A Widow for One Year

by John Irving

  So . . . her father was not in the pool with one of his squash opponents. Ruth took a closer, more critical look at the bra. It was a push-up bra, an expensive one; it would have been utterly gratuitous for Ruth to wear a push-up bra, but the woman in the pool with her father must have thought she needed one. The woman had small breasts—the bra was a 32B.

  That was when Ruth recognized the open suitcase on the floor of her father’s bedroom. It was a well-worn brown leather suitcase distinguished by its much-traveled appearance and its practical compartments and its useful, efficient straps. It had been Hannah’s carry-on bag for as long as Ruth had known Hannah. (“The bag made Hannah look like a journalist before she was a journalist,” Ruth had written in her diary—she couldn’t remember how many years ago.)

  Ruth stood as still in her father’s bedroom as she would have stood if Hannah and her father had been naked in bed in front of her. The sea breeze blew through the bedroom window again; it blew shut the door behind her. Ruth felt as if she’d been locked in a closet. If something had brushed against her (a dress on a hanger), she would have fainted or screamed.

  She struggled to summon that state of calm in which she composed her novels. Ruth thought of a novel as a great, untidy house, a disorderly mansion; her job was to make the place fit to live in, to give it at least the semblance of order. Only when she wrote was she unafraid.

  When Ruth was afraid, she had difficulty breathing. Fear paralyzed her; as a child, the sudden proximity of a spider would freeze her on the spot. Once, behind a closed door, an unseen dog had barked at her; she’d not been able to remove her hand from the doorknob.

  Now the thought of Hannah with her father took her breath away. Ruth had to make an enormous effort just to move. At first she moved very slowly. She folded the small black bra and put it in Hannah’s open suitcase. She found Hannah’s other shoe—it was under the bed—and she put the pair of salmon-pink shoes alongside the suitcase, where they could not be missed. In what Ruth knew would be the haste of things to come, she wanted Hannah not to leave any of her sexy little items behind.

  Before Ruth left her father’s bedroom, she looked at the photograph of her dead brothers in the doorway of the Main Academy Building. She considered that Hannah’s memory was not as remarkable as she’d supposed when they’d talked on the phone.

  So . . . Hannah stood me up because she was fucking my father, Ruth thought. She walked into the upstairs hall, taking off her swimsuit as she went. She looked in the two smaller guest bedrooms. Both beds were made, but one was dented with the shape of a slender body, and the pillows were bunched up against the headboard of the bed. The phone, normally on the night table, sat on the side of the bed. It had been from this guest bedroom that Hannah had phoned her, whispering, so as not to wake Ruth’s father—after she had fucked him.

  Ruth was naked now; she trailed the swimsuit behind her as she continued down the hall to her room. There she dressed herself in more characteristic clothes: jeans, one of the good bras Hannah had bought for her, a black T-shirt. For what she was about to do, she wanted to be in her uniform.

  Then Ruth went downstairs into the kitchen. Hannah, a lazy cook but an adequate one, had been planning to stir-fry some vegetables; she’d cut up a red and a yellow pepper and had tossed them in a bowl with some broccoli florets. The vegetables were sweating slightly. Ruth tasted one of the pieces of the yellow pepper. Hannah had sprinkled the vegetables with salt and sugar to make them bleed a little. Ruth recalled showing Hannah how to do that on one of the weekends they’d spent together at Ruth’s house in Vermont—complaining about bad boyfriends, as Ruth now remembered it.

  Hannah had also peeled a gingerroot, and mashed it; she’d set out the wok and the peanut oil, too. Ruth looked in the refrigerator and saw the shrimp marinating in a bowl. She was familiar with the dinner Hannah was preparing; Ruth had made this same dinner for Hannah, and for various boyfriends, many times. The only thing that wasn’t ready to cook was the rice.

  There were two bottles of white wine on the door of the refrigerator. Ruth took one out, opened it, and poured herself a glass. She walked into the dining room and out the screen door onto the terrace. When Hannah and her father heard the door close, they quickly swam away from each other, but both of them ended up in the deep end of the pool. They’d been squatting together in the shallow end—or else Ruth’s father had been squatting while Hannah bobbed in the water, in his lap.

