A Widow for One Year (16 page)

“What do you want?” Mrs. Vaughn asked. Then she looked past Eddie at Ted’s car. Before Eddie could answer, she asked him: “Where is he? Isn’t he coming? What’s wrong?”

“He couldn’t make it,” Eddie informed her, “but he wanted you to have . . . these.” In the wild wind, he didn’t dare hold out the drawings to her; awkwardly, he still hugged them to his chest.

“He couldn’t make it?” she repeated. “What does that mean?”

“I don’t know,” Eddie lied. “But there are all these drawings . . . May I put them down somewhere?” he begged.

“
What
drawings? Oh . . . the
drawings
! Oh . . .” said Mrs. Vaughn, as if someone had struck her in the stomach. She stepped back, tripping on the long white robe—she nearly fell. Eddie followed her inside, feeling like her executioner. The polished marble floor reflected the overhanging chandelier; in the distance, through an open pair of double doors, a second chandelier hung above a dining-room table. The house looked like an art museum; the far-off dining room was as big as a banquet hall. Eddie walked (for what seemed to him to be a mile or so) to the table, and put the drawings down, not realizing until he turned to go that Mrs. Vaughn had followed as closely and silently behind him as his shadow. When she saw the topmost drawing—one of her with her son—she gasped.

“He’s giving them to
me
!” she cried. “He doesn’t
want
them?”

“I don’t know,” Eddie said miserably. Mrs. Vaughn rapidly leafed through the drawings until she got to the first nude; then she overturned the stack, taking the last drawing off the bottom, which was now the top. Eddie began to edge away; he knew what the last drawing was.

“Oh . . .” Mrs. Vaughn said, as if she’d been punched again. “But when is he coming?” she called after Eddie. “He’s coming Friday, isn’t he? I have the whole day to see him Friday—he knows I have the whole day. He
knows
!” Eddie tried to keep walking. He heard her bare feet on the marble floor—she was scampering after him. She caught up to him under the big chandelier. “Stop!” she shouted. “Is he coming Friday?”

“I don’t know,” Eddie repeated, backing out the door. The wind tried to keep him inside.

“Yes, you
do
know!” Mrs. Vaughn screamed. “Tell me!”

She followed him outside, but the wind almost knocked her down. Her robe blew open; she struggled to close it. Eddie would always retain this vision of her, as if to remind himself of what the worst kind of nakedness was—the utterly unwanted glimpse of Mrs. Vaughn’s slack breasts and her dark triangle of matted pubic hair.

“Stop!” she cried again, but the sharp stones in the driveway prevented her from following him to the car. She bent down and picked up a handful of the pebbles, which she threw at Eddie. Most of them struck the Chevy.

“Did he
show
you those drawings? Did you
look
at them? Goddamn you—you looked at them,
didn’t
you?” she cried.

“No,” Eddie lied.

As Mrs. Vaughn bent down to pick up another handful of stones, a gust of wind blew her off balance. Like a gunshot, the front door behind her slammed shut.

“My God. I’m locked out!” she said to Eddie.

“Isn’t there another door that’s
un
locked?” he asked. (The mansion must have had a dozen doors!)

“I thought Ted was coming. He likes all the doors to be locked,” said Mrs. Vaughn.

“You don’t hide a key somewhere for emergencies?” Eddie asked.

“I sent the gardener home. Ted doesn’t like the gardener to be around,” said Mrs. Vaughn. “The gardener has an emergency key.”

“Can’t you call the gardener?”

“On what
phone
?” shouted Mrs. Vaughn. “You’ll have to break in.”

“Me?”
the sixteen-year-old said.

“Well, you know how to do it, don’t you?” the small, dark woman asked. “
I
don’t know how to do it!” she wailed.

There were no open windows because of the air-conditioning; the Vaughns had air-conditioning because of their art collection, which was also why there were no open windows. By a garden in the back, there were French doors, but Mrs. Vaughn warned Eddie that the glass was of a special thickness and laced with chicken wire, which made it nearly impenetrable. By swinging a rock, which he tied up in his T-shirt, Eddie was finally able to smash the glass, but he still needed to find one of the gardener’s tools in order to rip the chicken wire sufficiently for his hand to fit through the hole and unlock the door from the inside. The rock, which was a centerpiece to the birdbath in the garden, had dirtied Eddie’s T-shirt, which had also been cut by the breaking glass. He decided to leave his shirt, and the rock, in the smashed glass by the now-open door.

