Three Women at the Water's Edge (37 page)

Finally their teeth had begun to chatter and they had gone into the house. They didn’t want to ruin the rugs, so they had stripped off most of their clothes just inside the kitchen door and let them fall down in puddly globs of fabric.

“God, you look good, Mother!” Dale had exclaimed, seeing her mother there before her in underpants and bra. “You look marvelous!”

“Thank you,” Margaret had said, almost shyly. “So do you. Let’s go get something warm on before we catch pneumonia, and I’ll throw more wood on the fire.”

Margaret had put on her robe and stoked the fire, and Dale had put on her robe and made a pot of herb tea, and then they had sat in front of the fire quietly, getting warmed.

“I can’t get over your hair, Mother,” Dale said. “It’s so wonderful now. I wish you had worn it that way all your life. May I brush it?”

“Oh, yes, please,” Margaret said. She got up and found her brush and sat on the rug with her back to Dale. “Daisy used to brush my hair when she was very little, when you were a baby,” Margaret said. “You never did that, you never were much interested in that sort of thing. But Daisy used to love to brush my hair, as if I were one of her dolls. She would get out all her little barrettes and ribbons and stick them in my hair. Oh, I can remember one day when Daisy was five and you were just an infant, and I was so tired, so tired. I finally got you down for a nap, but Daisy was too old to nap, and it was winter and there was no school for some reason, and I just didn’t have the energy to entertain Daisy. So I lay on the sofa in the living room and asked her to brush my hair. Well, she did, and put in every barrette and ribbon she owned, and it felt so good to just lie there having her tend to me with her sweet tiny hands, and I was so
tired
. Well, when she got bored with doing my hair, I told her that she could get my lipstick and put it on me and fix my face up. I was desperate for some rest, Dale, I just needed to lie there and not move. So Daisy got my lipstick and put it on my lips, and then my cheeks, and then began to draw all over my face with it. I was simply too tired to object and I couldn’t see any harm in it anyway. Actually, it felt quite good, like having a facial massage, I can remember even now. The delicate pressure of that soft creamy lipstick being spread everywhere across my face. And of course you can guess what happened: one of the neighbors came to the door to bring me a cake and a present for you, since you were newborn, and when I heard the doorbell ring I thought, Lord, no, what shall I do! But before I could stop her, Daisy had gone out and opened the door and let her in. Old Mrs. Schultz; did I ever give her a shock. I managed to sit up by the time she got into the living room, but there was nothing I could do about my red face and wild hair. I tried to explain it to her, and she was fairly understanding, she had children herself, but all the same, I was chagrined.” Margaret and Dale laughed and laughed.

“I had something like that happen to me,” Dale said. “I mean not that, but the same sort of thing. It was—well, I suppose I can tell you, even if you are my mother. It was this November. I had been in an enormous variety store up in Portland, getting some stationery and deodorant and all that sort of thing, and I came across—oh, yes, it was in the toy department, I was looking at the toys, trying to decide what to send Danny and Jenny for Christmas. Well, I came across this wonderful booklet full of tiny fluorescent stars. It was a small booklet full of yellowish paper, and a thin liner could be peeled off the back, exposing a sticky side, so that all these little things could stick. There were small stars and moons and planets and comets that were outlined by perforations so that children could punch them out easily. I actually sent some to Danny. They’re wonderful. You put them about the room, on the ceiling and the walls, and inside the closets, and while the light is on, the paper absorbs the light, and then when you turn off the light and it’s all dark, these moons and stars glow. They give off a marvelous eerie greenish glow. Well, here’s what I did—you mustn’t be shocked now, Mother, you’re old enough to know—I bought several booklets for myself. And that night when I went to Hank’s I made him wait in the darkened bedroom by himself; I told him I had a surprise. I undressed in the bathroom, with all the lights on, and put those stars and moons and planets and comets all over my body. Stars on my breasts, a comet coming out of my belly button, a sun on each eyelid. Well, it was amazing! It was really fabulous. I came out into the dark of Hank’s bedroom and it was uncanny and absolutely wild. I mean I made him turn off all the lights, and so it was too dark to see any of my body, and all there was, all he could see, was all these tiny stars and planets dancing around toward him. I saw them in the mirror and couldn’t get over it, it was so wild! Well, I couldn’t help it, I danced and waved my arms about, it was a bit like being a firework, a sparkler or something, and—and, anyway, the next day I had to teach. I was showing a film in my biology class, and I set up the projector and pulled the shades and turned off the lights and walked back through the classroom to sit at the back. And the students began to whisper and titter—and they’re good students, usually well-mannered. So I finally said, ‘Okay, you guys, what’s going on?’ Well, I thought I had taken off all those stars, and I had even showered that morning, but the glue really sticks, and somehow I had missed a few. I had a star on the back of one arm and a comet on the back of the other and a planet at the side of my neck, and there I was walking along with these things glowing in my biology class. Well, I was cool. I just said, ‘Oh, thanks for telling me. Now be quiet and watch this film. You’ll be tested on it.’ But of course for a few moments I wanted to die.”

