Three Women at the Water's Edge (34 page)

“All right, cats, that’s better,” Margaret said. “You can both just calm down and be civilized.” She sat down and took a bite of her eggs. The food brought her a sense of pleasure and calm and as she looked at the books on the coffee table. She thought she would now like to read them; she would finish her breakfast and take the books back to bed. She took a bite of the crisp English muffin, and then the phone rang. She had to put her food back down in order to go into the kitchen to pick up the phone.

“Mother?” It was Dale speaking. “Good morning. How are you? Did I wake you?”

“Why, no, actually,” Margaret said. “A stray cat awoke me about thirty minutes ago and I’ve been watching him spat with Pandora. And I’m fine. But how are you? Why on earth are you calling at this time of day? What time is it in Maine now? Eleven o’clock? Shouldn’t you be teaching? Oh, what’s wrong?”

Dale laughed. “Don’t worry, nothing’s wrong. I’ve been trying to reach you all week, but either your line’s been busy or you’ve been out. I thought if I called now you surely wouldn’t be gone. Everything’s fine. I just wanted to ask if it would be all right if I flew out to see you this weekend. I have a cold; I can take sick leave and come out on Friday and stay the weekend.”

“Well…well
…well, of
course,
” Margaret stuttered. “But
why
? I mean, I would be delighted to see you, darling, but—”

“Stop worrying, Mother,” Dale said. “I just want to see you and talk with you about some things. Don’t worry. Nothing’s wrong. Listen, I’m in the school office right now and I’ve got to get back to my class. But I’ve got a reservation on a United flight that gets into Vancouver at noon. Flight two-nine-six. Okay?”

“Yes, yes, of course. I’ll meet you at the airport. Oh, this is exciting, Dale.”

“Good. I’ll see you Friday. Take care, Mom.”

Margaret hung up the phone and stood still, staring out the kitchen window at the rain, staring hard, as if she could see the answer to her thoughts if she only watched closely enough. Why was Dale coming out? What in the world was going on? And what kind of mother was she to feel so
suspicious
? Finally she went back out to the living room and sat down. She tasted her eggs again, but they had grown cold, and the honey had seeped into the muffins, giving them a damp and soggy appearance. Across the room, Pandora sat stiffly, watching first the new cat and then Margaret with sulky and accusing eyes.

“Damn,” Margaret said, then: “Oh, well.” And she picked up three of the new books and went off to her bedroom with them, leaving the muffins and the cats, knowing she would be unable to concentrate on the books or to fall into the oblivion of sleep.

Friday morning Margaret found herself in front of her mirror in tears. She had put on her loveliest clothes and spent a long time with her makeup, and still she looked wretched. Or thought she did. She supposed that she actually didn’t look much different from the day before, it was just her mood that was making her look this way, just her damned
mood
that was making her
think
she looked wretched. Oh, the flesh, the sappy flesh, she was thinking. This morning she hated all her flesh, all its pockets and creases and wrinkles and sags, all its flaws. She felt there was so much unsavoriness about her body. It had been so much easier when she hadn’t had any pretensions to beauty, when she had been able to hide behind her fat and her tiny-curled hair and her shapeless dresses. Now she felt she had proclaimed herself a person who found herself attractive, and therefore she was subject to criticism. She felt
old
. She placed her hands at the sides of her face and pulled the skin back toward her ears, wondering if she should have her face lifted. So many women were doing it, and they seemed to look and feel better because of it. And she certainly could afford it. She could afford to have everything lifted, everything done. But eventually time would tell, age would show, she would be fifty, and not twenty-four as Dale was. She would be fifty, and then sixty, and then seventy, there was no going back, no evading it: she was going to get old. She didn’t want to look old, she wanted to look young and sexy and admirable. But oh the vanity of it all, the damned vanity.

She went back into her bedroom and lay down on her bed and shut her eyes. Growing old was not fair. It was not fair that now when she was just discovering herself she was starting to fall apart. Now and then, in rare moments of despair, she sometimes thought she would have done better to stay in Liberty, where she could have grown old and ugly in comfort, eating and eating, growing fatter and fatter, with no one, most of all herself, placing any demands on her appearance. In Liberty she could have easily stayed Mrs. Santa Claus, jolly, plump, and sexless. As it was she had to fight with herself every day not to eat too much food, or any of the wrong foods which would cause her to gain weight, not to drink too much alcohol, which also added weight but, even worse, made her look bloated and saggy the next day; she had to fight to make herself swim and exercise. Most of the time it was worth it—but just now it was not. Just now it all seemed so trivial, so foolish, so almost shameful. Oh, what was it that one person loved about another person? The spirit of course, above all, the spirit of a person was the most important. But there was no getting around the fact that it was the flesh which first attracted people to each other. There was no getting around the fact that Anthony would never have loved Margaret if he had seen her in her Liberty body. And yet—hadn’t that body been a true reflection of her spirit? Hadn’t her spirit changed as much as her body? All right, then, but how was she to face the dilemma of the future, when she felt her spirit would grow more and more attractive, but her body could only age? Or even now, now was the problem,
now
: how to face Dale at the airport.

