A Widow for One Year (41 page)

“If either Allan or I meet someone else,” Ruth replied, “then it will be an especially good thing that we
haven’t
slept together.” It wasn’t until she put it that way that Ruth feared she cared more about losing Allan as an
editor
than about losing him as a
husband
.

“So tell me everything about Eddie O’Hare,” Hannah whispered.

“He’s very sweet,” Ruth began. “He’s quite odd, but mainly sweet.”

“But is he
sexy
?” Hannah asked. “I mean, could you
imagine
him with your mother? Your mother was so beautiful . . .”

“Eddie O’Hare is a
little
beautiful,” Ruth replied.

“Do you mean he’s effeminate?” Hannah asked. “My God—he’s not
gay,
is he?”

“No, no—he’s not gay. He’s not effeminate, either,” Ruth told Hannah. “He’s just very gentle. Surprisingly delicate-looking.”

“I thought he was tall,” Hannah said.

“Tall and delicate,” Ruth replied.

“I can’t see it—he sounds odd,” Hannah said.

“I
said
he was odd,” Ruth told her. “Odd and sweet, and delicate. And he’s
devoted
to my mother. I mean, he would marry her
tomorrow
!”

“He
would
?” Hannah whispered. “But how old would your mother be?
Seventy
-something?”

“Seventy-one,” Ruth said. “And Eddie is only forty-eight.”

“That
is
odd,” Hannah whispered.

“Don’t you want to hear about my
mother
?” Ruth repeated.

“Just a minute,” Hannah told her. She went away from the phone; then she was back. “I thought he said something, but it was just more snoring.”

“I can tell you another time, if you’re not interested,” Ruth said coldly. (It was almost her reading-aloud voice.)

“Of course I’m
interested
!” Hannah whispered. “I suppose you and Eddie talked about your dead brothers.”

“We talked about the
photographs
of my dead brothers,” Ruth told her.

“I should
hope
so!” Hannah answered.

“It was strange because there were some that he remembered that I didn’t. And there were others that
I
remembered, but he didn’t. We agreed that we must have
invented
these particular photographs. Then there were others that we
both
remembered, and we thought that these must be the real ones. I think we each had more invented photographs than we had real ones.”

“You and what’s ‘real’ and what’s ‘invented,’ ” Hannah remarked. “Your favorite subject . . .”

Ruth resented Hannah’s obvious lack of interest, but she went on.

“The photo of Thomas playing doctor to Timothy’s knee—that one is definitely real,” Ruth said. “And the one where Thomas is taller than my mother, and he’s holding a hockey puck in his teeth—we both remember that one, too.”

“I remember the one of your mother in bed, with your brothers’ feet,” Hannah said.

It was hardly surprising that Hannah would remember that one. Ruth had taken it to Exeter with her, and to Middlebury, too; presently, it was in the bedroom of her house in Vermont. (Eddie had
not
told Ruth that he’d masturbated to this particular picture of Marion, after he’d hidden the feet. When Ruth had raised the memory of those feet being covered with “what looked like little pieces of paper,” Eddie had told her that he didn’t remember anything covering the feet. “Then I must have invented that, too,” Ruth had said.)

“And I remember the one of your brothers at Exeter, under the good old ‘Come hither boys and be men’ bullshit,” Hannah said. “God, they were good-looking guys.”

Ruth had shown Hannah that photo of her brothers the first time Hannah had come home with her to Sagaponack. They’d been students at Middlebury at the time. The photo was always in her father’s bedroom, and Ruth had brought Hannah into his bedroom when her father was playing squash in his devious barn. Hannah had said the same thing then—that they were good-looking guys. That
would
be what Hannah would remember, Ruth thought.

“Eddie and I remembered the featured photograph in the kitchen— the one of both boys eating lobster,” Ruth went on. “Thomas is dismantling his lobster with the ease and dispassion of a scientist—there’s not the slightest strain on his face. Whereas it’s as if Timothy is
fighting
his lobster, and the lobster’s winning! I think that’s the picture I remember best. And all these years I wondered if I invented it or if it was real. Eddie said it was the one
he
remembered best, so it must be real.”

