Daisies

by Joshua Senter

  With the arrival of their first baby, Kristy, Sheila found her calling in life. She was to be a mother. Suddenly her days were filled. And at night she would report to Darrel all that she and Kristy had done the day before, as though he was the boss of the family and expected his dutiful employees to check in. Darrel delighted in Kristy, but having her changed the dynamic between husband and wife. Just as Sheila now saw herself first and foremost as a mother, so Darrel, too, began to see her this way. And that’s why Sheila understood on some level the first time he cheated on her.

  It was August and St. Louis was experiencing a heat wave that didn’t suit Kristy. She was developing a rash that the doctor advised be treated with a prescribed lotion and cooler temperatures for the baby. So, in the absence of an air-conditioner at the house and with Darrel’s approval, Sheila packed herself and Kristy up in the Mustang and headed to Oklahoma City for a visit, where Gwen had promised temperatures were milder.

  By that time, Willie had made his way from truck driver of refrigerated meats to truck driver for Fenny Parker Oil to oil derrick drill hand, to oil derrick field manager, to one of Fenny Parker’s most promising suits. But just because Willie was making more money than ever before, he and Gwen hadn’t changed much about their simple lives. They still lived in the small house Sheila grew up in. Willie still mowed their grass with a push mower. However, he and Gwen had taken up golf and joined the fancy golf club on the north side of town, Twin Hills. They were also traveling a bit more. When Sheila arrived with Kristy, Gwen was buzzing with stories from their recent visit to San Francisco.

  “Well, Marybeth and Fred brought a little bottle of bleach with them everywhere we went so they could disinfect the silverware.” Gwen lowered her voice, even though there was no one else listening to her and Sheila’s conversation. “I mean, those men running around up there and all those hippies. You just can’t trust a thing.”

  Sheila understood Gwen meant homosexuals when she said “men,” even though that concept was about as foreign to her as San Francisco itself.

  “Because of all the fog on the bay, it was near impossible to see the Golden Gate Bridge, but when you could see it, it was impressive.” Gwen was feeding Kristy a bottle while she and Sheila sat outside on the back patio drinking unsweetened iced tea. “The streets are absurd. It’s all up and down, you know. And there couldn’t be more Chinese. And none of ’em could speak a lick of English.” Gwen laughed at the thought. “Still, it was good to see your aunt and uncle.”

  “Did she have snickerdoodles in the jar on her counter like usual?”

  “Oh, I didn’t see. But she told me to tell you and Darrel to come out and visit them sometime. They’d love to have you.”

  “I doubt Darrel would wanna go to California,” Sheila smiled. “He’s more and more interested in the country, wants us to move down to Hartville, where he’s got another extension job lined up.”

  “Hartville! Lansakes! Where is that?”

  “Not far from his mom and dad,” Sheila sighed. “I can’t imagine what I’ll do in the country.”

  “Same thing you do in the city, I suspect.”

  “I don’t know what I’m doing in the city either, momma.”

  Gwen said nothing. Kristy had fallen asleep, and Gwen set Kristy’s bottle on the ground so she could focus entirely on gently coddling her granddaughter in her arms.

  “Hey, Darrel.” Sheila was on the phone in the Barnetts’ kitchen.

  “Hey,” Darrel said on the other end of the line.

  Whether he meant for the tone of his voice to be cold and distant, Sheila couldn’t tell. All she knew was that something had shifted between her and Darrel. “I’ve been thinking I oughta come home. It’ll be three weeks I been gone tomorrow.”

  “It’s still hot here,” Darrel said.

  “I looked in the paper, and the weather report showed it cooling down.”

  “What? You don’t trust me?”

  “Darrel, no. That’s not what I… Don’t you miss Kristy?”

  “Of course, I do, Sheila,” Darrel said with a huff.

  Sheila looked down at her feet. She’d gotten on his nerves. “I don’t mean to make you mad.”

  “You’re not making me mad.” Darrel’s voice was edgy.

  “Darrel, what’s wrong?”

  “Nothing. Come home if you want. I’ll see you when you get here.”

  Sheila hung on to the phone, not sure what to think. “I love you.”

