Three Women at the Water's Edge (8 page)

“What did your sister do?” Hank asked.

“Daisy? Well, she went to college at Northwestern,” Dale said. “She was four years older than I, and never made such good grades in school—I’m not saying she wasn’t as smart as I was, because she was, she just wasn’t as
interested
. She wasn’t planning all her life to be a doctor. Anyway, Mother made her get out of Liberty, too, but she didn’t make her go so far away. Actually, I don’t think Daisy got accepted anywhere back East. Well, she did what we all knew she’d do, what she’d always wanted to do, she married at twenty-two, and had a baby two years later, and a baby two years after that, and another baby is on the way now. She lives in Milwaukee. They have a house right on Lake Michigan. Daisy writes that it’s great, the house. I’ve never seen it. I really should visit them sometime…”

“Are you close to your sister?” Hank asked.

“Close? I don’t know. We were when we were little, of course, but we haven’t seen each other for three years now. And we lead such different lives. But we write each other about once a month. She has beautiful children. Enchanted children. I don’t know. I should go visit her, it would be fun.”

“Do you ever go back to Liberty?”

“Well, the last time I was back was just after I graduated from college. It looked good to me, Liberty. It looked pretty much the same. It’s a boring sort of place, I know, just a dumb little farm town, but I still love it. I wouldn’t mind living out my life there, or someplace like it. It has its charms. But then the ocean—this coast—this place—now I feel at
home
here, I feel that I would go berserk if I couldn’t get to the ocean every day. It’s become something I need. So I’ll probably end up settling here, if I can.” Dale went quiet then, thinking of her situation: the apartment she shared with Carol, which she would have to give up when Carol married; her job in the high school, which gave her security for the three years of her contract, but no longer; would she get tenure? She couldn’t know yet.

And now this man sitting across from her, listening to her intently. Where was he to fit in her life? All through the evening she had been talking rapidly, earnestly, her desire to touch him channeled into her words, her words, could she somehow touch him with her words? He was sitting there so calmly, watching her, listening: how did he feel now after she had revealed so much of herself to him? Did he like her? Did he want to touch her in return?

An apologetic waitress came to say that it was closing time, and Dale and Hank left the warmth of the restaurant for the chill of Hank’s red pickup truck. Dale admired the way Hank took care of the bill; in Europe she had usually paid for her own meals, and quite often had paid for the man’s meal, too, since many of the men she had struck up relationships with had had less money than she. As she climbed into the truck, she began to say something pleasantly grateful to Hank about the meal; she almost said that she would like to have him to dinner at her apartment sometime. But she was afraid that that would make her seem too eager to see him again, and too coyly domestic. The very action of getting into the small enclosed space of the dark cab, where he could hear her slightest breath, made her feel self-conscious. It made her lose the easiness she had felt with him inside the warm, bright restaurant where other people walked and talked and ate; it made the lust she had held back all evening in that reasonable room come surging to the front of her thoughts and gestures. Hank got into the cab behind the steering wheel. His jacket was rough suede, his hand was large and hairy; she was aware of the solidity of his right thigh as he pushed on the accelerator. Her mouth went suddenly dry. The evening was almost over. She felt panicked. And he was saying nothing. She sat in silence, loosely hugging herself, leaning slightly against the door.

“The heater will be warmed up in a minute,” Hank said.

“It’s getting cold,” Dale replied.

“Well, it’s late October. We’ll have some more warm days, but summer is definitely over.”

