Three Women at the Water's Edge

by Nancy Thayer

  “I never thought you did anything really wrong,” Dale confessed. “I idolized you, you know. You were so brave and so pretty and had so many friends.”

  “But you were so smart,” Daisy countered. “And you turned out every bit as pretty as I, you know that.”

  “Oh, that’s not true, that’s not true,” Dale said. “You’ll always be prettier than I; you just can’t help it.”

  So they got into a tussle of compliments and ended up going up to Daisy’s bedroom and throwing off their robes, to stand naked in front of the enormous mirror, studying their bodies and faces, and laughing at the sight.

  “I had to learn to walk all over again without putting weight on that little toe,” Dale said. “Remember? It’s amazing how important one fraction of a toe can be to the whole balance of your body.”

  So of course Daisy had to try to walk around her bedroom without putting any weight on her little toe, and that set them off laughing again, the sight of naked Daisy lumbering lopsidedly about.

  “Still,” Dale concluded, “even fat and pregnant, you’re still the more beautiful, Daisy.” She spoke with complete honesty.

  “Do you really think so?” Daisy asked, amazed. “How in the world can you think so? Look how fat I am, and all the veins running about all over my skin, and look how my breasts sag, and after the baby my stomach will sag, too. And then look at you—why, you’re perfect.”

  “Oh, I’m okay,” Dale said. “I’m acceptable enough, but something’s lacking about me; I’m too—bland. You look voluptuous and successful—that’s what you look: successful. You have a successful body.”

  “I do?” Daisy asked in amazement, and stared at herself again in the mirror, at all her fat appurtenances. “Well,” she said at last, “I must admit, I’m busy.”

  “Oh, Daisy,” Dale said, and wrapped her arms around her sister and hugged her.

  “Oh, Dale,” Daisy said, and hugged her sister back. They stood there, hugging awkwardly around the bulge of Daisy’s tummy, and it was lovely, the touch of skin.

  “Do you want to know something?” Dale said, withdrawing a bit from Daisy’s embrace, holding Daisy at arm’s length, one hand on each upper arm, scrutinizing her. “I’m jealous of you. Of that.” She nodded at Daisy’s belly. “I can’t imagine how it must feel to have a real baby inside. I think you must feel very smug.”

  “I do feel smug,” Daisy said. “I always have, each time I’ve been pregnant. There’s nothing like it. I feel self-contained, and self-content, and excited and hopeful, and oh, just terribly, terribly pleased. I’d love to have fifteen children. And I can’t blame Paul, you know, for going off; he really can’t share this pleasure. No matter what, he’s still got only his cold hard empty lonely body; he’ll never hold any magic—and that’s what it is, you know, no matter how many photographs or clinical books are brought out on the subject—that’s what it is, making a baby: magic. It’s not fair, I know—and I really don’t understand it. Why should nature deny half of the human race the joy of being magic? Poor little Danny; it kills him because he can’t grow up and have a baby in his tummy. You know, I think all that stuff about penis envy is absurd, a hoax, or maybe Freud thought it up hoping to make men feel better about themselves, less powerless. Jenny has never said she wanted a penis—although she has pulled Danny’s from time to time, I mean it does hang down there, just looking like it should be pulled. But Danny has said over and over again that he wished he could have a baby in his tummy like me, and when I sat down and tried to explain it all to the children, that Jenny would get to when she grew up because she was a girl, but Danny wouldn’t because he was a boy, well, Danny was just terribly upset. Heartbroken. No, I think it’s good that Paul will have Monica—that she’ll tie her tubes and he’ll get a vasectomy, and that way neither one of them will be able to make a baby, to make magic, and they’ll really be equals then, and probably have a very equal relationship. As for me, I wouldn’t trade one of my children, not even this new unborn one for a lifetime with Paul. My only regret is that I won’t be able to have more children. And it’s hormonal, a trick of body chemistry, this continual high, this delicious sense of well-being, and self-importance, and superiority, and smug delight; it’s a trick of body chemistry—but so is love, and so is recovering after being sick. And of course, there’s always the other side of it—morning sickness, and stretch marks, and the real exhaustion that wears you down after you have the baby and must tend to it. I’d rather be pregnant for three years, and give birth to a three-year-old—I think I’d be much more energetic!” Daisy smiled, and as if her thoughts suddenly weighed her down, sank onto the carpet awkwardly, catching herself with both hands, and lay on her back on the floor. She stared up at Dale, tall naked Dale, whose skin was firm and flawless, without a mark, like whole fabric, smooth and perfect. Tears began to trickle out of Daisy’s eyes and down the side of her face into her hair. Finally she was crying. She had wondered when it would come, when it would hit: and here it was. Dale’s presence provided just enough safety; so she let the tears come.