  “I know,” Darrel said and hung up.

  Gwen entered the kitchen and saw the worry on Sheila’s face. “Everything all right with Darrel?” she asked.

  “I think I’m gonna try to head home tomorrow,” Sheila said.

  When Sheila arrived, the weather had cooled. The wind outside was blowing in dark clouds that promised a summer storm replete with lightning and thunder. Darrel didn’t get out of the overstuffed armchair where he was watching TV to help Sheila with the luggage when she stumbled through the screen door, and when she offered to hand Kristy over to him, without meeting her eyes, he mumbled that he didn’t feel like holding her. Not sure what to think about this welcome, Sheila placed Kristy in her baby crib and went into her and Darrel’s bedroom. She shut the door, sat down on the bed, and cried. Tears were still wet on her cheeks and the thoughts of what she had done to Darrel to deserve his attitude toward her were still fresh in her head when Darrel appeared thirty minutes later.

  “Are you crying?” he asked, as though he were genuinely surprised.

  “Yeah,” Sheila said, now not meeting his eyes.

  “What the hell, Sheila?”

  “I don’t know. I just thought…”

  “What?”

  “I thought you’d be happier to see me and Kristy, that’s all.”

  “I am happy to see you.”

  “You didn’t get up to help with the luggage or anything.”

  “I was in the middle of watching a TV show. I didn’t want to miss the ending.”

  Sheila nodded as though she understood the logic, but she didn’t.

  “Don’t be mad.” Darrel made his way over to the bed and wrapped his arm around Sheila.

  “I’m not mad. I’m sad.”

  “Well, don’t be sad.”

  “I can’t help it. I missed you,” Sheila said, leaning into him. “And I was just really excited to see you.”

  “Well, I’m excited to see you, too,” Darrel said. He kissed her on the lips. Then he kissed her again.

  She wanted to pull away. She needed comfort, not sex. But he kissed her once more, slipping his tongue into her mouth in that way that he always did, and she took it, forgetting about her comfort, distracted by his forcefulness. He had missed her. This was his way of showing it, she thought. So she let him undress her, let him penetrate her, let him come, and she absorbed his arms and his smell and his passion as a remedy for her pain.

  When he was done, Darrel pulled on his jeans and left the room. Sheila thought he was just going outside for a smoke, but when he didn’t reappear after a few minutes, she slipped on the T-shirt he’d left behind and her panties, and she searched him out. He was in the kitchen looking out the large, square window over the sink. She leaned against the doorway watching him for a moment. She was scared. If only he would look back at her without her saying something, he would see the woman he loved, that he was so sexually attracted to. Her hair was just the way he liked it right now, loose, hanging around her face. Her makeup was gone, her body had returned to its shape before the pregnancy. But he didn’t turn to look at her.

  “Darrel?” Sheila ventured quietly.

  He didn’t respond.

  “Darrel?”

  “I’m in love with somebody else,” he said.

  Darrel’s words slipped into Sheila’s mind like a warm light, almost welcome in the sense that they explained everything. Then they turned on her. The warmth became cold and the light became a shadow that
now encompassed her entire existence all at once. Nothing made sense now. Nothing except those words: I’m in love with somebody else.

  Moments passed. A light patter of rain began outside. Sheila didn’t know what to do. Take Kristy and run? Scream? Beat on Darrel’s chest? Be calm and rational? Accept it? Suddenly a wail of pain erupted inside of her, leaping up from her chest and out of her mouth, and she collapsed to the floor, tears streaming down her face. In the background, Kristy began crying as well. As sobs rolled like ceaseless waves from Sheila’s body, Darrel just continued to look out the window. Did he feel pain for her? Did he care? He turned to Sheila and with guilty eyes said, “Stop crying.”

  But Sheila couldn’t. Her whole being was shaking, as though trying to reject some poison she had ingested. “No, Darrel. No, please. Please!” She writhed on the floor a bit longer. Then she leaned back against the doorframe, face flushed, and took a breath. She looked at Darrel through glassy eyes, willing him to take it back, the truth or at least what he’d said, that thing she could hardly believe was the truth. He forced a stare back at her, not sure what to do now. Sheila stood to her feet and took a step toward him, but the fear in his eyes stopped her cold. And then he just turned and walked out the back door into the rain.

