Three Women at the Water's Edge

by Nancy Thayer

  And of course the absence of Margaret in the house was noticeable. That is, it changed everything absolutely and completely. Nothing was the same. The very furniture that stood where it had stood for twenty years wore a different mien, was colder, less attractive, less receptive. Dale had to admit it—when she finally figured out what it was that was troubling her—she hated the house without her mother in it. She had never thought that much about her mother’s presence before; it had been her father whom she thought had given the spirit to the house, who had made the house seem a triumphant and exciting and protective place to live. Her mother had seemed only a sort of ambulatory bit of furniture, constant in function and intent, necessary as, say, a floor is necessary, but then not any more noticeable. But with Margaret gone the house did seem cold and barren, even with her father there. Dale’s bedroom did not seem the same. Margaret had made the curtains, had made the bedspread, had crocheted the pink-and-white afghan that was folded over the footboard of the bed. But now these seemed only things, material items getting a bit worse for wear, a bit sun-streaked and time-worn, which would bring very little money in a tag sale. Dale finally realized that just being in her old home without her mother in it gave her the creeps. It did not feel good; it felt awful. Something was lacking—a warmth, an energy, an invisible dispensation of affection and acceptance. No wonder her father felt so desolate; she could not blame him for that. But why didn’t he do something, why didn’t he move out, or bring a brand new chirpy wife in to brighten up the place; why didn’t he at least get a live-in maid and cook? My God, he could certainly afford it. What was he trying to do to himself? Did he think that by living in this house that so purely reeked of the loss of Margaret he still in some way had Margaret? That he still in a way was attached to her, and that another person or house would for once and for all sever that attachment? Oh, it was too much for Dale, it was disagreeable; she couldn’t puzzle it out; she didn’t want to: why should she have to! She had never in her life felt such relief as she felt the day she left her father’s to fly to Milwaukee to visit Daisy.

  “Can you come back for Christmas?” Harry had asked Dale as he drove her to the airport. He had kept his face toward the road, and to his credit had kept his voice firm and unemotional; still Dale felt he was wheedling her.

  “I don’t know yet, Daddy,” Dale had answered nervously.

  “If it’s a matter of money—”

  “No, no, it’s not that. I’m just not sure what my plans are yet.” She was planning to go skiing in Vermont with Hank. But she could not tell him that; he had not been receptive to any talk about Hank; it had made him irritable. “Perhaps you could have Daisy and her children down, or go up there. I know she would love to see you, and she’s having such a tough time these days.”

  “Um,” Harry had said. Daisy was not his favorite daughter; Dale was. And Daisy looked so much like Margaret. And Daisy had flown out to visit Margaret; Dale had told him that much, so Daisy would be on Margaret’s side. He was not very interested in seeing Daisy right now, though he did still love her, she was his first child.

  At the tiny midwestern airport, Dale had embraced her father, and then in a fit of remorse and affection, had taken him by the shoulders and looked him in the eye as if he were someone not her superior and said, “Daddy, please, for my sake, for your sake, try to get out to see people more. Start dating—don’t cringe—there are lots of lovely women in Liberty who worship you. I can’t stand to think of you going on and on there all alone when there are so many people who would be overjoyed to have your company. You can’t grieve for Mother forever—she is never going to come back, never, won’t you please accept that? And try to move on? You’re young, and handsome, and—and many women would be”—Dale had faltered, embarrassed to be verging on such sexual territory with her father—“many women would love to be a companion to you. Or even to marry you. And I would be so much happier if I knew you had a friend, someone to take care of you a bit. I mean, your breakfasts do leave something to be desired.” She tried to end jokingly, with an affectionate but definite point.

  But her father had pulled back. “You don’t understand, Dale,” he had said, shaking his head, his tired old head. “You are of a different generation. You know how to make and break relationships easily. It’s different for me.”

  “Daddy, please,” Dale had cried, almost desperate, “don’t be this way. I can’t bear to think of you living so unhappily from day to day. It’s not right. It’s not you. I want you to be happy and strong like you used to be. Come on!”

