Three Women at the Water's Edge (6 page)

“Thank you,” she said at last, and walked into the office, and Hank and the other man walked out. Dale could not bring herself to close the office door; she stood there dumbly staring, holding the door open, watching as the two men walked down the hall. She could not force herself to stop staring at him; she was too hungry for the sight of him. And she liked so well the sensation of desire which ran through her body so fiercely it bordered on alarm; she felt totally focused on the moment, on the reality of his presence. She did not want the moment to end.

Hank continued to walk down the hall, and then, casually, he stopped talking to the other man, and looked over his shoulder, and looked right at Dale. Their eyes met. For a moment Dale thought he would surely leave the man and come back down the hall to her—she wanted that so much. But he only looked at her, and then the other man said something to him, and Hank smiled and turned away and went around the corner, out of sight.

There was nothing more she could do. She handed in her attendance sheets and chatted with the secretaries automatically, then returned to her classroom to do the necessary things that the end of the day required. Finally she was through, she was free. She walked with great control to her Beetle convertible, and drove immediately to the ocean, and tore off her shoes and socks, and ran. She ran and ran. She ran for joy, she ran for love. She ran wildly at the edge of the surf because Hank Kennedy’s eyes were green.

She ran, thinking how drab the rest of her life seemed in comparison to this moment, how the rest of her life had not prepared her for this. She was full of such joy, such energy, such elation, simply because one man lived on this earth and had stopped for a few moments to meet her stare. And he would call her now, she was sure of it. If she had learned nothing else during her two years in Europe, she had learned how to say, merely by the way she held her body and her mouth, by the way she held her eyes:
I am interested in you
, or
leave me alone
. Of course in the high school office, her brain had short-circuited, and she had done nothing intentionally, but everything in her body had been tingling, moving outward toward him, and surely, oh, surely he could read those signs. And she was not unattractive, she had learned that, too. She had grown up thinking that her older sister Daisy was the beauty of the family and that she, Dale, was the brain, mainly because Daisy had blond hair and blue eyes, while Dale had light-brown hair and hazel eyes. But in college, and in Europe, she had discovered first to her delight and later to her disdain that she had something that attracted many men: large breasts. During her last six months in Europe she had gotten so tired of it all, of the fuss men made over her breasts, that she had gone to a surgeon in Paris to see about having her breasts reduced. But the cost was prohibitive, and the surgeon, a woman, had warned her against it. “You wait,” she had said, “you’re young, you’re not married. You wait.” Dale had bought looser and looser sweaters and shirts, and that had become a sort of style for her: jeans, high boots, loose sweaters or shirts, loose dresses. Her one vanity now was her hair, which was a rich, soft brown with auburn lights, and which she had let grow during the past two years so that it now reached below her waist. She could not quite sit on it, but in another six months she would be able to. Her hair was beautiful, and she liked the feeling of it sweeping protectively across her back like a cloak, or pulled straight back and tied with a striped ribbon into a single luxurious fall. So she had that, her hair, and she had her large breasts, and the bones of her face were good—no, she was not unattractive. She was attractive. Attractive. Would she attract him, would Hank Kennedy have been attracted to her by those few minutes in the high school office? She thought so, she hoped so, she hoped so desperately. Because underneath the free flow of joy which now surged about inside her, a thin line of tension was running, the tension of desire.

The sun went down finally, and as it did the luminescence went out of things. The sky, the water, the sand, went from silver to gray. It was really quite cold on the beach. Dale’s feet and ankles had gone numb. Still she kept moving along the line of the water, not running now, but walking, hugging herself for warmth. The tide was beginning to come in, and it gradually pushed her closer and closer into the shore, up toward the solid world where there were houses and cars and people and telephones. Dale did not want to leave the edge of the ocean, she did not want to leave her pure wild sense of ecstasy—she did not want to face the rest of her life wondering if she would ever see the man again, wondering if he would ever call.
He had to call
. She willed it. If he did not call, if she did not see him again, her life would seem as bleak and cold and gray as the world did right now, and she could not bear that. Better to walk and walk, savoring the last shivers of joy and desire; while she walked on the beach she still had it all, there was still hope.

But when her teeth began to chatter, she knew she had to go home. As she sat down inside her car, she realized how weak she was, how tired. She could not stop shaking, she was so cold. She managed to pull her socks on, but her wooden clogs felt too heavy to pick up, to attach to her feet. She drove home with the car heater on full blast, her sock-covered foot occasionally slipping off the gas pedal. It was quite dark by the time she arrived at the colonial house where she and Carol shared the large second-floor apartment. Carol was home, and had all the lights on, and apparently had fixed dinner, even though it was Dale’s night to do it. The apartment smelled of the good thick beef stew that Carol loved to make. Dale yearned for its warmth and substance.

“My God, where have you been?” Carol said, springing up out of a chair when she saw Dale walk in. “You look like a drowned cat.”

“I’ve been walking by the beach,” Dale said. “It was so beautiful, so fantastic, I can’t describe it. But I’ve gotten so cold. I can’t stop shivering.”