“Didn’t they ask you why you were wearing those things?” Margaret asked, laughing.

“No,” Dale said. “They could tell by my tone of voice I wouldn’t have told them. There, Mother, your hair’s all dry. And it’s gorgeous. It’s incredible.”

“Well, it’s dyed,” Margaret said. “But it used to be this color. I suppose I’ll keep dyeing it until—when, I don’t know, whenever it seems too obviously phony. Someday I’ll have to have the grace to live with white hair.”

“Mother,” Dale said, “you’ve got the grace to live with orange hair, or green or purple! I can’t believe how you’ve changed.” And she put her arm around her mother’s shoulders and they sat there in front of the fire awhile, side by side.

“Yes,” Margaret said after a bit, her voice becoming slow as if she were sleepy, “but you’ve changed, too, you know. You’ve changed a lot.”

“Well, I’m older,” Dale said. “And I’ve discovered a lot about myself. I really love my work. And then, of course, there’s Hank. I love him. He loves me. It’s—it’s really incredible how love can change your life.”

“Oh, yes,” Margaret said, and her voice grew slower, as if she were withdrawing into sleep, into a solitary region where Dale could not follow. “Oh, yes, of course,
Love
. Oh, well.” She leaned over and gave Dale an affectionate peck on her cheek. “You can tell me about Hank tomorrow,” she said. “I really do want to hear all about him. But I’ve got to get into bed now, I’m really fading away.” And she rose with sleepy grace and went into her bedroom, shutting the door behind her.

Dale sat in front of the fire for a while, trying to think about the day and all that had so subtly happened. It had not been quite spoiled by the tone of Margaret’s voice when she said, “Oh, yes, of course,
Love
. Oh, well.” Yet that had added a touch of sharpness, or perhaps only reality, to an otherwise joyfully blurred twelve hours. But after all, Dale thought, Mother is Mother, and I am myself. She has to live her life, and I get to live my own. And with that seemingly profound thought, Dale stretched out on the rug in front of the fire and fell asleep, with her head flat on the rug next to the pretty brass tray that held the teapot and cups. When she awoke in the morning Pandora the cat was asleep next to her left shoulder, and the new cat, the beautiful large gray one, was curled up with all the heavy warmth of his body right on the small of Dale’s back. Dale lay awake for a long time, watching the sun on the water, not wanting to move to disturb the sleep of the cat or the pleasure of her own body in feeling his warm vital weight.

The last Friday in March, it snowed heavily in Rocheport. Dale and Hank and Carol sat in Hank’s living room by the warmth of the wood stove, trying to play Scrabble. They were waiting for Carol’s fiancé, Bob, who was driving up from Massachusetts to spend the weekend with Carol. Dale and Carol had made a delicious bouillabaisse, which now simmered on the stove, and the salad was waiting in the refrigerator for the dressing. There was even a large loaf of oatmeal bread which Carol had made specially that day, but now she had taken it out of the oven so it would not get too browned. Bob was almost two hours late, and Dale and Hank and Carol were all pretending not to worry. But the snow continued to fall heavily, and from time to time the trees just outside the windows would creak under the weight of the damp snow, and it was impossible not to think of how bad the roads were. Dale was stumped; it was her turn to make a word. She had the letters
deat
on her small wooden holder, and there was a free
h
waiting on the board. She could have made the word
death
and gotten a triple word score, but felt too superstitious to make the word while Bob was so noticeably absent. They had turned off the stereo and the radio on in order to keep up with each new weather and news report, and whenever the announcer’s voice broke the pattern of music, the three sitting around the Scrabble board would freeze in order to concentrate on listening. Carol kept getting up to stir the stew, or get more wine, or use the bathroom, and Dale and Hank noticed how she looked out the windows each time she rose, as if by the intensity of her vision she could draw Bob’s car safely into the driveway.

