Three Women at the Water's Edge (4 page)

But the trouble was, Daisy thought, that Paul didn’t care what Daisy wanted anymore; he had gone past that. He had come to regard Daisy as the enemy; he wanted to escape her, or to obliterate her.

And he did not love the children, either, they both knew that. Well, he had never been around them much, had seldom held them, and it’s hard to love something one doesn’t know. Daisy had wanted Paul to be there at Danny’s birth, she had begged him to take part in the natural childbirth classes and in the delivery. But Paul had thrown up in the delivery room; it was not the sight of Daisy’s pain that nauseated him, but the shock of blood and excrement oozing from between her long slim legs. When Jenny was born, Daisy asked one of her best woman friends to come hold her hand and count and coach her, while Paul went to the friend’s husband’s house to drink; Danny stayed with a sitter. So, Daisy thought, she wouldn’t miss him, then, when the new child was born.

But DAMN HIM! How could he leave his family, how could he leave a child he hadn’t even seen? Was he mad? Was he insane? Hard-hearted? He had had some tenderness in him once. Didn’t his overwhelming love for Monica leave anything for his own family?

Daisy twisted again, and the afghan fell off onto the floor. She shivered, and wiped her tears on the pillowcase. It was almost three o’clock, she ought to get up, she ought to do something. She wished she could call her mother and ask her what to do, but recently her mother had changed so dramatically that Daisy was not sure of her response, and she couldn’t face a new weird mother on top of everything else. So Daisy could only sigh and get up. She smoothed the bed, picked up the afghan, gathered together the sheets of her mother’s letter, and laid them on the bedside table. She heard her friend’s car in the driveway, and looked out the window at her son running up the walk to the door, and was filled with a wonderful love. She could not believe it—that little boy, so full of grace, was something she had made in her body. She smiled with anticipation at how she would hug him when he came in the door, at how she would see him smile.

“Let’s not talk about anything serious,” Paul had said that night as he helped Daisy get into her chair at the restaurant. “Let’s just enjoy our meal, and have our talk over coffee.”

Daisy blithely agreed, although, looking back at it, she saw that she should have guessed by those very words what was coming. But it’s hard not to have hope at even the most difficult times. And then, would anything have been gained if she had let herself worry throughout the meal? It was such an excellent meal. She hadn’t been to such a fine restaurant in months, why should she have spoiled the occasion? It would not have changed a thing.

So she ate crusty French onion soup, and duck, sweet with cherries and wine, and a sharp salad full of oily smooth avocados and a creamy mocha dessert.

“Why not have a decaffeinated coffee?” Paul asked Daisy, and she agreed.

Paul seemed to have been pacing himself: as the coffee was set on the table, he began to talk. He put his elbows on the table, and clasped his coffee cup in both hands, and did not attempt to be subtle.

“I’ve had a good offer from a firm based in Los Angeles,” he said. “It’s a good position, with a chance for advancement. I could make a lot of money.”

Daisy thought: No. I don’t want to move. I don’t want to leave my house, the lake.

“I want to take the job,” Paul said, without waiting for Daisy to speak. “I want to take the job, and I want to marry Monica. I’ve talked to a lawyer. There’s a new divorce law in Wisconsin. All I have to do is claim irretrievable breakdown of our marriage, and the divorce is granted. There’s not a thing you can do about it. I’m going to get a divorce. If you’ll be decent about it, I’ll be as generous as I can with money, and I’ll be nice to the children. But if you fight me over this, if you get nasty, I’ll be nasty right back. I’ll be a bastard about money, and I’ll be a bastard to the children. I won’t come to see them, I won’t remember their birthdays, I’ll hit them.”

Daisy stared at her husband. Her entire body curled backward from him, sick with distaste. “My God,” she said.

“I’m desperate,” Paul said.

“You are contemptible,” Daisy said.

“So are you,” Paul replied.

“My father was right about you,” Daisy said then, in a whisper of amazement, talking more to herself than to Paul.

“What do you mean?” Paul said. “What did your father say?” It was one of his most vulnerable points; he idolized Daisy’s father, and wanted to be liked by him.

Daisy smiled, confident of her father’s protection. “I don’t dare tell you,” she said. “You might accuse me of not being decent to you, you might walk in the house and hit Danny.”

To her surprise, tears came into Paul’s eyes and his voice went mushy. “Daisy, please,” he said. “I told you I’m desperate. I’m trying to play the heavy, anything, to make you let me go. I don’t want to hit the children.”