  Now, in the deep end, their heads were small against the sparkling field of blue. Hannah looked less blond than usual; her wet hair was dark. Ruth’s father’s hair was dark, too. His thick, wavy hair had turned a metallic shade of gray, generously streaked with white. But in the dark-blue pool, Ted’s wet hair was almost black.

  Hannah’s head seemed as sleek as her body. She looks like a rat, Ruth thought. And Hannah’s small breasts bounced as she treaded water. The image that came to Ruth’s mind was that Hannah’s little tits could have been darting, one-eyed fish.

  “I got out here early,” Hannah began, but Ruth cut her off.

  “You were here last night. You called me after you fucked my father. I could have told you that he snored,” Ruth said.

  “Ruthie, don’t . . .” her father said.

  “ You’re the one who has a problem with fucking, baby,” Hannah told her.

  “Hannah, don’t . . .” Ted said.

  “Most civilized countries have laws,” Ruth told them. “Most societies have rules . . .”

  “I’ve heard this!” Hannah called to her. Hannah’s tiny face looked less confident than usual. But maybe it was only because Hannah wasn’t a strong swimmer; treading water didn’t come naturally to her.

  “Most families have rules, Daddy,” Ruth told her father. “Most friends, too,” Ruth said to Hannah.

  “Okay, okay—I’m lawlessness personified,” Hannah told her friend.

  “You never apologize, do you?” Ruth asked her.

  “Okay, I’m sorry, ” Hannah said. “Does that make it better?”

  “It was an accident—it was nothing planned,” Ted told his daughter.

  “That must have been a novelty for you, Daddy,” Ruth said.

  “We ran into each other in the city,” Hannah began. “I saw him standing on the corner of Fifth and Fifty-ninth, by the Sherry-Netherland. He was waiting for the light to change.”

  “I’m sure I don’t need to know the details,” Ruth told them.

  “You’re always so superior!” Hannah cried. Then she started coughing. “I’ve gotta get out of this fucking pool before I drown!”

  “You can get out of my house, too,” Ruth told her. “Just get your things and go.”

  There was no ladder in Ted Cole’s pool—ladders were not aesthetically pleasing to Ted. Hannah had to swim to the shallow end and walk up the steps, near Ruth.

  “Since when is it your house,” Hannah said. “I thought it was your father’s.”

  “Hannah, don’t . . .” Ted said again.

  “I want you to get out of here, too, Daddy,” Ruth told her father. “I want to be alone. I came home to be with you, and with my best friend,” she added. “But now I want you both gone.”

  “I’m still your best friend, for Christ’s sake,” Hannah said to Ruth. She was wrapping herself in a towel—the scrawny little rat, Ruth thought.

  “And I’m still your father, Ruthie. Nothing’s changed,” Ted said.

  “What’s changed is that I don’t want to see you. I don’t want to sleep in the same house with either of you,” Ruth said.

  “Ruthie, Ruthie . . .” her father said.

  “I told you—she’s a fucking princess, a prima donna,” Hannah told Ted. “First you spoiled her—now the whole world is spoiling her.” So they had talked about her, too.

  “Hannah, don’t . . .” Ruth’s father said, but Hannah walked into the house, letting the screen door slam. Ted kept treading water in the deep end of the pool; he could tread water all day.
/>   “I had a lot to talk to you about, Daddy,” she told him.

  “We can still talk, Ruthie. Nothing’s changed,” he repeated.

  Ruth had finished her wine. She looked at her empty glass; then she threw it at her father’s bobbing head. She missed him by a safe margin. The wineglass plunked into the water and sank, unbroken and dancing, like a ballet slipper, to the bottom of the deep end of the pool.

  “I want to be alone,” Ruth told her father again. “You wanted to fuck Hannah—now you can leave with her. Go on—just go with Hannah!”

  “I’m sorry, Ruthie,” her father said, but Ruth went into the house, leaving him to tread water.