“Didn’t you ever ask your father about the photographs?” Hannah asked. “Surely he would remember them better than you or Eddie.”

“He was so angry at my mother for taking them with her that he refused to talk about them,” Ruth answered.

“You’re too hard on him,” Hannah told her. “I think he’s charming.”

“I’ve seen him be ‘charming’ a few too many times,” Ruth told Hannah. “Besides, all he ever
is
is charming—especially when he’s around
you
.” Uncharacteristically, Hannah let Ruth’s remark pass.

It was Hannah’s theory that many women who had known Marion (even if only by a photograph) must have been flattered by Ted Cole’s attentions to them—simply because of how beautiful Marion had been. Ruth’s response to Hannah’s theory was: “I’m sure that must have made my mother feel
terrific
.”

Now Ruth felt frankly tired of trying to explain the importance of her evening with Eddie to Hannah. Hannah just wasn’t getting it.

“But what did Eddie say about the
sex
? Or
did
he say anything about it?” Hannah asked.

It’s absolutely all she’s interested in! Ruth thought. Ruth despaired of talking about sex, because that subject would soon lead Hannah back to her questions regarding when Ruth was going to “do it” with Allan.

“That photograph you remember so well,” Ruth began. “My goodlooking brothers in the doorway of the Main Academy Building . . .”

“What about it?” Hannah asked.

“Eddie told me that my mother made love to him under that photograph,” Ruth reported. “It was the first time they did it. My mother left the photo for Eddie, but my father took it.”

“And he hung it in his
bedroom
!” Hannah whispered harshly. “
That’s
interesting!”

“What a remarkable memory you have, Hannah,” Ruth said. “You even remember that the photograph of my brothers is in my father’s bedroom!” But Hannah made no response, and Ruth thought again: I’m tired of this conversation. (She was most of all tired of Hannah never saying she was sorry.)

Ruth sometimes wondered if Hannah would still be her friend if Ruth hadn’t become famous. In her own way—in the smaller world of magazines—Hannah was famous, too. She’d first made a name for herself writing personal essays. She’d kept a comedic diary; for the most part, it was a journal of her sexual exploits. But she’d soon tired of autobiography. Hannah had “graduated” to death and devastation.

In her morbid phase, Hannah had interviewed people who were dying; she’d devoted herself to terminal cases. Terminal
children
had captured her attention for about eighteen months. Later there’d been a piece on a burn ward, and one on a leper colony, too. She’d traveled to war zones, and to countries with widespread famine.

Then Hannah had “graduated” once again; she’d left death and devastation for the world of the perverse and the bizarre. She once wrote about a male porn star who was reputed to have a perpetual hard-on—his name, in the business, was “Mr. Metal.” Hannah had also interviewed a Belgian woman in her seventies who’d performed in over three thousand live-sex shows; her only partner had been her husband, who’d died following a sex performance. The grieving widow had not had sex since. Not only had she been faithful to her husband for forty years; for the last twenty years of their marriage, they’d had sex
only
in front of an audience.

Now Hannah had transformed herself yet again. Her current interest was famous people, which in the United States meant mainly movie stars and sports heroes and the occasional eccentric who was disturbingly rich. Hannah had never interviewed a writer, although she’d raised the subject of an “extensive”—or had Hannah said “ exhaustive”?—interview with Ruth.

Ruth had long believed that the
only
interesting thing about herself was her writing. She was deeply leery of the idea of Hannah interviewing her, because Hannah was more interested in Ruth’s personal life than she was in Ruth’s novels. And what
did
interest Hannah in Ruth’s writing was what was personal—what Hannah would have called “real”—about it.

Hannah will probably
hate
Allan, Ruth suddenly thought. Allan had already admitted that Ruth’s fame was, if not a burden, a nuisance to him. He had edited a number of famous authors, but he would submit to an interview only on the grounds that his remarks were “not for attribution.” Allan was so private that he didn’t even permit his writers to dedicate their books to him; when one writer had insisted, Allan said, “Only if you use my initials,
just
my initials.” Thus the book was dedicated:
TO A.F.A.
It struck Ruth as disloyal that she couldn’t recall what the
F.
stood for.

