him?
What if he missed her?

Oh, there were high-operatic fears that she could scale like a lyric soprano.

And what would James make of being there? He would think she had abandoned him. Wouldn’t that be the assumption of a two-year-old?
Look around and Mom’s not there; ergo, she’s gone—forever.

Naturally, Andrea tried to prepare him. She told him about the school, she said it would be only for a little while, and then
she would be back. But did he really understand? He was too little.

She didn’t understand!

In this dark moment of woe, she turned to her mother. She called Bobbi on her cell phone, trying to hide her tears. Andrea
knew that Bobbi was no comfort when she heard tears. Any emotional display, and Bobbi would go into her tough-love mode. So
Andrea tried to sound brave, but her mother could discern her daughter’s near hysteria through the false courage and fed her
that icy reassurance that Andrea should have expected: James will survive. He’ll be fine. It’s only a little day care, for
heaven’s sake. Buck up!

Just the kind of sensible talk Andrea should have expected from a rational human being. Right now she didn’t need a rational
human being. She needed a soul sister.

Which is who she called: her sisters, Becky and Jenny, who completely understood Andrea’s irrational panic. After all, they
had grown up under that same emotionally charged roof, where they, too, learned to downplay their theatrical outbursts under
Bobbi’s unsparing judgments. And, like good sisters, Becky and Jenny made those soft cooing noises that said they understood
and sympathized with a crazed lady going to pieces over a child torn from his mother’s loving arms by a play date.

As always, talking to her sisters was comforting, but Andrea was a mess as she rolled her cart through Sam’s Club, picking
up paper towels and cookies and steaks and floor cleaner—and sobbing and blubbering into the cell phone.

Somehow, the three hours passed, and she got back to the church early to pick up James. A little too early. She tried not
to seem like a stalker, peeking through the bushes as she waited.

Finally, it was noon and she marched into the classroom, careful not to fall apart in front of the other moms, who didn’t
look as if they had been sobbing and wailing all over Lafayette.

She felt she was the picture of control and respectability as she smiled crisply for Miss Lisa and Miss Cheryl, as if this
three-hour break had flown by smoothly.

And—thank God!—James burst into tears when he spotted his mother.

James lived inside a carefully cushioned, loving world. It was hardly surprising, given that he was a late child, born under
difficult circumstances to wildly overprotective parents. Bruce was only slightly less obsessive. He would wake up early so
that he could give James his first bottle of the day, and he kept his son up late so that he could give him his last bottle
at night.

When it came time for James to be weaned off his bottle, it was Bruce who had an emotional problem. Often, Andrea would come
out in the morning and find Bruce cradling his son in his arms and feeding him from the forbidden bottle.

The child was fine with the sippy cup, and Andrea was certain he would have had no trouble giving up the bottle. But Bruce
was another matter. He cherished his private moment when he could hold his son and whisper a kind of talking love song; it
was an intimacy that he held on to as long as he possibly could.

The Christmas before James turned three, Andrea came up with a drastic solution. She rounded up all the bottles in the house
and put them in a sealed package. She explained to James that she was going to leave all the bottles for Santa Claus to distribute
to children who had no bottles. Bruce had no further argument—not without taking on Santa Claus.

One day in early June, just when school closed for the summer, a great, long train of eighteen-wheel trucks pulled into the
parking lot of the Lafayette Convention Center—the Cajun Dome—and out poured a colorful band of muscled roustabouts, slick
pitchmen, glib barkers, and a wizened corps of carny gypsies in all their wild, tattooed splendor. The Cajun Heartland State
Fair had come to town. It was as if a fleet of pirate ships had landed. They began to pitch their soiled tents and unload
the big, clunky rides; they erected their exotic booths to house the eternal crooked games of chance that would plug up the
midway with their dusty prizes of cheap toys and useless gadgets. Then came the whirling helicopter, the dizzying Tilt-a-Whirl,
the shaky Ferris wheel, the faded carousel, all looking frail and patched, as if they were held together with duct tape and
baling wire. On such flimsy devices rode the children of Lafayette.