A Widow for One Year

by John Irving

  Suddenly he thought of another use for the pages he’d written for Penny Pierce and shown to Ted. When Alice arrived, the pages would be useful in bringing her up to date; surely the nanny needed to know— at least if she was going to be sensitive to everything Ruth would be feeling. Eddie folded the pages and stuck them in his right rear pocket. His jeans were a little damp, because he’d worn them over his wet bathing suit when he and Ruth had left the beach. The ten-dollar bill that Marion had given him was also a little damp, as was Penny Pierce’s business card, with her home phone number written in by hand. He put them both in the duffel bag; they were already in the category of mementos of the summer of ’58, which Eddie was beginning to realize was both a watershed in his life and a legacy that Ruth would carry with her for as long as she would carry her scar.

  The poor kid, Eddie was thinking, not realizing that this was also a watershed. At sixteen, Eddie O’Hare had ceased to be a teenager, in the sense that he was no longer as self-absorbed; he was concerned for someone else. The rest of today and tonight, Eddie promised himself, he would do what he did and say what he said for Ruth . He walked down the hall toward Ruth’s bedroom, where Ted had already hung the photograph of Marion and the feet from one of the many exposed picture hooks on Ruth’s stark walls.

  “Look, Eddie!” the child said, pointing to the photo of her mother.

  “I see,” Eddie told her. “It looks very nice there.”

  From the downstairs of the house, a woman’s voice called up to them. “Hello! Hello?”

  “Mommy!” Ruth cried.

  “Marion?” Ted called.

  “It’s Alice,” Eddie told them.

  Eddie stopped the nanny when she was halfway up the stairs. “There’s a situation you should know about, Alice,” he told the college girl, handing her the pages. “Better read this.”

  Oh, the authority of the written word.

  A Motherless Child

  A four-year-old has a limited understanding of time. From Ruth’s point of view, it was self-evident only that her mother and the photographs of her dead brothers were missing. It would soon occur to the child to ask when her mother and the photographs were coming back.

  There was a quality to Marion’s absence that, even to a four-year-old, suggested permanence. Even the late-afternoon light, which is long-lasting on the seacoast, seemed to linger longer than usual on that Friday afternoon; it appeared that night would never come. And the presence of the picture hooks—not to mention those darker rectangles that stood out against the faded wallpaper—contributed to the feeling that the photographs were gone forever.

  If Marion had left the walls completely bare, it would have been better. The picture hooks were like a map of a beloved but destroyed city. After all, the photographs of Thomas and Timothy were the principal stories in Ruth’s life—up to and including her initial experience with The Mouse Crawling Between the Walls . Nor could Ruth be comforted by the single and most unsatisfying answer to her many questions.

  “When is Mommy coming back?” would summon no better than the “I don’t know” refrain, which Ruth had heard repeated by her father and Eddie and, more recently, by the shocked nanny. Alice, following her brief reading experience, could not recover her formerly confident personality. She repeated the pathetic “I don’t know” refrain in a barely audible whisper.

  And the four-year-old went on asking questions. “Where are the pictures now ? Did any of the glass got broken? When is Mommy coming back?”

  Given Ruth’s limited understanding of time, which answers could have comforted her? Maybe “tomorrow” would have worked, but only until tomorrow came and went; Marion would still be missing. As for “next week” or “next month,” to a four-year-old you might as well say “next year.” As for the truth, it couldn’t have comforted Ruth—nor could she have comprehended it. Ruth’s mommy wasn’t coming back— not for thirty-seven years.

  “I suppose Marion thinks she isn’t coming back,” Ted said to Eddie, when they were at last alone together.

  “She says she isn’t,” Eddie told him. They were in Ted’s workroom, where Ted had already fixed himself a drink. Ted had also called Dr. Leonardis and canceled their squash game. (“I can’t play today, Dave— my wife’s left me.”) Eddie felt compelled to tell Ted that Marion had been sure Ted would get a ride home from Southampton with Dr. Leonardis. When Ted replied that he’d gone to the bookstore, Eddie would suffer his first and only religious experience.

