“Be back in fifteen minutes,” Ted told him. Then he noticed the long scraps of his familiar drawing paper. The tatters of his drawings were blowing in the wind; his drawings had been ripped to shreds. The forbidding barrier of privet had kept most of the torn paper from blowing into the street, but the hedges were bedecked with waving flags and strips of paper, as if some unruly wedding guests had strewn the Vaughn estate with makeshift confetti.
As Ted walked up the noisy driveway at a slow, stricken pace, Eddie got out of the car to watch; he even followed Ted a short distance. The courtyard was littered with the remains of Ted’s drawings. The spitting fountain was clogged with wet wads of paper; the water had turned a sepia shade of grayish brown.
“The squid ink . . .” Ted said aloud. Eddie, walking backward, was already retreating to the car. He had spotted the gardener on a ladder, plucking paper from the privet. The gardener had scowled at both Eddie and Ted, but Ted had noticed neither the gardener nor the ladder; the squid ink, staining the water in the fountain, had entirely captured Ted’s attention. “Oh boy,” he muttered, as Eddie left him.
Compared to Ted, the gardener was better dressed. There was always something careless and rumpled about Ted’s clothes—jeans, a tucked-in T-shirt, and (on this somewhat cool Friday morning) an unbuttoned flannel shirt that was flapping in the wind. And this morning Ted was unshaven, too; he was doing his best to make the worst possible impression on Mrs. Vaughn. (Ted and his drawings had already made the worst possible impression on Mrs. Vaughn’s gardener.)
“Five— five minutes!” Ted called to Eddie. Given the long day ahead, it hardly mattered that Eddie didn’t hear him.
Back in Sagaponack, Marion had packed a large beach bag for Ruth, who was already wearing her bathing suit under her shorts and T-shirt; in the bag were towels and two changes of clothes, including long pants and a sweatshirt. “You can take her anywhere you like for lunch,” Marion told Eddie. “All she ever eats is a grilled-cheese sandwich with French fries.”
“And ketchup,” Ruth said.
Marion tried to give Eddie a ten-dollar bill for lunch.
“I have money,” Eddie told her, but when he turned his back on her to help Ruth into the Chevy, Marion stuck the ten-dollar bill into the right rear pocket of his jeans, and he remembered what it had felt like the first time she’d pulled him to her by tugging the waist of his jeans—her knuckles against his bare stomach. Then she’d unsnapped his jeans and unzipped his fly, which he would remember for about five or ten years—every time he undressed himself.
“Remember, honey,” Marion said to Ruth. “Don’t cry when the doctor takes out your stitches. I promise—it’s not going to hurt.”
“Can I keep the stitches?” t
he four-year-old asked.
“I suppose . . .” Marion replied.
“Sure you can keep them,” Eddie told the child.
“So long, Eddie,” Marion said.
She was wearing tennis shorts and tennis shoes, although she didn’t play tennis, and a floppy flannel shirt that was too big for her—it was Ted’s. She wasn’t wearing a bra. Earlier that morning, when Eddie was leaving to pick up Ted at the carriage house, Marion had taken his hand and put it under her shirt and held it against her bare breast; but when he tried to kiss her, she drew away, leaving Eddie’s right hand with the feel of her breast, which he would go on feeling for about ten or fifteen years.
“Tell me all about the stitches,” Ruth said to Eddie, as he made a left turn.
“You won’t really feel them very much when the doctor takes them out,” Eddie said.
“Why not?” the child asked him.
Before he made the next turn, a right, he had his last sight of Marion and the Mercedes in the rearview mirror. She would not be turning right, Eddie knew—the movers were waiting straight ahead of her. The left side of Marion’s face was illuminated by the morning sun, which shone brightly through the driver’s-side window of the Mercedes; the window was open, and Eddie could see the wind blowing Marion’s hair. Just before he turned, Marion waved to him (and to her daughter), as if she were still intending to be there when Eddie and Ruth returned.
“Why won’t it hurt to take the stitches out?” Ruth asked Eddie again.
“Because the cut is healed—the skin has grown back together,” Eddie told her.
Marion was now gone from view. Is that it ? he was wondering. “So long, Eddie.” Were those her last words to him? “I suppose . . .” were Marion’s last words to her daughter. Eddie couldn’t believe the abruptness of it: the open window of the Mercedes, Marion’s hair blowing in the wind, Marion’s arm waving out the window. And only half of Marion’s face was in the sunlight; the rest of her was invisible. Eddie O’Hare couldn’t have known that neither he nor Ruth would see Marion again for thirty-seven years. But, for all those years, Eddie would wonder at the seeming nonchalance of her departure.
How could she? Eddie would think—as one day Ruth would also think about her mother.
The two stitches were removed so quickly that Ruth didn’t have time to cry. The four-year-old was more interested in the stitches themselves than in her almost perfect scar. The thin white line was discolored only slightly by traces of iodine, or whatever the antiseptic was—it had left a yellow-brown stain. Now that she could get her finger wet again, the doctor told her, this stain would be removed by her first good bath. But it was of greater concern to Ruth that the two stitches, which had each been cut in half, were saved in an envelope— and that the crusted scab, near the knotted end of one of the four pieces, not be damaged.
“I want to show my stitches to Mommy,” Ruth said. “And my scab.”
“First let’s go to the beach,” Eddie suggested.
“Let’s show her the scab first, then the stitches,” Ruth replied.
“We’ll see . . .” Eddie began. He paused to consider that the doctor’s office in Southampton was not more than a fifteen-minute walk from Mrs. Vaughn’s mansion on Gin Lane. It was now a quarter to ten in the morning; if Ted was still there, he would already have been with Mrs. Vaughn for more than an hour. More likely, Ted was not with Mrs. Vaughn. But Ted might have remembered that Ruth was having her stitches removed this morning, and he might know where the doctor’s office was.
“Let’s go to the beach,” Eddie said to Ruth. “Let’s hurry.”