  But the flight was called and people began moving toward the door, and at last all Dale and her father could do was to hug each other quickly, clumsily.

  “I love you, Daddy,” Dale said finally. And she would have cried, but her father had beaten her to it. Tears seeped out of his eyes and ran in rivulets down his wrinkled face. Dale had stared at her father one long moment, absolutely sick with despair, with anger, with what she had to admit was disgust. She turned and went out to board the plane.

  “Oh, poor Daddy,” Daisy said, shaking her head. “Oh, what’s going to happen to him?”

  “He’ll be okay,” Dale finished lamely. “He’ll be fine. I think it would be a great idea if you and the children could go down for Christmas. Or invite him here. It would do wonders for him to see the children, and to be away from the house. Why don’t you invite him up?”

  “Oh, I don’t know, Dale,” Daisy said, “I don’t know.” She sipped her coffee and then put her elbows on the table and leaned her head on her hands, her chin digging into the crosshatch of fingers. “Although maybe it’s not a bad idea. I mean I keep worrying about the children having a man around, and if nothing else, Daddy is a man. And he always was good with them; he always held them a lot. Well, I’ll think about it. It might be a good idea. I certainly would like to have someone else around at Christmas, but I wasn’t thinking of Dad.”

  “Now tell me about Mother,” Dale said.

  “Oh, well, I told you most of it on the way from the airport. She looks terrific, she’s all skinny and svelte and chic, all those things she never was before. It really is shocking. And her house is so clean and cold. But it’s not the change in appearances that upset me; it’s the change in her entire personality. I just don’t understand how someone could change so completely this way. She always used to be—well, you know—Mother. She always used to be so good and kind and loving. Always there whenever we needed a shoulder to cry on, someone to listen to our problems, to cheer us up and tell us what to do. She really used to care about us, to love us. And now—now she doesn’t seem interested in people. I mean, she was not interested in me. She seemed bored by me. She seemed to think that I was making a fuss over nothing, that Paul’s leaving me and my having to move and all was simply a trivial matter that any intelligent adult should be able to handle quietly and quickly, without bothering anyone else. She seemed cold. She almost seemed hateful—no, that would be too strong an emotion. She just was distant, and uninterested, and subtly superior. I didn’t get any feeling that she cared for me at all, that she cared whether I was happy or not. She kept saying that she had been good for forty-eight years of her life and now she intended to be happy, to stop taking care of other people and to take care of herself. Well.” Daisy stopped talking and her eyes glazed over as she sank her chin into her hands, remembering.

  “Do you think she’s sick?” Dale asked. “I mean mentally sort of bonkers?”

  “Well, she doesn’t seem to be,” Daisy said. “I mean if you were anyone else but her daughter, or someone who had known her from Liberty, you would think she was simply a charming and independent woman, a bit brusque and chilly, perhaps, but terribly witty and intelligent. She suddenly seems to know all sorts of things that I never realized she was aware of. I mean about music and books and architecture and so on. It’s amazing. It’s like Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde. But no, I can’t say she’s crazy. She’s just gone selfish, that’s all. And she
’s gone selfish at the time in my life when I need her most, and I don’t know how to handle it.”

  Dale, afraid that Daisy would become maudlin, jumped up from the breakfast table. “Let me help you do these dishes,” she said.

  “Thanks, Dale,” Daisy said, and lumbered to her feet. For a few moments the sisters were quiet, involved in the movements of clearing the table and rinsing the dishes and organizing the kitchen. Daisy went off to the family room and collected the children’s breakfast dishes. When she returned, she leaned against the stove and watched Dale putting the dishes into the dishwasher, and said, “But tell me about Hank. You’ve never told me much about him. Are you in love with him? What’s he like?”

