A Widow for One Year (26 page)

As in most Ted Cole stories, the principal device was also clever. In the story of Thomas and Timothy’s accident, Ted talked about himself in the third person; thus he stood at a considerable distance from himself
and
from the story. He was never “I” or “me” or “myself ”; he was always only “Ted”—or “he” or “him” or “himself.” He was merely a supporting character in a story about other, more important people.

If Marion had ever told the story, she would have stood so close to it that, in the telling of it, she would have descended into a final madness—a madness much greater than whatever madness had caused Marion to abandon her only living child.

“Well, here’s the deal,” Ted began. “Thomas had his driver’s license, but Timothy did not. Tommy was seventeen—he’d been driving for a year. And Timmy was fifteen; he’d only started to take driving lessons, from his father. Ted had earlier taught Thomas how to drive; it was Ted’s opinion that Timothy, who was only learning, was already a more attentive student than Thomas had ever been. Not that Thomas was a bad driver. He was alert, and confident—he had excellent reflexes. And Thomas was cynical enough to anticipate what
bad
drivers were going to do, even before the drivers themselves knew what they were going to do. That was the key, Ted had told him, and Thomas believed it: always assume that every other driver is a bad driver.

“There was one particularly important area of driving where Ted thought that his younger son, Timothy, was a better driver—or a
potentially
better driver—than Thomas was. Timothy had always been more patient than Thomas. Timmy, for example, had the patience to faithfully check the rearview mirror, whereas Tommy neglected to look in the rearview mirror as routinely as Ted thought a driver
should
look there. And it is often in the area of left turns that a driver’s patience is tested in a most subtle but most specific way—namely, when you are stopped and waiting to turn left across a lane of oncoming traffic, you must never,
ever
turn your wheels to the left in anticipation of the turn you are waiting to make. Never—not
ever
!

“Anyway,” Ted continued, “Thomas was one of those impatient young men who would often turn his wheels to the left while anticipating a left-hand turn, although his father
and
his mother—and even his younger brother—had repeatedly told Tommy
not
to turn his wheels until he was actually making the turn. Do you know why, Eddie?” Ted asked.

“So that, if you are rear-ended by a vehicle coming up behind you, you will
not
be pushed into the lane of oncoming traffic,” Eddie answered. “You would simply be pushed straight ahead, staying in your own lane.”

“Who taught you to drive, Eddie?” Ted asked.

“My dad,” Eddie said.

“Good for him! Tell him for me that he did a good job,” Ted said.

“Okay,” Eddie answered in the dark. “Go on . . .”

“Well. Where were we? We were out West, actually. It was one of those ski vacations that people from the East take in the spring, when what amounts to so-called spring skiing can’t be trusted in the East. If you want to be sure there’s snow in March or April, you better go west. And so . . . here were the displaced easterners, who were not at home out West. And it wasn’t just that it was
Exeter’s
spring vacation; it was doubtless spring break for countless schools and universities, and so there were many out-of-towners who were not only unfamiliar with the mountains but unfamiliar with the roads. And many of these skiers were driving unfamiliar cars—rental cars, for example. The Cole family had rented a car.”

“I get the picture,” Eddie said, sure that Ted was deliberately taking his time to get to what happened—probably because Ted wanted Eddie to
anticipate
the accident almost as much as Ted wanted Eddie to
see
it.

“Well. It was after a long day of skiing, and it had snowed all day. A wet, heavy snow. A degree or two warmer,” Ted said, “and this snow would have been rain. And Ted and Marion were not
quite
the diehard, nonstop skiers that their two sons were. At seventeen and fifteen, respectively, Thomas and Timothy could ski the pants off their parents, who at the time were forty and thirty-four, respectively, and who often finished a day on the slopes a trifle earlier than their boys.
That
day, in fact, Ted and Marion had retired to the bar at the ski resort, where they were waiting (what seemed to them) a rather long time for Thomas and Timothy to finish their last run—and then the last run after that. You know how boys are—the kids can’t get enough of the skiing, and so the mom and the dad do the waiting. . . .”

“I get the picture—you were drunk,” Eddie said.

