A Widow for One Year

by John Irving

  Eddie saw that all the photographs had been taken down from the walls; they must have been packed in some of the cardboard boxes. Unlike the last time Eddie had seen the house stripped of photographs, the picture hooks had also been removed; the holes in the walls had been filled, and the walls had been freshly painted over or newly wallpapered. A potential buyer would never know how many photographs had once hung there.

  Ruth told Eddie and Hannah that she’d “borrowed” the minister for the wedding service from one of the Bridgehampton churches. He was a big, baffled-looking man with a hearty handshake and a booming baritone voice, which resonated throughout the downstairs of the house and caused the settings on the dining-room table to rattle. Conchita Gomez had already set the table for Thanksgiving dinner.

  Eduardo gave the bride away. Eddie was Harry’s best man. Hannah was Ruth’s maid of honor, which she’d now been twice. At Ruth’s first wedding, it had been Eddie who’d given the bride away; he was relieved not to do so again. Eddie preferred being best man; even though he’d known Harry for less than a month, Eddie had grown very fond of the Dutchman. Hannah was also very fond of Harry, but she still had trouble looking at him.

  Harry had picked a poem to read. Not knowing that Allan had instructed Eddie to read a Yeats poem at Allan’s own memorial service, Harry chose a Yeats poem for his and Ruth’s wedding. Although the poem made Ruth and Hannah and Eddie cry, Ruth loved Harry all the more for it. It was the poem about “being poor,” which (compared to Ruth) Harry certainly was; and Harry read it with the uncompromising vigor with which a first-time policeman might read a criminal his rights.

  The poem was called “He Wishes for the Cloths of Heaven,” and Eduardo and Conchita held hands during Harry’s recitation—as if they were being married all over again.

  Graham was the ring bearer, but he’d misheard the word. The boy expected to be the ring burier . Thus, when it came time for him to hand over the rings, Graham was outraged that an important part of the wedding had been forgotten. When was he supposed to bury the rings, and where? After the service, since Graham was in despair over what he believed was the botched symbolism of the rings, Ruth let the boy bury her and Harry’s rings at the roots of the privet that towered over the swimming pool. Harry paid close attention to the burial site, so that after a certain solemn passage of time, Graham could be shown where to dig the rings up.

  Otherwise, Ruth’s second wedding went without a hitch. Only Hannah noticed that neither Ruth nor Eddie seemed to be on the lookout for Ruth’s mother. If Marion was on their minds, they weren’t showing it. Marion had rarely been much on Hannah’s mind; Hannah, of course, had never met Ruth’s mother.

  The Thanksgiving turkey, which Ruth and Harry had brought from Vermont, would have fed another family in addition to Ruth and Harry and Hannah and Eddie and Eduardo and Conchita; Ruth sent Eduardo and Conchita home with half the leftovers. Graham, suspicious of turkey, demanded a grilled-cheese sandwich instead.

  In the course of the long dinner, Hannah casually inquired of Ruth how much she was asking for the Sagaponack house. The sum was so staggering that Eddie spilled a generous portion of cranberry sauce in his lap, whereas Hannah coolly said to Ruth: “Maybe that’s why you haven’t sold it yet. Maybe you oughtta drop the price down, baby.”

  Eddie had already given up hope that the house would ever be his; he’d certainly given up wanting to share it with Hannah, who was still “between boyfriends” but who nonetheless managed to make herself beautiful for the entire Thanksgiving weekend. (Ruth had noticed that Hannah went to considerable efforts to make herself pretty around Harry.)

  Now that Hannah was once more paying attention to her appearance, Eddie ignored her—her prettiness meant little to him. And Ruth’s unmistakable happiness had dampened Eddie’s yearlong ardor for her; he was back in love with Marion, where he belonged. But what hope had he of seeing or even hearing from Marion? It had been about two months since he’d sent her his books—he’d not heard a word. Eddie had given up expecting to hear from Marion, as had Ruth. ( Marion also hadn’t answered Ruth’s letter.)

