A Widow for One Year

Eddie felt exhausted, but he’d identified the passage, as Ruth had asked him to.

At Ruth’s wedding, Hannah read from George Eliot with a lack of conviction, but the words themselves were alive for Ruth.

“What greater thing is there for two human souls, than to feel that they are joined for life—to strengthen each other in all labor, to rest on each other in all sorrow, to minister to each other in all pain, to be one with each other in silent unspeakable memories at the moment of the last parting?”

What greater thing is there, indeed? Ruth wondered. She thought she had only begun to love Allan; she believed she was already loving him more than she’d ever loved anyone else, except her dad.

The civil ceremony, which was conducted by a local justice of the peace, was held in Ruth’s favorite bookstore in Manchester, Vermont. The booksellers, a man and his wife who were old friends of Ruth’s, were kind enough to close their store for a couple of hours on one of the busiest shopping weekends of the year. After the wedding, the bookstore opened its doors to business-as-usual, but there seemed to be more than the expected numbers of book buyers waiting to be served. Among them were some curiosity seekers. As the new Mrs. Albright (which Ruth Cole would never be called ) left the store on Allan’s arm, she averted her eyes from the bystanders.

“If there are any journalists, I’ll handle them,” Hannah had whispered to Ruth.

Eddie was looking all around for Marion, of course.

“Is she here? Do you see her?” Ruth asked, but Eddie just shook his head.

Ruth was looking for someone else, too. She was half-expecting that Allan’s ex-wife would show up, although Allan had scoffed at her fears. The subject of children had been

a bitter one between Allan and his former wife, but their divorce had been a joint decision. Harassment was not a part of his ex-wife’s nature, Allan had said.

On that busy Thanksgiving weekend, they’d had to park at some distance from the bookstore. As they passed a pizza restaurant and a store that sold candles, Ruth realized that they were being followed; notwithstanding that Hannah’s bad boyfriend had the appearance of a bodyguard, someone was following the small wedding party. Allan took Ruth’s arm and hurried her along the sidewalk; they were now near the parking lot. Hannah kept turning to look at the elderly woman who was following them, but the woman was not one to be stared down.

“She’s not a journalist,” Hannah said.

“Fuck her—she’s just some old lady,” Hannah’s bad boyfriend said.

“I’ll handle this,” said Eddie O’Hare. But this older woman was immune to Eddie’s charms.

“I’m not talking to you. I’m talking to her, ” the elderly woman told Eddie; she was pointing at Ruth.

“Look, lady—it’s her wedding day. Take a fucking hike,” Hannah said.

Allan and Ruth stopped walking and faced the old lady, who was out of breath from hurrying after them. “It’s not my ex-wife,” Allan whispered, but Ruth knew this as surely as she knew that the old woman wasn’t her mother.

“I wanted to see your face,” the elderly lady said to Ruth. In her own way, she was as nondescript as Rooie’s murderer. She was just another older woman who’d let herself go. And with that thought, even before the woman spoke again, Ruth suddenly knew who she was. Who else but a widow for the rest of her life would be so inclined to let herself go?

“Well, now you’ve seen my face,” Ruth told her. “What next?”

“I want to see your face again, when you’re a widow,” the angry widow said. “I can’t wait for that.”

“Hey,” Hannah told the elderly lady, “by the time she’s a widow, you’ll be dead. You look like you’re dying already.”

Hannah took Ruth’s arm out of Allan’s hand and started pulling her toward their car. “Come on, baby—it’s your wedding day!”

Allan briefly glared at the old woman; then he followed Ruth and Hannah. Hannah’s bad boyfriend, although he looked like an enforcer, was actually an ineffectual wimp. He just scuffed his feet and glanced at Eddie.

And Eddie O’Hare, who’d never met an older woman who couldn’t (or wouldn’t) be charmed, thought he would try again with the angry widow, who was staring after Ruth as if she were memorizing the moment.

“Wouldn’t you agree that weddings are sacred, or that they should be?” Eddie began. “Aren’t they among those days that we are meant to remember all our lives?”

“Oh, yes —I agree!” the old widow said eagerly. “She’ll surely remember this day. When her husband’s dead, she’ll remember it more than she wants to. There’s not an hour that goes by that I don’t remember my wedding day!”

“I see,” Eddie said. “Can I walk you to your car?”

“No, thank you, young man,” the widow told him.

Eddie, defeated by her righteousness, turned away and hurried after the wedding party. All of them were hurrying, perhaps because of the rawness of the November weather.

There was a small dinner party in the late afternoon. The local booksellers came, and Kevin Merton (Ruth’s caretaker) with his wife. Allan and Ruth had arranged no honeymoon. As for the new couple’s plans, Ruth had told Hannah that they would probably use the Sagaponack house more frequently than they would get to Vermont. Eventually they would have to choose between Long Island and New England, which—once they had a child—would be an obvious choice, Ruth had said. (When the child was old enough to go to school, she would want the child to be in Vermont.)