Three Women at the Water's Edge

by Nancy Thayer

  Last year—it had been just last year, in May when Dale had returned from France—Margaret had been really intrigued by her second daughter and had wanted to reach out to her, to get to know her. She had wanted both to call Dale back into her own world, the world of churches and kitchens and secure family life where Margaret felt she still had a place, and to have Dale pull her out into the rest of the world; because at that time Margaret knew she wanted to change, knew she wanted to leave, but didn’t know how. She had already lost a lot of weight, and was proud of the fact, but she had not yet grown her hair out and dyed it, she had not yet changed her style of dress.

  “You look good, Mom,” Dale had said casually, sitting on a kitchen chair in her own Levi’s and blue work shirt.

  “Do you think so?” Margaret asked, pleased. “I’ve lost a lot of weight. And I swim a lot. I feel much better.”

  “You’ll probably live longer,” Dale said, and sipped her coffee. That was all the weight loss had meant to Dale, that her dowdy mother would not have as much strain on her heart. Oh, it’s not fair, Margaret had wanted to cry out: look at you! For Dale had not put on any lipstick or eye liner, but still her face shone with the health and beauty of youth. It was not even blotched yet with the fatigue and blots of motherhood as Daisy’s had become; Dale was as perfect as a ripe peach. And she was wearing, she wore constantly, lovely hoop earrings and lots of silver or gold rings and bracelets which she had bought on the sidewalks of Paris or been given by her lovers. Margaret wanted to know about that, she wanted to sit down with Dale and hear all about those sidewalks, those lovers; she had seen enough of the museums and castles, which were after all only another sort of confining home. She had wanted Dale to give her a picture of the world as only a free, beautiful, intelligent, well-educated young woman could have. She had wanted Dale to lure her away from her safe clean kitchen with tales of a complicated, messy, exciting other world.

  But Dale had not been interested in this; she had not sensed Margaret’s needs. She kept asking questions about Margaret’s friends, Margaret’s charities, in a manner that was heartbreaking to Margaret because Dale was so obviously covering her condescension and lack of interest. Margaret saw clearly how little Dale thought of her and her life, how bored she was with it all, how she was working at being attentive and nice. Margaret knew she was not fascinating to Dale; it was Harry who fascinated Dale. Margaret was only comfortable, well used, well worn, like an old coat, an old dog, an old blanket. And Dale had grown past the need for old comforts. She had gone far past Margaret, and had no thought of trying to bring Margaret with her. She did not even very much want to tell Margaret about her new world.

  Dale had talked about the new job she would have in Maine, about her interviews with the school board and principal, about Carol, the woman who would share an apartment with her. She did talk a bit about Rocheport, the ocean, and so on, but she didn’t say—as Margaret had overheard her saying to her father—”Oh, you should see it; you should come back for a visit before winter comes, it’s so beautiful there.” Margaret had been reduced to discussing pots and pans and dishes and towels: was there anything from home Dale needed? So they had gone through the house, scavenging up the necessary homely, homey items Dale might need to set up housekeeping, to make the rudimentary backdrop for her new life.

  “Don’t you want to take your stuffed animals?” Margaret had asked, as she stood with her daughter in Dale’s girlish pink bedroom. “Or any of these pictures?”

  Dale had shrugged her shoulders at all of it. “Oh, I don’t think so, Mom,” she said. “I don’t really—God, I can’t even remember half the stuff. And I’ve got so much junk with me that I picked up in Europe. I don’t want to clutter up the apartment too much. No, no, I don’t see anything here that I want. Why don’t you give it all to Goodwill or one of the church bazaars?”

  “Oh, no,” Margaret had said. “You don’t want me to give these things away, really, do you? Why don’t I just keep them here, just keep the room as it is, so you’ll feel at home when you come back to visit.” (Later, in Vancouver, after she had herself so easily left that home and most of the possessions gathered from her twenty-five years in it, Margaret was amazed to think of how upsetting this conversation was.)