Then they rode in silence. By the time they reached Dale’s apartment she was nearly in tears of desperation. Should she invite him up? It was after eleven; they both had to teach the next day. Should she invite him to dinner? Should she—what? What could she possibly do? The bold casual woman who had lived inside her skin for two years in France had deserted her now. She would truly die before she would say now, as she had said so often in the past two years to so many men: “Would you like to kiss me?” Or even, “Would you like to go to bed with me?” Now she remembered how smug she had been in Europe, how safe and invulnerable she had been, how
cowardly:
and all along she had thought of herself as a bold woman with daring sexual habits and strong sexual needs. In Europe she had been in love with no one, and so she had been vulnerable to no one. The men she had slept with had not touched her. They did not hurt her; they could not have hurt her. If they had turned down her proposal—and no one ever did, but if they had—she would have only shrugged. And when they made love to her, they had not touched her; she realized that now. And now here she was, nearly ill with despair because the evening was over and she did not know how to carry on from there, what to say, what to do. They were both adults, for heaven’s sake; surely she could say to him, “Wouldn’t you like to kiss me?” Or even, “Would you like to spend the night with me?” And he would not be appalled. But she was afraid he would refuse her. His face, when she glanced over at him, was stern and set. Was he already thinking of the next day, of a test he had to give? Suddenly she hated him. Why wasn’t he bristling out toward her as she was toward him? Didn’t he find her attractive?

When they stopped in front of Dale’s apartment, she said, “Would you like to come up for some coffee?” It hurt her throat to speak.

“I’d better not,” Hank said. “I’ve got some grading to do tonight. As a matter of fact, I’ve got some chores to do, too. I’ll walk you to the door,” he said.

He got out of the truck, and Dale sat there blindly, hot with desire and pain, while Hank performed the courtly act of coming around the front of the truck to open her door and help her out; another thing the men she had known in Europe seldom did. He took her hand as she jumped down from the truck, but then he let go of it immediately. They walked in silence toward the large colonial house. The lights were on in the front room; Carol was either still up or had left them on for her. And there they were then, standing down by Dale’s front door in the dark.

“It was a very good dinner,” Dale said. “Thank you again. I—I’d like to invite you to dinner at my apartment sometime. I—there are some things I can cook fairly well.”

“That would be nice,” Hank said. He was staring down at her so seriously that for a moment Dale thought that he might be feeling the same panic she felt. But then he said, “I had a nice evening. Let’s do it again sometime.”

And she said “Yes,” and he smiled and walked off, back to the truck.

Dale went inside the house and shut the big old door and stood blankly staring at the stairs she had to climb to her second-floor apartment. She did not want to climb them, she did not want to go one step farther from her contact with him. But she heard the truck pull away and go off down the road, and then the night was empty of sounds. She went blindly storming up the stairs then, and by the time she was inside her apartment she was sobbing with frustration.

Carol was sitting in an overstuffed chair, wearing a quilted peach-colored robe, reading. “Did you have a nice time?” she asked.

“Jesus Christ!” Dale sobbed. “He didn’t even kiss me good night! He didn’t even
touch
me!”

“Oh, dear,” Carol said, coming over to Dale and putting her arms around her. “Don’t let it upset you so, Dale. Hank Kennedy is the quiet type. You’re the first woman I’ve heard of him dating since he moved up here.”

“He’s probably gay,” Dale said. “That would be just my luck.”

Carol laughed. “He’s not gay. There are plenty of girls around here who knew him when he came up in the summer with his family who could attest to that. Calm down, for heaven’s sake. You’ve got to teach tomorrow. Would you like me to make you some warm milk?”

“Warm milk?”
Dale burst out laughing. “
Warm milk?
The last person who offered to fix me warm milk was my mother. Oh, Carol, you’re sweet, but I’m afraid I’ve gone past the warm milk stage, even if I am acting like a moony adolescent. No, I’ll have a stiff scotch and go to bed.”

And again it seemed that she did not sleep all night. For a long while she lay in bed, remembering the evening, listening for the phone to ring. Perhaps he would call her to say that he wanted to see her right away, he would come back and pick her up now, or that he wanted to see her the next evening. But the phone did not ring. Dale had to content herself with trying to remember the outlines of his hands, the exact green of his eyes, and the few intimate things he had mentioned about his life.

He did not call her the next day. He did not call her for a week. Dale was frantic, then alternately manic and listless. She thought of calling him, of asking him for dinner, but somehow could not do it. She began to think she would never see him again. She kept away from the beach; she worked industriously on her lesson plans, planning far into the year, making intricate, detailed charts and sheets.

And finally, eight days after their dinner together, he called. There was a movie on in Portland the next evening. He would pick her up at six.

