Angle of Repose - Wallace Stegner [96]
“Or find another boardinghouse here, if Mrs. Elliott gets to be more than you can stand.”
“It would be a slap in the face, she’s been so kind, according to her lights.”
“Then all the planning we can do leaves us right where we are.”
She heard the noise of Elliott shaking down the kitchen range, and in the dripping stillness that followed, distant bird cries cut through the mutter of the sea. “But not where we were,” she said. “Because now there’s a future. We can look out into fog as thick as cream and be certain it will burn away. We can hear all those lost squawks and know that as soon as Creation says the right word, they’ll be birds.”
“And meantime we’ll all be dead of pleurisy from standing in front of the window. Let’s get back to bed.”
He engulfed her, but the baby was between them; his soft snore bubbled under her ear. “Don’t,” she whispered, “you’ll wake him.”
“Put him back in his crib.”
“What if Marian is awake?”
“Let her take care of him.”
“What if she knocks?”
“Let her knock. Lock the door.”
“Then she’d think . . .”
“Let her think.” His hand was lifting under the weight of her breast, his lips were on the top of her head.
“But it’s so light!”
“Then you won’t need a lamp to put him in his crib,” Oliver said. “After that you can shut your eyes.”
4
“Susan,” said Mrs. Elliott, “I must give you a piece of advice.”
She flapped the reins on the round haunches that worked in the shafts below. “Come on, Old Funeral Procession.” Her worn shoes–she had not changed them even for Christmas dinner and Christmas calls –were propped against the dash. The hands that held the lines were freckled like tortillas. Instead of a hat she wore a bandeau or clout around her head; from under it sprouted twists of rusty wire. Her face was brown leather. She looked to Susan, setting her teeth against a headache and desperate to be home, like something put together in the harness room, like one of her own impromptu dolls.
Even the people to whom they had just delivered generous Christmas baskets–a Chinese washerman, a truck farmer with a flock of children still sun-browned in this backward Christmas weather that felt more like April, and two fishermen’s families–had probably mocked her after she left. An odd, brusque, offensive sort of gift-giving. Here: this is for you. No grace in it, and no patience to wait for thanks, even ironic thanks. The town character. And she did not permit Susan to ask what the advice might be. She gave it before Susan could open her mouth.
“Let that man of yours drop this cement business. Let him find a job where he can build things. That’s what he wants.”
Susan took her time about replying. They were passing along the wall of the ruined mission, which she had drawn for Thomas Hudson with its climbing roses entangled among the thorny blades of a prickly pear, like the red rose ’round the briar in the old ballad. The gate opened and dressed-up children spilled into the street, bright beads from a broken string. Two nuns smiled from the archway. Old Funeral Procession pulled the dogcart past.
“You’re mistaken, Mrs. Elliott,” Susan said, as pleasantly as she could. “He’s very interested in cement. Why else would we be staking our future on it? It’s just that times are bad, and no one is willing to risk his money until he’s very sure. Anyway, it’s up to Oliver to decide if it has to be given up. I don’t make that sort of decision.”
“Oh yes you do,” said Mrs. Elliott.
“But Mrs. Elliott, really!”
“Of course you make the decisions. You tell him how your life is to go. If you didn’t, you’d be up in the Andes right now.”
“And you think we should be?”
Mrs. Elliott laughed like a crow. “You’d be together. You keep saying you want to be.”
“Not in a place that would be dangerous for Ollie.”
“All right,” said Mrs. Elliott. “So you made that decision. Let me tell you something. Any place is dangerous. Did you read about that boy and his father that were drowned at Pigeon Point the other day, after abalones at low tide? I’ve known children in this sleepy