Three Women at the Water's Edge

by Nancy Thayer

  Daisy hung up and walked away. She wandered the house in a stupor, staring at the dark oak woodwork she had oiled and polished, at the casement windows she had painted, at the ten-foot-high walls she had papered. She tried to think through the blur of fatigue that was waving inside her. The house. She realized that she had not done much reasonable thinking in the past few weeks, that she had gone around like a sleepwalker, or an accident victim in shock, not openly acknowledging the results, the irreversible changes in her life. Paul was leaving. Paul had left. He wasn’t coming back. She didn’t really want him back. And she leaned against the winding oak staircase and cried gently, to think that she felt more pain at losing a house than at losing her husband. It made her feel guilty to realize that. And yet it was somehow obscene that she should have to lose both, that Paul should take away from her all security, all help with the children, and now their home. She was so tired that it was like being possessed by a demon, or like being drugged, her body was pulling against her, trying to sink down to any flat surface where it could collapse. But she stumbled back into the kitchen and dialed Paul’s office again.

  “Paul,” she said when he answered, “I am going to go to Vancouver next week to see my mother. Don’t get upset, it won’t cost you a cent. Mother is paying for the ticket. All you have to do is come stay with the children.”

  “Oh, Daisy, don’t be foolish,” Paul said. “I can’t stay with the children—”

  She interrupted him. Her voice was cold and immensely sane. “Of course you can,” she said. “In a few months you are going to live in California, leaving me to take care of three children for the rest of their lives. All I’m making you do is take care of two children for one week. It won’t kill you. Danny’s in preschool every afternoon. I can give you names and phone numbers for lots of sitters. All you have to do is give them dinner, and spend the night here with them, and give them breakfast and get them dressed. That’s not much. And you can ask Monica to help. If you’re living with her, if she’s got the fun of you, well she surely won’t mind being agreeable to the children as you said she would.”

  “Daisy,” Paul began. “This is absurd. I can’t—”

  “Paul,” Daisy said, “next Monday I’m flying to Vancouver, and I’m leaving this house with two children, your children, in it. You have to be responsible for your children for one week in your life, and it won’t kill you. If you don’t come take care of the children, they’ll just have to sit alone in the house for a week and starve to death or electrocute themselves, and it will all be on your head, because I’m going to Vancouver. Think of it financially, Paul. While I’m there I’m going to see if I can get some money from Mother so I can keep the house. Think of it that way.”

  “All right, all right,” Paul said, his voice dark with irritation. “All right. But you line up the sitters for me for next week, will you? Someone to take care of the kids in the day. I’ll take care of them at night, but I’ve got to work in the day, you know.”

  Daisy hung up the phone again, and then, before the momentum could leave her, called a travel agency to have them make reservations for her to fly to Vancouver. She called babysitters and arranged for them to come. Later when she called Karen she would ask her to check in on the children. And suddenly it was all done, it was all arranged. If she had stopped to consider it before doing it, she would have thought it impossible, to leave her two small children for a week. She had never left them for more than five hours at a time before.

  She went back into the family room. Now both children had sagged into sleep, lying sprawled on the sofa, snoringly content. It made Daisy nearly retch to see the family room; every toy and book and crayon and doll had been taken out of its proper place and scattered across the floor during the past few days. Little violet and orange and red and black and green circles of flat plastic from Danny’s Winnie-the-Pooh game were scattered across the carpet like large confetti; puzzle pieces had been stacked like towers; all the dolls had been undressed and their clothes unzipped, unbuttoned, unfolded, and flung into different corners of the room; a pile of soiled towels spilled over next to the sofa. On television a clean housewife with a polka-dot scarf on her head was holding a mop in one hand and kissing her husband with what would have been taken as insane glee in a normal household. Daisy crossed the room and turned off the television. She sat down on the floor of the family room and began to sort the puzzle pieces out: Little Red Riding Hood in one pile; the Owl Family in another; the dump truck in another; and so on. She lost interest in it after a while, and after checking on the children again, went up the stairs to the bathroom to brush her teeth.

