Three Women at the Water's Edge (46 page)

“I’ll take you outside in a minute, kids,” she said. “It’s nice and warm out. I’ll take you for a walk. Danny, you can ride your bike. You’ve been wanting to all winter and it’s finally nice enough out.”

“Yay! Yay! Can we go now, can we go now?” Danny yelled.

“In a minute, I have a few more things to do,” Daisy said. “Go play in the family room just a few more minutes.”

“Will you pull me in the wagon, Mommy?” Jenny asked, tugging on Daisy’s robe.

Daisy stared down at her blue-eyed daughter, her elder girl, and wanted to cry. Jenny was too young to manage a trike, and last summer Daisy had pulled her everywhere in a wagon. But now she had to push Susan in the carriage; she wouldn’t be able to manage the wagon, too. But that wouldn’t be fair to Jenny; what could she do? It seemed she was continually shorting this second child of hers, this little child, because of the new baby.

“Sure,” Daisy said finally. “Sure I will, sweetie. But we’ll have to put baby Susan in, too. She won’t take up much room.” She could pad the wagon bottom and sides with blankets, Daisy thought, and there wouldn’t be too many bumps on the sidewalk, and Jenny could sit with her feet scrunched up—

The phone rang. Daisy halfheartedly plodded into the kitchen to answer it, the two children trailing along beside her. Both children seemed more than ever jealous of her when she talked on the telephone; the phone ringing acted like a radar on them, drawing them to her, causing them to cling and pull at her arms and legs.

“Daisy? This is Jim Duncan,” a man said. “How are you?”

Jim Duncan, Daisy thought, Jim Duncan; who in the world is he? “I’m sorry,” Daisy said, trying to keep the long phone cord from strangling Jenny, who was tugging on it and managing to get it wound around her neck.

The man laughed. “
Dr
. Duncan,” he said. “I sort of delivered your baby.”

“Oh!” Daisy said, amazed. She had often thought of the man after she left the hospital, smiling at herself to remember how nice he had been, how special he had made her first night in the hospital with his present of hot cheeseburgers. And when she had gone to the enormous doctor’s clinic for her recent checkup, she had asked her old obstetrician if he knew the young doctor. But he hadn’t, and Daisy had let the idea of the man fall away, thinking she would never see him again. She couldn’t imagine why he was calling her now. Danny and Jenny began to squabble loudly right at her feet, and Daisy made hideous faces and gestures at them, trying to get them to be quiet and back off so that she could hear and think and carry on an intelligent conversation. She was glad Jim Duncan couldn’t see her now; he would think she was mad, but she could think of no other way to suggest silently to her children that they let her talk. So she spoke pleasantly to Jim Duncan, and simultaneously grimaced and lunged at her children, who fortunately went completely still with wonder at this strange sight.

Jim Duncan was calling to invite her out to dinner! Something a little better than cheeseburgers this time, he said. And perhaps a movie if she thought she could leave her infant for that long a time.

A bottle, Daisy thought, Susan can have a bottle for just one time, and if she doesn’t like it, tough, she’ll survive, let the babysitter handle her, she decided with a quick giddy surge of rationality. She had never missed nursing her first two children until they were three months old; but things were different now. The thought of an evening out, a long evening spent entirely with a pleasant adult male, was too enticing. They made plans for the following Friday evening.

Hanging up the phone, Daisy felt that the world had changed entirely. She sank down onto a kitchen chair and absentmindedly pulled both her son and her daughter onto her lap and kissed them on their necks.

“Mommy has a date, Mommy has a date,” she sang to her children.

“What’s a date?” Danny asked.

“It’s like a fig,” Daisy said, and laughed hysterically at her dumb joke. Something had snapped, or popped, inside her, something had changed. She had been wallowing in her martyred motherhood long enough, she realized, and now she would stop, she would change just a little bit. Now she would be brave and call Jerry; he had called twice after Susan’s birth to say that as soon as she felt like going out or having company in, he would like to see her. So she would see him, and she would see Jim Duncan, and she would let herself add this new dimension to her world, she would force herself to do it. For she knew that in spite of the difficulties of the isolated world she had shared with her three children over the past two months she had still felt safe and comfortable, secure. Now she was ready, perhaps, to feel something else, something a bit more challenging. Perhaps, she thought, perhaps she would even start doing exercises today. But then she looked through the kitchen at the laundry room, and her heart sank.

