A Widow for One Year

by John Irving

  By now, Conchita was worried enough to call Eduardo—even before she came downstairs—and while she was waiting for her husband to arrive, she took the large dark-green trash bag from Ted’s workroom and carried it out to the barn. There was a code panel that opened the garage door to the barn, and Conchita keyed in the proper code. When the garage door opened, Conchita saw that Ted had piled up some blankets along the barn floor, thus sealing the crack under the garage door; she also realized that Ted’s car was running, although Ted wasn’t in the car. The Volvo was chugging away in the barn, which reeked of exhaust fumes. Conchita dropped the trash bag in the open garage doorway. She waited in the driveway for Eduardo.

  Eduardo shut off the Volvo before he went looking for Ted. The tank was less than a quarter full—the car had probably run most of the night—and Ted had slightly depressed the accelerator pedal with an old squash racquet. It was one of Ruth’s old racquets, and Ted had pressed the racquet head against the accelerator and wedged the handle under the front seat. This had kept the car idling high enough so that it hadn’t stalled.

  The trap door to the squash court on the second floor of the barn was open, and Eduardo climbed the ladder; he was scarcely able to breathe, because the exhaust fumes had risen to the top of the barn. Ted was dead on the floor of the squash court. He was dressed to play. Maybe he’d hit the ball for a while, and run around a little in the court. When he got tired, he lay down on the floor of the court, perfectly positioned on the T, the spot on the court he’d always told Ruth to take possession of—to occupy, as if her life depended on it, because it was the position on the court from which you could best control the play of your opponent.

  Later Eduardo regretted that he opened the large dark-green trash bag and examined the contents before he threw the bag in the trash. His memory of the many drawings of Mrs. Vaughn’s private parts had never left him, although he’d seen her private parts in shreds and tatters. The black-and-white photographs were a grim reminder to the gardener of Ted Cole’s fascination with demeaned and demoralized women. Feeling sick to his stomach, Eduardo deposited the photographs in the trash.

  Ted had left no suicide note, unless one counts the note on the trash bag—CONCHITA, PLEASE THROW THIS TRASH AWAY BEFORE RUTH COMES HOME. And Ted had anticipated that Eduardo would use the telephone in the kitchen, for there on the notepad, by the kitchen phone, was another message: EDUARDO, CALL RUTH’S PUBLISHER, ALLAN ALBRIGHT. Ted had written down Allan’s number at Random House. Eduardo made the call without hesitation.

  But as grateful as Ruth would be to Allan for taking charge, she could not stop searching the Sagaponack house for the note she was hoping that her father had left for her . That there was no note confounded her; her father had always been able to say something self-justifying—he’d been tireless in defending himself.

  Even Hannah was hurt that he’d left no word for her, although Hannah would convince herself that a hang-up on her answering machine must have been a call from Ted.

  “If only I’d been there when he called!” Hannah would say to Ruth.

  “If only . . .” Ruth had said.

  The memorial service for Ted Cole was conducted in an impromptu fashion at the public school for grades one through four in Sagaponack. The school board, and the past and present teachers at the school, had called Ruth and offered her the premises. Ruth hadn’t realized the degree to which her father had been a benefactor of the school. He’d twice bought them new playground equipment; every year he donated art supplies for the children; he was the principal provider of children’s books for the Bridgehampton library, which was the library used by the schoolchildren in Sagaponack. Moreover, unbeknownst to Ruth, Ted had frequently read to the children during Story Hour, and, at least a half-dozen times during each school year, he came to the school and gave the children drawing lessons.

  Thus, in an atmosphere of undersize desks and chairs, and with the surrounding walls displaying children’s drawings of the most notable themes and characters from Ted Cole’s books, a local remembrance was held for the famous author and illustrator. A most beloved retired teacher at the school spoke fondly of Ted’s dedication to the entertainment of children, although she confused his books with one another; she thought that the moleman was a creature who lurked under the terrifying door in the floor, and that the indescribable sound like someone trying not to make a sound was that of the misunderstood mouse crawling between the walls. From the children’s drawings on the walls, Ruth saw sufficient numbers of mice and molemen to last her a lifetime.