  She was surprised at how old and bleak and haggard she looked. Her skin was gray. Her hair was stringy and matted. Her lips were chapped. Her eyelids drooped. She looked fifty years old, and she was only twenty-nine. The thought of the next few days ahead of her, home with sick children and no diversions except those involved in cleaning up the house, made her shudder. She couldn’t in good conscience ask a babysitter to come to the house to relieve her for a few hours, not when Danny’s stomach flu was so contagious. She would simply have to muddle through, survive the next few days by herself. Alone. Survive until she could leave on Monday, see her mother.

  It occurred to her then that this was the way it would be from now on. Forever. Except that there would soon be another baby to take care of. Then she might have three sick children on her hands at one time; she might as well plan on that happening at least once.

  It was really funny. How had it worked out this way, that she was to have three children and no house, and Paul was to have a new young wife? The whole thing was enough to make her howl with fury and resentment at the man she had married, at her plight. When she had been growing up, when she had married, she had never once thought of herself as becoming a bitter woman, a woman burdened with despair. And even now she did not want to be that way. Yet so many things were weighing her down—all the immediate, concrete things, Danny and Jenny’s sickness, the loss of her house; and even worse, a great weight of nameless fear. Suddenly she felt lonely and rejected and unloved and unlovable and ugly. She wanted to hurt Paul and Monica, yet hated herself for that desire. She felt helplessly, heavily full of grief. She was afraid of the future, and too exhausted to do more than survive her present. And she could feel rage building up inside her just as surely as the whitecaps grew as they approached the shore of the lake. She wanted to collapse onto the bathroom floor in a fit of tears and raving.

  But she could not, not yet. She had to see to the children, she had to watch over them. When she got to her mother’s house, she would let her guard down and really rant, really cry; she would hold herself in until then. She was not sure of the direction her life was going, but she knew she wanted to safeguard her little charges: her son, her daughter, and this new baby which now kicked and kicked inside her, as if reacting to the turbulence of her heart.

  She smiled down at her stomach, and said, “Hello, Baby.” She took off her robe and nightgown and began to take a hot shower, caressing her stomach a long time, as if to get reacquainted with the new baby, to apologize for not thinking of it much in the past few days. She washed her hair, rubbed moisturizing lotion on her face, put on fresh clothes and perfume. She made plans for the day, the tiny fragile plans women with sick children make for themselves, like rewards they would give themselves for simply going on: she would call Karen, and she would call her two other close women friends. And tonight she would call her mother to tell her she was coming out to visit next week. And she would even call Dale; she hadn’t spoken with Dale for a long time. She would ask a babysitter to come over tomorrow so that she could sleep if the children were up again in the night, or so she could get out of the house for a while; surely by tomorrow Danny’s sickness would not be contagious. She would make chocolate chip cookies today, even though Danny and Jenny were probably too sick to eat them; she could put them in the cookie jar for next week—and eat most of the uncooked d
ough herself. Chocolate chip cookie dough was one of the best things in her life. She would pick up the family room and do laundry, but let the rest of the house go—let Paul clean it if it bothered him. At three o’clock she’d have a glass of seltzer. She would play with the children and take care of them, but while they were watching television—and they could watch a lot of television today, because they were sick—she would read a new romantic paperback. She would make it through this day and the next and the next until she could get to her mother, until she could reach a place where she could be a child again, and receive a child’s portion of consolation and care.

  Daisy went back down the stairs and into the kitchen to begin making the cookies. She loved creaming the sweet brown sugar and the soft butter together, she loved the alcoholic aroma of vanilla, she loved the richness of the chocolate chips. She began to feel almost happy, exhilarated with fatigue. She went into the family room, sucking on a great spoon of dough, and stood there, swaying, watching her sweet sleeping children: listening to them breathe.

