Angle of Repose

Susan watches her children leave on the buggy to watch the fireworks and hears the water hose run out of water. Alone, she lies in the hammock and watches the stars appear. The July 4th display begins; the idea of the celebrations in the local town makes her skin crawl. She is beset by the feeling that the family “have bled [their] lives away in this desert” (508). Frank arrives at the house and they talk. They discuss the lawyer who scammed Oliver; Frank believes he “ought to be lynched” (511).

Quietly, Frank admits that he had hoped to visit Susan when she was alone. They talk more, the romantic tension evident. Frank asks Susan to leave with him. Frank touches Susan, forcing Lyman to think about how his own wife must have been seduced. He admits that he can only guess at the “intimate circumstances” (517) of his grandmother’s life and that he made up the scene “to fit other facts” (517). He cannot imagine or believe that Susan and Frank had sex, but he can understand her potential temptation. Frank leaves. Susan wanders through her home and then lies in bed and listens to her children return home. Oliver paces outside on the veranda and then quietly enters and lies beside her. In whispers, they talk. Frank left behind his gloves, Oliver notices, and Susan says that they had talked a little. Oliver kisses Susan, and “her cheek burned as if he had kissed her with sulphuric on his lips” (521).

Lyman cannot shake the sensation of “something about to come to an end” (522). Recent research has uncovered “some history that I want not to have happened” (522). Additionally, Shelly may be leaving soon, having decided to return to her husband. A hippie manifesto has arrived in Lyman’s mail and he describes its content; the movement has leased 20 acres and intends to set up a commune. Shelly confesses that she had a hand in making it. Lyman is cynical about the project; Shelly compares the ambitious commune to Oliver’s irrigation project. Lyman lists his many criticisms. They talk about Shelly’s husband; she has been to visit the commune and seems hopeful. She draws more comparisons between this ambitious project and that of Lyman’s grandparents. Lyman offers her an alternative: Stay and help him finish. However, she has already made up her mind. Shelly hugs and kisses Lyman. Shelly returns to work, leaving Lyman feeling “bleak, bleak, bleak” (534).

Lyman reaches a difficult part in his project. He neither wants this period to happen nor has the material evidence to use: “[A]ll I know is the what, and not all of that; the how and the why are all speculation” (535). He has not even shown his research to Shelly, but he knows that he must continue. He begins to read. Susan traveled East with Ollie and Betsy in July 1890. She deposits Ollie at his school a month early, and he will not return home for 10 years, spending summers with the kindly headmaster who helps him achieve an education. The train ride was nightmarish and tense. After depositing Ollie at school, Susan returns to Milton where Bessie is looking after Betsy. Susan intends to take rooms in New York but she does not. She writes an apology to Augusta and says that she is “going back” (540). She begins writing again to Augusta, but none of the letters detail the tragedy that occurred. Susan describes the “death throes of the canal company” (541) and helps Nellie run a small school. There are scant references to Oliver, however; he sends regular money orders from different states. After initial promise, the last of these mentions is dourer: She hopes to revive the farm, but her mind dwells on death and those she has lost.

Lyman returns to the raw facts: Agnes drowned in the canal in July 1890. Frank kills himself a short time later. Though the newspaper does not make the connection between the events, other people (and Lyman) can and do. Lyman speculates how difficult it must have been for Frank and Susan; with Oliver suspicious, there was no way they could meet to discuss their troubles. Perhaps, Lyman reasons, Susan took Agnes on a walk, using the child as an excuse to visit Frank by the canal. Ollie found his sister’s body. Frank, Lyman speculates, was “blaming himself” (546) when he shot himself in the head four days later. This “would have confirmed everything that Oliver Ward thought he knew” (546) about Frank and Susan.

Lyman also remembers a time when he was with his grandfather in the rose garden, during one of Aunt Betsy’s visits. She remembers the rose garden at the ranch; Oliver had “pulled it up […] one after the other” (548), and she never understood why. Oliver leaves without a word. Lyman imagines Oliver destroying the rose garden while Susan and Betsy watch. Susan shushes her bewildered child as Oliver mounts his horse and rides away. Shortly after was when Susan fled eastward: “[S]he thought that her marriage, her hope, and her exile had all ended together” (550), but she was back in less than a month, “trying to hold things together” (550). Susan “never blamed” (550) Oliver for abandoning her. Though Lyman admires his grandfather, he has trouble justifying Oliver’s “bleak and wordless break” (550), after which he disappeared. Lyman believes that Oliver “never got over being ashamed, and never found the words to say so” (550).

Lyman has a dream that he is sitting with Al, Shelly, Ada, and Ed when Ellen arrives at the house. Lyman knows of Ada’s dim opinion of Ellen; Ed is more polite than Ada and stands to greet Ellen. Lyman admits that he “gloried in the solidarity with which my gang met her—they were stony as cliffs” (554). Ellen makes small talk while the others begin to slink out, then Ellen asks for a tour of the house. Lyman reluctantly obliges. He leads her outside to the place where he exercises; heaving himself onto crutches, he begins doing furious laps. He stops short of his target and tries to sit back in the chair. The chair slips and Ellen catches Lyman. He thanks her, “raging with humiliation” (561).

Lyman leads Ellen to the rose bushes, giving a potted history of how his grandfather planted and tended to them. At the end of the row is a flower named after Agnes, cultivating the perfect hybrid after a long search. Lyman and Ellen go inside, and he is almost eager to show her the rest of the house. He shows Ellen a portrait of Susan, explaining that Susan was likely never happy after the age of 37, after Agnes’ death, but lived to be 91. Lyman’s exhilaration passes; he phones Ada’s home. Shelly answers and says that Ada has been taken to the hospital after “some sort of seizure” (567). When Lyman tells Ellen, her face seems delighted to have been proven right about Ada’s inability to care for Lyman. Ellen offers to make dinner and get Lyman a whiskey, even if he is not drinking at the moment.

Lyman allows her but regrets it. Ellen returns with a tray of food and asks why Susan was unhappy. Lyman explains: “[S]he considered that she’d been unfaithful to my grandfather, in thought or act or both” (569); she blamed herself for Agnes’ death and Frank’s suicide, and she had “lost the trust of her husband and son” (569). After 1890, Susan and Oliver were apart for two years before Conrad Prager asked Oliver to work on the Zodiac mine and convinced Oliver to invite Susan. They “lived happily-unhappily ever after” (570); the rest of the story does not interest Lyman because “it’s all over by 1890” (570). Ellen moves closer to Lyman. As she talks about how Oliver was a “warm and decent man” (572) for taking Susan back, Lyman seethes with rage. Lyman knocks over a glass of milk and angrily explains his grandparents to Ellen: “[S]he broke something she couldn’t mend” (572); he begins to weep and leaves the room.

Sitting in the bathroom, he sees himself in the mirror. He hears Shelly’s voice through the door. He hears Ellen agreeing to handle his bath, but Shelly says that she should handle it. The debate continues until the bathroom door bursts open and Shelly steps in, trapping Lyman. There is no escape. Shelly runs the hot water, the door locked with Ellen outside. There is nothing Lyman can do to stop Shelly undressing him. He begins to urinate into his tube; Shelly takes “one disgusted look” (575) and leaves. Ellen enters and bends down in front of him. Lyman wakes from his dream, his pajamas soaked in sweat. He lies for a while, “feeling pretty bleak—old, washed-up, helpless, and alone” (576). He records his dream onto a tape and thinks about the meaning of the phrase “angle of repose.” Lyman knows that—though Ellen was not in the house—it is inevitable that she will be at some point soon. He wonders whether he is “man enough to be a bigger man than [his] grandfather” (578).