But Mrs. Vaughn, who was barefoot, insisted that he carry her into the house through the French doors; she didn’t want to risk cutting her feet on the broken glass. Bare-chested, Eddie carried her into her house—being careful, as he reached around her, not to get his hands on the wrong side of her robe. She seemed to weigh next to nothing, barely more than Ruth. But when he held her in his arms, even so briefly, her strong smell came close to overpowering him. Her scent was indescribable; Eddie couldn’t say what she smelled like, only that the scent made him gag. When he put her down, she sensed his unconcealed revulsion.

“You look as if you’re disgusted,” she told him. “How
dare
you—how dare you detest
me
?” Eddie was standing in a room he’d never been in before. He didn’t know his way to the big chandelier at the main entrance, and when he turned to look for the French doors to the garden, a maze of open doorways confronted him; he also didn’t know how to find the door he’d just come in.

“How do I get out?” he asked Mrs. Vaughn.

“How dare you detest me?” she repeated. “You’re not exactly living an unsordid life yourself—are you?” Mrs. Vaughn asked the boy.

“Please . . . I want to go home,” Eddie told her. It wasn’t until he spoke that he realized he really meant it, and that he meant Exeter, New Hampshire—not Sagaponack. Eddie meant that he
really
wanted to go home. It was a weakness he would carry with him for the rest of his life: he would always be inclined to cry in front of older women, as he’d once cried in front of Marion—as he now commenced to cry in front of Mrs. Vaughn.

Without another word she took him by his wrist and led him through the museum of her house to the chandelier at the front door. The touch of her small, cold hand was like a bird’s foot, as if a diminutive parrot or a parakeet had grabbed hold of him. When she opened the door and pushed him into the wind, a number of doors slammed in the interior of her house, and as he turned to say good-bye, he saw the sudden whirlwind of Ted’s terrible drawings—the wind had blown them off the dining-room table.

Eddie couldn’t speak, nor could Mrs. Vaughn. When she heard the drawings fluttering behind her, she wheeled around in her big white robe, as if preparing herself for an attack. Indeed, before the front door again slammed shut in the wind, like a second gunshot, Mrs. Vaughn
was
about to be attacked. Surely she would recognize in those drawings at least a measure of the degree to which she’d allowed herself to be assaulted.

“She threw
rocks
at you?” Marion asked Eddie.

“They were little stones—most of them hit the car,” Eddie admitted.

“She made you
carry
her?” Marion asked.

“She was barefoot,” Eddie explained again. “There was all this broken glass!”

“And you left your shirt?
Why?
”

“It was ruined—it was just a T-shirt.”

As for Ted, his conversation with Eddie was a little different.

“What did she mean—she has ‘the whole day’ Friday?” Ted asked. “Does she expect me to spend
the whole day
with her?”

“I don’t know,” the sixteen-year-old said.

“Why did she think you’d looked at the drawings?” Ted asked. “
Did
you—did you look at them?”

“No,” Eddie lied.

“Christ, of course you did,” Ted said.

“She exposed herself to me,” Eddie told him.

“Jesus! She did
what
?”

“She didn’t mean to,” Eddie admitted, “but she exposed herself. It was the wind—it blew her robe open.”

“Jesus Christ . . .” Ted said.

“She locked herself out of her house, because of you,” Eddie told him. “She said you wanted all the doors locked, and that you didn’t like the gardener to be around.”

“She told you that?”

“I had to break into her house—I smashed in the French doors with a part of the birdbath. I had to carry her through the broken glass,” Eddie complained. “I lost my shirt.”

“Who cares about your
shirt
?” Ted shouted. “I can’t spend
the whole day
with her Friday! I’ll have you drop me off there the first thing Friday morning, but you
must
come back to get me in forty-five minutes. Forget that—in half an hour! I couldn’t possibly spend forty-five minutes with that crazy woman.”

“You just have to trust me, Eddie,” Marion told him. “I’m going to tell you what we’re going to do.”

“Okay,” Eddie said. He couldn’t stop thinking about the worst of the drawings. He wanted to tell Marion about Mrs. Vaughn’s smell, but he couldn’t describe it.

“On Friday morning you’re going to leave him at Mrs. Vaughn’s,” Marion began.