  But Dale began running the hot water and furiously scouring out the skillet that Daisy had heated the sausages in. She was suddenly superstitious, afraid to discuss Hank in this house so abundant with problems, as if speaking of him here would make him seem like only another problem—which perhaps he was. For she was in love with him, she continued to be in love with him, her love for him grew so that she knew she would rather die than live a life without him in it. And she felt that he loved her in the same way. And yet—and yet, if this was what love led to…She had been nineteen when Daisy had married Paul, and she could remember how glorious it had all seemed, the brilliance of joy that Daisy had worn about her for days and days, for months, before and after the wedding. To believe that Daisy and Paul had not loved each other as much as Dale and Hank loved each other was surely deceptive and the worst kind of snobbery; she could not set herself apart, above, quite so much. And what about her mother and father, what about Margaret and Harry? Had all her senses misled her? Had her mother never loved her father? Oh, no, that really could not be the case. Dale had to believe that her mother and father had truly loved each other—and look what their love had led to. Look what love led to; was it as Daisy had said the night before, lying naked on her back like an exposed, half mad, old fat Cassandra; perhaps what she said was true. Perhaps this was the way things went: youth—love—children—loss. And it seemed now from what Dale could see, in the swollen devastation of her sister, in the grieving huddle of her father’s bones about himself, that the loss of love was so dreadful, so complete, so painful and ruinous and torturous—so unbearable—that if one had any sense at all, one would do all she could to avoid it. To step aside, off the path that led toward love and children and loss, even if that meant standing always and forever alone.

  “Dale?” Daisy said. “Dale, I’m talking to you! What in the world are you thinking about?”

  Dale turned from the sink and dried her hands on a terry-cloth towel patterned with a red rooster standing in yellow flowers. “Daisy,” she asked, “is it worth it? All this”—and she spread her hands to indicate the mess, the physical mess, dried clots of Play-Doh and cardboard boxes and ransacked cupboards—“all this mess and disorder, all your loneliness and sorrow—was marrying Paul worth all this? Are you still glad you loved him—married him?”

  “Why, yes, of course,” Daisy answered instantly, wide-eyed with earnestness. “Because of the children.”

  —

  Dale went upstairs to shower and dress, then came back down, determined to help Daisy pack and clean house before they had to leave for the airport. But she went from room to room, bewildered, not knowing where or how to start. It was all such a jumble. In fact, it seemed insane.

  “Daisy,” Dale said, when she discovered Daisy in the family room, trying to squeeze Jenny into a pair of red cotton coveralls and a striped sweater with a duck on it, “why is it all such a complete mess? I don’t understand.”

  “You mean the boxes, the house? Well, look, Dale, first of all I don’t know when we’re going to move. It could be anytime after Christmas. I’ve agreed to move out thirty days after an offer is accepted, and an offer could be accepted any day now. That means I would have to move out right after Christmas. So I’ve got to get fairly well packed, and get ready for Christmas, too. I don’t think you can imagine what an undertaking it is to make a good Christmas for children. I have to”—she looked down at Jenny—”get ready for Santa Claus, I have to decorate the house, bake cookies, put up the crèche; I am determined to give my children a lovely, serene, rich Christmas this year, because I think it is important. I mean Christmas is one of those times that accumulates and accumulates through the years, like a tree growing each year until there is a marvelous forest one can return to and wander back through, whenever one wants, in our thoughts. Don’t you feel that way? It is so important. And I will not let one year go by with a stunted tree; I will not let this mess with Paul completely ruin my children’s lives. So I have to plan on spending time getting ready for Christmas. And we do have to live here, stay here, in this house, until we move out. So I can’t pack the everyday things—and there are so many everyday things! And then I pack unnecessary things, like the crystal, although it seems wrong to have the crystal packed at Christmas, I’ll miss it—I pack the crystal, carefully, and look, it doesn’t quite fill the whole box. So I have to go around the house, searching for something that will fit in the top of the box, something that is unnecessary, that is not too heavy to put on top of the crystal. And so on. Oh, God, I know it’s a horrible mess, don’t think I don’t know, my God, I live in it, I walk about in it every day. And I hate every minute of it, I hate leaving this house. It means so much to me. It makes me miserable, sick to my stomach every time I pack a box, so then I have to stop and go do something else, lie down awhile, or eat. Oh, God, Dale, it’s just the worst thing in the world.”

