Three Women at the Water's Edge (33 page)

But she had enjoyed going out to exciting places with Anthony and had been complimented by his repeated invitations. She had slept with him almost at once, simply because when the occasion presented itself she knew that she had to do it then or forever refrain out of sheer terror. She had slept with only one man all her life; her daughters had been with more men than she. Anthony had brought champagne to celebrate the signing over of the papers of the car, and she had gotten very drunk and taken him into her darkened bedroom. It had been amazingly exciting. After all those celibate months, the stretch of Anthony’s long naked torso against her own bare skin had been immensely satisfying. And Anthony had been almost efficient in his sexual expertise, so very courteous and capable and aware of just what needed to be done to bring Margaret to a point of gasping pleasure, and yet at the same time somehow still so aloof. How grown-up Margaret had felt. Sex became for her—to her real delight—almost merely another kind of possible, luxurious comfort. How grown-up she was: When she wanted to, she could smoke a cigarette, or have a drink, or have a bath, or have an orgasm. She felt quite smug. She felt that really this was the way people should live.

But now Anthony had asked Margaret to marry him. Three nights before, as they were sitting in his apartment drinking brandy after making love, he had suggested to her, in much the same tone of voice that he might suggest seeing a film that weekend, that they should marry. He had at first spoken of this possible marriage as a rational sort of exercise that would permit them to live the same sorts of lives they were living, except with each other. And then he would have a sabbatical from UBC the coming year and planned to do a lot of traveling throughout Canada, collecting information for a book he was doing on Canadian history. What fun it would be, he said, to take Margaret with him, to show her how enormous and varied Canada was, from the dark interior of British Columbia to the urbanity of Montreal. Oh, marriage would make their relationship so much easier; Anthony’s home was in Vancouver proper, a good hour’s drive across the Lion’s Gate Bridge and through the city. They could live in Margaret’s house or in his; how nice it would be, he said, to waken in the morning and share coffee and a newspaper in bed.

Margaret’s first reaction to Anthony’s proposal had been one of conceited gaiety, as if she were a child who had just been given a candy or a present simply for being cute. She took his proposal as a compliment, and not much more than that. Actually she had sat in Anthony’s living room, listening to him talk, and wishing there were someone she could tell. She wanted to preen, to show off, to say: Look what I’ve done! I’m barely divorced, and already this highly eligible man has asked me to marry him! I’m really quite marvelous, aren’t I! She had felt herself suddenly deliciously young, brought back to those adolescent years in Iowa when a marriage proposal was the sign of ultimate worth.

It had been a horrible shock when she had realized that she had to give Anthony some kind of answer. He was not just complimenting her; he was asking for a commitment. He was expressing a desire, a demand. And she could see by the way his long lean hands held his brandy snifter that her answer mattered to him. Oh, God, she had thought, under his reserved and splendid façade he was buttery and vulnerable, too. She had been filled with fear.

“Do you love me?” she had asked, because she had to know. She felt that if he had said no, she might have married him.

But Anthony said, “Yes. I do. I love you, Margaret. I’m sorry I haven’t said so before. It must be rather amusing to have a man propose marriage without telling you he loves you first. But I find that sort of thing very difficult to say. I always have been too reticent. But it’s true. I do love you. I love you. You have touched my soul.”

Margaret had cried out, helplessly, “Oh!” and hidden her face in her hands. She had become almost faint. She had covered her face with her hands and sat that way for a long time, staring down at her dress until she felt herself calmed by the way her mind began to study the intricate pattern of blue-and-violet paisley meandering about the cloth. When she finally looked up, she had gone blank, she had almost forgotten the crisis at hand. She had to look at Anthony’s serious face for a long moment before speaking.

“Anthony,” she said, “I’m sorry. I wasn’t prepared for this. I need to think about it. I’m immensely complimented, but I don’t know how to respond. In fact, I’m just stunned.”

Anthony had drawn her to him and kissed her on the mouth, her face, her neck. “Take your time,” he said. “I can understand your surprise. I know how I am, how I act, but I find it so hard to express my feelings. I don’t expect you to answer right away. Please take your time. But please say yes. I did not ask you to marry me frivolously. I love you. I want to marry you. I think we could spend the rest of our lives happily together. And I don’t want to share you with anyone.”

For there were other men. To Margaret’s amazement, there were other men. Anthony was by far the most handsome, but the two other men she had begun to see with some regularity had other points to commend them. For one, they both had a sense of humor which far excelled Anthony’s, and since Harry had never had much of a sense of humor, this quality had been almost the most attractive one she could find in a man. It gave her pleasure, as much pleasure as sex, to double over with laughter at what John Mallinson said, or to appreciate some witty intellectual remark of Roger Whitehall’s. She found that these men called up new layers of herself just as surely as Anthony did, and she valued these new parts of herself very much indeed. It seemed to her that intelligent lightheart
edness was a real gift of God. She wondered why she had somehow never come across it in Liberty: Was it that the humor there was always rather heavy and obvious or simply that no one would have thought to be airily lighthearted with her old self? At any rate, she had never dreamed she could have such easy, pleasurable and almost impersonal relationships with men like these, and it appalled her to think of sacrificing the acquaintance and company of these other men in order to limit herself to Anthony.