  Dale had smiled at her mother with what seemed to be a fond disdain. “You’re sweet, Mom,” she said. “You’re really the sweetest thing. But all these butterflies and flowers and kittens and posters—even the ones of Santana and Mick Jagger—well, they just make me want to laugh. Listen, I have some nude prints I’m going to hang that would make these things blush. Let’s give this stuff to Danny and Jenny. At least let’s give them the stuffed animals; the kids would love the stuffed animals.” And she had laughed, shaking her head at her adolescent follies, and dismissed her room, the room which held her past life in Margaret’s house, with an indifferent ease that made Margaret want to cry. But that huge stuffed giraffe, Margaret wanted to call out, I bought you that when you were sick in bed with a flu that almost killed you your sophomore year in high school. And she could see Dale clearly as she had been then, curled under a blanket, delirious with fever, while Margaret sat at her side touching her forehead with a cool wet blue washcloth.

  “I think I’ll walk down to Dad’s office and say hello to old Trudy,” Dale had said. But Margaret knew that Dale was not that interested in chatting with Harry’s secretary. Dale just wanted to go be with her father. And Margaret had had to let her go.

  So now why on earth was Dale spending the time and money to fly out to visit her? Margaret wondered. She looked at her watch, saw that she had to leave now to meet the plane, and rose from her bed. She smoothed out her dress, looked at herself in the mirror, and tentatively said, “Damn.” She picked up her car keys with shaking hands. She did not want to see Dale; she did not want to subject her old body to Dale’s young sharp scrutiny. She thought of changing her clothes—perhaps Dale would find Margaret too colorful and ridiculous; Margaret could almost hear Dale’s clever amused voice: “Oh, Mother, look at you! What a gas!”

  “Oh, well,” Margaret said, and went to the phone.

  —

  Dale’s plane was early, and Dale walked in the large waiting room at the airport, trying to collect her thoughts. She had so much to say, and it was so important; she felt as though she were rehearsing for a play or a performance or even a trial; she had a cause to plead. She decided that she would get the business about Daddy and his fiancée over with first; she and Daisy had discussed this for hours on the phone. Dale had thought that their mother would take Daddy’s coming marriage with delight and gratitude, but Daisy had been worried.

  “Mother’s been able to be an independent woman just because Daddy was still in love with her,” Daisy had said. “But now that he’s marrying Trudy, it will be a real severing of their ties, she will realize that she’s really alone. It’s so hard to be alone,” Daisy had said. “It’s the hardest thing in the world. I really think someone should be with Mother when she hears the news. I think you should fly out to be with her. I’d do it, but I’ve got to get these attic rooms ready to rent before the baby comes.”

  “All right,” Dale had said finally, “I’ll go. I suppose I should see Mother anyway; check her out and see if she’s stable.” For she and Daisy believed that Margaret might somehow be headed for a mental institution. Dale was afraid that she would find her mother wild-haired and over-rouged, trying suddenly to look young and sexy. Her letters were so bright and chipper, all about plays and lectures and ballets. Dale was afraid that her mother had changed so much so suddenly that she might really be about to flip over the edge. After all, what did her mother know about lectures and plays and ballet? And she couldn’t let Daisy handle it, she couldn’t let Daisy even continue to worry, because Daisy had enough going on in her own life now.

  Poor Daisy: she wasn’t going to be able to get nearly so much money from Paul as she wanted, and their enormous house was not selling, no one was eve
n looking at it, and while Daisy was doing her best to work hard and optimistically, she was frantically worried about money. Dale had encouraged her to fix up the attic to rent out, and in a fit of inspiration suggested that Daisy take all the furniture from their old bedrooms in Liberty to help set up the rooms. When their father had called with the amazing news that he was going to marry Trudy, his former nurse-secretary, Dale had tried to talk him into giving Daisy the money so she could keep her house, but Harry, who also seemed to have undergone some sort of psychological transformation, had said, no, he needed all his money for his new life. After all, he pointed out, he had already given Daisy twenty thousand dollars. Margaret had most of the money, he had said, and he wanted to spend what he had left on his new life: he and Trudy were going to shut the practice down to part time and let most of their patients go into Iowa City. He and Trudy wanted to buy a little vacation house in Arizona where they could spend most of the winters. Arizona? Dale had thought, Jesus Christ. Mother in Vancouver, Daddy in Arizona! But Dale had called Daisy, and Daisy had called their father, and Dale had called their father, too, and it was finally decided that as soon as there was a break in the weather Harry and Trudy would pay a moving company to bring a vanload of furniture up to Daisy.

