by John Irving
“Maybe we’re having an affair,” Hannah answered, which caused Eddie to cringe.
They were eating the apple pie when the real estate agent brought Candida back into the dining room—Graham trailing malevolently behind them. “It’s too much house for me,” Candida announced. “I’m divorced.” The agent, in hurrying after her departing client, gave Ruth a look full of imminent tears.
“Did she have to say she was divorced?” Hannah asked. “I mean, who couldn’t tell she was divorced?”
“She looked at one of the books Harry is reading,” Graham reported. “And she stared at your bra and your underpants, Hannah.”
“There are people who do that, baby,” Hannah said.
That night Eddie O’Hare fell asleep in his modest house on the north side of Maple Lane, where the tracks of the Long Island Rail Road ran not more than two hundred feet from the headboard of his bed. He was so tired—for tiredness often overcame him when he was depressed— that he was not awakened by the passing of the eastbound 3:21. At that hour of the morning, the eastbound train usually woke him, but on this particular Sunday morning he slept right through . . . that is, until the westbound passage of the 7:17. (On weekdays, Eddie was awakened earlier than this every morning—by the westbound 6:12.)
Hannah called him when he was still making coffee.
“I gotta get outta here,” Hannah whispered. She’d tried to get a seat on the jitney, but the buses were booked solid. She had earlier planned to leave that evening on the westbound 6:01 to Penn Station. “But I gotta leave sooner than that,” Hannah informed him. “I’m going nuts— the lovebirds are driving me crazy. I figured you knew the trains.”
Oh, yes—Eddie knew the trains. As for an afternoon train, there was a westbound 4:01 on Saturdays, Sundays, and holidays. You could almost always get a seat in Bridgehampton. Nevertheless, Eddie warned Hannah that if the train was unusually crowded, she might have to stand.
“You think some guy won’t offer me his seat, or at least let me sit in his lap?” Hannah asked. The thought of this further depressed Eddie, but he agreed to pick up Hannah and drive her to the Bridgehampton station. The foundation, which was all that remained of the derelict station, was virtually next door to Eddie’s house. And Hannah told Eddie that Harry had already promised to take Graham for a walk on the beach in the late afternoon—at the exact same time Ruth had declared she wanted to take a long bath.
There was a cold rain that Sunday at the end of the Thanksgiving weekend. In her bath, Ruth remembered that it was the anniversary of the night her father had made her drive him to the Stanhope, where Ted had taken so many of his women. En route he’d told her the story of what had happened to Thomas and Timothy, while Ruth had kept her eyes on the road. Now Ruth stretched out in her bath, hoping that Harry had dressed himself and Graham properly for their walk on the beach in the rain.
When Eddie picked up Hannah, the Dutchman and the boy were getting into Kevin Merton’s pickup truck in their oilskin slickers and their broad-brimmed sou’wester hats. Graham also wore a knee-high pair of rubber boots, but Harry had on his familiar running shoes, which he never cared about getting wet. (What had worked for him in de Wallen would suffice for the beach.)
Because the weather was bad, only a modest number of New Yorkers were returning to the city on the late-afternoon train; many more of them had left earlier. By the time it arrived in Bridgehampton, the westbound 4:01 was less than packed.
Hannah said: “At least I won’t have to give up my virginity or something, just to get a fucking seat.”
“Take care of yourself, Hannah,” Eddie told her—with genuine concern, if not total affection.
“You’re the one who should take care of himself, Eddie.”
“I know how to take care of myself,” Eddie protested.
“Let me tell you something, my funny friend,” Hannah said. “Time doesn’t stop.” She took his hands and kissed him on both his cheeks. It was what Hannah did, instead of a handshake. Sometimes she’d fucked people instead of shaking their hands.
“What do you mean?” Eddie asked.
“It’s been almost forty years, Eddie. It’s time you got over it!”
Then the train left and took her away. The westbound 4:01 left Eddie standing in the rain, where Hannah’s remarks had turned him to stone. Her remarks were of the nature of such a long-standing sorrow that Eddie carried them with him throughout the inattentive cooking and eating of his Sunday-night supper.