“Why can’t you stay married to me, remain a father to your children, and have your sweetie on the side?” Daisy asked. Something had happened; the worst moment was over; she began to sip her coffee.

“Because I don’t love you. I can’t bear to look at you. You used to be beautiful; now you’re not. You don’t interest me. There’s just nothing there for me. I don’t enjoy life with you. I am not interested in anything you’re interested in. When I was sitting at that parent-teacher meeting for Danny’s preschool, I thought I’d get sick or start tearing my hair, and you were so happy, making suggestions, really caring. The life you want is just not the life I want. I want to live with Monica; I want to eat elegant meals every night without children whining and interrupting, I want to be free to go out on the spur of the moment or to lie in bed screwing all Sunday morning, or to sleep all night long without some kid wailing. I want to be selfish.”

“So what will you do if Monica gets pregnant?” Daisy said. “She’s young. Accidents happen. Will you leave her then, too?”

“I’m going to get a vasectomy,” Paul said. “And Monica’s getting her tubes tied. There is no way we will have children in our lives. Although she’s perfectly willing to be agreeable to Danny and Jenny and the new baby whenever they come to visit,” he added.

Daisy stared at him over the rim of her cup. How completely Paul had planned his new life. Monica was even willing to be
agreeable
to the children! An urge moved through Daisy: covertly she looked about the table, searching for something hot and peppery, or oily and sharp with onions, to throw in Paul’s face. But the table had been cleared, had even been brushed clean of crumbs. There was only the expanse of white linen, and the water glasses, and Paul’s cup, and her own coffee, which tasted too good to be thrown away. It occurred to Daisy that there was not very much left she could do about the situation. It occurred to her that Paul had become the sort of person she did not like, would not even have wanted to know. And perhaps she had gotten what she wanted from him, the lovely children, the good house. She did not need to keep him around, as he was, as a father; his genes might be okay, because he was tall and good-looking, but perhaps it would be best if his influence ended right there.

“Well,” Paul said impatiently. “Well?”

Yet she did not want to admit this. She did not want to give in too easily. She was afraid, of vague things she could not even name. She felt that now she still somehow had the upper hand, and she was not willing to relinquish it, not when she was so unsure of the rules of the game, of the game itself. She hesitated. She stared at Paul, seeing a handsome man just past thirty, who had a neatly trimmed mustache riding a voluptuous mouth, and eyes as hard as—as what? His heart?

“You bastard,” she said calmly. “You bastard.”

To her awe and consternation, Paul burst into tears, right there in the restaurant. “Oh
Jesus
, Daisy,
come on
,” he said. “Why are you doing this? You don’t love me anymore. You haven’t loved me for a long time. You haven’t wanted me to touch you for
years
. You’ve detested me because I’ve scrambled to make money, because I haven’t gotten rich in the offhanded, altruistic, quiet way your father has. Yet you’ve been quick enough to want all the things that take money: the house, Montessori for the children. Somewhere along the way you stopped seeing
me
; the only time I please you is when I’m doing something with or for the children. How in the world can you want me to live with you? Can’t you be generous? Can’t you be kind? You have so much—you love the children, and they love you. Won’t you let me go off somewhere so I can be loved, too?”

At the end of this speech, Paul did an incredible thing: he blew his nose in the restaurant’s white linen napkin. It made Daisy laugh, and she sat there, aware that she could say something snide and cutting now. But Paul’s head was bent as he blew his nose and wiped his tears on the napkin, and across his white forehead a speckling of red appeared: the same nervous rash that broke out on Danny and Jenny’s foreheads when they were sad and upset. So because for a moment he was vulnerable, and reminded her of a child, and reminded her that he could feel enough pain to cry in public and that she was, as she was with her children, the only person in the world who could stop the tears and end the pain, because of all that, the child’s rash on the grown man’s forehead, Daisy said, “Okay, Paul.” She reached across the table and stroked his forehead lightly with her long fingers. Her pain would come later, she knew, when no one was there to stroke her. “Okay, Paul,” she repeated. “Okay. It’s all right. Okay.”

