A Widow for One Year (84 page)

“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 intruding 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.

“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.)