The pictures were the stories, and vice versa. To alter the photographs, as Eddie had, was as unthinkable as changing the past. The past, which was where Ruth's dead brothers lived, was not open to revision. Eddie vowed that he would try to make it up to the child, to reassure her that everything she'd ever been told about her dead brothers was immutable. In an unsure world, with an uncertain future, at least the child could rely on that. Or could she?
More than an hour later, Marion ended the tour in Eddie's bedroom --and, finally, in the guest bathroom that Eddie used. There was an appropriate fatalism to the fact that the last photograph to inspire Marion's background narration was the picture of Marion herself, in bed with the two bare feet.
"I love that picture of you, " Eddie managed to say, not daring to add that he had masturbated to the image of Marion's bare shoulders-- and to her smile. As if for the first time, Marion slowly considered herself in the twelve-year-old photograph.
"I was twenty-seven," she said, the passage of time, the melancholy of it, filling her eyes.
It was her fifth glass of wine, which she finished now in a perfunctory fashion. Then she handed her empty glass to Eddie. He remained standing where he was, in the guest bathroom, for a full fifteen minutes after Marion had left him.
The next morning, in the carriage-house apartment, Eddie had only begun his arrangement of the pink cashmere cardigan on the bed-- together with a lilac-colored silk camisole and matching panties--when he heard Marion's exaggerated clomping on the stairs leading up from the garage. She didn't knock on the door--she beat on the door. She wasn't going to catch Eddie in the act this time. He had not yet undressed to lie down beside her clothes. Nevertheless, a moment of indecision overcame him, and then there wasn't time to put Marion's clothes away. He'd been thinking about what an unwise color choice it had been for him to put pink and lilac together; yet the colors of her clothes were never what motivated him. He had been drawn to the lace on the waist of the panties, and to the lace in the fabulous decolletage of the camisole. Eddie was still fretting over his decision when Marion beat on the door a second time; he left her clothes on the bed and hurried to answer the door.
"I hope I'm not disturbing you," she said with a smile. She was wearing sunglasses, which she removed when she came into the apartment. For the first time, Eddie noticed her age in the crow's-feet at the outer corners of her eyes. The night before maybe Marion had had too much wine--five glasses of anything alcoholic was a lot for her.
To Eddie's surprise, she moved directly to the first of the few photographs of Thomas and Timothy she'd brought to the rental house, proceeding to explain her choices to Eddie. The pictures were of Thomas and Timothy when they were more or less Eddie's age, which meant the photos had been taken shortly before the boys died. Marion explained that she'd thought Eddie might find photographs of his contemporaries familiar, even welcoming, in what might be un familiar and un welcome circumstances. She'd worried about Eddie, long before he arrived, because she knew how little there would be for him to do . And she had doubted that he would have an easy time of it; she'd anticipated the nonexistence of any social life for the sixteen-year-old.
"Excepting the younger of Ruth's nannies, who were you ever going to meet?" Marion asked. "Unless you were especially outgoing. Thomas was outgoing, Timothy was not--he was more introspective, like you. Although you look more like Thomas," Marion told Eddie, "I think you are more like Timothy."
"Oh," Eddie said. He was stunned that she'd been thinking about him before he arrived!
The photography tour continued. It was as if the rental house were a secret room off the guest-wing hall, and Eddie and Marion had not ended their evening together; they had merely moved on, to another room, with other pictures. They traipsed through the kitchen of the carriage-house apartment--Marion talking and talking all the while-- and back into the bedroom, where she continued talking, pointing to the one photograph of Thomas and Timothy that hung over the headboard of the bed.
Eddie had little difficulty recognizing a most familiar landmark of the Exeter campus. The dead boys were posed in the doorway of the Main Academy Building, where, under the pointed pediment above the door was a Latin inscription. Chiseled into the white marble, which was offset by the great brick building and the forest-green double door itself, were these humbling words:
HVC VENITE PVERI
VT VIRI SITIS
(The U's in HUC and PUERI and UT had all been carved like V's, of course.) There were Thomas and Timothy in their jackets and ties, the year of their deaths. At seventeen, Thomas seemed almost a man--at fifteen, Timothy seemed very much a boy. And the doorway where they stood was the photo background most commonly chosen by the proud parents of countless Exonians. Eddie wondered how many unformed bodies and minds had passed through that door, under that stern and forbidding invitation.
