Pet Sematary - Stephen King [107]
Dory walked beside him, her face all but invisible under two- possibly three-layers of heavy black netting. Her hair was fashionably blue, the color favored by elderly ladies of an upper-class
American persuasion. She held her husbands ann. All Louis could really see behind the veil was the glitter of her tears.
Suddenly he decided it was time to let bygones be bygones. He could not hold the old grudge any longer. Suddenly it was too heavy. Perhaps it was the cumulative weight of all those platitudes.
Irwin. Dory, he murmured. Thank you for coming.
He made a gesture with his arms, as if to shake hands with Rachels father and hug her mother simultaneously, or perhaps even to hug them both. Either way he felt his own tears start for the first time, and for an instant he had the crazy idea that they could mend all their fences, that Gage would do that much for them in his dying, as if this were some romantic ladies novel he had stepped into where the wages of death were reconciliation, where it could cause something more constructive than this endless, stupid, grinding ache which just went on and on and on.
Dory started toward him, making a gesture, beginning, perhaps, to hold out her own arms. She said something-Oh, Louis and something else that was garbled-and then Goldman pulled his wife back. For a moment the three of them stood in a tableau that no one noticed except themselves (unless perhaps the funeral director, standing unobtrusively in the far corner of the East Room, saw-Louis supposed that Uncle Carl would have seen), Louis with his arms partly outstretched, Irwin and Dory Goldman standing as stiff and straight as a couple on a wedding cake.
Louis saw that there were no tears in his father-in-laws eyes; they were bright and clear with hate (does he think I killed Gage to spite him? Louis wondered). Those eyes seemed to measure Louis, to find him the same small and pointless man who had kidnapped his daughter and brought her to this sorrow and then to dismiss him. His eyes shifted to Louiss left-to Gages coffin, in fact-and only then did they soften.
Still Louis made a final effort. Irwin, he said. Dory. Please. We have to get together on this.
Louis, Dory said again-kindly, Louis thought-and then they were past him, Irwin Goldman perhaps pulling his wife along, not looking to the left or the right, certainly not looking at Louis Creed. They approached the coffin, and Goldman fumbled a small black skullcap out of his suit coat pocket.
You didnt sign the book, Louis thought, and then a silent
belch of such malignantly acidic content rose through his digestive works that his face clenched in pain.
The morning viewing ended at last. Louis called home. Jud answered and asked him how it had gone. All right, Louis said. He asked Jud if he could talk to Steve.
If she can dress herself, Im going to let her come this afternoon, Steve said. Okay by you?
Yes, Louis said.
How are you, Lou? No bullshit and straight on-how are you?
All right, Louis said briefly. Coping. I had all of them sign the book. All of them except Dory and Irwin, and they wouldnt.
All right, Steve said. Look, shall we meet you for lunch?
Lunch. Meeting for lunch. This seemed such an alien idea that Louis thought of the science fiction novels he had read as a teenager-novels by Robert A. Heinlein, Murray Leinster, Gordon R. Dickson. The natives here on Planet Quark have an odd custom when one of their children dies, Lieutenant Abelson: they meet for lunch. I know how grotesque and barbaric that sounds, but remember, this planet has not been terra formed yet.
Sure, Louis said. Whats a good restaurant for half time between funeral viewings, Steve?
Take it easy, Lou, Steve said, but he didnt seem entirely displeased. In this state of crazy calm, Louis felt better able to see into people than ever before in his life. Perhaps it was an