  Ruth stood in the kitchen; her knees shook a little when she washed the rice and let it drain in a sieve. She was sure she’d lost her appetite. To her relief, her father and Hannah didn’t try to talk to her again.

  Ruth heard Hannah’s high-heeled shoes in the front hall; she could imagine how perfect those salmon-pink shoes looked on a slinky blonde. Then she heard the navy-blue Volvo—its wide tires crushing the stones in the driveway. (In the summer of ’58, the driveway of the Coles’ house in Sagaponack had been a dirt driveway, but Eduardo Gomez had convinced Ted to try crushed stones. Eduardo had got the idea for a driveway of crushed stones from the infamous driveway at Mrs. Vaughn’s.)

  Ruth stood in the kitchen, listening to the Volvo moving west on Parsonage Lane. Maybe her father would take Hannah back to New York. Maybe they would stay in Hannah’s apartment. They should be too embarrassed to spend another night together, Ruth thought. But her father, although he could be sheepish, was never embarrassed— and Hannah wasn’t even sorry! They would probably go to the American Hotel in Sag Harbor. And they would call later—both of them, but at different times. Ruth remembered that her father’s answering machine was off; she resolved that she would not answer the phone.

  But when the phone rang only an hour later, Ruth thought it might be Allan. She answered it.

  “I’m still thinking about playing squash with you,” Scott Saunders said.

  “I’m not in the mood for squash,” Ruth lied. There was a golden quality to his skin, she remembered; his freckles were the color of the beach.

  “If I can steal you away from your father,” Scott said, “how about dinner tomorrow night?”

  Ruth had not been able to cook the dinner that Hannah had largely prepared; she knew she couldn’t eat. “I’m sorry—I’m not in the mood for dinner,” Ruth told the lawyer.

  “Maybe you’ll change your mind tomorrow,” Scott said. Ruth could imagine his smile—the self-importance of it.

  “Maybe . . .” Ruth confessed to him. Somehow she found the strength to hang up the phone.

  She wouldn’t answer it again, although it rang and rang for half the night. Each time it rang, she hoped it wasn’t Allan and she wished she could bring herself to turn her father’s answering machine on. Most of the calls, she was sure, were from Hannah or her father.

  And although she’d not found the energy to eat, she’d succeeded in drinking both bottles of the white wine. She’d covered the cut vegetables with some plastic wrapping, and she’d covered and refrigerated the washed rice. The shrimp, which were still in the refrigerator, would keep well for a night in their marinade, but to be sure Ruth had added the juice of another lemon. Maybe she’d feel like eating something tomorrow night. (Maybe with Scott Saunders.)

  She was sure her father would come back. She half-expected to see his car in the driveway in the morning. Ted enjoyed the martyr role; he would have loved to give Ruth the impression that he’d slept in the Volvo all night.

  But in the morning the car wasn’t there. The phone started ringing at seven A.M., and Ruth still wouldn’t answer it. Now she tried to find her father’s answering machine, but it was not in his workroom, where it usually was. Perhaps it had broken and he’d taken it somewhere to have it repaired.

  Ruth regretted being in her father’s workroom. Above his writing desk, where he wrote only letters nowadays, was the tacked-up list of names and phone numbers of his current squash opponents. Scott Saunders was at the top of the list. Oh, God—here I go again, she thought. There were two numbers for Saunders: his number in New York and a Bridgehampton number. She dialed the Bridgehampton number, of course. It was not yet seven-thirty; Ruth could tell by the sound of his voice that she’d awakened him.

  “Are you still thinking about playing squash with me?” Ruth asked him.

  “It’s early,” Scott said. “Have you beaten your father already?”

  “I want to beat you first,” Ruth told him.

  “You can try, ” the lawyer said. “How about dinner after we play?”

  “Let’s see how the game goes,” Ruth said.

  “What time?” he asked her.

  “The usual time—the same time you play with my father.”

  “I’ll see you at five, then,” Scott told her.

  That would give Ruth the whole day to get ready for him. There were specific shots and serves she liked to practice before she played a left-hander. But her father was the lefty of all lefties; in the past, she had never been able to adequately prepare herself for him. Now she believed that playing Scott Saunders would be the perfect warm-up for playing her father.