Dale had always been her father’s daughter; Daisy had always been her mother’s daughter. The spring Dale had graduated from college, Margaret and Harry had driven back to Massachusetts for the ceremony, and had stayed for a week in a pleasant hotel near the heart of the small New England town where the college was. And at each social function, at each expensive gay restaurant meal, even as they had walked about the town, looking at the charming pottery and clothing shops, Margaret had been well aware that Dale wouldn’t have cared all that much if Margaret had not been there. In fact Margaret had felt it very clearly that Dale would have liked to be alone with her father. Harry did look so distinguished, did look so much like the sort of person he was: a distinguished, well-respected, handsomely aging, prosperous man, the real man at that time in Dale’s life. Margaret had gone into a beauty shop on the main street of the town one morning to have her hair done, and had felt horribly shy and fat and tasteless as she sat in her polyester print dress having her little curls of hair combed out while all about her, sleek slim women, young and old, had sauntered, bright with fashion. She had come out of the shop, stunned by the daylight, and seen Dale and Harry strolling down the street arm in arm, stopping to chat with friends of Dale’s. How happy Dale had looked standing there with her father, leaning up against him, proudly displaying him; Margaret had wanted to run away. She had felt like a misfit, a damper on Dale’s days.

And then, two years later, just last year, when Dale had returned from her European stay, oh, what a distance had been between the two of them. Margaret had fixed Dale an enormous breakfast that morning, and sat down at the kitchen table across from her with a companionable cup of coffee, trying to talk with Dale, trying to get from Dale some real feeling for who she had become, what she had done, how those two years away had changed her. For once she had been totally interested in Dale, her younger daughter, totally interested and without anyone else in the way. The night before, Dale’s first night home, Dale had spent most of the time talking with Harry, telling him about castles or museums, and asking about all his patients and his work. Margaret had known what Dale had wanted—that private time with her father—and had kept as unobtrusively out of the way as possible, doing the dishes, refusing Dale’s offer to help, then making a lemon meringue pie for the next day. She had wished it had been Daisy who had been home, because then Daisy and Harry would have sat in the kitchen with her, and Danny and Jenny would have played on the floor with measuring spoons and cups and plastic bowls, and it would have been so comfortable. But Daisy was at her own home then, in Milwaukee, with her husband and children, and Margaret had wanted to turn her full attention toward Dale. She had wanted to get to know Dale, this second daughter of hers. She knew she had always favored Daisy, as Harry had favored Dale; she could call up times in her memory when she had probably unjustly sided with Daisy. There had been a time, a time like many, but this particularly was clear in Margaret’s thoughts, when Margaret had at least in her own feelings and actions been unfair to Dale. It was a summer afternoon when she was bringing the girls home from swimming, and Daisy, in a passion about something or other, had slammed the car door shut on Dale’s foot and severed part of her little toe. Dale had screamed with pain; she had been in pain and frightened, but Margaret’s sympathy had gone out first to Daisy, who had stood stricken and sickly pale by the car, too horrified even to cry at what she had just done. “It’s okay, it’s okay, Daisy, you didn’t mean to, we can fix it, Dale will be okay,” Margaret had said to her oldest daughter, and had rushed from the car to wrap Daisy in a consoling hug first, before taking care of Dale. That whole day she had been more worried about Daisy than Dale, because Dale had gone to her father and had the toe sewed back on and treated and bandaged and then had lounged about on the porch or in front of the television while Daisy brought her sister penitential gifts of fruit or candy or comic books. Harry and all the neighbors and all the girls’ friends had made such a fuss over Dale; Harry had soundly scolded Daisy for her carelessness; and for days Daisy had been pale with contrition. But that had not been fair, Margaret had felt: Daisy hadn’t
meant
to hurt Dale, it had been simply a stupid accident, simply a matter of Dale sticking her foot out at the wrong moment. Her heart had gone out to Daisy. Well, and perhaps not enough to Dale. Perhaps even then Margaret had been growing tired of nurturing and tending and sympathizing with victims. And perhaps her heart had never gone out enough to Dale: but then Dale had always had Harry.

Last year—it had been just last year, in May when Dale had returned from France—Mar
garet had been really intrigued by her second daughter and had wanted to reach out to her, to get to know her. She had wanted both to call Dale back into her own world, the world of churches and kitchens and secure family life where Margaret felt she still had a place, and to have Dale pull her out into the rest of the world; because at that time Margaret knew she wanted to change, knew she wanted to leave, but didn’t know how. She had already lost a lot of weight, and was proud of the fact, but she had not yet grown her hair out and dyed it, she had not yet changed her style of dress.

“You look good, Mom,” Dale had said casually, sitting on a kitchen chair in her own Levi’s and blue work shirt.

“Do you think so?” Margaret asked, pleased. “I’ve lost a lot of weight. And I swim a lot. I feel much better.”

“You’ll probably live longer,” Dale said, and sipped her coffee. That was all the weight loss had meant to Dale, that her dowdy mother would not have as much strain on her heart. Oh, it’s not
fair
, Margaret had wanted to cry out: look at you! For Dale had not put on any lipstick or eye liner, but still her face shone with the health and beauty of youth. It was not even blotched yet with the fatigue and blots of motherhood as Daisy’s had become; Dale was as perfect as a ripe peach. And she was wearing, she wore constantly, lovely hoop earrings and lots of silver or gold rings and bracelets which she had bought on the sidewalks of Paris or been given by her lovers. Margaret wanted to know about that, she wanted to sit down with Dale and hear all about those sidewalks, those lovers; she had seen enough of the museums and castles, which were after all only another sort of confining home. She had wanted Dale to give her a picture of the world as only a free, beautiful, intelligent, well-educated young woman could have. She had wanted Dale to lure her away from her safe clean kitchen with tales of a complicated, messy, exciting other world.