Three Women at the Water's Edge

by Nancy Thayer

  Three Women at the Water’s Edge is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are the products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

  2014 Ballantine Books eBook Edition

  Copyright © 1981 by Nancy Thayer

  An Introduction from the Author copyright © 2014 by Nancy Thayer

  Excerpt from Nantucket Sisters by Nancy Thayer copyright © 2014 by Nancy Thayer

  All rights reserved.

  Published in the United States by Ballantine Books, an imprint of Random House, a division of Random House LLC, a Penguin Random House Company, New York.

  BALLANTINE and the HOUSE colophon are registered trademarks of Random House LLC.

  Originally published in hardcover by Doubleday, an imprint of the Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group, a division of Random House LLC, in 1981.

  A portion of this work appeared in the October 1981 issue of Redbook.

  This book contains an excerpt from Nantucket Sisters by Nancy Thayer. This excerpt has been set for this edition only and may not reflect the final content of the final book.

  eBook ISBN 9780553391060

  Cover design: Eileen Carey and Belina Huey

  Cover image: © Marc Owen/Arcangel Images

  www.ballantinebooks.com

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  An Introduction from the Author

  I wrote Three Women at the Water’s Edge when I was divorced and living alone with two small children. I was still learning how my love for my children had overwhelmed me and changed me forever. It was a time of turbulence and discovery.

  I had to move from Vancouver, a city I adored, and that was a terrible loss. At the same time, some friends were falling in love, and they were dazzled with hope and anxiety. Some older women friends in their fifties wanted to discover themselves again, fall in love with themselves. All of these experiences found their way into the book. (Was Margaret right or wrong to ignore Daisy in order to live her own life? I received much mail—both praising and criticizing this book. I’d love to know what new readers think.)

  I set this book at the edge of three different bodies of water, because water suggests transformation, a new life for each of my characters.

  I’m delighted that my early novels are being made available to my readers as ebooks. My style has changed slightly, as the world has grown faster, but my subject, family life, remains as mysterious and fascinating to me now as it was in these early books: falling in love, raising children, friendships and betrayals and forgiveness.

  I hope you enjoy these early novels and discover some new friends there.

  Nancy Thayer

  There is a ship, and it sails the sea,

  It’s loaded deep, as deep can be.

  But not as deep as the love I’m in:

  I know not how I sink or swim.

  Traditional folk song

  Contents

  Cover

  Title Page

  Copyright

  An Introduction from the Author

  Epigraph

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Dedication

  By Nancy Thayer

  About the Author

  Excerpt from Nantucket Sisters

  One

  Daisy read what her mother, Margaret Wallace, had written:

  “Dearest Daisy,

  “I am happier than I have ever been in my life. Oh, darling, of course I was very happy—ecstatic—when you were born, and when Dale was born, but that was such a tired, hot, muddled happiness. This happiness is an energetic sort, completely selfish, clear and pure. If you could see me, how I look now, and my house, this dear house with its windows full of ocean, you would understand. You should see me now, my goodness, you should—

  “There, darling, I’ve just written you a check. I’m sure it will be sufficient to cover airfare from Chicago to Vancouver. You really should see Vancouver, you know, and you should get away from your babies and Paul for a while; it would do you good. Just for a few days. Perhaps, if you fly coach instead of first class, my check will cover a babysitter’s costs, so Paul can’t complain about a thing, not a thing. Would you come out? Oh, how I want to share this all with you! There is nothing like it in the world. I feel reborn. I wish I could tell you, show you, how happy I am. I am so glad to be divorced and free; and I am so much in love with my new life here in Vancouver. Yes—that’s just it—being here is like falling in love, you know that feeling one has that at last, at last, here it is, what you have been tending toward all your life, and it is all okay, everything is okay, your entire past life is justified, because it was all leading you to this place. And you can rest. You can rest, and even die, because it has been given to you, it has not been withheld, this total, complete, and completing joy. Bitterness goes away; envy, even desire goes away—except the desire for one more day of this, and then again, one more day. But bitterness falls away, and all the petty unpleasant emotions that used to prickle at one’s life, and you are pleasant to everyone, smiling at everyone, because you are here, it has been given to you, you have found it, you are content. Yes, like falling in love, those first dazed and grateful days.”

