Angle of Repose - Wallace Stegner [29]
“She said you might need some help, the girl you had didn’t work out.”
“She neither worked out nor worked. Do you type?”
“Not very fast, but I’m pretty accurate.”
“Ever transcribed tapes?”
“No. I suppose I could learn.”
“Are you discreet?”
“What?”
“Are you discreet?”
A little smile, out of focus at the edge of my vision. “I think so.”
“Because I’m not,” I said. “I tell myself I’m writing a book about my grandmother, and I am, too, but I sit up there sometimes and let my mouth go into that tape recorder and it gets all mixed up with Grandmother’s biography. I’m always saying things that would offend my relatives. Sometimes I might even say things that would offend yours. Plus a lot of stuff that would embarrass me if I played it back.”
“Sounds great,” she said, and laughed, a real ho ho ho. If I’d heard it through a wall I would have sworn it was a man’s laugh.
“Great is exactly what it isn‘t,” I said. “When I said ’discreet’ I meant discreet like a machine, something with fingers and no mind.”
The little smile, while she clawed the hair back over one shoulder.
“A good typist is supposed to type without reading,” she said. “I’m not a good typist, but I’m not a gossip either.”
“Good.” I wasn’t very pleased with her, if the truth should be told—and I had better make sure she doesn’t get this tape to transcribe. That little smile was more knowing than I had first thought her. But who else would I get? I said, “Have you got a file clerk’s memory? Mainly what I want is somebody to learn the files and find me things when I need them. I have a little trouble working from the chair.”
“Is there a lot of stuff?”
“Quite a lot.”
“I’d need a little time to learn it.”
“Of course. You can learn it while you put it in order.”
I was looking past her, down over the apple trees into the tops of the pines, to where the old mine dump drops off into the valley, but I could see her studying me sidelong. Let her study—after all, she was going to have to get used to looking at me. Finally she said, “Didn’t I see you walking up and down just now?”
“I guess you did. I was walking up and down.”
“It’s none of my business, but should you be?”
“What do you mean?”
“Shouldn’t somebody be with you?”
“Somebody’s with me most of the time,” I said. “Now and then I like to do a little something by myself.”
She heard the change in my tone, because hers changed too. As if I had rebuked her, and she had to defend herself, she said, “Mom thinks you try to do too much by yourself.”
I said, “I depend on your mother as helplessly as if I were six months old. But even baby tries to crawl a little on his own.”
“I’m sorry,” she said. “She didn’t mean it as a criticism. She thinks you’re just way out. She admires you more than anybody.”
“Tell her it’s mutual,” I said, past her. But I was surprised. Old Ada, the strong-as-a-horse family retainer? It was friendship as much as pay or inherited obligation that brought her to my house? It struck me that I had been spending too much embarrassed effort being truly a man of stone while she performed her grunting and clucking services. I was not her troublesome doll, then, her grotesque duty. I remembered her waddling to the cupboard for the bottle when I was eased into bed. Friendship, then.
“Mom’s all right,” Shelly said. “She wouldn’t criticize.”
“I know she wouldn’t. She’s great.”
“But she’d have a lot of quiet worms if she knew you were walking around by yourself.”
“Then this is your chance to practice being discreet.”
Ho ho ho, a department store Santa Claus. “Does that mean I’m hired?”
There is a certain boldness about her; she strikes me as refusing to be put in any subordinate position. She gives me no odds for my age, my experience, my possible distinction, my near-helplessness. If I had been interviewing twelve girls for this job the other day, she probably wouldn’t have got it, I’d have tried to find someone who disappears easier. But having no choice, I