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 sixpack 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.