As the room got darker I turned on a low lamp on the other side of the room. I sat in a Boston rocker near the bed, watching the sleeping woman and thinking that this was probably where Biddy sat and watched her, while she thought about the marriage and thought about her own life.
At a little after eight I knocked on Biddy's door. After the second attempt I heard a groggy, querulous mutter. I waited and knocked again and suddenly she pulled the door open. She had a robe around her shoulders and she held it closed with a concealed hand. Her hair was in wild disarray and her face was swollen with sleep. 'What time is it!'
I told her it was a little after eight, that I had unhooked Maurie from her machine at six, and that she was still sleeping. She yawned and combed her hair back with her free hand. 'The poor thing must have been really exhausted. I won't be a minute.'
When she was dressed, she sent me downstairs, saying she'd bring Maurie down in a little while. I found the light switches. As I was making a drink the phone rang. It was just one ring. No more. And so I decided Biddy had probably answered it upstairs. As I was carrying my drink into the living room it rang again, and once again it was just one ring.
Soon they came down. Maurie wore a navy blue floor-length robe with long sleeves and white buttons and white trim. She was scratching her shoulder with one hand and the opposite hip with the other, and complaining in a sour little voice. 'Just about eaten to pieces. How do they get in with the house all closed up?'
'You'll just make them worse by scratching, dear.'
'I can't help it.'
'Say hello to Travis, dear.'
She stopped at the foot of the stairs and smiled at me, still scratching, and said, 'Hello, Travis McGee! How are you? I had a very good nap today.'
'Good for you.'
'But I itch something awful. Biddy?'
'Yes, honey.'
'Is he here?' Her tone and expression were apprehensive.
'Tom went on a trip.'
'Can I have peanut butter sandwiches, Biddy, please?'
'But your diet, dear. You're almost up to a hundred and fifty again.'
Her tone was wheedling, sympathy-seeking. 'But I'm real tall, Biddy. And I'm starving. And I had a good nap and I itch something awful!'
'Well...'
'Please? He isn't here anyway. He won't know about it. You know something? Some son of a bitch must have kicked me or something. I'm so sore right--'
'Maureen!'
She stopped, gulped, looked humble. 'I didn't mean to.'
'Please try to speak nicely, dear.'
'You won't tell him?'
Biddy took my glass and they went out into the kitchen. In a little while Maureen came walking in very slowly and carefully, carrying my fresh drink. I thanked her and she beamed at me. Somehow she had managed to get a little wad of peanut butter stuck on the end of her nose, possibly from licking the top off the jar. She went back. I heard them talking out there but could not hear the words, just the tone, and it was like a conversation between child and mother.
When they came back in, Maureen pulled a hassock over in front of the television set. Biddy plugged a set of earphones into a jack in the rear of the set and Maureen put them on eagerly and then was lost in the images and the sound, expression rapt, as she ate her sandwiches.
Biddy said, 'She loves to watch things Tom can't stand.'
'Does she remember running away last night?'
'No. It's all gone now. Slate wiped clean.'
'She won't say Tom's name?'
'Sometimes she will. She's so terribly anxious to please him, to have him approve of her. She just gets... all tightened up when he's here. Really, he's wonderfully kind and patient with her. But I guess that... a child-wife isn't what a man of Tom's intelligence can adjust to.'
'If you think of her just as a child, she's a good child.'
'Oh, yes. She's happy, or seems happy, and she likes to help, but she forgets how to do things.'
'It doesn't seem consistent with suicide attempts, does it?'
She frowned. 'No. But it's more complex than that, Travis. There's another kind of child involved, a sly and naughty child. And the times she's tried, she's gotten into the liquor and gotten drunk first. It's almost as if alcohol creates some kind of awareness of self and her condition, removes some block or something. We keep it all locked up, of course, ever since the first time. But the tune she locked herself in the bathroom and cut her wrist, I'd forgotten and left a half quart of gin on the countertop with the bottles of mix. I just didn't see it, somehow. And she sneaked it upstairs, I guess. Anyway, the empty bottle was under her bed. Then the time Tom found the noose, we know she got into something, but we don't know what it was or how. Vanilla extract or shaving lotion or something. Maybe even rubbing alcohol. But of course she couldn't remember. It's quite late. Can I fix you something to eat?'
