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Authors: Wallace Stegner
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out her arms and he dropped the cabbage and crept into them. Hugging each other in the sanctuary kitchen, they were both about half comforted.
5
Mason came up from a long way down to find that his assiduous waitress was standing by his table, a healthy-looking blonde girl who smiled so brilliantly that he felt like shading his eyes. “Anything else? Dessert? Coffee?”
“Just coffee, please. And the check, if you will.”
She went away. Opposite his window the golden angel tiptoed his floodlighted spire. In the pale sky beyond, the colors of sunset were almost gone. Venus hung over the bony silhouette of Antelope Island.
An hour ago he had wondered why coming back here revived only the trivial and sentimental. Now he sat like someone whose car had just crashed, and who was not quite sure he could climb out. That night in November 1922, recovered from and forgotten, needed only to be remembered and it was as virulent as it had ever been. His childhood had been a disease that had produced no antibodies. Forget for a minute to be humorous or ironic about it, and it could flare up like a chronic sinus.
Which was unjust—his father was not always like that. It was just as possible to remember times when he had filled his son with admiration and pride. Was he an incurable grudge-holder?Was he going to pursue the poor devil with his hatred as if he had never survived adolescence? Was he never going to be reconciled to his mother’s unhappy submissive life? If he had known that this would be the net result of his returning, he would not have returned.
Since 1922 he had been packed and stored with later experiences, emotions, acquaintances, affections, languages, bodies of learning, cautions and wisdoms. He was thirty years older than his mother had been on that evening of the
castra
and the cabbage. Yet that single miserable evening, with its hatred of him, its loyalty to her, and its self-pity for himself all intact, hung in his head as unalterable as a room that disappears when a switch is touched, and appears again the moment the switch is turned back on. He hadn’t turned on the light in that room for years, but there it still was, implacable.
The waitress brought the coffee and poured it from its metal pot with gestures that were graceful and self-conscious. Mason picked up the check from its tray, added a twenty per cent tip, signed it, and turned it over again. At once respectful and pert, the girl stood there. “Enjoy your dinner?”
“Very much.”
“I saw you looking at our sunset.”
Did she think she ought to trade some cheery chat for the good tip? Had she been trained to give diners the friendly-Mormon-girl treatment? Did she think maybe he might turn out to be Stanley Kubrick?
“Spectacular,” he said.
“Salt Lake’s supposed to have the best sunsets in the world.”
The old local brag. “I know,” he said. “I used to live here.”
The girl made a comic face. “Nice try, Alice,” she said. “When?”
“When?”
“When did you live here?”
“I left in 1932.”
“Oh, wow. I bet it’s changed.”
“Some ways. Not the sunsets.”
He watched her through the steam of the raised coffee cup, thinking that some things changed hardly at all. This was a typehe had known by the dozen, just such a girl as he might have met at the kitchen entrance after her evening’s work, and taken out to the Green Dragon or the Old Mill to dance till the band folded. Just the sort of peppy date who would have necked happily in the car, parked in front of her house, and on the porch before going in, but would have briskly made him keep his hands to himself. Just the sort of date from whose enthusiastic but restricted kisses he had so often gone home (would anyone now believe it?) satisfied and pleased with himself.
“But you weren’t born in Salt Lake,” he suggested.
“What makes you think that?”
“Evidence.”
This was her kind of game. With her hip against the table edge she shot a look
5
Mason came up from a long way down to find that his assiduous waitress was standing by his table, a healthy-looking blonde girl who smiled so brilliantly that he felt like shading his eyes. “Anything else? Dessert? Coffee?”
“Just coffee, please. And the check, if you will.”
She went away. Opposite his window the golden angel tiptoed his floodlighted spire. In the pale sky beyond, the colors of sunset were almost gone. Venus hung over the bony silhouette of Antelope Island.
An hour ago he had wondered why coming back here revived only the trivial and sentimental. Now he sat like someone whose car had just crashed, and who was not quite sure he could climb out. That night in November 1922, recovered from and forgotten, needed only to be remembered and it was as virulent as it had ever been. His childhood had been a disease that had produced no antibodies. Forget for a minute to be humorous or ironic about it, and it could flare up like a chronic sinus.
Which was unjust—his father was not always like that. It was just as possible to remember times when he had filled his son with admiration and pride. Was he an incurable grudge-holder?Was he going to pursue the poor devil with his hatred as if he had never survived adolescence? Was he never going to be reconciled to his mother’s unhappy submissive life? If he had known that this would be the net result of his returning, he would not have returned.
Since 1922 he had been packed and stored with later experiences, emotions, acquaintances, affections, languages, bodies of learning, cautions and wisdoms. He was thirty years older than his mother had been on that evening of the
castra
and the cabbage. Yet that single miserable evening, with its hatred of him, its loyalty to her, and its self-pity for himself all intact, hung in his head as unalterable as a room that disappears when a switch is touched, and appears again the moment the switch is turned back on. He hadn’t turned on the light in that room for years, but there it still was, implacable.
The waitress brought the coffee and poured it from its metal pot with gestures that were graceful and self-conscious. Mason picked up the check from its tray, added a twenty per cent tip, signed it, and turned it over again. At once respectful and pert, the girl stood there. “Enjoy your dinner?”
“Very much.”
“I saw you looking at our sunset.”
Did she think she ought to trade some cheery chat for the good tip? Had she been trained to give diners the friendly-Mormon-girl treatment? Did she think maybe he might turn out to be Stanley Kubrick?
“Spectacular,” he said.
“Salt Lake’s supposed to have the best sunsets in the world.”
The old local brag. “I know,” he said. “I used to live here.”
The girl made a comic face. “Nice try, Alice,” she said. “When?”
“When?”
“When did you live here?”
“I left in 1932.”
“Oh, wow. I bet it’s changed.”
“Some ways. Not the sunsets.”
He watched her through the steam of the raised coffee cup, thinking that some things changed hardly at all. This was a typehe had known by the dozen, just such a girl as he might have met at the kitchen entrance after her evening’s work, and taken out to the Green Dragon or the Old Mill to dance till the band folded. Just the sort of peppy date who would have necked happily in the car, parked in front of her house, and on the porch before going in, but would have briskly made him keep his hands to himself. Just the sort of date from whose enthusiastic but restricted kisses he had so often gone home (would anyone now believe it?) satisfied and pleased with himself.
“But you weren’t born in Salt Lake,” he suggested.
“What makes you think that?”
“Evidence.”
This was her kind of game. With her hip against the table edge she shot a look
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