  Except for Allan and Hannah, the only noticeable out-of-towner was the gallery owner from New York who’d made a small fortune selling Ted Cole’s original drawings. Ted’s publisher couldn’t come—he was still recovering from a cough he’d caught at the Frankfurt Book Fair. (Ruth thought she knew the cough.) And even Hannah was subdued—they were all surprised to see so many children in attendance.

  Eddie O’Hare was there; as a Bridgehampton resident, Eddie was no out-of-towner, but Ruth hadn’t expected to see him. Later she understood why he’d come. Like Ruth, Eddie had imagined that Marion might show up. After all, it was one of those occasions at which Ruth dreamed that her mother might make an appearance. And Marion was a writer. Weren’t all writers drawn to endings? Here was an ending. But Marion wasn’t there.

  It was a raw, blustery day with a wet wind blowing from the ocean; instead of lingering outside the schoolhouse, people hurried to their cars when the makeshift service was over. All but one woman, whom Ruth judged to be about her mother’s age; she was dressed in black, she even wore a black veil, and she hovered in the vicinity of her shiny black Lincoln as if she couldn’t bear to leave. When the wind lifted her veil, her skin appeared to be stretched too tightly over her skull. The woman whose skeleton was threatening to break through her skin stared at Ruth so intently that Ruth jumped to the conclusion that the woman must be the angry widow who’d written her that hateful letter—the so-called widow for the rest of her life. Taking Allan’s hand, Ruth alerted him to the woman’s presence.

  “I haven’t lost a husband yet, so she’s come to gloat over the fact that I’ve lost a father!” Ruth said to Allan, but Eddie O’Hare was within hearing distance.

  “I’ll take care of this,” Eddie told Ruth. Eddie knew who the woman was.

  It was not the angry widow—it was Mrs. Vaughn. Eduardo had spotted her first, of course; he’d interpreted Mrs. Vaughn’s presence as another reminder of the fate to which he was doomed. (The gardener was hiding in the schoolhouse, hoping his former employer would miraculously disappear.)

  It was not that her skeleton was breaking through her skin; rather, her alimony had included a sizable allotment for cosmetic surgery, of which Mrs. Vaughn had partaken to excess. When Eddie took her arm and helped her in the direction of the shiny black Lincoln, Mrs. Vaughn did not resist.

  “Do I know you?” she asked Eddie.

  “Yes,” he told her. “I was a boy once. I knew you when I was a boy.” Her bird’s-feet fingers were like claws on his wrist; her veiled eyes eagerly searched his face.

  “You saw the drawings!” Mrs. Vaughn whispered. “You carried me into my house!”

  “Yes,” Eddie admitted.

  “She looks just like her mother, doesn’t she?” Mrs. Vaughn asked Eddie. She meant Ruth, of course, and Eddie disagreed, but he knew how to talk to older women.

  “In some ways, yes—she does,” Eddie replied. “She looks a little bit like her mother.” He helped Mrs. Vaughn into the driver’s seat. (Eduardo Gomez would not leave the schoolhouse until he saw the shiny black Lincoln drive safely away.)

  “Oh, I think she looks a lot like her mother!” Mrs. Vaughn told Eddie.

  “I think she looks like her mother and father both, ” Eddie tactfully replied.

  “Oh, no!” Mrs. Vaughn cried. “ No one looks like her father! He was one of a kind!”

  “Yes, you could say that,” Eddie told Mrs. Vaughn. He closed he
r car door and held his breath until he heard the Lincoln start; then he rejoined Allan and Ruth.

  “Who was she?” Ruth asked him.

  “One of your father’s old girlfriends,” Eddie told her. Hannah, who heard him, looked after the departing Lincoln with a journalist’s fleeting curiosity.

  “I had a dream they’d all be here, all his old girlfriends,” Ruth said.

  Actually, there was one other, but Ruth never knew who she was. She was an overweight woman who’d introduced herself to Ruth before the service in the schoolhouse. She was plump and fiftyish, with a contrite expression. “You don’t know me,” she’d said to Ruth, “but I knew your father. Actually, my mother and I knew him. My mother committed suicide, too, so I’m very sorry—I know how you must feel.”

