her marriage vows lightly. Lois is more concerned about keeping up appear-
ances than about Amy’s actual behavior. And both women conspire to keep
Howard in the dark. Consequently, Howard emerges as the most sympathetic
character, especially since he also has consented to Lois’s request to attend the
funeral. But the readerly dynamics continue to evolve as this conversation
does—and they evolve to a point at which it will be necessary to return to this
first exchange.
The second especially salient exchange occurs right after Amy tells Lois
that now that Jack is dead, she feels that she can go ahead and marry Joe and
settle down.
“He [Jack Hill] was no good,” said Lois Ambrie. “Strange how your father
knew that without knowing why.”
“I know why,” said Amy. “Jack was the kind of man that husbands are
naturally suspicious of. Father was afraid that Jack would make a play for
you. Instead he made a play for me, but Father never gave that a thought.”
“I suppose so. And in your father’s eyes it would have been just as bad
for me to cover up for you as it would have been for me to have had an affair
with Jack. I’ll be glad when he’s out of the way. Really glad when you can
marry Joe.” (12)The conversational disclosures in this collaborative exchange not only add
to the gap between Howard’s knowledge and the audience’s knowledge but
also further reveal the two women’s intimacy as they build on each other’s
thoughts and conclusions about the two men. It is especially striking that Lois
is talking about her husband this way with her daughter, since O’Hara gives
us no similar conversation between Lois and Howard about Amy’s judgments.
In addition, O’Hara uses the conversational disclosure to add another layer to
Lois’s motives for keeping up appearances: she is as concerned about How-
ard’s judgment of her as about his judgment of Amy. I will comment below
on Lois’s curious equation of covering up Amy’s affair with having her own
affair with Jack Hill.
The third salient exchange switches from the focus on Jack, Howard, and
the past to one on Amy, Joe, and the future, as Lois asks Amy whether she will
have to convert to Catholicism to marry Joe. This shift has three main effects:
(a) it signals at least a temporary end to the configurations and reconfigura-
tions about the past, (b) it introduces some significant differences between the
previously intimate Lois and Amy, and (c) it influences our ethical judgments
of both Lois and Amy. Where Lois is fixated on what a “feather in their cap”
(13) it will be for Joe’s Catholic family to make an alliance with the Ambries,
190 • CHAPTER 9