New Year's Eve

New Year's Eve is the imagined date of Eileen Dunlop's disappearance: a night whose revelry and promise of leaving the old behind seem to offer a fitting passage into a new life. She ultimately leaves X-ville on Christmas morning instead, making the contrast between the planned date and the actual departure central to the time's significance.

The Imagined Date

Eileen Dunlop thinks it would be nice to disappear on New Year's Eve, lost amid the bustle and revelry of the turn from the old year to the new. The date gives her escape a public cover and a calendar-shaped sense of renewal. It is a preferred occasion, however, not a necessary condition for leaving: she recognizes that Christmas is just as easy a day to disappear into.

Christmas Instead

Eileen Dunlop drives out of X-ville before sunrise on Christmas with a gun, the money in her purse, and a map in her pocket. She has plotted the route to Rutland repeatedly, but never reaches it. Looking back, she allows that the trains may not have been running that day, while acknowledging that she will never know. Her departure therefore falls not on the conspicuous threshold she first imagined, but on Christmas, a date that proves sufficient for her to vanish.

Retrospective Significance

The difference between the intended date and the actual one makes New Year's Eve a measure of Eileen Dunlop's changing relation to escape: she first imagines disappearance as an event that should coincide with a symbolic turning point, then acts without waiting for that occasion. The calendar's promise of renewal remains present, but the decisive change begins on Christmas morning. Later, she tells people to call her Lena and changes her last name after marrying that spring; the new identity follows the departure rather than the New Year's Eve she had once pictured.