  “Your name is . . .” Ruth had said, shaking the woman’s hand.

  “Oh, my maiden name was Mountsier,” the woman said in a self-deprecating way. “But you wouldn’t know me. . . .” Then she’d slipped away.

  “Gloria—I think she said that was her name,” Ruth told Eddie, but Eddie didn’t know who she was. ( Glorie was her name, of course—the late Mrs. Mountsier’s troubled daughter. But she’d slipped away.)

  Allan insisted that Eddie and Hannah join him and Ruth at the Sagaponack house for a drink after the service. By then it had begun to rain, and Conchita had finally freed Eduardo from the schoolhouse and taken him home to Sag Harbor. For once (or once again) there was something stronger than beer and wine in the Sagaponack house; Ted had bought an excellent single-malt Scotch whiskey.

  “Maybe Daddy bought the bottle because he was thinking of this occasion,” Ruth said. They sat at the dining-room table, where, once in a story, a little girl named Ruthie had sat with her daddy while the moleman waited in hiding under a standing lamp.

  Eddie O’Hare had not been in the house since the summer of ’58. Hannah had not been in the house since she’d fucked Ruth’s father. Ruth thought of this, but she refrained from comment; although her throat ached, she didn’t cry.

  Allan wanted to show Eddie his idea for the squash court in the barn. Since Ruth had given up the game, Allan had a plan to convert the court into either an office for himself or an office for Ruth. That way, one of them could work in the house—in Ted’s former workroom— and the other could work in the barn.

  Ruth was disappointed that she didn’t get to go off with Eddie alone, because she could have talked all day to him about her mother. (Eddie had brought with him Alice Somerset’s other two novels.) But with Eddie and Allan in the barn, Ruth was left alone with Hannah.

  “You know what I’m going to ask you, baby,” Hannah told her friend. Of course Ruth knew.

  “Ask away, Hannah.”

  “Have you had sex yet? I mean with Allan,” Hannah said.

  “Yes, I have,” Ruth replied. She felt the good whiskey warming her mouth, her throat, her stomach. She wondered when she would stop missing her father, or if she would stop missing him.

  “And?” Hannah asked.

  “Allan has the biggest cock I’ve ever seen,” Ruth said.

  “I didn’t think you liked big schlongs, or is it someone else who said that?” Hannah asked.

  “It’s not too big,” Ruth said. “It’s just the right size for me.”

  “So you’re fine? And you’re getting married? You’re gonna try to have a kid? The whole deal, right?” Hannah asked her.

  “I’m fine, yes,” Ruth replied. “The whole deal, yes.”

  “But what happened ?” Hannah asked her.

  “What do you mean, Hannah?”

  “I mean, you’re so calm—something must have happened, ” Hannah said.

  “Well. My best friend fucked my father, then my father killed himself, and I found out that my mother is a journeyman sort of writer— is that what you mean?”

  “All right, all right—I deserve that,” Hannah said. “But what happened to you ? You’re different . Something happened to you.”

  “I’ve had my last bad boyfriend, if that’s what you mean,” Ruth replied.

  “Okay, okay. Keep it to yourself,” Hannah said. “ Something happened. But I don’t care. Go on and keep it to yourself.”

  Ruth poured her friend a little more of the single-malt Scotch whiskey. “This is good, isn’t it?” Ruth asked.

  “You’re a weird one,” Hannah told her. It struck a chord. It was what Rooie had told Ruth the first time Ruth refused to stand in the wardrobe closet among the shoes.

  “Nothing happened, Hannah,” Ruth lied. “Don’t people simply come to a point when they want their lives to change, when they want a new life?”

  “Yeah . . . I wouldn’t know,” Hannah answered. “Maybe they do. But only because something happens to them.”

  Ruth’s First Wedding

  Allan Albright and Ruth Cole were married over the long Thanksgiving weekend, which they spent at Ruth’s house in Vermont. Hannah, together with a bad boyfriend, was a weekend-long houseguest, as was Eddie O’Hare, who gave the bride away. (Hannah was Ruth’s maid of honor.) With Minty’s help, Eddie had identified that George Eliot passage about marriage—Ruth wanted Hannah to read it at her wedding. Of course Minty couldn’t resist a small lecture upon his success in locating the passage.

