فصل سی و یک

THIRTY-ONE

So their winter passed. Ellie’s faith in Santa Claus was restored – temporarily at least – by the footprints in the hearth. Gage opened his presents splendidly, pausing every now and then to munch a particularly tasty-looking piece of wrapping paper. And that year, both kids had decided by mid-afternoon that the boxes were more fun than the toys.

The Crandalls came over on New Year’s Eve for Rachel’s eggnog, and Louis found himself mentally examining Norma. She had a pale and somehow transparent look that he had seen before. His grandmother would have said Norma was beginning to ‘fail’, and that was perhaps not such a bad word for it. All at once her hands, so swollen and misshapen by arthritis, seemed covered with liver-spots. Her hair looked thinner. The Crandalls went home around ten, and the Creeds saw the New Year in together in front of the TV. It was the last time Norma was in their house.

Most of Louis’s semester break was sloppy and rainy. In terms of heating costs, he was grateful for the protracted thaw, but the weather was still depressing and dismal. He worked around the house, building bookshelves and cupboards for his wife. By the time classes resumed on January 23rd, Louis was happy to go back to the University.

The flu finally arrived – a fairly serious outbreak of it struck the campus less than a week after the spring semester had begun, and he had his hands full – he found himself working ten and sometimes twelve hours a day and going home utterly whipped … but not really unhappy.

The warm spell broke on January 29th with a roar. There was a blizzard followed by a week of numbing sub-zero weather. Louis was checking the mending broken arm of a young man who was hoping desperately – and fruitlessly, in Louis’s opinion – that he would be able to play baseball that spring when one of the candy-stripers poked her head in and told him his wife was on the telephone.

Louis went into his office to take the call. Rachel was crying, and he was instantly alarmed. Ellie, he thought. She’s fallen off her sled and broken her arm. Or fractured her skull. He thought with alarm of the crazed fraternity boys and their toboggan.

‘It isn’t one of the kids, is it?’ he asked. ‘Rachel?’

‘No, no,’ she said, crying harder. ‘Not one of the kids. It’s Norma, Lou. Norma Crandall. She died this morning. Around eight o’clock, right after breakfast, Jud said. He came over to see if you were here and I told him you’d left half an hour ago. He … oh Lou, he just seemed so lost and so dazed … so old … thank God Ellie was gone and Gage is too young to understand …’ Louis’s brow furrowed, and in spite of this terrible news he found it was Rachel his mind was going out to, seeking, trying to find. Because here it was again. Nothing you could quite put your finger on, because it was so much of an overall attitudinal fix. That death was a secret, a terror, and it was to be kept from the children, above all to be kept from the children, the way that Victorian ladies and gentlemen had believed the nasty, grotty truth about sexual relations was to be kept from the children.

‘Jesus,’ he said. ‘Was it her heart?’

‘I don’t know,’ she said. She was no longer crying, but her voice was choked and hoarse. ‘Could you come, Louis? You’re his friend, and I think he needs you.’ You’re his friend.

Well I am, Louis thought with a small touch of surprise. I never expected to have an eighty-year-old man for a buddy, but I guess I do. And then it occurred to him that they had better be friends, considering what was between them. And considering that, he supposed that Jud had known they were friends long before Louis had. Jud had stood by him on that one, and in spite of what had happened since, in spite of the mice, in spite of the birds, Louis felt that Jud’s decision had probably been the right one … or, if not the right one, at least the compassionate one. He would do what he could for Jud now, and if it meant being best man at the death of his wife, he would be that.

‘On my way,’ he said, and hung up.