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, ear-ly-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.
He shed his lightweight sports jacket and pulled his tie off, and Biddy took them from him and carried them into the house. With a tired smile he said, “I’ve been worrying all morning about how Maureen would react to you. It can be very good or very bad, and no way to tell in advance. Biddy says it’s been fine so far.”
“She looks great.”
“Sure. I know. Dammit, it makes me feel… so disloyal to have to act as if Biddy and I were keeping some kind of defective chained up in the cellar. But too much exposure to outsiders shakes her up.” His quick smile was bitter and inverted. “And when she gets upset, you can be very very sure she’s going to upset the outsider, one way or another. She’s going to find her way out of the thicket. Someday. Somehow.”
“It must be pretty rough in the meanwhile, Tom.”
“And there’s another reason I feel guilty. Because most of it lands right on Biddy. I’m out of here all day working. We’ve tried and tried to find somebody to come in and help out, somebody kind and patient and well-trained. We’ve interviewed dozens. But when they find out the trouble is maybe in some psychiatric area, they back away.”
Biddy had returned and was busying herself with the food. I asked what luck they were having with the doctors. He shrugged. “They raise your hopes, then say sorry. One recent diagnosis was that a calcium deposit was diminishing the flow of blood to the brain. A series of tests, and then he says sorry, it isn’t that at all. The symptoms just don’t fit anything in their books. But I have some people who keep checking, writing letters.”
“Excuse a painful question, Tom. Is she deteriorating?”
“I keep wondering about that. I just don’t know. All we can do is wait and watch. And hope.”
Maurie stopped swimming, put her palms flat on the dock, and came vaulting up, turning in the air to sit on the edge, lithe as a seal. She got up and smiled up the slope at us. She used the short robe to pat her legs dry, then put it on, pulled her swimcap off, and shoved it into the robe pocket, shaking her hair out as she walked. As she approached Tom Pike her slow, floating assurance seemed to desert her. She came to him with downcast eyes, shoulders slightly hunched, her welcome smile nervous, her walk constricted. She made me think of a very good dog aware of having disobeyed her master and hoping to be so engaging and obedient that the infraction will be forgiven and forgotten. He kissed her briefly and casually and patted her shoulder and asked her if she had been a good girl. She said shyly that she had been good. It was a most plausible attitude and reaction. She was the wife and no matter how lost she had become, she could not help knowing that she no longer measured up to what they both expected of her. It seemed more an awareness of inadequacy than a conscious guilt.