Three Women at the Water's Edge (20 page)

Daisy could not decide how she felt about her mother. One afternoon in a dress shop in Gastown, Margaret pulled a bright-blue flowing cotton dress off the rack, and said, “Here, darling, this will look lovely on you!” Daisy stood in front of the mirror in the tiny dressing room and stared at herself, delighted. She looked slim and young and pretty. She felt rejuvenated. And then she loved her mother. But at other times she felt she hated her mother: Margaret seemed so relentless. She made Daisy walk when Daisy would have taken a cab; she suggested that Daisy have fruit instead of pie for dessert. And she would not let Daisy complain. She did listen calmly enough as they sat on lounge chairs on the ferry staring out at the blue water, the green and white mountains, while Daisy described her own wonderful house in detail. But when Daisy explained why she wanted to keep it, and how much money she would need in order to do so, Margaret only replied, “Oh, Daisy, it’s not necessary for you to have such a large house. Don’t be so gloomy, look on the bright side. A smaller and newer house will be much easier to clean and keep in repair.” And that was all she would say on the subject. So it seemed there was to be no help on that score. The last day Daisy spent with her mother, they took a long walk along the sea wall, and part of the time Daisy was charmed by Margaret, and responded happily when Margaret pointed out a piece of driftwood shaped like a seahorse or the way the blues of the ocean changed in intensity with the depth. But much of the time she was thinking: all this is very well and good, but
my
life is not here, and winter is coming, and what am I going to do?

The night before she left for home, Daisy went out to dinner with Margaret and her friend Miriam, Miriam’s husband, Gordon, and Margaret’s lover, Anthony. Daisy liked Anthony in spite of the fact that he called himself Anthony, which she felt was pretentious. He was a handsome British man in his fifties, very refined, almost courtly—well, Daisy decided, he could hardly be called Tony. He told wonderful stories and asked her questions in such a way that she found herself telling wonderful stories. Yes, she liked him, although sometimes she found it hard to see Anthony hold her mother’s hand. Before dinner, the group had drinks at Miriam and Gordon’s house, and at first Daisy had enjoyed it all—they were so witty and quick, they discussed art films and galleries and concerts and literary reviews and gossip about people Daisy hadn’t heard of. They seemed so carefree, so happy. They did not need ever to worry about diapers or childhood diseases or missing daddies, and it helped Daisy to know that such a world did exist. But toward the middle of the evening, when they were gathering into various cars to go to the restaurant, Daisy grew quiet, and found the talk about her losing its brilliance. Tomorrow, she thought, she would be flying home, leaving this land of Oz and these carefree people. She would have to take care of the children by herself, have a baby, sell a house, raise three children alone—and suddenly the entire week she had spent with her mother seemed like an absurdly imperfect gift. It was as if she were a peasant who had just received a diamond bracelet from the queen, when what she wanted and needed was one simple loaf of bread.

They were having dinner at the restaurant on top of Grouse Mountain, and to get to it they had to ride up the mountain in a gleaming red cable car. Margaret and the others exclaimed over the fantastic view, but the thought that crowded Daisy’s mind was that just one thin wire was all that kept the cable car from plunging down the mountain, making Danny and Jenny into motherless children. Daisy envied the people around her; it would be years before her own children were grown and away, years before she would be able to see the beauty in life before the danger.

At last the cable car lurched to a stop and everyone stepped off. They went quickly from the cold night into the warm restaurant and were shown to a table which looked out over Vancouver; it was an awesome sight. The lights of the city and the boats and ships moving in the harbor glittered and shone. The others, thinking they were doing Daisy a kindness, gave her a seat next to the window so that she could have the best view, but suddenly she found herself terrified. She wanted to turn to someone and say, “I’m afraid. This window, this wood, does not provide me enough protection. Safeguards as sturdy as this wall have broken before in my life. I’m terrified that I will fall. Look at me, I’m sitting here alone, hanging out over a dark void.”

