A Widow for One Year (23 page)

“I don’t know,” Eddie admitted. (By tonight, even before it was dark, this would become a refrain.)

“Did Mommy move the pictures from the halls, too?” the child asked.

“Yes, Ruth.”

“Why?” the four-year-old asked.

“I don’t know,” he repeated.

Pointing at the bathroom walls, Ruth said: “But Mommy didn’t move
those
things. What are those things called?”

“Picture hooks,” Eddie said.

“Why didn’t Mommy move them?” Ruth asked.

“I don’t know,” Eddie repeated. The child was standing in the emptying tub, which was filled with sand. Ruth began to shiver as soon as Eddie lifted her to the bath mat.

As he was drying her off, he wondered how he was supposed to untangle the little girl’s hair; it was quite long and full of knots. Eddie was distracted by trying to remember, word for word, what he’d written for Penny Pierce; he was also trying to imagine Ted’s reaction to certain sentences. For example: “I would estimate that Marion and I have made love about sixty times.” And following
that
sentence, there were
these
sentences, too: “When Ruth gets home, both her mother and all the pictures will be gone. Her dead brothers
and
her mother will be gone.”

Remembering his conclusion, word for word, Eddie wondered if Ted would appreciate the understatement. “I just thought that the child would probably really need to have
something
to put near her bed tonight,” Eddie had written. “There won’t be any other pictures—all those pictures she’s been used to. I thought that if there was one of her mother, especially . . .”

Eddie had already wrapped Ruth up in a towel before he noticed Ted standing in the bathroom doorway. In a wordless exchange, Eddie picked up the child and handed her to her father while Ted gave Eddie back the pages he’d written.

“Daddy! Daddy!” Ruth said. “Mommy
moved
all the pictures! But not the . . . what are they called?” she asked Eddie.

“The picture hooks.”

“Right,” Ruth said. “Why did she did that?” the four-year-old asked her father.

“I don’t know, Ruthie.”

“I’m going to take a quick shower,” Eddie told Ted.

“Yes, make it a quick one,” Ted told him. He carried his daughter into the hall.

“Look at all the . . . what are they called?” Ruth asked Ted.

“Picture hooks, Ruthie.”

Only after he’d showered did Eddie realize that Ted and Ruth had taken the photograph of Marion off the bathroom wall; they must have moved it to Ruth’s room. It was fascinating to Eddie to realize that what he’d written was coming true. He wanted to be alone with Ted, to tell him everything that Marion had instructed him to say—and anything that Eddie could add. He wanted to hurt Ted with as many truths as he could summon. But at the same time Eddie wanted to lie to Ruth. For thirty-seven years he would want to lie to her, to tell her anything that might make her feel better.

When Eddie had dressed, he put the pages he’d written into his empty duffel bag. He would be packing soon, and he wanted to be sure to take his writing with him. But, to his surprise, the duffel bag wasn’t empty. At the bottom was Marion’s pink cashmere cardigan; she’d also included her lilac-colored silk camisole and matching panties, despite her observation that pink with lilac was an unwise combination. She knew it was the décolletage (and the lace) that had appealed to Eddie.

Eddie rummaged through the bag, hoping to find more; maybe Marion had written him a letter. What he found surprised him as much as the discovery of her clothing. It was the crushed, bread loaf–shaped present that Eddie’s father had given him as he’d boarded the ferry for Long Island; it was Ruth’s present, the wrapping much the worse for its summerlong residence in the bottom of the duffel bag. Eddie didn’t think now was the right time to give Ruth the present, whatever it was.

Suddenly he thought of
another
use for the pages he’d written for Penny Pierce and shown to Ted. When Alice arrived, the pages would be useful in bringing her up to date; surely the nanny needed to know— at least if she was going to be sensitive to everything Ruth would be feeling. Eddie folded the pages and stuck them in his right rear pocket. His jeans were a little damp, because he’d worn them over his wet bathing suit when he and Ruth had left the beach. The ten-dollar bill that Marion had given him was also a little damp, as was Penny Pierce’s business card, with her home phone number written in by hand. He put them both in the duffel bag; they were already in the category of mementos of the summer of ’58, which Eddie was beginning to realize was both a watershed in his life and a legacy that Ruth would carry with her for as long as she would carry her scar.