  Yet, after almost forty years, what was there to expect? That Marion would deliver a testimonial to her conduct in Toronto? That she would send them an essay on her experiences with expatriation? Surely not even Ruth and Eddie could have expected Marion to show up for Ruth’s second wedding. “After all,” as Hannah whispered to Harry while he refilled her wineglass, “she didn’t show up for the first one.”

  Harry knew when to leave a subject alone. He simply began, in his best impromptu fashion, a kind of unstoppable ode to firewood. No one knew how to respond. All that anyone could do was listen. In fact, Harry had borrowed Kevin Merton’s pickup truck and hauled a half-cord of Vermont hardwood to Long Island.

  Harry was a trifle obsessed with firewood, Eddie had observed. Eddie had not been exactly fascinated by Harry’s wood discussion, which Harry had carried on, at length, over what remained of Thanksgiving dinner. (Harry was still talking about firewood when Eduardo and Conchita went home.) Eddie vastly preferred it when Harry talked about books. Eddie hadn’t met many people who’d read as many books as Harry had—excepting Eddie’s departed father, Minty.

  After dinner, while Harry and Eddie did the dishes, and Hannah got Graham ready for bed and prepared to read him a bedtime story, Ruth stood outside under the stars by the swimming pool; the pool had been partially drained and covered for the coming winter. In the darkness, the U-shaped border of privet that surrounded the pool served as a vast window frame that enclosed her view of the stars.

  Ruth could scarcely remember when the swimming pool and the encircling hedge hadn’t been there, or when the lawn had been the unmown field that her father and mother had argued about. Now it occurred to Ruth that, on other cold nights—when someone else was doing the dishes, and her father or a babysitter had been putting her to bed with a story—her mother must have stood in this yard, under these same pitiless stars. Marion would not have looked to the heavens and thought herself as lucky as her daughter was.

  Ruth knew she’d been lucky. My next book should be about fortune, she thought: about how fortune and misfortune were unequally distributed, if not at birth then in the course of circumstances beyond our control; and in the seemingly random pattern of colliding events—the people we meet, when we meet them, and if or when these important people might chance to meet someone else. Ruth had had only a little misfortune . Why was it that her mother had had such a lot ?

  “Oh, Mommy,” Ruth said, to the cold stars, “come enjoy your grandson while you still can.”

  Upstairs in the master bedroom—in fact, on the same king-size bed where she’d made love to the late Ted Cole—Hannah Grant was still trying to read a bedtime story to the grandson Ted never knew. Hannah hadn’t made much progress; the rituals of teeth-brushing and pajamachoosing had taken longer than she’d expected. Ruth had told Hannah that Graham was crazy about the Madeline books, but Graham wasn’t so sure.

  “Which one am I crazy about?” Graham inquired.

  “All of them,” Hannah said. “Pick the one you want and I’ll read it.”

  “I don’t like Madeline and the Gypsies, ” Graham informed her.

  “Good. We won’t read that one, then,” Hannah said. “I don’t like it, either.”

  “Why?” Graham asked her.

  “For the same reason you don’t like it,” Hannah answered. “Pick one you like. Pick a story, any story.”

  “I’m tired of Madeline’s Rescue, ” Graham told her.

  “Fine. I’m sick of it, too, actually,” Hannah said. “Pick one you like.”

  “I like Madeline and the Bad Hat, ” the boy decided, “but I don’t like Pepito—I really don’t like him.”

  “Isn’t Pepito in Madeline and the Bad Hat ?” Hannah asked.

  “That’s what I don’t like about it,” Graham answered.

  “Graham, you gotta pick a story you do like,” Hannah said.

/>   “Are you getting frustrated?” Graham asked her.

  “Me? Never,” Hannah said. “I got all day.”

  “It’s night,” the boy pointed out. “The day’s over.”

  “How about Madeline in London ?” Hannah suggested.

  “Pepito’s in that one, too,” Graham said.

  “How about just plain old Madeline, the original Madeline ?”

  “What’s ‘original’ mean?” Graham asked.

  “The first one.”

  “I’ve heard that one too many times,” Graham said.

  Hannah hung her head. She’d had a lot of wine with dinner. She truly loved Graham, who was her only godchild, but there were times when he confirmed Hannah’s decision to never have children.

