A Widow for One Year

  "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."

  "Get out of here," Eddie told him. "This is my room, at least for one more night."

  "It's almost morning," Ted told the boy. He opened one curtain so that Eddie could see the faint beginning of a dead-looking light.

  "Get out of here," Eddie repeated.

  "Just don't think that you know me, or Marion," Ted said. "You don't know us--you don't know Marion, especially."

  "Okay, okay," Eddie said. He saw that the bedroom door was open; there was the familiar dark-gray light from the long hall.

  "It was after Ruth was born, before Marion said anything to me," Ted continued. "I mean, she hadn't said a word --not one word about the accident. But one day, after Ruth was born, Marion just walked into my workroom--you know, she never went anywhere near my workroom--and she said to me: 'How could you have let me see Timmy's leg? How could you?' I had to tell her that I'd been physically unable to move--that I was paralyzed, turned to stone. But all she said was: 'How could you?' And we never talked about it again. I tried, but she just wouldn't talk about it."

  "Please get out of here," Eddie said.

  As he was leaving, Ted said: "See you in the morning, Eddie."

  The one curtain that Ted had opened did not admit enough of the faint, predawn light for Eddie to see what time it was; he saw only that his wristwatch and his wrist--including his whole arm and hand-- were the sickly, silver-gray color of a corpse. Eddie rotated his hand, but he could discern no difference in the shade of gray. The palm and the back of his hand were the same; in fact, his skin and the pillows and the wrinkled sheets were uniformly dead-gray. He lay awake, waiting for truer light. Through the window, he watched the sky; it slowly faded. Shortly before sunrise, the sky had lightened to the color of a week-old bruise.

  Eddie knew that Marion must have seen many hours of this predawn light. She was probably seeing it now--for surely she couldn't have been asleep, wherever she was. And whenever Marion was awake, Eddie now understood what she saw: the wet snow melting on the wet, black highway, which would also have been streaked with reflected light; the inviting neon of the signs, which promised food and drink and shelter (even entertainment); the constantly passing headlights, the cars inching by so slowly because everyone needed to gawk at the accident; the circulating blue of the police cars' lights, the blinking yellow lights of the wrecking truck, and the flashing red lights of the ambulance, too. Yet, even in this mayhem, Marion had spotted the shoe !

  "Oh, Ted, look--he's going to need his shoe," she would always remember saying, as she limped to the wreck and bent down.

  What kind of shoe was it? Eddie wondered. The absence of detail stopped him from seeing the leg exactly. An apres-ski boot, possibly. Maybe it was an old tennis shoe--something that Timothy didn't mind getting wet. But the namelessness of the shoe or boot--whatever it was--stopped Eddie from seeing it, and not seeing the shoe prevented him from seeing the leg. He couldn't even imagine the leg.

  Lucky Eddie. Marion was not so lucky. She would always remember the blood-soaked shoe; the exact detail of the shoe would always lead her to remember the leg.

  Working for Mr. Cole

  It was because he didn't know what kind of shoe it was that Eddie fell asleep without meaning to. He woke with the low sun shining in the one window with the open curtain; the sky was a crisp and cloudless blue. Eddie opened a window to feel how cold it was--it would be a chilly trip on the ferry, if he could get a ride to Orient Point--and there in the driveway he saw an unfamiliar truck. It was a pickup truck. Both a sit-down, tractor-type lawn mower and the kind of lawn mower that you walk behind were in the back of the truck, together with some rakes and spades and hoes and an assortment of sprinkler heads; there was also a long, neatly coiled hose.

  Ted Cole mowed his own lawn; and Ted watered the lawn only when it looked as if it needed it, or when he got around to it. Since the yard was unfinished, a result of Ted's standoff with Marion, it was hardly a yard that merited the attention of a full-time gardener. Yet the guy in the pickup truck looked like a full-time gardener.

  Eddie dressed himself and went down to the kitchen; one of the kitchen windows would offer him a better view of the man in the truck. Ted, who was surprisingly awake and had already made a pot of coffee, was peeking out a kitchen window at the mystery gardener, who was no mystery to Ted.

  "It's Eduardo," Ted whispered to Eddie. "What's Eduardo doing here?"

  Eddie now recognized Mrs. Vaughn's gardener, although Eddie had seen the gardener only once--and briefly--when Eduardo Gomez had scowled at Eddie from the vantage of his ladder, from which the tragically mistreated man had been plucking pieces of pornography from the Vaughns' privet.

  "Maybe Mrs. Vaughn has hired him to kill you," Eddie speculated.

  "No, not Eduardo !" Ted said. "But do you see her anywhere? She's not in the cab or in the back."

  "Maybe she's lying down under the truck," Eddie suggested.

  "I'm being serious, for Christ's sake," Ted told the boy.


  "So am I," Eddie said.

