Three Women at the Water's Edge (36 page)

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 uncomforta
ble—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—wh
at?—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 responsibi
lities 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.

And twelve hours later, Dale knelt in front of the fire in her mother’s house, almost drunk with happiness. She was sitting on the beautifully woven rug in front of the fireplace in her warm winter robe, kneeling behind her mother, brushing her mother’s hair while it dried. Her mother had such beautiful hair. It was thick and lustrous and as it dried in the firelight it began to glimmer with rich reddish-brown tones as warm and alive as the fire itself. Dale could not remember ever having touched her mother’s hair before; she could not remember ever even wanting to. But then of course she had never known her mother with hair like this; she had never known her mother as
beautiful;
she had never wanted to touch and stroke and caress her mother, as one wants to touch any beautiful creature, before now. She
loved
her mother. She loved bringing the brush down through her mother’s slightly damp hair, and watching it rise up bristling with its electricity, and then smoothing it with her other hand, and then bringing the brush down again. Margaret sat with her back toward Dale, her arms wrapped around her knees, her head tilted back.

At the last moment at eleven that day, Margaret had lost courage, had called Anthony and asked him to come with her to meet Dale and to take her to lunch. So Dale had had to swallow all her fury and force in order to be civil to the two people who met her at the airport, the two handsome strangers who collected her and took her to lunch. It had been a queer afternoon. Dale had been amazed at the bright, sunlit city with its dramatic backdrop of snow-covered mountains; and just as amazed at the enchantment which grew on her as she went through the day with her two companions. She had not been able to take her eyes off her mother. She had not been able to resist feeling smugly proud to walk into the French restaurant with two such obviously intelligent and elegant people, and she had kept saying to herself as she listened to her mother speak, as she watched her mother draw a cigarette from a charming silver-and-blue case: This is my mother! Why, this is my mother! And listening had been as entrancing as watching Margaret and Anthony; Margaret was actually clever, and witty, and well read, and perceptive. Dale had exclaimed several times: “Why, Mother, I didn’t know you knew
that
!” And then her mother had looked at her so fondly, a look passing over her face that brought back to Dale memories of the same look which Margaret had given to Dale almost as a gift in her childhood when she had done or said something especially amusing. Oh, her
lovely
mother, how she was the same, and how she had changed!

The three of them had all gotten on so well, and the day had been so pleasant, just chilly enough to make walking a brisk pleasure, that they had walked all about the city, and then through various parts of Stanley Park, looking at the ocean and its freighters or the Indian totem poles, and talking, and talking. Anthony knew so much about British Columbia; he was an historian, but then he wasn’t at all stuffy, and he spoke in such an entertaining way. They had been too happy a group to want to separate, and so had gone back to Margaret’s house for a late casual dinner of pâté and cheese and breads and cold crabmeat and fruit—and more wine, of course, much more wine. Anthony had finally left about ten-thirty, and as the two women walked him out to the car they had been taken with the way the full moon was shining in the sky, and as he drove away they decided to take a walk along the beach to watch the moon shining on the water. They had walked and walked together, laughing and talking. Dale had told her mother about her father’s marriage plans and had been able to see clearly by the moonlight how her mother’s face had brightened with delight at the news.

“Really?” Margaret had asked, turning toward Dale and clapping her hands together like a child. “Oh,
really
?” She seemed almost unable to believe such good fortune. “Oh, Dale, how wonderful!” Impulsively Margaret had hugged Dale to her, as if Dale had been somehow responsible for this event. “Isn’t it just perfect! Trudy is just what he needs, oh, they’ll get on so well together. Oh, think of it, just think of it, how
nice
.”

So they had walked on down the beach, farther and farther, stepping over bits of driftwood and large stones, talking about Dale’s father and his prospective new wife. Then Dale was able to talk to Margaret about Daisy in a different spirit from the one she had intended, from the one she had arrived with, and Margaret had been silent, listening, and finally had said, “I see what you’re saying. I understand what you want of me. Let me think about it. Give me a while to think this through. I
will
do something. Just give me time to think a bit.” And Dale had found it easy to accept this, to let the matter rest, to trust her mother.

Then a sudden wind had come up and blown clouds over the moon and in a matter of seconds a cold full rain had begun to come down on them. They were drenched immediately, but had turned and run back toward Margaret’s house anyway, as if by running they could keep themselves from getting any the more wet. In minutes they were totally soaked, with their hair and clothes sticking against them, and in running Dale had hit her foot against a log, but still it had turned out to be gay and crazy, running along beside the ocean in the rain, with Margaret going ahead of Dale and calling back to her over her shoulder, and both of them suddenly laughing with the gaiety of it all. Lights from the houses they passed and from across the harbor streaked and glittered as they ran, and Margaret and Dale were strangely caught up in a festive, even celebratory mood, so that by the time they arrived at Margaret’s house they did not go right in but stood looking up at the pouring sky and out at the waltzing ocean, with their arms held out to receive the rain and their heads thrown back. It was as if they had accomplished something, simply by running back to Margaret’s house together in the rain; it was as if something astonishing had been achieved. Of course they were a bit drunk from all the day’s wine, but it was more than that. Though they could not have said this to themselves in just so many words, it was as if the cold bright rain coming so unexpectedly made them aware of how full of good surprises the world was, of how one can sometimes turn the most casual corner in one’s life and come upon a miracle.