  “I want Madeline’s Christmas, ” Graham finally announced.

  “But it’s only Thanksgiving,” Hannah said. “You wanna Christmas story on Thanksgiving?”

  “You said I could pick any one I wanted.”

  Their voices carried downstairs to the kitchen, where Harry was scrubbing the roasting pan. Eddie was drying a spatula by absently waving it in the air. He’d been speaking to Harry on the subject of tolerance, but he appeared to have lost his train of thought. Their conversation had begun with the issue of in tolerance (largely racial and religious) in the United States, but Harry sensed that Eddie had drifted into a more personal area of discussion; in fact, Eddie was on the verge of confessing his intolerance of Hannah, when Hannah’s very own voice, in her dialogue with Graham, distracted him.

  Harry knew about tolerance. He would not have argued with Eddie, or with one of Eddie’s fellow citizens, that the Dutch are more tolerant than most Americans, but Harry believed this to be the case. He could sense Hannah’s intolerance of Eddie, not only because (in her view) Eddie was pathetic, and because of the sameness of his infatuation with older women, but also because Eddie wasn’t a famous writer.

  There is no intolerance in America that compares to the peculiarly American intolerance for lack of success, Harry thought. And while Harry had no fondness for Eddie’s writing, he liked Eddie a lot, especially because of Eddie’s abiding affection for Ruth. Admittedly, Harry was puzzled by the nature of Eddie’s adoration; the source of it must be the missing mother, Harry guessed—for the ex-cop could tell that what Ruth and Eddie had most in common was Marion’s absence. Her absence was a fundamental part of their lives, like Rooie’s daughter.

  As for Hannah, she called for more tolerance than even the Dutchman was accustomed to bestowing. And Hannah’s affection for Ruth was less certain than Eddie’s. Moreover, in the way that Hannah looked at Harry, the former Sergeant Hoekstra saw something too familiar. Hannah had the heart of a hooker—and a prostitute’s heart, Harry knew, was not the proverbial heart of gold. A prostitute’s heart was chiefly a calculating heart. An affection that was calculated was never trustworthy.

  It’s not the easiest thing to meet the friends of someone you’ve fallen in love with, but Harry knew how to keep his mouth shut and when to be just an observer.

  While Harry set a stockpot to boil on the stove, Eddie inquired of the former policeman what plans he had for enjoying his retirement— for it still puzzled Eddie (and Hannah) as to what Harry might find to do with himself. Would something in law enforcement in Vermont ever interest him? Harry was such an eager yet discriminating reader— might he try to write a novel himself one day? And it was evident that he liked to work with his hands. Would some sort of outdoor job appeal to him?

  But Harry told Eddie that he hadn’t retired to look for another job. He wanted to read more; he wanted to travel, but only when Ruth was free to travel with him. And although Ruth was a halfway-decent cook—that was her own description—Harry was a better cook, and he was the one in the family who had the time to do the grocery shopping. Moreover, Harry was looking forward to doing a lot of things with Graham.

  It was exactly what Hannah had privately confided to Eddie: Ruth had married a housewife! What writer wouldn’t want to have his or her own housewife? Ruth had called Harry her very own policeman, but Harry was really Ruth’s very own housewife .

  When Ruth came in from outside, her hands and face were cold, and she warmed herself by the stockpot, which had begun to bubble.

  “We’ll have turkey soup all weekend,” Harry told her.

  When the dishes were done, Eddie sat with Ruth and Harry in the living room, where the couple had been married only that morning but where Eddie was given the impression that Ruth and Harry had known each other forever; they would know each other forever, Eddie felt certain. The newlyweds sat on the couch—Ruth sipping her wine, Harry drinking his beer. Upstairs they could hear Hannah reading to Graham.

  “That’s how I feel,” Harry said. “Just fine.”

  “Me, too,” Ruth said.

  “To the lucky couple,” said Eddie O’Hare, toasting them with his Diet Coke.

  The three friends raised their glasses. There was the odd, ongoing pleasure of Hannah’s voice, reading to Graham. And Ruth thought again of how lucky she’d been, how she’d suffered only a little misfortune .

