Girl In The Plain Brown Wrapper

by John D. MacDonald

  Though it had dealt with personal, family matters, it had not been a particularly intimate letter. No one read-ing it could have ever guessed at the relationship we'd had on that lazy long cruise of the Likely Lady through the Bahamas. She asked me to stop and see her the next time I was over in the Sarasota area. I never did.

  I had thought of her a few times. Something would remind me of her, the look of a boat under sail, or the sound of hard rain, or a scent like that of the small pink flowers that grew out of the stony soil of the Exumas, and she would be in and out of my thoughts for a week or so. Now it had happened again, thanks to Meyer, and I would be remembering Helena Pearson for a few days or a few weeks. It had been one of those relationships you cannot really pin down. To the average outsider it would have been something to smirk about. The older woman, half a year widowed, who sends her daughters away so that she can go cruising with a man young enough to be the son of her dead husband, a new consort of considerable size, obviously fit and durable and competent and discreet, and obviously uninterested in any kind of permanent relationship.

  Yet I was quite certain that it had not been a situation she had planned. It had arisen through two sets of rationalizations, hers and mine, and the truth of it was perhaps something quite different from what we suspected. For her perhaps it was the affirmation of being still alive after the intense emotional focus of her life was gone forever. Maybe it had been something the body had created in the mind, just for its own survival, because with her perhaps a sexual continence would have been a progressive thing, parching and drying her, month by month, until all need would have been prematurely ended. My own supercilious little rationalization had been, in the beginning of it, that it would have been both cruel and stuffy to have failed to respond when she began her tentative invitations, to have let her know through my lack of response that the age differential did indeed put me off, and that I felt both clumsy and self-conscious in the role of the available younger man in a kind of floating bedroom farce. The least I could do would be to respond with as much forced enthusiasm as I could manage. But a sweet and immediate reality of the flesh had erased the reasons and the rationalizations. She was all limber girl in the half-light, slenderly, elegantly voluptuous, so consistently determined to never take more pleasure than she was able to give that she made a few intervening women seem dreary indeed.

  At last I was able to dim the vivid qualities of the memory and slide away into the earned sleep...

  Sunday, October sixth, was still and gray and breathlessly muggy. Bobby Guthrie's wife came for him at ten in the morning and they gave Joe Palacio a ride back into Miami. Monday they would get the Merrill-Stevens appraisals and estimates, based on detailed inspections. Meyer and I got the Flush out into the channel and headed north for Lauderdale at about eleven, with the Mu¤equita in tow and a pale sun beginning to burn through the overcast. The Busted Flush was still burdened with the gear and goop of Floatation Associates. Meyer assured me that as soon as the partnership had turned the `Bama Gal into money, they would move their stuff over onto the work boat Bobby had located, which they could buy at the right price.

  "Bobby will build special chemical tanks right into the work boat and rig up some automatic pumps with flow-meters so that one man can handle the flow of the stuff down to the job."

  "That's nice."

  "After another good piece of salvage, we're going to install the same kind of a setup, but smaller, on a truck, and put a good winch on it. It will make it easy to pick automobiles out of the canals."

  "That's nice."

  "Am I boring you or something, McGee?"

  "If I was all hot to get tangled up in a nice profitable little business with three nice people, I'd probably be chuckling and dancing and singing. Lots of luck, Meyer."

  He stared at me, shrugged, and went below to start taking the cameras and reels apart to see if the rinsing in fresh water had made them salvageable. He was in one of his mother-hen periods, but this time he was taking care of Guthrie and Palacio instead of McGee. They were in good hands. But Meyer was going to be a bore until the little business was safely launched.

  I had no plans. I felt mildly restless. I decided I would help the trio get their work boat set up and then maybe I would round up a batch of amiable folk and cruise on up the waterway, maybe as far as Jax. In another month or so I would have to start looking for a client so whipped-down he would snap at my kind of salvage, at my fifty-percent fee. Meanwhile, some fun and games, a little action, some laughs.

  There was a note in my post office box about something I had to sign for, so I didn't get Helena's letter until Monday, a little before noon.

  First there was a crisp white envelope with the return address in raised black letters: folmer, hardahee, and kranz, attorneys at law. There was a cashier's check for $25,000 paperclipped to the letter signed by one D. Wintin Hardahee in tiny little purple script. The letter was dated Sept 28th, and the check was dated Sept 27th.

  My dear Mr. McGee:

  Pursuant to the wishes of Mrs. Helena Trescott...

  [The Trescott put me off the track for a moment, and then I remembered the wedding I had missed, when she had married a Theodore Trescott.]

  I am herewith enclosing a cashier's check in the amount of twenty-five thousand dollars ($25,000.00) along with a letter which Mrs. Trescott asked me to mail with the cashier's check.

  She has explained to me that this sum is in payment of an obligation of several years' standing, and because it does not seem probable that she will survive her present critical illness, she wished to save you the trouble of presenting a claim against her estate.

