“The poor child!” Marion interrupted him. “I don’t want her to be like me !”
Dumping Mrs. Vaughn
For the next five or six days, before Ruth’s stitches were removed, the child didn’t go to the beach. The nuisance of keeping the cut dry made the nannies irritable. Eddie detected an increased sullenness in Ted’s and Marion’s behavior toward each other; they had always avoided each other, but now they never spoke to or even looked at each other. When one wanted to complain about the other, the complaint was made to Eddie. For example, Ted held Marion responsible for Ruth’s injury, although Eddie had repeatedly told him that it was he who had let Ruth have the photograph.
“That’s not the point,” Ted said. “The point is, you shouldn’t have gone into her room in the first place—that’s her mother’s job.”
“I told you. Marion was asleep,” Eddie lied.
“I doubt it,” Ted told the boy. “I doubt that ‘asleep’ accurately describes Marion’s condition. I would guess that she was zonked .”
Eddie wasn’t sure what Ted meant. He said, “She wasn’t drunk, if that’s what you mean.”
“I didn’t say she was drunk—she’s never drunk,” Ted told Eddie. “I said she was zonked . Wasn’t she?”
Eddie didn’t know what to say; he reported the problem to Marion.
“Did you tell him why ?” she asked the boy. “Did you tell him what you asked me?”
Eddie was shocked. “No, of course not,” the sixteen-year-old said. “
Tell him!” Marion exclaimed.
So Eddie told Ted what happened when he asked Marion about the accident. “I guess I zonked her,” Eddie explained. “I keep telling you— the whole thing is my fault.”
“No, it’s Marion’s fault,” Ted insisted.
“Oh, who cares whose fault it is?” Marion said to Eddie. “
I care,” Eddie said. “ I’m the one who let Ruth have the photograph in her room.”
“This isn’t about the photograph—don’t be silly,” Marion told the sixteen-year-old. “This has nothing to do with you, Eddie.”
It was a blow to the boy to realize that she was right. Eddie O’Hare was involved in what would be the most important relationship in his life; yet what was happening between Ted and Marion had nothing to do with him.
Meanwhile, Ruth asked every day about the unreturned photograph; every day there was a phone call to the frame shop in Southampton, but the matting and framing of a single eight-by-ten photo was not a priority in the framer’s busiest season of the year.
Would the new mat have a spot of blood on it? Ruth wanted to know. (No, it would not.) Would the new frame and the new glass be exactly like the old frame and the old glass? (Close enough.)
And every day and every night, Ruth would lead the nannies, or her mother or father, or Eddie, through the gallery of photographs hanging in the Coles’ house. If she touched that photo, could the glass cut her? If she dropped this one, was it also glass and would it break? Why did glass break, anyway? And if glass could cut you, why would you want any glass in your house?
But before Ruth’s repeated questions, the month of August had passed the midpoint; it was markedly cooler at night. Even the carriage house was comfortable for sleeping. One night when Eddie and Marion were sleeping there, Marion forgot to tack the towel over the skylight. They were awakened early in the morning by a low-flying flock of geese. Marion said: “Going south already?” She didn’t speak to Eddie or Ruth for the rest of the day.
Ted radically revised A Sound Like Someone Trying Not to Make a Sound; for almost a week, he presented Eddie with a completely rewritten draft every morning. Eddie would retype the manuscript the same day; the next morning Ted’s rewrite would come back to him. No sooner was Eddie beginning to feel like an actual writer’s assistant than the rewriting process stopped. Eddie wouldn’t see A Sound Like Someone Trying Not to Make a Sound again until it was published. Although it would be Ruth’s favorite among her father’s books, it would never be a favorite of Eddie’s; he’d seen too many versions of it to appreciate the final draft.
And in the mail one day, just before Ruth’s stitches were removed, was a fat envelope for Eddie from his father. It contained the names and addresses of every living Exonian in the Hamptons; in fact, it was the very same list of names and addresses that Eddie had thrown away on the ferry while crossing Long Island Sound. Someone had found the envelope with the embossed Phillips Exeter Academy return address and the senior O’Hare’s carefully handwritten name—a janitor, or one of the ferry crew, or some meddler snooping through the trash. Whoever the idiot was, he or she had returned the list to Minty O’Hare.
“You should have told me that you lost this,” Eddie’s father wrote to him. “I would have copied the names and addresses and given them to you again. Thankfully someone recognized their value. A remarkable act of human kindness—and at a time in our history when acts of kindness are growing rare. Whoever it was, man or woman, didn?
?t even ask to be repaid for the postage! It must have been the Exeter name— on the envelope, I mean. I’ve always said that you can never overestimate the influence of the academy’s good name. . . .” Minty had added one name and address, he noted to Eddie: an Exonian in nearby Wainscott had somehow been omitted from the original list.
It was an irritating time for Ted, too. Ruth claimed that her stitches gave her nightmares; she had most of her nightmares when it was Ted’s turn to stay with her. One night the child cried and cried for her mother; only her mommy—and, to Ted’s further exasperation, Eddie— could comfort her. Ted had to call them in the carriage house and tell them to come home. Then Eddie had to drive Ted back to the carriage house, where, Eddie imagined, the imprints of his and Marion’s bodies were still visible (if not still warm) on the bed.
When Eddie returned to the Coles’ house, all the upstairs lights were on. Ruth could be soothed only by being carried from photograph to photograph. Eddie volunteered to complete the guided tour, so Marion could go back to bed, but Marion seemed to be enjoying herself; in fact, Marion was aware that this would probably be her last journey through the photographic history of her dead boys with her daughter in her arms. Marion was actually prolonging the narrative that accompanied each picture. Eddie fell asleep in his room, but with the door to the upstairs hall open; for a while, he could hear Ruth’s and Marion’s voices.
Eddie knew by the child’s question that they were looking at the photograph (in the middle guest bedroom) of Timothy crying and covered with mud. “But what happened to Timothy?” Ruth asked, although she knew the story as well as Marion did. By now, even Eddie knew all the stories.
“Thomas pushed him in a puddle,” Marion told Ruth.