But Miriam and Gordon and Margaret and Anthony were leaning away from her, discussing the menu and the wine list. They were laughing. They would be puzzled or even irritated by her fear—and probably they could not help her anyway. Daisy studied her mother, who had just placed her hand on Anthony’s wrist with casual and graceful possessive
ness. Her mother. Margaret. After all, Daisy thought, she was glad she had spent the week with this new woman, her mother; although she realized that it would be a long time before she fully appreciated just what it was she had lost, and what she had gained.

A little before midnight two days after Thanksgiving, Daisy and Dale stood in front of the enormous gilt mirror that hung in Daisy’s bedroom. They were each holding a cup of hot chocolate, and they were naked, and they were laughing their heads off. They really were a funny sight. These two sisters, who had grown up taking baths together, snuggling in bed together, each as carelessly used to the sight of the other’s body as to her own, these two sisters who had been skinny together, all knees and knobby elbows and smooth cleft pubic flesh protruding like two sections of fruit, all the juice and seeds then an uninteresting secret inside, these two sisters had so very much changed. They had seen some of the changes over their adolescent years, when first Daisy and then Dale began to curve and bulge and sprout hair, but then of course they grew more modest, and first Daisy and then Dale hid in bathrooms and dressed with the bedroom door closed, and if neither girl startled or turned her back when the other entered to find her slipping into a bra, still they stopped having casual glimpses of the other’s completely bare figure. But now, warm from the hot chocolate and the pleasure of their rediscovered intimacy, they felt that that was too bad; for it was important, the knowledge of the other’s total body; it was so very
fine
. To know comfortably, easily, the back and front, the sides, the top and bottom of your sister, all that smooth pretty flesh, the skin, the muscles, the brace of bones, the wings of back; you had to know it all, around and around with innocence and pleasure, like knowing a ride on a merry-go-round, like knowing the post of your bed.

So much is lost with growing up. The intimate holding of a husband or wife is certainly a glorious thing, but how sad that that is
all:
the one other person, husband or wife, the only grown person one gets to see in complete naked loveliness for the rest of your life. What a burden that puts on a marriage. What a shame people couldn’t go around naked together—not for sexual and orgasmic purposes, but simply for the pleasure of seeing skin—which has more subtle varieties of color and light than the sky—and rounded spheres or balls or cones of flesh which push outward steadily, resiliently, like the spirit of life itself. There are no words, not enough words, to describe the marvelously diverse forms that different sections of the body will take.

One could say that Daisy’s belly was a ball, while Dale’s was a flat plane; but the words are dead and insufficient, do not convey the suppleness, the silky rounded slide of Dale’s belly, nor the opalescent sheen of Daisy’s taut skin over a belly that was not a ball at all, that moved and bulged and rippled with the baby’s slightest stir. People really ought to go naked more often with each other, simply for the joy of it, simply for the joy, the pleasure—and even the amusement, because something like Daisy’s buttocks was really as witty and delightful as the best New Yorker cartoon. And it is all so interesting, the sags and lumps and stretches of flesh, the turnings more delicate and miraculous than the best Louis XV table leg, oh, you could look at it forever, another person’s body, and all dimensions are satisfied. People should go naked in front of one another often, really they should.

Or so Dale and Daisy thought. There they were, quite happy, standing in front of the mirror, arms around each other, laughing. There was Dale, there was Daisy. They were almost of the same height: Dale was five seven, and Daisy was five six, but because Dale’s arms and legs were so slim while Daisy’s were plump and ample, and because Daisy had her enormous belly bulging out in all directions, Daisy looked much shorter, squatter, wider—and wider she certainly was. They turned and stood back to back as they had been asked to do so often as children in order to let their parents measure their heights; but the sight of themselves in the mirror, naked, shoulder to shoulder, buttock to buttock, made them laugh so hard they couldn’t stand still. Daisy looked as though she had little kittens snuggled inside her skin, hiding in her buttocks, all curled up at the top of her thighs, at the bottom of her bottom, making fat weighty wobbly bulges that pushed out from within her skin. Except for her large breasts, Dale looked skinny. She really wasn’t, it was just the contrast with fat Daisy. “You could be a centerfold in
Playboy,
” Daisy said, scrutinizing Dale carefully.

