“Your father is getting closer to the truth, Amy.”
“I guess he is.”
“I had a very difficult time persuading him to go to the funeral
tomorrow.”
“Why did you bother?”
“Appearances. ‘Why didn’t Howard Ambrie go to Jack Hill’s funeral?’
They’d be talking about that for a month, and somebody’d be sure to say
something to Celia. And then Celia’d start asking herself questions.”
“I wonder. I think Mrs. Hill stopped asking questions a long time ago.
She should have. I wasn’t the only one he played around with.” (11)Here O’Hara uses this conversational disclosure to resolve tensions from
the first two conversations—about Lois’s motivation in persuading How-
ard and about the identity of Amy’s lover. As noted above, O’Hara uses this
exchange to firmly establish that he, his audience, Lois, and Amy now all share
information that Howard (apparently) does not. In addition, the revelation
begins the process of reconfiguration because it not only confirms the hypoth-
esis that “Appearances” would follow the mystery-solution pattern of a detec-
tive story but does so in a way that ties the first two conversations together.
Furthermore, the authorial disclosure across conversations reveals that both
previous scenes involving Howard were significantly less candid than they
appeared and significantly less candid than this one: Lois and Amy share sig-
nificant confidences with each other that neither shares with him.
In addition, certain moments in both of the previous conversations take
on greater significance. In the first, Howard couples his consent to attend the
funeral with the question of why Lois cares so much about whether Celia
would know about his presence, but Lois responds only to his agreement: “But
you will go?” (6). O’Hara uses this conversational disclosure to reveal why she
was so selective. In the second conversation, when Howard asks whether the
man with whom Amy had her affair has “gone out of [her] life,” “she looked
at him sharply” before answering yes. And it is when he follows up by ask-
ing whether she met him at Cornell that she tells him to stop asking more
questions. O’Hara now allows his rhetorical readers to recognize that Howard
apparently does not suspect that Amy suspects that he knows about her affair
with Hill.
These reconfigurations rooted in the authorial disclosure across conversa-
tions also have consequences for rhetorical readers’ larger construction of the
family portrait and their affective and ethical responses to each member. Amy
is not just a careless woman who will neglect to close the door of her expen-
sive sports car and turn out the light in her garage but also someone who takes
CONVERSATIONAL AND AUTHORIAL DISCLOSURE IN DIALOgUE • 189