“No, it was upstairs with us,” Ruth told him.
“I think it’s gone, then,” Ted said. “What did it sound like?”
“It was a sound like someone trying not to make a sound,” Ruth told him.
He put her down on one of the guest-room beds; then he took a pad of paper and a pen off the night table. He liked so much what she’d said that he had to write it down. But he had no pajamas on—hence no pockets for the piece of paper, which he held in his teeth when he picked Ruth up again. As usual, she took only a passing interest in his nakedness. “Your penis is funny,” she said.
“My penis is funny,” her father agreed. It was what he always said. This time, with a piece of paper between his teeth, the casualness of his remark seemed even more casual.
“Where did the sound go?” Ruth asked him. He was carrying her through the guest bedrooms and the guest bathrooms, turning off the lights, but he stopped so suddenly in one of the bathrooms that Ruth imagined that Thomas or Timothy, or both of them, had reached out from one of the photographs and grabbed him.
“I’ll tell you a story about a sound,” her father said, the piece of paper flapping in his teeth. He immediately sat down on the edge of the bathtub, still holding her in his arms.
The photograph that had caught his attention was one that included Thomas at the age of four—Ruth’s age exactly. The photo was awkwardly posed: Thomas was seated on a large couch upholstered in a confused floral pattern; the botanical excess appeared to completely overwhelm Timothy, who, at the age of two, was unwillingly being held in Thomas’s lap. It would have been 1940, two years before Eddie O’Hare was born.
“One night, Ruthie, when Thomas was your age—Timothy was still in diapers—Thomas heard a sound,” Ted began. Ruth would always remember her father in the act of taking the piece of paper from his mouth.
“Did they both wake up?” Ruth asked, staring at the photograph.
And that was what set the memorable old story in motion; from the very first line, Ted Cole knew this story by heart.
“Tom woke up, but Tim did not.”
Ruth shivered in her father’s arms. Even as a grown woman, and an acclaimed novelist, Ruth Cole could never hear or say that line without shivering.
“Tom woke up, but Tim did not. It was the middle of the night. ‘Did you hear that?’ Tom asked his brother. But Tim was only two. Even when he was awake, he didn’t talk much.
“Tom woke u
p his father and asked him, ‘Did you hear that sound?’
“ ‘What did it sound like?’ his father asked.
“ ‘It sounded like a monster with no arms and no legs, but it was trying to move,’ Tom said.
“ ‘How could it move with no arms and no legs?’ his father asked.
“ ‘It wriggles,’ Tom said. ‘It slides on its fur.’
“ ‘Oh, it has fur?’ his father asked.
“ ‘It pulls itself along with its teeth,’ Tom said.
“ ‘It has teeth, too!’ his father exclaimed.
“ ‘I told you—it’s a monster!’ Tom said.
“ ‘But what exactly was the sound that woke you up?’ his father asked.
“ ‘It was a sound like, in the closet, if one of Mommy’s dresses came alive and it tried to climb down off the hanger,’ Tom said.”
For the rest of her life, Ruth Cole would be afraid of closets. She could not fall asleep in a room when the closet door was open; she did not like to see the dresses hanging there. She didn’t like dresses—period. As a child, she would never open a closet door if the room was dark— out of fear that a dress would pull her inside.
“ ‘Let’s go back to your room and listen for the sound,’ Tom’s father said. And there was Tim, still asleep—he still hadn’t heard the sound. It was a sound like someone pulling the nails out of the floorboards under the bed. It was a sound like a dog trying to open a door. Its mouth was wet, so it couldn’t get a good grip on the doorknob, but it wouldn’t stop trying—eventually the dog would get in, Tom thought. It was a sound like a ghost in the attic, dropping the peanuts it had stolen from the kitchen.”
And here, the first time she heard the story, Ruth interrupted her father to ask him what an attic was. “It’s a big room above all the bedrooms,” he told her. The incomprehensible existence of such a room terrified her; there was no attic in the house where Ruth grew up.
“ ‘There’s the sound again!’ Tom whispered to his father. ‘Did you hear that?’ This time, Tim woke up, too. It was a sound like something caught inside the headboard of the bed. It was eating its way out—it was gnawing through the wood.”