As the Tide Rises and Falls

Like the domestic epic, if there is such a thing, Annie Dillard's The Maytrees comprehends marriage, birth, separation, return, and death. The epic story of the Maytrees glitters and glows in Annie Dillard's telling. The ocean is never far away in this novel, nor are the sand dunes. In this setting people come together and drift apart. The prologue tells us that the Maytrees' lives are "played out before the backdrop of the fixed stars"—as are all our lives, though we seldom stop to think about it. This novelist takes careful pleasure in the way the action informs everything it touches.

Until his friend put him right, Toby Maytree had taken the future Mrs. Maytree for Ingrid Bergman. Lou, who has been pursued by boys since she was very young, is won over by Toby's tact in courting her. After being happily married for fourteen years, they find seams beginning to show. Both husband and wife have had experience of a kind to make their union seem strong and stable. Maytree writes long books of poetry; Lou is a perfect helpmate. When not writing or reading or making love, the Maytrees get into discussions about the large questions. For instance, who gets more pleasure from the act of love, man or woman? Tiresias said woman (and he was said to have experienced both genders). Lou also answers, woman, but then adds, "if the man is John Keats." Perhaps it makes less difference to the man who the woman is?

They love dancing, and her beauty has been a never-failing source of pleasure to Maytree. "But what so endeared her now and forever was her easy and helpless laughter. He felt like the world's great wit. Her rusty-axel laugh sustained itself voicelessly and without air. At table if she was still chewing when the laugh came rolling on her backward like a loose cart, she put a napkin on her head." He falls in love with her over and over again.

When their baby boy is born, Maytree has dreams of teaching little Pete all the things that seem important. But Petie is not up to such learning. To Lou the baby is adorable: "Lou saw something in the organism that bypassed him." He is interested in shaping his offspring to some ideal; she loves her baby for what it simply is. Toby's love for her is too absorbing for him to share it with an interloper.

When Petie, at fourteen, has a biking accident and breaks a leg, Toby curses the man whom he considers responsible. Lou's apparent tolerance for the man enrages Maytree. Lou has no idea why Maytree has changed: "In her company he wrapped himself in misery like a robe." Finally he tells her he is planning to move to Maine. She refuses to ask why. Suddenly she is left with a child with a broken leg, very little money, and the rest of her life to mull things over.

Especially in scenes of dramatic intensity, every move, every gesture is minutely described; but we as readers see Toby strictly from the outside, as Lou does, and we register Lou's shock fully. Her mind works rapidly as she tries to grasp the future awaiting her. As usual Lou seems immediately convincing. Toby, perhaps necessarily, seems less so—after all, we knew nothing in advance of his feelings toward Deary.

Deary, a friend of the world, slides in and out of marriage like changing her costume for the evening. She is wildly unconventional, sleeping out in the dunes and taking life as she finds it. But everyone who knows her is glad to see that no harm comes to her. She is a human pet.

The die is cast. From the familiar and lovable, Toby must enter a future murky and dangerous. How did he come to despise that wonderful calm in Lou that he had so admired? He would miss Petie, of whom he had become fonder as the boy...