Three Women at the Water's Edge (44 page)

“You’re cold,” Hank said. “Let’s go inside.”

They went through the farmhouse silently, doing the routine chores they did every night when Dale was with Hank: checking to be sure the water bowl was filled for the dog and cats, pulling down the window shades against the night, turning down the furnace, shutting off the lights. If I marry Hank, Dale thought, this will be my home, I will live in this house with this man. She moved her hand against the doorframe of the bedroom and was pleased at the warm solidity of the wood, at the security of the definite, lasting structure. It all pleased her, this strong old house, the large capable presence of the man she loved moving through the dark and light rooms at her side: this is how it will be, Dale thought. She would help Hank clean house, she would eat meals with him, she would lie down again and again in this bedroom, and awaken to routine tasks. They would have their separate work and their mutual cares and pleasures, they would go out into the world together. They would push a grocery cart down brightly lighted aisles, seriously considering bread and mushrooms. Oh, it was lovely, that the world held such mundane, minute, trivial things by which to anchor down something as awesome and uncontrollable as love. People were clever, to surround themselves with such homely plain objects and habits that would keep them from floating off the earth with dread and joy.

They began to undress in the bedroom, still without speaking, and Dale suddenly saw how straight and tense Hank was holding himself as he moved. Oh, he
cares,
Dale thought, he is concerned, he wants to know my answer, he wants to marry me. He loves me. He does love me.

“Hank,” she said, but could not go on.

As if he knew her thoughts, Hank dropped his clothes on the bed and came to Dale; he took her in his arms and held her close against him. They stood together for a long moment then, body pressed against body, naked and trembling, warm breasts against chest, strong torsos touching all up and down, and Hank’s generous giving genitals pushing out against Dale. Then Hank took Dale’s head in his hands and pressed his mouth against hers and kissed and kissed her, as if he could not stop. All that he was, was coming toward her now, and searching against her, asking. Her face and Hank’s were suddenly wet with tears; she did not know when she had started crying. She did not know precisely why.
Oh, Mother, oh, Daisy,
she thought,
oh, Hank, oh love
.

She moved away from Hank. “Just a minute,” she said. “I need to go to the bathroom.” And she crossed the room and went into the safety of the bright common room and shut the door and leaned against it. What did she want? Earlier in the evening she had been driven with love for Hank, certain that she did love him, yearning for the security of marriage. But there, on the same breadth of land which held this house where they both now stood, across the miles of earth, there stood her mother and her sister, proof that love does not always work. And so what was she to do? How was she to decide? What was real?

She felt something moist against her thigh; she put her hand down and brought it back up, shining and wet with liquid from her body. She stared at her hand, glistening with the fluid of desire, and she thought, with a slow rush of understanding:
this is real
. God help me, this is real. This is what is real in life, past words, past arranging, past all conscious intentions, past control. And she knew then, because of that real rich moisture, which flowed inside her in spite of the intricate troublings of her mind, because of that, simply that, she could change her life, surrender her life, give herself over to love, and let come what may. She loved Hank. Whatever the price she might have to pay in the future, it was worth it, it was all worth it. She loved Hank. She would believe what her body told her; she would marry him.

She went back into the bedroom where Hank sat waiting for her on the broad double bed. He rose when he saw her, but he did not speak.

“Well,” she said, and her voice held solid though her body trembled, “well, then, let’s do get married. Let’s do get married, at least for a while.” And she crossed the room, and went into his arms, and they embraced. And as they stood together she felt good from head to toe, she felt glad and strong, in her body and in her mind, she felt altogether good, and glad, and at peace, and right.

The last weekend in May was so warm that the beaches around Rocheport were busy with people of all ages and sizes, who had come out to soak up this first rich sun. Some of the bravest were going into the water even though it was still cold. Dale and Hank had come prepared for the day: they had brought blankets and beer, cold cuts and chips, books and towels. Dale lay on her stomach, feeling the heat of the sand rise up through the towel, feeling Hank’s gentle hands as he spread lotion on her back. She was so happy. She had not realized that it was possible for real human beings to go on for so long being happy. She and Hank would be married in two weeks; they had told their various friends and families, and were making rather casual plans. They would be married in Rocheport, and would drive to Bar Harbor to take a ferry across to Newfoundland to spend two weeks vacationing there before they returned to begin their busy summer. Dale would take courses at the university; Hank would work on the farm, and begin renovating the farmhouse. They were buzzing with plans; it seemed that all the days of eternity could not give them enough time to do all that they wanted to do together. And they felt so
smug
, so smug about marriage, that society sanctioned such an institution that would enable them to greedily fulfill their lust for each other every day.