  For seven, almost eight years—lasting through college but not enduring through graduate school—Eddie O’Hare would be unimpressively yet sincerely religious, because he believed that God or some heavenly power had to have kept Ted from seeing the Chevy, which was parked diagonally across from the bookstore the entire time that Eddie and Ruth had been negotiating for the photograph in Penny Pierce’s frame shop. (If that wasn’t a miracle, what was?)

  “So where is she?” Ted asked him, shaking the ice cubes in his drink.

  “I don’t know,” Eddie told him.

  “Don’t lie to me!” Ted shouted. Not even pausing to put down his drink, Ted slapped Eddie in the face with his free hand. Eddie did as he’d been told. He made a fist—hesitating, because he’d never hit anyone before. Then he punched Ted Cole in the nose.

  “Jesus!” Ted cried. He walked in circles, spilling his drink. He held the cold glass against his nose. “Christ, I hit you with my open hand— with the flat of my hand—and you make a fist and punch me in the nose. Jesus!”

  “Marion said it would make you stop,” Eddie told him.

  “ ‘Marion said,’ ” Ted repeated. “Christ, what else did she say?”

  “I’m trying to tell you,” Eddie said. “She said you don’t have to remember anything I say, because her lawyer will tell you everything again.”

  “If she thinks she’s got a rat’s ass of a chance to get custody of Ruth, she’s got another think coming !” Ted shouted.

  “She doesn’t expect to get custody of Ruth,” Eddie explained. “She has no intention of trying.”

  “She told you that?”

  “She told me everything I’m telling you,” Eddie replied.

  “What kind of mother doesn’t even try to get custody of her child?” Ted shouted.

  “She didn’t tell me that,” Eddie admitted.

  “Jesus . . .” Ted began.

  “There’s just one thing about the custody,” Eddie interrupted him. “You’ve got to watch your drinking. No more DWI—if you get another drunk-driving conviction, you could lose custody of Ruth. Marion wants to know that it’s safe for Ruth to drive with you. . . .”

  “Who is she to say I wouldn’t be safe for Ruth?” Ted shouted.

  “I’m sure the lawyer will explain,” Eddie said. “I’m just telling you what Marion told me.”

  “After the summer she’s had with you, who’s going to listen to Marion?” Ted asked.

  “She said you’d say that,” Eddie told him. “She said she knows more than a few Mrs. Vaughns who’d be willing to testify, if it came to that. But she doesn’t expect to get custody of Ruth. I’m just telling you that you’ve got to watch your drinking.”

  “Okay, okay,” Ted said, finishing his drink. “Christ! Why did she have to take all the photographs? There are negatives. She could have taken the negatives and made her own pictures.”

  “She took all the negatives, too,” Eddie told him.

  “The hell she did!” Ted cried. He stormed out of his workroom, with Eddie following behind. The negatives had been with the original snapshots; they were in about a hundred envelopes, all of them in the rolltop desk in the alcove between the kitchen and the dining room. It was the desk where Marion worked when she was paying bills. Now both Ted and Eddie could see that the rolltop desk itself was gone.

  “I forgot that part,” Eddie admitted to Ted. “She said it was her desk—it was the only furniture she wanted.”

  “I don’t give a shit about the goddamn desk!�
�� Ted yelled. “But she can’t have the photographs and the negatives. They were my sons, too!”

  “She said you’d say that,” Eddie told him. “She said you wanted to have Ruth, and she didn’t. Now you have Ruth. She has the boys.”

  “I should have half the photographs, for Christ’s sake,” Ted said. “Jesus . . . what about Ruth? Shouldn’t Ruth have half the pictures?”

  “Marion didn’t say anything about that,” Eddie confessed. “I’m sure the lawyer will explain.”

  “Marion won’t get far,” Ted said. “Even the car is in my name— both cars are in my name.”

  “The lawyer will be telling you where the Mercedes is,” Eddie informed him. “Marion will send the keys to the lawyer, and the lawyer will tell you where the car is parked. She said she didn’t need a car.”

  “She’s going to need money,” Ted said nastily. “What’s she going to do for money?”

  “She said the lawyer will tell you what she needs for money,” Eddie told him.

  “Christ!” Ted said.

