by Nancy Thayer
“Well, first of all,” Margaret replied, and she patted Daisy’s hand so briefly that it was almost more of an admonition than a caress, “dry your eyes and stop thinking about yourself. You’ll have plenty of time to think about yourself. You’ve never seen Vancouver before, and it’s the closest thing to heaven I can think of. Forget the divorce and all of that for a little while, and enjoy yourself. Look at the mountains. Aren’t they wonderful? Have you ever seen anything so lovely? We’re in downtown Vancouver right now; aren’t those office buildings a marvelous contrast to the mountains? I’m going to drive you through Stanley Park before I take you home. In fact, I think we’ll get out and have a little walk. The exercise would do you good. And the second thing you can do, Daisy, is to realize that what you’re asking from me I just can’t give anymore. I used to give out advice as freely as milk and cookies. People seemed to need it, dull people, they seemed to think that advice came in an edible package, and I tried to keep everyone fed. Well, I don’t make cookies anymore, and I don’t hand out advice. That does not mean that you can’t learn something from me, while you’re here; you are not a dull person, Daisy. You are a pretty bright young woman. And you’re my daughter, and I love you. I wish you well. But giving cookies and consolation is a hard habit to break, and now that I’ve managed to do it, I won’t start up again, not for anyone. Especially not for you. Especially not for you, Daisy, because you and Dale are the people I love most in the world. You’ve got to learn to stand on your own.
“Look, here we are, this is Stanley Park. One thousand acres of parkland between the city and the sea. There is Lost Lagoon on the left. We’ll stop here, at Prospect Point; that will give you the best view of West Vancouver, and the mountains, and the harbor. Look, isn’t that a marvelous totem pole? I’ve been fascinated by all the Indian lore and art that’s a part of British Columbia. Somehow the Canadians have managed to incorporate a lot of the wealth of their Indian heritage into their modern world in a way we Americans have failed to do. There’s an artist, Emily Carr, who does marvelous sweeping paintings, a bit like Georgia O’Keeffe, but really there’s no comparison, and she includes so much of the feeling of Indians, the primitive people who lived on the land as if they were part of the land rather than owners of it; they’ve a good exhibition of Emily Carr’s works at the public gallery; I’ll take you there tomorrow. Shall we get out now, and walk a bit?”
Daisy stared at her mother for one long moment. She decided that Margaret was about as sensitive and receptive as a railroad train; but there was no fighting against that blunt direct force. There was nothing to do, it seemed, but be carried along. Margaret got out of the car, walked to a railing, and stood looking out over the ocean, seemingly oblivious of Daisy. Daisy sighed and rather reluctantly pulled herself out of the car to follow. Without the restraint of the car to frame the landscape in, all of Vancouver seemed to spring up around her, demanding in its really startling beauty. Daisy leaned against the car, stunned, suddenly taken out of herself. She looked about her, and her gaze was carried up and up. On her left were crested, majestic snow-capped mountains rising above the glittering ocean. On her right was a forest of evergreens, taller than any trees she had seen or dreamed, and beyond that, where the forest had been cut back to make way for the city, was the bright clean human lift of cement and glass and steel buildings. It made Daisy almost dizzy to look about her; she was used to more moderate land, to flat land or rolling hills, which signified moderation and orderliness and calm. This land spoke of luxuriant extremes, of bold-faced triumphant isolation. It really was too much, Daisy thought, the change in her mother, and now this overwhelmingly beautiful land which would not let her ignore it, which called up wild desires and longings, which made impossible things seem possible simply by its presence—after all, here it was, Vancouver, more beautiful than a dream of heaven. If it could exist, what could not? She understood why her mother had moved here.
“It is fantastic, Mother!” Daisy said, approaching Margaret and leaning on the railing next to her. She watched cars cross back and forth from West Vancouver to Stanley Park on the arching green span of Lion’s Gate Bridge. Below, the ocean sparkled with freighters and tugboats. “I’ve never seen anything like it in my life. Words can’t touch it.”
