A Widow for One Year (6 page)

The first driver off the ferry was a fool. He was so stunned by the beauty of the woman he saw walking toward him that he turned off the road into the stony sand of the beach; his car would be stuck there for over an hour, but even when he realized his predicament, he couldn’t take his eyes off Marion. He couldn’t help himself. Marion didn’t notice the accident—she just kept walking, slowly.

For the rest of his life, Eddie O’Hare would believe in fate. After all, the second he set foot on shore, there was Marion.

Eddie Is Bored—and Horny, Too

Poor Eddie O’Hare. To be in public with his father always caused him complete mortification. The occasion of Eddie’s long drive to the ferry docks in New London, or of his seemingly longer wait (with his dad) for the arrival of the Orient Point ferry, was no exception. Within the Exeter community, Minty O’Hare’s habits were as familiar as his breath mints; Eddie had learned to accept that both students and faculty unashamedly fled from his father. The senior O’Hare’s ability to bore an audience,
any
audience, was notorious. In the classroom, Minty’s soporific approach to teaching was renowned; the students whom the senior O’Hare had put to sleep were of legendary numbers.

Minty’s method of boredom was never ornate; simple repetition was his game. He would read aloud from what he judged to be the significant passages of the previous day’s assignment—when presumably the material was fresh in the students’ minds. The freshness of their minds could be seen to wilt as the class wore on, however, for Minty always located
many
passages of significance, and he read aloud with great feeling, and with repeated pauses for effect; the lengthier pauses were required for sucking on his mints. Little discussion followed the ceaseless repetition of these overly familiar passages—in part because no one could argue against the obvious significance of each passage. One could only question the
necessity
of reading aloud such passages. Outside the classroom, Minty’s method of teaching English was so frequently a matter of discussion that Eddie O’Hare often felt as if he’d suffered through his father’s classes, although he never had.

Eddie had suffered elsewhere. He was grateful that, since early childhood, he had eaten most of his meals in the school dining hall, first at a faculty table with another faculty family, and later with his fellow students. Therefore, school vacations were the only times when the O’Hares, as a family, dined at home. Dinner parties, which Dot O’Hare gave regularly—although there were few faculty couples who met with her reluctant approval—were another story. Eddie was not bored by such dinner parties because his parents restricted his presence at them to the briefest of polite appearances.

But at family dinners during school vacations Eddie was exposed to the stultifying phenomenon of his parents’ perfect marriage: they did not bore each other because they never listened to each other. A tender politeness passed between them; the mom would allow the dad to speak, at length, and then it was the mom’s turn—almost always on an unrelated subject. Mr. and Mrs. O’Hare’s conversation was a masterpiece of non sequiturs; by not participating, Eddie could best entertain himself by trying to guess if
anything
of what his mother or father had said would ever be remembered by the other.

Shortly before his departure for the ferry to Orient Point, an evening at home in Exeter became a case in point. The school year was over, the commencement exercises recently concluded, and Minty O’Hare was philosophizing on what he called the indolence of the students’ behavior in the spring term. “I
know
that they are thinking of their summer vacations,” Minty said for perhaps the hundredth time. “I
realize
that the return of warm weather is itself an invitation to sloth, but not to slothfulness of such an advanced degree as I observed
this
spring.”

His father made these same statements
every
spring; the statements themselves brought forth a deadening torpor in Eddie, who’d once wondered if his sole athletic interest, running, wasn’t the result of trying to flee his father’s voice, which had the predictable, ceaseless modulations of a circular saw in a lumberyard.

When Minty had not quite finished—Eddie’s father never seemed to be finished—but he had at least paused for breath, or for a bite of food, Eddie’s mother would begin.

“As if it weren’t enough that, all winter, we were witnesses to the fact that Mrs. Havelock chooses
not
to wear a bra,” Dot O’Hare began, “now that the weather is warm again, we must suffer the consequences of her refusal to shave her armpits, too. And there is still no bra in sight. Now it’s no bra
and
hairy armpits!” Eddie’s mother declared.

