Free Three Women at the Water's Edge by Nancy Thayer Page B

here,” she had said over and over again to Dale, and when Dale asked her why, she would only say, “You’ve got to see more of life, you’ve got to get a wider view.” Her father had wanted her to attend the state university, but had acquiesced in the face of his wife’s vehement wishes. His wife usually did not oppose him, seldom asked for things to be her way.
    Dale often thought now that if she had gone to the state university she would have been able to make it into medical school, she would have been able to become a physician. She would have been able to go back to Liberty as a general practitioner, to work with her father. Sometimes the thought of her loss made her waste weeks in a hopeless bog of despair.
    “What did your sister do?” Hank asked.
    “Daisy? Well, she went to college at Northwestern,” Dale said. “She was four years older than I, and never made such good grades in school—I’m not saying she wasn’t as smart as I was, because she was, she just wasn’t as
interested
. She wasn’t planning all her life to be a doctor. Anyway, Mother made her get out of Liberty, too, but she didn’t make her go so far away. Actually, I don’t think Daisy got accepted anywhere back East. Well, she did what we all knew she’d do, what she’d always wanted to do, she married at twenty-two, and had a baby two years later, and a baby two years after that, and another baby is on the way now. She lives in Milwaukee. They have a house right on Lake Michigan. Daisy writes that it’s great, the house. I’ve never seen it. I really should visit them sometime…”
    “Are you close to your sister?” Hank asked.
    “Close? I don’t know. We were when we were little, of course, but we haven’t seen each other for three years now. And we lead such different lives. But we write each other about once a month. She has beautiful children. Enchanted children. I don’t know. I should go visit her, it would be fun.”
    “Do you ever go back to Liberty?”
    “Well, the last time I was back was just after I graduated from college. It looked good to me, Liberty. It looked pretty much the same. It’s a boring sort of place, I know, just a dumb little farm town, but I still love it. I wouldn’t mind living out my life there, or someplace like it. It has its charms. But then the ocean—this coast—this place—now I feel at
home
here, I feel that I would go berserk if I couldn’t get to the ocean every day. It’s become something I need. So I’ll probably end up settling here, if I can.” Dale went quiet then, thinking of her situation: the apartment she shared with Carol, which she would have to give up when Carol married; her job in the high school, which gave her security for the three years of her contract, but no longer; would she get tenure? She couldn’t know yet.
    And now this man sitting across from her, listening to her intently. Where was he to fit in her life? All through the evening she had been talking rapidly, earnestly, her desire to touch him channeled into her words, her words, could she somehow touch him with her words? He was sitting there so calmly, watching her, listening: how did he feel now after she had revealed so much of herself to him? Did he like her? Did he want to touch her in return?
    An apologetic waitress came to say that it was closing time, and Dale and Hank left the warmth of the restaurant for the chill of Hank’s red pickup truck. Dale admired the way Hank took care of the bill; in Europe she had usually paid for her own meals, and quite often had paid for the man’s meal, too, since many of the men she had struck up relationships with had had less money than she. As she climbed into the truck, she began to say something pleasantly grateful to Hank about the meal; she almost said that she would like to have him to dinner at her apartment sometime. But she was afraid that that would make her seem too eager to see him again, and too coyly domestic. The very action of