Margaret smiled, pleased. “I know,” she said. “Miriam had written to me for years, telling me I should come out for a vacation, and she had sent me an occasional snapshot, too. But I always resisted coming here. I was afraid, I think. And of course when I did come, well, I knew I had found my home. It’s funny, isn’t it, how I could have lived all my life in the middle of the continent, stuffing myself with bread in the middle of the breadbasket, only to discover at the advanced age of forty-eight that I felt truly at home in another country, another city, another world.”
“Do you think you would have felt that way—that you had found your home—if you had come out to Vancouver ten years ago, or fifteen years ago, or even five?” Daisy asked.
“Well, Daisy,” Margaret said. “I’ve asked myself that often. I don’t know the answer. Well, I couldn’t have come twenty years ago, when you girls were small; I could not have taken you away from the safety of your home and your father. Five years ago—I don’t know. Perhaps. I think one has to be ready for major changes like this; the timing has to be right. It’s perfectly possible that five years ago, or even three, I might have come out here, admired the place, and gone back to Liberty quite happily. But the important thing is that I came when I did, and that I’m here, now. And I’m so glad you’re here, too; there’s so much I want to show you. Oh, I don’t know where to take you first; there’s so much to see, so much to do.”
Daisy watched her mother closely as she spoke, noticing how almost childish she was in her enthusiasm, so self-centered and lighthearted, as if she hadn’t a care in the world. Well, maybe she hadn’t, Daisy thought sulkily; she certainly didn’t seem to care much about Daisy’s problems. Only two years before, Margaret had come to Milwaukee to take care of everyone while Jenny was born. How warm and generous she had been then, and what restfulness there had been for Daisy, with her mother there to cook and clean and tend. Oh, how was it, Daisy thought, that she had to lose her mother at the same time she lost her husband? For she had to face up to it: she had, in a very real way, lost her mother. She wanted to snivel and pout, but clearly Margaret would not put up with that; clearly Margaret was just not very interested in Daisy’s problems at all.
As if Margaret were reading her mind, she turned to Daisy. Still leaning gracefully against the railing, her entire posture casual and relaxed, she said sternly, “You know, Daisy, I’ve spent my entire life listening to other people’s problems. Your situation isn’t half as bad as you think it is, not half as bad as some I’ve heard. You’re young; you’ll be attractive again if you lose weight; you will have some kind of house; and you will have three beautiful children. And now you have the chance to have a vacation. I’m not going to help you solve your problems, but I will give you one week of real pleasure, if you’ll only let me. Try to enjoy this week. Relax, look about you. Maybe you’ll learn something. And please remember: you have a right to your agitation; but I have a right to my tranquillity.”
“All right, Mother,” Daisy said, conceding. What else could she say?
“Good,” Margaret said. “Let’s go home. I’m so eager to show you my house.”
Daisy sat in the car again, listening to her mother tell how she had found her wonderful house, offering up necessary words of admiration at the landscape they drove through on their way into West Vancouver—and she did admire the landscape; it was amazingly beautiful. But for Daisy it was rather like being on the moon, or another planet, with a guide one is not quite sure is human, so far removed is she from human concerns.
Margaret’s house was another shock for Daisy. The house in Liberty had been full of overstuffed chairs, thick carpets, harmonious clutter. Everything in it had been touchable, usable, anyone could sit
anywhere; it had been a house for a family to live in. But Daisy wandered through Margaret’s new home as if through a museum. In fact her first thought was that of course she could not have brought Danny and Jenny here; they would have gotten the glass coffee table sticky with fingerprints, and they might have toppled over the strange green soapstone Eskimo statue that sat next to the fireplace hearth. They might have touched the white walls, and left marks; they might have left fingerprints on the sliding glass doors that looked out over the ocean, they might have knocked over the tall Chinese vase full of dried autumn leaves and flowers. Daisy’s second thought was that she was glad that her children weren’t with her, because now she was free to look through her mother’s house without any distractions. It was a beautiful home, Daisy could not deny it. It was breathtaking.