“Time doesn’t stop” echoed in Eddie’s mind long after he’d plopped a marinated tuna steak on his outdoor grill. (The gas barbecue, on the front porch of Eddie’s unimpressive house, was at least protected from the rain.) “It’s been almost forty years, Eddie.” Eddie repeated this to himself while he ate his tuna steak, together with a boiled potato and a handful of boiled frozen peas. “It’s time you got over it!” he said aloud, as he washed his one dish and his wineglass. When he wanted another Diet Coke, Eddie was so despondent that he drank straight from the can.
The house trembled at the passing of the westbound 6:01—the later but not the latest of the westbound Sunday trains. “I hate trains!” Eddie shouted, for not even his nearest neighbor could have heard him above the noise of the clattering train.
The whole house shook again for the passing of the 8:04, which was indeed the last of the westbound Sunday trains. “Fuck you!” Eddie yelled pointlessly.
No kidding—it was time he got over it. But he would never get over Marion. Eddie knew he would never get over her.
Marion at Seventy-Six
Maple Lane, appropriately, is lined for half its length by dozens of old maple trees. A few other types of trees—an oak or two, some decorative Bradford pears—are mixed in with the maples. Approaching from the east, one forms a primary impression that is favorable. Maple Lane seems to be a well-shaded, small-town street.
Cars are parked in driveways—some residents park on the street, under the trees—and the presence of children is indicated by the occasional bike or trike or skateboard. Everything speaks of a comfortable if not grand middle-class population. The dogs, unfortunately, speak for themselves—and loudly. Indeed, the dogs watch over what is the heart of Eddie O’Hare’s neighborhood with a protectiveness that suggests to the outsider or passerby that these modest-looking houses must be vastly more chock-full of wealth than they appear to be.
Moving west on Maple Lane, Chester Street goes off to the south, revealing more pleasant, charmingly shaded houses. But then, almost exactly halfway along the lane—at that point where Corwith Avenue also heads south, to Main Street—the whole aspect of Maple Lane abruptly changes.
The north side of the street turns entirely commercial. From Eddie’s front porch, both a NAPA Auto Parts and a John Deere dealership are visible—they share a long, ugly building with the replete charmlessness of a utility shed. There’s also Gregory Electric, in an arguably less offensive frame building, and Iron Horse Graphics, which occupies a fairly good-looking modern structure. The small brick building (Battle Iron and Bronze) is positively handsome, but for the fact that in front of it—in front of all these buildings—is a wide, unkempt, continuous parking area, monotonously composed of gravel. And behind these commercial buildings is, finally, the defining feature of Maple Lane: the tracks of the Long Island Rail Road, which run parallel to the lane and lie within a stone’s throw north of it.
In one open lot, an unsteady-looking pile of track sections is stacked, and beyond the tracks are mounded heaps of sand, topsoil, and gravel—the storage area for Hamptons Materials, Inc., which is marked by a very prominent sign.
On the south side of Maple Lane, only a few private homes are squeezed alongside more commercial property—including the office for the Hampton Tank and Gas Service. Thereafter, the south side of the lane falls apart altogether. There are some seedy bushes, dirt, more gravel, and—especially in the summer months, or on holiday weekends—a line of cars parked at right angles to the str
eet. Albeit rarely, the line of parked cars might extend for a hundred yards or more, but now—on a desolate Sunday night at the end of the long Thanksgiving weekend—only a few cars are parked there. It has the appearance of a neglected used-car lot. However, in the absence of cars, the parking area looks worse than abandoned—it seems hopeless. All the more so for its proximity to the unhappy structure on the north side and poorer end of the street—the aforementioned relict of the former Bridgehampton railroad station.
The foundation is cracked. Two small, prefabricated shelters stand in mock replacement of what the station house used to be. There are two benches. (On this cold, wet Sunday night in late November, no one is sitting on either bench.) A hedge of ill-tended privet has been planted in an apologetic effort to disguise the degeneration of the once-prosperous railroad. The forlorn remnant of the station, an unsheltered telephone box, and a tarred platform that runs for fifty yards along the tracks . . . alas, for the predominantly well-to-do village of Bridgehampton, this passes for a rail-transportation site.
