“It’s going in my ears, too!” the four-year-old screamed.
“I thought you were brave. Aren’t you brave?” Eddie asked her. As soon as the shampooing was finished, Ruth stopped crying. Eddie let her play with the hose until she sprayed him.
“Where did Mommy move the pictures?” Ruth asked.
“I don’t know,” Eddie admitted. (By tonight, even before it was dark, this would become a refrain.)
“Did Mommy move the pictures from the halls, too?” the child asked.
“Yes, Ruth.”
“Why?” the four-year-old asked.
“I don’t know,” he repeated.
Pointing at the bathroom walls, Ruth said: “But Mommy didn’t move those things. What are those things called?”
“Picture hooks,” Eddie said.
“Why didn’t Mommy move them?” Ruth asked.
“I don’t know,” Eddie repeated. The child was standing in the emptying tub, which was filled with sand. Ruth began to shiver as soon as Eddie lifted her to the bath mat.
As he was drying her off, he wondered how he was supposed to untangle the little girl’s hair; it was quite long and full of knots. Eddie was distracted by trying to remember, word for word, what he’d written for Penny Pierce; he was also trying to imagine Ted’s reaction to certain sentences. For example: “I would estimate that Marion and I have made love about sixty times.” And following that sentence, there were these sentences, too: “When Ruth gets home, both her mother and all the pictures will be gone. Her dead brothers and her mother will be gone.”
Remembering his conclusion, word for word, Eddie wondered if Ted would appreciate the understatement. “I just thought that the child would probably really need to have something to put near her bed tonight,” Eddie had written. “There won’t be any other pictures—all those pictures she’s been used to. I thought that if there was one of her mother, especially . . .”
Eddie had already wrapped Ruth up in a towel before he noticed Ted standing in the bathroom doorway. In a wordless exchange, Eddie picked up the child and handed her to her father while Ted gave Eddie back the pages he’d written.
“Daddy! Daddy!” Ruth said. “Mommy moved all the pictures! But not the . . . what are they called?” she asked Eddie.
“The picture hooks.”
“Right,” Ruth said. “Why did she did that?” the four-year-old asked her father.
“I don’t know, Ruthie.”
“I’m going to take a quick shower,” Eddie told Ted.
“Yes, make it a quick one,” Ted told him. He carried his daughter into the hall.
“Look at all the . . . what are they called?” Ruth asked Ted.
“Picture hooks, Ruthie.”
Only after he’d showered did Eddie realize that Ted and Ruth had taken the photograph of Marion off the bathroom wall; they must have moved it to Ruth’s room. It was fascinating to Eddie to realize that what he’d written was coming true. He wanted to be alone with Ted, to tell him everything that Marion had instructed him to say—and anything that Eddie could add. He wanted to hurt Ted with as many truths as he could summon. But at the same time Eddie wanted to lie to Ruth. For thirty-seven years he would want to lie to her, to tell her anything that might make her feel better.
When Eddie had dressed, he put the pages he’d written into his empty duffel bag. He would be packing soon, and he wanted to be sure to take his writing with him. But, to his surprise, the duffel bag wasn’t empty. At the bottom was Marion’s pink cashmere cardigan; she’d also included her lilac-colored silk camisole and matching panties, despite her observation that pink with lilac was an unwise combination. She knew it was the décolletage (and the lace) that had appealed to Eddie.
Eddie rummaged through the bag, hoping to find more; maybe Marion had written him a letter. What he found surprised him as much as the discovery of her clothing. It was the crushed, bread loaf–shaped present that Eddie’s father had given him as he’d boarded the ferry for Long Island; it was Ruth’s present, the wrapping much the worse for its summerlong residence in the bottom of the duffel bag. Eddie didn’t think now was the right time to give Ruth the present, whatever it was.
Suddenly he thought of another use for the pages he’d written for Penny Pierce and shown to Ted. When Alice arrived, the pages would be useful in bringing her up to date; surely the nanny needed to know— at least if she was going to be sensitive to everything Ruth would be feeling. Eddie folded the pages and stuck them in his right rear pocket. His jeans were a little damp, because he’d worn them over his wet bathing suit when he and Ruth had left the beach. The ten-dollar bill that Marion had given him was also a little damp, as was Penny Pierce’s business card, with her home phone number written in by hand. He put them both in the duffel bag; they were already in the category of mementos of the summer of ’58, which Eddie was beginning to realize was both a watershed in his life and a legacy that Ruth would carry with her for as long as she would carry her scar.
The poor kid, Eddie was thinking, not realizing that this was also a watershed. At sixteen, Eddie O’Hare had ceased to be a teenager, in the sense that he was no longer as self-absorbed; he was concerned for someone else. The rest of today and tonight, Eddie promised himself, he would do what he did and say what he said for Ruth . He walked down the hall toward Ruth’s bedroom, where Ted had already hung the photograph of Marion and the feet from one of the many exposed picture hooks on Ruth’s stark walls.
“Look, Eddie!” the child said, pointing to the photo of her mother.
“I see,” Eddie told her. “It looks very nice there.”