“Oh, wouldn’t Daddy
die,
” Dale said, horrified and delighted at the thought, and they both laughed even more, imagining the sight of their father in his leather recliner, idly flipping through
Playboy
—which he did not take, which some kind person would have thought to send him—to see his youngest daughter, his darling girl, naked and glossy to the public eye. But Dale did have that sort of figure, and it wasn’t her fault, and as they stood in front of the mirror she declared that even though perhaps her body was more aesthetically pleasing, Daisy’s body was far more
interesting
. There was so much more there to consider, and while one might want to stroke Dale, one wanted to squeeze and bite Daisy; her body had the fat and innocent seductiveness of a child’s. But she would never get a new husband this way, they both agreed on that, no, she would never get a new husband. She could never wear a bikini—she could never wear a swimming suit, unless it would be one of those one-piece black things with a ruffled skirt on it—and the thought of Daisy who once had lived in bikinis going around in a matronly suit made them cackle till tears came to their eyes.

“Where’s your birthmark?” Dale shouted all of a sudden. “My God, your birthmark, what have you done?” She was referring to a small leaf-shaped spot of skin that had been darker than the rest of Daisy’s body, that had always been there, just below Daisy’s belly button, and which had kept Daisy frantic for a few months, afraid to wear a bikini, afraid that people would laugh. But now it was totally gone. Instead there was a brown line from Daisy’s protruding belly button to the top of her curly pubic hair, and blue veins showing beneath the pale skin, but no birthmark.

“I’ve lost it,” Daisy said. “It got lighter and lighter with each pregnancy, and now it’s just gone away. I’d forgotten all about it.”

“But how can you lose a birthmark?” Dale asked stupidly.

“They fade, they fade,” Daisy said, not interested in the question, and she dismissed the topic by a wave of her hand which sent her hot chocolate sloshing over the rim of her cup.

They were happy. They shouldn’t have been, neither one had very much to be happy about, but it was precisely that which made their happiness so keen. Dale had flown back to Liberty four days before, to spend Thanksgiving with her father, and it had been—well, almost not bearable, the change in her father, the pitifulness of it all. Then today she had flown into Milwaukee and had been met at the airport by Daisy, who had told her about the divorce and her uncertain future. They had driven home in a car so full of chaos that Dale was dumbfounded. There were the two children, wallowing in the backseat—s
weet, pretty children, but sticky with the lollipops Daisy had given them to keep them quiet so that she and Dale could talk. They were really lovely children, but the result of their existence, as evidenced by the state of the backseat, was so messy Dale could not take it all in. The floor was littered with everything: old lollipop sticks, gum wrappers, pennies, pictures painted at school and abandoned to be shredded by the children’s feet as they got in and out of the car, lids off things, dolls’ arms, a few books with pictures of three pigs or three kittens on the front, a lonely holey mitten—or was it a sock?—headless paper dolls, unidentifiable chips of bright colored plastic. The backseat itself was dusted with various crumbs of different sizes and colors: cookies, graham crackers, potato chips, even a bit of apple skin. In the rear window shelf of the backseat were more things: a little beaded purse of Jenny’s, a small airplane of Danny’s, a tiny furry bear with the stuffing leaking out of his bum and one of his eyes flipped onto the floor, more gum wrappers, more lollipop sticks.

