when she pictured the son she might have , it always looked like jackie , and swore like jackie , and drank like jackie , even as it waddled in its diapers , and although she succeeded in purging from her mind the image of herself standing atop the stairway with that son in her arms , never could she purge the image of that same son broken and bloody eighteen steps below her , little jackie dead for the fears joan amognes could not keep from strongarming her soul .