A Widow for One Year

Then his passport was stamped and handed back to him. Harry saw a sign that said the automatic door was out of order, but the door opened nonetheless, admitting him into the New World, where Ruth was waiting for him. The instant he saw her, his doubts vanished, and in the car she said to him: “I was having second thoughts, until I saw you.”

She was wearing a fitted olive-green shirt; it clung to her in the manner of a long-sleeved polo shirt, but it was more open at the throat, where Harry could see the cross of Lorraine that he’d given her—the two crosspieces glinting in the brilliant autumn sun.

They drove west for close to three hours, across most of Massachusetts, before turning north into Vermont. That mid-October, the fall foliage was at its peak in Massachusetts, but the colors were more muted—just past their prime—as Ruth and Harry headed north. It struck Harry that the low, wooded mountains reflected the melancholy of the changing season. The faded colors heralded the coming dominance of the bare, mouse-brown trees; soon the evergreens would be the only color against the mouse-gray sky. And in six weeks or less, the changing fall would change again—soon the snow would come. There’d be days when shades of gray would be the only colors amid a prevailing whiteness, which would be brightened by intermittent skies of purplish slate or blue.

“I can’t wait to see the winter here,” Harry told Ruth.

“You’ll see it soon enough,” she replied. “The winter here feels like forever.”

“I’ll never leave you,” he said.

“Just don’t die on me, Harry,” Ruth told him.

Because Hannah Grant hated to drive, she had been involved in more than one compromising relationship. She also loathed spending her weekends alone, which meant that she’d often left Manhattan on a weekend, to visit Ruth in Vermont, in the company of one bad but car-driving boyfriend or another.

At the moment, Hannah was between boyfriends, a condition she rarely tolerated for long, and so she’d asked Eddie O’Hare to be her designated driver for the weekend, even though he would first have to come into Manhattan to pick her up. Hannah believed she was justified in asking Eddie to drive her to Vermont—Hannah always believed she was justified. But Ruth had invited her and Eddie for the weekend, and Hannah had long believed that there was no such thing as a detour too prolonged or inconvenient to suggest.

She’d been surprised at how easily Eddie was persuaded, but Eddie had a reason of his own to think that a four-hour drive in the same car with Hannah might be beneficial—even providential. Naturally the two friends (if you could call Hannah and Eddie “friends”) were dying to talk to each other about what had befallen their mutual friend, for Ruth had sincerely shocked both Hannah and Eddie by her announcement that she was in love with a Dutchman, whom she intended to marry—not to mention that the Dutchman was an ex-cop, whom she’d known for less than a month!

When she was between boyfriends, Hannah dressed what she called “down,” which is to say she dressed almost as plainly as Ruth, who would never have described Hannah as dressing down. But Eddie noted that Hannah’s lank hair had an atypically oily, unwashed look to it, and she wasn’t wearing any makeup, which was a sure sign that Hannah was between boyfriends. Eddie knew that Hannah would never have called him and asked him for a ride if she’d had a boyfriend— any boyfriend.

At forty, Hannah had lost little of her sexual rawness, which her tired-looking eyes only enlarged. Her tawny, amber-blond hair had turned ash-blond (with Hannah’s help), and the pale hollows under her prominent cheekbones served to exaggerate her aura of a constant, predatory hunger. It was a decidedly sexual hunger, Eddie thought, glancing sideways at Hannah in the car. And that it had been a while since she’d waxed her upper lip was sexually enhancing. The blond down on her upper lip, which Hannah had the habit of exploring with the tip of her tongue, gave her an animalistic power that provoked in Eddie an unexpected and unwanted sense of arousal.

Eddie O’Hare had never been sexually attracted to Hannah Grant, nor was he attracted to her now; but when Hannah paid less attention to her appearance, her sexual presence announced itself with more brutal force. She’d always been long-waisted and thin, with high, small, shapely breasts, and when she gave in to her slovenliness, it heightened that aspect of herself of which she was (finally) least proud: chiefly, Hannah looked born to be in bed with someone—and with someone else, and someone else—again and again. (All in all, she was sexually terrifying to Eddie—and never so much as she was when she was between boyfriends.)

“A fucking Dutch cop! Can you imagine?” Hannah asked Eddie.

All that Ruth had told the two of them was that she’d first seen Harry at one of her book-signings, and that he’d later introduced himself to her in the lobby of her hotel. It infuriated Hannah that Ruth had been nonchalant about Harry being a retired policeman. (Ruth had been more expressive on the subject of Harry being a reader .) He’d been a street cop in the red-light district for forty years, but all that Ruth had said was that Harry was her cop now.

“Exactly what kind of relationship does a guy like that have with those hookers?” Hannah asked Eddie, who just kept driving, as best he could; he found it impossible not to look at Hannah from time to time. “I hate it when Ruth lies to me, or when she doesn’t tell the whole truth, because she’s such a good liar,” Hannah said. “It’s her fucking business to make up lies, isn’t it?”

Eddie stole another look at her, but he would never interrupt her when she was angry—Hannah angry was a sight that Eddie loved to behold.

Hannah slouched in her seat, the seat belt noticeably parting her breasts while at the same time flattening her right breast into virtual nonexistence. Glancing at her sideways again, Eddie saw that Hannah wasn’t wearing a bra. She had on a slinky, soft-looking silk pullover, which was frayed at both cuffs—the turtleneck had lost what elasticity it had ever had. Hannah’s thinness was exaggerated by how the turtleneck drooped around her throat. The outline of her left nipple was clearly visible where the seat belt stretched the pullover against her breast.

“I’ve never heard Ruth sound so happy,” Eddie said unhappily; his memory of how positively ecstatic she’d been on t

he phone nearly caused him to shut his eyes in pain, but he remembered he was driving. To him, the burnt-ochre color of the dead and dying leaves was a morbid reminder that the foliage season was over. Was his love for Ruth dying, too?

“So she’s gaga about the guy—that’s fucking obvious,” Hannah said. “But what do we know about him? What does Ruth really know about him?”

“He could be one of those male gold diggers,” Eddie suggested.

“No shit!” Hannah cried. “Of course he could be! Cops don’t make any money unless they’re corrupt.”

“And he’s as old as Allan was,” Eddie said. Hearing Ruth sound that happy had half-convinced Eddie that he wasn’t in love with her, or that he’d fallen out of love with her. It was confusing. Eddie wouldn’t really know how he felt about Ruth until he saw her with the Dutchman.

“I never went out with a Harry, ” Hannah said. “It’s not like I’m utterly without standards.”

“Ruth said that Harry was truly excellent with Graham,” Eddie countered. “Whatever that means.” Eddie knew that he’d failed Ruth in his insufficient efforts with Graham. He was Graham’s godfather in name only. (Ever since he’d spent a whole day with Ruth when she was a child, and doubtless because it was also the day Ruth’s mother left, Eddie had felt completely devastated in the presence of children.)

“Ruth could be seduced by anyone who was ‘truly excellent’ with Graham,” Hannah rejoined, but Eddie doubted that the tactic would ever have worked for him—even if he could have mastered the tactic.

“I understand that Harry has taught Graham how to kick a soccer ball,” Eddie offered, in faint praise.

“American kids should learn to throw balls,” Hannah replied. “It’s those fucking Europeans who like to kick them.”

“Ruth said that Harry was very well read,” Eddie reminded her.