“That was one aspect of what would become trivial—in the area of the ongoing argument between Ted and Marion, I mean,” Ted told Eddie. “Marion
said
that Ted was drunk, although in Ted’s view he wasn’t. And Marion, while not drunk, had had more to drink at that late-afternoon time than was customary for her. When Thomas and Timothy found their parents in the bar, it was evident to both boys that neither their father
nor
their mother was in
ideal
shape to drive the rental car. Besides, Thomas had his driver’s license, and Thomas hadn’t been drinking. There was no question as to who among them should be the driver.”

“So Thomas was driving,” Eddie interrupted.

“And, brothers being brothers, Timothy sat beside him—in the passenger seat. As for the parents,” Ted told Eddie, “they sat where, one day, most parents will end up: in the backseat. And, in Ted and Marion’s case, they continued to do what many parents do without cease: they kept arguing, although the nature of their arguments remained trivial,
enduringly
trivial. Ted, for example, had cleared the windshield of snow, but not the rear window. Marion argued that Ted should have cleared the rear window, too. Ted countered that as soon as the car was warm and moving, the snow would slide off. And although this proved to be the case—the snow slid off the rear window as soon as they were traveling at less-than-highway speed—Marion and Ted continued to argue. Only the topic changed; the triviality endured.

“It was one of those ski towns where the town itself isn’t much to speak of. The main street is actually a three-lane highway, where the middle lane is designated for left turns, although not a few morons confuse what is a
turning
lane with a
passing
lane, if you know what I mean. I
hate
three-lane highways, Eddie—don’t you?”

Eddie refused to answer him. It was a Ted Cole story: you always see what you’re supposed to be afraid of; you see it coming, and coming. The problem is, you never see
everything
that’s coming.

“Anyway,” Ted continued, “Thomas was doing a good job of driving, considering the adverse conditions. The snow was still falling. And now it was dark, too—truly everything was unfamiliar. Ted and Marion began to quarrel about the best route to the hotel where they were staying. This was foolish, because the entire town was on one or the other side of this three-lane highway, and since this highway was in actuality a
strip
of hotels and motels and gas stations and restaurants and bars, which lined both sides of the road, it was necessary to know only which side of the highway you were going to. And Thomas knew. It would be a left turn, no matter how he did it. It hardly helped him, as a driver, that his mother and father were determined to choose precisely
where
he should turn left. He could, for example, turn left at the hotel itself—Ted approved of this direct approach—or he could drive past the hotel to the next set of traffic lights. There, when the light was green, he could execute a left U-turn; then he would be approaching the hotel on his right. Marion thought the U-turn at the traffic lights was safer than the left turn from the turning lane, where there were no lights.”

“Okay! Okay!” Eddie screamed in the dark. “I see it! I see it!”

“No, you don’t!” Ted shouted at him. “You can’t possibly see it until it’s
over
! Or do you want me to stop?”

“No—please go on,” Eddie answered.

“So . . . Thomas moves into the center lane, the
turning
lane—it’s
not
a passing lane—and Tommy puts on his blinker, not knowing that both his taillights are covered with wet, sticky snow, which his father had failed to clear off at the same time his father failed to clear the rear window. No one behind Thomas’s car can see his directional signal, or even the taillights or the brake lights. The car is not visible—or it is visible only at the last second—to anyone approaching it from behind.

“Meanwhile, Marion says: ‘Don’t turn here, Tommy—it’s safer up ahead, at the lights.’

“ ‘You want him to make a U-turn and get a ticket, Marion?’ Ted asked his wife.

“ ‘I don’t care if he gets a ticket, Ted—it’s safer to turn at the lights,’ Marion said.

“ ‘Break it up, you two,’ Thomas said. ‘I don’t want to get a ticket, Mom,’ the boy added.

“ ‘Okay—so turn here, then,’ Marion told him.

“ ‘Better just do it, Tommy—don’t sit here,’ Ted said.

“ ‘Great backseat driving,’ Timothy commented. Then Timmy noticed that his brother had cranked the wheels to the left while he was still waiting to turn. ‘You cut your wheels too soon again,’ Tim told him.

“ ‘It’s because I thought I was going to turn, and then I thought I wasn’t, asshole!’ Thomas said.

“ ‘Tommy, don’t call your brother an asshole, please,’ Marion told her son.

