A Widow for One Year (21 page)

She confronted Eduardo in the courtyard, where only the fountain separated them. The stained pool was now as unsightly as a shallow birdbath in which a hundred bats had drowned. Mrs. Vaughn held something in her hand—it was a check—and the wrecked gardener eyed her warily; he limped sideways, keeping the fountain between them, as Mrs. Vaughn began to circle the blackened water in his direction.

“Don’t you want this? It’s your
last
paycheck!” the evil little woman said.

Eduardo halted. If she was going to pay him, perhaps he would stay and clean up the last of the ripped-to-shreds pornography. After all, the maintenance of the Vaughn estate had been his principal source of income for many years. The gardener was a proud man, and the miniature bitch had humiliated him; yet he thought that even if the check she was offering him was the
last
paycheck he would ever receive from her, it would be sizable.

With his hand held out in front of him, Eduardo cautiously inched around the spoiled fountain in Mrs. Vaughn’s direction. She allowed him to approach her. She was almost within his reach when she made several hasty folds in the check, and—when it was crudely shaped like a boat—she launched it into the murky water. The check sailed into the middle of the funereal pool. It was necessary for Eduardo to wade into the fountain, which he did with trepidation.

“Go
fish
!” Mrs. Vaughn shrieked at him.

Even as he plucked the check out of the water, Eduardo was aware that the ink had run; he couldn’t read what the amount had been
or
Mrs. Vaughn’s cramped signature. And before he could step out of the fishy-smelling fountain, he knew (without once looking at her haughty, retreating figure) that the door would slam again. The fired gardener dried the worthless check against his pants and preserved it in his wallet; he didn’t know why he bothered.

Dutifully, Eduardo returned the ladder to its usual place alongside the potting shed. He saw a rake that he’d meant to repair and briefly wondered what he should do with it; he left it on the worktable in the toolhouse. He would have gone home then—he was already limping slowly toward his truck—but he suddenly saw the three large leaf bags that he’d already filled with the scraps of the shredded drawings; he had calculated that the remaining mess, when it was all cleaned up, might fill another two bags.

Eduardo Gomez picked up the first of the three full bags and emptied it onto the lawn. The wind quickly blew some of the paper all around, but the gardener was dissatisfied with the results; he ran limping through the pile of paper, kicking his feet like a child in a heap of leaves. The long tatters flew through the garden and draped the birdbath. The beach roses at the back of the yard, where the footpath led to the beach, were a magnet to the scraps and shreds of paper; the torn paper clung to everything it touched, like tinsel to a Christmas tree.

The gardener limped into the courtyard with the remaining two full bags. The first of these he upended in the fountain, where the mass of ripped drawings soaked up the blackened water like a giant, immovable sponge. The last full bag, which by coincidence included some of the best (albeit largely destroyed) views of Mrs. Vaughn’s crotch, was no challenge to Eduardo’s remaining creativity. The inspired man limped in circles around the courtyard, holding the open bag above his head. It was like a kite that refused to fly, but the countless snippets of pornography did indeed take flight; they rose into the privet, from which the heroic gardener had earlier plucked them, and they rose
above
the privet, too. As if to reward Eduardo Gomez for his courage, a strong sea breeze blew partial views of Mrs. Vaughn’s breasts and vagina to both ends of Gin Lane.

It was later reported to the Southampton police that two boys on bicycles were treated to a questionable glimpse of Mrs. Vaughn’s anatomy, which the boys found as far away as First Neck Lane—a testimony to the strength of the wind, which had blown this particular close-up of Mrs. Vaughn’s nipple, and her irregularly enlarged areola, across Agawam Lake. (The boys, who were brothers, brought the scrap of the pornographic drawing home, where their parents discovered the obscenity and called the cops.)

Agawam Lake, which was no larger than a pond, separated Gin Lane from First Neck Lane, where—at the very moment Eduardo released the remains of Ted Cole’s drawings—the artist himself was pursuing his seduction of a slightly overweight eighteen-year-old girl. Glorie had brought Ted home to meet her mother, largely because the girl had no car of her own and needed her mother’s permission in order to borrow the family vehicle.