  Four

  Daisy couldn’t help but laugh. She was thinking of the little bags of surprises she had given to her children that morning, so that in their eagerness to look at their loot they wouldn’t cry to see their mother leave. She had given them some candy, some Little Golden Books, and some cheap dime-store toys, including, for each of them, a yellow and red plastic harmonica. The children loved harmonicas and played them ceaselessly when they had them; Daisy usually threw them away as soon as one entered the house, because the noise was wildly unnerving even to the most doting of mothers. Jenny usually contented herself with walking around the house simply inhaling and exhaling over and over again at one certain note, making a sound exactly like that of a French police car siren. But Danny attempted to play real songs on his harmonica, and was inventive and tireless. Neither he nor Jenny seemed bothered by the fact that their music was dissonant, loud, and painful—just as children didn’t seem to be driven mad by other children’s shrieking, wailing, or sniveling—and they could stay in the same room together playing harmonica duets until Daisy’s head ached and she found herself tense with inexplicable rage. Well, she hoped that the children would like their presents, and that they would play their harmonica duets for their father when he returned home from work that evening, and when he awoke first thing in the morning. It was a trivial sort of treachery, giving the children harmonicas when she left, but it was the best she could do in the situation, and it gave her a real satisfaction; it made her laugh.

  It was two-thirty in the afternoon, and Daisy was almost at the end of her four-hour flight from Chicago to Vancouver. She had truly enjoyed the flight. As the plane lifted off the ground with its almost unimaginable speed and ease, she had suddenly felt set free—released, relieved. Danny and Jenny were both over their illnesses, and Daisy was exhausted from the constant pressure and worry. Now she was wearing fresh, clean clothes and she was sitting alone with an entire coach-class airplane seat to herself. It was real luxury—no sweet but wriggling child could climb up on her now to accidentally kick her in her big belly with a careless knee or to spill a drink or wipe sticky hands on her pretty dress. For the first time in four years she was completely alone, with only her own needs to tend to—and she was traveling toward her mother, who would give her the help and advice she so desperately needed. It was lovely. There were reliable babysitters in the house with the children now, and they would be there every day, and Daisy’s friends Karen and Jane had promised to drop in every day to check on things. Paul would be with the children at night. Daisy had an entire week of freedom to look forward to. She would rest, relax, and tell her mother about the mess her life was in, and get a good full helping of love and support to carry back with her to face the frightening future.

  The future. Daisy had been too totally involved with the real struggle of getting through each day to think of the future, but as the plane ascended into the sky and gently leveled off, she tried to gather together her thoughts to plan. She settled back in her seat and folded her hands on her belly and thought how the very plane that was carrying her seemed both a metaphor and a sign. Rising so gracefully from the pull of earth, it seemed to say: Look, I am weighted, too, and tied to the world, I am burdened with life, and yet for a while I can set myself free. And though that escape took power, perhaps it was the power of imagination that was the most important of all. So Daisy wanted to use her powers of imagination, she wanted to summon up her courage and intelligence to think of the future, to plan.

  There would be Danny and Jenny, and there would be the new baby. That was always first. And Paul would be gone; she would be alone. It was hard to go much further than that; it was so different from anything she had ever planned on. At some point Daisy knew she would have to break down and cry for herself, to mourn and wail over all that she had lost—and sometimes it seemed that she had lost the meaning of her life. If Paul did not want her and his children, who would? She had been too busy caring for the children to grieve for what she had lost, but that grief was there, building up inside her, as real and heavy a weight as the baby she carried. Perhaps, Daisy hoped, when she was with her mother she would be able to let go, let down, collapse and cry. She hadn’t yet told her mother about the coming divorce; she wanted to tell her face-to-face. She wanted to fall into her mother’s comforting arms and cry; she wanted her mother to take away the pain. In fact she did not want to face the pain until her mother was there to help her. When she had married Paul, she had thought she was a grown-up, that she would not need her mother again. But for the past few weeks she had been dreaming of her mother, of her mother’s tender warmth and ample soothing love, and it was the kindest thing in Daisy’s life that the plane was carrying her toward that.