  If you have any questions about this matter, you can reach me at the address and telephone number given above.

  Yours very truly, The law firm was in Fort Courtney, Florida. Her letter was thick, sealed in a separate envelope, and addressed to me. I walked back to the Flush and put it, unopened, on the desk in the lounge. I took one of the big glasses and laid an impressive belt of Plymouth atop the cubes, and then roamed about, sipping at it, continually catching a glimpse of the letter out of the corner of my eye. The eerie coincidence of not having thought of her for maybe almost a year, then having such vivid memories just one week after the letter had been mailed, gave me a hollow feeling in the middle.

  But it had to be read and the gin wasn't going to make it any easier.

  Travis, my darling,

  I won't bore you with clinical details-but oh I am so sick of being sick it is almost a relief to be able to see in their eyes that they do not expect me to make it... sick unto death of being sick-a bad joke I guess. Remember the day at Darby Island when we had a contest to see who could invent, the worst joke? And finally declared it a draw? I'm not very brave. I'm scared witless. Dying is so damned absolute-and today I hurt like hell because I made them cut way down on the junk they are giving me so I could have a clear head to write to you... Forgive lousy handwriting, dear. Scared, yes, and also quite vain, so vain I would not look forward to walking out of this place-tottering out, a gray little old lady, all bones and parchment.

  Up until a year ago, dear, I looked very much as I looked that marvelous summer we had together, and might look almost as well this year too, except for a little problem known familiarly as Big C. A year ago they thought they took it all out, but then they used cobalt, and then they went in again, and everything was supposed to be fine, but it popped up in two more places, and Thursday they are going to do another radical, which they are now building me up for, and I think Dr. Bill Dyckes is actually, though maybe he wouldn't even admit it to himself, letting me leave this way instead of the long lousy way that I can expect if they don't operate.

  I said I wasn't going to bore you! I'm tempted to tear this up and start again, but I think that one letter is about all I can manage. About the check Mr. Hardahee arranged for, and which you will get with this letter, please don't get stuffy about it. Actually, practically by accident, I became medium rich-an o
ld friend of Mick's took over the investment thing shortly after Mick died. He is very clever and in the business of managing money for people. For the last five and a half years he has been buying funny little stocks for my account, things I never heard of before, and some of them are never heard of again, but a lot of them go up and up and up, and he smiles and smiles and smiles. But lately, of course, he has been changing everything around so that it will all be neat for the estate taxes. Don't have strange ideas about you getting money that should go to my girls, because they will be getting enough. Anyway, the money is sort of a fee...

  It's about my big daughter, Travis. Maureen. She's practically twenty-six. She's been married to Tom Pike for three and a half years now. They have no children. She's had two miscarriages. Maurie is a stunning-looking young woman. When she had her second miscarriage, a year ago, she was quite sick. I would have been able to take care of her, but at about that time I was in the hospital for my first operation-Gad, talk about soap operas!... Bridget had come down to help out, and Biddy is still here, because things are a Godawful mess. You see, I always thought that Maurie was the solid-as-a-rock one, and Biddy-she's twenty-three now-would be the one who'd manage to mess herself up because she is sort of dreamy and unreal and not in touch. But Biddy has had to hang around not only on account of me but because Maurie has tried three times to kill herself. It seems even more unreal to me when I see my hand write the words on this paper -kill herself-such a stupid and frightening waste. Tom Pike is a darling. He could not be nicer. He and Biddy are trying as hard as they can to bring Maurie out of it, but she just doesn't seem right to me. As if she can't really be reached. Tom has tried all kinds of professional care and advice, and they have been trying to make me believe that her troubles are over now. But I can't believe it. And I certainly can't get up out of this damned bed and take charge. Let us just say I am not likely to ever get up out of this damned bed.

  Remember on our cruise when you told me how you live, what you do? Maybe I am stretching the definition, but in this situation my elder is trying to steal her own life. Do you ever operate on a preventative basis? I want you to try to keep her from stealing her life away. I don't have any idea how you would go about it, or whether anything you could do would be of any use at all. Certainly fifty percent of Maurie's life would be worth far more than twenty-five thousand.

  I have been thinking of you these past days, finally de-' aiding there is no one else I could ask this of, and no one else I would trust to be able to do anything to help. You are so darn shrewd and knowing about people, Travis. I know that you put a raggedy widow-lady back together again with great skill and taste and loving kindness. In my memories of that summer you are two people, you know. One was a young man so much younger than I that at times, when we were having fun and you seemed particularly boyish, you made me feel like a depraved and evil old hag. At other times there was something so... kind of ancient and knowledgeable about you, you made me feel like a dumb young girl. Had it not been for the time we had together, I might have been able to adjust to spending the rest of my life with Teddy Trescot... Anyway, my lasting impression was that there cannot be too many things in this world you would not be able to cope with. And I don't mean just muscle and reflex... I mean in the gentle art of maneuvering people, as I think Maurie needs to be maneuvered. Can't she comprehend how valuable life is? I certainly can, right now more than ever.