  “Well,” Dale said, “I really can’t see how I can help you pack, but let me clean your house for you. Why don’t you go rest and I’ll watch the children and tidy up? I’d like to do it, I really would, Daisy; I need to do it, it will give me a chance to see what life would be like if I were married and had children.”

  “Oh, Dale, I don’t want you to clean my house,” Daisy said halfheartedly. “But I am tired. I mean we stayed up so late. I usually fall asleep right after the children do.”

  “Well, go up and lie down and rest,” Dale said. “This is your only chance; I’ve got to leave at three. Go on, please.”

  So Daisy waddled up the stairs, pulling her robe up about her so she wouldn’t trip, and Dale sat down on the floor of the family room and played for a while with Danny and Jenny. They were such pretty children. They had fat cheeks, rosy and dimpled, and little white squares of teeth, like toy teeth; Dale loved to see the teeth when the children smiled. They were delighted by her interest and affection, and they brought out their favorite toys, and Jenny sat on her lap and cuddled while Dale played garage with Danny. Dale had never had much interest in little children; she preferred young adolescents, kids who could share jokes and knowledge, who could carry on a decent conversation. For that reason she had gone into secondary-school teaching instead of elementary. But now as she sat on the floor with her nephew and niece she became slowly aware of their charm, their real entrancing charm. First of all, of course, there was their size: They were so tiny, such miniature people, and as Dale held them or felt them topple against her, she grew amazed that such small creatures should contain all the necessary human parts: a heart, a spleen, lungs, a stomach, intestines, a brain, tiny veins and capillaries. She thought their organs must be like little trinkets, like baubles, that for them to be of such a frivolous size and yet to work such wonders—pumping blood, digesting food, bringing in air, keeping the small body alive—must be a real kind of miracle. So the two children were both delightful, like toys, and yet enormous in significance, showing how the force of life is not one only of brute power, but also of clever delicacy.

  And then they did talk, they did try to carry on a conversation, and they were not jaded or brittle like the students Dale taught in Maine, who came slouching in reeking of the smoke of some kind of cigarette or other, who pretended to feel no excitement at any wonderful thing, not the workings of the human body no
r the intricacies of a leaf. Everything was of vast interest to both Danny and Jenny, although Jenny’s attention span was not very long. Dale told the children that she taught French and biology, and she spoke a little French for them, and taught them a few words—how easily, with what willing readiness they learned—they were not constrained by fears of appearing foolish; and Dale realized that at their young age it was all the same to them, English or French, those were all new sounds they must learn to shape in their mouths, new sounds they must try to connect a meaning to. They were without embarrassment. That was the important thing. “Bonjour, chérie,” Jenny said sweetly, perfectly, as if she had been born French. “Je m’appelle Danny,” Danny said. For one weird moment Dale had a glimpse of what the world must be like to someone two or four, how vast and peculiar the world must seem, full of awesome and arbitrary bits of sounds and objects that must somehow be brought down, like chairs and broomsticks floating haphazardly through the air, into a sort of organized room so that one could walk and sit. It was eerie. And of course the only way to get by was not to be embarrassed; you had to reach out and snatch at a word or idea quickly, before it floated away, and by saying it you possessed it, you made it your own, brought it to earth, and kept it, though sometimes you must stomp on it a bit, to make sure it did not escape. Oh, it was eerie, frightening, wonderful, exciting. Everything was possible to children; so they believed in Santa Claus and goblins and shadows and light. But mostly they believed in adults, in the wisdom and goodness of adults, they believed in them without embarrassment, with total surrender, and with all their complete little lives at stake. Look how easily they believed that the sounds Dale was making—”Je t’aime, ma petite”—were real words which had some worth. Look how they trusted her with their minds. My God, they were marvelous, children were, Dale thought, they were so brave. It was their courage that impressed her most; it almost moved her to tears.