It had not been too long a walk from the bookstore to Glorie’s house on First Neck Lane, but Ted’s subtle courtship of the college girl had several times been interrupted by insulting questions from Glorie’s pathetic pear-shaped friend. Effie was far less a fan of
The Door in the Floor
than Glorie was; the tragically unattractive girl had
not
written
her
term paper on the perceived atavism in Ted Cole’s symbols of fear. Though she was intensely ugly, Effie was a lot less full of shit than Glorie was.

Effie was a lot less full of shit than Ted, too. In fact, the fat girl was insightful: she wisely grew to dislike the famous author in the course of their short walk; Effie also saw the efforts of Ted’s seduction-in-progress for what it was. Glorie, if she saw what was progressing, offered little resistance.

That Ted took an unexpected interest (of a sexual kind) in Glorie’s
mother
surprised him. If Glorie was a little
too
young and inexperienced for his usual taste—and she was borderline overweight—Glorie’s mom was older than Marion and the type of woman Ted generally ignored.

Mrs. Mountsier was preternaturally thin, the result of an inability to eat that had been brought on by her husband’s recent and wholly unanticipated death. She was clearly a widow who’d not only deeply loved her husband; she was also—and this was obvious, even to Ted— a widow still caught in the detectable stages of grief. In short, she was not a woman who could be seduced by
anybody;
yet Ted Cole was not just anybody, and he couldn’t suppress his unpredictable attraction to her.

Glorie must have inherited her penchant for curvaceousness from a grandmother or an even more distant relation. Mrs. Mountsier was a classical but wraithlike beauty, a pretender in Marion’s inimitable mold. Whereas Marion’s perpetual sorrow had turned Ted away from her, Mrs. Mountsier’s regal sadness turned Ted on. Yet his attraction to her daughter was undiminished—it was suddenly the
two
of them he wanted! In a similar situation, most men might have thought: What a dilemma! But Ted Cole thought only in terms of possibilities. What a
possibility
! he was thinking, as he allowed Mrs. Mountsier to make him a sandwich—after all, it was almost lunchtime—
and
he yielded to Glorie’s insistence that he allow her to put his wet blue jeans and his soaked-through shoes in the dryer.

“They’ll be dry in fifteen or twenty minutes,” the eighteen-year-old promised. (The shoes would take at least half an hour, but what was the hurry?)

While he ate his lunch, Ted wore a bathrobe belonging to the late
Mr
. Mountsier. Mrs. Mountsier had shown Ted where the bathroom was, so he could change, and she’d handed him her dead husband’s bathrobe with an especially appealing sort of sadness.

Ted had never tried to seduce a widow before—not to mention a mother and her daughter. He’d spent the summer drawing Mrs. Vaughn. The illustrations for the unfinished
A Sound Like Someone Trying Not to Make a Sound
had been long neglected; he’d barely begun to think about what those illustrations should be. Yet here, in a comfortable house on First Neck Lane, a mother-and-daughter portrait of unusual promise had presented itself to him—he knew he had to try it.

Mrs. Mountsier did not eat lunch. The thinness of her face, which looked frail and brittle in the midday light, suggested that she had at best an intermittent appetite, or that she had some difficulty keeping food down. She’d delicately powdered the dark circles under her eyes; like Marion, Mrs. Mountsier could sleep only for short periods of time, when she was utterly exhausted. Ted noticed that the thumb of Mrs. Mountsier’s left hand could not leave her wedding ring alone, although she was unaware of how constantly she touched it.

When Glorie saw what her mother was doing to her wedding ring, she reached out and squeezed her hand. The look that Mrs. Mountsier gave her daughter was both thankful and apologetic; the sympathy passed between them like a letter slipped under a door. (In the first of the drawings, Ted would pose them with the daughter holding her mother’s hand.)

“You know, this is quite a coincidence,” he began, “but I’ve been looking for two suitable subjects for a mother-and-daughter portrait— it’s something I’ve been thinking about for my next book.”

“Is it another children’s book?” asked Mrs. Mountsier.

“Categorically, yes,” Ted answered her, “but I don’t think that any of my books are truly for children. First of all, there are the mothers who must buy them, and—usually—the mothers are the first to read them aloud. Children usually
hear
them before they’re able to read them. And when those children are adults, they often go back to my books and read them again.”

“That’s just how it happened to me!” Glorie said. Effie, who was sulking, rolled her eyes.

