“They’ve been fucking all weekend—I’m not kidding,” Hannah whispered to Eddie, when he came to dinner Saturday night. “I swear, they invited me so that I could look after Graham while they snuck off and did it! No wonder they didn’t go on a honeymoon—they didn’t need to! Making me the maid of honor was just an excuse!”
“Maybe you’re imagining things,” Eddie said, but Hannah truly had been put in an unusual position, at least “unusual” for her. She was in Ruth’s house without a boyfriend, and Hannah was keenly aware that if Ruth and Harry weren’t having sex every minute, they obviously wanted to.
In addition to a beet salad, Harry had made a terrific turkey soup; he’d baked some cornbread, too. To everyone’s surprise, Harry persuaded Graham to try a little of the soup, which the boy ate with a grilled-cheese sandwich. They were still eating when Ruth’s hard-working real estate agent knocked on the door, bringing with her a bitter-looking woman who was introduced to them all as a “potential buyer.”
The agent apologized to Ruth for not calling first, not to mention not making an appointment, but the so-called potential buyer had just heard that the house was on the market and she’d insisted on seeing it; she was on her way back to Manhattan that very night.
“To beat the traffic,” the potential buyer said. Her name was Candida and her sourness emanated from her pinched-together mouth, which was so tightly closed around itself that it must have hurt her to smile—laughter was unthinkable, from such a mouth. Candida might have been as pretty as Hannah once—she was still as thin, and as fashionably attired—but she was now at least Harry’s age, although she looked older; and she seemed more interested in assessing the people at the dining-room table than in the house.
“Is someone getting divorced?” Candida asked.
“Actually, they just got married,” Hannah said, pointing to Ruth and Harry. “And we’ve never been divorced or married,” Hannah added, indicating Eddie and herself.
Candida glanced questioningly at Graham. In Hannah’s answer, there’d been no explanation regarding where Graham had come from. And no explanation would be forthcoming, Hannah decided, staring the sour-looking woman down.
On the dining-room sideboard, where the remains of the salad course attracted a further look of disapproval from Candida, there was also a copy of the French translation of My Last Bad Boyfriend, which was of great sentimental value to Ruth and Harry—for they looked upon Mon dernier voyou as a fond memento of their falling in love in Paris. The way Candida looked at the novel implied her disapproval of French, too. Ruth hated her. Probably the real estate agent also hated her, and right now the agent was embarrassed.
A hefty woman who was inclined to chirp, the agent apologized again for intru
ding on their dinner. She was one of those women who rush into real estate after their children have flown the nest. She had a shrill, insecure eagerness to please that was more in keeping with the endless providing of peanut-butter-and-jelly sandwiches than with the selling or buying of houses; yet her enthusiasm, if fragile, was not feigned. She truly wanted everyone to like everything, and since this happened rarely, the real estate agent was easily given to sudden tears.
Harry offered to turn the lights on in the barn, so that the potential buyer could see the office space on the second floor, but Candida announced that she wasn’t looking for a house in the Hamptons because she wanted to spend time in a barn. She wanted to look around upstairs—she was most interested in bedrooms, Candida said—and so the agent traipsed off with her. Graham, who was bored, went after them.
“My fucking underwear’s all over the guest-room floor,” Hannah whispered to Eddie, who could imagine it—who had already imagined it.
When Harry and Ruth went into the kitchen to fuss with the dessert, Hannah whispered to Eddie: “You know what they do in bed together?”
“I can imagine what Ruth and Harry do in bed together,” Eddie whispered to Hannah, in response. “I’m sure I don’t need to be told .”
“He reads to her,” Hannah whispered. “It goes on for hours . Sometimes she reads to him, but I can hear him better.”
“I thought you said they fucked all the time.”
“I meant all day. At night, he reads to her—it’s sick,” Hannah added.
Once more, Eddie was overcome with envy and longing. “Your average housewife doesn’t do that,” he whispered to Hannah, to which she responded with a drop-dead glare.
“What are you two whispering about?” Ruth called from the kitchen.
“Maybe we’re having an affair,” Hannah answered, which caused Eddie to cringe.
They were eating the apple pie when the real estate agent brought Candida back into the dining room—Graham trailing malevolently behind them. “It’s too much house for me,” Candida announced. “I’m divorced.” The agent, in hurrying after her departing client, gave Ruth a look full of imminent tears.
“Did she have to say she was divorced?” Hannah asked. “I mean, who couldn’t tell she was divorced?”
“She looked at one of the books Harry is reading,” Graham reported. “And she stared at your bra and your underpants, Hannah.”
“There are people who do that, baby,” Hannah said.
That night Eddie O’Hare fell asleep in his modest house on the north side of Maple Lane, where the tracks of the Long Island Rail Road ran not more than two hundred feet from the headboard of his bed. He was so tired—for tiredness often overcame him when he was depressed— that he was not awakened by the passing of the eastbound 3:21. At that hour of the morning, the eastbound train usually woke him, but on this particular Sunday morning he slept right through . . . that is, until the westbound passage of the 7:17. (On weekdays, Eddie was awakened earlier than this every morning—by the westbound 6:12.)
Hannah called him when he was still making coffee.
“I gotta get outta here,” Hannah whispered. She’d tried to get a seat on the jitney, but the buses were booked solid. She had earlier planned to leave that evening on the westbound 6:01 to Penn Station. “But I gotta leave sooner than that,” Hannah informed him. “I’m going nuts— the lovebirds are driving me crazy. I figured you knew the trains.”
Oh, yes—Eddie knew the trains. As for an afternoon train, there was a westbound 4:01 on Saturdays, Sundays, and holidays. You could almost always get a seat in Bridgehampton. Nevertheless, Eddie warned Hannah that if the train was unusually crowded, she might have to stand.
“You think some guy won’t offer me his seat, or at least let me sit in his lap?” Hannah asked. The thought of this further depressed Eddie, but he agreed to pick up Hannah and drive her to the Bridgehampton station. The foundation, which was all that remained of the derelict station, was virtually next door to Eddie’s house. And Hannah told Eddie that Harry had already promised to take Graham for a walk on the beach in the late afternoon—at the exact same time Ruth had declared she wanted to take a long bath.