A Widow for One Year

by John Irving

  “ What story?” Eddie asked.

  “I know you want to hear it,” Ted said. “You told me that you asked Marion to tell it to you, but Marion can’t handle this story. It turns her to stone, just thinking about it. You remember when you turned her to stone by just asking her about it—don’t you, Eddie?”

  “Yes, I remember,” Eddie said. So it was that story. Ted wanted to tell him about the accident.

  Eddie had wanted Marion to tell him the story. But what should the sixteen-year-old have said? Eddie certainly needed to hear the story, even if he didn’t want to hear it from Ted.

  “Go on, tell it,” the boy said as casually as possible. Eddie couldn’t see where in the room Ted was, or if he was standing or sitting—not that it mattered, because Ted’s narrative voice, in any of his stories, was greatly enhanced by an overall atmosphere of darkness.

  Stylistically, the story of Thomas and Timothy’s accident had much in common with Ted Cole’s The Mouse Crawling Between the Walls and The Door in the Floor —not to mention the many drafts that Eddie had faithfully transcribed of A Sound Like Someone Trying Not to Make a Sound . In other words, it was a Ted Cole kind of story; when it came to this kind of story, Marion’s version could never have been a match for Ted’s.

  For one thing—and this was immediately clear to Eddie—Ted had worked on the story. It would have killed Marion to have paid as close attention to the details of her boys’ deaths as Ted had. And for another thing, Marion would have told the story without devices; she could have told it only as plainly as possible. In contrast, the principal device in Ted’s telling of the tale was extremely self-conscious, even artificial; yet without it, Ted might not have been able to tell the story at all.

  As in most Ted Cole stories, the principal device was also clever. In the story of Thomas and Timothy’s accident, Ted talked about himself in the third person; thus he stood at a considerable distance from himself and from the story. He was never “I” or “me” or “myself ”; he was always only “Ted”—or “he” or “him” or “himself.” He was merely a supporting character in a story about other, more important people.

  If Marion had ever told the story, she would have stood so close to it that, in the telling of it, she would have descended into a final madness—a madness much greater than whatever madness had caused Marion to abandon her only living child.

  “Well, here’s the deal,” Ted began. “Thomas had his driver’s license, but Timothy did not. Tommy was seventeen—he’d been driving for a year. And Timmy was fifteen; he’d only started to take driving lessons, from his father. Ted had earlier taught Thomas how to drive; it was Ted’s opinion that Timothy, who was only learning, was already a more attentive student than Thomas had ever been. Not that Thomas was a bad driver. He was alert, and confident—he had excellent reflexes. And Thomas was cynical enough to anticipate what bad drivers were going to do, even before the drivers themselves knew what they were going to do. That was the key, Ted had told him, and Thomas believed it: always assume that every other driver is a bad driver.

  “There was one particularly important area of driving where Ted thought that his younger son, Timothy, was a better driver—or a potentially better driver—than Thomas was. Timothy had always been more patient than Thomas. Timmy, for example, had the patience to faithfully check the rearview mirror, whereas Tommy neglected to look in the rearview mirror as routinely as Ted thought a driver should look there. And it is often in the area of left turns that a driver’s patience is tested in a most subtle but most specific way—namely, when you are stopped and waiting to turn left across a lane of oncoming traffic, you must never, ever turn your wheels to the left in anticipation of the turn you are waiting to make. Never—not ever !

  “Anyway,” Ted continued, “Thomas was one of those impatient young men who would often turn his wheels to the left while anticipating a left-hand turn, although his father and his mother—and even his younger brother—had repeatedly told Tommy not to turn his wheels until he was actually making the turn. Do you know why, Eddie?” Ted asked.

  “So that, if you are rear-ended by a vehicle coming up behind you, you will not be pushed into the lane of oncoming traffic,” Eddie answered. “You would simply be pushed straight ahead, staying in your own lane.”

  “Who taught you to drive, Eddie?” Ted asked.

  “My dad,” Eddie said.

  “Good for him! Tell him for me that he did a good job,” Ted said.

  “Okay,” Eddie answered in the dark. “Go on . . .”