“I know!” the boy said. “For half an hour.”

“No,
not
for half an hour,” Marion informed the sixteen-year-old. “You’re going to leave him with her and
not
come back to pick him up. It will take him most of the day to get home by himself without a car. I’ll bet you anything that Mrs. Vaughn won’t offer to drive him.”

“But what will he
do
?” Eddie asked.

“You mustn’t be afraid of Ted,” Marion reminded him. “What will he
do
? It will probably occur to him that the only person he knows in Southampton is Dr. Leonardis.” (Dave Leonardis was one of Ted’s regular squash opponents.) “It will take Ted half an hour or forty-five minutes just to walk to Dr. Leonardis’s office,” Marion continued. “And
then
what will he do? He’ll have to wait all day, until all of Leonardis’s patients have gone home, before he can get a ride home with the doctor—unless one of Leonardis’s patients is someone Ted knows, or someone who happens to be driving in the direction of Sagaponack.”

“Ted’s going to be furious,” Eddie warned her.

“You just have to trust me, Eddie.”

“Okay.”

“After you drive Ted to Mrs. Vaughn’s, you’re going to come back here and get Ruth,” Marion went on. “Then you’re going to take Ruth to her doctor to get her stitches out. Then I want you to take Ruth to the beach. Let her get wet—let her
celebrate
having her stitches out.”

“Excuse me,” Eddie interrupted. “Why doesn’t one of the nannies take Ruth to the beach?”

“There will be no nannies on Friday,” Marion informed him. “I need the day, or as much of the day as you can give me, to be alone here.”

“But what are you going to do?” Eddie asked.

“I’m going to tell you,” she told him again. “You just have to trust me, completely.”

“Okay,” he said, but for the first time Eddie knew that he
didn’t
trust Marion—not completely. After all, he was her pawn; he’d already had the sort of day that a pawn might have.

“I looked at the drawings of Mrs. Vaughn,” he confessed to Marion.

“Merciful heavens,” she said to him. He didn’t want to cry again, but he allowed her to pull his face into her breasts; he let her hold him there while he struggled to say what he felt.

“In the drawings, she was somehow
more
than naked,” he began.

“I know,” Marion whispered to him. She kissed the top of his head.

“It was not
just
that she was naked,” Eddie insisted. “It was as if you could see everything that she must have submitted to. She looked like she’d been
tortured
or something.”

“I know,” Marion said again. “I’m so sorry. . . .”

“Also, the wind blew her robe open and I
saw
her,” Eddie blurted out. “She was exposed only for a second, but it was as if I already knew everything about her.” Then he realized what it was about Mrs. Vaughn’s smell. “And when I had to pick her up and carry her,” Eddie said, “I noticed her smell—like on the pillows, only stronger. It made me gag.”

“What did she smell like?” Marion asked him.

“Like something dead,” Eddie told her.

“Poor Mrs. Vaughn,” Marion said.

Why Panic at Ten O’Clock in the Morning?

It was shortly before eight on Friday morning when Eddie picked Ted up at the carriage house for the drive to Southampton and what Ted thought would be a half-hour meeting with Mrs. Vaughn. Eddie’s nervousness was extreme, and not only because he feared that Ted would have Mrs. Vaughn on his hands a lot longer than he assumed. Marion had more or less scripted Eddie’s day. Eddie had a lot to remember.

When he and Ted stopped for coffee at the Sagaponack General Store, Eddie knew all about the moving truck that was parked there. The two sturdy movers were drinking coffee and reading their morning newspapers in the cab. When Eddie had returned from Mrs. Vaughn’s—to take Ruth to have her stitches removed—Marion would know where she could find the movers. The movers, like Eddie, had been given their instructions: to wait at the store until Marion came to get them. Ted and Ruth—and the nannies, who’d been dismissed for the day—would never see the movers.

By the time Ted found his way home from Southampton, the movers (and everything Marion wanted to take with her) would be gone. Marion herself would be gone. She had forewarned Eddie of this. That would leave Eddie to explain it all to Ted;
that
was the script Eddie kept rehearsing on the way to Southampton.

“But who’s going to explain it all to
Ruth
?” Eddie had asked. There then crept into Marion’s expression that same aura of distance that Eddie had witnessed when he’d asked her about the accident. Clearly Marion had
not
scripted the part of the story where someone explains it all to Ruth.