  So—the future. It might also mean moving out of their home, the graceful welcoming house that Daisy had painted and oiled and polished and made her own. Now it was early November. She had persuaded Paul to let them stay in the house through Christmas at least; she had tried to persuade him to let them stay in the house until the end of March when the new baby would be born. But Paul had pressed her; he needed the money, and the real-estate agents were pressing him, wanting to show their house to clients who were eager to find a large house on the lake. Also, Paul had said, and actually he had been right, it would be much easier for Daisy to go ahead and move before the baby came. Afterward she would be so tired. If she moved out in January, that would give her two months to get herself and the children settled in a new home before the baby disrupted their lives. Daisy had acquiesced, more out of a sense of unreality than of accord. And Paul, relieved by what he took to be her reasonableness, offered to show the house in the evenings while he was living there—two or three people were almost ready to buy the house simply from seeing it from the street—so that Daisy wouldn’t be bothered. He had even asked Mrs. Wentworth to look for a pleasant little home in a good neighborhood for Daisy and the children; he was trying to be helpful, he said.

  “You’re in the wrong profession, Paul,” Daisy had said to him once over the phone. “You should be a used-car dealer. You’d make a killing.”

  “What?” Paul had asked, an edge of fear in his voice.

  “Never mind,” Daisy had said. “Never mind.” She had known that nastiness would do no good, but the temptation was always so strong; she wanted to scratch at Paul, to cause him little wounds, because the one he was dealing her went so deep.

  Of course she knew being nasty would not help. The only thing that would really change matters was money. Daisy sat in the plane, unable to think much further than that: that she needed comfort from her mother, and she wanted money from her mother, too. Oh, how Daisy hoped her mother would offer her some money, enough money so that Daisy could keep her house. She hoped her mother would just give her the money with the easy generosity with which she had once given Daisy bikes and party dresses and dolls. Yet she was not sure just how much available money her mother had, or what righ
ts she as a grown child had to ask for such a large sum. Was she being too demanding, too greedy? How could she bring up the question if her mother did not immediately make the offer? And what would she do if her mother had really changed? Daisy had been taken aback a few days earlier when her mother had said on the phone, “Oh, I’m glad you’re not planning to bring the children. I was afraid you would want to.” What kind of grandmother was she who did not want to see her grandchildren? It was obvious from her letters that she had changed, and Daisy tried to prepare herself. Still, her mother was her mother, Daisy thought stubbornly. Her mother would have to help.

  The no-smoking, fasten-seat-belt lights flashed on and Daisy looked out the window. The plane was descending through clouds, and Daisy could see little but mist and flat, gray land. This was beautiful Vancouver? Maybe her mother had gone mad. She took up her purse and combed her hair again and put on fresh lipstick. A few nights of good sleep had restored her face to its normal prettiness, and excitement made her eyes shine. The plane landed with a customary bump, and Daisy relaxed in her seat as it rushed to a stop, then headed in toward the gate. She let almost all the other travelers fill the aisle and leave before getting up herself; she wanted to do it all slowly, to savor every moment. She loved her mother, she had always loved and adored her mother, and a gentle joy was spreading through her now that the actual moment of being with her again was so close. She left the plane and impatiently went through the routine of claiming her luggage and going through customs. Finally she was able to pass through the glass doors and out to the waiting area. She looked about, smiling with anticipation.

  But she could not find her mother. There was a crowd of people milling about, some waving, some grabbing other people out of the line of arriving passengers, but her mother was not in the crowd. Daisy glanced at her watch; the plane had been a few minutes late: her mother should be here, she had said that she would be. Daisy set her heavy suitcases on the floor and just stood there helplessly. It was not like her mother not to be on time. A few feet away a slender older woman, chic and stunning and vaguely familiar, smiled at Daisy. Daisy returned the smile politely, looked away, then looked back, stunned.