The front door opened to a small entrance hall which Margaret had separated from the living room by a stunning Chinese screen in a silk so purple as to be almost black, with cherry-and-yellow designs blossoming on it. Stepping past the screen, one saw, with a gasp—it did cause a gasp, it was so splendid—the stretch of highly polished dark wood floor out to a wall of glass looking onto the ocean. The other walls of the room were white; there was a white marble fireplace, and a vivid abstract in blues and oranges, which Daisy had never seen before, above the mantel. There was a small white rug, an elegant white sofa and chair, a wicker rocker with what appeared to be a shawl thrown over it, and the coffee table. At one end of the room was the dining area, so gleaming in chrome and glass that Daisy had to turn away, remembering the enormous oak table, the comforting oak buffet she had grown up with. The kitchen was clever and small; and there were only two other rooms: Margaret’s bedroom, and the spare room where Daisy was staying.
Margaret’s bedroom walls were white and the carpet was thick and rich and white, but everything else in the room was bright with color: In the corner near the glass wall was the chair Margaret had written about, with the batik bedspread draped over it, so that it undulated in stripes of red, violet, blue, green, yellow, and orange; Margaret’s bed, which to Daisy’s surprise was queen size (Daisy would ask why later, when she found the energy to do so) and covered with a thick rich quilt of random dark and light blues; the cherry armoire that had belonged to Margaret’s mother, where both Harry and Margaret had once stored their clothes but which now only Margaret used; a small walnut lady’s writing desk with papers lying on it, and pens, and journals in red and blue leather. And the one familiar sign that made Daisy feel her mother might not be completely lost to her—the antique cherry washstand, used as it always had been as a bedside table, layered with Margaret’s books, magazines, newspapers, and reviews. The lamp of Daisy’s childhood was there, too: it was an antique oil lamp which had been electrified long ago; its base was marble and brass, and the globe was crystal etched with flowers. Twelve crystal prisms hung from the brass rimming the globe; six ended in triangular points and were connected to a round prism at the top; the other six were shorter and squarer and connected to an emerald-cut prism at the top. Daisy stared at the lamp, stunned with memory: every night the family would know when Margaret was through reading, because when she reached her hand out to pull the brass chain that turned the light off, she of necessity hit the prisms and they would chime and tinkle in the most clear and lovely way. Just so, in the middle of the night, if Dale or Daisy were sick, or if the phone rang, someone calling for their father, everyone could hear the less restrained tinkling of the prisms as Margaret fumbled in the dark for the brass chain. A few times, when Daisy or Dale had been very very sick, Margaret had released one of the prisms from its tiny brass hook and let the child take it in her hand, to feel its cold ungiving surfaces, or to hold it up in the sunlight, to see the rainbows the sun made from its facets.
In the Liberty house, the crystal lamp had seemed inordinately sensual and extravagant; its mere presence there in their parents’ solid room had always been a bit of a mystery. But now it seemed perfect in Margaret’s new bedroom. Daisy was struck by a wave of understanding: oh, so that is how she really was all along, that is what she wanted.
“Your house is absolutely splendid, Mother,” Daisy said, coming back into the living room. “I think it’s the most wonderful house I’ve ever seen—except for mine. It’s certainly different from mine.”
“Well, we’re different,” Margaret said. “Here, I made you some herb tea. It’s very good. Why don’t you take it with you into the guest room and unpack and rest awhile. We’re going out to dinner tonight at a wonderful restaurant down on the harbor. It’s a Greek restaurant, a real Greek restaurant. It’s run by Greeks and frequented by the Greek sailors when their freighters are in dock. The food is delicious, and the men do wonderful dances, and if the other Greeks like the dancing, they get up and join, or they throw glasses which smash to pieces on the floor. Then the men dance, some of them barefoot, around the glass. It’s rather wild. Not like anything we ever had in Liberty, that’s for sure. And I’ve got some lovely friends joining us. I’m eager for you to meet them. So do take your tea and have a little rest; we’ll be up late tonight.”
