When Fiction Becomes Reality
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calm down and write out his complaint, O'Hare writes: “I have been sleeping
with Mrs. Cole this summer. I estimate we have made love 60 times. Ted Cole
has been (sleeping with Mrs. Vaughn)/’ Amazed, the shop owner says, "The
Vaughns of Gin Lane? . . . Please go on.” O’Hare obliges her and writes:
“Marion is taking the pictures with her, every one of them, except the one you
have here in the shop. When Ruth goes home, both her mother and all the
pictures will be gone. Her dead brothers and her mother will be gone.” After
delivering the photograph to O’Hare, the woman asks him, "Is Marion leaving
you, too?” (Earlier in the day, O’Hare told Marion Cole that he loved her. She
replied, “So long, Eddie.” Her response is without malice, but also without
empathy.) 0 ‘Hare must confront his own irretrievable loss and acknowledge his
own broken heart. He is not a character in the Coles’ story: He is deeply
wounded and will never again be the boy he was when he stepped off the ferry.
Ruth has an even more unsettling discovery to make as she gazes at the
picture hooks that pepper her house: “Where are all the other pictures?” Ruth
asks O’Hare. “Why would Mommy do that?” Ted Cole’s questions mirror his
daughter’s: “What kind of mother doesn’t even try to get custody of her
daughter?” and later, "What kind of mother leaves her daughter?” he asks.
The climax of F