Angle of Repose - Wallace Stegner [65]
May I tell you of a queer thing that happened in San Francisco? I went to church with Mr. Prager on Thanksgiving morning–Oliver had an appointment with some men in town. Mrs. P. did not feel well enough to go. It was a mild, soft morning, the hill was very steep, the air very relaxing, like our first mild weather in spring, when the damp sea winds blow. We sat through the first part of the service but the organ made me feel strangely. Its throbbing seemed to stifle me and for the first time that pulse within me woke and throbbed so strongly it took away my breath. Mr. Prager sat on one side of me and Mr. Ashburner on the other. I thought I should faint and leaned against the seat. Everything grew dark and I did not know anything for a minute–I don’t know how long, but I came to myself with great drops of perspiration on my lips and forehead. Mr. Ashburner was looking at me very closely.
Both Mr. Prager and Mr. Ashburner were delicate enough not to allude to it, but Mr. Hall joined us on our way home and cheerfully exclaimed, “Weren’t you ill in church? You looked as if you were going to faint. Didn’t you notice it, Prager?” Mr. P. said, “I thought she looked a little pale, but the church was very close,” and changed the subject.
It seems absurd to talk so much about an experience common to all women–but I think it one of the strangest feelings–that double pulse, that life within a life. . . .
4
Now ensued a blissful time for my grandmother. Many things contributed to it, not the least of which was that double pulse. She floated listening on the placid amniotic tides. But there were other things too.
The rainy season came on and restored her to time and change. Her days had variety and excitement, the sun that had been inescapable for months was now out of sight for sometimes a week on end, wild gusts of rain beat against her house and filled her veranda with twigs and leaves, the mountain was lost and revealed and lost again in stormy roils of cloud, the hills emerged under the slashes of reasserted sun a magical fresh green. The long dry hot winter, as Oliver said, was over. The dust was laid in the trails, the smells of ripe summer garbage that had once drifted across them from the camps were replaced by clean woodsmoke. In the woods and along the trail sides marvels appeared, unexpected flowers, maidenhair. The smells of the woods were no longer dusty and aromatic, but as damp and rich as those of the Long Pond woods at home.
When it stormed, her house was the sanctuary she thought a house should be. On those days Oliver could not see to work in his dark little office past four thirty. She sat now, not on the veranda exposed to the tumble of mountains, but inside by the fire in her little redwood parlor, waiting in dreamy security for the click of the gate latch and the sound of boots on the porch. Sometimes they had a whole hour before dinner to be idle in, read Scribner’s or Turgenev or Daniel Deronda aloud, fix things, talk.
In January Augusta had her child without trouble, and thereafter her letters appear to have lost their despondency as the living child began to replace the dead one. Freed from anxiety about her friend, Susan was more open to knowing her husband. She discovered in him unexpected capacities. He could make or fix anything from the broken handle of a carving knife to the sinking props under the veranda. Without their discussing reasons, he built a bed, a bench, and a bureau for the spare room, and he began on a cradle that would swing from the porch ceiling. From Mexican Camp he brought home coyote and wildcat skins, and tanned them and sewed them together into a rug for beside their bed. The baby