COME HITHER BOYS
AND BECOME MEN
But it hadn't happened for Thomas and Timothy. Eddie was aware that Marion had paused in her narration of the photograph; her eyes had fallen upon her own pink cashmere cardigan, which (together with her lilac-colored camisole and matching panties) was displayed on the bed.
"Goodness--not pink with lilac!" Marion said.
"I wasn't thinking of the colors," Eddie admitted. "I liked the . . . lace." But his eyes betrayed him; he was looking at the decolletage of the camisole, and he couldn't remember the word for it. Cleavage came to his mind, although he knew that wasn't the right word.
"The decolletage?" Marion prompted.
"Yes," Eddie whispered.
Marion raised her eyes above the bed to the image of her happy sons: Huc venite pueri (come hither boys) ut viri sitis (and become men). Eddie had suffered through his second year of Latin; a third year of the dead language loomed ahead of him. He thought of the long-standing joke at Exeter about a more fitting translation of that inscription. ("Come hither boys and become weary .") But he could sense that Marion was in no mood for a joke.
Looking at the photograph of her boys on the threshold of manhood, Marion said to Eddie: "I don't even know if they had sex before they died." Eddie, remembering that picture of Thomas kissing a girl in the '53 yearbook, would have guessed that Thomas had. "Maybe Thomas had," Marion added. "He was so . . . popular. But surely not Timothy--he was so shy. And he was only fifteen. . . ." Her voice trailed away and her glance fell back to the bed, where the pink and lilac combination of her sweater with her lingerie had earlier caught her eye. "Have you had sex, Eddie?" Marion asked abruptly.
"No, of course not," Eddie told her. She smiled at him--pityingly. He tried not to look as wretched and unlovable as he was convinced he was.
"If a girl died before she had sex, I might say she was lucky," Marion continued. "But for a boy . . . my goodness, it's all boys want, isn't it? Boys and men," she added. "Isn't it true? Isn't it all you want?"
"Yes," said the sixteen-year-old despairingly.
Marion stood by the bed and picked up the lilac-colored camisole with the incredible decolletage; she picked up the matching panties, too, but she pushed the pink cashmere cardigan to the far side of the bed. "It's too hot," she said to Eddie. "I hope you'll forgive me if I don't wear the sweater."
He stood there frozen, his heart pounding, while she began to unbutton her blouse. "Close your eyes, Eddie," she had to tell him. With his eyes closed, he was afraid he might faint. He felt himself weaving from side to side; it was all he could do not to move his feet. "Okay," he heard her say. She was lying on the bed in the camisole and the panties. "My turn to close my eyes," Marion said.
Eddie undressed clumsily--he had to keep looking at her. When she felt his weight on the bed beside her, she turned on her side to face him. When they looked into each other's eyes, it gave Eddie a pang. In Marion's smile, there was more that was motherly than what he had dared to hope he might see there.
He didn't touch her, but when he began to touch himself, she gripped the back of his neck and pulled his fa
ce against her breasts, where he hadn't even dared to look. With her other hand, she took his right hand and firmly placed it where she had seen him put his hand the first time--against the crotch of her panties. He felt himself explode into the palm of his left hand, so quickly and with such force that he flinched against her. Marion was so surprised that she flinched in response. "Goodness-- that was fast!" she said. Holding his cupped palm in front of him, Eddie ran into the bathroom before he made a mess.
When he'd washed himself, he came back to the bedroom, where he found Marion still lying on her side, almost exactly as he had left her. He hesitated before lying down beside her. But without moving on the bed or looking at him, she said, "Come back here."
They lay looking into each other's eyes for what seemed to Eddie to be a never-ending time--at least he never wanted the moment to end. All his life, he would hold this moment as exemplary of what love was. It was not wanting anything more, nor was it expecting people to exceed what they had just accomplished; it was simply feeling so complete . No one could possibly deserve to feel any better.
"Do you know Latin?" Marion whispered to him.
