The typewriter seemed to be the perfect solution. It's a portable, and, enclosed in its case, makes a solid seat. I put it on the chair in the kitchen, sat on top of it, and found that I could see the highway. Whenever I saw headlights of a car coming slowly I told Grant, and he put down his paper to go out after it. During the average early evening--the part that was my shift--there weren't, usually, more than two or three coming slowly enough to rate any attention, so Grant's reading or resting wasn't much disturbed. Of the two or three, he usually managed to get one, so I couldn't use the excuse that it didn't pay, to resign from my boring job.
Even though I was more comfortable, now that I could sit down, I was still bored. I decided to try to read. The impracticality of such frivolity became apparent at once. If I let the book rest on my lap, I had to look downward at it in order to read it. And if I looked downward, I couldn't see the flash of headlights on the highway. The only way I could keep watch on the highway as I read was to hold the book up in front of me, so high that the light of headlights would be visible beneath it, or, for variety, a little lower, so that the headlights would appear above it.
My arms began to ache before I had done that very long. Finally I put my feet on the typewriter case and rested the book on my knees. Except for the fact that I had no backrest, since the typewriter case came most of the way up the back of the chair, I was quite comfortable in this position. The only flaw in the arrangement was that every few seconds I'd catch a glimpse of lights down the highway, and I'd have to stop reading and gauge the speed of the car.
If it was a fast one, I could return to my reading; if it was a slow one, I yelled, "Eep!" at Grant, and he'd go into action. At first I had said to him, when I saw a slow car, "Better go outside, dear. Here comes one that looks like it might stop."--or, "Hurry out there! Here comes a slow one!" But I reasoned that all that was a tremendous waste of energy. After all, he knew perfectly well I wasn't sitting in front of the kitchen window in such an uncomfortable position because I thought it would improve my complexion. He knew why I was sitting there, and there was no need for me to launch into detailed explanations whenever I saw a slow car. So I saved time and energy by simply remarking "Eep"; and he always knew exactly what I meant.
Cars came dribbling along the highway every few seconds, and although the actual prospects were few, the interruptions to my reading were many. I seldom was able to finish two consecutive sentences before the twinkle of headlights dragged me away from the printed words.
Sometimes I thought it might be easier just to give up the idea of reading.
It was difficult, too, to keep up with my writing. If I tried to write in our own cabin, the proximity of Grant and the children, and their noise, made it impossible for me to concentrate. And Grant didn't like having me go to cabin 15 for a few hours at a time, since that left him with a lot to handle. For a time I kept my writing to a minimum, neglecting every phase of it except a monthly feature I was doing regularly for a women's digest magazine. I grew very dissatisfied with the unproductiveness of my daily routine, though, and told Grant I must start writing again. He agreed to take over the entire responsibility of the place and the children during the baby's afternoon nap if I'd be gone only an hour; at any time after an hour, the baby might wake up and it was difficult for him to manage her and wait on customers at the same time.
The children were both in bed by seven-thirty every night, and each night at seven-thirty-five I went back to cabin 15, with my writing paraphernalia and my watch and a match to light the heater, to stay until nine, when I'd go back to look out the kitchen window for slow cars. (On the nights when we didn't have many vacancies left at that time, and it looked as though number 15 might be rented soon, I went into our kitchen to write, after first extracting a solemn promise--a new one each night--from Grant that he would keep out.)
Sometimes after I'd get across the driveways and the grass islands into number 15, it would start to rain. There was something wonderful about that, and yet it gave me a lost feeling too, knowing that my family was snug in a cabin across the chasm of downpour, while I was here alone. When it rained I usually spent as much time watching it as I did writing. I opened the door to a blast of cold air, and the sight of a lead-colored, darkening sky. Or I looked through the slats of the Venetian blind. I could see the sparkle-spattered highway shimmering like a smooth sheet of glass, glittering with the reflection of lights from the service stations, and rippled by the gusts of cold wind that danced continually across it. There were pools of black water in the gravel of our driveways, and the Chinese elms waved their wet, lacy branches mournfully. The neon signs glowed through the rain, and water trickled off the curbs of the islands of grass and the island of geraniums beneath our sign. Thunder shook all of San Gorgonio Pass intermittently, and lightning flashed the trees to a wet, brilliant green. The fury of it, and my own solitude, filled me with a kind of exultation.
Rainy weather never interfered much with David's school. We always drove him to the school, which was about a mile away, and got him after school. I usually drove him to school in the morning with Donna sitting primly in the back seat; by afternoon Grant was awake, and he picked him up after school.