Angle of Repose - Wallace Stegner [106]
IV
LEADVILLE
1
Today was Rodman day. He might as well have put a gun to my head.
He called before nine, saying that Leah was taking Jackie to her camp, and he might drop up if I was going to be home. I wonder where he thought I might be going. I’d be glad to see him, I said, not untruthfully. Ada and I plotted a lunch: avocado salad, a soufflé, garlic bread, a bottle of Green Hungarian. There is simply no sense in letting him think I subsist on canned soup and peanut butter sandwiches.
A little before noon I heard his car in the drive, then the bell. Ada let him in, and they talked a minute or two down in the hollow hall. With all the windows and doors open to let the breeze through, sounds are carried through the house with great clarity.
There is a certain endearing innocence about Rodman–he makes the world’s worst conspirator or gumshoe. It has apparently never occurred to him that he has the loudest voice in the entire world, and that when he wants to be confidential he ought to retreat two miles. He reminds me of Bob Sproul, who was president of the University of California when I taught there, back in simpler times than these. There was a story they always told, that once a visitor came into his office for an appointment and heard Bob’s voice booming away in the inner office. Sit down, the secretary said, he’ll just be a few minutes, he’s talking to New York. It seems so, says the visitor, but why doesn’t he use the telephone?
That’s Rodman, to the life. He bellows at Ada in a way to rattle the windows. “Hi, Ada. Hot enough for you? How’s everything? How’s Pop?”
“Doin’ just fine.”
“How’s the pain? Any better?”
“Well, how would a person know? He don’t tell you when he hurts, he just takes his aspirin. Some day he’s just goin’ to blow up with those aspirin, two dozen a day.”
“Sleeps all right, does he?”
“He seems to sleep pretty good. I put him to bed about ten, and he’s up at six.”
“You work a long day.”
“Oh, I don’t get him up. He gets himself up. He’s up and down that lift, and out in the yard every afternoon. You’d be surprised what he can do for himself.”
“No I wouldn’t,” Rodman says. “I’m surprised he hasn’t started playing golf.” His voice drops a few decibels, the vase of marguerites on the desk quits trembling. “Any signs of, you know, failing? Still seem to have all his buttons?”
“Oh, buttons! Don’t you worry about his buttons!” (Atta girl, Ada.)
“No problems like Grandpa’s.”
I can’t quite hear Ada’s reply. She knows, if Rodman doesn’t, how sounds carry up the bare stairs, and I suppose it embarrasses her to be passing on my sanity in my hearing. I know what she thought of Father. He was such a gloomy man, she has said more than once. Just sat and stared at nothing for hours at a time, and got up and walked off without a word right while you were talking to him. Lived in some world off by himself. Got stingy, too, as he got worse–saved little scraps of things in the icebox, would have lived on scraps if she hadn’t kept an eye on him. I am not like that, am I, Ada? Make a joke now and again, don’t I? Show my appreciation of what you do for me? Did Father ever have a drink with you at bedtime, or sit on the porch with you and Ed drinking beer and watching the ballgame?
“Well, good,” says Rodman’s voice. “Great. We want him to go on just like he is, as long as he can manage. Where is he, up in his study?”
“Where else?” Ada says. “He’s at that desk all hours. You go ahead on up, it’ll do him good to take his eyes out of a book for a minute. I’ll holler when lunch is ready.”
Hard heels on the thin Beluchi rug, then on wood. He must wear leather heels, maybe with taps. I wonder if he’d begin to doubt his existence if he couldn’t hear himself? He says from the bottom of the stairs, “How’s this lift work? Can I ride up without a ticket?”
“Just stand on the step and push the switch,” Ada says. “I ride it all the time, it’s a real leg saver.”
Murmur of the moving lift, the big laugh rising