The poor kid, Eddie was thinking, not realizing that this was also a watershed. At sixteen, Eddie O’Hare had ceased to be a teenager, in the sense that he was no longer as self-absorbed; he was concerned for someone else. The rest of today and tonight, Eddie promised himself, he would do what he did and say what he said for
Ruth
. He walked down the hall toward Ruth’s bedroom, where Ted had already hung the photograph of Marion and the feet from one of the many exposed picture hooks on Ruth’s stark walls.

“Look, Eddie!” the child said, pointing to the photo of her mother.

“I see,” Eddie told her. “It looks very nice there.”

From the downstairs of the house, a woman’s voice called up to them. “Hello! Hello?”

“Mommy!” Ruth cried.

“Marion?” Ted called.

“It’s Alice,” Eddie told them.

Eddie stopped the nanny when she was halfway up the stairs. “There’s a situation you should know about, Alice,” he told the college girl, handing her the pages. “Better read this.”

Oh, the authority of the written word.

A Motherless Child

A four-year-old has a limited understanding of time. From Ruth’s point of view, it was self-evident only that her mother and the photographs of her dead brothers were missing. It would soon occur to the child to ask when her mother and the photographs were coming back.

There was a quality to Marion’s absence that, even to a four-year-old, suggested permanence. Even the late-afternoon light, which is long-lasting on the seacoast, seemed to linger longer than usual on that Friday afternoon; it appeared that night would never come. And the presence of the picture hooks—not to mention those darker rectangles that stood out against the faded wallpaper—contributed to the feeling that the photographs were gone forever.

If Marion had left the walls
completely
bare, it would have been better. The picture hooks were like a map of a beloved but destroyed city. After all, the photographs of Thomas and Timothy were the principal stories in Ruth’s life—up to and including her initial experience with
The Mouse Crawling Between the Walls
. Nor could Ruth be comforted by the single and most unsatisfying answer to her many questions.

“When is Mommy coming back?” would summon no better than the “I don’t know” refrain, which Ruth had heard repeated by her father and Eddie and, more recently, by the shocked nanny. Alice, following her brief reading experience, could not recover her formerly confident personality. She repeated the pathetic “I don’t know” refrain in a barely audible whisper.

And the four-year-old went on asking questions. “Where are the pictures
now
? Did any of the glass got broken?
When
is Mommy coming back?”

Given Ruth’s limited understanding of time, which answers
could
have comforted her? Maybe “tomorrow” would have worked, but only until tomorrow came and went; Marion would still be missing. As for “next week” or “next month,” to a four-year-old you might as well say “next year.” As for the truth, it couldn’t have comforted Ruth—nor could she have comprehended it. Ruth’s mommy
wasn’t
coming back— not for thirty-seven years.

“I suppose Marion thinks she isn’t coming back,” Ted said to Eddie, when they were at last alone together.

“She says she isn’t,” Eddie told him. They were in Ted’s workroom, where Ted had already fixed himself a drink. Ted had also called Dr. Leonardis and canceled their squash game. (“I can’t play today, Dave— my wife’s left me.”) Eddie felt compelled to tell Ted that Marion had been sure Ted would get a ride home from Southampton with Dr. Leonardis. When Ted replied that he’d gone to the bookstore, Eddie would suffer his first and only religious experience.

For seven, almost eight years—lasting through college but not enduring through graduate school—Eddie O’Hare would be unimpressively yet sincerely religious, because he believed that God or
some
heavenly power had to have kept Ted from seeing the Chevy, which was parked diagonally across from the bookstore the entire time that Eddie and Ruth had been negotiating for the photograph in Penny Pierce’s frame shop. (If
that
wasn’t a miracle, what was?)

“So where
is
she?” Ted asked him, shaking the ice cubes in his drink.

“I don’t know,” Eddie told him.

“Don’t lie to me!” Ted shouted. Not even pausing to put down his drink, Ted slapped Eddie in the face with his free hand. Eddie did as he’d been told. He made a fist—hesitating, because he’d never hit anyone before. Then he punched Ted Cole in the nose.

“Jesus!” Ted cried. He walked in circles, spilling his drink. He held the cold glass against his nose. “Christ, I hit you with my open hand— with the
flat
of my hand—and you make a fist and punch me in the nose. Jesus!”

