"To go back to Chicago with your mother and father," Louis repeated patiently. "They'll be going tomorrow. If you call them now and Delta right after, you may be able to get on the same plane with them."
"Louis, have you lost your mind? After the fight you had with my father--"
Louis found himself speaking with a quick glibness that was totally unlike him. It afforded him a cheesy sort of exhilaration. He felt like a football sub who suddenly gets the ball and makes a seventy-yard touchdown run, cutting and weaving, outthinking potential tacklers with a delirious one-time-only ease. He had never been a particularly good liar, and he had not planned this encounter in any detail at all, but now a string of plausible lies, half-truths, and inspired justification poured out of him.
"The fight we had is one of the reasons I want you and Ellie to go back with them. It's time we sewed up this wound, Rachel. I knew that . . . felt it . . . at the funeral parlor. When the fight started, I was trying to patch things up."
"But this trip . . . I don't think it's a good idea at all, Louis. We need you. And you need us." Her eyes measured him doubtfully. "At least, I hope you need us. And neither of us are in any shape to--"
"--in any kind of shape to stay here," Louis said forcefully. He felt as if he might be coming down with a fever. "I'm glad you need me, and I do need you and Ellie. But right now this is the worst damn place in the world for you, honey. Gage is everywhere in this house, around every corner. For you and me, sure. But it's even worse for Ellie, I think."
He saw pain flicker in her eyes and knew he had touched her. Some part of himself felt shame at this cheap victory. All the textbooks he'd read on the subject of death told him that the bereaved's first strong impulse is to get away from the place where it happened . . . and that to succumb to such an impulse may turn out to be the most harmful course of action because it allows the bereaved the dubious luxury of refusing to come to terms with the new reality. The books said it was best to remain where you were, to battle grief on its home ground until it subsided into remembrance. But Louis simply did not dare make the experiment with his family at home. He had to get rid of them, at least for a while.
"I know," she said. "It just . . . hits you all over the place. I moved the couch while you were in Bangor . . . I thought running the vacuum around would take my mind off . . . off things . . . and I found four of his little Matchbox cars under there . . . as if they were waiting for him to come back and . . . you know, play with them . . ." Her voice, already wavering, now broke. Tears spilled down her cheeks. "And that's when I took the second Valium because I started crying again, the way I'm crying now . . . oh what a fucking soap opera all of this is . . . hold me, Lou, will you hold me?"
He did hold her, and he did it well, but he felt like an imposter. His mind spun with ways to turn these tears to his further benefit. Some nice guy, all right. Hey-ho, let's go.
"How long does it go on?" she wept. "Does it ever end? If only we could have him back, Louis, I swear I'd watch him better, it would never happen, and just because that driver was going too fast that doesn't let me--us--off the hook. I didn't know there could ever be hurt like this, and that's the truth. It comes, over and over it comes, and it hurts so much, Louis, there's no rest from it even when I go to sleep, when I go to sleep I dream it, over and over again, I see him running to the road . . . and I scream to him . . ."
"Shhh," he said. "Rachel, shhh."
She lifted her puffy face to him. "It wasn't even as if he were being bad, Louis. It was just a game to him . . . the truck came at the wrong time . . . and Missy Dandridge called while I was still crying . . . and said she read in the Ellsworth American that the driver tried to kill himself."
"What?"
"He tried to hang himself in his garage. He's in shock and deep depression, the paper said . . ."
"Too fucking bad he didn't make good on it," Louis said savagely, but his voice sounded distant to his own ears, and he felt a chill spreading through. The place has a power, Louis . . . it's been full of power before, and I'm ascared it's coming round to full again. "My boy's dead and he's out on a thousand dollars' bail and he'll go on feeling depressed and suicidal until some judge takes away his license for ninety days and gives him a slap-on-the-wrist fine."
"Missy says his wife has taken the kids and left him," Rachel said dully. "She didn't get that from the paper, but from somebody who knows somebody down Ellsworth way. He wasn't drunk. He wasn't on drugs. He didn't have any previous speeding violations. He said that when he got to Ludlow, he just felt like putting the pedal to the metal. He said he didn't even know why. So around and around it goes."
