. ruined.”

The last word became a miserable choke. She tried to drink coffee, but that was no good. A moment later she was sobbing into her hands.

There was a queer moment then. There were crossing lines of tension then. They all seemed to focus on Louis. He felt this with the same preternatural insight he’d had all this day, and of them all, this was the clearest and surest. Even the waitress felt those converging lines of awareness. He saw her pause at a table near the back where she was laying placemats and silver. For a moment Louis was puzzled, and then he understood: they were waiting for him to comfort his wife.

He couldn’t do it. He wanted to do it. He understood it was his responsibility to do it. All the same, he couldn’t. It was the cat that got in his way.

Suddenly and with no rime or reason. The cat. The fucking cat. Church with his ripped mice and the birds he had grounded forever. When he found them, Louis had cleaned up the messes promptly, with no complaint or comment, certainly without protest. He had, after all, bought them. But had he bought this?

He saw his fingers. Louis saw his fingers. He saw his fingers lightly skating over the back of Gage’s jacket. Then Gage’s jacket had been gone. Then Gage had been gone.

He looked into his coffee cup and let his wife cry beside him, uncomforted.

After a moment-in terms of clock time probably quite short, but both then and in retrospect it seemed long-Steve put an arm around her and hugged her gently. His eyes on Louis’s were reproachful and angry. Louis turned from them toward Jud, but Jud was looking down, as if in shame. There was no help there.

37

“I knew something like this would happen,” Irwin Goldman said. That was how the trouble started. “I knew it when she married you. ‘You’ll have all the grief you can stand and more,’ I said. And look at this. Look at this… this mess.”

Louis looked slowly around at his father-in-law, who had appeared before him like some malign jack-in-the-box in a skullcap; and then, instinctively, he looked around at where Rachel had been, by the book on the stand-the afternoon shift was hers by default-but Rachel was gone.

The afternoon viewing had been less crowded, and after half an hour or so, Louis had gone down to the front row of seats and sat there on the aisle, aware of very little (only peripherally aware of the cloying stink of the flowers) except the fact that he was very tired and sleepy. It was only partly the beer, he supposed. His mind was finally ready to shut down. Probably a good thing.

Perhaps, after twelve or sixteen hours of sleep, he would be able to comfort Rachel a little.

After a while his head had sunk until he was looking at his hands, loosely linked between his knees. The hum of voices near the back was soothing. He had been relieved to see that Irwin and Dory weren’t here when the four of them returned from lunch, but he should have known their continued absence was too good to be true.

“Where’s Rachel?” Louis asked now.

“With her mother. Where she should be.” Goldman spoke with the studied triumph of a man who has closed a big deal. There was Scotch on his breath. A lot of it.

He stood before Louis like a banty little district attorney before a man in the bar of justice, a man who is patently guilty. He was unsteady on his feet.

“What did you say to her?” Louis said, feeling the beginnings of alarm now. He knew Goldman had said something. It was in the man’s face.

“Nothing but the truth. I told her this is what it gets you, marrying against your parents’ wishes. I told her-”

“Did you say that?” Louis asked incredulously. “You didn’t really say that, did you?”

“That and more,” Irwin Goldman said, “I always knew it would come to this-this or something like it. I knew what kind of a man you were the first time I saw you.” He leaned forward, exhaling Scotch fumes. “I saw through you, you prancing little fraud of a doctor. You enticed my daughter into a stupid, feckless marriage and then you turned her into a scullery maid and then you let her son be run down in the highway like a… a chipmunk.”

Most of this went over Louis’s head. He was still groping with the idea that this stupid little man could have-“You said that to her?” he repeated. “You said it?” “I hope you rot in hell!” Goldman said, and heads turned sharply toward the sound of his voice. Tears began to squeeze out of Irwin Goldman’s bloodshot brown eyes. His bald head glowed under the muted fluorescent lights.

“You made my wonderful daughter into a scullery maid… destroyed her future took her away… and let my grandson die a dirty death in a country road.”

His voice rose to a hectoring scream.

“Where were you? Sitting on your ass while he was playing in the road? Thinking about your stupid medical articles? What were you doing, you shit? You stinking shit! Killer of children!

There they were. There they were at the front of the East Room. There they were, and Louis saw his arm go out. He saw the sleeve of his suit coat pull back from the cuff of his white shirt. He saw the mellow gleam of one cufflink. Rachel had given him the set for their third wedding anniversary, never knowing that her husband would someday wear these cufflinks to the funeral ceremonies of their then-unborn son. His fist was just something tied to the end of his arm. It connected with Goldman’s mouth. He felt the old man’s lips squash and splay back. It was a sickening feeling, really-squashing a slug with your fist might feel something like that.

There was no satisfaction in it. Beneath the flesh of his father-in-law’s lips he could feel the stern, unyielding regularity of his dentures.

Goldman went stumbling backward. His arm came down against Gage’s coffin, knocking it aslant. One of the vases, top-heavy with flowers, fell over with a crash. Someone screamed.

It was Rachel, struggling with her mother, who was trying to hold her back. The people who were there-ten or fifteen in all-seemed frozen between fright and embarrassment. Steve had taken Jud back to Ludlow, and Louis was dimly grateful for that. This was not a scene he would have wished Jud to witness. It was unseemly.

“Don’t hurt him!” Rachel screamed. “Louis, don’t hurt my father!”

“You like to hit old men, do you?” Irwin Goldman of the overflowing checkbook cried out shrilly. He was grinning through a mouthful of blood. “You like to hit old men? I am not surprised, you stinking bastard. That does not surprise me at all.”

Louis turned toward him, and Goldman struck him in the neck. It was a clumsy, side-handed, chopping blow, but Louis was unprepared for it. A paralyzing pain that would make it hard for him to swallow for the next two hours exploded in his throat. His head rocked back, and he fell to one knee in the aisle.

First the flowers, now me, he thought. What is it the Ramones say? Hey-ho, let’s go! He thought he wanted to laugh, but there was no laugh in him. What came out of his hurt throat was a little groan.

Rachel screamed again.

Irwin Goldman, his mouth dripping blood, marched over to where his son-in-law kneeled and kicked Louis smartly in the kidneys. The pain was a bright flare of agony. He put his hands down on the rug runner to keep from going flop on his belly.

“You don’t do so good even against old men, sonny!” Goldman cried with cracked excitement. He kicked out at Louis again, missing the kidney this time, getting Louis on the high part of the left buttock with one black old man’s shoe. Louis grunted in pain, and this time he did go down on the carpet. His chin hit with an audible crack. He bit his tongue.

“There!” Goldman cried. “There’s the kick in the ass I should have given you the first time you came sucking around, you bastard. There!” He kicked Louis in the ass again, this time connecting with the other buttock. He was weeping and grinning. Louis saw for the first time that Goldman was unshaven-a sign of mourning. The funeral director raced toward them. Rachel had broken Mrs. Goldman’s hold and was also racing toward them, screaming.