  “You see, Edward,” Minty informed his son, “a passage of this kind, which is a summation—both in its content and in its tone—is certain to be an opening passage to a chapter or, more likely, a concluding passage. And as it suggests some deeper finality, it is more likely a passage to be found near the end of a book than it is to be found near the beginning.”

  “I see,” Eddie said. “What book is it from?”

  “The hint of irony gives it away,” Minty intoned. “That, and its bittersweet quality. It’s like a pastoral, but more than a pastoral.”

  “Which novel is it, Dad?” Eddie begged his father.

  “Why, it’s Adam Bede, Edward,” the old English teacher told his son. “And it’s well suited for your friend’s wedding, which is a November wedding, the same month Adam Bede himself was married to Dinah— ‘on a rimy morning in parting November,’ ” Minty quoted from memory. “That’s from the first sentence of the last chapter, not counting the Epilogue,” the old English teacher added.

  Eddie felt exhausted, but he’d identified the passage, as Ruth had asked him to.

  At Ruth’s wedding, Hannah read from George Eliot with a lack of conviction, but the words themselves were alive for Ruth.

  “What greater thing is there for two human souls, than to feel that they are joined for life—to strengthen each other in all labor, to rest on each other in all sorrow, to minister to each other in all pain, to be one with each other in silent unspeakable memories at the moment of the last parting?”

  What greater thing is there, indeed? Ruth wondered. She thought she had only begun to love Allan; she believed she was already loving him more than she’d ever loved anyone else, except her dad.

  The civil ceremony, which was conducted by a local justice of the peace, was held in Ruth’s favorite bookstore in Manchester, Vermont. The booksellers, a man and his wife who were old friends of Ruth’s, were kind enough to close their store for a couple of hours on one of the busiest shopping weekends of the year. After the wedding, the bookstore opened its doors to business-as-usual, but there seemed to be more than the expected numbers of book buyers waiting to be served. Among them were some curiosity seekers. As the new Mrs. Albright (which Ruth Cole would never be called ) left the store on Allan’s arm, she averted her eyes from the bystanders.

  “If there are any journalists, I’ll handle them,” Hannah had whispered to Ruth.

  Eddie was looking all around for Marion, of course.

  “Is she here? Do you see her?” Ruth asked, but Eddie just shook his head.

  Ruth was looking for someone else, too. She was half-expecting that Allan’s ex-wife would show up, although Allan had scoffed at her fears. The subject of children had been
a bitter one between Allan and his former wife, but their divorce had been a joint decision. Harassment was not a part of his ex-wife’s nature, Allan had said.

  On that busy Thanksgiving weekend, they’d had to park at some distance from the bookstore. As they passed a pizza restaurant and a store that sold candles, Ruth realized that they were being followed; notwithstanding that Hannah’s bad boyfriend had the appearance of a bodyguard, someone was following the small wedding party. Allan took Ruth’s arm and hurried her along the sidewalk; they were now near the parking lot. Hannah kept turning to look at the elderly woman who was following them, but the woman was not one to be stared down.

  “She’s not a journalist,” Hannah said.

  “Fuck her—she’s just some old lady,” Hannah’s bad boyfriend said.

  “I’ll handle this,” said Eddie O’Hare. But this older woman was immune to Eddie’s charms.

  “I’m not talking to you. I’m talking to her, ” the elderly woman told Eddie; she was pointing at Ruth.

  “Look, lady—it’s her wedding day. Take a fucking hike,” Hannah said.

  Allan and Ruth stopped walking and faced the old lady, who was out of breath from hurrying after them. “It’s not my ex-wife,” Allan whispered, but Ruth knew this as surely as she knew that the old woman wasn’t her mother.

  “I wanted to see your face,” the elderly lady said to Ruth. In her own way, she was as nondescript as Rooie’s murderer. She was just another older woman who’d let herself go. And with that thought, even before the woman spoke again, Ruth suddenly knew who she was. Who else but a widow for the rest of her life would be so inclined to let herself go?

  “Well, now you’ve seen my face,” Ruth told her. “What next?”