Lord, it was still all there, waiting to be done, the stinky sheets, the mountains of diapers waiting to be folded, the whole bit. By the time she finished that, and finished pulling Jenny and Susan in the wagon and watching to see that Danny didn’t ride his bike into the street, she wouldn’t have the energy to do exercises; if she lay down on the floor to try, she would probably fall asleep. Oh, it was hopeless. Hopeless and seemingly endless.

“Aren’t you ever coming out?”

Daisy looked up to see Sara and Allison standing in the back doorway, staring at her.

“I still haven’t finished the laundry,” Daisy told them. “Besides, I don’t want to bother you girls. You look so peaceful out there.”

“Oh,
God
,” Sara said, entering the kitchen. “You sound just like my mother. ‘You girls just go on and enjoy yourselves, have a good time, and don’t worry about me in here suffering away in the cold.’ Geez, Daisy, I thought you were better than that. It’s a good thing you have us around to shape you up before you start doing that number on Danny and Jenny.”

“I’ll fold the laundry,” Allison said. “It’ll take me five minutes.”

“No, no,” Daisy said, “I’ve got to wash the sheets, too.”

“Well, I can probably handle that,” Allison said. “I’ve been known to be capable of such things. A little soap, stuff them in the machine, press a button; I don’t think it will wear me down
too
much.”

“And I’ll take Danny and Jenny on outside with me,” Sara said. “You go take off that horrible robe and get into some shorts. You’re beginning to look about as healthy as a slug.”

“Thanks a lot,” Daisy said, but she had to fight back tears: how nice these girls were,
how nice
.

“The kids have some sand pails and shovels in the garage, don’t they?” Sara asked, already heading back out the door, holding each child by the hand.

“Yes,” Daisy said, “way at the back, by the garden hose. Well, they might be hidden by some boxes, I’ll come help you find them—”

“Daisy,”
Sara said, turning and fixing Daisy with a look, “cool it. Go change your clothes. You don’t have to do everything. Finding sand pails is not a major operation.” And she walked away, leading Danny and Jenny with her.

Daisy walked up the stairs, smiling to herself, and slipped into an old pair of maternity shorts and a short-sleeved cotton shirt. She peeked into the baby’s room and saw that Susan was still sleeping soundly, so she went on down the stairs. Allison was still in the laundry room, singing a rock song to herself and folding the diapers with a flippancy that came from knowing it wasn’t the thousandth time that week she had done such a thing. “Go on out,” she told Daisy. “I’ll be through here in a minute.”

The sun almost blinded Daisy as she walked out into it, and the warmth made her stop still. She felt like an animal, she just wanted to stay there, absorbing the soothing heat.

“Come on, old lady,” Ruth Anne called. “We’ve got you all set up.”

And they had. They had dragged out a folding plastic lounge chair from the garage and set it down near the water. Danny and Jenny were already on the sand, building sand castles with the help of Sara and Melissa. Daisy sank into the chair and put her feet up, almost stunned by her sudden good fortune.

“Here,” Ruth Anne said. “Have a Coke.” She handed Daisy a tall glass filled with icy cola, and a pile of magazines with pictures of gorgeous women in brilliant summer clothes grinning on the covers.

“This is so nice of you all,” Daisy said.

“Oh, I know, I know,” Ruth Anne said. “We’re just piling up points in heaven like crazy.” Then she went back and stretched out on her towel.

Daisy sat for a long moment staring at the magazines before she realized she didn’t want to read them. Later, maybe, but not now. Now she wanted simply to sit, letting herself take in the delicious warmth of the sun. This was a rare day, she knew, for it would be cool and rainy again before it got really warm and bright, but change was in the air: spring was here. Spring was here, and summer was close, and when fall came Danny and Jenny would both be going to preschool. By the time the weary winter rolled around again, she would be able to have some time free to herself while her baby napped and her children were off in the afternoons. She had come out of the winter, she had come out of the worst time in her life, and all sorts of warm and pleasurable things lay ahead. Why, her life was manageable after all; after all, her life was even happy.