“He’s got a front-wheel-drive car,” Hank said. “He’ll be fine. This snow is bound to slow him down.”

But they were all afraid that the snow might do more—a patch of ice, a skid, an accident…They were all very polite and quiet, like good children trying to charm the universe into kindness.

“He’ll call if he gets in trouble,” Dale said. It was the third or fourth time she had said it.

“I know,” Carol said. “He’s a careful driver. He’s driven in this kind of weather all his life.” But still her face was tense. And no other topic of conversation could hold her interest.

Dale settled on the word
tie
, which gave her only three points, and waited for Carol to make her word. She thought: at least we’re here with her, in case anything bad does happen.

“Oh, I can’t think of a single word to make,” Carol said, exasperated. “I’m usually so good at this game.”

“Let me see your letters,” Hank said. “Maybe I can help.”

Carol turned her letters toward Hank. “Do you know what I’d really like to do?” she said. “I’d like to scrub the toilet. Or the kitchen floor.”

“Whatever for?” Hank asked. “Don’t you think my house is sanitary?”

“Oh, it’s not that at all,” Carol said. She rose and went to look out a window. “It’s just that at times like this I like to be doing something that I hate. In order to earn a reward from Fate. You know.” She gestured vaguely and gave Dale a look that said quite clearly: Don’t make me be too precise on this point. Don’t make me say that if I scrub a toilet, which I hate doing, I will in that way save Bob from being killed on an icy road. “It’s an old habit,” she went on. “From school. If you study hard, you are rewarded with good grades. Also, I think the time will pass more quickly if I’m active.”

Dale rose. “The kitchen floor can always use a scrubbing,” she said. “Come on, I’ll show you where the soap is.” But in the kitchen she encountered her own problem: kneeling down below the sink, where
she
would have kept the floor detergent, she found only a trash sack. This was not her house; it was Hank’s; and she felt strangely slighted. She had to call Hank in from the living room to show her where he kept his mop and cleansers.

The three of them were all gathered about the broom closet in an inordinately serious group when they heard the car come into the driveway. Carol was out the door in an instant, not even stopping to put on her coat. After a few moments she came back in, her arm around Bob, her hair sparkling with snowflakes, her face glowing. They all made a great fuss over Bob, who was exhausted from the drive and delighted to be safe inside a warm house. They talked a bit, then Hank took Bob off to fix him a drink, and Carol and Dale went into the living room to put away the Scrabble game and clear up the wineglasses.

“Carol,” Dale said, as the two women knelt on the floor, putting little wooden squares of letters into the box, “your hands are shaking.”

“I’m so glad he’s alive,” Carol said. “I was so worried. You know how I’ve picked on you about how strongly you feel about Hank, and yet I suppose I’m not so different after all. It’s a surprise—how love can get to you sometimes.”

Dale leaned across the Scrabble board and gave Carol a hug.

“Can we eat right away?” Hank called from the kitchen.

“Of course,” Carol called back, and rose, suddenly her usual efficient self.

Dale stayed on the floor for a moment, holding the folded Scrabble board to her chest as if it were a tangible piece of good luck. What a good night it would be now, she thought, all four of them together, safe in the midst of a snowstorm, safe in the midst of love.

The last Friday in March, Margaret sat in the concert hall with her hands resting loosely in her lap. The orchestra was performing Beethoven’s
Pastoral
, and Margaret was thinking how literature and music called forth different reactions in her. When she read fiction, she lost herself in the lives of other people; but when she listened to music, it seemed that she lost herself in her own life. Her thoughts drifted back and forth through the past events and years of her life without reason, and a surge of music would as often remind her of a fantasy she had once had as of an event that actually happened. Perhaps she was experiencing early senility. A passage of music brought to mind a dress she had wanted when she was twenty, but had never actually even seen: It was a pink dress with ruffles and black velvet bows on the cuffs, neck, and hem. The sort of dress she had never worn and would never wear. But she had wanted that dress when she was twenty, and had even thought of designing it and making it herself. She never had; and she could not imagine why certain musical notes would conjure it up in her thoughts now. Yes, the music acted on her like some sort of drug: she floated free, like Alice falling down the rabbit hole, and encountered all sorts of bizarre objects from her real and imagined life.

