Marriage of Ed Deepneau and Helen Deepneau

The marriage of Ed Deepneau and Helen Deepneau, formalized on August 5, 1987, is a central relationship in the novel that undergoes a catastrophic transformation from a seemingly happy union to a violent and abusive one, ultimately ending in divorce and Ed's death. The marriage serves as a microcosm of the larger conflicts in the story, illustrating how personal bonds can be corrupted by madness, ideological extremism, and supernatural forces.

Identity and Background

Ed Deepneau, a research chemist at Hawking Laboratories in Fresh Harbor, and his wife Helen, along with their baby daughter Natalie, lived in a small chocolate-brown Cape Cod house with whipped-cream trim on Harris Avenue, four houses up from Ralph Roberts and Bill McGovern. Ralph and his wife Carolyn were very fond of the Deepneaus, considering Ed one of the kindest, most civil young men they had ever met. Carolyn had liked to say the Deepneaus belonged to "the Church of the Latter-Day Yuppies," though her genuine liking for them robbed the phrase of any real bite. They were laissez-faire vegetarians who considered both fish and dairy products okay, had worked for Clinton in the last election, and their car bore bumper stickers saying "SPLIT WOOD, NOT ATOMS" and "FUR ON ANIMALS, NOT PEOPLE." The Deepneaus had also apparently kept every album they had ever purchased during the sixties, which Carolyn found one of their most endearing characteristics. Ed was a member of the Book of the Month Club, the kind who took the twenty-pound histories of the Crimean War they always seemed to offer as alternates to the main selection. Ralph had an idea that Ed wouldn't be able to tell someone to go to hell without suffering a sleepless night in consequence.

The Unraveling: Abuse and Violence

The marriage began to unravel long before it became public knowledge. Helen later revealed that Ed first hit her two years before she got pregnant with Natalie, just before her pregnancy. She had kept pushing it away. The first visible sign of trouble to outsiders came in the summer of 1992, when Ralph witnessed Ed's bizarre and violent road rage incident at the airport. Ed, driving his Datsun, came tearing out of the General Aviation terminal service gate, screaming obscenities, and deliberately rammed a blue Ford Ranger pickup truck. When the heavyset driver got out, Ed attacked him, slapping him and screaming about dead babies and murder. Ralph intervened, and Ed eventually calmed down, apologizing and claiming he had bumped his head on the steering wheel. Ralph, troubled, noted that Ed was wearing a white silk scarf with Chinese figures embroidered on it in red.

The abuse escalated dramatically in August 1993. Helen, staggering and bloody, her face beaten and one eye puffed shut, came to the Red Apple store carrying baby Natalie. She had been beaten by Ed because she had signed a petition to bring Susan Day to Derry to speak on behalf of WomanCare. Ralph called the police, and Ed was arrested for domestic assault. When Ralph confronted Ed at his home, Ed was sitting shirtless on his lawn, listening to Jefferson Airplane, with blood on his knuckles and a drop on his left lens of his round John Lennon specs. He was completely unrepentant, ranting about the "Crimson King" and "Centurions" who were killing babies. He told Ralph, "They are killing the babies wholesale. Ripping them from the wombs of their mothers and carrying them out of town in covered trucks." He also spoke of seeing colors and of a "little bald doctor" who had told him about these things. Ed was arrested and released on bail, with a no-contact agreement.

Separation and Divorce

After the beating, Helen went to High Ridge, a shelter for battered women run by WomanCare. She wrote to Ralph, saying she was divorcing Ed. "Part of my mind (it sounds like my mother when it talks) just about howls when I put it that bluntly, but I'm tired of fooling myself about my situation," she wrote. "The plain fact is that the man I married has been replaced by a dangerous paranoid." She noted that Ed sometimes sat on the porch and talked to someone who wasn't there, a man he called "the little bald doctor." She received a note from Ed saying he was staying at a cottage at the Hawking Labs compound in Fresh Harbor and would honor the non-contact clause. He included a $750 check, which seemed to indicate he understood his responsibilities, but Helen felt it was as if he wasn't really apologizing at all, but just getting on the record. Helen got a job at the Derry Public Library and moved back to Harris Avenue with Natalie, buying a house three doors up from her old place. The house on Harris Avenue was put up for sale, with the money to go into an escrow account to be divided according to the divorce decree.

Ed's Descent and Final Act

Ed's madness deepened. He was fired from Hawking Labs after his involvement in the Friends of Life demonstrations. He used a briefcase full of money—eighty thousand dollars—to bail out Charlie Pickering, the man who had attacked Ralph in the library. Ed's actions were increasingly driven by the influence of the supernatural entity Atropos, who had cut Ed's life-cord, making him an "undesignated" being, a blank card in the deck of fate. Ed's final act was to steal a plane and attempt to crash it into the Civic Center during Susan Day's speech, intending to kill thousands. He had taped a photo of Helen and Natalie to the instrument panel of the plane, wanting them to be the last thing he saw. Ralph, who had been drawn into the conflict by the agents of the Purpose, Clotho and Lachesis, confronted Ed in the plane. Ed, seeing Ralph, screamed, "Give them back! They're mine!" Ralph grabbed the photo, and in the struggle, the plane crashed into the parking lot, killing Ed. The explosion killed seventy-one people in the ensuing panic, but the Civic Center itself was largely spared.

Aftermath and Legacy

After Ed's death, Helen received a substantial insurance settlement, thanks to the efforts of John Leydecker and a lawyer friend. She used the money to buy a house on Harris Avenue. She dated John Leydecker for a time, but the relationship ended, and she began to wear a discreet pink triangle pin on her prim, high-necked librarian's blouses, indicating a new direction in her personal life. Ralph and Lois babysat Natalie frequently, and Ralph often thought of Ed's meanest legacy to his widow: a bumper sticker on her reconditioned Volvo that read "A WOMAN NEEDS A MAN LIKE A FISH NEEDS A BICYCLE." He felt that Helen had been cheated in some obscure fashion, that some bad-tempered fate had tied a can to her tail, and she didn't even know it. The marriage, which had begun with love and promise, ended in violence, madness, and death, leaving behind a widow and a daughter who would forever be marked by the tragedy.