  Sheila chased after him as he made his way toward his old pickup and woke it to life. “Darrel!” She called his name in her panties and his T-shirt, her naked feet squishing into the wet earth. “Darrel!” It was all she could think to say. There were no threats she had prepared for this moment. There was no begging phrase she could articulate.

  “Darrel!”

  But he backed his truck out of the drive and peeled off.

  Sheila returned to the house, stopping briefly at the back door to wash the mud off her feet with the garden hose. Then, once inside, she dried them with a cup towel. She straightened the chairs at the kitchen table and gathered the unopened mail lying there. She placed it next to the telephone and took a few dirty dishes that had been left in the sink and placed them in the dishwasher. It was full. So she poured soap into the appropriate dispenser and turned it on. She took bleach out of the cabinet, mixed it with water and soap, and wiped down the countertops. She mopped the floor and sanitized the refrigerator door. In moments, the kitchen was immaculate. Then Sheila turned her attention to the living room. Kristy was still crying in the spare room, but Sheila couldn’t deal with her. Instead she plumped the pillows on the couch, straightened the magazines on the coffee table, and vacuumed the rug. She gathered extraneous clothes Darrel had left here and there—a shirt, socks, pants, a handkerchief—and threw them in the hamper. She stripped her and Darrel’s bed, turned on the washer, cleaned the bathroom. Then she sat down. She had done everything without taking off her damp clothes, without a thought about how she looked. She took a shower, slipped on one of her nightgowns, and lay down on the couch.

  When she woke up, it was three in the morning and she couldn’t fall back to sleep. She thought about calling Gwen and Willie. She thought about getting in the Mustang and driving back to Oklahoma City. Then she thought about Darrel. Who had he fallen in love with? Where had they met? She thought about scouring the city to find him and his new love. She went through all Darrel’s drawers, all his pants, all of their mail trying to find something—some clue. But when dawn had come and the rain had stopped, all was still a mystery. Kristy woke up at her usual time, and Sheila fed and changed her. It was Sunday morning and down the street the bell of the Baptist church rang out to announce services were about to begin. Despite the fact she had never been religious, Sheila pulled back her hair, selected a conservative summer skirt to wear, dressed Kristy, and they went to church.

  Even as she stood with the rest of the crowd and sang the hymns, even as she sat and watched the preacher preach, nothing actually penetrated Sheila’s mind. It’s not that she was thinking about Darrel either. She was simply numb. But at least that was a survivable feeling. Kristy fell asleep. The altar call came and went. A few people said “hello” and “welcome” to Sheila and Kristy as they exited the church. Kristy ate lunch contentedly while Sheila stared off into the distance. Night fell. She called Gwen.

  “Soodie, what’s wrong?”

  “He left me, momma.” Sheila cried.

  “Oh, Soodie…”

  “What do I do?”

  “Did you try talking to him?”

  “I was too upset.”

  “Well, maybe you should talk to him.”

  “I don’t know where he is. I wanna come home.”

  “What happened?”

  “I’m not sure, momma. He just said he’s…” Sheila began crying again. “He said he’s in love with somebody else.”

  “Let me talk to your daddy and find out what he thinks you should do.”

  Headlights swept over the walls of the kitchen, announcing the arrival of a vehicle at the back driveway. “Oh, momma, somebody’s here.” Sheila looked out the kitchen window to see Darrel exiting his truck.

  “Soodie, come home if you need to.”

  “It’s Darrel.”

  Sheila hung up the phone and wiped her cheeks as Darrel appeared at the back door, face full of scruff, wearing the same clothes he’d left in the day before. He sat down on one of the kitchen chairs and looked at his hands.

  “Sharon broke it off with me,” Darrel sighed. “She said she didn’t want anything serious.”

  “Sharon?”

  “Yeah.” His curt tone stopped Sheila dead in her tracks. He hadn’t come back to apologize. He hadn’t changed his mind. He simply had nowhere else to go.