Now she thought of Daisy; it was the alarm of timpani and brass, no doubt, that brought Daisy to mind. Daisy’s baby was due any day now, and in spite of herself, Margaret continually thought about Daisy with emotions as turbulent and complex as the music now being performed. The birth of a baby was always a dramatic event, and there were always so many possible problems. In spite of modern medicine, women did still die in childbirth. Or the baby could die. Or something could be wrong with the baby. Or everything could be fine. Still the labor and birth were events of certain magnitude. Yet Margaret was fixed in her mind that she would not go back to help Daisy. She did not want to be in charge of a large household and take care of her grandchildren, not now, not anymore. The one thing she would have done for Daisy was impossible: She would have actually
had
the baby for Daisy. She would have loved the experience of giving birth, of holding a vulnerable and always somehow magical newborn in her arms; she would have loved lying in the hospital with her needs tended to as she tended to those of the baby. But that was not possible, and as much as Margaret worried about Daisy, she realized that she also slightly envied her this ultimate female experience.

She had sent Daisy a check, with a note that more would follow as soon as possible, and now that that decision had been made, Margaret was glad. She felt she had done the right thing. Surely now she could be free to consider her own needs, her own life. Perhaps, she thought, after she received the crucial phone call from Daisy and knew that all was well with her and the baby, perhaps then she would be able to relax and concentrate on herself. She hoped so. Although it was beginning to seem that the tension between her desire for isolation and the necessity of somehow nurturing the world around her would always be present. Even now, as she sat in the concert hall listening to the symphony, she was aware of Anthony’s hand on her arm. As the music built to its climax, Anthony’s hand tightened. He might have been totally unaware of his pressure, but Margaret felt put upon, she felt that Anthony was asking her to be aware of his intense reaction to the music. And when it ended, she would be called upon to discuss it with Anthony and his friends, and to hear in detail just what sensations and memories the music called up in them. She did not especially want to know any of this. She did not want to have to comment on the orchestra’s brilliance or the conductor’s grace. She did not want to have to turn her experience of this music into a structure of words that would be criticized and rearranged by others. She wanted merely to sit listening to the music, appreciating it for itself. For a moment she had a vision of herself as some sort of trapped creature who must continually produce from the world about it food for others’ consumption. Yet she knew that was a slightly mad thought: oh, she knew it was not as bad as all that. She did still enjoy the company of others. She was looking forward to the dinner they would have afterward, and to the conversation. A discussion of the concert would be good for her, Margaret decided; it would keep her mind off Daisy, off her own petty problems. So she sat with her hands in her lap, intently listening, and it seemed her emotions rose and fell with the rhythm of the music.

The last Friday in March, Daisy had a date. The baby was five days overdue and Daisy lurched around through life like a whale out of water. She felt enormous, she
was
enormous, and inside her vast stomach things sloshed and tugged and pulled when she walked. All she wanted to do was to sit with her feet up; her feet ached and ached. She really could not breathe easily, especially after eating, but she was so bored and frustrated that she ate almost constantly anyway. She couldn’t sleep at night because she was so uncomfortable, and because she kept thinking she was feeling the beginnings of labor, and so she went through the days feeling cranky and tired and falling asleep at odd moments whenever she could sit down. During the days she would fall instantly into a sleep as deep as a black hole, and she would awake with a start, not knowing where or who she was. She had taken to keeping the phone receiver off the hook during much of the day because so many people kept calling her to ask, “Are you
still
home? What’s going on?” Jane and Karen and her other friends called her constantly to see if anything was happening with the baby yet. So Daisy was totally shocked to answer the phone one day and hear a man speaking to her.

The man was Jerry Reynolds, an accountant who worked in the same Milwaukee firm as Paul. She had met him many times at company parties, and she supposed that if she had ever thought of him at all she had simply thought, when talking to him, that he was just a pleasant man who was polite enough never to appear bored when talking with her. Well, he was separated from his wife now, and had heard that Daisy and Paul were getting divorced, and had called to ask her for a dinner date.

