“Your mother clearly didn’t leave your father for O’Hare,” Allan said; he spoke more carefully than he usually did. He was trying to behave himself. He was a good man. Ruth saw that she’d made him afraid of her temper, for which she hated herself anew.
“That must be true,” Ruth replied, with equal care. “But any woman would have had just cause to leave my father.”
“Your mother left you, too,” Allan interjected. (Of course they had talked and talked about that.)
“That’s also true,” Ruth replied. “That’s precisely what I want to talk to Eddie about. I’ve heard what my father has to say about my mother, but my father doesn’t love her. I want to hear what someone who loves her has to say about that.”
“You think O’Hare still loves your mother?” Allan asked.
“You’ve read his books,” Ruth answered.
“Ad nauseam,” Allan said again. He’s an awful snob, Ruth thought. But she liked snobs.
Then Eddie came back to the table.
“We’ve been talking about you, O’Hare,” Allan said in a cavalier fashion. Eddie looked nervous.
“I told them about you and Mother,” Ruth said to Eddie.
Eddie tried to look composed, although the wet wool of his jacket clung to him like a shroud. In the candlelight he saw the bright yellow hexagon shining in the iris of Ruth’s right eye; when the light flickered, or when she turned her face toward the light, her eye changed color— from brown to amber—in the same way that the same hexagon of yellow could turn Marion’s right eye from blue to green.
“I love your mother,” Eddie began, without embarrassment. He’d needed only to think of Marion and he at once regained his composure, which he’d lost on the squash court while losing three games to Jimmy; Eddie’s composure had not seemed to him recoverable until now.
Allan looked astonished when Eddie asked the waiter for some ketchup and a paper napkin. It was not the kind of restaurant where ketchup was served, nor was there a paper napkin in the place. Allan took charge; it was one of his likable qualities. He went out on Second Avenue and quickly located a cheaper sort of restaurant; he was back at the table in five minutes with a half-dozen paper napkins and a ketchup bottle that was less than a quarter full.
“I hope it’s enough,” he said. He’d paid five dollars for the nearly empty ketchup bottle.
“It’s plenty, for my purposes,” Eddie told him.
“Thank you, Allan,” Ruth said warmly. Gallantly, he blew her a kiss.
Eddie poured a spreading puddle of the ketchup on his butter plate. The waiter looked on with grave distaste.
“Stick your right index finger in the ketchup,” Eddie said to Ruth.
“ My finger?” Ruth asked him.
“Please,” Eddie said to her. “I just want to see how much you remember.”
“How much I remember . . .” Ruth said. She dabbed her finger in the ketchup, wrinkling her nose—like a child.
“Now touch the napkin,” Eddie told her, sliding the paper napkin toward her. Ruth hesitated, but Eddie took her hand and gently pressed her right index finger on the napkin.
Ruth licked the rest of the ketchup off her finger while Eddie positioned the napkin exactly where he wanted it: on the far side of Ruth’s water glass, so that the glass magnified the fingerprint. And there it was—as it would be, forever: the perfectly vertical line on her right index finger; seen through the water glass, it was nearly twice the size of the scar itself.
“Do you remember?” Eddie asked her. The yellow hexagon in Ruth’s right eye was dulled with tears. She couldn’t speak. “Nobody else will ever have fingerprints like yours,” Eddie told her, as he’d told her on the day her mother left.
“And my scar will always be there?” Ruth asked him, as she had asked him thirty-two years ago, when she was four.
“Your scar will be part of you forever,” Eddie promised her, as he had promised her then.
“Yes,” Ruth whispered, “I remember. I remember almost everything,” she told him through her tears.
Later, alone in her suite at the Stanhope, Ruth remembered that Eddie had held her hand while she cried. She also recalled how wonderfully understanding Allan had been. Without a word, which was so uncharacteristic of him, Allan had ushered Karl and Melissa—and, most remarkably, himself —to another table in the restaurant. And Allan had insisted to the maître d’ that it be a faraway table, not within hearing distance of Ruth and Eddie. Ruth was unaware of when Allan and Karl and Melissa left the restaurant. Finally, while she and Eddie were debating the subject of which of them would pay for their dinner—Ruth had drunk an entire bottle of wine, and Eddie didn’t drink—the waiter interrupted their debate by telling them that Allan had already paid for everything.
Now, in the bedroom of her hotel, Ruth considered calling Allan and thanking him, but he would probably be asleep. It was almost one A.M. And she had been so stimulated to talk and listen to Eddie that she didn’t want to feel let down—as she might, if she talked to Allan.
Allan’s sensitivity had impressed her, but the subject of her mother, which Eddie had instantly taken up, was too much on her mind. Although she hardly needed more to drink, Ruth opened one of those lethal little bottles of cognac that always lurk in minibars. She lay in her bed, sipping the strong drink and wondering what to write in her diary; there was so much she wanted to say.