  “Don’t forget the cedar chest full of blankets,” Dale had said. “Don’t forget the boxes of old dishes down in the basement. And send everything from Daisy’s room and mine, and send everything from the basement rec room, the chairs, that old sofa, the end tables, the lamps, everything. Daddy, it’s the least you can do for Daisy. She doesn’t have the money to buy new stuff for the rooms. Do you want me to fly out to help with the packing?”

  But Harry had said with great alacrity that no, no, Dale was not to fly out, he would send everything.

  “Trudy won’t want all of Mom’s old stuff hanging around to remind her of her place in that house,” Dale had insisted, pulling every punch she could. She had grown to feel so protective of her older sister, and she had determined that if Daisy wanted so badly to keep her house, then she should keep it. It didn’t seem too much to want, and it wasn’t as if Daisy weren’t working for it herself, for she was. She had cleaned the attic of what junk was in it, and scrubbed and waxed the floors all by herself. She had spent days driving to different plumbing firms, talking with different contractors, in order to get the cheapest bid on having a small kitchen put in. Dale called Daisy at least twice a week to hear how things were progressing, and sometimes she was caught up in Daisy’s enthusiasm and longed to be there herself, nailing large bright brass hooks into the wall.

  “I can rent each of the four bedrooms at one hundred and twenty-five dollars a month, at least, and that makes five hundred dollars,” Daisy had explained. “Daddy said he would send up the refrigerator we used to have in the basement rec room, so all I need to buy is a little stove. The yellow armchair from your old bedroom will go in the far bedroom under the slanted roof. Did I tell you Daddy said he’d send up the fold-out bed from the back porch? That’s pretty ratty, so I’ll keep my eye out for a twin bed on sale, but I’ll put the wicker chair from my old bedroom in the room that has that fold-out bed, and my old white chest and bookcase.”

  Daisy would go on and on about the attic apartment, and although Dale’s phone bill for the month of January was colossal, Dale didn’t care. She was so proud of Daisy for her efforts, and she could see how important all this was to her: It was as if Daisy had watched the complicated edifice of her marriage crumble about her, then had set out to rebuild and reinforce at least the house she lived in, in order to have some shelter and structure in her life. Dale wanted to help. She wanted to help because she loved her sister, and because she was now on the side of optimism and enterprise: She wanted things to turn out well for others so that she could believe they could turn out well for her.

  But just this past week, Daisy had called in tears to say that they had to forget the whole thing. Corinne Wentworth had showed up with some serious buyers, a manager for one of the largest firms in Milwaukee, and his wife. The realtor was showing the couple other houses, but was sure that they liked Daisy’s house best. “It’s no good, it’s no use, I’ll have to sell the house,” Daisy had said. “There’s nothing else I can do. Paul wants his money, and I don’t have it, and I haven’t heard from Mother and doubt that I ever will.”

  Dale did not think she could bear to have Daisy lose her house. Her father had told her that her mother had all the money; the only solution was for Margaret to give Daisy the money, and that was all there was to it. And if she didn’t, or wouldn’t, or couldn’t, well then her mother would have to help somehow. At least, Dale thought, Margaret could fly out to Milwaukee to help Daisy with her new baby and her house hunting. After all, Daisy really needed help. Dale couldn’t go; she had to teach. Mother couldn’t expect to just lie about in loony luxury while her daughter faced the crisis of her life.

  Hank had driven Dale to the airport in Boston on Friday; he had arranged to take the day off and planned to spend the weekend with his parents and then to pick up Dale on Sunday night to drive her back to Maine.

