O’Hara’s

O’Hara’s is a dark local bar that becomes the setting for a decisive night in Eileen Dunlop’s relationship with Rebecca: the place where Eileen accepts an invitation, dances with her, and briefly feels important and beloved. Its significance is sharpened by Eileen’s prior familiarity with the bar, gained through years of being sent there to retrieve her father, and by her return the next morning, when the possibility of escape is present but she cannot yet leave Rebecca.

Setting and Earlier Visits

O’Hara’s is described as a dim, working-class establishment with hard wooden booths. Its regulars include local police officers, firefighters, and shipyard workers, men whose work leaves them smelling of sweat and salt. Eileen knows that two women arriving alone may attract looks or worse, but accepts the risk when Rebecca proposes meeting there. She presents herself as willing to go despite being inexperienced in nightlife and conscious of her own social awkwardness.

The invitation changes how Eileen prepares for the evening. She leaves work early, goes home to change, and dresses up, applies makeup, and looks for her mother’s perfume. She recognizes that this effort may make her look like an outsider, yet the prospect of going out with Rebecca outweighs her embarrassment. Before the meeting, she drinks vermouth and buys gin and beer for her father as well as another bottle of vermouth for herself. The bar is therefore entered not as an unknown world, but as a familiar place newly charged by Rebecca’s presence.

Eileen’s earlier visits were bound up with her father’s drinking. As a girl, she was sent into O’Hara’s to fetch him after an extended beer with fellow officers; later, she went as a sober escort when he became drunk and refused a ride home. One autumn evening, returning from college, she drove him home from the bar. He rested his head on her shoulder, told her he loved her and was sorry he could not be a better father, then touched her breast. Eileen pushed him away, and he dismissed her protest by calling her Joanie. She never told anyone. This memory makes the bar part of a private history of care, humiliation, and silence, even as the evening with Rebecca gives it a different emotional charge.

Eileen and Rebecca’s Night

When Eileen arrives, Rebecca is at work, and Leonard “Lee” Polk is sitting in a chair before her desk, looking through a large picture book. He raises the book to hide his face when he sees Eileen. The invitation to O’Hara’s has already seemed to Eileen like admission to an elite world of beautiful people. Though she senses that Rebecca’s manner can be scripted and pretentious, she feels flattered and thrilled, and quickly agrees to meet her there.

At the bar, Eileen drinks as the two women spend the evening together. When the jukebox starts again, Rebecca asks her to dance and pulls her from her stool. Eileen has never danced before. She takes Rebecca’s hands and lets Rebecca lead, giggling, stopping to cover her face in embarrassment and delight. They dance first to lively songs and then to slow love songs, circling together as the mood shifts. Eileen holds Rebecca around the waist with only her wrists touching her, keeping her hands stiff and angled away from Rebecca’s body. The men watching from a booth are initially entertained, then lose interest; none joins them.

After the music stops, they return to their drinks. Eileen finishes her whiskey and beer, then drinks the martini Rebecca pushes away. Outside, Rebecca thanks her and praises her unusual face, telling her she has a fascinating quality and brilliant dreams. Eileen watches Rebecca leave in a dark two-door car. Her description of the night preserves both its intimacy and its imbalance: Rebecca can offer praise and depart, while Eileen is left exhilarated by the feeling that she has finally become someone important.

After Rebecca Leaves

Rather than go home, Eileen re-enters O’Hara’s. The men from the booth are still drunk, laughing, slapping the table, and spilling beer. She sits in Rebecca’s seat and takes comfort in the slight warmth left behind. Sandy, the bartender, slides her an ashtray and a cocktail napkin; Eileen orders whiskey and puts out her cigarette. The small gesture of occupying Rebecca’s place extends the evening after Rebecca herself has gone, as Eileen tries to remain inside the feeling of being beloved.

Her next memory is waking in the morning slumped over the steering wheel of her car, parked partly in a snowbank outside her house. A frozen pool of vomit lies beside her; her pantyhose are laddered, her lipstick is smeared, and her hair sticks out in every direction. The keys are missing from the ignition, her cape is gone, the trunk is open, and her purse is missing. This disordered return contrasts sharply with the effort she had made to look right for Rebecca. Her father’s robe is found in the empty fireplace, and she retrieves her purse from junk by the front door before going out to free the car. The smell from the vomit lingers on her coat even after she later abandons the Dodge and disappears.

The Morning Return

Once she has pulled the car out of the snowbank, Eileen drives back to O’Hara’s. In retrospect, she recognizes that she could have driven away then and become free, but she cannot leave Rebecca. The bar is dark, with narrow shafts of light coming through the peeling black paint on the window over the door; the smell of stale beer turns her stomach. Sandy is behind the bar drinking water. Eileen asks to borrow a bottle of gin, returning to the same place at the threshold between a night she cannot fully remember and the departure she has not yet managed to make.

O’Hara’s thus holds two versions of Eileen’s attachment to other people. Her earlier visits expose how her father’s drinking made her responsible for getting him home, while her night with Rebecca offers a brief experience of attention, desire, and shared movement. By morning, that exhilaration has given way to physical disarray, but not to emotional independence: even with the car free of the snowbank and the road open, Eileen turns back to the bar because she is not ready to leave Rebecca.