Everyone but Effie was pleased. Mrs. Mountsier had been assured that mothers came first. Glorie had been congratulated for no longer being a child; the famous author had recognized that she was an adult now.

“What sort of drawings do you have in mind?” Mrs. Mountsier asked.

“Well. At first I would want to draw you and your daughter together,” Ted told her. “That way, when I draw each of you separately, the presence of the one who’s missing is . . . well, somehow,
there
.”

“Wow! Do you want to do it, Mom?” Glorie asked. (Effie was rolling her eyes again, but Ted never paid much attention to someone who wasn’t attractive.)

“I don’t know. How long would it take?” Mrs. Mountsier asked. “Or which of us would you want to draw first? I mean separately. I mean, after you’ve drawn us together.” (In a rush of desire, Ted realized that the widow was a wreck.)

“When do you go back to college?” Ted asked Glorie.

“September fifth or something,” Glorie said.

“September third,” Effie corrected her. “And you were going to spend Labor Day weekend in Maine, with me,” she added.

“I should do Glorie first, then,” Ted told Mrs. Mountsier. “First the two of you together. Then Glorie alone. Then, when Glorie is back in college,
you
alone.”

“Oh, I don’t know,” Mrs. Mountsier said.

“Come on, Mom! It’ll be fun!” Glorie said.

“Well.” It was Ted’s famous, never-ending “Well.”

“Well
what
?” Effie asked rudely.

“I mean, you don’t have to decide
today,
” Ted told Mrs. Mountsier. “Just think about it,” he said to Glorie. Ted could tell what Glorie was already thinking about. Glorie would be the easy one. And then . . . what a pleasantly long fall and winter it might be! (Ted was imagining the vastly slower seduction of the grieving Mrs. Mountsier—it might take months, even a year.)

It called upon tact to permit
both
the mother and daughter to drive him back to Sagaponack. Mrs. Mountsier volunteered; then she realized that she’d hurt her daughter’s feelings, that Glorie truly had her heart set on driving the famous author and illustrator home.

“Oh, please—
you
do it, then, Glorie,” Mrs. Mountsier said. “I hadn’t realized how much you
wanted
to do it.”

It won’t work if they quarrel, Ted was thinking. “Speaking selfishly,” he said—he smiled charmingly at Effie—“I’d be honored if you
all
drove me home.” Although his charm didn’t work with Effie, mother and daughter were instantly reconciled—for now.

Ted also played the role of peacemaker when it came to deciding whether Mrs. Mountsier or Glorie should drive. “Personally,” he said, smiling at Glorie, “I think people of your age are better drivers than their parents. On the other hand”—he turned his smile to Mrs. Mountsier—“people like us are unbearable backseat drivers.” Ted turned back to Glorie. “Let your mother drive,” he told the girl. “It’s the only way to keep her from being a backseat driver.”

Although Ted had seemed indifferent to Effie’s rolling her eyes, this time he anticipated her; he turned to the ugly wretch and rolled
his
eyes, just to show her that he knew.

To anyone seeing them, they were seated in the car like a reasonably normal family. Mrs. Mountsier was at the wheel with the convicted DWI celebrity in the passenger seat beside her. In the back were the children. The one with the misfortune to be ugly was, naturally, sullen and withdrawn; it was probably to be expected, because her apparent “sister” was comparatively pretty. Effie sat behind Ted, glaring at the back of his head. Glorie leaned forward, filling the space between the two front seats of Mrs. Mountsier’s dark-green Saab. By turning in his seat to view Mrs. Mountsier’s stunning profile, Ted could also glimpse her vivacious if not exactly beautiful daughter.

Mrs. Mountsier was a good driver who never took her eyes off the road. The daughter couldn’t take her eyes off Ted. For a day that had started out so badly, look what opportunities had come out of it! Ted glanced at his watch and was surprised to see that it was early in the afternoon. He would be home before two—plenty of time to show the mother and daughter his workroom while there was still good light. You can’t judge a day by its beginning, Ted had decided, as Mrs. Mountsier passed Agawam Lake and turned from Dune Road onto Gin Lane. Ted had been so transfixed by the visual comparison between mother and daughter that he’d not been watching the road.

“Oh, you’re going
this
way . . .” he said in a whisper.