Louis had time to notice that Gage was wearing a jumper he had never seen before—it looked like more of Grandda’s work to Louis. Then Ellie hurtled into him and shinnied up him like a tree.
“Hi, Daddy!” she bellowed and smacked his cheek heartily.
“Hi, hon,” he said and bent over to catch Gage. He pulled him up into the crook of his arm and hugged them both. “I’m glad to see you back.”
Rachel came up then, her traveling bag and pocketbook slung over one arm, Gage’s diaper bag slung over the other. I’LL BE A BIG
BOY SOON was printed on the side of the diaper bag, a sentiment probably meant more to cheer up the parents than the diaper-wearing child. She looked like a professional photographer at the end of a long, grueling assignment.
Louis bent between his two kids and planted a kiss on her mouth.
“Hi.”
“Hi, Doe,” she said, and smiled.
“You look beat.”
“I am beat. We got as far as Boston with no problem. We changed planes with no problem. We took off with no problem. But as the plane is banking over the city, Gage looks down and says, ‘Pretty, pretty,’ and then whoopses all over himself.”
“Oh, Jesus.”
“I got him changed in the toilet,” she said. “I don’t think it’s a virus or anything. He was just airsick.”
“Come on home,” Louis said. “I’ve got chili on the stove.”
“Chili! Chili!” Ellie screamed in Louis’s ear, transported with delight and excitement.
“Chiwwi! Chiwwi!” Gage screamed in Louis’s other ear, which at least equalized the ringing.
on,” Louis said. “Let’s get your suitcases and blow this joint.
“Daddy, how’s Church?” Ellie asked as he set her down. It was a question Louis had expected, but not Ellie’s anxious face, and the
deep worry line that appeared between her dark blue eyes. Louis frowned and then glanced at Rachel.
“She woke up screaming over the weekend,” Rachel said quietly.
“She had a nightmare.”
“I dreamed that Church got run over,” Ellie said.
“Too many turkey sandwiches after the big day, that’s my guess,”
Rachel said. “She had a bout of diarrhea too. Set her mind at rest, Louis, and let’s get out of this airport. I’ve seen enough airports in the last week to last me for at least five years.”
“Why, Church is fine, honey,” Louis said slowly.
Yes, he’s fine. He lies around the house all day long and looks at me with those strange, muddy eyes—as if he’d seen something that had blasted away most of whatever intelligence a cat has. He’s just great. 1 put him out with a broom at night because I don’t like to touch him. I just kind of sweep at him with it and he goes. And the other day when 1 opened the door, Ellie, he had a mouse—or what was left of it. He’d strewed the guts hell to breakfast. And speaking of breakfast, I skipped mine that morning. Otherwise— “He’s just fine.”
“Oh,” Ellie said, and that furrow between her eyes smoothed out.
“Oh, that’s good. When I had that dream, I was sure he was dead.”
“Were you?” Louis asked, and smiled. “Dreams are funny, aren’t they?”
“Dweems!” Cage hollered—he had reached the parrot stage that Louis remembered from Ellie’s development. “Dweeeeeems!” He gave Louis’s hair a hearty tug.
“Come on, gang,” Louis said, and they started down to the baggage area.
They had gotten as far as the station wagon in the parking lot when Gage began saying “Pretty, pretty,” in a strange, hiccupping voice.
This time he whoopsed all over Louis, who had put on a new pair of double-knit slacks for the plane-meeting occasion. Apparently Gage thought pretty was the code word for I’ve got to throw up now, so sorry, stand clear.
It turned out to be a virus after all.
By the time they had driven the seventeen miles from the Bangor airport to their house in Ludlow, Gage had begun to show signs of fever and had fallen into an uncomfortable doze. Louis backed into the garage, and out of the corner of his eye he saw Church slink along one wall, tail up, strange eyes fixed on the car. It disappeared into the dying glow of the day, and a moment later Louis saw a disemboweled mouse lying beside a stack of four summer tires—
he had had the snows put on while Rachel and the kids were gone.
