59 pages • 1 hour read
Lucinda BerryThe Perfect Child
Fiction | Novel | Adult | Published in 2019A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.
Chapters 53-61Chapter Summaries & Analyses
Chapter 53 Summary: “Christopher Bauer”
Content Warning: This section of the guide includes discussion of child abuse, graphic violence, death, addiction, and mental illness (including postpartum psychosis).
Christoper finally makes it back home after days in the hospital and finds the house exactly as it was left. There is rotting food lying around, and it feels strange without his family there. Christopher looks around the house for clues about what happened the day Hannah was found in the bathroom with Cole and Janie. He finds Cole’s baby book with diary entries from Hannah written throughout it. The entries begin with Hannah expressing how she feels like a prisoner in her home and wants Janie to be taken back. With each entry, Hannah’s animosity becomes more severe until she is calling Janie a demon with black eyes who talks to herself in Latin. Hannah’s last entry reads “Today is the day” (302), implying that she intended to “do” something about Janie.
Christopher goes to Allison’s house, where Piper and Dr. Chandler are already waiting for him. Everyone gathers around Janie to hear her tell the story of what happened, and Dr. Chandler gives her some dolls to help explain it. Janie uses the mother doll to hit the girl doll and then tells Dr. Chandler that Hannah tried to drown her. Dr. Chandler sees that Christopher is deeply upset and suggests he leave the room. He gives Piper the baby book in the hopes that it can bring some clarity to everything.
Chapter 54 Summary: “Hannah Bauer”
Hannah is with her psychologist and is asked about images that she has been seeing in her waking life. Hannah explains that she started hallucinating visions of Cole dying in various ways, including by her own intentional hand. Hannah never told anyone about these hallucinations because she knew it was extremely worrisome to see herself harming Cole. Hannah is diagnosed with postpartum psychosis, and when she tries to claim that her perception of Janie as dangerous was justified, the doctor tells Hannah that she can’t trust her own judgment.
Interlude 18 Summary: “Case #5243 Interview: Piper Goldstein”
Piper doesn’t say much about Hannah’s entries in the baby book, except to explain that she never told Allison about them, because she assumed Allison already knew.
Chapter 55 Summary: “Christopher Bauer”
The first time Christopher goes to see Hannah at the hospital, he is shocked by how dismal the psychiatric ward is. Hannah comes out with unbrushed hair and with her head down, and when Christopher tries to talk to her, she won’t reply or look at him. Christopher finds it too painful and uncomfortable and leaves shortly after. On his second visit, Hannah tells him to leave her because she sees herself as a horrible person who hurt a child. Christopher tells Hannah that he won’t leave her just because she is ill and admits that he has not been perfect throughout this entire experience either.
Chapter 56 Summary: “Hannah Bauer”
Hannah meets with her doctor a couple of times a day, and during one session is asked about hearing voices. Hannah explains that alongside the visual images came voices telling her that Janie was a demon. When her doctor asks her to talk about what happened the day she tried to drown Janie, Hannah refuses, believing there is no sense in trying to redeem or forgive herself.
Chapter 57 Summary: “Christopher Bauer”
Allison calls Christopher and tells him he has until Friday to figure out somewhere else for his children to stay. She doesn’t feel safe with Janie in the house and worries about her own children, and no amount of pleading on Christopher’s part will change her mind. Christopher calls Piper and begs her to find a solution, but Piper already knows that any solution will take longer than a few days. She offers to call Allison and try to change her mind.
Interlude 19 Summary: “Case #5243 Interview: Piper Goldstein”
Piper tells the police that she called Allison and tried to explain that there is nowhere else for the children to go except into foster care. Nothing she said made Allison change her mind. Piper called Christopher to tell him this, and he asked if she would be willing to take the children; Piper agreed to think about it. However, when Piper called the next day to tell Christopher she would take his children, Christopher told Piper that Allison was dead.
Chapter 58 Summary: “Christopher Bauer”
Christopher comes to tell Hannah that her sister is dead, and the experience is horrible for both of them. At first, he only tells Hannah that Allison died, leaving out the fact that Janie pushed her down the stairs. Hannah knows Christopher isn’t telling her the full story, and when he finally admits it, she starts shrieking and throws her chair. Hannah yells, “I should’ve killed her!” (332), until a couple of orderlies take her away.
Interlude 20 Summary: “Case #5243 Interview: Piper Goldstein”
Piper is questioned about Allison’s funeral, during which Allison’s husband, Greg, became angry with Christopher and Hannah and blamed them for Allison’s death. Greg yelled at them to leave his house because moments before, he saw footage on a nanny cam of Janie pushing Allison down the stairs and then simply standing there for several minutes as Allison died.
Chapter 59 Summary: “Christopher Bauer”
Christopher goes to visit Janie at her new residential home and finds her very happy there. She is thrilled to see him, and he feels the same; he realizes that no matter what she does, he will always love her.
At home, Cole goes to sleep easily for once, but then Piper calls and comes over late at night. She was recently taken off of Janie’s case but still cares about the Bauers. She warns Christopher that Greg is trying to have him arrested for manslaughter, claiming that Christopher should have warned Greg’s family about the things Janie had done. Piper tells Christopher to get a lawyer and not to talk to anyone until he does.
Chapter 60 Summary: “Hannah Bauer”
While the charges of manslaughter are dropped, Greg refiles for reckless endangerment instead. Hannah relinquishes herself to healing and lets Christopher take over much of the parenting duties. She has regular panic attacks and doesn’t want to leave home as a result, and she and Christopher have yet to talk about Janie. Hannah knows that she never wants to see Janie again and refuses to ever let her back into the home, even if that might mean losing Christopher one day.
Interlude 21 Summary: “Case #5243 Interview: Piper Goldstein”
Ron and Luke show Piper some footage they found on Becky’s phone. The footage shows Janie tied up and wearing a dog collar, living in the closet. Becky calls her out and puts a bowl of dog food in front of her, and Janie stabs her in the neck several times, killing her. Ron and Luke explain that Becky was using methamphetamine and had no idea how to raise a child like Janie. She called social services several times in the year leading up to her death, and nobody ever went to help her. Piper was the one assigned to her case, and it is implied that if she had gone to see Becky, none of the following events would have transpired.
Piper tries to explain that social services gets hundreds of calls a day and that the broken system was responsible, not her. Ron and Luke feel it is their responsibility to tell the Bauers what Janie did to her mother, and Piper wants to come with them.
Chapter 61 Summary: “Hannah Bauer”
Hannah and Christopher are at home enjoying peace and quiet and Cole’s laughter. Hannah is grateful to finally have the life she wanted but will always grieve the loss of her sister. Neither Christopher nor Hannah likes their new social worker, but they continue to keep in touch with Piper. Cole makes babbling sounds as he sits with Hannah, and suddenly the doorbell rings. Piper is there with the police by her side.
Chapters 53-61 Analysis
The story’s climax is a product of everything that came before it. Every minor and major incident along the way, every unspoken word or lie, and every decision to live in denial facilitates Allison’s death. The novel has firmly established The Sinister Side of Unconditional Love in Christopher’s relationship with Janie; his affection for Janie repeatedly causes him to dismiss the warning signs in her behavior, the implication being that it was only a matter of time before something catastrophic happened. The twist comes instead from Piper’s involvement. The revelation that Piper was assigned to Janie’s case before Becky’s murder retroactively calls her reliability into question, as it is now clear that she has more to answer for than simply the events that occurred during the Bauers’ fostering of Janie. It also lends an element of social critique to the novel, showing how an underfunded and overworked social services system struggles to perform the most basic functions, creating larger problems down the road.
At the same time, the nature of the threat Janie poses remains ambiguous, in part due to the ambiguities of Hannah’s narration. In an extreme example of How Parenting Changes a Marriage, Christopher loses trust in Hannah after she tries to kill Janie and searches for evidence of this in their home. The diary entries that Christopher finds point to Hannah’s increasing state of panic and desperation, which eventually developed into psychosis. However, while it is clear that Hannah was experiencing hallucinations, it is less clear just how much her perception of Janie was distorted. To further complicate matters, as Hannah starts to recover, she becomes ashamed of what she did and doubts herself, spurred on by doctors who have told her she cannot rely on her own judgment.
Allison’s death at least partly vindicates Hannah, though it also further traumatizes her. Janie always held resentment toward motherly figures, and Allison was no exception. The news of Allison’s death sends Hannah right back to where she started in terms of psychological healing. Christopher even remarks that “her grief and anger had turned her into a beast” (332); the dehumanizing metaphor speaks to the distance that has grown between the spouses, but it is also darkly ironic, as Hannah previously used similar comparisons to describe Janie. She comes home from the hospital with a demeanor that is “more like a soldier who’d been to war and returned home” (337), as though she is forever changed by all that she went through. Getting Cole back alleviates some of Hannah’s grief, but it doesn’t assuage her fear and panic. Moreover, Christopher’s continued love for Janie represents an unresolved strain of tension in the marriage. Given this, the fragile domestic happiness that Hannah and Christopher have reestablished at the end of the novel seems likely to shatter in light of the final twist: that Janie killed her mother and should never have been sent home to live with an unprepared and inexperienced family.