Along this sorry stretch of Maple Lane, the surface of the street is patchy asphalt that has been laid over the original cement. The verges are gravelly and ill defined; there are no sidewalks. And on this particular November night, there is no traffic. Busy traffic conditions don’t often occur or long prevail on Maple Lane, not only because the town of Bridgehampton is served by surprisingly few passenger trains but also because the trains themselves are cinder-stained relics. The passengers must disembark the old-fashioned way—namely, by clambering down the rusted steps at the end of each car.
Ruth Cole, and most travelers to and from New York who were in her income bracket, never took the train; Ruth took the jitney instead. Eddie, although he was decidedly not in Ruth’s income bracket, usually took the jitney to and from New York, too.
In Bridgehampton, not even a half-dozen local taxis await the arrival of those trains likely to have more than one or two off-loading passengers—for example, the Friday evening Cannonball Express, which arrives at 6:07 sharp (following a 4:01 departure from Penn Station). But, generally speaking, the west end of Maple Lane is a scruffy, sad, deserted place. The cars and taxis rushing east on the lane or south on Corwith Avenue, after a train’s brief appearance at the station platform, seem to be in a big hurry to get away from there.
Is it any wonder that Eddie O’Hare wanted to get away from there, too?
Of all the Sunday nights in the year—in the Hamptons, particularly— the Sunday night that marks the end of the long Thanksgiving weekend is conceivably the loneliest. Even Harry Hoekstra, who had every reason to be happy, could feel the loneliness of it. At fifteen minutes past eleven on that Sunday night, Harry was indulging in a favorite, newfound pastime. The retired police officer was pissing on the lawn behind Ruth’s Sagaponack house. The former Sergeant Hoekstra had seen several street prostitutes and drug addicts pissing on the streets of the red-light district; yet until he’d experienced the Vermont woods and fields, and the lawns of Long Island, Harry hadn’t known how entirely satisfying an outdoor act of urination could be.
“Are you peeing outside again, Harry?” Ruth called.
“I’m looking at the stars,” Harry lied.
There were no stars to look at. Although the rain had finally stopped, the sky was black and the air had turned much colder. The storm had blown out to sea, but the northwest wind was sharp; whatever weather the wind was bringing, the sky was still overcast. It was a dreary night, by anyone’s standards. The faint glow on the northern horizon was caused by the headlights of those cars carrying the few New Yorkers who’d not already returned to New York; the Montauk Highway, even in the westbound lane, had remarkably little traffic for any Sunday night. The foul weather had sent everyone home early. Rain is the best policeman, Harry remembered.
And then the train whistle made its mournful sound. It was the whistle for the eastbound 11:17, the last train of the night. Harry shivered and went back inside the house.
It was because of the eastbound 11:17 that Eddie O’Hare had not gone to bed; he’d waited up because he couldn’t stand to be lying awake in his trembling bed when the train arrived and then departed. Eddie always went to bed after the eastbound 11:17.
Since the rain had stopped, Eddie had dressed himself warmly and stood outside on his porch. The arrival of the 11:17 attracted the cacophonous attention of the neighborhood dogs, but not a single car passed. Who would be taking an eastbound train to the Hamptons at the end of the Thanksgiving weekend? Nobody, Eddie thought, although he heard one car leave the parking area at the west end of Maple Lane; it drove off in the direction of Butter Lane—it didn’t pass Eddie’s house.
Eddie continued to stand in the cold on his porch, listening to the departing train. After the dogs stopped barking and the train could no longer be heard, he tried to enjoy the brief tranquillity, the unusual quietude.
The northwest wind was definitely bringing the winter with it. The cold air blew over the warmer water in the puddles that dotted Maple Lane. Out of the resultant fog, Eddie suddenly heard the sound of wheels, but they were like the wheels on a child’s toy truck—they gave off a barely audible sound, although by now the sound of the wheels had got the attention of a dog or two.
A woman was making her way through the fog. Behind her, she was pulling one of those suitcases you see most frequently in airports—a suitcase on little wheels. Given the broken surface of the street—the cracked pavement, the gravelly verge, not to mention the puddles— the woman was struggling with her suitcase, which was better equipped for airports than the wrong end of Maple Lane.