  “You know, one really can’t go on being pregnant forever. You’ve got to have the baby, and there it is, and you love it with all your life, and that is what life is then—those children, their health and safety and happiness. The joy of holding them. And the work. But once you’ve had them—oh, Dale, don’t envy me. I envy you. You’re young. Look at your body. It’s so lovely. You’re so lovely. You look so young and firm and appealing. And look at me, look at my breasts: those stretch marks won’t go away. Oh, when I’m through nursing my breasts will get smaller, but those little silver streaks will always be there, on my breasts, my hips, my belly; even if I lose weight I will never again be able to look like you. Oh, Dale, I’m getting old, old, and no one will ever love me again, no one will ever take care of me, give me presents, help me. I’m so old and fat and tired—” Daisy closed her eyes and tears trickled out and down her face.

  “Daisy,” Dale said, alarmed, and knelt beside her sister. “Please don’t talk that way. Don’t even think that way. You are lovely; you will be lovelier; men will want you again—”

  Daisy was lying flat on her back on the rug, arms crossed protectively over her belly. Tears kept flowing. “No, no,” she said, not opening her eyes. “It’s all over. Don’t envy me, Dale; it’s all over, gone—my youth, my prettiness, my slim body, my hopes. Things change, and that’s the truth, and there’s no way to get around it. Things change. We age. We get older. We begin to sag. Children are the compensation, the reward, but the truth is we still after a while begin to lose it all—the energy, the body, the shining face. Life really is a series of rooms, and we go from one into the other, but the door goes only one way, and we can never go back. It happens to everyone. Youth—love—children—loss. Not a circle, but a straight inflexible line. Youth—love—children—loss. It’s all in front of you. But it’s all behind me, and I can’t go back. Oh, Dale, I am so tired. And so cold.”

  Dale knelt next to her sister, staring, frightened, wanting Daisy to open her eyes and wake up and be happy again. She gently touched Daisy’s shoulder. But Daisy was drifting into sleep. Well, if there was nothing else she could do, Dale thought, she could at least keep her sister from being cold; and she crossed to the bed and took the blankets and the afghan off and covered Daisy with them, head to toe. She covered her sister who, like an enormous swollen child, lay naked and vulnerable on the floor, now completely asleep. Dale tucked a blanket about Daisy’s feet and ankles so that the covers wouldn’t come off in the night, so that she would keep warm all over. Then she went through the house quietly, turning off lights, putting the screen in front of the dying fire, checking the children, and finally falling on top of the guest bed, pulling part of the bedspread about her for warmth.

  —

  In the morning both sisters were cross with exhaustion. Dale sat in the kitchen in her robe, drinking instant coffee and feeling mucky and thinking that Daisy was, after all, disg
usting. Daisy did look a fright, all lumpy in her sagging old robe, her hair going this way and that, her face swollen. But what repelled Dale most about Daisy were the bits of hard dried Play-Doh that littered the kitchen floor. All the bright cheerful colors—pink, yellow, blue—had been mixed together by the children into repulsive feculent tones of brown, green-gray, and puce. Daisy had managed to put most of the Play-Doh back into its little cardboard cartons, but much of it still stuck to the sides of the kitchen table or lay hideously about on the floor, with bits of cat hair stuck into it. It seemed much more than anyone should have to bear on awakening. Daisy didn’t notice the Play-Doh: she thumped around between sink and stove and refrigerator, heating little precooked sausages for the children and making them waffles from the toaster, and then eating some of the stuff herself—frozen waffles, toasted, slathered with imitation maple syrup and butter. Dale politely refused any of it, it made her stomach turn, she thought—all those chemicals, all that junk food. She sipped snobbishly at her instant coffee.