Mrs. Havelock was a new young faculty wife; as such, at least to Eddie and the majority of the boys at Exeter, she was of more interest than were most of her counterparts. And Mrs. Havelock’s bralessness was, for the boys, a
plus
. While she was not a pretty woman, but rather plump and plain, the sway of her youthful, ample bosom had fully endeared her to the students—and to those uncounted men on the faculty who would never have confessed their attraction. In those prehippie days of 1958, Mrs. Havelock’s bralessness was both unusual and noteworthy. Among themselves, the boys called her Bouncy. For lucky
Mr
. Havelock, whom the boys deeply envied, they demonstrated unparalleled respect. Eddie, who enjoyed Mrs. Havelock’s bouncing breasts as much as anyone, was perturbed by his mother’s heartless disapproval.

And now the hairy armpits—these, Eddie had to admit, had been the cause of considerable consternation among the less sophisticated students. In those days, there were boys at Exeter who seemed not to know that women
could
grow hair in their armpits—or else these boys were deeply distressed to contemplate why any woman
would
. To Eddie, however, Mrs. Havelock’s hairy armpits were further evidence of the woman’s boundless capacity to give pleasure. In a sleeveless summer dress, Mrs. Havelock bounced
and
she was hairy. Since the warm weather, not a few of the boys, in addition to calling her Bouncy, had taken to calling her Furry. By either name, the very thought of her gave Eddie O’Hare a hard-on.

“The next thing you know, she’ll stop shaving her legs,” said Eddie’s mother. The thought of
that
admittedly gave Eddie pause, although he decided to reserve judgment until he saw for himself if such a growth on Mrs. Havelock’s legs might please him.

Since Mr. Havelock was a colleague of Minty’s in the English Department, it was Dot O’Hare’s opinion that her husband should speak to him about the disturbing inappropriateness of his wife’s “ bohemianism” at an all-boys’ school. But Minty, although he could bore with the best of bores, knew better than to interfere with the clothing or the shaving—or the lack thereof—of another man’s wife.

“My dear Dorothy,” was all that Minty would say, “Mrs. Havelock is a European.”

“I don’t know what
that’s
supposed to mean!” Eddie’s mother commented. But Eddie’s father would already have returned—as agreeably as if he had never been interrupted—to the subject of student indolence in the spring.

In Eddie’s unexpressed opinion, only Mrs. Havelock’s mobile breasts and furry armpits could ever relieve the sluggishness he felt—and it wasn’t the spring that made Eddie feel indolent. It was his parents’ unending and unconnected conversations; they left a veritable wake of slothfulness, a trail of torpor.

Sometimes Eddie’s fellow students would ask him: “Uh, what’s your dad’s
real
name, anyway?” They knew the senior O’Hare only as Minty, or—to his face—Mr. O’Hare.

“Joe,” Eddie would reply. “Joseph E. O’Hare.” The
E.
was for Edward, the only name his father called him.

“I didn’t name you Edward because I wanted to call you Eddie,” his father periodically told him. But everyone else, even his mom, called him Eddie. One day, Eddie hoped, just plain Ed would do.

At the last family dinner before Eddie left for his first summer job, he had tried to interject some of his own conversation into his parents’ endless non sequiturs, but it hadn’t worked.

“I was at the gym today, and I ran into Mr. Bennett,” Eddie said. Mr. Bennett had been Eddie’s English teacher in the past school year. Eddie was very fond of him; his course included some of the best books that the boy had ever read.

“I suppose we can look forward to seeing her armpits at the beach all summer. I’m afraid I just may
say
something,” Eddie’s mother announced.

“I actually played a little squash with Mr. Bennett,” Eddie added. “I told him that I’d always been interested in trying it, and he took the time to hit the ball with me for a while. I liked it better than I thought I would.” Mr. Bennett, in addition to his duties in the English Department, was also the academy squash coach—quite a successful one, too. Hitting a squash ball had been something of a revelation to Eddie O’Hare.

“I think a shorter Christmas vacation and a longer spring break might be the answer,” his father said. “I know the school year is a long haul, but there ought to be a way to bring the boys back in the spring with a little more pep in them—a little more get-up-and-go.”

“I’ve been considering that I might try squash as a sport—I mean, next winter,” Eddie announced. “I’d still run cross-country in the fall. I could go back to track in the spring. . . .” For a moment it seemed that the word “spring” had caught his father’s attention, but it was only the
indolence
of spring that held Minty in its thrall.