Later that night, much later, Daisy lay alone in bed again, propped up on pillows, drinking hot chocolate, feeling stunned and yet somehow queenly. With a gesture of her hand, she could dispense favors. “And to you, I grant complete freedom.” She was enormous in her majesty. The chocolate filled her with sweetness. Paul was sleeping in the guest room, so Daisy had the entire double bed to herself, and she sat right in the middle of it with the blue satin comforter spread out over her knees and the rest of the bed like a realm. The house was very quiet; it was after twelve. At the restaurant, Paul had quickly calmed down and begun to discuss the concrete details of their divorce: how soon he could get it, whom he would use as a lawyer, whom she would use as a lawyer, that he would move out of the house and to Monica’s as soon as possible.

Daisy had said very little and nodded her head to everything Paul said. I may never see this man naked again, she was thinking inanely, I may never again see this man’s penis. I know the shape of his chest, where his birthmarks are, I know about the peculiar toenail on the little toe of his left foot. All these are things I will never see again. Not that I’ve seen all that much of them recently, his body is not one I’ve held very much in the past few years. Take your weird toenail and go, Paul, who cares, who cares.

“Daisy,” Paul said, “are you listening?”

She was beginning to be overcome by a great weariness. “I’m listening, Paul,” she said. “I’m hearing every word you’re saying.” But by the time they were ready to leave she was thinking: Who is this stranger, why is he telling me all these things, what does it matter to me?

So they rode home in silence. Daisy’s head fell back against the headrest and she dozed as Paul drove. They walked into the house, said ordinary normal words to the babysitter—it really was curious how normal they could act in front of such an audience, a fourteen-year-old girl—and Paul drove the babysitter home. He was a very long time doing it; Daisy suspected in a dull way that he had stopped somewhere to call Monica, to tell her that the evening had been a success.

When he returned, he came into the bedroom, took his pajamas from the drawer, and said, “I’ll sleep in the guest room tonight.”

“Oh,” said Daisy, who had brushed her teeth and washed her face and was beginning to wake up. This announcement seemed to bother her greatly, in an obscure way. Paul went into the guest room and shut the door tightly.

“Oh, well,” Daisy said to the door.

She went to the bedroom—her bedroom now—and put two pillows in the very middle of the bed, and settled down against them. She sat and drank for a while, staring at the blue comforter and the walls, and feeling rather powerful, because she was the only person in the house who was awake, and also rather sovereign, which in her mind at that moment meant large and stately, and alone. She felt very important somehow, but couldn’t understand why; she supposed it was the shock of Paul’s news. Looking about the room, she saw her mother’s letter lying still largely unread on the bedside table. She picked it up, and began to read. She finished her hot chocolate before she finished the letter, and fell asleep sitting up, with the bedside light on, and the cocoa mug lying on its side on the blue comforter, and her mother’s letter loosely fallen from her hand.

Margaret Wallace had written: “Each morning I awaken to the dazzling bright splendor of sunlight on water, and I lie in bed watching the long, serious, slender freighters glide past, and I try to think of the proper names for all the different blues I see dancing in the water. (Robin’s egg, indigo, sapphire.) I stretch in my wide bed, on my cool blue sheets, and don’t want to rise, and then think, I don’t have to! And sometimes I cry for joy, for the beauty and luxuriousness of my life.

“At night it is the same. I cannot bear to go to sleep, I sit up in my old blue chair (I found a cotton batik spread in a shop in Dundarave, a spread covered with wide wild stripes of rainbow, and threw it over the chair, so it does not look the same, it is new, as I am). And I stare and stare out the window at the water, at the dark. Sometimes the moon spreads itself across the water in uneven, uneasy strips; it is always shimmering, changing, curving into new forms, as if lying very lightly and restlessly on the surface of the water, which otherwise would absorb it, drink it, cause it to vanish, unlike the reliable certain earth which only refuses and reflects. Sometimes there is no moon, but still the show of dancing lights as the cars cross over and back on the Lion’s Gate Bridge, over and back, and then the lights of the houses and the city flash and tease, and even very late at night I can see lights somewhere. I do not feel alone, I feel sufficiently accompanied, and I wonder if across the harbor, on the eastern shore, another woman is sitting with a glass of brandy in her hand, staring at the water, smiling back at me. Pandora often comes into the room at night—she likes to go about then, you know—and she often comes into my bedroom and leaps up onto my bed, just out of touching distance, and our eyes meet for a moment. I do not need to speak to her; our eyes meet, that is enough, and then she sits and watches the night with me and is elegant and understanding enough to refuse to break our happy silence with a sound. A most companionable cat.