In the darkness and the fog, the woman appeared to be of no specific age. She was of above-average height—quite thin, but not exactly frail; yet even in her shapeless raincoat, which she’d gathered tightly around her in the cold, her body was still shapely. It was not like an elderly woman’s body at all, although Eddie could now discern that she was an older woman—albeit a beautiful one.
Not knowing if the woman saw him standing in the darkness of his porch—and being, therefore, as careful as he could be not to startle her—Eddie said: “Excuse me. May I help you?”
“Hello, Eddie,” Marion said. “Yes, you certainly may help me. I’ve been thinking about how much I would like you to help me for what seems like the longest time.”
What did they talk about, after thirty-seven years? (If it had happened to you, what would you have talked about first ?)
“Grief can be contagious, Eddie,” Marion told him, as he took her raincoat and hung it in his front-hall closet. It was only a two-bedroom house. The single guest room was small and airless, and at the top of the stairs—near the equally small room that Eddie used for his office. The master bedroom was downstairs; one could look into it from the living room, where Marion now sat on the couch.
As Eddie started upstairs with her suitcase, Marion stopped him by saying: “I’ll sleep with you, Eddie—if it’s all right. I’m not terribly good on stairs.”
“Of course it’s all right,” Eddie told her, taking her suitcase into his bedroom.
“Grief is contagious,” Marion began again. “I didn’t want you to catch my grief, Eddie. I really didn’t want Ruth to catch it.”
Had there been other young men in her life? One can’t blame Eddie for asking her. Younger men had always been attracted to Marion. But who among them could ever have matched her memory of those two young men she lost? There hadn’t been one younger man who’d even matched her memory of Eddie ! What Marion had begun with Eddie had ended with him.
One can’t blame Eddie for then asking her if she had known older men. (After all, he was more familiar with that kind of attraction.) But when Marion had accepted the companionship of older men— widowers primarily, but divorcés and intrepid bachelors as well— she’d discovered that even older men found mere “companionship” insufficient; naturally they’d wanted sex, too. And Marion didn’t want sex—after Eddie, she honestly hadn’t
wanted it.
“I’m not saying sixty times was enough,” she told him, “but you did set a standard.”
At first Eddie thought it must have been the happy news of Ruth’s second wedding that had finally drawn Marion out of Canada, but although Marion was pleased to learn of her daughter’s good fortune, she confessed to Eddie that she’d not heard a word about Harry Hoekstra until Eddie told her.
Naturally it then occurred to Eddie to ask Marion why she’d come back to the Hamptons now . When Eddie considered all the times that he and Ruth had half-expected Marion to make an appearance . . . well, why now ?
“I heard the house was for sale,” Marion told him. “It was never the house I had to get away from—it was never you, either, Eddie.”
She’d kicked off her shoes, which were wet, and through her sleek pantyhose, which were tinted a pale-tan color, her toenails were painted the fiery pink of the beach roses that grew wild behind the dreaded Mrs. Vaughn’s Southampton estate.
“Your former house is an expensive house, nowadays,” Eddie ventured to say. He couldn’t bring himself to mention the exact amount that Ruth wanted.
As always, he loved what Marion was wearing. She had on a long skirt, which was a dark charcoal-gray, and a crewneck cashmere sweater of salamandrine-orange, an almost tropical pastel color, similar to that pink cashmere cardigan she’d been wearing when Eddie first met her— the sweater that he’d been so obsessed with, until his mother gave it away to some faculty wife.
“How much is the house?” Marion asked him.
When Eddie told her, Marion sighed. She’d been away from the Hamptons too long; she had no idea how the real estate market had flourished. “I’ve made a fair amount of money,” Marion said. “I’ve done better than I deserve to have done, considering what I’ve written. But I haven’t made that much money.”
“I haven’t made very much money from my writing at all,” Eddie admitted, “but I can sell this house anytime I want to.” Marion had politely made a point of not looking at her somewhat shabby surroundings. (Maple Lane was Maple Lane, and the years of Eddie’s summer rentals had taken their toll inside the house, too.)