“I gotta go—I think I hear him,” Hannah was whispering.

“You’re not going to stand me up in Sagaponack, are you?” Ruth asked. “I’m counting on you to save me from my father.”

“I’ll be there. I’ll get myself there somehow,” Hannah whispered. “I think it’s your father who needs saving from
you
—the poor man.”

Since when had her father become “the poor man”? But Ruth was tired; she let Hannah’s remark pass.

After she’d hung up the phone, Ruth reconsidered her plans. Since she was not seeing Allan for dinner the next night, she could leave for Sagaponack after her last interview, a day earlier than she’d planned; then she would have one night alone with her father.
One
night alone with him might be tolerable. Hannah would arrive the next day, and they would have a night together—just the three of them.

Ruth couldn’t wait to tell her father how much she had liked Eddie O’Hare—not to mention some of the things that Eddie had told her about her mother. It would be best if Hannah was
not
there when Ruth told her father that her mother had thought of leaving him
before
the boys had been killed. Ruth didn’t want Hannah around for that conversation, because Hannah always stood up for Ruth’s father—maybe just to provoke her.

Ruth was still so irritated with Hannah that she had some difficulty falling back to sleep. Lying awake, she found herself remembering the time she lost her virginity. It was impossible for her to recall the event without considering Hannah’s contribution to the minor disaster.

Although she was a year younger than Ruth, Hannah had always seemed older, not only because Hannah had had three abortions before Ruth managed to lose her virginity but also because Hannah’s greater sexual experience lent her an air of maturity and sophistication.

Ruth had been sixteen, Hannah fifteen when they’d met—yet Hannah had demonstrated greater sexual confidence. (And this was before Hannah had had sex!) In her diary, Ruth once wrote of Hannah: “She projected an aura of worldliness long before she’d been in the world.”

Hannah’s parents, who were happily married—she called them “boring” and “staid”—had brought up their only child in a fine old house on Brattle Street in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Hannah’s father, a professor at Harvard Law School, had a patrician demeanor; his deportment bespoke a steadfast inclination to remain
uninvolved,
which Hannah said suited a man who’d married a wealthy and utterly unambitious woman.

Ruth had always liked Hannah’s mother, who was good-natured and gracious to the point of being utterly benign. She also read a great deal—one never saw her without a book. Mrs. Grant had once told Ruth that she’d had only one child because, after Hannah was born, she missed all the time she’d once had to read. Hannah told Ruth that her mother couldn’t wait for Hannah to be old enough to amuse herself so that Mrs. Grant could get back to her books. And “amuse herself,” Hannah did. (Perhaps it was her mother who’d made Hannah the superficial and impatient reader that she was.)

While Ruth thought Hannah was fortunate to have a father who was faithful to his wife, Hannah said that a little womanizing might have made her father less predictable; to Hannah, “less predictable” meant “more interesting.” She claimed that her father’s remoteness was the result of his years in the law school, where his abstract ruminations on the
theoretical
levels of the law appeared to have distanced him from any appreciation of the
practice
of law itself. He had a great disdain for lawyers.

Professor Grant had urged the study of foreign languages on his daughter; his highest hope for Hannah was for her to pursue a career in international banking. (International banking had been where the best and the brightest of his students at Harvard Law School had ended up.)

Her father had a great disdain for journalists, too. Hannah was at Middlebury, where she was majoring in French and German, when she decided that journalism was the career for her. She knew this with the same certainty that Ruth had known, at an earlier age, that she wanted to be a novelist. Hannah announced with a most matter-of-fact surety that she would go to New York and make her way in the world of magazines. To that end, upon her graduation from college, she asked her parents to send her to Europe for a year. There she could practice her French and German, and she would keep a journal; her “powers of observation,” as Hannah put it, “would be honed.”

Ruth, who’d applied (and been accepted) to the graduate program in creative writing at the University of Iowa, had been caught off guard by Hannah’s suggestion that Ruth come to Europe with her. “If you’re going to be a writer, you need something to write
about,
” Hannah had told her friend.