Stone Diaries, The - Carol Shields [62]
Disappointment lingers for days, but the weeks pass, a month, two months, and by the time he once again picks up his pen, his devotion has been restored. It is inevitable that each of us will be misunderstood; this, it seems, is part of twentieth-century wisdom.
Let it be said that Daisy Goodwill has saved every one of Barker Flett’s letters; she has them still, though she would be hard put to tell you just where they are. In a drawer somewhere. Or a cardboard carton.
Her letters to him have not survived.
Nor are there any photographs of her dating from this period.
Still, you can guess how she must have looked as she neared the end of her train journey to Ottawa—although, as a captive of her own drama, she is likely to touch up this image more than a little; for instance, she sees herself as having already removed her hat—knowing full well that a woman never travels hatless—and next thing you know she’s shaking out her reddish-brown hair with its eruptions of gold. The last of the sun’s rays enter the train window and gather on the folds of her linen dress. (Cut on the bias. Smart by the standards of Bloomington, Indiana.) She is clasping her hands firmly together on her lap much as Barbara Stanwyck did in The Woman in Red, indicating sprightly female determination. And she hopes the line of her jaw, like Garbo’s, conveys a similar attitude.
What will she say to him? What will be her first words?
A scene offers itself up: she is taking his hand, shaking it gravely, holding herself a little aloof so as not to alarm him. She speaks quietly, sincerely of her journey. No, she is not overly tired.
It was really very pleasant. Scenery just heavenly. The miles flew by. She is anxious to demonstrate good will, while patiently waiting for candor to establish itself.
What if they have nothing to talk about? Nothing in common?
Well, she must find something. She will put her mind to it.
Again she presses her hands together. Gloveless. Ringless. A stranger might guess her to be engaged in an act of silent prayer, and in a sense she is, for her concentration has a devout intensity.
She is traveling to Barker Flett as to a refuge. It comes down to that.
She cannot go back to Vinegar Hill to be the daughter of Cuyler Goodwill and the step-daughter of Maria, not in that house, not in Bloomington, not at her age, it is out of the question. This last year she has been in danger of becoming an eccentric or else one of those persons who does not bother to put a saucer under her cup.
Her father’s tiresome freestone metaphor comes back to her with all the dead weight of its evangelical offering: as with a chunk of Indiana limestone, he says, a person can split off his life in one direction or the other; the choice is open.
But no such choices are available to her at this time in her life, a woman on the verge of middle age—or so she thinks. A person arbitrarily named. A person accidentally misplaced. How did this happen? She’s caught in a version of her life, pinned there.
A thought comes into her head: that lately she doesn’t ask herself what is possible, but rather what possibilities remain. At this moment she is clearly on a one-way journey, though her return train ticket lies safely in a pocket of her leather handbag. Curiously, she is not afraid, knowing as she does that love is mostly the avoidance of hurt, and, furthermore, she is accustomed to obstacles, and how they can be overcome by readjusting her glance or crowding her concerns into a shadowy corner.
She closes her eyes for a moment—not Garbo eyes, no, nothing like so brave and chilly—and thinks of these last few days of travel.
Everything she has seen or done has jagged edges around it. Her various conversations with strangers go round and around in her head, exhilarating but also exhausting—that man at the Falls, wasn’t he the limit! All of them.
From surfeit to loss is a short line. She cannot go back. She will have to make new plans. These plans grow in her head, wild as they are, sending out tentacles, scenes, whole