A Widow for One Year

Marion went to the beach only if Ruth wanted to go, and if it was a weekend—or if, for some reason, there was no nanny to take the child. Marion didn’t like too much sun; at the beach she would cover herself in a long-sleeved shirt. She wore a baseball cap and sunglasses, so that no one ever knew who she was, and she sat watching Ruth play by herself at the water’s edge. “Not like a mother, more like a nanny,” Marion had described herself at the beach to Eddie. “Like someone even less interested in a child than a good nanny would be,” Marion had said.

Ted had wanted multiple showerheads for the outdoor shower; that way, he and his squash opponent could take a shower together—“like in a locker room,” Ted had said. “Or all the children can shower together.”

“ What children?” Marion had repeated.

“Ruth and her nanny, then,” Ted had replied.

The lawn in the presently unmanaged yard gave way to an untended field of tall grass and daisies. There should be more lawn, Ted had decided. And some sort of barrier to keep the neighbors from seeing you when you were in the pool.

“ What neighbors?” Marion had asked.

“Oh, there will be lots more neighbors one day,” Ted had told her. (He was right about that.)

But Marion had wanted a different sort of yard. She liked the field of tall grass, and the daisies; more wildflowers would have suited her. She liked the look of an untamed garden. And maybe a grape arbor, but with the vines allowed to run unchecked. And there should be less lawn, not more—and more flowers, but not prissy flowers.

“ ‘Prissy . . .’ ” Ted had said scornfully.

“Swimming pools are prissy,” Marion had said. “And if there’s more lawn, it will look like an athletic field. What do we need an athletic field for? Is Ruth going to be throwing or kicking a ball with an entire team ?”

“You’d want more lawn if the boys were alive,” Ted had told her. “The boys liked to play ball.”

That had been the end of it. The yard had stayed as it was—if not exactly a yard-in-progress, at least an unfinished yard.

In the dark, listening to the crickets and the tree frogs and the distant percussion of the surf, Eddie was imagining what would become of the yard. He heard the ice cubes rattling in Ted’s glass before he saw T

ed, and before Ted saw him.

There were no lights on in the downstairs of the house, only the light from the upstairs hall, and from the guest bedroom, where Eddie had left his light on, and from the feeble night-light in the master bathroom, which was always left on for Ruth. Eddie marveled how Ted had managed to make himself another drink in the dark kitchen.

“Is Ruth asleep?” Eddie asked him.

“Finally,” Ted said. “The poor kid.” He went on shaking the ice cubes in his glass; he kept sucking his drink. For a third time, Ted offered Eddie a drink and Eddie declined.

“At least have a beer, for Christ’s sake,” Ted said. “Jesus . . . just look at this yard.”

Eddie decided to have a beer. The sixteen-year-old had never had a beer before. His parents, on special occasions, drank wine with dinner, and Eddie had been permitted to have wine with them. Eddie had never liked the wine.

The beer was cold but bitter-tasting—Eddie wouldn’t finish it. Yet going to the refrigerator to get it, and turning on (and leaving on) the kitchen light, had broken Ted’s train of thought. Ted had forgotten about the yard; he was thinking more directly of Marion instead.

“I can’t believe she doesn’t want custody of her own daughter,” Ted said.

“I don’t know if that’s it,” Eddie replied. “It’s not that she doesn’t want Ruth. Marion just doesn’t want to be a bad mother—she thinks she’ll do a bad job.”

“What kind of mother leaves her daughter?” Ted asked the boy. “Talk about ‘a bad job’!”

“She said she wanted to be a writer, once,” Eddie said.

“Marion is a writer—she just doesn’t do it,” Ted told him.

Marion had told Eddie that she couldn’t keep turning to her innermost thoughts when all she thought about was the death of her boys. Eddie said cautiously to Ted: “I think Marion still wants to be a writer, but the death of the boys is her only subject. I mean that it’s the only subject that keeps presenting itself to her, and she can’t write about it.”

“Let me see if I follow you, Eddie,” Ted said. “So . . . Marion takes every existent photograph of the boys that she can lay her hands on— and all the negatives, too—and she goes off to be a writer, because the boys’ death is the only subject that keeps presenting itself to her, although she can’t write about it. Yeah . . .” Ted said, “that makes a lot of sense, doesn’t it?”

“I don’t know,” Eddie said. Whatever theory there was about Marion, the theory had a hole in it; there was a gap in what anybody knew or said about her. “I don’t know her well enough to judge her,” Eddie told Ted.

“Let me tell you something, Eddie,” Ted said. “ I don’t know her well enough to judge her, either.”

Eddie could believe that, but he wasn’t about to let Ted feel virtuous. “Don’t forget—it’s you she’s really leaving,” Eddie told him. “I guess she knew you pretty well.”