“Don’t pay any attention to the car,” Daisy had said, noticing Dale’s dismay. “I haven’t cleaned back there since last summer. I’ve been
meaning
to, but first I was so nauseated with morning sickness, and then all this mess with Paul came up and I just can’t put my mind to it, the backseat just doesn’t seem important. I just don’t have the energy. And sometimes, you know, I feel that
this
is the only home we have, the car, I mean we’re going to have to leave our house, and sometimes I put the children in the backseat and give them a picture book and a bag of chips and I just drive around, listening to music, and feeling safe, and enclosed, as if I’ve got us all securely together here, with walls snug around us, and a window to see out of, and the illusion that we’re going somewhere, that together we are on our way.” Daisy grinned at Dale. “I know. It sounds silly, doesn’t it?”

Daisy’s words frightened Dale, but Danny and Jenny in the backseat seemed not to hear. They did not notice the disorder at all. They even seemed happy. They giggled and bumped into each other and spoke nonsense and snorted, and it made Dale smile, she couldn’t help it, to see the pretty boy and girl rollicking about in the backseat together.

The house had also been startling: elegant and stately, outwardly solid and secure; but inside a jumble of half-packed cardboard boxes that displayed the good crystal or orange plastic jack-o’-lanterns that the children used to collect their Halloween loot in. Boxes of tiny baby booties and shoes, bibs and blankets—”God, I packed all the baby stuff.” Daisy laughed. “Then remembered I have a new one coming, and had to dig through it all and open it up again.” Daisy made her way through her hodgepodge house with the assuredness of a loony queen. She thumped and thudded about here and there, settling the children in front of the TV, fixing Danny and Jenny peanut butter sandwiches and carrots, and lighting a fire in the living room.

“I’m so glad to see you,” Daisy said, and hugged her sister.

They sat in front of the fire and talked, and they agreed to eat later, after the children were in bed, but then somehow they forgot to eat. Dale asked if she could bathe the children and put them to bed, and she did, and that was a treat for them all. The children in the bathtub were like treasures in the sea: they sparkled and shone like jewels; their wet skin glistened and their laughter sparkled off the walls. Dale rubbed soap on her hands, then rubbed her hands on the children’s skin, scrubbing gently their fragile backs with the vulnerable, blameless curve of spine; washing their desperately lovely and defenseless necks, their energetic arms and legs, their joyous fruitlike bums. They were giddy with the novelty of being washed by their aunt; she was giddy with the access to this new source of fleshly delight. After their baths she dressed them in pajamas and held them on her lap, reading them bedtime stories, inhaling the scent of their dampened hair. Nothing was ever so clean as a newly bathed child; nothing fit into a lap as well; holding the children Dale had a flash of insight and knew that all sciences and mythologies were wrong: The world was a globe but not desolately turning in empty space, nor was it supported on the shoulders of some tired muscular masculine Atlas: it was a globe, a living round sphere, nestled into the arms and lap of some glorious invisible woman, its mother, who let it turn and turn in her arms with its inextingui
shable optimism and energy; but who never let it fall.

While Dale had been bathing the children, Daisy had been taking her own luxuriously solitary bath in her bathroom, soaking in, a rare treat for her, to have someone else bathe and tuck away the children. She had not reflected on anything, she had merely felt the warmth of the water, seen the bubbles, smelled the sweet fragrance of the bath oil. Then she put on her old soft robe and went in to kiss the children good night, and finally went back down the stairs with Dale, to sit in front of the fire. Daisy carelessly dumped a jar of peanuts into a silver dish she had been intending to pack, and brought the peanuts into the living room by the fire. Dale and Daisy pushed the furniture away and sprawled on the rug right in front of the fire. Dale had gotten so wet washing the children, the sleeves and front of her shirt all splashed, that she had changed as soon as the children were in bed, and she had come down wearing only her robe, too. So a natural, indolent intimacy sprang up immediately between the two sisters: they pulled up their robes to let the heat strike their legs, they ate peanuts sloppily, not minding if they dropped one, not bothering to see where it rolled. They drank diet sodas and seltzer. They were at that stage where one is too tired and comfortable to be sad; that stage where the immediate past and future become only words to be exchanged like markers in a lazy game, and
now
is all one feels, and now feels blurred and good. They felt cozy.