Margaret had written; she would fly back for the wedding and for a short visit; she was happy, she wrote, loving the bookstore and her own full life. Daisy could not come because of all the children, but she was happy, too, and during their phone conversations Dale had been amazed at the complete, unreserved delight with which Daisy had greeted Dale’s plans for marriage.

“I’ll probably get married again myself someday,” Daisy had said. “You know, marriage is really so nice.”

“Oh, Daisy.” Dale had laughed. “
You
are so nice.”

How they pleased her, her mother and her sister, how their optimism and the simple continuation of their lives pleased her; it made the whole world and all the actions in it seem possible. So one could go into good times and then into bad; but then one could go into bad times and out again into good. It was all possible, if one was brave.

“Do you want a beer?” Hank asked, breaking into Dale’s thoughts. “I’m getting hungry.”

“Umm,” Dale said. She twisted around and sat up. “Yes, I’d love a beer. Where’s the opener?” She rooted around in the basket she’d brought. “Sorry,” she said, “I think I left it in the car.”

“I’ll get it,” Hank said. He jumped up and raced off toward the car, and Dale smiled, filled with a silly vain pleasure to think that that tall lean lovely man would be her husband. How happy she was. She could not believe her happiness. Yet she accepted it, as one must accept what seems clearly a gift from God. She accepted it, she reveled in it; she let her love for Hank be the controlling force of her life—for how could she do otherwise?

Yet someone was crying. Dale glanced around, suddenly filled with dismay: how could anyone be crying on this sunny, fine day?

She saw a small child, a little boy of around five in red swimming trunks, standing a few feet from her, staring out at the ocean and rubbing his eyes and crying. She looked all about, but could see no parent in sight. She rose and padded across the soft sand and knelt down next to the little boy.

“What’s wrong?” she asked. “Are you lost?”

“No,” the little boy cried. “My mommy’s back there, with my brother.”

“Then why are you crying?” Dale asked. “What’s wrong?”

“It’s my plastic raft,” the little boy said. He pointed to a bright yellow object that bobbed up and down on the waves of the ocean about twenty yards out. “Mommy told me not to let it go, but I did, and now it’s gone out so far I’ve lost it. I can’t get it back.”

“Well, stop crying,” Dale said. “I’ll swim out and get it for you. Okay?” She rose, eager to do the deed, grinning with pleasure at a problem so easily solved.

The boy looked at her in amazement. “But you can’t swim out that far,” he said. “That’s way out. That’s dangerous.”

Dale laughed. “No,” she said. “It’s not so far for a big person. And I’m a good strong swimmer. I won’t drown.” And she walked to the edge of the water, and boldly plunged into the cold. She began to swim with even, strong, completely sure strokes, to rescue the toy for the child.

One Saturday in late May the sun came out strong and full and the entire day was golden and fresh and warm. Since it was a Saturday, all the girls on the third floor were free from work. Daisy heard them giggling up and down the back stairs, but paid little attention to them; she had so much to do. She had settled Danny and Jenny in front of the Saturday-morning cartoons on television and carried baby Susan with her in a backpack as she moved around the house tidying up. She was in the laundry room off the kitchen, folding diapers, when Sara and Ruth Anne burst in on her.

“You’ve got to come outside,” they shouted at her. “It’s just heaven. It’s so warm!” They were both wearing startlingly bright bikinis, and their tight bellies shone with the whiteness of winter.

“Umm,” Daisy said, “all right. In a while. I’ve got to fold this laundry.”

“Well,
hurry
!” they told her, and turned away.