'I think I'll be moving along, Biddy. Thanks.'
'I owe you, my friend. I was irritated you let me sleep so long. But I guess you knew better than I how badly I needed it. I was getting ragged around the edges. The very least I can do is feed you.'
'No thanks, I...'
She straightened, head tilted, listening, and then relaxed. 'Sorry. I thought it was that damned phone again. I think something's wrong with the line. For the last two or three months every once in a while it will give one ring or part of a ring and then stop, and there won't be anybody there. Just the dial tone when you pick it up. Did you say you would stay?'
'I'd better not, thanks just the same.'
Maureen's good-night was a smile and a bob of the head and a hasty return to the color screen where a vivid-faced girl was leaning over a wire fence amid a throng, cheering a racehorse toward the finish line. The only sound was the insectile buzzing that escaped from Maureen's padded earphones.
As I walked to the car in the drive I heard the clack behind me as Biddy relocked the heavy front door.
11
-----SUNDAY DINNER was finished
by the tune I got to the motel dining room, but they could provide steak sandwiches. There was one whispering couple on the far side of the room and one lonely fat man slumped at the bar. Both the couple and the fat man were gone when I went to the bar for a nightcap. I sat on the far stool by the wall, where Penny had been sitting when I had first seen her.
Jake, the bartender, wore an odd expression as he approached me. 'Evening, sir. Look, if I got you in any kind of jam--'
'I told Stanger he could check it out with you, that I met her right here Friday night.'
He looked relieved. 'What happened, he mouse- trapped me. He came up with this thing about we let them come in and hustle, we could lose the license. And one thing and another, he worked it around to you and that girl, and I thought he had been tipped and I couldn't exactly deny it, so I said sure, they left together, but how could I know they weren't friends or something already. Honest to God, sir, I didn't know it was the same one in the paper this morning until he said so. Then I'm left hanging, wondering if you were some kind of crazy that took her home and... there are some very ordinary looking guys who are very weird about hustlers. But I couldn't imagine you doing... Anyway, when I saw you come in, I felt better, I don't know why.'
'I think maybe some Black Jack on one rock.'
'Yes, sir, Mr. McGee.' When he served it with a proper flourish, he said, 'Jesus, I've felt half sick ever since. And... I guess you've got a right to feel a lot sicker than me.' The implied question was very clear.
'Jake, we walked out of here and shook hands and sang one small hymn and said good-night.'
He flushed. 'I'm sorry. It's none of my business. I was just thinking she didn't have the right moves, you know? So what she is doing is trying to get even with a boyfriend who's cheating on her by doing some swinging herself, so she takes you home and the next day she tells him how she got even, and he can't stand it. She's laughing at him. He grabs the first thing and--'
'Stares in horror at what he's done and, sobbing his heart out, dials the cops.'
'It's just that you try to figure out what happened.'
'I know, Jake. I'm sorry. Everybody plays that particular game. That's because we always want to know why. Not so much how and who and when. But why.'
'Can I ask you something? Did you stop in your room before you came in to eat?'
'No. I parked in front. The question implies I've been away from the place. So somebody has been trying to get me.'
He looked uneasy. 'Well, it's Mr. Holton. He comes in off and on and he's never any trouble. He's a lawyer. He was here about five o'clock looking for you. He had two quick ones and he came back about quarter to six. He'd have some and then go looking for you and come back. I let him have more than I would somebody else, on account of he's local and a good customer and he's always treated me good. Well, he finally got mean and loud and I finally had to cut him off. From the way he walked out... maybe a half hour
