Three Women at the Water's Edge (16 page)

“Attitude!” Daisy said, and turned to face her mother. This really was too much, she thought, this was really all crazy!

But Margaret went right on talking. “Yes, attitude,” she said. “So much in life depends on how you look at it. Why, Daisy, you’ve got a whole new life ahead of you, a fresh start. You know I never did care much for Paul, and if I were you, why, I think I’d be celebrating right now. In fact, that’s what we’ll do: we’ll get a good bottle of champagne and drink to your future.”

“Oh,
Mother
!” Daisy cried. “How you’ve changed! I wanted to break down and cry and have you put your arms around me and say ‘There, there,’ I wanted you to—” But the thought of all she wanted made Daisy’s eyes fill with tears and her throat close up. She leaned her head on the car window and for one long moment felt totally helpless and pathetic. She felt so sorry for herself. Rejected by her husband, and now rejected by her mother. It was too much. It wasn’t fair. She wanted advice and consolation and sympathy and comfort and she wasn’t getting any of it; she felt hurt, pitiful. She felt like a little child who walked all the way to the candy store only to find it closed. “Mother,” she said, “really. I don’t know what I’m going to do.”

“Well, first of all,” Margaret replied, and she patted Daisy’s hand so briefly that it was almost more of an admonition than a caress, “dry your eyes and stop thinking about yourself. You’ll have plenty of time to think about yourself. You’ve never seen Vancouver before, and it’s the closest thing to heaven I can think of. Forget the divorce and all of that for a little while, and enjoy yourself. Look at the mountains. Aren’t they wonderful? Have you ever seen anything so lovely? We’re in downtown Vancouver right now; aren’t those office buildings a marvelous contrast to the mountains? I’m going to drive you through Stanley Park before I take you home. In fact, I think we’ll get out and have a little walk. The exercise would do you good. And the second thing you can do, Daisy, is to realize that what you’re asking from me I just can’t give anymore. I used to give out advice as freely as milk and cookies. People seemed to need it, dull people, they seemed to think that advice came in an edible package, and I tried to keep everyone fed. Well, I don’t make cookies anymore, and I don’t hand out advice. That does not mean that you can’t learn something from me, while you’re here; you are not a dull person, Daisy. You are a pretty bright young woman. And you’re my daughter, and I love you. I wish you well. But giving cookies and consolation is a hard habit to break, and now that I’ve managed to do it, I won’t start up again, not for anyone. Especially not for you. Especially not for you, Daisy, because you and Dale are the people I love most in the world. You’ve got to learn to stand on your own.

“Look, here we are, this is Stanley Park. One thousand acres of parkland between the city and the sea. There is Lost Lagoon on the left. We’ll stop here, at Prospect Point; that will give you the best view of West Vancouver, and the mountains, and the harbor. Look, isn’t that a marvelous totem pole? I’ve been fascinated by all the Indian lore and art that’s a part of British Columbia. Somehow the Canadians have managed to incorporate a lot of the wealth of their Indian heritage into their modern world in a way we Americans have failed to do. There’s an artist, Emily Carr, who does marvelous sweeping paintings, a bit like Georgia O’Keeffe, but really there’s no comparison, and she includes so much of the feeling of Indians, the primitive people who lived on the land as if they were part of the land rather than owners of it; they’ve a good exhibition of Emily Carr’s works at the public gallery; I’ll take you there tomorrow. Shall we get out now, and walk a bit?”

Daisy stared at her mother for one long moment. She decided that Margaret was about as sensitive and receptive as a railroad train; but there was no fighting against that blunt direct force. There was nothing to do, it seemed, but be carried along. Margaret got out of the car, walked to a railing, and stood looking out over the ocean, seemingly oblivious of Daisy. Daisy sighed and rather reluctantly pulled herself out of the car to follow. Without the restraint of the car to frame the landscape in, all of Vancouver seemed to spring up around her, demanding in its really startling beauty. Daisy leaned against the car, stunned, suddenly taken out of herself. She looked about her, and her gaze was carried up and up. On her left were crested, majestic snow-capped mountains rising above the glittering ocean. On her right was a forest of evergreens, taller than any trees she had seen or dreamed, and beyond that, where the forest had been cut back to make way for the city, was the bright clean human lift of cement and glass and steel buildings. It made Daisy almost dizzy to look about her; she was used to more moderate land, to flat land or rolling hills, which signified moderation and orderliness and calm. This land spoke of luxuriant extremes, of bold-faced triumphant isolation. It really was
too much,
Daisy thought, the change in her mother, and now this overwhelmingly beautiful land which would not let her ignore it, which called up wild desires and longings, which made impossible things seem possible simply by its presence—after all, here it was, Vancouver, more beautiful than a dream of heaven. If it could exist, what could not? She understood why her mother had moved here.