Daisy stood dumbly, a rectangle of white cotton cloth in her hands, and watched the two young women rush back out through the kitchen to the sun. Ruth Anne needs to lose a few pounds before she hits the public beaches in her bikini, Daisy thought, then shrugged. Who was she to cast a critical eye? She wouldn’t dare show up in a swimming suit, let alone a bikini. Oh, it wasn’t fair. Those girls looked so fine, even with their bits of plumpness here and there, they looked so young and healthy and all of a piece that they fairly glowed with it. Even the way they moved, almost bouncing off the balls of their feet with their energy and enthusiasm for life—while Daisy still collapsed into a chair whenever she could. Daisy wanted to sink down into the pile of laundry and cry. Susan had been born two months ago and after the euphoria of birth had worn off, the exhaustion remained. Susan still awoke at two in the morning for her feeding, and for the past week both Danny and Jenny had had colds and coughs.
They
managed to sleep through their coughing, but Daisy couldn’t; she would lie in her bed, listening, so tired she felt she was drugged to the bone, saying to herself that if Jenny coughed again, she would get up and give her some more cough medicine. But she knew that if she woke Jenny to give her the medicine, she would have to rock her for a long while to get her back to sleep, and she felt simply too tired to deal with that. So she lay in her bed, waiting for one more cough, and then one more before she finally fell back to sleep. Susan liked to wake at six in the morning, and so Daisy began her days in a state of queasy dizziness, and not even the richest, creamiest coffee could get rid of her headache. Oh, it was hard, it was
so hard
, to be alone in the house, the sole protector and caretaker of three small children. The first month had been a little easier, because first Jane and then Karen had taken Danny and Jenny into their homes, and the four upstairs girls, entranced with the novel presence of a tiny baby, had volunteered to take care of Susan now and then during the day so that Daisy could sleep. But now the novelty had worn off a bit, and although the girls still dropped in spontaneously to peek at the infant, they were more interested in their own lives, their clothes, boyfriends, jobs, amusements. Daisy had to keep talking herself out of begrudging them their freedom, their irresponsi
bility. They’re only eighteen and nineteen, she kept telling herself. I was free at that age, too; I didn’t have to take care of children. But still she found herself making a bitter mouth from time to time as she compared her present state to that of the girls.

They were all giddy now about buying new spring clothes and rushed in to show Daisy clever little slips of dresses or a new shirt which they wore braless and tucked into their jeans. And Daisy would admire them appropriat
ely—and she really did admire them, they did look so pretty, but she had to keep swallowing back her envy. She wanted those pretty, skimpy clothes, she wanted a pretty, skimpy body. Instead she was still wearing her loose old maternity clothes, because whenever she nursed she had enormous breasts and was unable to lose much weight. And she was far too tired to even think of exercising, although this time, as with the last two times, she had promised herself she would start immediately doing leg raises and waist bends. Now her own body seemed to her a loose collection of sagging sacks which she unceremoni
ously stuffed into yet another shapeless set of sacks so that she could go through her days. At least her hair looked good. She had left the children with a sitter one day and gone out to The Clip Joint where for two luxurious hours other people tended to her needs. They washed her hair and massaged her scalp and cut her hair into short crisp layers that she could wash easily in the shower and brush dry. She was pleased with the haircut, because it made her eyes look larger and her face look thinner, and even more so because it gave her such hope. Whenever she ran a brush through her hair, she released the fragrance of the perfumed shampoo she had chosen for herself, and she felt this fragrance fall around her briefly like a mist of hope; the pleasures of self-indulgence and vanity were all slowly coming back to her. Because of this new haircut, she had been brave enough to try to look really pretty, like the old Daisy she had been, for the meeting she had had yesterday with Paul.

Paul. Now he was out in California with Monica—with Monica, his new love, and his new job. He had called yesterday before he left town for good, to tell Daisy he would like to come over to say goodbye to Danny and Jenny and to see Susan. Daisy had washed and set her hair and put on makeup and then tried for over an hour to find some combination of clothes that would make her look attractive; she had ended up throwing almost everything she owned on the floor in despair. But she had vowed to herself that she would not let Paul see her again in her old baggy robe, and finally she had gotten into a pair of jeans which she could not zip and her favorite maternity smock which hung down over the gap where her stretch-marked belly protruded from the open zipper. Each time she bent or sat, the zipper bit into her belly, and the seam of the jeans pressed into her crotch, but she could tell by the mirror that at least she didn’t look pregnant anymore, and perhaps she looked almost slim again. And she had been gratified by Paul’s first words: “Why, Daisy, you’re looking wonderful!”

“Thank you,” she said shyly, as they stood in the front hall. “You look wonderful, too.”

And he did: there he was, her husband—now her ex-husband—just as tall and handsome and lean as he had been the day he had walked out of her life. It was hard for her to look at him without loving him, in spite of everything. Whatever it had been that had caused her to love him at first was still at least partly there for her, and she had to turn her face away to hide the way she felt. “Would you like to see the baby? She’s in the playpen in the kitchen.”