  “Where’s Kristy?” Darrel asked.

  “She’s sleeping.”

  Darrel got up from the table, went to his and Sheila’s bedroom, and closed the door.

  The next few days, Darrel came and went without so much as a look or word to Sheila. She made his breakfast in the mornings, washed and folded his laundry, and took care of his house and his daughter. Thoughts of leaving him pervaded her mind, thoughts of starting over new with her parents’ help. Then Sheila would see him half-naked drinking his morning coffee at the kitchen window and miss his touch and wonder what she needed to do to get him to love her again. Why did this marriage matter? Why did he matter? It was love. It was passion. She had felt it only once and that was with Darrel, and she was determined to feel it with him again. So Sheila stayed. She took the role Darrel had offered her to play in his life, the one in which she was submissive to his every desire, the one in which she was diminished beyond wife and mother, the one in which she forgot who she had been and in which she would never be allowed to find out who she could be. And she hoped. And she prayed.

  Two and a half weeks after Sheila returned from Oklahoma, she and Darrel began sleeping in the same bed again, but he wouldn’t touch her. He instead pouted and sulked around the house, mourning the loss of Sharon. Sheila quietly discovered that Sharon was a cashier at the cafeteria down the street from Darrel’s work. She was about Sheila’s age, blonde and thin. She and Darrel had been seeing one another for about a month before Sheila left for Oklahoma and, well, the rest was history. Then, just as Sheila was becoming adjusted to this new life of strained relations between her and Darrel, he appeared one evening after work while she was frying steak. He had a big smile on his face and a six-pack of beer in his hand.

  “Funny Girl, we’re moving.”

  “What?” Sheila was as shocked by this news as by Darrel’s chipper use of her pet name.

  “Where’s Kristy?”

  “In the living room.”

  Darrel went into the living room, retrieved Kristy, and brought her back into the kitchen. He tossed her lightly in the air. “We’re movin’, baby girl! What do you think about that?” He kissed Kristy on the cheek, his mood positively beaming.

  “Darrel, what are you talking about?” Sheila was being cautiously enthusiastic about this man currently standing in her kitchen, afraid the wrong words m
ight break his cheer.

  He looked her in the eyes with a sincerity she hadn’t seen in what felt like forever. “We’re starting over.”

  Just as Darrel promised, he moved Sheila and Kristy to Hartville, Missouri, a little town of about a thousand people deep in the heart of the Ozark Mountains. It was a restful place that overlooked a large river, populated by the greenest oak trees Sheila had ever seen. The people were, as Gwen would say, “the salt of the earth,” and every building seemed as kept and new as the day it was constructed fifty years before.

  Darrel had been hired to head up the extension office, a great job by any account, and he rented a little house a mile down Turly Road, ten miles outside of town, for Sheila and Kristy to call home. With the new house and the new job and the new surroundings, Sheila was relieved to discover her and Darrel’s relationship seemed to have a new lease as well. He’d pick her and Kristy up after work and take them for drives out in the country to show them plots of land he thought they ought to buy and turn into their own farm. On Sundays, Sheila found herself more than welcomed by the patrons of the local Baptist Church, and when Sheila dressed to attend the first time, Darrel had surprised her by asking if he could go, too. They made love like they used to. Nothing in life was sweeter to Sheila than when Darrel would grunt how much he loved her as he moved inside her. All that had happened before slowly disappeared in the blurry background of their past. How could it not? Sheila was falling in love with Darrel again. He was treating her as his everything once more. She was the person he confided in. She was the person he tried to please. When they walked through town, he was the one who grabbed her hand to hold it. He was making up for what had gone so terribly wrong, and she was willing to accept this action-oriented apology as the best of its kind.

  When Gwen asked Sheila about the relationship, Sheila could only smile that things were great. She and Darrel were making plans. She was pregnant once more.

  Darrel had hoped their second child would be a boy, but once again they were blessed with a little bundle of female they named Rebecca. Kristy was in awe of her. Sheila was relieved to have made it through another pregnancy so easily, and Darrel swore to himself that he would be the best father these little girls could have, even though he had no idea what being a great father entailed.