As she’d written in the very first chapter of Not for Children, who knew when it was time for a widow to re-enter the world? There was no such thing as a widow re-entering the world “safely.”
The publication of Ruth Cole’s fourth novel, My Last Bad Boyfriend, was delayed until the fall of 1995, which was the earliest possible date that Ruth could conceive of making her first public appearance since her husband’s death—not that Ruth was as available as her publishers would have liked. She’d agreed to a reading at the 92nd Street Y, where she’d not read since Eddie O’Hare’s marathon introduction in 1990, but Ruth had refused to give any interviews in the U.S.—on the grounds that she was spending only one night in New York, en route to Europe, and that she never wanted to conduct any interviews at her home in Vermont. (Since the first of September, the Sagaponack house had been on the market.)
Hannah maintained that Ruth was crazy to isolate herself in Vermont; according to Hannah, Ruth should sell the Vermont house instead. But Allan and Ruth had agreed: Graham should grow up in Vermont.
Besides, Conchita Gomez was too old to be Graham’s principal nanny. And Eduardo was too old to be a caretaker. In Vermont, Ruth would have available babysitters close to home. Kevin Merton had three daughters of babysitting age; one of them, Amanda, was a high-school student who was permitted a limited amount of travel. (The high school had agreed that a book tour with Ruth Cole fell into the category of an educational trip; hence Ruth was taking Graham and Amanda Merton with her to New York and Europe.)
Not all of her European publishers were satisfied by Ruth’s plans to promote My Last Bad Boyfriend . But Ruth had fairly warned everyone: she was still in mourning, and she would go nowhere without her four-year-old son; moreover, neither her son nor his nanny should be kept out of school for longer than two weeks.
The trip Ruth planned would be as easy on herself and Graham as possible. She was flying to London on the Concorde, and she would fly back to New York from Paris—again on the Concorde. Between London and Paris, she would bring Graham and his babysitter to Amsterdam; she couldn’t not go to Amsterdam, she’d decided. The novel’s partial setting there—that humiliating scene in the red-light district— made the book of special interest to the Dutch; and Maarten was her favorite European publisher.
It
was not Amsterdam’s fault that Ruth now dreaded going there. Surely she could promote her new novel for Maarten without visiting the red-light district. Every unoriginal journalist who interviewed her, not to mention every photographer assigned to take her picture, would insist on Ruth returning to de Wallen —the setting of the novel’s most notorious scene—but Ruth had resisted the lack of originality in journalists and photographers before.
And perhaps it was a form of penance that she should have to go back to Amsterdam, the novelist thought—for wasn’t her fear a form of penance? And why wouldn’t she be afraid every second she was in Amsterdam—for how could the city not remind her of the eternity of her hiding in Rooie’s closet? Wouldn’t the wheezing of the moleman be the background music in her sleep? If she could sleep . . .
In addition to Amsterdam, the only part of Ruth’s book tour that she was dreading was her one night in New York, and she was dreading that only because, once again, Eddie O’Hare was introducing her before her reading at the 92nd Street Y.
She’d unwisely chosen to stay at the Stanhope; she and Graham had not been there since Allan’s death, and Graham remembered the last place he’d seen his father better than Ruth had thought he would. They were not staying in the same two-bedroom suite, but the configuration of the rooms and the decor were strikingly similar.
“Daddy was sleeping on this side of the bed, Mommy on that side,” the boy explained to his babysitter, Amanda Merton. “The window was open,” Graham went on. “Daddy had left it open, and I was cold. I got out of my bed . . .” Here the boy stopped. Where was his bed? With Allan gone, Ruth hadn’t asked the hotel to provide a roll-away for Graham; there was more than enough room in her king-size bed for her and her small son. “Where’s my bed?” the boy now asked.
“Sweetie, you can sleep with me,” Ruth told him.
“Or you can sleep in my bedroom, with me, ” Amanda offered helpfully—anything to get Graham off the subject of his father’s death.
“Okay. Fine,” Graham said in the tone of voice he used when something was wrong. “But where is Daddy now ?” His eyes welled with tears. For half a year, or more, he hadn’t asked that question.
Oh, how stupid of me to bring him here ! Ruth thought, hugging the child while he cried.
Ruth was still in the bathtub when Hannah came to the suite, bringing with her a lot of presents for Graham of the kind not suitable for taking on a plane to Europe: an entire village of interlocking blocks, and not just one stuffed animal, but a whole family of apes. They would have to ask the Stanhope to keep the village and the apes for them, which would make it a major inconvenience if they chose to stay in a different hotel.
But Graham seemed completely recovered from how the hotel had triggered his memory of Allan’s death. Children were like that— suddenly heartbroken, and then as quickly over it—whereas Ruth now felt resigned to the memories that being in the Stanhope evoked in her . She kissed Graham good night; the child was already discussing the room-service menu with Amanda when Ruth and Hannah left for Ruth’s reading.
“I hope you’re gonna read the good part,” Hannah said.
The “good part” to Hannah was the deeply disturbing sex scene with the Dutch boyfriend in the prostitute’s window room. Ruth had no intention of ever reading that scene.
“Will you see him again, do you think?” Hannah asked her, en route to the Y. “I mean, he’s gonna read the book. . . .”
“Will I see whom again?” Ruth asked, although she knew very well the “him” Hannah had meant.
“The Dutch boy, whoever he is,” Hannah replied. “And don’t tell me there wasn’t a Dutch boy!”
“Hannah, I never had sex with a Dutch boy.”
“My bet is, he’s gonna read the book,” Hannah went on.
By the time they got to Ninety-second Street and Lexington Avenue, Ruth was almost looking forward to Eddie O’Hare’s introduction—at least that would put an end to her having to listen to Hannah.
Of course Ruth had considered that Wim Jongbloed would read My Last Bad Boyfriend; she was prepared to be as icy to him as she had to be. If he approached her . . . But what had both surprised and relieved Ruth, albeit in an anticlimactic fashion, was that Maarten had informed her that Rooie’s murderer had been caught in Zurich. Soon after his capture, the killer had died !
Maarten and Sylvia had mentioned this to Ruth rather casually. “I don’t suppose they ever found that prostitute’s killer, did they?” Ruth had asked them, with feigned indifference. (She’d put the question to them in a recent weekend phone call, together with the usual questions regarding the itinerary for her upcoming trip.) Maarten and Sylvia had explained how they’d missed the news: they were away from Amsterdam—thus the story was secondhand for them—and by the time they heard the details, they’d forgotten that Ruth had been interested in the story.
“In Zurich?” Ruth had asked. So that had been the moleman’s German-sounding accent—he’d been Swiss !
“I think it was Zurich,” Maarten had replied. “And the guy had killed other prostitutes, all over Europe.”