  They both had reason to believe that Mrs. Vaughn was capable of murder, but it appeared that Eduardo Gomez was alone; the gardener was just sitting in the cab of his truck. Ted and Eddie could see the steam escape from Eduardo's thermos when he poured himself a cup of coffee; the gardener was politely waiting for the household itself to give him some active indication that it was awake.

  "Why don't you go find out what he wants?" Ted asked Eddie.

  "Not me, " Eddie said. "I've been fired--isn't that right?"

  "For Christ's sake . . . at least come with me, then," Ted told the sixteen-year-old.

  "I better stay by the phone," Eddie said. "If he has a gun and shoots you, I'll call the police."

  But Eduardo Gomez was unarmed; the gardener's only weapon was a harmless-looking piece of paper, which he removed from his wallet. He showed it to Ted; it was the smudged, illegible check that Mrs. Vaughn had sailed into the fountain.

  "She said it was my last paycheck," Eduardo explained to Ted.

  "She fired you?" Ted asked the gardener.

  "Because I warned you that she was coming after you in her car," Eduardo said.

  "Oh," Ted said; he kept staring at the worthless check. "You can't even read this," he told Eduardo. "It might as well be blank." From its adventure in the fountain, the check was coated with a patina of faded squid ink.

  "It wasn't my only job," the gardener explained, "but it was my biggest. My principal income."

  "Oh," Ted said; he handed Eduardo the sepia-colored check, which the gardener solemnly returned to his wallet. "Let me be sure that I understand you, Eduardo," Ted began. "You think that you saved my life, and that this cost you your job."

  "I did save your life--it did cost me my job," Eduardo Gomez replied.

  Ted's vanity, which was extended to his fleetness of foot, compelled him to believe that, even from a standing start, he could have outrun Mrs. Vaughn in her Lincoln. Nonetheless, Ted would never have disputed the fact that the gardener had behaved courageously.

  "How much money are we talking about, exactly?" Ted asked.

  "I don't want your money--I'm not here for a handout," Eduardo told him. "I was hoping that you might have some work for me."

  "You want a job?" Ted asked.

  "Only if you've got one for me," Eduardo replied. The gardener was looking despairingly at the scruffy yard. Not even the patchy lawn showed signs of professional care. It needed fertilizer--not to mention that it clearly didn't get enough water. And there were no flowering shrubs, no perennials, no annuals--at least none that Eduardo could see. Mrs. Vaughn had once told Eduardo that Ted Cole was rich and famous. (I guess the money doesn't go into the landscaping, Eduardo was thinking.) "It doesn't look as if you've got a job for me," the gardener told Ted.

  "Just wait a minute," Ted said. "Let me show you where I want to put a swimming pool, and some other stuff."

  From the kitchen window, Eddie watched them walk around the house. It did not strike Eddie that they were having a life-threatening conversation. The boy assumed that it was safe to join them in the yard.

  "I want a simple, rectangular pool--it doesn't have to be Olympic size," Ted was telling Eduardo. "I just want a deep end and a shallow end--with steps. And no diving board. I think diving boards are dangerous for children. I've got a four-year-old daughter."

  "I've got a four-year-old granddaughter, and I agree with you," Eduardo told Ted. "I don't build pools, but I know some guys who do. I can maintain a pool, of course. I can do the vacuuming and keep the chemicals in balance. You know, so the water doesn't get cloudy--or your skin doesn't turn green, or something."

  "Whatever you say," Ted said. "You can be in charge. I just don't want a diving board. And there have to be some plantings around the pool-- so that the neighbors and passersby aren't always staring at us."

  "I would recommend a berm--actually, three berms," Eduardo said. "And on top of the berms, to hold the soil, I would suggest some Russian olives. They do well here, and the leaves are nice--a sort of silvery green. They have fragrant yellow flowers and an olivelike fruit. Oleaster is another name for them."

  "Whatever you say," Ted told him. "You're in charge. And there's the matter of the perimeter of the property itself--I don't feel that there's ever been a visible border to the property."

  "There's always privet," Eduardo Gomez replied. The small man seemed to shiver a little when he thought of the hedge where he'd hung dying in the exhaust fumes. Nevertheless, the gardener could work wonders with privet: in his care, Mrs. Vaughn's privet had grown an average of eighteen inches a year. "You just got to feed it and water it, and most of all prune it," the gardener added.

  "Sure--let's do privet, then," Ted said. "I like hedges."

  "Me, too," Eduardo lied.

  "And I want more lawn," Ted said. "I want to get rid of the dumb daisies and the tall grass. I'll bet there are ticks in that tall grass."

  "Sure there are," Eduardo told him.

  "I want a lawn like an athletic field," Ted said with a vengeance.

  "You want lines painted on it?" the gardener asked.

  "No, no!" Ted cried. "I mean, I want the lawn to be the size of an athletic field."