Jenny and Danny jumped up from their sand castles and began to gather sticks and rocks and shells to decorate them; Danny had taken off his shirt and his pale skin gleamed in the sunlight. Daisy watched her children, pleased at the sight of their small bodies. Just past them, the bright blue of the lake stretched out endlessly, the waves peaking up and down gently, flashing sparks of light when the sun hit just the right way. How beautiful the water was, Daisy thought, and how fortunate she was to be able to live near it. How fortunate she was to be able to sit out here on this luminous day, basking in the warmth of the sun, looking at the expanse of dancing blue. Yet it was the presence of her son and daughter, running back and forth by the water that pleased her most, she realized. She found them by far the most beautiful; they were so compact, so complete, so delineated and defined. She could gather them up in her arms and squeeze their solid responsive flesh; she could gather them against her in a way she could never hold the water. And it was that that she loved, she realized, it was the flesh. She loved the flesh, the sight, the textures, the smells, she loved the flesh best.

She stared at her children, marveling at them, stroking them in her thoughts, running her hands over their firm miraculous heads, down over their vulnerable necks, their delicately framed rib cages, their busy energetic arms. Their stomachs, she loved their fat full comical protruding stomachs, and she loved, oh, she
loved
their thighs, thighs so stuffed with life that they seemed full to bursting. Oh, the fat sweet goodness of the flesh, Daisy thought, it was so substantial, so receptive, so real. Now even the fatigue that mellowed her very bones seemed sweet, seemed pleasurable; she felt her body flowing with the pleasure of life.

So she did not have regrets. She did not regret her marriage to Paul, because it had brought her all this: her children, her house by the water. She did not regret the divorce, because it had brought her herself. She had learned to manage, she had learned to cope. So far she had made her life come out as she wanted it, she had arranged life more or less to her satisfaction. Someday she would come to love a man again, because someday the flesh of her children would not suffice and she would desire something larger and different—and if she was attractive to Jim Duncan and Jerry Reynolds now, now when she looked worse than she ever had in her life, then surely as the months went by and she was able to manage such monumental activities as losing some weight and doing exercises, surely she would find men who would want to touch her and love her and someday even share her life. What was not possible? Everything was possible. Daisy felt strong and immensely vital. She felt happy.

She heard Allison come out the kitchen door and looked over her shoulder to see the young girl walking out into the sun, carrying baby Susan in her arms.

“Don’t worry,” Allison said. “I heard her cry and thought she might like to join us out here. I’ve changed her and everything. She can hang around with us on the blanket for a while. We haven’t had a good chat for several days. I’ve got to tell her about my date last night. She’s two months old; it’s about time she started learning about men.”

Daisy watched as Allison and Ruth Anne settled the baby on the blanket. She listened for a moment as the two girls chattered to each other about the men they had been with the night before. Susan hunched about on the blanket, cooing and drooling, perfectly content. Daisy turned back to the sight of the water, thinking how nice these girls were, how nice. How nice life could be, she thought; I must remember this. I must save the memory of this afternoon to carry me through some rainy night.

And so she sat, relaxed and warm, buffeted by the sounds of her laughing moving children and her friends, and watched the sun sparkle on the water with a radiance that almost equaled the radiance of life.

This book is for my mother,
Jane,

my sister
Martha,
and for
Jean,

Robb, Dina, Vicki, Merry, Jill, Katherine,
and
Miriam

Nantucket Sisters

A Nantucket Christmas

Island Girls

Summer Breeze

Heat Wave

Beachcombers

Summer House

Moon Shell Beach

The Hot Flash Club Chills Out

Hot Flash Holidays

The Hot Flash Club Strikes Again

The Hot Flash Club

Custody

Between Husbands and Friends

An Act of Love

Family Secrets

Everlasting

My Dearest Friend

Spirit Lost

Morning

Nell

Bodies and Souls

Three Women at the Water’s Edge

Stepping