  “You were planning to get a divorce, anyway, weren’t you?” Eddie asked him.

  “Is that Marion’s question or yours?” Ted asked.

  “Mine,” Eddie admitted.

  “Just stick to what Marion told you to say, Eddie.”

  “She didn’t tell me to get the photograph,” Eddie told him. “That was Ruth’s idea, and mine. Ruth thought of it first.”

  “That was a good idea,” Ted admitted.

  “I was thinking of Ruth,” Eddie told him.

  “I know you were—thank you,” Ted said.

  They were quiet for a second or two, then. They could hear Ruth harassing the nanny nonstop. At the moment, Alice seemed closer to breaking down than Ruth did.

  “What about this one? Tell it!” the four-year-old demanded. Ted and Eddie knew that Ruth must have been pointing to one of the picture hooks; the child wanted the nanny to tell her the story behind the missing photograph. Naturally Alice couldn’t remember which of the photographs had hung from the picture hook that Ruth was pointing to. Alice didn’t know the stories behind most of the photos, anyway. “Tell it! What about this one?” Ruth asked again.

  “I’m sorry, Ruth. I don’t know,” Alice said.

  “This is the one with Thomas in the tall hat,” Ruth told the nanny crossly. “Timothy is trying to reach Thomas’s hat, but he can’t reach it because Thomas is standing on a ball.”

  “Oh, you remember,” Alice said.

  For how long will Ruth remember? Eddie was thinking. He watched Ted fix himself another drink.

  “Timothy kicked the ball and made Thomas fall down,” Ruth continued. “Thomas got mad and started a fight. Thomas won all the fights because Timothy was smaller.”

  “Was the fight in the photograph?” Alice asked.

  Wrong question, Eddie knew.

  “No, silly!” Ruth screamed. “The fight was after the picture!”

  “Oh,” Alice said. “I’m sorry. . . .”

  “You want a drink?” Ted asked Eddie.

  “No,” Eddie told him. “We should drive over to the carriage house and see if Marion left anything there.”

  “Good idea,” Ted said. “You’re the driver.”

  At first they found nothing in the dismal rental house above the garage. Marion had taken what few clothes she’d kept there, although Eddie knew—and would always appreciate—what she’d done with the pink cashmere cardigan and the lilac-colored camisole and matching panties. Of the few photographs Marion had moved to the carriage house for the summer, all but one were gone. Marion had left behind the photograph of the dead boys that hung above the bed: Thomas and Timothy in the doorway of the Main Academy Building, on the threshold of manhood—their last year at Exeter.

  HVC VENITE PVERI VT VIRI SITIS

  “Come hither boys . . .” Marion had translated, in a whisper, “. . . and become men.”

  It was the photograph that marked the site of Eddie’s sexual initiation. A piece of notepaper was taped to the glass. Marion’s handwriting was unmistakable.

  FOR EDDIE

  “For you ?” Ted shouted. He ripped the notepaper off the glass. He picked at the remnant of Scotch tape with his fingernail. “Well, it’s not for you, Eddie. They’re my sons—it’s the only picture I have of them!”

  Eddie didn’t argue. He could remember the Latin well enough without the photograph. He had two more years to be at Exeter; he would pass through that doorway and under that inscription often enough. Nor did he need a picture of Thomas and Timothy; it wasn’t them he needed to remember. He could remember Marion without them; he’d only known her without them, although he would certainly admit to the presence of those dead boys.

  “Of course it’s your picture,” Eddie said.

  “You bet your ass it is,” Ted told him. “How could she even think of giving it to you?”

  “I don’t know,” Eddie lied. In one day, “I don’t know” had become everyone’s answer for everything.

  Thus the photograph of Thomas and Timothy in the doorway at Exeter belonged to Ted. It was a better likeness of the dead boys than that partial view of them—namely, their feet—which now hung in Ruth’s bedroom. Ted would hang the photo of the boys in the master bedroom, on one of the many available picture hooks that were exposed there.

  When Ted and Eddie left the shabby apartment over the garage, Eddie took his few things with him—he wanted to pack. He was waiting for Ted to tell him to leave; obligingly, Ted told him in the car when they were driving back to the house on Parsonage Lane.