He just felt like putting the pedal to the metal.
The place has a power . . .
Louis thrust these thoughts away. He gripped his wife's forearm gently. "Call your mother and father. Do it now. There's no need for you and Ellie to be in this house another day. Not another day."
"Not without you," she said. "Louis, I want us . . . I need us to stick together."
"I'll follow you in three days--four at the most." If things went well. Rachel and Ellie might be back here in forty-eight hours. "I've got to find someone to fill in for me, on a part-time basis, at least, at the university. I've got sick time and vacation time coming, but I don't want to leave Surrendra on the hot seat. Jud can watch the house while we're gone, but I'll want to cut off the electricity and store what we've got in the Dandridges' deep freeze."
"Ellie's school . . ."
"The hell with it. It's out in three weeks, anyway. They'll understand, the circumstances being what they are. They'll arrange an early dismissal. It'll all work just--"
"Louis?"
He broke off. "What?"
"What are you hiding?"
"Hiding?" He looked at her openly, clearly. "I don't know what you're talking about."
"Don't you?"
"No. I don't."
"Never mind. I'll call them right now . . . if that's what you really want."
"It is," he said, and the words seemed to echo in his mind with an iron clang.
"It might even be best . . . for Ellie." She looked at him with her red-rimmed eyes, still slightly glazed from Valium. "You look feverish, Louis. As if you might be coming down with something."
She went to the telephone and called the motel where her parents were staying before Louis could reply.
*
The Goldmans were overjoyed at Rachel's proposal. They were not so wild about the idea of Louis joining them in three or four days, but in the end they wouldn't have to worry about it all, of course. Louis had not the slightest intention of going to Chicago. He had suspected that if there was to be a snag, it would be getting air reservations this late. But luck was with him there too. There were still available seats on Delta's Bangor to Cincinnati run, and a quick check showed two cancellations on a Cincinnati to Chicago flight. It meant that Rachel and Ellie would be able to travel with the Goldmans only as far as Cincinnati, but they would get to Chicago less than an hour after.
It's almost like magic, Louis thought, hanging up the telephone, and Jud's voice responded promptly, It's been full of power before, and I'm ascared . . .
Oh, get fucked, he told Jud's voice rudely. I've learned to accept a great many strange things in the last ten months, my good old friend. But am I ready to believe that a haunted patch of ground can influence airline ticketing? I don't think so.
"I'll have to pack," Rachel said. She was looking at the flight information Louis had jotted down on the pad by the phone.
"Take just the one big suitcase," Louis said.
She looked at him wide-eyed, mildly startled. "For both of us? Louis, you're joking."
"All right, take a couple of tote bags too. But don't exhaust yourself packing a different outfit for the next three weeks," he said, thinking, Especially since you may be back in Ludlow very soon. "Take enough for a week, ten days. You've got the checkbook and the credit cards. Buy what you need."
/> "But we can't afford--" she began doubtfully. She seemed doubtful about everything now, malleable, easily confused. He remembered her odd, dangling comment about the Winnebago he had once spoken idly about buying.
"We have the money," he said.
"Well . . . I suppose we could use Gage's college fund if we needed to, although it would take a day or two to process the savings account and a week to get the treasury bills cashed--"
Her face began to crumple and dissolve again. Louis held her. She's right. It just keeps right on hitting you, it never lets up. "Rachel, don't," he said. "Don't cry."
But of course she did--she had to.
*
While she was upstairs packing, the phone rang. Louis sprang for it, thinking it would be someone from Delta ticketing, saying a mistake had been made, no flights were available. I should have known everything was going too smoothly.
But it wasn't Delta ticketing. It was Irwin Goldman.
"I'll get Rachel," Louis said.
"No." For a moment there was nothing else, only silence. He's probably sitting there and trying to decide which name to call you first.