He had finally driven her home, and left her at her door with a kiss that left no doubt as to the seriousness of his intentions. He did love her; she had touched his soul. That was the worst thing of all. She was almost certain that she did not want to touch anyone else’s soul, certainly not now, not for a long while. And assuredly she did not want her own soul touched or meddled with; my God, she was only in the process of discovering her soul, at the age of forty-eight—she wasn’t about to give it over right away to someone else’s keeping. She wasn’t even sure what it was like. For the past three days she had rather barricaded herself in her house, leaving the phone off the hook, or going out all afternoon and evening by herself, to the library, to bookstores, to clever shops which occupied her mind. She had walked and walked inside shopping malls and art galleries, trying to tire herself out so that she would simply not have the energy to deal with the problem. Yesterday afternoon she had sat alone in a small café, drinking cinnamon-flavored coffee and enjoying a cigarette, and she had begun to watch two women of her own age who were having lunch together at a table near hers. The two women had been so involved in each other, heads bent toward each other, talking earnestly, drawing back to eat or laugh, and Margaret felt a glow of satisfaction come over her at the sight. It occurred to her then that the person she liked best in her life at that moment was her own woman friend Miriam, because Miriam gave and needed just the right amount—and she imposed no conditions whatsoever on Margaret’s life. Miriam was tremendously busy with her own life, with her teaching at the university, and with her pleasant marriage with Gordon, and so she had some time for Margaret, and would help her if that was needed, or ask for help, but that sort of request was rare. Margaret spoke to Miriam on the phone almost daily, and they saw each other at least once a week; they shared occasional meals and books and laughter. And that was all. There was a real elegance about the friendship Margaret shared with Miriam; there was a fastidious grace. It was unlike any relationship Margaret had ever had, and she felt she valued it above all others. So Margaret sat impolitely watching the other lunching women, and wondering about the nature of friendships and love, until they finished their meal and rose and left. Then she left, herself, not any the less confused.

And now here she was, on a rainy morning, alone with herself and her familiar old cat and the sleeping new one. It fascinated her that the stray cat could sleep so soundly in a strange house, that it could be so self-possessed as to enter a new space and give itself over to sleep. Now that it was dry, Margaret could see that it was a large and graceful cat, a really quite beautiful cat, and she even found herself thinking that she would like to keep it. Would she become a cliché of a woman, an old lonely woman living with only cats as company? Why did people deride such women so? She would find it, she thought, a most superior way to live. She could envision a quite lovely life shared only with these quiet, undemanding animals who by their own insolent aloofness would allow her an elegant, companionable privacy.

But what to do about the people in her life, these people who reached out, and touched her soul, in spite of her attempted withdrawal, and tried to draw her back into a world where people healed and wounded each other? In the past few weeks, Margaret had become unable to watch the television news or to read the front page of the newspaper. It seemed that the world was just too full of tragedy, of need, of sorrow; and that somehow it was all her fault. Children were starving in India and Africa; families in South America had lost their homes to earthquakes and landslides; adolescents were maimed in totally unnecessary car accidents; baby seals and whales were being killed; old people were freezing and living on cat food. The last evening she had watched the news she had finally slammed off the television set in a fury, and paced about her house waving her hands and shouting to herself while Pandora, her old familiar cat, sat cynically watching her from a comfortable nest on the sofa.

“Well, what am I supposed to do?” she had asked the cat, the pure white, silky, well-fed, and luxurious cat. “What should I do? Should I buy food and mail it to India? Adopt a whale? Adopt an old person? Fly down to Peru with a hammer and some nails and try to build one homeless family a new house? What am I supposed to do? Shall I stand at a curve on Upper Levels Highway with a sign telling drivers to slow down, to drive more carefully? Or station myself at an airport waiting for a crash so I can pull victims from the plane? Give all my money to medical research? Arrive at a hospital and tell them to cut out my eyes to give to some blind child? What shall I do? What would it help the world if I tried?”

In other words, did she have to fly back and help Daisy with her children?

Did she have to marry Anthony and be a helpful faculty wife, ministering to students and young professors’ families?

But what else was she good for? She was intelligent and well read, but she had no degrees. She could do several things very well, but she had developed no marketable skills or talents, and she wasn’t interested, really, in a career. She simply wanted to live out her life by enjoying each day as she chose. The question was, how could she buy her way? Or had she somehow already bought it?

Margaret lit another cigarette, then put it out because it gave her mouth an unpleasant taste. She looked at her watch: it was eight o’clock. She decided to fix herself some breakfast. She went into her kitchen and became involved for a while in the pleasure of making herself a tray with eggs scrambled with cheese and chives, and an English muffin slathered with butter and honey, and fresh pressed orange juice. She carried the tray back to the living room, intending to eat and read, and as she set the tray on the coffee table, she saw Pandora stroll out of the bedroom to come to a dramatic standstill at the sight of the stray cat sleeping on the hearth. Pandora’s white fur stood on end and a low nasty growl came roiling out of her throat. This immediately woke the stray cat, who sprang to its feet at once and arched its back. Both cats hissed, then began to do a tense scuttling dance about each other, snarling and hissing as they did. Pandora suddenly reached out one sharp paw to swipe at the stray cat, and the cat leaped back and yowled.

“Pandora,
stop it
!” Margaret yelled. She walked over to her cat and stood above her, frowning down. “You stop that right now. This poor cat was freezing out in the rain and I had to take him in. He’s just a temporary guest; he’s not going to give you any trouble. Now you mind your manners and settle down or I’ll put
you
out in the rain.”

Pandora eyed Margaret with an almost sneering distaste, then turned her back and slunk off under a chair, to lie and stare out steadily and nastily at the stray cat. The stray cat settled back down on the hearth but this time with an air of wary unease, keeping his eyes open and facing toward Pandora.