"Yes," he whispered back.
She rolled her eyes upward, above the bed, to indicate the photograph of that important passage, which her sons had not navigated. "Say it in Latin for me," Marion whispered.
"Huc venite pueri . . ." Eddie began, still whispering.
"Come hither boys . . ." Marion translated in a whisper.
" . . . ut viri sitis," Eddie concluded; he'd noticed that Marion had taken his hand and again placed it against the crotch of her panties.
". . . and become men," Marion whispered. Again she gripped the back of his neck and pulled his face against her breasts. "But you still haven't had sex, have you?" she asked. "I mean not really ."
Eddie closed his eyes against her fragrant bosom. "No, not really," he admitted. He was worried, because he didn't want to sound as if he were complaining. "But I'm very, very happy," he added. "I feel complete ."
"I'll show you complete, " Marion told him.
The Pawn
Regarding sexual capacity, a sixteen-year-old boy is capable of an astonishing number of repeat performances in what Marion, at thirty-nine, would attest was a remarkably short period of time. "My goodness !" Marion would exclaim, to the perpetual and nearly constant evidence of Eddie's erections. "Don't you need time to . . . recover ?" But Eddie required no recovery; paradoxically, he was both easily satisfied and insatiable.
Marion was happier than she'd been at any time she could remember since her sons had died. For one thing, she was exhausted; she was sleeping more soundly than she had in years. And for another thing, Marion took no pains to conceal her new life from Ted. "He wouldn't dare complain to me, " she told Eddie, who was nonetheless anxious that Ted might dare complain to him.
Poor Eddie was understandably nervous about the obviousness of their thrilling affair. For example, whenever their lovemaking had marked the sheets in the carriage-house apartment, it was Eddie who was in favor of doing the laundry--lest Ted should see the telltale stains. But Marion always said, "Let him wonder if it's me or Mrs. Vaughn." (When there were stains on the bedsheets in the master bedroom of the Coles' house, where Mrs. Vaughn could not have been the cause, Marion said, more to the point, "Let him wonder.")
As for Mrs. Vaughn, whether or not she knew of the strenuousness of Marion's exertions with Eddie, her more subdued relationship with Ted had changed. While Mrs. Vaughn had once epitomized furtiveness by her hesitant and darting movements in the driveway--both on her way to model and on her way back to her car--she now approached every new opportunity to pose with the resignation of a dog submitting to a beating. And when Mrs. Vaughn left Ted's workroom, she staggered to her car with a carelessness that implied her pride was irretrievable; it was as if the particular pose of the day had defeated her. Mrs. Vaughn had clearly passed from the degraded phase, as Marion had called it, into the final phase of shame.
Ted had never been in the habit of visiting Mrs. Vaughn at her summer estate in Southampton more than three times a week. But the visits were less frequent now, and of notably shorter duration. Eddie knew this because he was always Ted's driver. Mr . Vaughn spent the workweek in New York. Ted was happiest in the Hamptons during the summer months, when so many young mothers were there without their commuting husbands. Ted preferred the young mothers from Manhattan to the year-round residents; the summer people were on Long Island just long enough--"the perfect length of time for one of Ted's affairs," Marion had informed Eddie.
It made Eddie anxious. He had to wonder what Marion thought was "the perfect length of time" for her affair with him . He didn't dare ask.
In Ted's case, the young mothers who were available in the off-season were more troublesome to break up with; not all of them were as ongoingly friendly ( after the affair) as the Montauk fishmonger's wife, whom Eddie had heretofore known only as the ever-faithful provider of Ted's squid ink. At the end of the summer, Mrs. Vaughn would be back in Manhattan--where she could fall apart about a hundred miles from Ted. That the Vaughn residence was on Gin Lane in Southampton was ironic, considering Ted's fondness for gin and posh neighborhoods.
"I never have to wait," Eddie observed. "He's usually walking along the side of the road when it's time for me to pick him up. But I wonder what she does with her kid."
"Probably tennis lessons," Marion had remarked.
But lately Ted's trysts with Mrs. Vaughn were lasting no more than an hour. "And last week I left him there only once," Eddie reported to Marion.