  “What’s tomorrow—Saturday?” he asked.

  “Yes, it’s Saturday,” Eddie replied.

  “I want you out of here tomorrow. By Sunday at the latest,” Ted told him.

  “Okay,” Eddie said. “I just need to find a ride to the ferry.”

  “Alice can take you.”

  Eddie decided it was wise not to tell Ted that Marion had already thought of Alice as Eddie’s best bet for a ride to Orient Point.

  When they got back to the house, Ruth had cried herself to sleep— the child had also refused to eat her supper—and Alice was crying quietly in the upstairs hall. For a college girl, the nanny seemed excessively undone by the situation. Eddie couldn’t muster much sympathy for Alice; she was a snob who had immediately lorded her presumed superiority over him. (Alice’s only superiority to Eddie was that she was a few years older than sixteen.)

  Ted helped Alice navigate the stairs, and he gave her a clean handkerchief with which to blow her nose. “I’m sorry for springing all this on you, Alice,” Ted told the college girl, but the nanny wouldn’t be appeased.

  “My father left my mother when I was a little girl,” Alice sniffed. “So I quit . That’s all—I just quit . And you should have the decency to quit, too,” Alice added to Eddie.

  “It’s too late for me to quit, Alice,” Eddie said. “I just got fired.”

  “I never knew you were such a superior person, Alice,” Ted told the girl.

  “Alice has been superior to me all summer,” Eddie said to Ted. Eddie didn’t like this aspect of the change inside him; together with authority, with finding his own voice, he’d also developed a taste for a kind of cruelty he’d been incapable of before.

  “I am morally superior to you, Eddie—I know that much,” the nanny told him.

  “ Morally superior,” Ted repeated. “Now there’s a concept! Don’t you ever feel ‘ morally superior,’ Eddie?”

  “To you I do,” the boy said.

  “You see, Alice?” Ted asked. “Everyone feels ‘ morally superior’ to someone !” Eddie hadn’t realized that Ted was already drunk.

  Alice went off weeping. Eddie and Ted watched her drive away.

  “There goes my ride to the ferry,” Eddie pointed out.

  “I still want you out of here tomorrow,” Ted told him.

  “Fine,” Eddie said. “But I can’t walk to Orient Point. And you can’t drive me.�
�

  “You’re a smart boy—you’ll think of someone to give you a ride,” Ted said.

  “You’re the one who’s good at getting rides,” Eddie replied.

  They could have gone on being petty all night—and it wasn’t even dark outside. It was much too early for Ruth to have fallen asleep. Ted worried aloud that he should wake her up and try to convince her to eat something for supper. But when he tiptoed into Ruth’s room, the child was at work at her easel; she’d either woken up or she’d fooled Alice into thinking that she was asleep.

  For a four-year-old’s, Ruth’s drawings were markedly advanced. Whether this was a sign of her talent or the more modest effect of her father having shown her how to draw certain things—faces, primarily—it was too soon to know. She decidedly knew how to draw a face; in fact, faces were all that Ruth ever drew. (As an adult, she wouldn’t draw at all.)

  Now the child was drawing unfamiliar things: they were stick figures of the clumsy, unformed kind that more normal four-year-olds ( non-practicing artists) might draw. There were three such figures, not at all well drawn, and they had faceless, oval heads as plain as melons. Over them, or perhaps behind them—the perspective wasn’t clear—loomed several large mounds that looked like mountains. But Ruth was a child of the potato fields and the ocean; where she’d grown up, everything was flat.

  “Are those mountains, Ruthie?” Ted asked.

  “No!” the child screamed. She wanted Eddie to come look at her drawing, too. Ted called for him.

  “Are those mountains?” Eddie asked, when he saw the drawing.

  “No! No! No!” Ruth cried.

  “Ruthie, honey, don’t cry.” Ted pointed to the faceless stick figures. “Who are these people, Ruthie?”

  “Died persons,” Ruth told him.

  “Do you mean dead people, Ruthie?”

  “Yes, died persons,” the child repeated.

  “I see—they’re skeletons,” her father said.

  “Where are their faces?” Eddie asked the four-year-old.