  —

  Daisy put her mother’s letter down. She couldn’t bear to read any more of it right at this moment: falling in love, dazed and grateful days. How could her mother write such stuff? What did her mother know about falling in love? Falling in love, falling in love—a pox on falling in love, and a pox on those who did it. All illusion, falling in love, an illusion which brought a momentary and false joy to two people—and trouble and pain to everyone else.

  Paul too said he had fallen in love, and now look how he was, not pleasant, not smiling, not content. No. He was cranky and mean and depressed and confused. She was terrified that Paul would leave her.

  Daisy sat up in bed suddenly, meaning to go off to get herself a drink of water. But the movement of pulling herself up into a sitting position made her head spin. She lay back down. She was three months pregnant and still nauseous. It was two o’clock; her rest time. Danny, four years old, was at nursery school until three; Jenny, her two-year-old daughter, was taking a nap in her small pink-and-white bedroom. Daisy had perhaps an hour to lie with her feet up, indulging herself in the luxury of silence. Then Jenny would awake and Danny would come home and they would need walks and snacks and a referee for fights and dinner and bath and a story.

  And Paul would be home, roughhousing on the floor with the children, eating his dinner like a cowed slave, never meeting Daisy’s eyes. He would pace restlessly about the house, and finally, he would burst out of the house with a desperate, transparent excuse: “I have to mail a letter,” “I’m out of shaving cream,” “I want to buy a copy of Newsweek.” He would escape to some pay phone, Daisy knew, to call Monica. He would come home sometimes calmer, sometimes not; sometimes he would go into the bathroom, and run water, and sit on the toilet and cry. She had opened the bathroom door once, not knowing he was in there, thinking that Danny had left the water running. And there he was, Paul, her husband, sitting fully clothed on the toilet, head in his hands, crying with love for another woman. He had flinched when she opened the door, exposing him so suddenly; he had flinched and looked up at her, his blue eyes blazing through his tears, his look so like Danny’s when he knew he was being caught at something which deserved a spanking.
Guilt, regret, defiance. Damn. Falling in love.

  It seemed the baby moved. Daisy put her hand on her slightly rounded stomach, longing to feel that first definite kick. Such subtle joy, a baby inside. She pulled the blue afghan up around her, and her mother’s letter, which she had put down on top of it, slid off the bed to the floor.

  It was strange how happy Daisy could feel, now with the world shattering all about her, when she was here, quiet and warm in bed, alone with her third gentle quiet child, so subdued and tantalizing there inside her. It was a true sensual pleasure just to put her feet up. She could feel a release of pressure at the back of her knees, and a firm hard resting where her calves and buttocks touched the bed. Her feet seemed to flow like a river, to glow like fire. Her shoulders and arms cramped and uncramped and the long stretch of her back touching the bed seemed to be the most real thing in her life. Relief. Support of those parts of the body which had been all day long supporting others, other bodies, other things. Sometimes Daisy put a heating pad underneath her on the bed, and the warmth spread into her flesh like soft butter on toast, and how could she not be happy? It was almost an ecstasy, it almost made the rest of the day worthwhile, when this one hour was so delicious.

  But she was tired. She was always so tired.