The mouse’s innards glowed pink and raw in the garage’s gloom.
Louis got out quickly and purposely bumped against the pile of tires, which were stacked up like black checkers. The top two fell over and covered the mouse. “Ooops,” he said.
“You’re a spaz, Daddy,” Ellie said, not unkindly.
“That’s right,” Louis said with a kind of hectic cheer. He felt a little like saying Pretty, pretty and blowing his groceries all over everything. “Daddy’s a spaz.” He could remember Church killing only a single rat before his queer resurrection; he sometimes cornered mice and played with them in that deadly cat way that ultimately ended in destruction, but he or Ellie or Rachel had always intervened before the end. And once cats were fixed, he knew, few of them would do more than give a mouse an interested stare, at least as long as they were well-fed.
“Are you going to stand there dreaming or help me with this kid?”
Rachel asked. “Come back from Planet Mongo, Dr. Creed. Earth people need you.” She sounded tired and irritable.
“I’m sorry, babe,” Louis said. He came around to get Gage, who was now as hot as the coals in a banked stove.
So only the three of them ate Louis’s famous South Side Chili that night; Gage reclined on the living room sofa, feverish and apathetic, drinking a bottle filled with lukewarm chicken broth and watching a cartoon show on TV.
After dinner Ellie went to the garage door and called Church.
Louis, who was doing the dishes while Rachel unpacked upstairs, hoped the cat wouldn’t come, but he did—he came in walking in his new slow lurch, and he came almost at once, as if he—as if it—
had been lurking out there. Lurking. The word came immediately to mind.
“Church!” Ellie cried. “Hi, Church!” She picked the cat up and hugged it. Louis watched out of the corner of his eye; his hands, which had been groping on the bottom of the sink for any leftover silverware, were still. He saw Ellie’s happy face change slowly to puzzlement. The cat lay quiet in her arms, its ears laid back, its eyes on hers.
After a long moment—it seemed very long to Louis—she put Church down. The cat padded away toward the dining room without looking back. Executioner of small mice, Louis thought randomly. Christ, what did we do that night?
He tried honestly to remember, but it already seemed far away, dim and distant, like the messy death of Victor Pascow on the floor of the infirmary’s reception room. He could remember carriages of wind passing in the sky and the white glimmer of snow in the back field which rose to the woods. That was all.
“Daddy?” Ellie said in a low, subdued voice.
‘What, Ellie?”
“Church smells funny.”
“Does he?” Louis asked, his voice carefully neutral.
“Yes!” Ellie said, distressed. “Yes, he does! He never smelled funny before! He smells like. . . he smells like ka-ka!”
“Well, maybe he rolled in something bad, honey,” Louis said.
“Whatever that bad smell is, he’ll lose it.”
“I certainly hope so,” Ellie said in a comical dowager’s voice. She walked off.
Louis found the last fork, washed it, and pulled the plug. He stood at the sink, looking out into the night while the soapy water ran down the drain with a thick chuckling sound.
When the sound from the drain was gone he could hear the wind outside, thin and wild, coming from the north, bringing down winter, and he realized he was afraid, simply, stupidly afraid, the way you are afraid when a cloud suddenly sails across the sun and somewhere you hear a ticking sound you can’t account for.
“A hundred and three?” Rachel asked. “Jesus, Lou! Are you sure?”
“It’s a virus,” Louis said. He tried not to let Rachel’s voice, which seemed almost accusatory, grate on him. She was tired. It had been a long day for her; she had crossed half the country with her kids today. Here it was eleven o’clock, and the day wasn’t over yet.
Ellie was deeply asleep in her room. Gage was on their bed in a state that could best be described as semiconscious.
Louis had started him on Liquiprin an hour ago. “The aspirin will bring his fever down by morning, hon.”
“Aren’t you going to give him ampicfflin or anything?”
Patiently, Louis said, “If he had the flu or a strep infection, I would. He doesn’t. He’s got a virus, and that stuff doesn’t do doodly-squat for viruses. It would just give him the runs and dehydrate him more.”