  Ruth began by calling Eduardo and Conchita. She didn’t want them around the house. She told Conchita she was sorry that she wouldn’t see her this visit, and Conchita did what she always did when she talked to Ruth—she cried. Ruth promised she would see Conchita when she was back from Europe, although Ruth doubted she would be visiting her father in Sagaponack then.

  Ruth told Eduardo that she was going to write all day; she didn’t want him mowing the lawn or clipping the hedges or doing whatever he did to the swimming pool. She needed to have a quiet day. On the outside chance that her father wouldn’t come back in time to drive her to the airport tomorrow, Ruth told Eduardo that she would call him. Her flight to Munich left early Thursday evening; she wouldn’t need to leave Sagaponack before two or three tomorrow afternoon.

  It was like Ruth Cole to try to organize everything, to try to give her life the structure of her novels. (“You always think you can cover any contingency,” Hannah had told her once. Ruth thought she could, or that she should .)

  The one thing she should have done, but didn’t, was call Allan. Instead she let the phone keep ringing, unanswered.

  The two bottles of white wine had not given her a hangover, but they had left a sour taste in her mouth, and her stomach did not welcome the idea of any solid food for breakfast. Ruth found some strawberries, a peach, a banana. She put these in the blender with orange juice and three heaping tablespoons of her father’s favorite protein powder; the drink tasted like cold, liquid oatmeal, but it made her feel as if she were bouncing off the walls, which was how she wanted to feel.

  There were only four good shots in squash, she dogmatically believed.

  In the morning, she’d practice her rail and her cross-court—good and deep, both of them. Also, there was a dead spot on the front wall of the barn; it was about thigh-high and a little to the left of center, well below the service line. Her father had sneakily marked the spot with a smudge of colored chalk. She would practice her aim at that spot. You could hit the ball as hard as you wanted, but if you hit that spot, the ball just died; it came off the wall like a drop shot. She would work on her hard serve in the morning, too. She wanted to hit all her hard shots in the morning. Afterward, she could ice her shoulder—maybe while sitting in the shallow end of the pool, both before and after she made herself a little lunch.

  In the afternoon, she’d practice her drop shot. Ruth also had two good corner shots—one from midcourt and the other when she was close to one of the side walls. She rarely played a reverse corner; she thought of it as a low-percentage or a trick shot, and she didn’t like trick shots.

  She’d work on her soft serve in the afternoon, too. In the low-ceilinged barn, she wouldn’t even try h
er lob serve, but her chip serve had lately been improving. When she sliced through the serve, which she hit low to the front wall—barely above the service line—the ball caught the side wall very low and its bounce off the floor was very flat.

  It was still early in the morning when Ruth climbed the ladder from the floor area of the barn—where her father parked his car in the cold-weather months—and pushed open the trap door above her head. (The trap door was usually kept closed so that wasps and other insects would not rise to the top of the barn and end up in the squash court.) Outside the squash court, on the second floor of the barn—it had once been a hayloft—were a collection of racquets and balls and wristbands and protective eyewear. Tacked to the outside door of the court was a gray photocopy of Ruth’s Exeter team; it had been copied from the pages of the ’73 PEAN, her yearbook. Ruth was in the front row, far right, with the boys’ varsity. Her father had copied the yearbook picture and proudly tacked the photocopy on the door.

  Ruth crumpled up the photocopy after she’d ripped it off the squash-court door. She entered the court and stretched for a while— first her hamstrings, then her calves, last, her right shoulder. She always started by facing the side wall in the left-hand court; she liked to begin with her backhand. She hit her volleys and her cross-courts before she went to work on her hard serves. She hit nothing but hard serves for the last half hour; she hit them until they were all landing where she wanted them to.

  Fuck you, Hannah! Ruth thought. The ball flew off the front wall like something alive. Goddamn you, Daddy! she said to herself—the ball flying like a wasp or a bee, only much faster. Her imaginary opponent could never return that ball on the fly. It would be all he could do just to get out of the way.