Angle of Repose - Wallace Stegner [237]
I was always one whose arm twisted easily. I have always felt better and talked better when I was a little high. My grandfather in me? Why not? What begins as safety-valve binges and gestures toward social ease ends as habit. I have no reason to be surprised if I have by now picked up a physiological craving that has nothing to do with pain, boredom, reticence, tension, lack of friends, or anything else.
But it’s too risky. If I let myself go that way I give them a handle, I lose it all. Suppose I do have pain? I can put up with it, or go back to cortisone; and if cortisone blows me up with water retention and gives me insomnia, why then I have taken what I want and paid for it. I’d rather be sleepless, and even more a Gorgon than I am, than turn into a helpless old stewbum that Rodman can handle as he pleases.
So for the sake of my independence, here goes my felicity. As of this minute I’m on the wagon.
What about the half-emptied glass? Dump it in the sink? Why? My backbone is rigid enough, I don’t have to stiffen it with symbolic gestures. Now then. One smooth brown swallow sluiced around in the mouth, cool among the teeth, and put it down. That’s the end of it.
Now do I feel better? Think. Try to be exact.
No, I don’t feel better. I feel aggrieved, picked-on, and pursued. I want to know why a bunged-up old scholar can’t have his drink in peace. I want to know why I must be wary of the uncertain future. What future? Not Lyman Ward’s. He has converted back to kerosene and is living his grandparents’ life. His own future ought not bother him or anyone else. His grandfather’s horse pistol three feet from his forehead tells him that there is always a solution if things get unbearable. The fact that he isn’t tempted seems to prove that they aren’t unbearable yet. But they are going to be a lot less pleasant without Old Grand-Dad.
So right on, as the activists say. Right on, Lyman. Fifty whole years of Grandmother’s life to go. Make them last.
Of course it’s impossible. I’ll never finish. Autumn is already nearly here, Shelly has had about all the country quiet her physiology can stand, and will be leaving soon. Ada has been having trouble with her breathing. She smokes too much, there is always a cigarette dribbling ashes down her front and into her dishwater and onto her ironing, and I hear her wheeze like an old dog when she makes my bed. Emphysema, I shouldn’t be surprised, her breathing apparatus gone as slack as an old garter. Hyperventilation, pains in her chest and left arm, maybe heart involved too. Good Christ, what would I do if she collapsed?
The very thought of it brings an element of desperation into my delusions of independence. I will not kid myself that this summer of quiet routine and country air have left me much better off than when I came. I have had six aspirins and a bourbon since I got up, and still I ache.
What the hell, my right is in retreat, my center is giving way, my left is crumbling, I have just sent my bottled support to the rear. I shall attack. I shall go on writing the personal history of my grandmother, following Bancroft’s advice to historians: present your subject in his own terms, judge him in yours.
Actually, I’d just as soon leave out the judgment entirely. I don’t feel at ease judging people. And I’d just as soon let her present herself: her letters from the Mesa are among the longest and fullest she wrote during that long half century of correspondence.
3
The Mesa
August 16, 1889
Darling Augusta–
We have slept five nights in our house in the sagebrush. Like everything here, it is large and raw. It is for the future, it sacrifices the present for what is to come. In time it may be charming, but now it seems hopeless. We need everything–awnings, more chairs,