“Marion said it would make you stop,” Eddie told him.

“ ‘Marion said,’ ” Ted repeated. “Christ, what
else
did she say?”

“I’m trying to tell you,” Eddie said. “She said you don’t have to remember anything I say, because her lawyer will tell you everything again.”

“If she thinks she’s got a rat’s ass of a chance to get custody of Ruth, she’s got another think coming !” Ted shouted.

“She doesn’t expect to get custody of Ruth,” Eddie explained. “She has no intention of trying.”

“She told you that?”

“She told me everything I’m telling you,” Eddie replied.

“What kind of mother doesn’t even try to get custody of her child?” Ted shouted.

“She didn’t tell me that,” Eddie admitted.

“Jesus . . .” Ted began.

“There’s just one thing about the custody,” Eddie interrupted him. “You’ve got to watch your drinking. No more DWI—if you get another drunk-driving conviction, you could lose custody of Ruth. Marion wants to know that it’s safe for Ruth to drive with you. . . .”

“Who is she to say
I
wouldn’t be safe for Ruth?” Ted shouted.

“I’m sure the lawyer will explain,” Eddie said. “I’m just telling you what Marion told me.”

“After the summer she’s had with
you,
who’s going to listen to Marion?” Ted asked.

“She said you’d say that,” Eddie told him. “She said she knows more than a few Mrs. Vaughns who’d be willing to testify, if it came to that. But she doesn’t
expect
to get custody of Ruth. I’m just telling you that you’ve got to watch your drinking.”

“Okay, okay,” Ted said, finishing his drink. “Christ! Why did she have to take all the photographs? There are negatives. She could have taken the negatives and made her
own
pictures.”

“She took all the negatives, too,” Eddie told him.

“The hell she did!” Ted cried. He stormed out of his workroom, with Eddie following behind. The negatives had been with the original snapshots; they were in about a hundred envelopes, all of them in the rolltop desk in the alcove between the kitchen and the dining room. It was the desk where Marion worked when she was paying bills. Now both Ted and Eddie could see that the rolltop desk itself was gone.

“I forgot that part,” Eddie admitted to Ted. “She said it was her desk—it was the only furniture she wanted.”

“I don’t give a shit about the goddamn desk!” Ted yelled. “But she can’t have the photographs
and
the negatives. They were my sons, too!”

“She said you’d say that,” Eddie told him. “She said you wanted to have Ruth, and she didn’t. Now you have Ruth. She has the boys.”

“I should have half the photographs, for Christ’s sake,” Ted said. “Jesus . . . what about Ruth? Shouldn’t
Ruth
have half the pictures?”

“Marion didn’t say anything about that,” Eddie confessed. “I’m sure the lawyer will explain.”

“Marion won’t get far,” Ted said. “Even the car is in my name—
both
cars are in my name.”

“The lawyer will be telling you where the Mercedes is,” Eddie informed him. “Marion will send the keys to the lawyer, and the lawyer will tell you where the car is parked. She said she didn’t need a car.”

“She’s going to need money,” Ted said nastily. “What’s she going to do for money?”

“She said the lawyer will tell you what she needs for money,” Eddie told him.

“Christ!” Ted said.

“You were planning to get a divorce, anyway, weren’t you?” Eddie asked him.

“Is that Marion’s question or yours?” Ted asked.

“Mine,” Eddie admitted.

“Just stick to what Marion told you to say, Eddie.”

“She didn’t tell me to get the photograph,” Eddie told him. “That was Ruth’s idea, and mine. Ruth thought of it first.”

“That was a good idea,” Ted admitted.

“I was thinking of Ruth,” Eddie told him.

“I know you were—thank you,” Ted said.

They were quiet for a second or two, then. They could hear Ruth harassing the nanny nonstop. At the moment, Alice seemed closer to breaking down than Ruth did.

“What about this one? Tell it!” the four-year-old demanded. Ted and Eddie knew that Ruth must have been pointing to one of the picture hooks; the child wanted the nanny to tell her the story behind the missing photograph. Naturally Alice couldn’t remember which of the photographs had hung from the picture hook that Ruth was pointing to. Alice didn’t know the stories behind most of the photos, anyway. “Tell it! What about this one?” Ruth asked again.