“ ‘At least not in front of your mother,’ Ted added.

“ ‘No—that’s not what I mean, Ted,’ Marion told her husband. ‘I mean that he shouldn’t call his brother an asshole—period.’

“ ‘You hear that, asshole?’ Timothy asked his brother.

“ ‘Timmy,
please
. . .’ Marion said.

“ ‘You can turn after this snowplow,’ Ted told his son.

“ ‘Dad, I know. I’m the driver,’ the seventeen-year-old said.

“But suddenly the interior of their car was flooded with light—it was the headlights of the car coming up on them from behind. It was a station wagon full of college kids from New Jersey. They’d never been in Colorado before. It’s conceivable that, in New Jersey, there’s no difference between turning lanes and passing lanes.

“Anyway, the college kids thought they were
passing.
They didn’t see (until the last second) the car that was waiting to turn left in front of them—as soon as the snowplow, in the oncoming lane, passed by. And so Thomas’s car was rear-ended, and, because Thomas had already turned his wheels, his car was pushed into the lane of oncoming traffic, which in this case consisted of a very large snowplow, moving about forty-five miles per hour. The college kids said later that they thought their station wagon was doing about fifty.”

“Jesus . . .” Eddie said.

“The snowplow cut Thomas’s car almost perfectly in half,” Ted went on. “Thomas was killed by the steering column of the car he was driving—it crushed his chest. Tommy died instantly. And—for about twenty minutes—Ted was trapped in the backseat, where he was seated directly behind Thomas. Ted couldn’t see Thomas, although Ted knew that Tommy was dead because Marion could see Tommy, and although she would never use the ‘dead’ word, she kept repeating to her husband, ‘Oh, Ted—Tommy’s gone. Tommy’s gone. Can you see Timmy? Timmy’s not gone, too—is he? Can you see if he’s gone?’

“Because Marion was trapped in the backseat behind Timothy—for more than half an hour—she couldn’t see Timothy, who was directly in front of her. Ted, however, had a pretty good view of his younger son, who’d been knocked unconscious when his head went through the windshield; for a while, however, Timothy was still alive. Ted could see that Timmy was breathing, but Ted
couldn’t
see that the snowplow, as it had cut the car in two, had also cut off Timmy’s left leg at the thigh. While an ambulance and rescue crew struggled to disengage them all from the crumpled car, which had been accordioned between the snowplow and the station wagon, Timothy Cole bled to death from a severed femoral artery.

“For what seemed like twenty minutes—maybe it was less than five—Ted watched his younger son die. Since Ted was freed from the wreckage about ten minutes before the rescue workers were able to free Marion . . . Ted had broken only a few ribs; he was otherwise unhurt . . . Ted saw the paramedics remove Timmy’s body (but
not
Timmy’s left leg) from the car. The boy’s severed leg was still pinned to the front seat by the snowplow when the rescue workers finally extricated Marion from the backseat of the car. She knew that her Thomas was dead, but only that her Timothy had been taken from the wreckage—to the
hospital,
she hoped, for she kept asking Ted, ‘Timmy’s not gone, too—is he? Can you see if he’s gone?’

“But Ted was a coward when it came to answering that question, which he left unanswered—and would leave unanswered. He asked one of the rescue workers to cover Timmy’s leg with a tarpaulin, so Marion would not see it. And when Marion was safely outside the car . . . she was actually standing, and even limping around, although it would turn out that she had a broken ankle . . . Ted tried to tell his wife that her younger son, like her older son, was dead. He just never quite managed to
say
it. Before Ted could tell her, Marion spotted Timmy’s shoe. She couldn’t have known—she couldn’t have
imagined
—that her boy’s shoe was still attached to his leg. She thought it was just his shoe. And she said, ‘Oh, Ted, look—he’s going to need his shoe.’ And without anyone stopping her, she limped to the wreckage and bent down to pick up the shoe.

“Ted
wanted
to stop her, of course, but—talk about ‘turned to stone’—he felt at that moment absolutely paralyzed. He could not move, he couldn’t even speak. And so he allowed his wife to discover that her son’s shoe was still attached to a
leg
. That was when Marion began to realize that Timothy was gone, too. And
that
. . .” Ted Cole said, in his fashion, “that is the end of the story.”