Marion had been right. Mrs. Vaughn had not finished getting dressed, or possibly she'd not completed the exact phase of un dress that she might have been preparing in order to look alluring to Ted. Her hair was wet and lank, and her upper lip seemed rubbed raw; at one corner of her mouth, like a clown's unfinished smile, remained a trace of the hair-removal ointment that she'd too hastily tried to wipe away. Mrs. Vaughn had been hasty in her choice of a robe as well, for she stood in the doorway in a white terry-cloth thing that resembled a giant, ungainly towel. It was probably her husband's robe, for it hung over her thin ankles; one edge dragged on the doorsill. She was barefoot. The wet nail polish on her big right toe had been smeared across the top of her right foot in such a way that it looked as if she'd cut her foot and was bleeding.
"What do you want?" Mrs. Vaughn asked. Then she looked past Eddie at Ted's car. Before Eddie could answer, she asked him: "Where is he? Isn't he coming? What's wrong?"
"He couldn't make it," Eddie informed her, "but he wanted you to have . . . these." In the wild wind, he didn't dare hold out the drawings to her; awkwardly, he still hugged them to his chest.
"He couldn't make it?" she repeated. "What does that mean?"
"I don't know," Eddie lied. "But there are all these drawings . . . May I put them down somewhere?" he begged.
" What drawings? Oh . . . the drawings ! Oh . . ." said Mrs. Vaughn, as if someone had struck her in the stomach. She stepped back, tripping on the long white robe--she nearly fell. Eddie followed her inside, feeling like her executioner. The polished marble floor reflected the overhanging chandelier; in the distance, through an open pair of double doors, a second chandelier hung above a dining-room table. The house looked like an art museum; the far-off dining room was as big as a banquet hall. Eddie walked (for what seemed to him to be a mile or so) to the table, and put the drawings down, not realizing until he turned to go that Mrs. Vaughn had followed as closely and silently behind him as his shadow. When she saw the topmost drawing--one of her with her son--she gasped.
"He's giving them to me !" she cried. "He doesn't want them?"
"I don't know," Eddie said miserably. Mrs. Vaughn rapidly leafed through the drawings until she got to the first nude; then she overturned the stack, taking the last drawing off the bottom, which was now the top. Eddie began to edge away; he knew what the last drawing was.
"Oh . . ." Mrs. Vaughn said, as if she'd been punched again. "But when is he coming?" she called after Eddie. "He's coming Friday, isn't he? I have the whole day to see him Friday--he knows I have the whole day. He knows !" Eddie tried to keep walking. He heard her bare feet on the marble floor--she was scampering after him. She caught up to him under the big chandelier. "Stop!" she shouted. "Is he coming Friday?"
"I don't know," Eddie repeated, backing out the door. The wind tried to keep him inside.
"Yes, you do know!" Mrs. Vaughn screamed. "Tell me!"
She followed him outside, but the wind almost knocked her down. Her robe blew open; she struggled to close it. Eddie would always retain this vision of her, as if to remind himself of what the worst kind of nakedness was--the utterly unwanted glimpse of Mrs. Vaughn's slack breasts and her dark triangle of matted pubic hair.
"Stop!" she cried again, but the sharp stones in the driveway prevented her from following him to the car. She bent down and picked up a handful of the pebbles, which she threw at Eddie. Most of them struck the Chevy.
"Did he show you those drawings? Did you look at them? Goddamn you--you looked at them, didn't you?" she cried.
"No," Eddie lied.
As Mrs. Vaughn bent down to pick up another handful of stones, a gust of wind blew her off balance. Like a gunshot, the front door behind her slammed shut.
"My God. I'm locked out!" she said to Eddie.
"Isn't there another door that's un locked?" he asked. (The mansion must have had a dozen doors!)
"I thought Ted was coming. He likes all the doors to be locked," said Mrs. Vaughn.
"You don't hide a key somewhere for emergencies?" Eddie asked.
"I sent the gardener home. Ted doesn't like the gardener to be around," said Mrs. Vaughn. "The gardener has an emergency key."
"Can't you call the gardener?"
"On what phone ?" shouted Mrs. Vaughn. "You'll have to break in."
"Me?" the sixteen-year-old said.
"Well, you know how to do it, don't you?" the small, dark woman asked. " I don't know how to do it!" she wailed.
There were no open windows because of the air-conditioning; the Vaughns had air-conditioning because of their art collection, which was also why there were no open windows. By a garden in the back, there were French doors, but Mrs. Vaughn warned Eddie that the glass was of a special thickness and laced with chicken wire, which made it nearly impenetrable. By swinging a rock, which he tied up in his T-shirt, Eddie was finally able to smash the glass, but he still needed to find one of the gardener's tools in order to rip the chicken wire sufficiently for his hand to fit through the hole and unlock the door from the inside. The rock, which was a centerpiece to the birdbath in the garden, had dirtied Eddie's T-shirt, which had also been cut by the breaking glass. He decided to leave his shirt, and the rock, in the smashed glass by the now-open door.
