“I’ll come back tomorrow,” Bob told Ethan.
“Bring Connie,” Ethan told Bob.
“Who’s Connie?” Roberta asked Ethan, but he didn’t answer and neither did Bob. He waved and was away down the corridor. The next day he returned with Connie. When they entered the room, Ethan was sitting up in bed and reading from a stack of papers. “Well,” he said. Connie had been alarmed by Bob’s explanation of what had landed Ethan in the hospital; and though she was soothed by Ethan’s healthful demeanor, when she saw his knife wound, then did her alarm return, alarm that soon gave way to upset, and finally anger directed at Ethan and Bob both for treating a potentially fatal event as though it were only a lark or trifle. She asked what in the world was the matter with them, and they said they didn’t know what. She wanted to have Eileen arrested and said that if Ethan wouldn’t call the police then she would. Here Ethan held up the papers and said, “Even if I wanted to press charges, and I don’t, I couldn’t.”
“Why not?” Connie demanded.
“I’ll explain,” Ethan said, “but only if you’ll stop yelling at Bob and me.”
She crossed her arms and was silent. Ethan said that just before Bob and Connie arrived, Eileen’s father had come to visit, along with an associate of his, a funereal little man holding a briefcase. Eileen’s father’s attitude toward Ethan was cool at first; he was behaving as if he had just happened to be passing by and had paused to offer an impartial salutation. But soon enough he named the purpose of the visit, which was that he wanted to know what to expect in terms of legal repercussions so far as his daughter was concerned. Why hadn’t Ethan contacted the police yet? Ethan explained, almost reluctantly, as he didn’t like the idea of giving Eileen’s father what he wanted, his disinclination to bring Eileen to justice.
“Would you sign an agreement to that effect?” Eileen’s father asked.
“I don’t see why I should,” Ethan told him.
Eileen’s father looked to his comrade, who took an envelope from his briefcase and passed this to Eileen’s father, who passed it to Ethan. It held a cashier’s check for ten thousand dollars, made out in Ethan’s name. Ethan stared at the numerals. Eileen’s father said that he understood his daughter had misbehaved. Ethan told him, “There’s misbehavior and there’s misbehavior.”
“You signed?” asked Connie.
“Yes.”
“So you’re rich,” said Bob.
“I’m a little bit rich.”
“And now what?”
“I don’t know. I mean, this happened fifteen minutes ago. I guess I’ll make plans? Heal? They’re discharging me tomorrow morning. Can you come get me and drop me at my apartment, Bob? You’ll get your weekly cardiovascular exercise helping me up the stairs.”
“Sure,” said Bob.
Connie was shaking her head, her face descriptive of both amusement and contempt. “I’m asking again: What, in the world, is the matter with you two?” Ethan and Bob looked on, not understanding. Connie explained, “You’re coming to stay with us until you’re well again, Ethan.”
THE HOUSE ACHIEVED A NEW ASPECT BY ETHAN’S PRESENCE, WHICH for Bob took some getting used to. Each weekday morning while Connie and Ethan slept, Bob rose and began his preparations for the workday; only now he no longer lit his fire, or fixed himself a full breakfast, actions that Connie said would cause a disturbance and work at cross-purposes with Ethan’s rehabilitation. One evening Bob reached for his alarm clock and discovered its bells had been wrapped in cotton batting.
“What did you do to my clock?” he asked Connie.
“It wakes up Ethan.”
“It wakes up me. That’s its job.”
“It’ll still wake you up, maniac.” And it did, but Bob missed the instant of piercing terror the naked bells drilled into him.
He found he disliked leaving the house for work, leaving Connie and Ethan alone for so many hours, and would shudder in crossing the threshold of the front door, as though revolted by a magnetic field. The days at the library were longer than usual, and when he came home Connie was distracted, either tending to Ethan or cooking for him or else tiptoeing around because he was having his nap. Bob recognized that Ethan had truly needed a place to recuperate and was glad to give shelter to his friend; but he also felt that his household had become infected by an imbalance that was, at the very least, an imposition. He was approaching the tipping point toward a true unhappiness when Ethan began his return to health, and Connie became less distracted by her caring for him, and so she came back to Bob. By the end of the first week of Ethan’s three-week stay, Bob was relieved of his petty fears and jealousies by simply witnessing the way Ethan and Connie behaved around each other. The truth was that they liked each other. The truth was also that they loved and adored Bob, always so enthusiastic at his return in the evening, wanting to know all the gossip of his workday. They laughed together at the dinner table — Ethan could only gently laugh — and Bob understood that nothing of his relationship with Connie had been compromised.
Ethan improved further, and with his awakening he was visited by a desire to spend some of the money his wound had yielded him. He began making purchases by telephone and mail so that each day when Bob came home there was something new to show off, a wristwatch, or robe, silk pajamas, a shaving kit, all the little male niceties he had until that time gone without. He gave Bob any number of gifts in this same line; Bob suggested Ethan might buy Connie something as well, and Ethan became shy and said that he knew he should but that when he’d brought it up to Connie she had refused him in a way that he took to be heartfelt.
By the end of the second week Ethan was ambulatory and spent the days climbing up and down the stairs, circulating through the bathroom and kitchen and living room, making small messes at each location he visited. Bob had seen Ethan’s apartment and knew he was a sloppy man, but to experience such disarray in his own orderly home was something else. Ethan was a great one for picking a book off the shelf and taking it to some far corner of the house, leaving it open-faced on the floor, where it would remain until Bob dusted it off and returned it to its home. When Bob found a book left out overnight on the grass in the backyard, he went to get Ethan from the kitchen and walked him, in his pajamas, to the back door. He pointed at the book. “No,” he said. “I’m sorry,” Ethan told him.
One evening Bob came home to find Ethan and Connie bickering in the living room. “Ethan is trying to give us money,” Connie said. Bob had had a bad day at work and was climbing up the stairs to seek out a bottle of aspirin in the bathroom. “So he wants to give us money,” Bob said. “Let him.” Connie and Ethan both raised their eyebrows at that. Ethan never did give them any money.
At the end of the third week, Bob and Connie were married, with Ethan standing as best man. The newlyweds didn’t ask Ethan to leave, but he was left to his own devices while they were hidden away in their room all through the weekend. On Monday Bob came home from work to find Connie sitting alone in the nook, reading a magazine, but angrily. “Good news, Bob. You can take the cotton off your alarm clock.”
“He’s gone home?” Bob asked.
“He has.”
He sat down opposite her. “That’s not so bad a thing, is it?”
She said, “Of course he’s well enough now, and if he wants to go, then go. But no, I don’t understand why he did it the way he did it.”
“How did he do it?”
“He came downstairs after you left for work and he was dressed and packed and said he was going home and thanks, a lot. Those were the words he used, comma after the thanks. Walked right out the door.”