“But I’m pregnant,” she had replied, amazed and rather alarmed.

“Well, that’s all right,” Jerry had said.

“But I mean I’m really
pregnant
,” Daisy said. “I’m nine months along. The baby should come any day now.” What she meant to imply was that not only would she be incapable of sleeping with him, but that she would look unattractive and bulgy, that he wouldn’t even want to be seen with her in public.

“You can still eat and talk, can’t you?” Jerry had said. And then, disarmingly, “I really would like it so much if I could take you out to dinner. I’m feeling rather awkward since this divorce thing, and I’ve always felt comfortable around you, and to tell the truth it would be a relief to me just to be able to go out with a woman who would obviously be just a companion and friend.”

Daisy was touched by his honesty. “Oh, you mean I could be a sort of trial date for you.”

Jerry laughed. “Well, let’s hope it won’t be too much of a trial,” he said. “Really, Daisy, it is partly that—I’ve forgotten everything about ‘dating’—I hate that word—and it’s been years since I’ve so much as sat alone with a woman other than my wife for any period of time. It’s—I’m—well, what it comes down to is a sort of situation like getting thrown from a horse. I mean it’s necessary to get right back on. I mean I don’t want to become afraid of women simply because I’ve forgotten how to deal with them. But I do like
you
, I always have liked you, and I think we could have a good time together.”

Daisy had been moved by his candor. And, hungry all the time as she was these days, the idea of a good meal at a nice restaurant appealed to her. Jerry seemed so unthreatening on the phone, so almost pitiable. And she remembered that while he was not ugly, he was not uncomfortably handsome, either; he was just pleasant-looking enough so that she would feel good with him in public, but not so handsome that she would feel embarrassed by her own bulbous physical state. She agreed to go.

Sara, one of the girls who had moved into the attic apartment, agreed to babysit for Danny and Jenny. Daisy would of course pay her the regular babysitting fee—they had discussed all this at the time the girls took the apartment, and it was agreed that they would pay the full amount of rent and Daisy would pay them regular babysitting fees, instead of trying to work out some other more complicated arrangement. But Daisy was discovering that all four girls, but especially Sara and Ruth Anne, would be of more help to her than she had ever dreamed. In almost no time at all she had come to think affectionately of her four renters as the “upstairs girls.” They were lonely young women from farms or small towns in the middle of Wisconsin who had come straight from high school to Milwaukee to get good-paying secretarial or department store jobs and to meet professional men; they missed their homes and families and liked hanging around Daisy’s house in the evenings or on weekends, idly playing with Danny and Jenny. They thought Daisy’s children were just so
cute
and they were forever asking Daisy if they could take the children with them down for a walk on the lakeshore or for a ride with them to do errands and buy ice cream. In return Daisy found herself spending long evening hours sitting at the kitchen table with them, listening to their life stories, offering them sensible advice, doling out sympathy when they complained of problems with their jobs or boyfriends or lack of boyfriends. She had already given Sara, who was her size, three of her old blouses, blouses she would never wear again because they were too frilly and young for her, and twice when two of the other girls had had an especially snazzy date she had lent them her long dresses for the evening. She felt that she had somehow accumulated an extended family about her, and she liked it. She liked it very much. All through the month of March she had seldom found herself alone in the evenings—b
ecause even on the weekends it never happened that all four girls had dates—and whoever didn’t have a date ended up coming down from the attic to share a bowl of popcorn and a television movie with Daisy. One Saturday night she had given Melissa a permanent to make her straight hair frizzy; another night she had sat up late with Ruth Anne and Allison, discussing sex and men and contraception. Oh, she liked it all, the companionship, the laughter, the stories which reminded her of her own unmarried youth, even the pleasant, busy sound of footsteps going up and down the back stairs, the hum of blow dryers and the rush of hot water as the girls got ready for dates or the noise of doors opening and closing at all hours of the day and night. It felt good to go to sleep in a house so full of life, with all the prettiness and optimism of the four young girls filling what had once been empty rooms above her, billowing above her like palpable clouds of hope between her and the cold night air. She liked the girls and thought herself quite lucky. And their first month’s rent had paid the largest part of the expense of having the little kitchen installed. April’s rent money would finish off that bill, and there would be some left over for babysitting and gas and food; she was eventually even going to be able to start a small savings account.