  “Oh, God,” Daisy said, sinking into a chair at the table, “I’m so tired. I’ve got such a headache, and I feel like I’ve been eating onions all night. But we’ve got to talk, you know.”

  “I know,” Dale said. She had to fly back to Maine that day, in the late afternoon, for her Thanksgiving vacation was over and she had to teach again tomorrow morning. Hank, Maine, the clean school, brisk Carol, her whole real life, all seemed hopelessly far away.

  “Well, let’s talk a bit, and then perhaps you can help me pack,” Daisy said. “There’s so much to do I feel overwhelmed sometimes, sometimes I just don’t think I can face it. And Paul wants me to keep the house looking presentable for prospective buyers, but I can’t do that and pack at the same time. Not to mention the children. Anyway, they’re watching Captain Kangaroo now, and that should keep them occupied for an hour, then we’ll have to pay them some attention. So let’s talk now while we’ve got the chance. Tell me about Dad.”

  Dale looked at Daisy; Daisy looked almost exactly like Margaret except for her mouth, her large well-spaced teeth, which were like her father’s. “I don’t know how to begin,” Dale said. “Oh, God, I am so tired. How late did we drink stay up last night? Maybe I’d better have a piece of toast—oh, hell, give me one of those waffles. Anyway—well, I don’t suppose we really have to worry about him, I mean he’s keeping his practice up and is still very busy with that. So that’s one good sign, I mean he isn’t completely falling apart. But he’s lost so much weight, and his skin looks absolutely gray, and he looks tired, and he looks sad. He seems defeated. He seems defeated by the smallest things: every morning when he made breakfast for me he burned the eggs and ruined the coffee and spilled the juice. I tried to fix breakfast for him, but he got irritable and said, ‘No, no, I can do it myself, I have to do it for myself all the time, you know.’ I tried to talk him into getting a maid, even a live-in lady to do his cooking and cleaning—the house is filthy, you wouldn’t believe it. But he said he was too private a person to have someone strange in the house; he said he couldn’t trust anyone. He insisted that he could take care of himself just fine. And he doesn’t go anywhere anymore, he always stays at home, watching TV or sleeping, and when I told him he should get out more often, he said, ‘Oh, I hate seeing people. I know they’re either feeling sorry for me, thinking I’m a pathetic old fool, or else they’re secretly wondering just what kind of monster I am to have driven Margaret off.’ So he’s all alone there, and the house is getting dirtier and dirtier, and there’s nothing in the refrigerator. He seems to subsist on TV dinners. Sometimes he doesn’t even go to bed at night, I mean in the bedroom, he says he hates it there all alone. He sleeps on the living room sofa, with an afghan over him. God, it’s pathetic. I told him he should sell the house and get himself something smaller, easier to keep, that that might help him psychologically, but he said, ‘Oh, who do you think you are, young lady, talking that way, throwing those words around. Everyone in town knows that this is Dr. Wallace’s house, and when I bought it I intended to live in it until I died, and I still do. I’ve lost everything else, don’t ask me to give up my house.’ I’ve asked him if some of the other women—mother’s old friends—hadn’t been helpful, hadn’t wanted him to come to dinner or something, but he said that they were all such a bunch of gossipy old snoops, and he didn’t want to have a thing to do with them. Oh, Daisy, it’s so awful. He’s so pathetic. Are you sure you want to know it all?”

  Daisy said yes, emphatically, and sat silent, cradling her coffee cup in her hands, listening.

  Their father had cried. Four nights in a row, their father had sat in the living room and put his head in his hands and sobbed shamelessly, out of control. The first night Dale had quickly crossed the room and put her arms around her father and said, “Daddy, don’t cry, don’t cry, come on.” But that hadn’t helped, hadn’t stopped her father, and then she thought that perhaps he needed to cry. Perhaps he had not been able to cry before, perhaps he needed her, someone he could trust, there to witness his grief. But, dear Lord, it had been painful for Dale, it had made her nearly sick. To see her father, who had been like a king, a sort of god, a strong and powerful man, wise, indomitable—why, he had shaped her entire life, and she had spent her grown-up years wondering if she would ever be able to meet a man her own age who was half as fine as her father—to see her father sobbing, out of control, shameless, pathetic, grief-stricken, afraid: it was perhaps not right for any daughter to see her father in such a way. A daughter can’t do what a wife does.