Daisy shut the door in the small guest bedroom and dutifully unpacked, musing all the while about this new mother of hers, who enjoyed watching Greek sailors dance around broken glass. Then she lay down on the bed and stared at the walls. She wondered vaguely how Danny and Jenny were; Paul would be with them now. They would enjoy that, for they never had had much time alone with their father. And though he did not adore them, he would be kind. He was probably even taking them to McDonald’s for dinner as a treat. Well, she would not worry about them; her mother was right. It would be a waste of energy to worry about them this week while they were in someone else’s care. It was the rest of her life, the real life that she would go back to after this week, that she had to worry about.
On the wall opposite the bed hung a bright Chagall print. Chagall! Daisy thought; she had never known that her mother liked or even knew about Chagall. On the wall above the bed hung another print that must be one of the Emily Carrs her mother so admired. It was an almost surrealistic watercolor of one extremely tall, bare, and lonely tree stretching above mountains into a radiance of white. Daisy sat up to read the title: Scorned of Timber, beloved of the sky. She lay back down again, studying the print. The tree seemed queer and proud, so tall and lonely, with its small triangle of green peaking at the top of its long, thin trunk. It seemed self-sufficient, as if in love with the sky, or something in the sky which ordinary people could not see. It reminded Daisy of her mother, who had grown thin and strange and proud and self-sufficient, and in a flash Daisy remembered another tree, a tree in a book which she had read over and over again to her children, The Giving Tree. That tree loved a child so much that it sacrificed everything for him, gave him everything: shade, apples, branches, its trunk, and finally, at last, because there was nothing else it could give, its wretched stump as a seat of solace for the unhappy person it loved. Daisy felt a wave of self-pity begin to rise within her: she was going to try to be the giving tree to her own children; why did she have to be faced at this point in her life with a mother who was like that solitary monster of Emily Carr’s?
Then Margaret appeared at the door, first knocking, then entering, and she did not look like a solitary monster at all. She looked like a quite lovely and intelligent woman—an interesting woman, and one Daisy would like to know.
“It’s time to get ready,” she said. “Would you like a bath first? Let me look at the clothes you’ve brought; they aren’t very pretty, are they? Though I know it’s hard when you’re pregnant. Still, we’ll go to some boutiques in Gastown tomorrow and find some batik and Indian print dresses for you. They’re very comfortable, flowing soft cotton, in brilliant colors. Well, we’d better hurry, we should be there in half an hour.”
“Who are the friends who are joining us?” Daisy asked, pulling herself up to sit on the edge of the bed.
“Miriam and Gordon, of course,�
� Margaret said. “They’re dying to meet you; they’ve only seen pictures of you, but you know Miriam has been my friend since high school. And Anthony Brooks—he’s a new and”—Margaret paused to smile—”special friend of mine.”
Daisy understood by that smile that Anthony was Margaret’s lover. Her mother had a lover! “Mother!” she said. “Oh, Mother.” And she sat there on the bed for a moment, her hands on her large matronly belly, looking at her strange new mother, returning her smile.
—
At seven o’clock the next morning, while Daisy was still asleep, Margaret was sitting by the side of the indoor pool at the rec center. She was wearing a plain black maillot and had a black rubber swimming cap on her head and a large green towel draped over her shoulders. She was trying to work up the courage to enter the pool. Two other people were already swimming, doing slow sputtering backstrokes across the water. The lifeguard sat on a bench on the other side of the pool, yawning into his cardboard cup of coffee. There was open swimming now until eight-thirty, when women’s swimnastics would begin. Margaret stayed for the swimnastics sometimes, sometimes not, depending on her mood. She disliked the turquoise swimming pool, which was Olympic-size and overly chlorinated; she disliked the enormous high-ceilinged room that echoed and amplified each sound. She disliked the occasional clots of hairs that lay on the slick cold tiles, she disliked the diving boards, the clocks, the temperature gauge which assured her that it was 78 degrees in the room when she felt as though it were 30. She disliked the violence of forcing herself into the water, she disliked the reluctance, the laziness, the sluggishness of her limbs as she worked her way back and forth, back and forth across the pool.
But she loved the sensation of finally climbing out of the pool, her entire body vivid and tingling from exertion. She loved the long hot shower, the feeling of bright cleanliness she felt as she dried. She felt about swimming the way Dorothy Parker felt about writing; she hated swimming, but she loved having swum.