“It is fantastic, Mother!” Daisy said, approaching Margaret and leaning on the railing next to her. She watched cars cross back and forth from West Vancouver to Stanley Park on the arching green span of Lion’s Gate Bridge. Below, the ocean sparkled with freighters and tugboats. “I’ve never seen anything like it in my life. Words can’t touch it.”

Margaret smiled, pleased. “I know,” she said. “Miriam had written to me for years, telling me I should come out for a vacation, and she had sent me an occasional snapshot, too. But I always resisted coming here. I was afraid, I think. And of course when I did come, well, I knew I had found my home. It’s funny, isn’t it, how I could have lived all my life in the middle of the continent, stuffing myself with bread in the middle of the breadbasket, only to discover at the advanced age of forty-eight that I felt truly at home in another country, another city, another world.”

“Do you think you would have felt that way—that you had found your home—if you had come out to Vancouver ten years ago, or fifteen years ago, or even five?” Daisy asked.

“Well, Daisy,” Margaret said. “I’ve asked myself that often. I don’t know the answer. Well, I couldn’t have come twenty years ago, when you girls were small; I could not have taken you away from the safety of your home and your father. Five years ago—I don’t know. Perhaps. I think one has to be
ready
for major changes like this; the timing has to be right. It’s perfectly possible that five years ago, or even three, I might have come out here, admired the place, and gone back to Liberty quite happily. But the important thing is that I came when I did, and that I’m here, now. And I’m so glad you’re here, too; there’s so much I want to show you. Oh, I don’t know where to take you first; there’s so much to see, so much to do.”

Daisy watched her mother closely as she spoke, noticing how almost childish she was in her enthusiasm, so self-centered and lighthearted, as if she hadn’t a care in the world. Well, maybe she hadn’t, Daisy thought sulkily; she certainly didn’t seem to care much about Daisy’s problems. Only two years before, Margaret had come to Milwaukee to take care of everyone while Jenny was born. How warm and generous she had been then, and what restfulness there had been for Daisy, with her mother there to cook and clean and tend. Oh, how was it, Daisy thought, that she had to lose her mother at the same time she lost her husband? For she had to face up to it: she had, in a very real way, lost her mother. She wanted to snivel and pout, but clearly Margaret would not put up with that; clearly Margaret was just not very interested in Daisy’s problems at all.

As if Margaret were reading her mind, she turned to Daisy. Still leaning gracefully against the railing, her entire posture casual and relaxed, she said sternly, “You know, Daisy, I’ve spent my entire life listening to other people’s problems. Your situation isn’t half as bad as you think it is, not half as bad as some I’ve heard. You’re young; you’ll be attractive again if you lose weight; you will have some kind of house; and you will have three beautiful children. And now you have the chance to have a vacation. I’m not going to help you solve your problems, but I will give you one week of real pleasure, if you’ll only let me. Try to enjoy this week. Relax, look about you. Maybe you’ll learn something. And please remember: you have a right to your agitation; but I have a right to my tranquillity.”

“All right, Mother,” Daisy said, conceding. What else could she say?

“Good,” Margaret said. “Let’s go home. I’m so eager to show you my house.”

Daisy sat in the car again, listening to her mother tell how she had found her wonderful house, offering up necessary words of admiration at the landscape they drove through on their way into West Vancouver—and she did admire the landscape; it was amazingly beautiful. But for Daisy it was rather like being on the moon, or another planet, with a guide one is not quite sure is human, so far removed is she from human concerns.

Margaret’s house was another shock for Daisy. The house in Liberty had been full of overstuffed chairs, thick carpets, harmonious clutter. Everything in it had been touchable, usable, anyone could sit anywhere; it had been a house for a family to live in. But Daisy wandered through Margaret’s new home as if through a museum. In fact her first thought was that of course she could not have brought Danny and Jenny here; they would have gotten the glass coffee table sticky with fingerprints, and they might have toppled over the strange green soapstone Eskimo statue that sat next to the fireplace hearth. They might have touched the white walls, and left marks; they might have left fingerprints on the sliding glass doors that looked out over the ocean, they might have knocked over the tall Chinese vase full of dried autumn leaves and flowers. Daisy’s second thought was that
she
was
glad
that her children weren’t with her, because now she was free to look through her mother’s house without any distractions. It was a beautiful home, Daisy could not deny it. It was breathtaking.