  Over that long Thanksgiving weekend, the happy couple dined only once more with Hannah and Eddie, their two unhappy friends.

  “They’ve been fucking all weekend—I’m not kidding,” Hannah whispered to Eddie, when he came to dinner Saturday night. “I swear, they invited me so that I could look after Graham while they snuck off and did it! No wonder they didn’t go on a honeymoon—they didn’t need to! Making me the maid of honor was just an excuse!”

  “Maybe you’re imagining things,” Eddie said, but Hannah truly had been put in an unusual position, at least “unusual” for her. She was in Ruth’s house without a boyfriend, and Hannah was keenly aware that if Ruth and Harry weren’t having sex every minute, they obviously wanted to.

  In addition to a beet salad, Harry had made a terrific turkey soup; he’d baked some cornbread, too. To everyone’s surprise, Harry persuaded Graham to try a little of the soup, which the boy ate with a grilled-cheese sandwich. They were still eating when Ruth’s hard-working real estate agent knocked on the door, bringing with her a bitter-looking woman who was introduced to them all as a “potential buyer.”

  The agent apologized to Ruth for not calling first, not to mention not making an appointment, but the so-called potential buyer had just heard that the house was on the market and she’d insisted on seeing it; she was on her way back to Manhattan that very night.

  “To beat the traffic,” the potential buyer said. Her name was Candida and her sourness emanated from her pinched-together mouth, which was so tightly closed around itself that it must have hurt her to smile—laughter was unthinkable, from such a mouth. Candida might have been as pretty as Hannah once—she was still as thin, and as fashionably attired—but she was now at least Harry’s age, although she looked older; and she seemed more interested in assessing the people at the dining-room table than in the house.

  “Is someone getting divorced?” Candida asked.

  “Actually, they just got married,” Hannah said, pointing to Ruth and Harry. “And we’ve never been divorced or married,” Hannah added, indicating Eddie and herself.

  Candida glanced questioningly at Graham. In Hannah’s answer, there’d been no explanation regarding where Graham had come from. And no explanation would be forthcoming, Hannah decided, staring the sour-looking woman down.

  On the dining-room sideboard, where the remains of the salad course attracted a further look of disapproval from Candida, there was also a copy of the French translation of My Last Bad Boyfriend, which was of great sentimental value to Ruth and Harry—for they looked upon Mon dernier voyou as a fond memento of their falling in love in Paris. The way Candida looked at the novel implied her disapproval of French, too. Ruth hated her. Probably the real estate agent also hated her, and right now the agent was embarrassed.

  A hefty woman who was inclined to chirp, the agent apologized again for intru
ding on their dinner. She was one of those women who rush into real estate after their children have flown the nest. She had a shrill, insecure eagerness to please that was more in keeping with the endless providing of peanut-butter-and-jelly sandwiches than with the selling or buying of houses; yet her enthusiasm, if fragile, was not feigned. She truly wanted everyone to like everything, and since this happened rarely, the real estate agent was easily given to sudden tears.

  Harry offered to turn the lights on in the barn, so that the potential buyer could see the office space on the second floor, but Candida announced that she wasn’t looking for a house in the Hamptons because she wanted to spend time in a barn. She wanted to look around upstairs—she was most interested in bedrooms, Candida said—and so the agent traipsed off with her. Graham, who was bored, went after them.

  “My fucking underwear’s all over the guest-room floor,” Hannah whispered to Eddie, who could imagine it—who had already imagined it.

  When Harry and Ruth went into the kitchen to fuss with the dessert, Hannah whispered to Eddie: “You know what they do in bed together?”

  “I can imagine what Ruth and Harry do in bed together,” Eddie whispered to Hannah, in response. “I’m sure I don’t need to be told .”

  “He reads to her,” Hannah whispered. “It goes on for hours . Sometimes she reads to him, but I can hear him better.”

  “I thought you said they fucked all the time.”

  “I meant all day. At night, he reads to her—it’s sick,” Hannah added.

  Once more, Eddie was overcome with envy and longing. “Your average housewife doesn’t do that,” he whispered to Hannah, to which she responded with a drop-dead glare.

  “What are you two whispering about?” Ruth called from the kitchen.