Pet Sematary(36)

"Norma," he said, "anything I could do, I was pleased to do."

"You're a dear man," Norma said. "You take this man of mine out somewhere and let him buy you a glass of beer. I'm feeling sleepy again, and I can't seem to get rid of him."

Jud stood up with alacrity. "Hot damn! I'll go for that, Louis. Quick, before she changes her mind."

The first snow came a week before Thanksgiving. They got another four inches on the twenty-second of November, but the day before the holiday itself was clear and blue and cold. Louis took his family to Bangor International Airport and saw them off on the first leg of their trip back to Chicago for a visit with Rachel's parents.

"It's not right," Rachel said for perhaps the twentieth time since discussions on this matter had commenced in earnest a month ago. "I don't like thinking of you rattling around the house alone on Thanksgiving Day. That's supposed to be a family holiday, Louis."

Louis shifted Gage, who looked gigantic and wide-eyed in his first big-boy parka, to his other arm. Ellie was at one of the big windows, watching an Air Force helicopter take off.

"I'm not exactly going to be crying in my beer," Louis said. "Jud and Norma are going to have me over for turkey and all the trimmings. Hell, I'm the one who feels guilty. I've never liked these big holiday group gropes anyway. I start drinking in front of some football game at three in the afternoon and fall asleep at seven, and the next day it feels like the Dallas Cowgirls are dancing around and yelling boola-boola inside my head. I just don't like sending you off with the two kids."

"I'll be fine," she said. "Flying first class, I feel like a princess. And Gage will sleep on the flight from Logan to O'Hare."

"You hope," he said, and they both laughed.

The flight was called, and Ellie scampered over. "That's us, Mommy. Come on-come on-come on. They'll leave without us."

"No they won't," Rachel said. She was clutching her three pink boarding cards in one hand. She was wearing her fur coat, some fake stuff that was a luxuriant brown... probably it was supposed to look like muskrat, Louis thought.

Whatever it was supposed to look like, it made her look absolutely lovely.

Perhaps something of what he felt showed in his eyes because she hugged him impulsively, semicrushing Gage between them. Gage looked surprised but not terribly upset.

"Louis Creed, I love you," she said.

"Mom-eee," Ellie said, now in a fever of impatience. "some on-come on-c-"Oh, all right," she said. "Be good, LOUIS."

"Tell you what," he said, grinning, "I'll be careful. Say hello to your folks, Rachel."

"Oh, you," she said and wrinkled her nose at him. Rachel was not fooled; she knew perfectly well why Louis was skipping this trip. "Fun-nee."

He watched them enter the boarding ramp... and disappear from sight for the next week. He already felt homesick and lonely for them. He moved over to the window where Ellie had been, hands stuffed in his coat pockets, watching the baggage handlers loading the hold.

The truth was simple. Not only Mr. but also Mrs. Irwin Goldman of Lake Forest had disliked Louis from the beginning. He came from the wrong side of the tracks, but that was just for starters. Worse, he fully expected their daughter to support him while he went to medical school, where he would almost surely flunk out.

Louis could have handled all this, in fact had been doing so. Then something had happened which Rachel did not know about and never would... not from Louis, anyway. Irwin Goldman had offered to pay Louis's entire tuition through med school. The price of this "scholarship" (Goldman's word) was that Louis should break off his engagement with Rachel at once.

Louis Creed had not been at the optimum time of life to deal with such an outrage, but such melodramatic proposals (or bribes, to call a spade a spade) are rarely made to those who are at an optimum time-which might be around the age of eighty-five. He was tired, for one thing. He was spending eighteen hours a week in classes, another twenty hitting the books, another fifteen waiting tables in a deep-dish pizza joint down the block from the Whitehall Hotel. He was also nervous. Mr. Goldman's oddly jovial manner that evening had contrasted completely with his previous cold behavior, and Louis thought that when Goldman invited him into the study for a cigar, a look had passed from him to his wife.

Later-much later, when time had lent a little perspective-Louis would reflect that horses must feel much the same free-floating anxiety when they smell the first smoke of a prairie fire. He began expecting Goldman to reveal at any moment that he knew Louis had been sleeping with his daughter.

When Goldman instead made his incredible offer-even going so far as to take his checkbook from the pocket of his smoking jacket like a rake in a Noel Coward farce-Louis had blown up. He accused Goldman of trying to keep his daughter like an exhibit in a museum, of having no regard for anyone but himself, and of being an overbearing, thoughtless bastard. It would be a long time before he would admit to himself that part of his rage had been relief.

All of these little insights into Irwin Goldman's character, though perhaps true, had no redeeming touch of diplomacy in them. Any semblance of Noel Coward departed; if there was humor in the rest of the conversation, it was of a much more vulgar sort. Goldman told him to get out and that if he ever saw Louis on his doorstep again, he would shoot him like a yellow dog. Louis told Goldman to take his checkbook and plug up his ass with it. Goldman said he had seen bums in the gutter who had more potential than Louis Creed. Louis told Goldman he could also shove his goddam BankAmericard and his American Express Gold Card right up there beside his checkbook.