"He's almost finished with her," Marion said. "I can always tell."
Eddie assumed that Mrs. Vaughn lived in a mansion, although the Vaughn property, which was on the ocean side of Gin Lane, was walled off from his view by towering hedges. The perfect pea-size stones in the hidden, disappearing driveway were freshly raked. Ted always told Eddie to let him out of the car at the entrance to the driveway. Maybe Ted liked the feel of walking to his assignations on those expensive stones.
Compared to Ted, Eddie O'Hare was a mere fledgling at love affairs--a rank beginner--yet Eddie had quickly learned that the excitement of anticipation was almost equal to the thrill of lovemaking; in Ted's case, Marion suspected that Ted enjoyed the anticipation more . When Eddie was in Marion's arms, the sixteen-year-old found this possibility unimaginable.
They made love in the carriage-house apartment every morning; when it was Marion's turn to spend the night there, Eddie would stay with her until dawn. They didn't care that the Chevy and the Mercedes would be parked in the driveway for anyone to see. They didn't care that they were seen having dinner together in the same East Hampton restaurant every night. It was an unconcealed pleasure for Marion to watch Eddie eat. It also pleased her to touch his face or his hands or his hair, no matter who was looking. She even went with him to the barbershop to tell the barber how much to cut or when to stop cutting. She did his laundry. In August, she began to buy him clothes.
And there were times when Eddie's expression as he slept would so keenly resemble an expression of Thomas's or Timothy's that Marion would wake him up and bring him (still half asleep) to the specific photograph--just to show him how he had suddenly appeared to her. Because who can describe the look that triggers the memory of loved ones? Who can anticipate the frown, the smile, or the misplaced lock of hair that sends a swift, undeniable signal from the past? Who can ever estimate the power of association, which is always strongest in moments of love and in memories of death?
Marion couldn't help herself. With every act she performed for Eddie, she thought of everything she'd ever done for Thomas and Timothy; she also attended to those pleasures that she imagined her lost sons had never enjoyed. However briefly, Eddie O'Hare had brought her dead boys back to life.
Although Marion didn't care whether Ted knew of her relationship with Eddie, she was puzzled that Ted hadn't said something, for surely he must have known. He was as amiable to
Eddie as ever; lately Ted was spending more time with Eddie, too.
With a large portfolio of loosely held-together drawings, Ted had asked Eddie to drive him into New York. They took Marion's Mercedes for the hundred-mile trip. Ted directed Eddie to his art gallery, which was either on Thompson near the corner of Broome, or on Broome near the corner of Thompson--Eddie couldn't recall. After delivering the drawings, Ted had taken Eddie to lunch at a place he'd once taken Thomas and Timothy. The boys had liked it, Ted had said. Eddie liked it, too, although it made him uncomfortable when Ted told him--on the drive back to Sagaponack--that he was grateful to him for being such a good friend to Marion. She'd been so unhappy; it was wonderful to see her smiling again.
"He said that?" Marion asked Eddie.
"Exactly," Eddie reported.
"How odd," Marion remarked. "I would have expected him to say something snide."
But Eddie detected next to nothing in Ted that was "snide." There was one reference that Ted had made to Eddie's physical condition, but Eddie couldn't tell if Ted's remark had or had not insinuated his knowledge of Eddie's daily and nightly athletics with Marion.
In his workroom, by the telephone, Ted had posted a list of a half-dozen names and numbers; these were his regular squash opponents, who (Marion told Eddie) were Ted's only male friends. One afternoon, when one of Ted's regular opponents had canceled a match, Ted asked Eddie to play. Eddie had earlier expressed his newfound interest in squash, but he'd also confessed to Ted that he was a player of less-than-beginner status.
The barn adjacent to the Coles' house had been restored; in the loft, above what served as a two-car garage, an almost regulation-size squash court had been built to Ted's specifications. Ted claimed that a town ordinance had restricted him from raising the roof of the barn--hence the ceiling of the squash court was lower than regulation size--and dormer windows on the ocean side of the barn had caused one side wall of the court to be irregular in shape and offer notably less playing surface than did the opposing wall. The resulting peculiar shape and dimensions gave Ted a distinct home-court advantage.