  "Oh," Eduardo said. "That's a lot of lawn, a lot of mowing, a lot of sprinklers . . ."

  "What about carpentry?" Ted asked the gardener.

  "What about it?" Eduardo asked.

  "I mean, can you do carpentry? I was thinking about an outdoor shower--multiple showerheads," Ted explained. "Not a lot of carpentry."

  "Sure, I can do that," Eduardo told him. "I don't do plumbing, but I know a guy . . ."

  "Whatever you say," Ted said again. "I'm putting you in charge. And what about your wife?" he added.

  "What about her?" Eduardo asked.

  "Well, I mean, does she work? What does she do?" Ted asked him.

  "She cooks," Eduardo told him. "She looks after our grandchild sometimes--and some other people's children, too. She cleans some people's houses. . . ."

  "Maybe she'd like to clean this house," Ted said. "Maybe she'd like to cook for me, and look after my four-year-old girl. She's a nice little girl. Her name is Ruth."

  "Sure, I'll ask my wife. I'll bet she'll want to do it," Eduardo replied.

  Eddie felt certain that Marion would have been devastated if she'd been a witness to these transactions. Marion had been gone less than twenty-four hours, but her husband--at least in his mind--had already replaced her. Ted had hired a gardener and a carpenter, a virtual caretaker and handyman--and Eduardo's wife would soon be doing the cooking, and looking after Ruth!

  "What's your wife's name?" Ted asked Eduardo.

  "Conchita--not like the banana," Eduardo told him.

  Conchita would end up cooking for Ted and Ruth; she would not only become Ruth's principal nanny, but when Ted took a trip, Conchita and Eduardo would move into the house on Parsonage Lane and look after Ruth as if they were her mother and father. And the Gomez's granddaughter, Maria, who was Ruth's age, would be her frequent playmate in the years that Ruth was growing up.

  Getting fired by Mrs. Vaughn would have only happy and prosperous results for Eduardo; soon his principal income would be from Ted Cole, who would also provide for Conchita's principal income. As an employer, Ted would prove to be a lot more likable and reliable than he was as a man . (If not to Eddie O'Hare.)

  "So when can you start?" Ted asked Eduardo on that early Saturday morning in August 1958.

  "Whenever you want," Eduardo answered.

  "Well. You can start today, Eduardo," Ted told him. Without looking at Eddie, who was standing there beside them in the yard, Ted said: "You can begin by driving this boy to the ferry at Orient Point."

  "Sure, I can do that," Eduardo said. He nodded politely to Eddie, who nodded back.

  "You can leave immediately, Eddie," Ted told the sixteen-year-old. "I mean, before breakfast."

  "That's fine with me," Eddie replied. "I'll go get
my things."

  And that was how it happened that Eddie O'Hare left without saying good-bye to Ruth; he had to leave when the child was still asleep. Eddie barely took the time to call home. He'd awakened his father and mother after midnight; now he woke them again, before seven in the morning.

  "If I get to New London first, I'll just wait for you at the docks," Eddie told his dad. "Drive safely."

  "I'll be there! I'll meet your ferry! We'll both be there, Edward!" Minty breathlessly told his son.

  As for the list of every living Exonian in the Hamptons, Eddie almost packed it. Instead he ripped each of the pages into long, thin strips and wadded them into a ball, which he left in his guest-bedroom wastebasket. After Eddie had gone, Ted would snoop through the room, discovering the list, which Ted would mistake for love letters. Ted would painstakingly reassemble the list, until he realized that neither Eddie nor Marion could have composed such "love letters" as these.

  At the top of his small suitcase, Eddie had already packed the O'Hare family's copy of The Mouse Crawling Between the Walls; it was the copy that Minty had wanted Mr. Cole to autograph, but Eddie could not (under the circumstances) bring himself to ask the famous author and illustrator for his signature. Instead, Eddie stole one of Ted's pens; it was a fountain pen with the kind of nib Ted liked best for autographs. On the ferry, Eddie assumed, he would have time to try his best imitation of Ted Cole's careful calligraphy. Eddie hoped that his mom and dad would never know the difference.

  In the driveway, there was little to say in the way of good-byes-- formal or informal.

  "Well." Ted stopped. "You're a good driver, Eddie," Ted managed to say; he held out his hand. Eddie accepted the handshake. He cautiously extended the mangled, bread loaf-shaped present for Ruth in his left hand. There was nothing to do but give it to Ted, which Eddie did.

  "It's for Ruth, but I don't know what it is," Eddie said. "It's from my parents. It was in my duffel bag all summer," he explained. He could see the distaste with which Ted examined the crushed wrapping paper, which was virtually undone. The present begged to be opened, if only to be free of its dreadful wrapping. Certainly Eddie was curious to see what it was; he also suspected he would be embarrassed to see what it was. Eddie could tell that Ted wanted to open it, too.