“I… I know how I must have sounded. Mr. McGee, this wouldn’t be a very good time for you to come here. Maybe I could come and…. Are you in town?”
“Yes. I’m at the Wahini Lodge. Room One-0-nine.”
“Would it be convenient if I came there at about six o’clock? I have to stay here until Tom gets home from work.”
“Thanks. That will be just fine.”
I used the free tune to brief myself on the geography. The rental had a city-county map in the glove compartment. I never feel comfortable in any strange setting until I know the ways in and the ways out, and where they lead to, and how to find them. I learned it was remarkably easy to get lost in the Haze Lake Drive area. The residential roads wound around the little lakes. There was a big dark blue rural mailbox at the entrance to the pebbled driveway of number 28, with aluminum cutout letters in a top slot spelling T. pike. Beyond the plantings I saw a slope of cedar-shake roof and a couple of glimpses of sun-bright lake. The house was in one of the better areas but not in one of the best. It was perhaps a mile from the Haze Lake Golf and Tennis Club and about, I would guess, $50,000 less than the homes nearer the club.
On my way back from there toward the city I found a precious, elfin little circle of expensive shops. One of them was a booze shoppe, with enough taste to stock Plymouth, so I acquired a small survival kit for local conditions.
Biddy-Bridget called on the house phone at five after six, and I walked through to the lobby and took her around to the cocktail lounge close to the pool area, separated from the hot outdoors by a thermopane window wall tinted an unpleasant green-blue. She walked nicely in her little white skirt and her little blue blouse, shoulders back and head high. Her greetings had been reserved, proper, subdued.
Sitting across from her at a corner table, I could see both portions of the Helena-Mick heritage. She had Helena’s good bones and slenderness, but her face was wide through the cheekbones and asymmetrical, one eye set higher, the smile crooked, as Mick’s had been. And she had his clear pale blue eyes.
The years from seventeen to twenty-three cover a long, long time of change and learning. She had crossed that boundary that separates children from people. Her eyes no longer dismissed me with the same glassy and patronizing indifference with which she might stare at a statue in a park. We were now both people, aware of the size of many traps, aware of the narrowing dimensions of choice.
“I remembered you as older, Mr. McGee.”
“I remember you as younger, Miss Pearson.”
“Terribly young. And I thought I was so grown up about everything. We’d been moved about so much… Maurie and me… I thought we were terribly competent and Continental and sophisticated. I guess… I know a lot less than I thought I knew back then.”
After our order was taken, she said, “Sorry I wasn’t very cordial on the phone. Maurie gets… nuisance calls sometimes. I’ve gotten pretty good at cooling them.”
“Nuisance calls?”
“How did you know where to find us, Mr. McGee?”
“Travis, or Trav, Biddy. Otherwise you make me feel as old as you thought I was going to be. How did I find you? Your mother and I kept in touch. A letter now and then. Family news.”
“So you had to hear from her during… this past year, or you wouldn’t have asked if you were talking to me.”
“I got her last letter Monday.”
It startled her. “But she’d–”
“I was away when it arrived. It had been mailed back in September.”
“Family news?” she said cautiously.
I shrugged. “With her apologies for being so depressing. She knew she’d had it. She said you’d been here ever since Maurie was in bad shape after her second miscarriage.”
Her mouth tightened with disapproval. “Why would she write such… personal family things to somebody we hardly knew?”
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“So I could have them published in the paper, maybe.”