  She was not only tired, she was also fat, and she was absorbed by her children, and she was happy. She liked living the life her children demanded, centered around the bedroom and kitchen and playroom where the TV was. Now it was late September, and the weekdays were graced with a loose and lazily pleasurable routine. Daisy would lie in bed as long as she could in the morning—Paul would get up early, too early, at six-thirty, and he wanted only black coffee for breakfast, which she could make the night before and plug into the timer on the stove. He would shower, shave, dress, drink the coffee and leave for work while Daisy still lay sunk in her special early-morning dreams. Daisy would lie in bed as long as she could until the children finally woke her up. Never wanting to leave the warm ease of her bed, the small hot home she had made there under the blankets, she could often entice Danny and Jenny into the bed with her, where she would cuddle them and tell them fairy tales, or play games with them, pulling the sheet and blankets up over their heads, pretending to be caterpillars in a cocoon, or bears in a cave. It was dim and stuffy and hot and crowded under the sheets, close and satisfying. Finally everyone would get bored, though, and they would throw back the covers and leave the bed for the rest of the world. The bed when they left it would look like a shattered boat, abandoned on the bright rocks of daytime, wrecked and unappealing.

  Still in her, long wide Lanz nightgown, as old and comfortable as her skin, Daisy would send Danny and Jenny in to watch TV while she fixed breakfast. She made enormous sweet first meals: pancakes with maple syrup and butter, or hot oatmeal with butter and brown sugar, or eggs and toast with butter and thick layers of raspberry jam. Daisy drank more milk than Danny and Jenny, more juice, too; after all, she was pregnant. She usually left the plates and glasses on the breakfast table, so that she could watch Captain Kangaroo with the children.

  The children loved Captain Kangaroo, but Daisy loved him even more than they did. She would sink into an armchair with a cup of sweet and creamy coffee steaming in her hands, and Danny and Jenny would spread out on the floor or on the old grimy child-worn sofa, and they would spend another perfectly contented hour together. They were all heartbroken if they somehow missed the singing introduction to the show. It was the best part; it made them all happy; it made Daisy irrationally happy, and gay as if at a wonderful party, and full of love for the entire world, to see and hear the introduction to Captain Kangaroo. “Good morning, Captain!” everyone sang. She loved seeing all the actors and celebrities as they said their idiosyncratic and cheerful good mornings, and she loved best the last of the introduction: always, something you could count on, Captain Kangaroo himself, wishing his audience a good morning. He wore bangs, and he never had a cold or bags under his eyes. She loved him. There was something of Santa Claus about him—plump face, red coat, love of children, magic winks, sexlessness. He was diverting and clever and familiar and kind. He was unique and reassuring: he did not ask for involvement as so many of the other children’s shows did, he didn’t throw in any sappy psychology to help you like yourself more, he wasn’t a goody-goody. He was really like an elf or a gnome; it was impossible to believe that he would ever die; yet somehow fitting that he should grow old. He was not a part of the real world. He was special. Daisy could not believe, grown-up as she was, that there was not in fact a man who was named Captain Kangaroo; that an actor ever took off the red coat and left the pink house and walked the mortal city streets.

  “Parents, spend a little time with your children today,” Captain Kangaroo would always say sometime during the show. It was his only request, and it seemed a reasonable one, and it showed that he knew, he knew, that the grown-ups were watching.

