He wrote a letter to his daughter, Daisy, telling her that the classic pyramid shape is based on the spreading-out rays of the sun as they fall to earth.
“Nonsense,” Daisy’s husband said, “the sun’s rays fall straight downward, not on an angle.”
“Well, never mind,” Daisy said vaguely, “it’s something for him to do.”
The pyramid is to be two yards square, a miniature replica of the real thing. He’s worked out the proportions, using the Great Pyramid as his model. So reduced in size are his stone blocks (smaller than the tip of his finger, three-eighths of an inch square) that he can hold six or seven of them in the palm of his hand. The exterior cladding will be pure white Indiana limestone, but he intends to use sandstone, marble, granite, slate, whatever, for the interior. Mortar? He’s decided yes, a very thin mixture, more like glue actually. The Egyptians could build without mortar, but his stones are too small and hence too light. His aim is to use stone from around the world. He brought back lava stone from the Hawaiian Islands where he and Maria spent Easter, and he’s received stone samples from Manitoba, Ontario, Tennessee, Michigan, Vermont, France (Burgundy), Italy, Finland, and the British Isles. He’s heard of limestone beds in South Africa, and he and Maria are there right now on a vacation, seeing the sights and keeping their eyes open for new quarries and new variations of stone. Shining through his thoughts, and through his dreams as well, are the warm sunlit surfaces of rock shelves as yet untouched.
Here, at these newly discovered sites, he longs to tap his hammer and dislodge a sample which he will pack in wadded newspaper and carry home. (His favorite joke concerns a railway porter who asked him if he had rocks in his suitcase, it was so heavy.)
“He’s obsessed,” his daughter Daisy says, but she says it happily. On the whole she believes old people are better off obsessed than emptied out.
What is the pyramid for? Quite a lot of people ask Daisy this question, and she doesn’t know what to say. Does he intend it as his own tombstone? No, he and Maria have already bought cemetery plots in Bloomington. Is it a sort of memorial to something?
Well, maybe; no one’s come out and put the question to him.
He has the self-confidence of a man who expects others to applaud his most outlandish projects. He’s taking his time, too; this is a major construction, slightly more than two million tiny stone pieces to set in place. In the exact center, buried under the foundation, is a time capsule. He wrote to his three grandchildren in Ottawa for contributions. Something small, he said, and representative of the times. Little Joan, encouraged by her father, sent a two-penny postage stamp with the king on it. Warren sent a pressed maple leaf. And Alice, after much thought, sent a headline cut from the local newspaper: PRINCESS ELIZABETH TO MARRY PRINCE PHILIP IN NOVEMBER.
These items — stamp, leaf, and paper banner — Cuyler Goodwill has placed in a sealed metal box. Maria, his second wife, has contributed an envelope of fennel seeds. Goodwill himself, that eccentric old fool, has added, at the last minute, the wedding ring that belonged to his first wife.
The ring is of yellow gold with a fine milled edge. The wedding date, June 15, 1903, is engraved inside, as well as the initials of the bride and groom. Goodwill recalls exactly what he paid for the ring, which was four dollars and twenty-five cents. Eighteen karat gold too, ordered through the Eaton’s catalogue. He remembers that when his young wife died in childbirth two years later, he agonized about whether or not to remove the ring before burial; what was the common practice? What did people do? He had no idea.
It was the doctor’s wife, a Mrs. Spears, who urged him to preserve the ring as a keepsake; she also helped him in the removing of it, first rubbing a little lard on his dead wife’s finger, then easing it off. Mrs. Spears’ voice as she performed this act had been most tender. “Keep it, Mr. Goodwill,” she said, her face empty of calculation, “so you can give it to your daughter when she grows up.”
And this is what he has always intended to do, to present it to his dear child, making a ceremony of it, a moment of illumination in which he would for once join the separate threads of his life and declare the richness of his blessings.
But he feels, recently, that he has lost his way in life. Old age has made him clumsy in both body and spirit, and he is unable finally to bring the scene to actuality or even, of late, to imagine it. What words would he find to invest the moment with significance? And what words would his daughter offer in return? Thank you would not do. Gratitude itself would not do. Speech and gesture would not suffice, not in the thin ether of the world he now inhabits. Far less troubling to bury this treasure beneath a weight of stone — his pyramid, dense, heavy, complex, full of secrets, a sort of machine.
His statement of finality. Either that, or a shrug of surrender.
Mrs. Flett’s Old School Friend
Fraidy Hoyt and Daisy Goodwill Flett went to school together back in Indiana. They sat on the Goodwills’ front porch in Bloomington and shared bags of Jay’s Potato Chips. They went to college together too, and pledged the same sorority, Alpha Zeta, and ever since that time they’ve stayed in touch. That is, they’ve corresponded three or four times a year, and sent each other jokey presents on their birthdays and at Christmas. They haven’t actually seen each other for years, but, finally, in August of 1947, Fraidy got herself on a train and went up to Ottawa for a week’s visit.
While she was there she thought: here is Daisy Goodwill with a distinguished husband and a large well-managed house and three beautiful children. Daisy’s got all that any of us ever wanted.
Whereas I’ve missed out on everything, no husband, no kids, no home really, only a dinky little apartment, not even a garden. Oh, Daisy’s garden! That garden’s something else. She can get up in the morning and spend all day if she likes trimming and weeding and transplanting and bringing beauty into the world. While I’m sitting at work. Tied to a desk and to the clock. Missing out on this business of being a woman. Missing it all.
Or else Fraidy Hoyt thought: oh, poor Daisy. My God, she’s gone fat. And respectable. Although who could be respectable going around in one of those godawful dirndl skirts — should I say something? Drop a little hint? Her cuticles too. I don’t think she’s read a book in ten years. And, Jesus, just look at this guest room.
Hideous pink scallops everywhere. I’m suffocating. Four more days. And this crocheted bedspread, she’s so gee-dee proud of, no one has crocheted bedspreads any more, it’s enough to give you nightmares just touching it. I’d like to unravel the whole damn thing, and I could too, one little pull. These kids are driving me crazy, whining and sneaking around all day, then dressing up like little puppets for the return of the great man at the end of the day.
Putting on a little play every single hypocritical day of their lives.
And: what can I say to her? What’s left to say? I see you’re still breathing, Daisy. I see you’re still dusting that nose of yours with Woodbury Face Powder. I observe your husband is always going off to “meetings” in Toronto or Montreal, and I wonder if you have any notion of what happens to him in those places. I notice you continue to wake up in the morning and go to bed at night. Now isn’t that interesting. I believe your life is still going along, it’s still happening to you, isn’t it? Well, well.
Mrs. Flett’s Intimate Relations with her Husband Deeply, fervently, sincerely desiring to be a good wife and mother, Mrs. Flett reads every issue of Good Housekeeping.
Also McCall’s and The Canadian Home Companion. And every once in a while, between the cosmetic advertisements and the recipe columns, she comes across articles about ways a woman can please her husband in bed. Often, too, there are letters from women who are seeking special advice for particular sexual problems. One of them wrote recently, “My husband always wants to have our cuddly moments on Monday night after his bowling league. Unfortunately I do the wash on Mondays and am too exhausted by evening to be an enthusiastic partner.” The advice given was short and to the point: “Wash on Tuesdays.” Which made Mrs. Flett smile. She laughed out loud, in fact, and wished her friend Fraidy was here to hear her laugh. Another woman wrote: