That she had strained herself trying to keep Zelda from choking was simple, obvious, elementary-my-dear-Watson. To everyone, that was, except Rachel herself. Rachel had been sure that this was Zelda's revenge from beyond the grave. Zelda knew that Rachel was glad she was dead; Zelda knew that when Rachel burst from the house telling all and sundry Zelda's dead, Zelda's dead at the top of her voice, she had been laughing, not screaming; Zelda knew she had been murdered and so had given Rachel spinal meningitis, and soon Rachel's back would start to twist and change and she too would have to lie in bed, slowly but surely turning into a monster, her hands hooking into claws.
After a while she would begin screaming with the pain, as Zelda had done, and then she would start wetting the bed, and finally she would choke to death on her own tongue. It was Zelda's revenge.
No one could talk Rachel out of this belief-not her mother, her father, or Dr.
Murray, who diagnosed a mild backsprain and then told Rachel brusquely (cruelly, some-Louis, for instance-would have said) to stop behaving so badly. She ought to remember that her sister had just died, Dr. Murray told her; her parents were prostrate with grief and this was not the time for Rachel to make a childish play for attention. Only the slowly abating pain had been able to convince her that she was neither the victim of Zelda's supernatural vengeance nor God's just punishment of the wicked. For months (or so she told Louis; it had actually been years, eight of them) afterward she would awaken from nightmares in which her sister died over and over again, and in the dark Rachel's hands would fly to her back to make sure it was all right. In the frightful aftermath of these dreams she often thought that the closet door would bang open and Zelda would lurch out, blue and twisted, her eyes rolled up to shiny whites, her black tongue puffing out through her lips, her hands hooked into claws to murder the murderer cowering in her bed with her hands jammed into the small of her back.
She had not attended Zelda's funeral or any funeral since.
"If you'd told me this before," Louis said, "it would have explained a hell of a lot."
"Lou, I couldn't," she said simply. She sounded very sleepy now. "Since then I've been... I guess a little phobic on the subject."
Just a little phobic, Louis thought. Yeah, right.
"I can't... seem to help it. In my mind I know you're right, that death is perfectly natural-good, even-but what my mind knows and what happens... inside me...
"Yeah," he said.
"That day I blew up at you," she said, "I knew that Ellie was just crying over the idea... a way of getting used to it... but I couldn't help it. I'm sorry, Louis."
"No apology needed," he said, stroking her hair. "But what the hell, I accept it anyway, if it'll make you feel better."
She smiled. "It does, you know. And I feel better. I feel as if I just sicked up something that's poisoned part of me for years."
"Maybe you have."
Rachel's eyes slipped closed and then opened again.
slowly. "And don't blame it all on my father, Louis. Please. That was a terrible time for them. The bills-Zelda's bills-were sky-high. My dad had missed his chance to expand into the suburbs, and the sales in the downtown store were off.
Chapter 14
He looked up when Louis came in and said, "Well, she's gone, Louis." He said this in such a clear and matter-of-fact way that Louis thought it must not have really cleared through all the circuits yet-hadn't hit him yet where he lived.
Then Jud's mouth began to work and he covered his eyes with one arm. Louis went to him and put an arm around him. Jud gave in and wept. It had cleared the circuits, all right. Jud understood perfectly. His wife had died.
"That's good," Louis said. "That's good, Jud, she would want you to cry a little, I think. Probably be pissed off if you didn't." He had started to cry a little himself. Jud hugged him tightly, and Louis hugged him back.
Jud cried for ten minutes or so, and then the storm passed. Louis listened to the things Jud said then with great care-he listened as a doctor as well as a friend. He listened for any circularity in Jud's conversation; he listened to see if Jud's grasp of when was clear (no need to check him on where; that would prove nothing because for Jud Crandall the where had always been Ludlow, Maine); he listened most of all for any use of Norma's name in the present tense. He found little or no sign that Jud was losing his grip. Louis was aware that it was not uncommon for two old married people to go almost hand-in-hand, a month, a week, even a day apart. The shock, he supposed, or maybe even some deep inner urge to catch up with the one gone (that was a thought he would not have had before Church; he found that many of his thoughts concerning the spiritual and the supernatural had undergone a quiet but nonetheless deep sea-change). His conclusion was that Jud was grieving hard but that he was still compos mentis.
He sensed in Jud none of that transparent frailty that had seemed to surround Norma on New Year's Eve, when the four of them had sat in the Creed living room, drinking eggnog.
Jud brought him a beer from the fridge, his face still red and blotchy from crying.
"A bit early in the day," he said, "but the sun's over the yardarm somewhere in the world and under the circumstances...