“If it’s madness, it’s mine, not yours. Don’t worry about it.”
“And now this, this sneaking around going through Jim’s private papers, what does it mean? What are you looking for?”
“You know what I’m looking for. Jim must have told you. He tells you everything else.”
“Only because you won’t talk to him anymore.”
Daisy stared at a section of the wall, wondering how many times during the past week Jim and her mother had discussed the situation. Perhaps they had a conference about her whenever she was absent, like two doctors in consultation over a very sick patient whose symptoms they didn’t understand. “She’s looking for a lost day, Dr. Fielding.” “That sounds pretty serious, Dr. Harker.” “Oh, it is. First case I’ve ever had quite like it.” “We may have to operate.” “Good idea. Splendid. If the lost day is anywhere, it’s inside her. We’ll dig it out and dispose of it. Can’t leave it in there festering.”
“You seem,” Mrs. Fielding said, “to resent the fact that Jim confides in me.”
“Not at all.”
“Most young women are grateful for a decent relationship between in-laws. Jim and I have many differences of opinion, but we try to overlook them for your sake, because we both love you.” Mrs. Fielding’s eyes were moist, and the corners of her mouth turned down as if she was going to cry. She pressed her fingertips against her mouth to steady it. “You know that, don’t you? That we both love you?”
“Yes.” She knew they both loved her, each in a different way, neither of them completely. Jim loved her insofar as she fitted his conception of the ideal wife. Her mother loved her as a projection of herself, but the projected part must be without the flaws of the original. Oh yes, certainly, she was loved. Being loved was not the problem. The problem, when you were the focus of two such powerful people as Jim and her mother, was the loss of spontaneity, of being able to love.
She thought, suddenly and disturbingly, of Pinata, of the drive back to the city from the cemetery, how old and tormented his face had looked in the dashlights as if he thought no one was watching him and it was safe to show his sorrow.
She turned her head and saw her mother looking at her, and she knew she’d better stop thinking about Pinata. It was frightening the way her mother could read her mind sometimes. But then I am her projection machine. She just sits back and watches the pictures, censoring, editing. She can’t see Pinata, though. She doesn’t even know about him. No one does. Pinata was hers, locked up in a secret drawer inside herself.
She finished replacing the papers. Then she locked the desk and put the key back on the windowsill. Everything looked exactly the same as when she had come in. Jim need never know she’d searched the desk and found out about the monthly payments to Adam. Unless her mother told him.
“I suppose,” Daisy said, “you’ll tell him?”
“I consider it my duty.”
“Do you have any duty to me?”
“If I thought you were acting in a logical and rational matter, I wouldn’t dream of mentioning this episode to Jim. Yes, I have a duty to you, and that is to protect you from the consequences of your own irresponsibility.”
“I’m irresponsible,” Daisy repeated. “I’m illogical and irrational and irresponsible. Just like my father. Go on, say it. I’m just like my father.”
“I don’t have to say it. You did.”
“In exactly what ways have I been irresponsible?”
“Several that I know of. One that I’d like to find out about.”
“You could ask me.”
“I’m going to.”
Mrs. Fielding sat down, holding her back straight and her hands crossed on her lap. It was a posture Daisy had come to know well through the years. It indicated seriousness of purpose, great patience, maternal affection (this hurts me more than it does you), and anger with its bile so finely distilled that it was almost palatable. Wry whiskey.
“I had lunch with Mrs. Weldon today,” Mrs. Fielding said. “Do you remember her?”
“Vaguely.”
“She’s an impossible woman, but she has a way of finding out odd bits of information. This time the information was about you. Perhaps you’ll consider it trivial. I don’t. It’s an indication that you’re not being as careful as you should be. You can’t afford to get yourself talked about. Jim is becoming a prominent man in this town. And he’s a devoted husband as well. There isn’t a woman who knows him who doesn’t envy you.”
Daisy had heard it all before. The tone varied, the clichés varied, but the message was always the same: that she, Daisy, was a very lucky girl, who ought to be grateful every day of her life that Jim remained married to her even though she was sterile. Mrs. Fielding was too subtle to say any of this outright, but the implication was clearly made: Daisy had to be a super wife because she couldn’t be a mother. The marriage was the important thing, not the individuals who contracted it. And the marriage was important, not for any religious or moral reasons, but because it meant, for Mrs. Fielding, the only real security she’d ever had. Daisy understood this and felt both sympathetic, because her mother had worked very hard to keep the family going, and resentful, because it seemed to Daisy that it wasn’t her own life or marriage or husband; half, or more than half, belonged to her mother.
“Are you listening to me, Daisy?”
“Yes.”
“On Piedra Street?”
“I may have been on Piedra Street. Why? What difference does it make?”
“Someone saw you,” Mrs. Fielding said. “A next-door neighbor of Mrs. Weldon’s, called Corinne. She claims you were walking with a good-looking dark young man who has some connection with jails or the Police Department. Were you, Daisy?”
She was tempted to lie about it, to keep Pinata safely and secretly locked inside her private drawer, but she was afraid that a lie would be more damaging than the truth. “Yes, I was there.”
“Who was the man?”
“He’s an investigator.”
“Do you mean a detective?”
“Yes.”
“Why on earth would you be walking around town with a detective?”
“Why not? It was a nice day, and I like walking.”
There was a silence, then Mrs. Fielding’s voice, as smooth and chilling as liquid air. “I warn you not to be flippant with me. How did you meet this man?”
“Through my — through a friend. I didn’t know he was an investigator at the time. When I found out, I hired him.”
“You hired him? What for?”
“To do a job. Now that’s all I have to say on the subject.”
She started toward the door, but her mother called her back with an urgent “Wait.”
“I prefer not to discuss...”
“You prefer, do you? Well, I prefer to get this settled between the two of us before Jim finds out about it.”
“There’s nothing to settle,” Daisy said, keeping her voice calm because she knew her mother was waiting for her to lose her temper. Her mother was always at her best when other people lost their tempers. “I hired Mr. Pinata to do some work for me, and he’s doing it. Whether Jim finds out about it doesn’t matter. He hires people at the office all the time. I don’t make an issue of it, because it’s none of my business.”