But Mrs. Vaughn, who was barefoot, insisted that he carry her into the house through the French doors; she didn't want to risk cutting her feet on the broken glass. Bare-chested, Eddie carried her into her house--being careful, as he reached around her, not to get his hands on the wrong side of her robe. She seemed to weigh next to nothing, barely more than Ruth. But when he held her in his arms, even so briefly, her strong smell came close to overpowering him. Her scent was indescribable; Eddie couldn't say what she smelled like, only that the scent made him gag. When he put her down, she sensed his unconcealed revulsion.
"You look as if you're disgusted," she told him. "How dare you--how dare you detest me ?" Eddie was standing in a room he'd never been in before. He didn't know his way to the big chandelier at the main entrance, and when he turned to look for the French doors to the garden, a maze of open doorways confronted him; he also didn't know how to find the door he'd just come in.
"How do I get out?" he asked Mrs. Vaughn.
"How dare you detest me?" she repeated. "You're not exactly living an unsordid life yourself--are you?" Mrs. Vaughn asked the boy.
"Please . . . I want to go home," Eddie told her. It wasn't until he spoke that he realized he really meant it, and that he meant Exeter, New Hampshire--not Sagaponack. Eddie meant that he really wanted to go home. It was a weakness he would carry with him for the rest of his life: he would always be inclined to cry in front of older women, as he'd once cried in front of Marion--as he now commenced to cry in front of Mrs. Vaughn.
Without another word she took him by his wrist and led him through the museum of her house to the chandelier at the front door. The touch of her small, cold hand was like a bird's foot, as if a diminutive parrot or a parakeet had grabbed hold of him. When she opened the door and pushed him into the wind, a number of doors slammed in the interior of her house, and as he turned to say good-bye, he saw the sudden whirlwind of Ted's terrible drawings--the wind had blown them off the dining-room table.
Eddie couldn't speak, nor could Mrs. Vaughn. When she heard the drawings fluttering behind her, she wheeled around in her big white robe, as if preparing herself for an attack. Indeed, before the front door again slammed shut in the wind, like a second gunshot, Mrs. Vaughn was about to be attacked. Surely she would recognize in those drawings at least a measure of the degree to which she'd allowed herself to be assaulted.
"She threw rocks at you?" Marion asked Eddie.
"They were little stones--most of them hit the car," Eddie admitted.
"She made you carry her?" Marion asked.
"She was barefoot," Eddie explained again. "There was all this broken glass!"
"And you left your shirt? Why? "
"It was ruined--it was just a T-
shirt."
As for Ted, his conversation with Eddie was a little different.
"What did she mean--she has 'the whole day' Friday?" Ted asked. "Does she expect me to spend the whole day with her?"
"I don't know," the sixteen-year-old said.
"Why did she think you'd looked at the drawings?" Ted asked. " Did you--did you look at them?"
"No," Eddie lied.
"Christ, of course you did," Ted said.
"She exposed herself to me," Eddie told him.
"Jesus! She did what ?"
"She didn't mean to," Eddie admitted, "but she exposed herself. It was the wind--it blew her robe open."
"Jesus Christ . . ." Ted said.
"She locked herself out of her house, because of you," Eddie told him. "She said you wanted all the doors locked, and that you didn't like the gardener to be around."
"She told you that?"
"I had to break into her house--I smashed in the French doors with a part of the birdbath. I had to carry her through the broken glass," Eddie complained. "I lost my shirt."
"Who cares about your shirt ?" Ted shouted. "I can't spend the whole day with her Friday! I'll have you drop me off there the first thing Friday morning, but you must come back to get me in forty-five minutes. Forget that--in half an hour! I couldn't possibly spend forty-five minutes with that crazy woman."
"You just have to trust me, Eddie," Marion told him. "I'm going to tell you what we're going to do."
"Okay," Eddie said. He couldn't stop thinking about the worst of the drawings. He wanted to tell Marion about Mrs. Vaughn's smell, but he couldn't describe it.
"On Friday morning you're going to leave him at Mrs. Vaughn's," Marion began.
"I know!" the boy said. "For half an hour."
"No, not for half an hour," Marion informed the sixteen-year-old. "You're going to leave him with her and not come back to pick him up. It will take him most of the day to get home by himself without a car. I'll bet you anything that Mrs. Vaughn won't offer to drive him."
"But what will he do ?" Eddie asked.
"You mustn't be afraid of Ted," Marion reminded him. "What will he do ? It will probably occur to him that the only person he knows in Southampton is Dr. Leonardis." (Dave Leonardis was one of Ted's regular squash opponents.) "It will take Ted half an hour or forty-five minutes just to walk to Dr. Leonardis's office," Marion continued. "And then what will he do? He'll have to wait all day, until all of Leonardis's patients have gone home, before he can get a ride home with the doctor--unless one of Leonardis's patients is someone Ted knows, or someone who happens to be driving in the direction of Sagaponack."
"Ted's going to be furious," Eddie warned her.
