John MacDonald - The Girl in the Plain Brown Wrapper

“She gets involved with men?”

“She goes out alone. She gets tight. She’s very lovely. It’s hell on Tom and it isn’t any of your business.”

“That’s no way to speak to your kindly old uncle.”

A wan smile. “My nerves are ragged. And that part of it just... makes me want to resign from the human race. Those damned oily voices on the phone, like filthy children wondering if Maurie can come out and play. Or like the way you see packs of dogs, following. They don’t know she’s sick. They don’t even give a damn.”

“How often does she sneak off?”

“Not often. Maybe three times in the last four months. But that’s three times too many. And she never remembers much about it.”

I took her empty glass and built her a fresh drink and took it to her, saying, “You must have some kind of a theory. You probably know her as well as anyone in the world. What started all this?”

“When she had the second miscarriage, it was because of some kind of kidney failure. She had convulsions. I thought that could have done something to her brain. But the doctors say no. Then I thought she might have a tumor of the brain, but they did all kinds of tests and there’s nothing like that at all. I don’t know, Travis. I just don’t know. She’s the same Maurie, but yet she’s not. She’s more... childlike. She breaks my heart.”

“Care if I stop by and say hello?”

“What good would it do?”

“And what harm could it do?”

“Is it just kind of a sick curiosity?”

“I guess that’s my bag, going around staring at crazies.”

“ Damn you! I just meant that—”

“She’s not on display? Right? Okay. She was twenty. She took that ugly business about Mick with a great deal of class and control. I knew how much she adored her father. Look, I didn’t ask to be let in on all the family secrets. But I was. I’d like to see what she’s like. Maybe you’re too close to it. Maybe she’s better than you think she is. Or worse. Can you think of anybody else who hasn’t seen her since she was twenty?”

“N-No. Suppose I ask Tom what he thinks. And phone you here either later this evening or in the morning.”

When she finished her drink, I walked her out to her little red Falcon wagon. She thanked me for the drinks and apologized for being so tired and cross and edgy, and drove off.

She phoned in the morning and invited me to lunch at the house. She said Maurie was looking forward to seeing me again, and that Tom would join us for lunch if he could get away.

Bridget Pearson apparently heard the sound of tires on the driveway pebbles and appeared from behind the house, on the lake side. She wore yellow shorts and a white sleeveless top and had her hair tied back with yellow yarn. Her sunglasses were huge and very black.

“So glad you could make it! We’re out back. Come along. Tommy fogged the yard before he went to work, and there’s hardly a bug. He should be along any minute.”

She kept chattering away, slightly nervous, as I followed her out to the slope of lawn overlooking the lakeshore. Tall hedges of closely planted punk trees shielded the area from the neighboring houses. There was a redwood table and benches under a shade tree, a flourishing banyan. The two-story boathouse was an attractive piece of architecture, in keeping with the house. There was a T-shaped dock, iron lawn furniture painted white, a sunfish hauled up onto the grass, a little runabout tethered at the dock. The makings of the picnic lunch were stacked on one end of the redwood table. A charcoal fire was smoking in a hibachi. She pointed out the pitcher of fresh orange juice, the ice bucket, the glasses, the vodka bottle, and told me to make myself a drink while she went to tell Maurie I’d arrived.

In a few moments Maureen came out through the screened door of the patio, moving down across the yard toward me, smiling. Her dead mother had written me that she was stunning. In truth she was magnificent. Her presence dimmed the look of Biddy, as if the younger sister were a poor color print, overexposed and hastily developed. Maurie’s blond hair was longer and richer and paler. Her eyes were a deeper, more intense blue. Her skin was flawlessly tanned, an even gold that looked theatrical and implausible. Her figure was far more rich and abundant and had she not stood so tall, she would have seemed overweight. She wore a short open beach robe in broad orange and white stripes over a snug blue swimsuit. She moved toward me without haste, and reached and took my hands. Her grasp was solid and dry and warm.

“Travis McGee. I’ve thought of you a thousand times.” Her voice was slow, like her smile and her walk. “Thank you for coming to see us. You were so good to us a long time ago.” She turned and looked over her shoulder toward Biddy and said, “You’re right. He isn’t as old as I thought he’d be either.” She stretched up and kissed me lightly on the corner of the mouth and squeezed my hands hard and released them. “Excuse me, Travis dear, while I go do my laps. I’ve missed them for a few days, and if I stop for any length of time, I get all saggy and soft and nasty.”

She walked out to the crossbar of the T and tugged a swim cap on, dropped the robe on the boards and dived in with the abrupt efficiency of the expert. She began to swim back and forth, the length of the crossbar, so concealed by the dock that all we could see were the slow and graceful lift and reach of her tanned arms.

“Well?” Biddy asked, standing at my elbow.

“Pretty overwhelming.”

“But different?”

“Yes.”

“How? Can you put your finger on it?”

“Maybe she seems as if she’s dreaming the whole scene. She sort of... floats. Is she on anything?”

“Like drugs? Oh, no. Well, when she gets jumpy, we give her a shot. It’s sort of a long-lasting tranquilizer. Tom learned from one of the doctors and taught me how.”

I watched the slow and apparently tireless swimming and moved to the table to finish making my drink. “There’s nothing vague or dazed about her eyes. But she gives me a funny kind of feeling, Biddy. A kind of caution. As if there’s no possible way of guessing just what she might do next.”

“Whatever comes into her head. Nothing violent. But she is just... as primitive and natural as a small child. Wherever she itches, she’ll scratch, no matter where she is. Her table manners are... pretty damned direct. They get the job done and in a hurry. And she says whatever she happens to be thinking, and it can get pretty... personal. Then if Tom or I jump on her about it, she gets confused and upset. Her face screws up and her hands start shaking and she goes running off to her bedroom usually. But she can talk painting or politics or books... just so long as it’s things she learned over a year ago. She hasn’t added anything new this year.”

We heard another car on the pebbles and she went hurrying off around the corner of the house. She reappeared, talking rapidly and earnestly to the man walking slowly beside her. A certain tension seemed to be going out of his posture and expression, and he began to smile. She brought him over and introduced him.

He was tall and wiry, dark hair, dark eyes, a face that had mobility and sensitivity, and might have been too handsome without a certain irregularity about his features, a suggestion of a cowlicky, lumpy, aw shucks, early-Jimmy-Stewart flavor. His voice did not have the thin country whine of Mr. Stewart, however. It was surprisingly deep, rich, resonant, a basso semi- profundo . Mr. Tom Pike had exceptional presence. It is a rare attribute. It is not so much the product of strength and drive as it is a kind of quality of attention and awareness. It has always puzzled and intrigued me. People who without any self-conscious posturing, any training in those Be Likable and Make Friends courses, are immediately aware of you, and curious about you, and genuinely anxious to learn your opinions have this special quality of being able to somehow dominate a room, a dinner table, or a backyard. Meyer has it.