Now that-except that the word was "hysteric," not "hystric"-was straight from his father's mouth. Bad enough to hear it from Rod-but this was too much.
She saw red and was about to give him that spanking she had promised-but before she could move to give his fanny a real tanning, she saw something else instead.
The Indian.
It rose up from the shadows behind the television set, where it had either been lurking, or been doing something to the television set. Ryan came up behind her, and grabbed for her hand with a gasp.
This time the Indian did not disappear when she turned her full attention on it; she was looking straight at it, and although Rod didn't seem to see it, Ryan beside her did, and shrank against her, whimpering.
It grinned at her, a nasty, snide grin. Like a wolverine, she thought, crazily. Like a bear trap. Like-like the Devil, just before he takes a soul!
And it vanished.
Rod was still messing with the television. "There!" he said in triumph, as the picture came in, the Channel Six weatherman standing in front of an image of a Doppler Radar scan. "I need to tune-"
His hand was on the dial, just as lightning hit the antenna above them.
The next half hour was hell on earth.
Toni found herself on the dining room floor, Ryan beside her, with no memory of how they had gotten there. She scrambled to her feet and dashed into the living room, vaguely aware that every hair on her head was standing on end, and feeling a kind of tingle in her hands and feet, as if they'd been asleep.
Young Rod was collapsed in a heap beside the television. The back of the set had blown out, and glass shards were embedded in the wall behind the set.
Rod's outstretched hand was black and crisped. He wasn't moving.
She didn't scream; she didn't panic. "Ryan," she said, very clearly and out of some kind of unholy calm, "call 9-1-1. Tell them your brother's been hit by lightning. If our phone doesn't work, go next door and use theirs, and give them our address. If the phone does work, make the call, then go next door to Mrs. Nebles. Take Jill. Stay there."
"But Ma-" Ryan burbled, clearly terrified.
"Go now," she yelled, fiercely, and then all her concentration was on the child who needed her. She ran across the living room and fell to her knees beside Rod. She put him over on his back, carefully, in case there was a spinal injury, feeling under his chin for a pulse.
No pulse. No breathing.
She had never done CPR except on a dummy, but it all came back to her now. She tilted his head back, made sure his airway was clear, covered his mouth and nose with her mouth, and breathed.
Once. Twice. Then pump his chest. She didn't need to be too careful; he wasn't so small that she'd crack his ribs.
Breathe. Pump. Breathe. Pump. Don't forget to breathe for yourself, or you 'II pass out.
At some point, she heard sirens over the sound of the pouring rain and the thunder outside. She ignored them as she ignored everything else.
Breathe. Pump. Breathe-
Hands pulled her away; she fought them for a moment, until she saw it was the paramedics in their bright yellow slickers, then she let them take over, surrounding Rod with their machines and their expertise.
Other people came crowding in; firemen, Mrs. Nebles, the neighbor with Ryan and Jill. She couldn't see Rod for all the bodies around him, but she heard the pure tone of a flat-lined EKG, then heard someone say "Clear!", and then everyone pulled away.
She heard the snap of the fibrillator, heard someone curse. The flat tone continued.
She collapsed into the chest of whoever was holding her, sobbing as hysterically as her two remaining children. She would never forget that horrible, unwavering tone for as long as she lived.
They tried, over and over again, to get Rod's heart started. But the tame lightning of their machines could not restart what the wild lightning had stopped.
Finally, they pronounced Rod dead on the scene, covered him up with a rubber sheet, and took him away, into the rain, in an ambulance, but one with the lights and siren dead. She rode in the back, with the paramedic holding her hand, awkwardly.
She was no longer crying, no longer screaming with the pain of her loss. She was numb, now; after the ambulance ride, after the session at the hospital with the doctors and the paperwork--how could they bother with paperwork at a time like that?-after the call to Rod, missing him by minutes. They'd left a policeman at her home, the nurses told her, patting her hand. The policeman would tell him. He would come soon, to help her with all this.
But he never came, and she stumbled through it all alone. Thank God Mrs. Nebles had said she would take care of Ryan and Jill. Thank God the paramedics had reminded her to bring her purse. What she couldn't remember was in the papers she kept in her purse.
Insurance. Why? she had wanted to scream. People to notify. Recounting it all to the police.
Still Rod did not come.
Surely he would come and take her home.
But he didn't come, and finally the nurses took pity on her and called the neighbor who had Ryan and Jill, asked Mrs. Nebles to keep the kids overnight, then sent her home with another policeman rather than a taxi. They probably didn't trust her to remember what her own address was. . . .
Rod's car was in the driveway; she walked up to the silent, darkened house, still numb, not knowing what she was going to say to him. Suddenly, she was afraid for him-how could he be expected to bear up under this? Rod was his image, his golden child! He must be half insane; no wonder he hadn't come to the hospital!
She pulled open the door-and there he was, staring at her. She opened her mouth, the tears starting again.
But as it happened, he didn't give her a chance to say anything.
He simply dragged her inside, face full of-not the grief she had expected, but silent fury. He dragged her into the living room, to the spot in front of the TV, where Rod had died. He shoved her down on her knees on the spot where he had lain.
He screamed at her, as she knelt there, unable to move or think. Screamed at her that this was all her fault-she was a slut, a whore, an unfit mother-she had caused Rod's death, to make way for her own favored brats, who were probably bastards by some fancy gigolo, conceived while he was hard at work, trying to make a decent life for them all-
Then, when she didn't respond except for silent tears, he hit her.
He knocked her into the wall, and she put up her hands, ineffectually, to defend herself. That seemed to infuriate him even further and he pulled her to her feet, then balled up both his fists, punching her in the face and stomach alternately, while she wept and retched, and finally dropped into merciful unconsciousness.
She woke up again, lying where she had fallen, in the dark and silent house, and crawled as far as the bathroom, using the sink to haul herself to her feet. Somehow, she got herself cleaned up, studiously avoiding looking at herself in the mirror. But she could not bear to go to the bedroom. Not to lie beside the man who had done this to her, and blamed her for her own son's death.
Instead, clutching her sore stomach, she got as far as the little bed in Ryan's room before she collapsed again, face and body throbbing with pain, onto the neatly made cotton comforter.
Eventually, she slept.
When she woke the next morning, an aching mass of misery inside and but, Rod was already gone.
The doorbell rang just as she was putting the finishing touches on a makeup job that she hoped, vaguely, would disguise the bruises, the black eye, and the swollen lip and jaw. It rang again, and she moved carefully to answer it, assuming that it must be the neighbor, Mrs. Nebles, who had taken Ryan and Jill-poor things, they must be hysterical; Rod hadn't come to get them and only God knew what they'd been told last night- But when she opened the door, it wasn't the neighbor, it was Jennie Talldeer, her expression one of sympathy and haunted guilt, a guilt that Toni recognized, but could not imagine the meaning of. There was a handsome, long-haired young man standing politely behind her, and Toni gulped down a surge of nausea and revulsion. Right now, she did not want to see any men-he would think she was to blame; he would say that Rod had been right to beat her-
"Toni, we heard on the news this morning and-my god!" Jennie exclaimed, her expression transforming from sympathy to shock and outrage. "What the hell did Rod do to you?"
Not "what happened," but "what did Rod do to you."
Jennie knew. It was out in the open between them. And Toni was too tired to try to hide it anymore.