When Goldman spoke again, his voice was strained. He seemed to be pushing the words out against some great inner resistance. "It's you I want to talk to. Dory wanted me to call and apologize for my . . . for my behavior. I guess . . . Louis, I guess I wanted to apologize too."
Why, Irwin! How big of you! My God, I think I just wet my pants!
"You don't need to apologize," Louis said. His voice was dry and mechanical.
"What I did was inexcusable," Goldman said. Now he did not just seem to be pushing the words out; he seemed to be coughing them out. "You suggesting that Rachel and Eileen come out has made me see what a big man you have been about this . . . and how small I have been."
There was something very familiar in this rap, something eerily familiar--
Then he got it, and his mouth suddenly pulled together in a tight pucker, as if he had bitten straight through a plump yellow lemon. Rachel's way--she was completely unaware of it, Louis was sure--of saying contritely, Louis, I'm sorry I was such a bitch, after her bitchiness had gotten her her own way about something she really wanted. Here was that voice--robbed of Rachel's liveliness and merriness, true--but that same voice saying, I'm sorry I was such a bastard, Louis.
The old man was getting his daughter and granddaughter back; they were running home from Maine to Daddy. Courtesy of Delta and United, they were coming back to where they belonged, back to where Irwin Goldman wanted them. Now he could afford to be magnanimous. As far as old Irwin knew, he had won. So let's just forget that I took a swing at you over your dead son's body, Louis, or that I kicked you when you were down, or that I knocked his coffin off its bier and snapped the latch so you could see--or think you saw--that one last flash of your child's hand. Let's forget all of that. Let bygones be bygones.
Terrible as it may be, Irwin, you old prick, I'd wish for you to drop dead right this second, if it wouldn't screw up my plans.
"That's all right, Mr. Goldman," he said evenly. "It was . . . well . . . an emotional day for all of us."
"It was not all right," he persisted, and Louis realized--although he did not want to--that Goldman was not just being political, was not just saying that he was sorry he had been such a bastard now that he was getting his own way. The man was nearly weeping, and he was speaking with a slow and trembling urgency. "It was a terrible day for all of us. Thanks to me. Thanks to a stupid, bullheaded old man. I hurt my daughter when she needed my help . . . I hurt you, and maybe you needed my help too, Louis. That you do this . . . behave this way . . . after I behaved that way . . . it makes me feel like garbage. And I think that is just the way I should feel."
Oh let him stop this, let him stop before I start to scream at him and blow the whole deal.
"Rachel's probably told you, Louis, we had another daughter--"
"Zelda," Louis said. "Yes, she told me about Zelda."
"It was difficult," Goldman said in that trembling voice. "Difficult for all of us. Most difficult for Rachel, perhaps--Rachel was there when Zelda died--but difficult for Dory and me too. Dory almost had a breakdown--"
What do you think Rachel had? Louis wanted to shout. Do you think a kid can't have a nervous breakdown? Twenty years later she's still jumping at death's shadow. And now this happens. This miserable, awful thing. It's a minor miracle that she isn't in the fucking hospital, being fed through an I.V. tube. So don't talk to me about how difficult it was for you and your wife, you bastard.
"Ever since Zelda died, we have . . . I suppose we have clung to Rachel . . . always wanting to protect her . . . and to make it up to her. Make up for the problems she had with her . . . her back . . . for years afterward. Make up for not being there."
Yes, the old man was really crying. Why did he have to be crying? It made it harder for Louis to hold on to his clean, pure hate. More difficult, but not impossible. He deliberately called up the image of Goldman reaching into the pocket of his smoking jacket for his overflowing checkbook . . . but he suddenly saw Zelda Goldman in the background, an unquiet ghost in a stinking bed, her cheesy face full of spite and agony, her hands pulled into claws. The Goldman ghost. Oz the Gweat and Tewwible.
"Please," he said. "Please, Mr. Goldman. Irwin. No more. Let's not make things any worse than they have to be, okay?"
"I believe now that you are a good man and that I misjudged you, Louis. Oh, listen, I know what you think. Am I that stupid? No. Stupid, but not that stupid. You think I'm saying all of this because now I can, you're thinking oh yeah, he's getting what he wants and once he tried to buy me off, but . . . but Louis, I swear . . ."