"You just have to trust me, Eddie."
"Okay."
"After you drive Ted to Mrs. Vaughn's, you're going to come back here and get Ruth," Marion went on. "Then you're going to take Ruth to her doctor to get her stitches out. Then I want you to take Ruth to the beach. Let her get wet--let her celebrate having her stitches out."
"Excuse me," Eddie interrupted. "Why doesn't one of the nannies take Ruth to the beach?"
"There will be no nannies on Friday," Marion informed him. "I need the day, or as much of the day as you can give me, to be alone here."
"But what are you going to do?" Eddie asked.
"I'm going to tell you," she told him again. "You just have to trust me, completely."
"Okay," he said, but for the first time Eddie knew that he didn't trust Marion--not completely. After all, he was her pawn; he'd already had the sort of day that a pawn might have.
"I looked at the drawings of Mrs. Vaughn," he confessed to Marion.
"Merciful heavens," she said to him. He didn't want to cry again, but he allowed her to pull his face into her breasts; he let her hold him there while he struggled to say what he felt.
"In the drawings, she was somehow more than naked," he began.
"I know," Marion whispered to him. She kissed the top of his head.
"It was not just that she was naked," Eddie insisted. "It was as if you could see everything that she must have submitted to. She looked like she'd been tortured or something."
"I know," Marion said again. "I'm so sorry. . . ."
"Also, the wind blew her robe open and I saw her," Eddie blurted out. "She was exposed only for a second, but it was as if I already knew everything about her." Then he realized what it was about Mrs. Vaughn's smell. "And when I had to pick her up and carry her," Eddie said, "I noticed her smell--like on the pillows, only stronger. It made me gag."
"What did she smell like?" Marion asked him.
"Like something dead," Eddie told her.
"Poor Mrs. Vaughn," Marion said.
Why Panic at Ten O'Clock in the Morning?
It was shortly before eight on Friday morning when Eddie picked Ted up at the carriage house for the drive to Southampton and what Ted thought would be a half-hour meeting with Mrs. Vaughn. Eddie's nervousness was extreme, and not only because he feared that Ted would have Mrs. Vaughn on his hands a lot longer than he assumed. Marion had more or less scripted Eddie's day. Eddie had a lot to remember.
When he and Ted stopped for coffee at the Sagaponack General Store, Eddie knew all about the moving truck that was parked there. The two sturdy movers were drinking coffee and reading their morning newspapers in the cab. When Eddie had returned from Mrs. Vaughn's--to take Ruth to have her stitches removed--Marion would know where she could find the movers. The movers, like Eddie, had been given their instructions: to wait at the store until Marion came to get them. Ted and Ruth--and the nannies, who'd been dismissed for the day--would never see the movers.
By the time Ted found his way home from Southampton, the movers (and everything Marion wanted to take with her) would be gone. Marion herself would be gone. She had forewarned Eddie of this. That would leave Eddie to explain it all to Ted; that was the script Eddie kept rehearsing on the way to Southampton.
"But who's going to explain it all to Ruth ?" Eddie had asked. There then crept into Marion's expression that same aura of distance that Eddie had witnessed when he'd asked her about the accident. Clearly Marion had not scripted the part of the story where someone explains it all to Ruth.
"When Ted asks you where I've gone, just say you don't know," Marion told Eddie.
"But where are you going?" Eddie asked.
"You don't know," Marion repeated. "If Ted insists on a better answer, to anything, just say that he'll be hearing from my lawyer. My lawyer will tell him everything."
"Oh, great," Eddie said.
"And if he hits you, just hit him back. By the way, he won't make a fist--at worst he'll slap you. But you should use your fist," Marion advised Eddie. "Just punch him in the nose. If you punch him in the nose, he'll stop."
But what about Ruth? The plans for Ruth were vague. If Ted began to shout, how much should Ruth hear? If there was a fight, how much should the child see? If the nannies had been dismissed, Ruth would have to be either with Ted or with Eddie, or with them both. Why wouldn't she be upset?
"You can call Alice, if you need help with Ruth," Marion had suggested to Eddie. "I told Alice that you or Ted might call her. In fact, I told her to call the house about midafternoon--to see if you needed her after all." Alice was the afternoon nanny, the pretty college girl with her own car. She was the nanny Eddie liked the least, Eddie had reminded Marion.
"You better get to like her a little," Marion replied. "If Ted kicks you out--and I can't imagine that he'll want you to stay --you're going to need a ride to the ferry at Orient Point. Ted's not permitted to drive, you know--not that he would want to drive you, anyway."
"Ted's going to kick me out and I'm going to have to ask Alice for a ride," Eddie echoed.
Marion merely kissed him.
And then the moment was at hand. When Eddie stopped at Mrs. Vaughn's concealed driveway on Gin Lane, Ted said, "You better wait here for me. I'm not going to last a half hour with that woman. Maybe
twenty minutes, tops. Maybe ten. . . ."
"I'll go and come back," Eddie lied.
"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."