“Maybe she gets a rash from shaving,” Eddie’s mom speculated. “Mind you, not that I don’t get a rash occasionally myself—but it’s no excuse.”

Later Eddie did the dishes while his parents prattled away. Just before going to bed, he heard his mom ask his dad: “What did he say about
squash
? What
about
squash?”

“What did
who
say?” his father asked.

“Eddie!” his mom replied. “Eddie said something about squash, and Mr. Bennett.”

“He coaches squash,” Minty said.

“Joe, I know
that
!”

“My dear Dorothy, what is your question?”

“What did Eddie say about squash?” Dot repeated.

“Well, you tell me,” Minty said.

“Honestly, Joe,” Dot said. “I sometimes wonder if you ever listen.”

“My dear Dorothy, I’m all ears,” the old bore told her. They both had a good laugh over that. They were still laughing as Eddie dragged himself through the requisite motions of going to bed. He was suddenly so tired—so
indolent,
he guessed—that he couldn’t conceive of making the effort to tell his parents what he’d meant. If theirs was a good marriage, and by all counts it seemed to be, Eddie imagined that a
bad
marriage might have much to recommend it. He was about to test that theory, more strenuously than he knew.

The Door in the Floor

En route to New London, a journey that had been tediously over-planned—like Marion, they’d left much too early for the designated ferry—Eddie’s father got lost in the vicinity of Providence.

“Is this the pilot’s error or the navigator’s?” Minty asked cheerfully. It was both. Eddie’s father had been talking so much that he’d not been paying sufficient attention to the road; Eddie, who was the “navigator,” had been making such an effort to stay awake that he’d neglected to consult the map. “It’s a good thing we left early,” his father added.

They stopped at a gas station, where Joe O’Hare made his best attempt to engage in small talk with a member of the working class. “So, how’s this for a predicament?” the senior O’Hare said to the gas-station attendant, who appeared to Eddie to be a trifle retarded. “Here’s a couple of lost Exonians in search of the New London ferry to Orient Point.”

Eddie died a little every time he heard his father speak to strangers. (Who but an Exonian knew what an Exonian was?) As if stricken by a passing coma, the gas-station attendant stared at an oily stain on the pavement a little to the right of Minty’s right shoe. “You’re in Rhode Island” was all that the unfortunate man was able to say.

“Can you tell us the way to New London?” Eddie asked him.

When they were back on the road again, Minty regaled Eddie on the subject of the intrinsic sullenness that was so often the result of a subpar secondary-school education. “The dulling of the mind is a terrible thing, Edward,” his father instructed him.

They arrived in New London in enough time for Eddie to have taken an earlier ferry. “But then you’ll have to wait in Orient Point all alone!” Minty pointed out. The Coles, after all, were expecting Eddie to be on the later ferry. By the time Eddie realized how much he would have preferred to wait in Orient Point alone, the earlier ferry had sailed.

“My son’s first ocean voyage,” Minty said to the woman with the enormous arms who sold Eddie his passenger ticket. “It’s not the
Queen Elizabeth
or the
Queen Mary;
it’s not a seven-day crossing; it’s not Southampton, as in England, or Cherbourg, as in France.
But,
especially when you’re sixteen, a little voyage at sea to Orient Point will do!” The woman smiled tolerantly through her rolls of fat; even though her smile was slight, one could discern that she was missing a few teeth.

Afterward, standing at the waterfront, Eddie’s father philosophized on the subject of the dietary excesses that were often the result of a subpar secondary-school education. In one short trip away from Exeter, they kept running across examples of people who would have been happier or thinner (or both) if they’d only had the good fortune to attend the academy!

Occasionally Eddie’s father would interject, at random, sprinkles of advice that, out of nowhere, pertained to Eddie’s upcoming summer job. “Don’t be nervous just because he’s famous,” the senior O’Hare said, apropos of nothing. “He’s not exactly a major literary figure. Just pick up what you can. Note his work habits, see if there’s a method to his madness—that kind of thing.” As Eddie’s designated ferry approached, it was Minty who was suddenly growing anxious about Eddie’s job.