The front door opened to a small entrance hall which Margaret had separated from the living room by a stunning Chinese screen in a silk so purple as to be almost black, with cherry-and-yellow designs blossoming on it. Stepping past the screen, one saw, with a gasp—it did cause a gasp, it was so splendid—the stretch of highly polished dark wood floor out to a wall of glass looking onto the ocean. The other walls of the room were white; there was a white marble fireplace, and a vivid abstract in blues and oranges, which Daisy had never seen before, above the mantel. There was a small white rug, an elegant white sofa and chair, a wicker rocker with what appeared to be a shawl thrown over it, and the coffee table. At one end of the room was the dining area, so gleaming in chrome and glass that Daisy had to turn away, remembering the enormous oak table, the comforting oak buffet she had grown up with. The kitchen was clever and small; and there were only two other rooms: Margaret’s bedroom, and the spare room where Daisy was staying.

Margaret’s bedroom walls were white and the carpet was thick and rich and white, but everything else in the room was bright with color: In the corner near the glass wall was the chair Margaret had written about, with the batik bedspread draped over it, so that it undulated in stripes of red, violet, blue, green, yellow, and orange; Margaret’s bed, which to Daisy’s surprise was queen size (Daisy would ask why later, when she found the energy to do so) and covered with a thick rich quilt of random dark and light blues; the cherry armoire that had belonged to Margaret’s mother, where both Harry and Margaret had once stored their clothes but which now only Margaret used; a small walnut lady’s writing desk with papers lying on it, and pens, and journals in red and blue leather. And the one familiar sign that made Daisy feel her mother might not be completely lost to her—the antique cherry washstand, used as it always had been as a bedside table, layered with Margaret’s books, magazines, newspapers, and reviews. The lamp of Daisy’s childhood was there, too: it was an antique oil lamp which had been electrified long ago; its base was marble and brass, and the globe was crystal etched with flowers. Twelve crystal prisms hung from the brass rimming the globe; six ended in triangular points and were connected to a round prism at the top; the other six were shorter and squarer and connected to an emerald-cut prism at the top. Daisy stared at the lamp, stunned with memory: every night the family would know when Margaret was through reading, because when she reached her hand out to pull the brass chain that turned the light off, she of necessity hit the prisms and they would chime and tinkle in the most clear and lovely way. Just so, in the middle of the night, if Dale or Daisy were sick, or if the phone rang, someone calling for their father, everyone could hear the less restrained tinkling of the prisms as Margaret fumbled in the dark for the brass chain. A few times, when Daisy or Dale had been very very sick, Margaret had released one of the prisms from its tiny brass hook and let the child take it in her hand, to feel its cold ungiving surfaces, or to hold it up in the sunlight, to see the rainbows the sun made from its facets.

In the Liberty house, the crystal lamp had seemed inordinately sensual and extravagant; its mere presence there in their parents’ solid room had always been a bit of a mystery. But now it seemed perfect in Margaret’s new bedroom. Daisy was struck by a wave of understanding: oh, so
that
is how she really was all along,
that
is what she wanted.

“Your house is absolutely splendid, Mother,” Daisy said, coming back into the living room. “I think it’s the most wonderful house I’ve ever seen—except for mine. It’s certainly
different
from mine.”

“Well,
we’re
different,” Margaret said. “Here, I made you some herb tea. It’s very good. Why don’t you take it with you into the guest room and unpack and rest awhile. We’re going out to dinner tonight at a wonderful restaurant down on the harbor. It’s a Greek restaurant, a
real
Greek restaurant. It’s run by Greeks and frequented by the Greek sailors when their freighters are in dock. The food is delicious, and the men do wonderful dances, and if the other Greeks like the dancing, they get up and join, or they throw glasses which smash to pieces on the floor. Then the men dance, some of them barefoot, around the glass. It’s rather wild. Not like anything we ever had in Liberty,
that’s
for sure. And I’ve got some lovely friends joining us. I’m eager for you to meet them. So do take your tea and have a little rest; we’ll be up late tonight.”