Recapitulation by Wallace Stegner

Author:Wallace Stegner [Stegner, Wallace]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 978-1-101-91172-3
Publisher: Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group
Published: 2015-02-17T16:00:00+00:00

On the last words, wearing a rubber-lipped grin, he sticks his head around the jamb.

He has not yet made any sign that he knows Nola is there. Bruce watches him go in and bend over and kiss the woman in the bed—and that is surely showing off, that most certainly reflects his awareness of an audience. Except when he is showing off or clowning, he makes no such standard gestures of affection.

Bruce’s mother’s voice, fluty and high, is as false as his kiss. “I didn’t expect you so soon. How was the trip?” Then, before he can answer, “This is Nola Gordon, Bo. These nice children left their dance to come out and see me.”

Now finally he turns toward Nola. Bruce can’t see her, but he can see the jolt she gives him. He has probably visualized Bruce’s date as some flat-chested flapper with her hemline above her knees and her waistline around her hip bones, her hair cut like a boy’s, her jaws going on a wad of gum—the whole John Held picture. He has not expected someone like this.

At once something humorous and alert comes into his dark face, his lips remain quirked into a half smile after he has said hello. Nola’s low voice murmurs something. Bruce knows exactly how she is looking at his father, her eyes curious and interested, seeming to waver but actually steady, only the light in them changing. He can’t stay out of it. He pushes in, crowding the little room with one person too many.

At once he feels compared and judged. Beside his father’s size and weight and shirt-sleeve dishevelment he feels like the overdressed figure on a wedding cake. Though he is as tall as his father, he weighs fifty pounds less. He is not bearded, dirty, heavy-shouldered, smelling of physical exertion. The old helpless feeling of inferiority oppresses him. He is angry that he has brought Nola here and tried to mix the unmixable oil and water of his life.

In his mother’s watching eyes there is an expression he cannot read. Understanding? Sympathy? Pity? Warning? In a too casual voice she says, “You’re all greasy. Did you have a flat tire or something?”

It is a cue his father has been waiting for. A short laugh erupts from his throat, he spreads his hands and looks at them, he regards Nola with an indescribable waiting slyness in his face. Bruce reads him—oh, he reads him! He has a tale to unfold. He is going to shine.

“Nothing so serious as a flat tire,” he says. “I tipped over.”

Bruce’s mother sits straight up. “Tipped over!”

“Ass over teacup,” he says cheerfully—and is there a deliberateness in the profanity, a calculated nudge? Bruce wishes Nola had kept her coolie coat on. Her shoulders are too naked for this room and this company. His father rolls his hands as if winding yarn. “Down the bank, clear over, and up on her wheels in the ditch.”

“You could have been killed!”

“Damn right I could have.”

“Are you all right? You didn’t get hurt at all?”

“Nary a scratch.

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