“Get in the bathtub right away, get in the hottest water you can stand. Hurry up, take those clothes off, they’re soaked. Walking on the beach at this time of year? You’re crazy. What’s gotten into you? Look at your hair, it’s marvelous the way it goes all curly and fuzzy when it’s damp. Go on, get in the tub, I’ll bring you—what? What should I bring you, what would be good for you? What do we have in the way of liquor? Here. How about a nice stiff scotch? That’s as close to brandy as we can get. What in the world were you doing out there on the beach anyway?”

Dale went into the bathroom and started the water into the tub. She poured in a great dollop of bath oil. She piled her hair on top of her head and held it there with two wooden prongs, then peeled her wet jeans and sweater off her body; the jeans were almost iced. Her skin had gone very white, and she was covered with gooseflesh. The hot water on her cold skin was painful, a sort of shocking burn, but she forced herself into the tub, down into the hot foamy depths, so that only her head was above the water. She could hear Carol going on and on in the other room, and she smiled to herself. Carol was the most perfect person to live with at times like these, because she excelled in taking charge, taking care. Carol would make a fine mother, Dale thought, Carol should have ten children. Carol made taking care of people an art. In fact, Carol reminded Dale of her mother—at least of her mother as she remembered her. Dale hadn’t seen her mother since the divorce, since her mother had undergone her mysterious and unexplainable transforma
tion; she could not believe her mother had changed as much as her father wrote she had. Dale could not imagine her mother being any way other than she had been the twenty-four years Dale had known her: warm, generous, kind, thoughtful, always ready to help.

“Here,” Carol said, coming into the bathroom. “A nice neat scotch. No ice, no water. Have a sip. You need it.” She handed the glass to Dale and then put the lid of the toilet seat down and sat down on it, crossed her legs, and looked at Dale affectiona
tely. “Feel better? At least your teeth have stopped chattering.”

“God, Carol, I’m sorry about dinner,” Dale said. “I forgot it was my turn to cook tonight.” She sipped the scotch. It burned. She could feel it burning all the way down through her chest and into her stomach.

“Oh, heavens, don’t worry about that,” Carol said. “I was in the mood to make a beef stew anyway. Smells good, doesn’t it? I made enough so we won’t have to cook tomorrow night, we can just warm it up. Oh, by the way, Hank Kennedy phoned. He called twice, once when I just got home and then about fifteen minutes ago.”

“He
did
?” Dale tried her best to sound casual, and she was astounded that she did not drop the glass of scotch into the tub. “Did he say why he was calling?”

“No, he just said he wanted to talk to you. I told him you would be home any minute. He said he’d call you back. Hey, the scotch is working. Your color is returning, you’re beginning to look human again. Shall I go put dinner on the table or would you like to soak some more?”

“Yes, I’d like to soak a few minutes more,” Dale said. “I want to get thoroughly warmed up. Even my bones got cold out there. That beef stew smells better than anything I’ve ever smelled before in my life. I’m so hungry, I can’t tell you how hungry I am.”

“Well, you should be, after running around on the beach at the end of October,” Carol said sensibly, rose, and left the bathroom. “Call me when you’re getting out, and I’ll dish up the stew.”

Dale sipped more of the scotch, and reached out to set the glass on the bath mat, her arm dripping water and suds onto the floor. Then she sank back into the heat of the water and pressed both hands against her heart, and thought: she would lie in the tub until she was completely warm, and then she would put on her warmest nightgown and robe and slippers, and then she would eat the beef stew, and drink a glass of red wine, and then she would help Carol with the dishes, and then she would grade papers, and eat a crisp pear and drink coffee. And when would Hank Kennedy call: when she was tying the sash of her robe? Or biting into the sweet white flesh of the pear?

He called just as Dale had finished grading all the papers, when she had almost given up hope. When the phone rang, she nearly screamed. “I’ll get it,” she said to Carol.

His voice was very low, very male. “Dale Wallace?” he said. “This is Hank Kennedy. I’m not sure you know who I am—”

“I know who you are,” Dale said evenly.
I know who you are: I’m in love with you
.

“Well, then,” he said, “I was wondering—I’d like to see you sometime.”

“Yes,” Dale said. “I’d like that, too.” Was she being too obvious, too forward? She didn’t care.

“When?” he asked. “I mean, when would be good for you?”

Tonight
, she yearned to say,
now
. But instead she put it in his charge: “Well, almost any time is fine. When would be good for you?”

“Well—perhaps tomorrow? After school? I could pick you up and we could go have dinner together. There are several nice restaurants around—”

“That would be fine,” Dale said. “That would be really fine.”

“I’ll pick you up in front of the high school tomorrow. What is a good time?”

“Five,” she said. “Five would be good. I can get everything cleaned up and in order by then.”

“All right,” he said. “I’ll see you then.”

“Yes. See you then,” Dale said, and hung up. She turned to Carol and smiled. “That was Hank Kennedy,” she said calmly.

“Well, good,” Carol said, smiling back at her. “And just think what we’ll save on the electric bill. All we’ll have to do is set our appliances next to you and they’ll run full speed.”

“Carol,” Dale said in drawn-out syllables, pleadingly. She wanted every ounce of Carol’s attention and understanding and good warm humor, because it was true: Dale was radiant, she was electric. She was shaking. She could not imagine how she could sleep, and so she sat with Carol and talked about her years in Europe, and her college days, and her high school days, until Carol finally said, “I’m sorry, Dale, but I’ve got to get some sleep. And you should, too.”