Lightning
she had been dead from the moment she collapsed.
10
One week after Laura returned to Mcllroy and eight days before Christmas, Mrs. Bowmaine reassigned Tammy Hinsen to the fourth bed in the Ackersons' room. In an unusual private session with Laura, Ruth, and Thelma, the social worker explained the reasoning behind that reassignment: "I know you say Tammy isn't happy with you girls, but she seems to get along better there than anywhere else. We've had her in several rooms, but the other children can't tolerate her. I don't know what it is about the child that makes her an outcast, but her other roommates usually end up using her as a punching bag."
Back in their room, before Tammy arrived, Thelma settled into a basic yoga position on the floor, legs folded in a pretzel form, heels against hips. She had become interested in yoga when the Beatles endorsed Eastern meditation, and she had said that when she finally met Paul McCartney (which was her indisputable destiny), "it would be nice if we have something in common, which we will if I can talk with some authority about this yoga crap."
Now, instead of meditating she said, "What would that cow have done if I'd said, 'Mrs. Bowmaine, the kids don't like Tammy because she let herself be diddled by the Eel, and she helped him target other vulnerable girls, so as far as they're concerned, she's the enemy.' What would Bovine Bowmaine have done when I laid
that
on her?"
"She'd have called you a lying scuz," Laura said, flopping down on her sway-backed bed.
"No doubt. Then she'd have eaten me for lunch. Do you believe the size of that woman? She gets bigger by the week. Anyone that big is dangerous, a ravenous omnivore capable of eating the nearest child, bones and all, as casually as she'd consume a pint of fudge ripple."
At the window, looking down at the playground behind the mansion, Ruth said, "It's not fair the way the other kids treat Tammy."
"Life isn't fair," Laura said.
"Life isn't a weenie roast, either," Thelma said. "Jeez, Shane, don't wax philosophical if you're going to be trite. You know we hate triteness here only slightly less than we hate turning on the radio and hearing Bobbie Gentry singing
Ode to Billy Joe
."
When Tammy moved in an hour later, Laura was tense. She had killed Sheener, after all, and Tammy had been dependent on him. She expected Tammy to be bitter and angry, but in fact the girl greeted her only with a sincere, shy, and piercingly sad smile.
After Tammy had been with them two days, it became clear that she viewed the loss of the Eel's twisted affections with perverse regret but also with relief. The fiery temper she had revealed when she tore apart Laura's books was quenched. She was once again that drab, bony, washed-out girl who, on Laura's first day at Mcllroy, had seemed more of an apparition than a real person, in danger of dissolving into smoky ectoplasm and, with the first good draft, dissipating entirely.
After the deaths of the Eel and Nina Dockweiler, Laura attended half-hour sessions with Dr. Boone, a psychotherapist, when he visited Mcllroy every Tuesday and Saturday. Boone was unable to understand that Laura could absorb the shock of Willy Sheener's attack and Nina's tragic death without psychological damage. He was puzzled by her articulate discussions of her feelings and the adult vocabulary with which she expressed her adjustment to events in Newport Beach. Having been motherless, having lost her father, having endured many crises and much terror—but most of all, having benefited from her father's wondrous love—she was as resilient as a sponge, absorbing what life presented. However, though she could speak of Sheener with dispassion and of Nina with as much affection as sadness, the psychiatrist viewed her adjustment as merely apparent and not real.
"So you dream about Willy Sheener?" he asked as he sat beside her on the sofa in the small office reserved for him at Mcllroy.
"I've only dreamed of him twice. Nightmares, of course. But all kids have nightmares."
"You dream about Nina, too. Are those nightmares?"
"Oh, no! Those are lovely dreams."
He looked surprised. "When you think of Nina, you feel sad?"
"Yes. But also… I remember the fun of shopping with her, trying on dresses and sweaters. I remember her smile and her laugh."
"And guilt? Do you feel guilty about what happened to Nina?"
"No. Maybe Nina wouldn't have died if I hadn't moved in with them and drawn Sheener after me, but I can't feel
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