She led Paul back through the house to the kitchen and together they stood and looked down at tiny, wriggly Susan, who was lying on her back, wearing one of Jenny’s little old pink terry-cloth pajamas. She was cooing rapturously at her fist and trying to get it up to her face and into her mouth. Daisy leaned on the playpen, looking down, instantly amazed all over again at how healthy, how well formed, how really adorable her baby was. Who could resist falling in love with such a lovely child, she thought—and then looked up at Paul and saw, with a plunge in her heart, that he could,
he
could.

“Would you like to hold her?” Daisy asked.

Paul looked uncomfortable, but “Sure,” he said.

Daisy bent over and took the baby out of the playpen, carefully supporting the wobbly head. Paul took his daughter into his arms with a conscious awkwardness. He studied her for a while. “She’s pretty,” he admitted at last. “And she doesn’t look at all like Danny or Jenny.”

“I know,” Daisy said. “I think she’s going to look like Dale. Although I’m not sure yet that her eyes will be brown; they seem to be getting lighter.”

Paul, obviously aware that he should do something, gently bounced the infant against him for a minute and said with forced heartiness, “Well, she’s certainly all there. But she’s so light. I’d forgotten how small babies are.”

Susan began to root around against his chest, searching with her mouth for a milky breast, nuzzling at him with her whole face, pushing at him with tight demanding fists. This always made Daisy go weak in the knees with love, but Paul brought Susan away from him, held her out to Daisy and said, “Could you put her back now? I’d do it, but I’m afraid I might drop her.”

So Daisy took the baby and settled her in the playpen, and busied herself awhile adjusting the pads and giving the baby a pacifier and a pink rattle in the shape of a flower. So this was the contact that her third child would have with its father, she thought grimly, and struggled to hold back tears. Poor baby, she thought, poor little fatherless girl—and poor, lonely, pitiful me. For a moment she felt almost overcome with self-pity.

“Where are Danny and Jenny?” Paul asked. “I brought them a little present.”

“They’re on the third floor with the girls,” Daisy said. “I’ll call them.” She went to the back stairs and called up to her children that their father was there, then turned back to find Paul staring at her with an expression she could not fathom. In the clear afternoon light it seemed almost that he was looking at her with love.

“You look tired, Daisy,” Paul said. “I mean you look awfully pretty, but you look tired, too.”

“I
am
tired,” Daisy said. “It isn’t easy.”

“I know. I know.” Paul sank down into a kitchen chair and put his head in his hands a moment, then looked back up at Daisy. “I’m sorry about all this, you know. Or maybe you don’t know. Maybe you can’t know how sorry I am. I feel I’ve fucked up so badly. I mean the children—I wish people could somehow keep from making mistakes. Or I wish at least we could erase them.”

“Mistakes?” Daisy asked. She had to lean against the doorway for support; she was unnerved by Paul’s sudden willingness to talk, and by the way he was looking at her. “Do you think of the children as mistakes? Would you erase them if you could?”

“Oh, I know it sounds heartless to you, and I don’t mean it that way. But yes, I suppose I do think of the children as mistakes. We were so happy before the children came, Daisy; I keep remembering our first two years together, I keep thinking of those years over and over again. We had such good times. I felt we were on our way somewhere together. And then the children came and stopped everything, threw everything off track. We never got to go to Europe together, we never got to enjoy having money together, we hardly even got to know each other. I love Monica now, but I can’t say I love her any more than I loved you at first, and I hate it that my life is so messed up and fragmented this way. God, Daisy, before the children you were so happy, so lighthearted, so full of laughter and good ideas, I loved being with you. There’s no one like you in the world, you know. Monica’s wonderful, but she’s so—serious, often. You were just such a pleasure in my life. I loved knowing someone like you.”

“Oh,
Paul,
” Daisy said, “I’m still that person. Or I can be that person again. I still have fun, I still laugh—” For one wild instant a great hope sprang up within her, a silly false television commercial sort of vision of herself and her three children and Paul all walking along the edge of the lake, frolicking, loving each other, being a family. In her eagerness she found herself crossing the room to stand at the table next to Paul’s chair. She put her hand on his shoulder. How solid he was, how hard, how big. A man. She felt the old sexual desire move through her like a current from her hand on his strong firm arm down through her body.