"No more," Louis said gently. "I can't . . . I really can't take any more." Now his voice was trembling as well. "Okay?"
"All right," Goldman said and sighed. Louis thought it was a sigh of relief. "But let me say again that I apologize. You don't have to accept it. But that is what I called to say, Louis. I apologize."
"All right," Louis said. He closed his eyes. His head was thudding. "Thank you, Irwin. Your apology is accepted."
"Thank you," Goldman said. "And thank you . . . for letting them come. Perhaps it is what they both need. We'll wait for them at the airport."
"Fine," Louis said, and an idea suddenly occurred to him. It was crazy and attractive in its very sanity. He would let bygones be bygones . . . and he would let Gage lie in his Pleasantview grave. Instead of trying to reopen a door that had swung shut, he would latch it and double-bolt it and throw away the key. He would do just what he had told his wife he was going to do: tidy up their affairs here and catch a plane back to Shytown. They would perhaps spend the entire summer there, he and his wife and his good-hearted daughter. They would go to the zoo and the planetarium and boating on the lake. He would take Ellie to the top of the Sears Tower and show her the Midwest stretching away like a great flat gameboard, rich and dreaming. Then when mid-August came, they would come back to this house which now seemed so sad and so shadowy, and perhaps it would be like starting over again. Perhaps they could begin weaving from fresh thread. What was on the Creed loom right now was ugly, splattered with drying blood.
But would that not be the same as murdering his son? Killing him a second time?
A voice inside tried to argue that this was not so, but he would not listen. He shut the voice up briskly.
"Irwin, I ought to go now. I want to make sure Rachel's got what she needs and then get her to bed."
"All right. Goodbye, Louis. And once more--"
If he says he's sorry one more time, I'll fucking scream.
"Goodbye, Irwin," he said and hung up the phone.
*
Rachel was deep in a litter of clothes when he came upstairs. Blouses on the beds, bras hung over the backs of chairs, slacks on hangers that had been hung over the doorknob. Shoes were lined up like soldiers under the window. She appeared to be packing slowly but competently. Louis could see it
was going to take her at least three suitcases (maybe four), but he could also see no sense in arguing with her about it. Instead he pitched in and helped.
"Louis," she said as they closed the last suitcase (he had to sit on it before Rachel could snap the catches), "are you sure there's nothing you want to tell me?"
"For God's sake, hon, what is this?"
"I don't know what it is," she replied evenly. "That's why I'm asking."
"What do you think I'm going to do? Creep off to a bordello? Join the circus? What?"
"I don't know. But this feels wrong. It feels as if you're trying to get rid of us."
"Rachel, that's ridiculous!" He said this with a vehemence that was partly exasperation. Even in such straits as these, he felt a certain pique in being seen through so easily.
She smiled wanly. "You never were a very good liar, Lou."
He began to protest again, and she cut him off.
"Ellie dreamed you were dead," she said. "Last night. She woke up crying, and I went in to her. I slept with her for two or three hours and then came back in with you. She said that in her dream you were sitting at the kitchen table and your eyes were open, but she knew you were dead. She said she could hear Steve Masterton screaming."
Louis looked at her, dismayed. "Rachel," he said at last, "her brother just died. It's normal enough for her to dream that other members of her family--"
"Yes, I surmised that much for myself. But the way she told it . . . the elements . . . it seemed to me to have a quality of prophecy."
She laughed weakly.
"Or maybe you had to be there."
"Yes, maybe so," Louis said.
It seemed to me to have a quality of prophecy.
"Come to bed with me," Rachel said. "The Valium's all worn off, and I don't want to take any more. But I'm afraid. I've been having my own dreams . . ."
"Dreams of what?"
"Of Zelda," she said simply. "The last few nights since Gage died, when I go to sleep, Zelda's there. She says she's coming for me, and this time she'll get me. That both she and Gage will get me. For letting them die."
"Rachel, that's--"