  “Well. Where were we? We were out West, actually. It was one of those ski vacations that people from the East take in the spring, when what amounts to so-called spring skiing can’t be trusted in the East. If you want to be sure there’s snow in March or April, you better go west. And so . . . here were the displaced easterners, who were not at home out West. And it wasn’t just that it was Exeter’s spring vacation; it was doubtless spring break for countless schools and universities, and so there were many out-of-towners who were not only unfamiliar with the mountains but unfamiliar with the roads. And many of these skiers were driving unfamiliar cars—rental cars, for example. The Cole family had rented a car.”

  “I get the picture,” Eddie said, sure that Ted was deliberately taking his time to get to what happened—probably because Ted wanted Eddie to anticipate the accident almost as much as Ted wanted Eddie to see it.

  “Well. It was after a long day of skiing, and it had snowed all day. A wet, heavy snow. A degree or two warmer,” Ted said, “and this snow would have been rain. And Ted and Marion were not quite the diehard, nonstop skiers that their two sons were. At seventeen and fifteen, respectively, Thomas and Timothy could ski the pants off their parents, who at the time were forty and thirty-four, respectively, and who often finished a day on the slopes a trifle earlier than their boys. That day, in fact, Ted and Marion had retired to the bar at the ski resort, where they were waiting (what seemed to them) a rather long time for Thomas and Timothy to finish their last run—and then the last run after that. You know how boys are—the kids can’t get enough of the skiing, and so the mom and the dad do the waiting. . . .”

  “I get the picture—you were drunk,” Eddie said.

  “That was one aspect of what would become trivial—in the area of the ongoing argument between Ted and Marion, I mean,” Ted told Eddie. “Marion said that Ted was drunk, although in Ted’s view he wasn’t. And Marion, while not drunk, had had more to drink at that late-afternoon time than was customary for her. When Thomas and Timothy found their parents in the bar, it was evident to both boys that neither their father nor their mother was in ideal shape to drive the rental car. Besides, Thomas had his driver’s license, and Thomas hadn’t been drinking. There was no question as to who among them should be the driver.”

  “So Thomas was driving,” Eddie interrupted.

  “And, brothers being brothers, Timothy sat beside him—in the passenger seat. As for the parents,” Ted told Eddie, “they sat where, one day, most parents will end up: in the backseat. And, in Ted and Marion’s case, they continued to do what many parents do without cease: they kept arguing, although the nature of their arguments remained trivial, enduringly trivial. Ted, for example, had cleared the windshield of snow, but not the rear window. Marion argued that Ted should have cleared the rear window, too. Ted countered that as soon as the car was warm and moving, the snow would slide off. And although this proved to be the case—the snow slid off the rear window as soon as they were traveling at less-than-highway speed—Marion and Ted continued to argue. Only the topic changed; the triviality endured.

  “It was one of those ski towns where the town itself isn’t much to speak of. The main street is actually a three-lane highway, where the middle lane is designated for left turns, although not a few morons confuse what is a turning lane with a passing lane, if you know what I mean. I hate three-lane highways, Eddie—don’t you?”

  Eddie refused to answer him. It was a
Ted Cole story: you always see what you’re supposed to be afraid of; you see it coming, and coming. The problem is, you never see everything that’s coming.

  “Anyway,” Ted continued, “Thomas was doing a good job of driving, considering the adverse conditions. The snow was still falling. And now it was dark, too—truly everything was unfamiliar. Ted and Marion began to quarrel about the best route to the hotel where they were staying. This was foolish, because the entire town was on one or the other side of this three-lane highway, and since this highway was in actuality a strip of hotels and motels and gas stations and restaurants and bars, which lined both sides of the road, it was necessary to know only which side of the highway you were going to. And Thomas knew. It would be a left turn, no matter how he did it. It hardly helped him, as a driver, that his mother and father were determined to choose precisely where he should turn left. He could, for example, turn left at the hotel itself—Ted approved of this direct approach—or he could drive past the hotel to the next set of traffic lights. There, when the light was green, he could execute a left U-turn; then he would be approaching the hotel on his right. Marion thought the U-turn at the traffic lights was safer than the left turn from the turning lane, where there were no lights.”