  “You’re right, Captain, I will,” Daisy would think. She would stack the dishes in the dishwasher while a commercial or “Dancing Bear” was on, sometimes stopping in the midst of her work to run back to the playroom when Danny cried, “Mommy, Mommy, ‘Uncle Backwards’ is on!” After giving the kitchen table an irresolute swipe, she would begin the hardest part of the day: taking the children out for fresh air. In warm weather it was a lovely thing to do, but now in the fall it seemed a backbreaking task. Jenny was too little to get herself dressed in her cumbersome sweater or coat, and even Danny needed help, with boots, mittens, hat, muffler. When the weather was warm, they went down the hill to the beach to play in the sand or to see what new things had happened to the long curved shore of the lake. But when the brisk autumn breeze came sweeping up off the lake they had to stay close to the house. Danny would ride his bike on the driveway and Daisy would push Jenny on the swing or help her steer her little plastic pedal cart, or they would all play running games. Finally someone, usually Jenny, would complain of the cold. They would go back into the house and play with modeling clay, or paint, or build with plastic building bricks, or play house, or something, something. There were no children in the neighborhood around them—one of the disadvantages of owning a large expensive home in an older area—so Daisy felt it her duty to entertain the children. Usually she could get them to play nicely with each other or by themselves for fifteen minutes here and there so that she could do the laundry, vacuum, dust, clean out the refrigerator, start a cake, anything that could be begun and not instantly finished. Finally she would fix lunch, and another mother would come by and honk in the driveway and Danny would go off to preschool, and Daisy would put Jenny down for her nap. Jenny was a good child, reliable; she always slept for at least two hours. For the first hour Daisy would do housework. Laundry, folding clothes and putting them away, ironing. Once a week, sweeping and scrubbing and waxing the large kitchen floor. Wiping sticky fingerprints off the high chair, the table, the counters, the cupboard doors in the kitchen. Cleaning the toilets and bathtubs and bathroom walls, cleaning the bathroom sink where Paul’s mustache trimmings lay like small blond bugs, and the soap dish was soggy and streaked from the children. It was a large house; they had wanted a large house; they had been delighted to find this house, on the lake, huge and rambling, with lots of angles and landings and elaborate woodwork. But they could afford only the mortgage on the large, interesting house, and had no money left over to pay for a woman to help dust the interesting, elaborate woodwork or to shine the leaded glass. Daisy did this while Jenny slept.

  She often felt that if she had to fill out a form which asked for her occupation, she would put down: Mover. For that was what much of her work consisted of—moving: moving dusty socks and underwear from under beds where the small cotton articles hid like shy white mice, moving them from under the beds into the laundry chute, then into the appropriate laundry pile, then into the washing machine, into the dryer, onto the table to be folded, and finally back upstairs to the proper drawer, where they would lie obedien
tly until someone else would take them out and wear them and take them off, dropping them somewhere else: perhaps under the sofa in the TV room. She moved dishes and pots and pans to the table and stove and back to the sink and down to the dishwasher and up to their shelves and back to the table and stove again. She moved infinite numbers of minuscule objects: blue plastic barrettes shaped like bows or ducks, tiny orange sticks belonging to the Tinkertoy set or even smaller white plastic squares with bumps on the bottom belonging to the Lego building set, pens, books, papers, paperclips, fingernail clippers, broken Crayolas, cuff links, old crumpled Kleenexes, ugly hard forgotten pieces of cookie, diapers, doll socks, screwdrivers, pennies, petrified pieces of old bubble gum, telephone books, newspapers, magazines, mail, small smeary tubes of ChapStick, bottles of cough medicine and sticky spoons, the Scotch tape holder, rubber bands, twist ties, bits of string, Matchbox cars, doll aprons, shoelaces, puzzle pieces, bills, business cards. She moved things from wherever they didn’t belong to where they did. She moved groceries from their store shelves into the car, out of the car onto the kitchen counters, into their proper storage places, out again to be cooked or sliced and eaten, and some of it into the garbage disposer, and some of it, bones and eggshells, into trash sacks and out into the trash barrels, and down the driveway to the edge of the curb. She swept the back hall and steps to the basement where the laundry room was. She swept under the kitchen table. They had a cat and loved her; she shed fine white hairs everywhere; these gathered into clumps on the bottom of the broom or stuck to the broken halves of jelly beans which Daisy dug out from under the sofa cushions. Sometimes, if the job was a big one, such as cleaning the stove and cleaning off the burners and lining the little pans with aluminum foil, or baking her own bread or a cake or pie for a dinner party they were having over the weekend, sometimes then Daisy worked all afternoon, and did not take her rest. But because her physician had told her that she had to rest, she needed to rest, that because she was pregnant and had two small children, she must think of rest as a medicine and take it regularly, because of the backing of that particular outside authority, she usually did spend the last hour of Jenny’s naptime resting.