“Jesus, this is excruciating,” Hannah had whispered to Ruth. “Eddie should just read the fucking poem!”
Ruth, who already knew the poem, would have been happier never to hear it. The poem always made her cry—even removed from the context of Allan’s death and Ruth herself being left a widow. She had no doubt that it would make her cry now.
“It’s gonna be okay, baby,” Hannah whispered again, as Eddie finally read the Yeats poem.
When you are old and grey and full of sleep,
And nodding by the fire, take down this book,
And slowly read, and dream of the soft look
Your eyes had once, and of their shadows deep;
How many loved your moments of glad grace,
And loved your beauty with love false or true,
But one man loved the pilgrim soul in you,
And loved the sorrows of your changing face;
And bending down beside the glowing bars,
Murmur, a little sadly, how Love fled
And paced upon the mountains overhead
And hid his face amid a crowd of stars.
Understandably, everyone in attendance assumed that Ruth cried so bitterly because of how much she’d loved her husband. She had loved Allan, or at least she’d learned to. But even more, Ruth had loved her life with him. And while it pained her that Graham had lost his father, it was at least better for Graham that the boy was young enough not to be permanently scarred. In time, Graham would hardly remember Allan at all.
But Ruth had been so angry with Allan for dying, and when Eddie read the Yeats poem, it only made her angrier to hear how Allan had assumed she would be an old woman when he died! Ruth, of course, had always hoped she would be an old woman when Allan died. Now here she was, just turned forty—and with a three-year-old son.
And there was yet a meaner, more selfish reason for Ruth’s tears. It was that reading Yeats had discouraged her from even trying to be a poet; hers were the tears a writer cried whenever a writer heard something better than anything he or she could have written.
“Why is Mommy crying?” Graham had asked Hannah—for the hundredth time, because Ruth had been on-and-off inconsolable since Allan’s death.
“Your mommy’s crying because she misses your daddy,” Hannah whispered to the child.
“But where is Daddy now ?” Graham asked Hannah; he’d not yet had a satisfactory answer from his mother.
After the service, a crush of people had pressed around Ruth; she lost count of the number of times her arms were squeezed. She kept her hands clasped at her waist; most people didn’t try to touch her hands—just her wrists and her forearms and her upper arms.
Hannah had carried Graham, Eddie slinking alongside them. Eddie looked especially sheepish, as if he regretted having read the poem—or else he was silently berating himself in the belief that his introduction should have been longer and clearer.
“Take off the pail, Mommy,” Graham had said.
“It’s a veil, baby—not a pail,” Hannah told the boy. “And Mommy wants to keep it on.”
“No, I’ll take it off now,” Ruth said; she’d finally stopped crying. A numbness enclosed her face; she felt impervious to crying or to any form of showing how upset she was. Then she remembered that dreadful old woman who’d called herself a widow for the rest of her life. Where was she now? Allan’s memorial service would have been the perfect place for her to reappear!
“Do you remember that terrible old widow?” Ruth asked Hannah and Eddie.
“I’m on the lookout for her, baby,” Hannah had replied. “But she’s probably dead.”
Eddie was still in the throes of being overcome by the Yeats poem, yet he’d never stopped being the constant observer. Ruth was looking for Marion, too; then she thought she saw her mother.
The woman wasn’t old en