“Will anybody make any trouble about my staying here?”
“You are adults. You don’t look like a fool, McGee. You don’t have the look of the kind of murderous fool who’d try to make love to her in her condition. I take you on faith. It saves time. And if anybody does not like this temporary arrangement, I recommended it.”
“I’ll be too busy with the housework.”
“She is exhausted. I think she will sleep a long time now. But it would be nice to be there when she wakes up.”
While she was in deep sleep, I collected all the soiled clothing and bedding. I took it into town and dropped it off. I bought supplies. When I got back she was still in almost the same position, making small snores, evenly spaced, barely audible. It took me until dusk to polish the big house. I kept looking in at her.
Then I went in and she made a sound like a whispered scream. She was sitting up. I turned the lights on. Her eyes were huge and vague.
I stayed a cautious ten feet from her and said, “I am Trav McGee. You’ve been sick. Dr. Ramirez was here. He’ll be back tomorrow. I’ll stay in the house, so you’ll be completely safe.”
“I feel so far away. I didn’t have any dreams. Unless… unless this is one.”
“I’m going to go fix you some soup. And bring you a pill.”
“I don’t want anything.”
I arranged more agreeable lighting. She watched me. I had checked where things were kept. I found a sedate nightgown, a robe of Hong Kong silk, tossed them on the foot of the bed.
“If you’re strong enough, Lois, get ready for bed while I fix the soup. The bathroom is clean now.”
“What is going on? Who are you?”
“Mother McGee. Don’t ask questions. Just accept.”
I heated the canned soup, strengthened it with cream, fixed her one slice of toast with butter. When I came back she was propped up in bed. She was wearing the nightgown and a bed jacket. She had tied her tousled dark hair back, rubbed away the last trace of lipstick.
“I’m wobbly” she said in a small shy voice. “Can I have a drink?”
“That depends on how you do with the soup and toast.”
“Soup maybe. Toast no.”
“Can you feed yourself`?”
“Of course.”
“Take the pill.”
“What is it?”
“Dr. Ramirez called it a mild tranquilizer.”
I sat nearby. She spooned the soup up. Her hand trembled. Her nails were clean and broken. There was an old bruise, saffroned, on the side of her slender throat. She was too aware of my watching her and so I tried some mild chatter. Abstract theory by McGee. My tourist theory. Any Ohioan crossing the state line into Florida should be fitted with a metal box that rests against the small of the back. Every ninety seconds a bell rings and a dollar bill emerges part way from a slot in the top of the box. The nearest native removes it. That would take care of the tipping problem. At places where hundreds of them flock together, the ringing of bells would be continuous.
It was difficult to amuse her. She was too close to being broken. The best I could achieve was a very small quick smile. She managed two thirds of the soup and two bites of toast. I set them aside. She slid down a little and yawned.
“My drink?”
“In a little while.”
She started to speak. Her eyes blurred and closed. In a few moments her mouth sagged open and she slept. In sleep the intense strain was gone and she looked younger. I turned the bedroom lights out. An hour later the phone rang. Someone wanted to sell us an attractive building lot at Marathon Heights.
As she slept I searched for the personal data. I finally found the traditional steel box behind books in the living room. It opened readily with a bent paper clip. Birth certificate, marriage license, divorce decree, keys to a safedeposit box, miscellany of family materials, income statements. I spread it out and pieced together her current status. She had accepted a settlement at the time of divorce three years ago. The house was a part of it. Her income was from a trust account in a bank in Hartford, Connecticut, a family trust setup whereby she received a little over seven hundred dollars a month and could not touch the principal amount. Her maiden name was Fairlea. There was an elder brother in New Haven.
D. Harper Fairlea. On her hall table was a great stack of unopened mail. I checked it over and found that people were clamoring to have their bills paid, and in the stack I found her trust income checks, unopened, for May June and July. Her personal checkbook was in the top drawer of the living-room desk, a built-in affair. She had not balanced it in some time, and I estimated she had a couple of hundred dollars in her account.
At nine-thirty I called D. Harper Fairlea in New Haven. They said he was ill and could not come to the phone. I asked to talk to his wife. She had a soft, pleasant voice.
“Mr. McGee, surely Lois could tell you that Harp had a severe heart attack some months ago. He’s been home a few weeks now, and it is going to be a long haul. Really I thought the very least she could do was come up here. He is her only blood relative, you know. And I have been wondering why we haven’t heard from her. If she is in some sort of trouble and needs help, about all we can say is that we hope things will work out for her. We really can’t give her any kind of assistance right now. We have three children in school, Mr. McGee. I don’t even want to tell Harp about this. I don’t want to give him something else to fret about. I’ve been inventing imaginary phone calls from Lois, inventing concern and telling him she is fine.”
“I’ll know better in a few days how she is, and what will have to be done.”
“I understood she has some nice friends down there.”
“Not lately.”
“What is that supposed to mean?”
“I think she gave up her nice friends.”
“Please have her phone me when she’s able. I’m going to worry about her. But there’s just nothing I can do. I can’t leave Harp now, and I just don’t see how I could take her in.”
No help there. She hadn’t seemed very concerned about who I might be. I sensed that the two sisters-in-law had not gotten along too well. So it was no longer a case of waiting for somebody to come and take over. I was stuck, temporarily.
I made up a bed in the bedroom next to hers. I left my door and her door open. In the middle of the night I was awakened by the sound of glass breaking. I pulled my pants on and went looking. Her bed was empty. The nightgown and bed jacket were on the floor beside the bed. The nightgown was ripped.
I found her in the kitchen alcove, fumbling with the bottles. I turned on the white blaze of fluorescence and she squinted toward me, standing naked in spilled liquor and broken glass. She looked at me but I do not think she knew me. “Where is Fancha?” she yelled. “Where is that bitch? I hear her singing.”
She was beautifully made, but far too thin. Her bones were sharp against the smoothness of her, her ribs visible. Except in the meagerness of hips and breasts, all the fatty tissue had been burned away, and her belly had the slight bloat that indicates starvation. I got her away from there. Miraculously, she had not cut her feet. She squirmed with surprising strength, whining, trying to scratch and bite. I got her back into her bed, and when she stopped fighting me, I got one of the other pills down her. Soon it began to take effect. I put the lights out. I sat by her. She held my wrist very tightly, and fought against the effects of the pill. She would start to slide away and then struggle back to semi-consciousness. I did not understand a lot of her mumbling. Sometimes she seemed to be talking to me, and at other times she was back in her immediate past.
Once, with great clarity, with a mature and stately indignation she said, “I will not do that!” Moments later she repeated it, but this time in the lisping narrow voice of a scared young child. “Oh, I will not do that!” The contrast came close to breaking my heart.
And then at last she slept. I cleaned up, hid the remaining liquor and went back to bed.
In the morning she was rational, and even a bit hungry. She ate eggs scrambled with butter and cream, and had a slice of toast. She napped for a little while, arid then she wanted to talk.
“It was such a stupid thing, in the beginning,” she said. “You live here all year around, and you want the
