. And, in the cabin, there was a door in the floor.
“The little boy was afraid of what was under the door in the floor, and the mommy was afraid, too. Once, long ago, other children had come to visit the cabin, for Christmas, but the children had opened the door in the floor and they had disappeared down the hole, under the cabin, and all their presents had disappeared, too.
“Once the mommy had tried to look for the children, but when she opened the door in the floor, she heard such an awful sound that her hair turned completely white, like the hair of a ghost. And she smelled such a terrible smell that her skin became as wrinkled as a raisin. It took a whole year for the mommy’s skin to be smooth again, and for her hair not to be white. And, when she’d opened the door in the floor, the mommy had also seen some horrible things that she never wanted to see again, like a snake that could make itself so small that it could sneak through the crack between the door and the floor—even when the door was closed—and then it could make itself so big again that it could carry the cabin on its back, as if the snake were a giant snail and the cabin were its shell.” ( That illustration had given Eddie O’Hare a nightmare— not when Eddie was a child, but when he was a sixteen-year-old!)
“The other things under the door in the floor are so horrible that you can only imagine them.” (There was an indescribable illustration of these horrible things as well.)
“And so the mommy wondered if she wanted to have a little boy in a cabin in the woods, on an island, in a lake—and with no one else around—but especially because of everything that might be under the door in the floor. Then she thought: Why not? I’ll just tell him not to open the door in the floor!
“Well, that’s easy for a mommy to say, but what about the little boy? He still didn’t know if he wanted to be born into a world where there was a door in the floor, and no one else around. Yet there were also some beautiful things in the woods, and on the island, and in the lake.” (Here there was an illustration of an owl, and of the ducks that swam ashore on the island, and of a pair of loons nuzzling on the still water of the lake.)
“Why not take a chance? the little boy thought. And so he was born, and he was very happy. His mommy was happy again, too, although she told the little boy at least once every day, ‘Don’t you ever, not ever — never, never, never —open the door in the floor!’ But of course he was only a little boy. If you were that boy, wouldn’t you want to open that door in the floor?”
And that, thought Eddie O’Hare, is the end of the story—never realizing that, in the real story, the little boy was a little girl. Her name was Ruth, and her mommy wasn’t happy. There was another kind of door in the floor that Eddie didn’t know about—not yet.
The ferry had come through Plum Gut. Orient Point was now clearly in sight.
Eddie took a good look at the jacket photographs of Ted Cole. The author photo on The Door in the Floor was more recent than the one on The Mouse Crawling Between the Walls . In both, Mr. Cole struck Eddie as a handsome man, suggesting to the sixteen-year-old that a man of the advanced age of forty-five could still move the hearts and minds of the ladies. A man like that would be sure to stand out in any crowd at Orient Point. Eddie didn’t know that he should have been looking for Marion.
Once the ferry was secured in the slip, Eddie scanned the unimpressive gathering on shore from the vantage of the upper deck; there was no one who matched the elegant jacket photos. He’s forgotten about me! Eddie thought. For some reason, this inspired Eddie to think spiteful thoughts about his father—so much for Exonians!
From the upper deck, however, Eddie did see a beautiful woman waving to someone on board; she was so striking that Eddie didn’t want to see the man she might be waving to. (He assumed that she must have been waving to a man.) The woman was so distractingly gorgeous, she made it difficult for Eddie to keep looking for Ted. Eddie’s eyes kept coming back to her —she was waving up a storm. (From the corner of his eye, Eddie saw someone drive off the ferry into the stony sand of the beach, where the car instantly stalled.)
Eddie was among the last of the stragglers to disembark, carrying his heavy duffel bag in one hand, and the lighter, smaller suitcase in the other. He was shocked to see that the woman of such breathtaking beauty was standing exactly where she’d been when he’d first spotted her, and she was still waving. She was dead-ahead of him—and she appeared to be waving at him . He was afraid he was going to bump into her. She was close enough for him to touch her—he could smell her, and she smelled wonderful—when, suddenly, she reached out and took the lighter, smaller suitcase from his hand.
“Hello, Eddie,” she said.
If he died a little whenever his father spoke to strangers, Eddie now knew what it meant to really die: his breath was gone, he couldn’t speak.
“I thought you’d never see me,” the beautiful woman said.
From that moment on, he would never stop seeing her, not in his mind’s eye—not whenever he closed his eyes and tried to sleep. She would always be there.
“Mrs. Cole?” he managed to whisper.
“Marion,” she said.
He couldn’t say her name. With his heavy bag, he struggled to follow her to the car. So what if she wore a bra? He had noticed her breasts nonetheless. And in her sleek, long-sleeved sweater, there was no knowing if she shaved her armpits. What did it matter? The coarse hair of Mrs. Havelock’s armpits that had once so thoroughly engaged him, not to mention her floppy tits, had receded into the distant past; he felt only a mute embarrassment at the very idea that someone as ordinary as Mrs. Havelock had ever stirred an iota of desire in him.
When they arrived at the car—a Mercedes-Benz the dusty red of a tomato—Marion handed him the keys.
“You can drive, can’t you?” she asked. Eddie still couldn’t speak. “I know boys your age—you love to drive every chance you get, don’t you?”
“Yes, ma’am,” he replied.
“Marion,” she repeated.
“I was expecting Mr. Cole,” he explained.
“Ted,” Marion said.
These weren’t Exeter rules. At the academy—and, by extension, in his family, because the atmosphere of the academy was where he had truly grown up—it was “sir” and “ma’am” to everyone; it had been Mr. and Mrs. Everybody . Now it was Ted and Marion; here was another world.
When he sat in the driver’s seat, the accelerator and brake and clutch pedals were the perfect distance away from him; he and Marion were the same height. The thrill of this discovery was immediately moderated, however, by his awareness of his immense erection; his hugely evident hard-on brushed the bottom of the steering wheel. And then the clam truck drove slowly past—the driver had noticed Marion, too, of course.
“Nice job if you can get it, kid!” the clam-truck driver called.
When Eddie turned the key in the ignition, the Mercedes gave a responsive purr. When Eddie stole a look at Marion, he saw that she was evaluating him in a way that was as foreign to him as her car was.