  “Okay! Okay!” Eddie screamed in the dark. “I see it! I see it!”

  “No, you don’t!” Ted shouted at him. “You can’t possibly see it until it’s over ! Or do you want me to stop?”

  “No—please go on,” Eddie answered.

  “So . . . Thomas moves into the center lane, the turning lane—it’s not a passing lane—and Tommy puts on his blinker, not knowing that both his taillights are covered with wet, sticky snow, which his father had failed to clear off at the same time his father failed to clear the rear window. No one behind Thomas’s car can see his directional signal, or even the taillights or the brake lights. The car is not visible—or it is visible only at the last second—to anyone approaching it from behind.

  “Meanwhile, Marion says: ‘Don’t turn here, Tommy—it’s safer up ahead, at the lights.’

  “ ‘You want him to make a U-turn and get a ticket, Marion?’ Ted asked his wife.

  “ ‘I don’t care if he gets a ticket, Ted—it’s safer to turn at the lights,’ Marion said.

  “ ‘Break it up, you two,’ Thomas said. ‘I don’t want to get a ticket, Mom,’ the boy added.

  “ ‘Okay—so turn here, then,’ Marion told him.

  “ ‘Better just do it, Tommy—don’t sit here,’ Ted said.

  “ ‘Great backseat driving,’ Timothy commented. Then Timmy noticed that his brother had cranked the wheels to the left while he was still waiting to turn. ‘You cut your wheels too soon again,’ Tim told him.

  “ ‘It’s because I thought I was going to turn, and then I thought I wasn’t, asshole!’ Thomas said.

  “ ‘Tommy, don’t call your brother an asshole, please,’ Marion told her son.

  “ ‘At least not in front of your mother,’ Ted added.

  “ ‘No—that’s not what I mean, Ted,’ Marion told her husband. ‘I mean that he shouldn’t call his brother an asshole—period.’

  “ ‘You hear that, asshole?’ Timothy asked his brother.

  “ ‘Timmy, please . . .’ Marion said.

  “ ‘You can turn after this snowplow,’ Ted told his son.

  “ ‘Dad, I know. I’m the driver,’ the seventeen-year-old said.

  “But suddenly the interior of their car was flooded with light—it was the headlights of the car coming up on them from behind. It was a station wagon full of college kids from New Jersey. They’d never been in Colorado before. It’s conceivable that, in New Jersey, there’s no difference between turning lanes and passing lanes.

  “Anyway, the college kids thought they were passing. They didn’t see (until the last second) the car that was waiting to turn left in front of them—as soon as the snowplow, in the oncoming lane, passed by. And so Thomas’s car was rear-ended, and, because Thomas had already turned his wheels, his car was pushed into the lane of oncoming traffic, which in this case consisted of a very large snowplow, moving about forty-five miles per hour. The college kids said later that they thought their station wagon was doing about fifty.”

  “Jesus . . .” Eddie said.

  “The snowplow cut Thomas’s car almost perfectly in half,” Ted went on. “Thomas was killed by the steering column of the car he was driving—it crushed his chest. Tommy died instantly. And—for about twenty minutes—Ted was trapped in the backseat, where he was seated directly behind Thomas. Ted couldn’t see Thomas, although Ted knew that Tommy was dead because Marion could see Tommy, and although she would never use the ‘dead’ word, she kept repeating to her husband, ‘Oh, Ted—Tommy’s gone. Tommy’s gone. Can you see Timmy? Timmy’s not gone, too—is he? Can you see if he’s gone?’

  “Because Marion was trapped in the backseat behind Timothy—for more than half an hour—she couldn’t see Timothy, who was directly in front of her. Ted, however, had a pretty good view of his younger son, who’d been knocked unconscious when his head went through the windshield; for a while, however, Timothy was still alive. Ted could see that Timmy was breathing, but Ted couldn’t see that the snowplow, as it had cut the car in two, had also cut off Timmy’s left leg at the thigh. While an ambulance and rescue crew struggled to disengage them all from the crumpled car, which had been accordioned between the snowplow and the station wagon, Timothy Cole bled to death from a severed femoral artery.

