Angle of Repose - Wallace Stegner [272]
“But she wasn’t happy.”
“She wasn’t unhappy, either. Do you have to be one or the other?”
I focused into the middle of her dark blue, wondering glance. I focused, actually, between her eyes, and I was thinking as I appeared to look at her, Why does an unblinking, wide-eyed, questioning look always strike me as unintelligent? Is it? Or is it possible it is only open, willing?
My brief exhilaration had passed. Out the window, the sky was losing its light, there was no sun on the pines. Where on earth was Ada? It was away past the time she should have come to start my dinner. The dread came back and squatted like a toad on my heart. Suddenly, before the woman could question or stop me, I had wheeled to the side of the bed and was dialing the telephone. On the fourth ring it was answered: Shelly, sounding as usual like a longshoreman.
“Hello,” I said. “Is your mother there?”
“I was just going to call you,” she said. “We’ve had a kind of time. She’s sick–some sort of seizure. Dad’s taking her in to the hospital right now. I probably ought to go along. Do you think you could wait supper till I get back? Maybe an hour?”
Heavy and coarse as a man’s, her voice boomed and crackled in my ear. She sounded excited and hurried and breathless, as if she had had to run to the phone.
“Of course,” I said. “My Lord, yes. You do whatever she needs, don’t worry about me. I can make a sandwich. Give her my love.”
“O.K.,” said her breathless baritone. “I guess that’s . . . I’ll be over later, then. Don’t try to fix your own, I’ll be there. O.K.?”
“O.K.” I hung up.
“What is it?” Ellen said, though I was sure she had heard it all–Shelly’s voice came out of the earpiece as if out of a megaphone. What luck! Ellen’s face said. Just what we were hoping for! It was bound to happen sooner or later, she was really too decrepit.
Her shoes were still in her hand, her head was on one side. “You need a drink,” she said. “You look sunk.” Bending, she slipped on her pumps, one, then the other. “Where’s there a bottle? You don’t want to go on with that nonsense about being on the wagon. This is an emergency. I’ll fix you a drink and then I’ll go see what I can find for you to eat.”
“I can wait. Shelly’ll be over in an hour.”
“No, no. Why should you?”
She came in like a reserve quarterback hot to prove the injustice of his being kept out of the game. Helpless and troubled, I stared at her, unable to find the words that would stop her. I let her fix the drink, popping two aspirins into my mouth while her back was turned. I put out a cold and sweating hand and took the cold, sweating glass.
“Would you like the television up here, for news or anything?”
I felt like something stiff and rigid propped in the corner. “No thank you.”
“Anything else you need? Any pills or anything?”
“Nothing. I’m fine.”
“Well, you just sit and enjoy your drink. I’ll be back in a jiffy.”
Her heels on the planks were brisk, she went down the stairs in a clatter–nimble, well-preserved, and vigorous. I sat by the window and let the bourbon wash around in my mouth–and why in hell had I let her subvert me, after a week of will power?–and warm the ball of cold putty in the middle of my chest. Every sound that came up from downstairs had my ears on end. Talk about a little Kafka animal sweating down its hole! Once I thought I heard her singing as she worked. I downed the drink in a few gulps, and quickly, before she could get back up the lift and prevent me with some female notion of what was good for me, wheeled over to the refrigerator and sloshed another couple of ounces onto the ice in my glass and wheeled back. I was waiting there with an empty glass, my chair turned so that I could look out the window and watch night come on, when she came upstairs with a tray.
“Tell me about your book,” she said while I sat eating the soup and sandwiches and fruit and milk she had brought. She herself was walking restlessly around the room, stocking-footed again, a drink in her hand. She seemed to dislike the sound of her heels on the bare floors–very different from her son. “What do you call it?