فصل هفتم

SEVEN

The next two weeks were busy ones for the family. Little by little Louis’s new job began to shake down for him (how it would be when ten thousand students, Many of them drug and liquor abusers, some afflicted with social diseases, some anxious about grades or depressed about leaving home for the first time, a dozen of them – girls, mostly – anorexic … how it would be when all of them converged on the campus at once would be something else again). And while Louis began getting a handle on his job as head of University Medical Services, Rachel began to get a handle on the house. As she was doing so, something happened which Louis had only dared to hope for – she fell in love with the place.

Gage was busy taking the bumps and spills that went with getting used to his new environment, and for a while his night-time schedule was badly out of whack, but by the middle of their second week in Ludlow he had begun to sleep through again. Only Ellie, with the prospect of beginning kindergarten in a new place before her, seemed always over-excited and on a hairtrigger. She was apt to go into prolonged giggling fits or periods of almost menopausal depression or tempertantrums at the drop of a word. Rachel said she would get over it when she saw that school was not the great red devil she had made it out to be in her own mind, and Louis thought she was right. Most of the time, Ellie was what she had always been – a dear.

His evening beer or two with Jud Crandall became something of a habit. Around the time Gage began sleeping through again, Louis began bringing his own six-pack over every second or third night. He met Norma Crandall, a sweetly pleasant woman who had rheumatoid arthritis – filthy old rheumatoid arthritis, which kills so much of what could be good in the old ages of men and women who are otherwise healthy – but her attitude was good. She would not surrender to the pain; there would be no white flags. Let it take her if it could. Louis thought she might have another five to seven productive if not terribly comfortable years ahead of her.

Going completely against his own established customs, he examined her at his own instigation, inventoried the prescriptions her own doctor had given her, and found them to be completely in order. He felt a nagging disappointment that there was nothing else he could do or suggest for her, but her Dr Weybridge had things as under control as they were ever going to be for Norma Crandall – barring some sudden break-through, which was possible but not to be counted upon. You learned to accept, or you ended up in a small room writing letters home with Crayolas.

Rachel liked her, and they had sealed their friendship by exchanging recipes the way small boys trade baseball cards: Norma Crandall’s deep-dish apple pie for Rachel’s beef stroganoff. Norma was taken with both of the Creed children – particularly with Ellie, who, she said, was going to be ‘an old-time beauty’. At least, Louis told Rachel that night in bed, Norma hadn’t said Ellie was going to grow into a real sweet ‘coon. Rachel laughed so hard she broke explosive wind, and then both of them laughed so long and loudly they woke up Gage in the next room.

The first day of kindergarten arrived. Louis, who felt pretty well in control of the infirmary and the medical support facilities now (besides, the infirmary was currently dead empty; the last patient, a summer student who had broken her leg on the Union steps, had been discharged a week before), took the day off. He stood on the lawn beside Rachel with Gage in his arms, as the big yellow bus made the turn from Middle Drive and lumbered to a stop in front of their house. The doors at the front folded open; the babble and squawk of many children drifted out on the mild September air.

Ellie cast a strange, vulnerable glance back over her shoulder, as if to ask them if there might not yet be time to abort this inevitable process now, and perhaps what she saw on the faces of her parents convinced her that the time was gone, and everything which would follow this first day was simply inevitable – like the progress of Norma Crandall’s arthritis. She turned away from them and mounted the steps of the bus. The doors folded shut with a gasp of dragon’s breath. The bus pulled away. Rachel burst into tears.

‘Don’t, for Christ’s sake,’ Louis said. He wasn’t crying. Only damn near. ‘It’s only half a day.’

‘Half a day is bad enough,’ Rachel answered in a scolding voice, and began to cry harder. Louis held her, and Gage slipped an arm comfortably around each parent’s neck. When Rachel cried, Gage usually cried, too. Not this time. He has us to himself, Louis thought, and he damn well-knows it.

They waited with some trepidation for Ellie to return, drinking too much coffee, speculating on how it was going for her. Louis went out into the back room that was going to be his study and messed about idly, moving papers from one place to another but not doing much else. Rachel began lunch absurdly early.

