That Ted took an unexpected interest (of a sexual kind) in Glorie’s mother surprised him. If Glorie was a little too young and inexperienced for his usual taste—and she was borderline overweight—Glorie’s mom was older than Marion and the type of woman Ted generally ignored.
Mrs. Mountsier was preternaturally thin, the result of an inability to eat that had been brought on by her husband’s recent and wholly unanticipated death. She was clearly a widow who’d not only deeply loved her husband; she was also—and this was obvious, even to Ted— a widow still caught in the detectable stages of grief. In short, she was not a woman who could be seduced by anybody; yet Ted Cole was not just anybody, and he couldn’t suppress his unpredictable attraction to her.
Glorie must have inherited her penchant for curvaceousness from a grandmother or an even more distant relation. Mrs. Mountsier was a classical but wraithlike beauty, a pretender in Marion’s inimitable mold. Whereas Marion’s perpetual sorrow had turned Ted away from her, Mrs. Mountsier’s regal sadness turned Ted on. Yet his attraction to her daughter was undiminished—it was suddenly the two of them he wanted! In a similar situation, most men might have thought: What a dilemma! But Ted Cole thought only in terms of possibilities. What a possibility ! he was thinking, as he allowed Mrs. Mountsier to make him a sandwich—after all, it was almost lunchtime— and he yielded to Glorie’s insistence that he allow her to put his wet blue jeans and his soaked-through shoes in the dryer.
“They’ll be dry in fifteen or twenty minutes,” the eighteen-year-old promised. (The shoes would take at least half an hour, but what was the hurry?)
While he ate his lunch, Ted wore a bathrobe belonging to the late Mr . Mountsier. Mrs. Mountsier had shown Ted where the bathroom was, so he could change, and she’d handed him her dead husband’s bathrobe with an especially appealing sort of sadness.
Ted had never tried to seduce a widow before—not to mention a mother and her daughter. He’d spent the summer drawing Mrs. Vaughn. The illustrations for the unfinished A Sound Like Someone Trying Not to Make a Sound had been long neglected; he’d barely begun to think about what those illustrations should be. Yet here, in a comfortable house on First Neck Lane, a mother-and-daughter portrait of unusual promise had presented itself to him—he knew he had to try it.
Mrs. Mountsier did not eat lunch. The thinness of her face, which looked frail and brittle in the midday light, suggested that she had at best an intermittent appetite, or that she had some difficulty keeping food down. She’d delicately powdered the dark circles under her eyes; like Marion, Mrs. Mountsier could sleep only for short periods of time, when she was utterly exhausted. Ted noticed that the thumb of Mrs. Mountsier’s left hand could not leave her wedding ring alone, although she was unaware of how constantly she touched it.
When Glorie saw what her mother was doing to her wedding ring, she reached out and squeezed her hand. The look that Mrs. Mountsier gave her daughter was both thankful and apologetic; the sympathy passed between them like a letter slipped under a door. (In the first of the drawings, Ted would pose them with the daughter holding her mother’s hand.)
“You know, this is quite a coincidence,” he began, “but I’ve been looking for two suitable subjects for a mother-and-daughter portrait— it’s something I’ve been thinking about for my next book.”
“Is it another children’s book?” asked Mrs. Mountsier.
“Categorically, yes,” Ted answered her, “but I don’t think that any of my books are truly for children. First of all, there are the mothers who must buy them, and—usually—the mothers are the first to read them aloud. Children usually hear them before they’re able to read them. And when those children are adults, they often go back to my books and read them again.”
“That’s just how it happened to me!” Glorie said. Effie, who was sulking, rolled her eyes.
Everyone but Effie was pleased. Mrs. Mountsier had been assured that mothers came first. Glorie had been congratulated for no longer being a child; the famous author had recognized that she was an adult now.
“What sort of drawings do you have in mind?” Mrs. Mountsier asked.
“Well. At first I would want to draw you and your daughter together,” Ted told her. “That way, when I draw each of you separately, the presence of the one who’s missing is . . . well, somehow, there .”
“Wow! Do you want to do it, Mom?” Glorie asked. (Effie was rolling her eyes again, but Ted never paid much attention to someone who wasn’t attractive.)
“I don’t know. How long would it take?” Mrs. Mountsier asked. “Or which of us would you want to draw first? I mean separately. I mean, after you’ve drawn us together.” (In a rush of desire, Ted realized that the widow was a wreck.)
“When do you go back to college?” Ted asked Glorie.
“September fifth or something,” Glorie said.
“September third,” Effie corrected her. “And you were going to spend Labor Day weekend in Maine, with me,” she added.
“I should do Glorie first, then,” Ted told Mrs. Mountsier. “First the two of you together. Then Glorie alone. Then, when Glorie is back in college, you alone.”
“Oh, I don’t know,” Mrs. Mountsier said.
“Come on, Mom! It’ll be fun!” Glorie said.
“Well.” It was Ted’s famous, never-ending “Well.”
“Well what ?” Effie asked rudely.
“I mean, you don’t have to decide today, ” Ted told Mrs. Mountsier. “Just think about it,” he said to Glorie. Ted could tell what Glorie was already thinking about. Glorie would be the easy one. And then . . . what a pleasantly long fall and winter it might be! (Ted was imagining the vastly slower seduction of the grieving Mrs. Mountsier—it might take months, even a year.)
It called upon tact to permit both the mother and daughter to drive him back to Sagaponack. Mrs. Mountsier volunteered; then she realized that she’d hurt her daughter’s feelings, that Glorie truly had her heart set on driving the famous author and illustrator home.
“Oh, please— you do it, then, Glorie,” Mrs. Mountsier said. “I hadn’t realized how much you wanted
to do it.”
It won’t work if they quarrel, Ted was thinking. “Speaking selfishly,” he said—he smiled charmingly at Effie—“I’d be honored if you all drove me home.” Although his charm didn’t work with Effie, mother and daughter were instantly reconciled—for now.