فصل بیست و سوم

TWENTY-THREE

He awoke at nine the next morning. Bright sunshine streamed in the bedroom’s east windows. The telephone was ringing. Louis reached up and snared it. ‘Hello?’ ‘Hi!’ Rachel said. ‘Did I wake you up? Hope so.’

‘You woke me up, you bitch,’ he said, smiling.

‘Ooooh, such nasty language, you bad old bear,’ she said. ‘I tried to call you last night. Were you over at Jud’s?’ He hesitated for only the tiniest fraction of a moment.

‘Yes,’ he said. ‘Had a few beers. Norma was up at some sort of Thanksgiving supper. I thought about giving you a ring, but … you know.’ ‘Yes,’ she said. ‘I do know.’

They chatted a while. Rachel updated him on her family, something he could have done without, although he took a small, mean satisfaction in her news that her father’s bald spot seemed to be expanding at a faster rate.

‘You want to talk to Gage?’ Rachel asked.

Louis grinned. ‘Yeah, I guess so,’ he said. ‘Don’t let him hang up the phone like he did the other time.’ Much rattling at the other end. Dimly he heard Rachel cajoling the kid to say Hi, Daddy.

At last Gage said, ‘Hi, Dayee.’

‘Hi, Gage,’ Louis said cheerfully. ‘How you doing? How’s your life? Did you pull over your grandda’s pipe-rack again? I certainly hope so. Maybe this time you can ruin his stamp collection as well.’ Gage babbled on happily for thirty seconds or so, interspersing his gobbles and grunts with a few recognizable words from his growing vocabulary – Mommee, Ellie, Grandda, Granma, car (pronounced in the best Yankee tradition as kaaaaaaaa, Louis was amused to note), twuck, and shit.

At last Rachel pried the phone away from him, to Gage’s wail of indignation and Louis’s measured relief – he loved his son and missed him like mad, but holding a conversation with a not-quite-two-year-old was a little bit like trying to play cribbage with a lunatic; the cards kept going everywhere and sometimes you found yourself pegging backwards.

‘So how’s everything there?’ Rachel asked.

‘Okay,’ Louis said, with no hesitation at all this time – but he was aware he had crossed a line, back when Rachel had asked him if he had gone over to Jud’s last night and he told her he had. In his mind he suddenly heard Jud Crandall saying: The soil of a man’s heart is stonier, Louis … a man grows what he can … and he tends it. ‘Well … a little dull, if you want to know the God’s honest. Miss you.’ ‘You actually mean to tell me you’re not enjoying your vacation from this sideshow?’ ‘Oh, I like the quiet,’ he admitted, ‘sure. But it gets strange after the first twenty-four hours or so.’ ‘Can I talk to Daddy?’ It was Ellie, in the background.

‘Louis? Ellie’s here.’

‘Okay, put her on.’

He talked to Ellie for almost five minutes. She prattled on about the doll Granma had gotten her, about the trip she and Grandda had taken to the stockyards (‘Boy, do they stink, Daddy,’ Ellie said, and Louis thought: Your grandda’s no rose, either, sweetie), about how she had helped make bread, and about how Gage had gotten away from Rachel while she was changing him. Gage had run down the hallway and pooped right in the doorway leading into Grandda’s study (atta boy, Gage! Louis thought, a big grin spreading over his face).

He actually thought he was going to get away – at least for this morning – and was getting ready to ask Ellie for her mother again so he could say goodbye to her when Ellie asked, ‘How’s Church, Daddy? Does he miss me?’ The grin faded from Louis’s mouth, but he answered readily and with the perfect note of off-handed casualness: ‘He’s fine, I guess. I gave him the left-over beef stew last night and then put him out. Haven’t seen him this morning, but I just woke up.’ Oh boy, you would have made a great murderer – cool as a cucumber. Dr Creed, when did you last see the deceased? He came in for supper. Had a plate of beef stew, in fact. I haven’t seen him since then.

‘Well, give him a kiss for me.’

‘Yuck, kiss your own cat,’ Louis said, and Ellie giggled.

‘You want to talk to Mummy again, Daddy?’

‘Sure. Put her on.’

Then it was over. He talked to Rachel for another couple of minutes; the subject of Church was not touched upon. He and his wife exchanged love-you’s and Louis hung up.

‘That’s that,’ he said to the empty, sunny room, and maybe the worst thing about it was that he didn’t feel bad, didn’t feel guilty, at all.