The next evening was a Saturday; there was no school the next day, no reason to return to the apartment early. For their dinner together, Dale had worn her loosest of shirts, wanting to appear casual and altogether uninterested in sex; she did not want to appear to be coming on too strong. Now, for the movie, she wore her tightest sweater. She did not care how she appeared; she was interested only in a reaction. She wore a sweater, tight jeans; she wore lipstick and eye shadow and perfume. Then, at the last moment, afraid of seeming too obvious, she desperately put her long thick hair into two braids, hoping that would make her look innocent, would counteract everything else.

At the movie they did not touch, except briefly, when he helped her with her coat. After the movie, Dale invited him to her apartment for coffee and dessert. She did not tell him that Carol was spending the weekend at her parents’ home twenty miles away. It was wonderful hearing Hank’s heavy male step as he came up the stairs to the apartment behind Dale. It was wonderful having him stand so near, so real, as she unlocked the apartment door.

Inside the apartment she put on music, made the coffee, served the cake. Hank sat on a chair in the kitchen, watching her. He talked about one of his problem students and the administration of his school. The boy wanted to wear a red cap all the time in school; the administration considered this deviant behavior but could not find any specific restrictions in their books against constantly wearing a cap. Dale sat sipping her coffee, not even pretending to eat her cake, listening to Hank talk about the boy. She had hoped that this second time with him she would feel less lustful; but she desired him even more. His skin. It was so firm, so smooth. She wondered if he had hair on his chest, on his back. His thighs. She could not keep from looking at his thighs, so substantial in the blue denim. His hands. They were rough hands for a teacher, but she supposed that was because he had animals, ran a farm. His hands were clean, his nails were blunt and square and even; but his hands seemed rough, and she wanted to feel their abrasiveness against her skin. She could not respond intelligently to what he was saying. She could not keep interested in his words. Perhaps she seemed bored; he set his coffee cup down on the table and rose.

“I should be going,” he said.

Dale rose, too. She thought she would cry. She could not help herself, she finally said the words she had said so often before, but this time she said them almost inaudibly, and to her helpless horror, her eyes filled with tears as she spoke: “Don’t you want to kiss me?”

Hank stood there a moment, on one side of the kitchen table, looking at her so seriously Dale thought she would faint. Then he said, “My God,” and crossed around to where Dale stood. He took her into his arms. She was stunned to feel that he was shaking. “My God,” he said again. “Dale.” And he bent his face to hers. He kissed her then, intently, firmly. He held her against him, his left hand on her head as he kissed her mouth, her eyes, her neck; his right hand resolutely pressing her body against his. And she understood why he had been so reluctant to kiss her; his feeling about her was not frivolous; he wanted her, too. And once he had begun making love to her there was no halfway point where they could stop.

His chest and his flat belly were hairy; his back was not. His skin had an olive cast, and his body was marked by different stripes of tan: his arms and neck were still the darkest from working on the farm; the area around his crotch and buttocks was paler than the rest, indicating the shape of his swimming trunks. His thighs were long and lean and as hard as iron, and covered with wonderful thick black hair like fur. Dale rubbed her face in his thighs, murmuring. The first time he entered her she did not come, she could not concentrate, she wanted too much to feel everything at once: his hands, his penis, his legs, his mouth. And he came almost immediately, burrowing his head into her neck as he did. She watched him, she could not help looking at him, watching him, although she supposed it was not fair; when she saw him grimace, when she heard him moan, she felt pierced by an emotion she had never felt before, and she held on to him tightly, as if otherwise he might die. “Too quick,” he said, “I’m sorry,” but she kissed him and would not let him speak, and when he rolled on his back she sat up, naked, to study him. She looked and looked at his body, and ran her hands everywhere. He lay watching her. He touched her breasts, her belly. He undid her braids. Her hair fell about her shoulders. He became hard again, and he pushed her back down on the bed and entered her. He lasted for a long time this time, and this time Dale came to him. She cried aloud when she did, and Hank held on to her firmly and protectively as she helplessly surged through waves of fear, revelation, rapture; and at last was washed aground on the shores of the deepest peace.