  “God, I’m going to miss you so much,” he had said to her as they stood holding each other loosely while waiting for Dale’s plane to be announced.

  “I know,” Dale said. “I’ll miss you. But I really have to do this. I really want to do this.” Leaning up against his long strong body, looking at his beautiful green eyes, she had almost lost her impetus, she had almost said: oh, let’s forget this, let’s just spend the weekend in some motel. For now that she had worked a small way past the need of her love for him, she was caught up in the beauty of it. How she enjoyed him, how she enjoyed just the sight of him, and the way the sound of his voice moved her. There were times when they would both be tired and slightly bored with their days, cranky because of the cold gray weather, and still she would want to hear him speak, just to speak, so that she could feel the tenor of his voice move through her, causing her great physical pleasure, no matter what he was saying. One night when they had not seen each other all day and had exhausted all topics after an hour’s phone conversation, Dale had asked Hank to simply read to her from the day’s newspaper; and, laughing, he had done it. How his voice pleased her. What beauty there was in it, and what pleasure she took from that beauty. And how intelligent he was, how sensible, how helpful he was to her. How much it seemed they had in common! His suggestions for running the film series were almost always so perfect that they seemed what she would have thought of in the next moment, or if she had only had the sense. When she had told him of her revelation about teaching, about her sudden realization of love for her work, he had understood, and had agreed with her, had admitted that he felt very much the same sort of thing. Even her feelings about her family, which she was only now coming to examine, were strengthened by the long talks she shared with him, when he discussed his feelings toward his own family. Hank had adored his parents as a child, but came to disapprove of them, to want to really separate himself from them as a young man, when he realized that he could not stay married to the woman they had chosen or pursue the sort of life they thought he ought to lead. So he had for a time even hated his family; but now he was trying—even though it was often awkward, often uncomfortable—to get to know them again, to say to them: This is who I am, and I am still your son, and let’s be friendly toward one another. Just so Dale was realizing that for a while now she had to be the real adult, the responsible one, while her father went through this hasty marriage and Daisy went through her divorce and her mother went through—what?—Lord knew what, Dale thought. A mental breakdown? But it was okay that it was all happening now, Dale thought, for she was beginning to feel like a grown-up, she was beginning to put on the responsibilities of a grown-up as one puts on appropriate clothes for a job interview: she was taking care of her courses, and running the high school film series, and still finding the time and energy within herself to attend to these unsettled people who were related
to her by blood. It even seemed logical, suitable, that all this should be happening to her parents and sister at this fairly stable and truly happy time in her own life. And the best of it this weekend was that she felt that she could leave Hank and come back to him, and he would not die, she would not die, he would be waiting for her in Boston, and he would still love her, he would not stop loving her while she was gone. All the magic was still there, but the good sturdy settledness of it was beginning to be there, too, buoying her up.

  Still, as Dale sat on the plane flying toward Vancouver, she found herself thinking less and less of Hank and more and more about her mother. Dale felt a sort of doting sympathy for her father, who had been in such misery but now was in a state of childish, self-centered happiness; she felt great compassion and protectiveness for Daisy, who was in such a terribly difficult situation in life right now; and she felt really nothing but irritation and anger toward her mother, who had been the cause of her father’s grief and was refusing to be the source of any strength or consolation or assistance toward Daisy. Dale went over and over it all on the plane, and when she hit the Vancouver airport she felt as adamant and forceful as shot from a cannon. And as she waited and waited for her tardy mother, she grew more and more energetic with anger. She was almost boiling over with words, words she wanted to shout at Margaret. If her mother had gone nuts, Dale would just have to shock her back to her senses. Silly old Mother, she thought, and wished she didn’t have to spend any more time with her than would be necessary to get her to do what was needed. Their mother had always championed Daisy; it was inconsiderate, it was simply immoral for her to be unsupportive at this point in Daisy’s life. Oh, Dale had her words ready like bullets, like arrows, like cannon shot. She paced about the airport, her canvas knapsack over her shoulder, grinding her teeth, nearly muttering to herself, wishing her mother would hurry up and arrive.