  Believe me, darling, I am very tempted to drop one of those horrid death-bed demands upon you-Save my daughter's life! But I cannot bring myself to the point of such dramatic corn. You will if you want to and you won't if you don't. It is that simple.

  I just had a couple of bad ones and couldn't keep my jaw shut tight enough and so I humiliated myself by squealing loud enough to bring the nurse scuttling in, and so they gave me a shot and things are beginning to get a little vague and swimmy. I will hang on long enough to sign this and seal it, but it might get to sounding a little drunky before I do... I wrote about you being two people to me... I am two people to myself... Do you know how strangely young the heart stays, no matter what? One of me is this wretched husk here in the electric bed, all tubes and bad smells and hurt and the scars that didn't do much good, except for a little while... the other me is caught back there aboard the Lady in Shroud Cay, and the other me is being your bounding, greedy hoyden, romping and teasing in the nakedy bed, such a shameless widow-wench indeed, totally preoccupied with our finding, over and over, that endless endless little time when it was all like deep hot engines running together... the heart stays young... so damnably yearningly unforgivably young... and O my darling hold that other me back there long ago far away hold her tightly and do not let her fade away, because...

  Signed with a scrawled "H." They keep emptying out the world. The good ones stand on trap doors so perfectly fitted into the floor you can't see the carpentry. And they keep pulling those lousy trip cords.

  So do your blinking, swallowing, sickening, ol' Trav, and phone the place. The girl said that Mr. Hardahee had left for lunch, and then she said he hadn't quite, and maybe she could catch him, and she asked was it important, and I said with a terrible accuracy that it was a matter of life and death. D. Wintin Hardahee had a purry little voice, useful for imparting top-secret information. "Ah, yes. Yes, of course. Ah... Mrs. Trescott passed away last Thursday evening... ah... after the operation... in the recovery room. A very gallant woman. Ah... I count it a privilege to have made her acquaintance, Mr. McGee."

  He said there had been a brief memorial service yesterday, Sunday.

  There have been worse Mondays, I am sure.

  Name three.

  . Helena, dammit, this is not one of your better ideas. This Maureen of yours is getting devoted attention from people who love her. Maybe she just doesn't like it here. And anybody could make out a pretty long list of contemporary defects. Am I supposed to be the kindly old philosopher, woman, and go set on her porch, and spit and whittle and pat her on the hand and tell her life can be beautiful? Hang around, kid. See what's going to happen next.

  I remember your daughters, but not too distinctly, because it was five years ago. Tallish, both slender-lithe blondes with the long smooth hanging sheath of hair, blunt-featured, a bit impassive with all that necessity for total cool that makes them look and act like aliens observing the quaint rites of earthlings. The infrequent blink is when the gray-blue eyes take pictures with hidden cameras. A considerable length of sea-brown legs and arms protruding from the boat clothes, resort clothes. Reservedly polite, quick-moving to go perform the requested errand or favor, a habit of standing close together and murmuring comments to each other, barely moving the shape of the unmadeup girl mouths.

  What the hell makes you think-made you think-I could communicate with either of them on any level, Helena Pearson Trescot? I am not as much older than your elder daughter than you were older than I, but it is a large gap. Don't trust anybody over thirty? Hell, I don't trust anybody under thirty or over thirty until events prove otherwise, and some of my best friends are white Anglo-Saxon Protestant beach girls.

  Helena, I think slaying oneself is a nasty little private, self-involved habit and, when successful, the residual flavor is a kind of sickly embarrassment rather than a sense of high tragedy. What is it you want of me? I am not suited to the role of going around selling the life-can-be-beautiful idea. It can be, indeed. But you don't buy the concept from your friendly door-to-door lecture salesman.

  No thanks. Husband Tommy and sister Biddy can cope. Besides, what in the world would I say to the three of them? Helena sent me?

  Besides, dear lady, you left me the out. "You will if you want to and you won't if you don't. It is that simple."

  I don't.

  Tell you what I will do, though. Just to play fair. I'll take a little run up there, for some reason or other I'll dream up, and prove to both of us just how bad your suggestion is. Let's say we'll both sleep better. Okay? Fair to all?

  5

>   COURTNEY COUNTY: Pop. 91,312. County Seat: Incorporated municipality of Fort Courtney. Pop. 24,808. Gently rolling country. Acres and acres of citrus groves, so lushly productive the green leaves on the citrus trees look like dark green plastic, the profusion of fruit like decorative wax. Ranchland in the southern part of the county. Black angus. White fences. Horse breeding as a sideline. An industrial park, a couple of nice clean operations making fragments of the computer technology, one a branch of Litton Industries, one spawned by Westinghouse, and one called Bruxtyn Devices, Inc., which had not yet been gobbled up by anybody.