“She’s told! The doctors a few days ago. And me just now!”
The young man gazed over the sun-yellowed green of the lawn to the cool blue-green of its shady places. “Bad, hunh?”
“Too awful to think about…!”
He drank the cold coffee, tinkled ice, refilled the glass from a pitcher. His mother’s weekly visits to her sister, in the asylum they referred to as the “Home,” invariably depressed her. Today, however, she seemed in a different frame of mind: hopeful, but frightened. Ted knew-most people in these days knew-a great deal about such attitudes. “Better tell me,” he said.
“Right now. And get it over with.”
His mother glanced at him lovingly and nodded to herself. “I—I guess it isn’t really any different from—thousands of stories like it. Only, when it’s your own sister…! Your own nieces and nephews…!”
“Sure,” he said.
She Sighed and her eyes looked far away. “They got the warning on the radio,” she finally began, “the red signal. They started for the cellar, but it had a foot of water in it. Jim, the fool, decided not to take cover. The windows blew in on them, including new storm windows, she said. It—killed the baby, Irma—but…” She halted.
Ted murmured, “But what?”
“You see—Ruth was holding the baby and the baby’s body saved her face. It ripped up Jim’s face and chest. They—just decamped—ran away—like so many people. Ruth in the lead—