When the phone rang at quarter past ten, Rachel raced for it and answered with a breathless ‘Hello?’ before it could ring a second time. Louis stood in the doorway between his office and the kitchen, sure it would be Ellie’s teacher telling them that she had decided Ellie couldn’t take it, and the stomach of public education had found her indigestible and was spitting her back. But it was only Norma Crandall, calling to tell them that Jud had picked the last of the corn and they were welcome to a dozen ears if they wanted it. Louis went over with a shopping bag and scolded Jud for not letting him help pick it.

‘Most of it ain’t worth a tin shit anyway,’ Jud said.

‘You spare that kind of talk while I’m around,’ Norma said. She came out on the porch with iced tea on an antique Coca-Cola tray.

‘Sorry, my love.’

‘He ain’t sorry a bit,’ Norma said to Louis, and sat down with a wince.

‘Saw Ellie get on the bus,’ Jud said, lighting a Chesterfield.

‘She’ll be fine,’ Norma said. ‘They almost always are.’ Almost, Louis thought morbidly.

But Ellie was fine. She came home at noon smiling and sunny, her blue first-day-of-school dress belling gracefully around her scabbed shins (and there was a new scrape on one knee to marvel over), a picture of what might have been two children or perhaps two walking gantries in one hand, one shoe untied, one ribbon missing from her hair, shouting: ‘We sang Old MacDonald! Mommy! Daddy! We sang Old MacDonald! Same one as in the Carstairs Street School!’ Rachel glanced over at Louis, who was sitting in the windowseat with Gage on his lap. The baby was almost asleep. There was something sad in Rachel’s glance, and although she looked away quickly, Louis felt a moment of terrible panic. We’re really going to get old, he thought. It’s really true. No one’s going to make an exception for us. She’s on her way … and so are we.

Ellie ran over to him, trying to show him her picture, her new scrape, and tell him about Old MacDonald and Mrs Berryman all at the same time. Church was twining in and out between her legs, purring loudly, and Ellie was somehow, almost miraculously, not tripping over him.

‘Shh,’ Louis said, and kissed her. Gage had gone to sleep, unmindful of all the excitement. ‘Just let me put the baby to bed and then I’ll listen to everything.’ He took Gage up the stairs, walking through hot slanting September sunshine, and as he reached the landing, such a premonition of horror and darkness struck him that he stopped – stopped cold – and looked around in surprise, wondering what could possibly have come over him. He held the baby tighter, almost clutching him, and Gage stirred uncomfortably. Louis’s arms and back had broken out in great rashes of gooseflesh.

What’s wrong? he wondered, confused and frightened. His heart was racing; his scalp felt cool and abruptly too small to cover his skull; he could feel the surge of adrenalin behind his eyes. Human eyes really did bug out when fear was extreme, he knew; they did not just widen but actually bulged as blood-pressure climbed and the hydrostatic pressure of the cranial fluids increased. What the hell is it? Ghosts? Christ, it really feels as if something just brushed by me in this hallway, something I almost saw.

Downstairs the screen door whacked against its frame.

Louis Creed jumped, almost screamed, and then laughed. It was simply one of those psychological cold-pockets people sometimes passed through – no more, no less. A momentary fugue. They happened, that was all. What had Scrooge said to the ghost of Jacob Marley? You may be no more than an underdone bit of potato. There’s more gravy than grave to you. And that was more correct – physiologically as well as psychologically – than Charles Dickens had probably known. There were no ghosts, at least not in his experience. He had pronounced two dozen people dead in his career and had never once felt the passage of a soul.

He took Gage into his room and laid him in his crib. As he pulled the blanket up over his son, though, a shudder twisted up his back and he thought suddenly of his Uncle Frank’s showroom. No new cars there, no televisions with all the modern features, no dishwashers with glass fronts so you could watch the magical sudsing action. Only boxes with their lids up, a carefully hidden spotlight over each. His mother’s brother was an undertaker.

Good God, what gave you the horrors? Let it go! Dump it!

He kissed his son and went down to listen to Ellie tell about her first day at big kids’ school.