  “For what seemed like twenty minutes—maybe it was less than five—Ted watched his younger son die. Since Ted was freed from the wreckage about ten minutes before the rescue workers were able to free Marion . . . Ted had broken only a few ribs; he was otherwise unhurt . . . Ted saw the paramedics remove Timmy’s body (but not Timmy’s left leg) from the car. The boy’s severed leg was still pinned to the front seat by the snowplow when the rescue workers finally extricated Marion from the backseat of the car. She knew that her Thomas was dead, but only that her Timothy had been taken from the wreckage—to the hospital, she hoped, for she kept asking Ted, ‘Timmy’s not gone, too—is he? Can you see if he’s gone?’

  “But Ted was a coward when it came to answering that question, which he left unanswered—and would leave unanswered. He asked one of the rescue workers to cover Timmy’s leg with a tarpaulin, so Marion would not see it. And when Marion was safely outside the car . . . she was actually standing, and even limping around, although it would turn out that she had a broken ankle . . . Ted tried to tell his wife that her younger son, like her older son, was dead. He just never quite managed to say it. Before Ted could tell her, Marion spotted Timmy’s shoe. She couldn’t have known—she couldn’t have imagined —that her boy’s shoe was still attached to his leg. She thought it was just his shoe. And she said, ‘Oh, Ted, look—he’s going to need his shoe.’ And without anyone stopping her, she limped to the wreckage and bent down to pick up the shoe.

  “Ted wanted to stop her, of course, but—talk about ‘turned to stone’—he felt at that moment absolutely paralyzed. He could not move, he couldn’t even speak. And so he allowed his wife to discover that her son’s shoe was still attached to a leg . That was when Marion began to realize that Timothy was gone, too. And that . . .” Ted Cole said, in his fashion, “that is the end of the story.”

  “Get out of here,” Eddie told him. “This is my room, at least for one more night.”

  “It’s almost morning,” Ted told the boy. He opened one curtain so that Eddie could see the faint beginning of a dead-looking light.

  “Get out of here,” Eddie repeated.

  “Just don’t think that you know me, or Marion,” Ted said. “You don’t know us—you don’t know Marion, especially.”

  “Okay, okay,” Eddie said. He saw that the bedroom door was open; there was the familiar dark-gray light from the long hall.

  “It was after Ruth was born, before Marion said anything to me,” Ted continued. “I mean,
she hadn’t said a word —not one word about the accident. But one day, after Ruth was born, Marion just walked into my workroom—you know, she never went anywhere near my workroom—and she said to me: ‘How could you have let me see Timmy’s leg? How could you?’ I had to tell her that I’d been physically unable to move—that I was paralyzed, turned to stone. But all she said was: ‘How could you?’ And we never talked about it again. I tried, but she just wouldn’t talk about it.”

  “Please get out of here,” Eddie said.

  As he was leaving, Ted said: “See you in the morning, Eddie.”

  The one curtain that Ted had opened did not admit enough of the faint, predawn light for Eddie to see what time it was; he saw only that his wristwatch and his wrist—including his whole arm and hand— were the sickly, silver-gray color of a corpse. Eddie rotated his hand, but he could discern no difference in the shade of gray. The palm and the back of his hand were the same; in fact, his skin and the pillows and the wrinkled sheets were uniformly dead-gray. He lay awake, waiting for truer light. Through the window, he watched the sky; it slowly faded. Shortly before sunrise, the sky had lightened to the color of a week-old bruise.

  Eddie knew that Marion must have seen many hours of this predawn light. She was probably seeing it now—for surely she couldn’t have been asleep, wherever she was. And whenever Marion was awake, Eddie now understood what she saw: the wet snow melting on the wet, black highway, which would also have been streaked with reflected light; the inviting neon of the signs, which promised food and drink and shelter (even entertainment); the constantly passing headlights, the cars inching by so slowly because everyone needed to gawk at the accident; the circulating blue of the police cars’ lights, the blinking yellow lights of the wrecking truck, and the flashing red lights of the ambulance, too. Yet, even in this mayhem, Marion had spotted the shoe !