  Dale had watched her father sobbing, his back heaving, his nose running, and at first she had been filled with a helpless pity. She had put her arms around him, soothed him; she had babbled frivolously about other, happier things, trying to turn his attention away from himself. But the next night, as they sat down together in the living room, with the large television screen flashing uselessly nearby, her father had cried again, the same way. He had cried and said that he missed Margaret, that he couldn’t bear to live without her, that he didn’t know what he was going to do. Dale’s ministrations were failures, and her grief quickly changed to impatience; her father seemed grotesque. My God, she thought, he is an adult, and it has been several months, he’s supposed to be wise—he’s been handing out advice and wisdom all these years as regularly as he handed out prescriptions and pills—and here he couldn’t begin to handle himself. Was he a fraud? Had he always been a fraud? And what in the world did he want of Dale? She couldn’t change things for him, bring his wife back to him—my God. What did he want of her? She fixed him a strong scotch and water, which he only sipped. She bent over him, saying, “Daddy, Daddy, please. Don’t do this.” At first she had wanted to console him, to comfort him, but soon enough she wanted only to shake him, to strike him hard across his shaking hands, to shout, “Stop it! You are my father! Just stop it right now!” He seemed ludicrous; and Dale could not bear it, she could not stand the sight of her father so shattered, shameless, broken. In the daytime he dressed decently to go out to his office, but at night he changed into a pair of comfortable and shapeless, sagging pants, and an old cotton shirt, and a baggy old sweater which Margaret had knitted for him once long ago. Dale kept sitting on the arm of her father’s chair, awkwardly attempting some sort of cheering embrace, and the feel of her father’s shoulders and back beneath the loose old sweater repelled her. It was possible, it was almost certain, that she had never held her father before in just such a way. As a daughter she had always sat on his lap, or held his hand as they walked together, and then as she grew older, most of their physical contact stopped, was limited to brief hugs and embarrassed pecks of kisses. She had never in her life had her arms around his shoulders—which were large and loose and soft, not flabby, but not stern and valiant, not invulnerable, as Hank’s were, as she thought a man’s shoulders should be. She had never in her life been in this physically superior arrangement with her father, perched on the arm of the chair above her father, he
r head and arms higher than his, the great bald spot at the back of his head exposed, the ridge of wrinkles on the back of his neck exposed, his shoulders bent and drooping, his whole body sinking helplessly into the chair, nothing triumphant left about him at all. Dale felt that it was disastrously wrong, wrong for her to be sitting here like that with her father, above him, helplessly patting his shuddering back. And she saw what she had not come to see, what she did not ever want to see: that her father, her daddy, was growing old, was growing close to the edge of death. Her father was vulnerable. Her father could die. As he sat there, crying into his hands, he was dying in front of her, before her eyes, changing shape like a tired and wicked sorcerer who is playing a nasty trick on a gullible child. It seemed the worst sort of treachery. And she did not know if she could forgive him. She felt she despised him and of course despised herself for the thought.

  She did not think her father sensed any of her distaste. Finally he would stop crying, and he would blow his nose and pat her hand and say, “Oh, Dale, it’s so good to have you here. I’ve been so lonely.” Then Dale would go into the kitchen and cut a piece of Sara Lee cheesecake or a bakery pie and bring it in to her father with a cup of Ovaltine, and they would sit watching television for a while, anything that was on, as if they were normal people. After a decent interval, Dale would excuse herself to go up to bed, and when she came down in the morning, she would find her father curled on the large sofa like some bizarre child, wrapped in an afghan. The television would still be on; some perky woman with fluffy hair would be reading the news. The worst was over: Dale would awaken her father, and he would go up to shower and dress and come down looking and acting like his old, real self. And they spent the four days of her stay pleasantly enough, walking about Liberty, visiting old friends, eating dinner and lunch with old friends; or Dale visited alone while her father was at his office. Only the evenings were bad, but they were bad enough to change the shape of her entire visit.