This is going to hurt, she thought, and then everything came back to her… especially the image of Gerald doing his header off the side of the bed. Her husband was on the floor, either dead or unconscious, and she was lying up here on the bed, thinking about what a drag it was that her lower arms and hands had gone to sleep. How selfish and self-centered could you get?
If he’s dead, it’s his own damned fault, the no-bullshit voice said. It tried to add a few other home truths as well, but Jessie gagged it. In her still-not-quite-conscious state she had a clearer sightline into the deeper archives of her memory banks, and she suddenly realized whose voice - slightly nasal, clipped, always on the verge of a sarcasm-tinged laugh-that was. It belonged to her college roommate, Ruth Neary. Now that Jessie knew, she found she wasn’t a bit surprised. Ruth had always been extremely generous with pieces of her mind, and her advice had often scandalized her nineteen-year-old wet-behind-the-ears roommate from Falmouth Foreside… which had undoubtedly been the idea, or part of it; Ruth’s heart had always been in the right place, and Jessie had never doubted that Ruth actually believed sixty per cent of the things she said and had actually done forty per cent of the things she claimed to have done. When it came to things sexual, the percentage was probably even higher. Ruth Neary, the first woman Jessie had ever known who absolutely refused to shave her legs and her armpits; Ruth, who had once filled an unpleasant floor-counsellor’s pillowcase with strawberry-scented foam douche; Ruth, who on general principles went to every student rally and attended every experimental student play. If all else fails, tootsie,some good-looking guy will probably take hit clothes off, she had told an amazed but fascinated Jessie after coming back from a student effort entitled “The Son of Noah’s Parrot'. I mean, it doesn’t always happen, but it usually does-I think that’s really what student-written-and-produced plays are for-so guys and girls can take off their clothesand make out in public.
She hadn’t thought of Ruth in years and now Ruth was inside her head, handing out little nuggets of wisdom just as she had in days of yore. Well, why not? Who was more qualified to advise the mentally confused and emotionally disturbed than Ruth Neary, who had gone on from the University of New Hampshire to three marriages, two suicide attempts, and four drug-and-alcohol rehabs? Good old Ruth, just another shining example of how well the erstwhile Love Generation was making the transition to middle age.
“Jesus, just what I need, Dear Abby from hell,” she said, and the thick, slurry quality of her voice frightened her more than the lack of feeling in her hands and lower arms.
She tried to yank herself back up to the mostly-sitting position she had managed just before Gerald’s little diving exhibition (Had that horrible egg-cracking sound been part of her dream? She prayed that it had been), and thoughts of Ruth were swallowed by a sudden burst of panic when she did not move at all. Those tingling spirals of sensation spun through her muscles again, but nothing else happened. Her arms just went on hanging above and slightly behind her, as moveless and feelingless as stovelengths of rock maple. The muzzy feeling in her head disappeared-panic beat the hell out of smelling salts, she was discovering-and her heart kicked into a higher gear, but that was all. A vivid image culled from some long-ago history text flickered behind her eyes for a moment: a circle of laughing, pointing people standing around a young woman with her head and hands in stocks. The woman was bent over like a hag in a fairy-tale and her hair hung in her face like a penitent’s shroud.
Her name is Goodwife Burlingame and she’s being punished for hurtingher husband, she thought. They’re punishing the Goodwife because theycan’t get hold of the one who’s really responsible for hurting him…theone who sounds like my old college roommate.
But was hurting the right word? Was it not likely that she was now sharing this bedroom with a dead man? Was it not also likely that, dog or no dog, the Notch Bay end of the lake was entirely deserted? That if she started to scream, she would be answered only by the loon? Only that and nothing more?
It was mostly that thought, with its strange echo of Poe’s “The Raven,” that brought her to a sudden realization of just what was going on here, what she had gotten herself into, and full-fledged, mindless terror suddenly fell on her. For twenty seconds or so (if asked how long that panic-attack lasted, she would have guessed at least three minutes and probably closer to five) she was totally in its grip. A thin rod of rational consciousness remained deep inside her, but it was helpless-only a dismayed spectator watching the woman writhe on the bed with her hair flying as she whipped her head from side to side in a gesture of negation, hearing her hoarse, frightened screams.
A deep, glassy pain at the base of her neck, just above the place where her left shoulder started, put a stop to it. It was a muscle-cramp, a bad one, what the jocks called a Charley horse. Moaning, Jessie let her head fall back against the separated mahogany slats which formed the head-board of the bed. The muscle she had strained was frozen in a strenuous flexed position, and it felt as hard as a rock. The fact that her exertion had forced pins and needles of feeling all the way down the forearms to the palms of her hands meant little next to that terrible pain, and she found that leaning back against the headboard was only putting more pressure on the over-strained muscle.
Moving instinctively, without any thought at all, Jessie planted her heels against the coverlet, raised her buttocks, and shoved with her feet. Her elbows bent and the pressure on her shoulders and upper arms eased. A moment later the Charley horse in her deltoid muscle began to let go. She let out her breath in a long, harsh sigh of relief.
The wind-it had progressed quite a bit beyond the breeze stage, she noticed-gusted outside, sighing through the pines on the slope between the house and the take. just off the kitchen (which was in another universe as far as Jessie was concerned), the door she and Gerald had neglected to pull shut banged against the swollen jamb; one time, two time, three time, four. These were the only sounds; only these and nothing more. The dog had quit barking, at least for the time being, and the chainsaw had quit roaring. Even the loon seemed to be on its coffee-break.
The image of a lake-loon taking a coffee-break, maybe floating in the water-cooler and chatting up a few of the lady loons, caused a dusty croaking sound in her throat. Under less unpleasant circumstances, that sound might have been termed a chuckle. It dissolved the last of her panic, leaving her still afraid but at least in charge of her thoughts and actions once more. It also left her with an unpleasant metallic taste on her tongue.
That’s adrenaline, toots, or whatever glandular secretion your bodydumps when you sprout claws and start climbing the walls, If anyoneever asks you what panic is, now you can tell them: an emotional blankspot that leaves you feeling as if you’ve been sucking on a mouthful ofpennies.
Her forearms were buzzing, and the tingles of sensation had at last spread into her fingers as well. Jessie rolled her hands open and closed several times, wincing as she did so. She could hear the faint sound of the handcuff chains rattling against the bedposts and took a moment to wonder if she and Gerald had been mad it certainly seemed so now, although she had no doubt that thousands of people all over the world played similar games each and every day. She had read that there were even sexual free spirits who hanged themselves in their closets and then beat off as the blood-supply to their brains slowly decreased to nothing. Such news only served to increase her belief that men were not so much gifted with penises as cursed with them.