The one who got away
Eileen“The one who got away” is the narrator’s name for her former self, Eileen, and for the scar that remains as a mark of that earlier identity. The phrase turns the scar from something other people interpret into a private sign of having survived a past self: the narrator understands it as proof that she was once someone else, the girl called Eileen.
Origin and Interpretations
After shutting the front door for the last time, the narrator turns toward the yard and is struck on the cheek by a falling icicle. The incident leaves a scar. She recalls that men later treated it as a source of character, with one likening its line to an empty grave and another to a trail of tears. Their readings make the mark a public surface onto which others project meaning; the narrator does not adopt either interpretation as her own.
Meaning of the Expression
The narrator instead calls the scar a mark of having been someone else once, and identifies that earlier person as Eileen—the one who got away. The expression therefore links bodily evidence of the past to a change in self-understanding: Eileen is not simply another name for the present narrator, but the person she remembers having been. The passage leaves the scar’s meaning personal rather than definitive, ending on the narrator’s distinction between her former self and who she is now.
