A Widow for One Year

“She cooks,” Eduardo told him. “She looks after our grandchild sometimes—and some other people’s children, too. She cleans some people’s houses. . . .”

“Maybe she’d like to clean this house,” Ted said. “Maybe she’d like to cook for me, and look after my four-year-old girl. She’s a nice little girl. Her name is Ruth.”

“Sure, I’ll ask my wife. I’ll bet she’ll want to do it,” Eduardo replied.

Eddie felt certain that Marion would have been devastated if she’d been a witness to these transactions. Marion had been gone less than twenty-four hours, but her husband—at least in his mind—had already replaced her. Ted had hired a gardener and a carpenter, a virtual caretaker and handyman—and Eduardo’s wife would soon be doing the cooking, and looking after Ruth!

“What’s your wife’s name?” Ted asked Eduardo.

“Conchita—not like the banana,” Eduardo told him.

Conchita would end up cooking for Ted and Ruth; she would not only become Ruth’s principal nanny, but when Ted took a trip, Conchita and Eduardo would move into the house on Parsonage Lane and look after Ruth as if they were her mother and father. And the Gomez’s granddaughter, Maria, who was Ruth’s age, would be her frequent playmate in the years that Ruth was growing up.

Getting fired by Mrs. Vaughn would have only happy and prosperous results for Eduardo; soon his principal income would be from Ted Cole, who would also provide for Conchita’s principal income. As an employer, Ted would prove to be a lot more likable and reliable than he was as a man . (If not to Eddie O’Hare.)

“So when can you start?” Ted asked Eduardo on that early Saturday morning in August 1958.

“Whenever you want,” Eduardo answered.

“Well. You can start today, Eduardo,” Ted told him. Without looking at Eddie, who was standing there beside them in the yard, Ted said: “You can begin by driving this boy to the ferry at Orient Point.”

“Sure, I can do that,” Eduardo said. He nodded politely to Eddie, who nodded back.

“You can leave immediately, Eddie,” Ted told the sixteen-year-old. “I mean, before breakfast.”

“That’s fine with me,” Eddie replied. “I’ll go get my things.”

And that was how it happened that Eddie O’Hare left without saying good-bye to Ruth; he had to leave when the child was still asleep. Eddie barely took the time to call home. He’d awakened his father and mother after midnight; now he woke them again, before seven in the morning.

“If I get to New London first, I’ll just wait for you at the docks,” Eddie told his dad. “Drive safely.”

“I’ll be there! I’ll meet your ferry! We’ll both be there, Edward!” Minty breathlessly told his son.

As for the list of every living Exonian in the Hamptons, Eddie almost packed it. Instead he ripped each of the pages into long, thin strips and wadded them into a ball, which he left in his guest-bedroom wastebasket. After Eddie had gone, Ted would snoop through the room, discovering the list, which Ted would mistake for love letters. Ted would painstakingly reassemble the list, until he realized that neither Eddie nor Marion could have composed such “love letters” as these.

At the top of his small suitcase, Eddie had already packed the O’Hare family’s copy of The Mouse Crawling Between the Walls; it was the copy that Minty had wanted Mr. Cole to autograph, but Eddie could not (under the circumstances) bring himself to ask the famous author and illustrator for his signature. Instead, Eddie stole one of Ted’s pens; it was a fountain pen with the kind of nib Ted liked best for autographs. On the ferry, Eddie assumed, he would have time to try his best imitation of Ted Cole’s careful calligraphy. Eddie hoped that his mom and dad would never know the difference.

In the driveway, there was little to say in the way of good-byes— formal or informal.

“Well.” Ted stopped. “You’re a good driver, Eddie,” Ted managed to say; he held out his hand. Eddie accepted the handshake. He cautiously extended the mangled, bread loaf–shaped present for Ruth in his left hand. There was nothing to do but give it to Ted, which Eddie did.

“It’s for Ruth, but I don’t know what it is,” Eddie said. “It’s from my parents. It was in my duffel bag all summer,” he explained. He could see the distaste with which Ted examined the crushed wrapping paper, which was virtually undone. The present begged to be opened, if only to be free of its dreadful wrapping. Certainly Eddie was curious to see what it was; he also suspected he would be embarrassed to see what it was. Eddie could tell that Ted wanted to open it, too.

“Should I open it, or let Ruth open it?” Ted asked Eddie.

“Why don’t you open it?” Eddie said.

When Ted opened the present, it was clothing—a little T-shirt. What four-year-old is interested in clothing? If Ruth had opened the present, she would have been disappointed that it wasn’t a toy or a book. Besides, the little T-shirt was already too small for Ruth; by next summer, when it was T-shirt weather again, the child would have completely outgrown it.

Ted fully unfolded the T-shirt and held it up for Eddie to see. The Exeter theme should not have surprised Eddie, but the boy—for the first time in sixteen years—had just spent almost three months in a world where the academy was not the day-in, day-out topic of discussion. Across the chest of the little shirt, Eddie could read the maroon lettering on a field of gray:

EXETER 197__

Ted also showed Eddie the enclosed note from Minty. His father had written: “Not that it’s likely—at least not in our lifetimes—that the academy will ever admit girls, but I thought that, as a fellow Exonian, you would appreciate the possibility of your daughter attending Exeter. With my thanks for giving my boy his first job!” The note was signed Joe O’Hare, ’36. It was ironic, Eddie thought, that 1936, which was the year that his father had graduated from Exeter, was also the year Ted had married Marion.

It was more ironic that Ruth Cole would go to Exeter, despite Minty’s (and many of the Exeter faculty’s) belief that coeducation at the old academy was unlikely. In fact, on February 27, 1970, the trustees announced that Exeter would admit girls in the fall of that year. Ruth would then leave her life on Long Island for the venerable boarding school in New Hampshire; she was sixteen. At the age of nineteen, she would graduate from Exeter, in the class of ’73.

That year, Eddie’s mother, Dot O’Hare, would send her son a letter, telling him that his former employer’s daughter had graduated from the academy—along with 46 other girls, who were the female classmates of 239 boys. Dot admitted to Eddie that the numbers might be even more one-sided, because she had counted several of the boys as girls—so many of the boys had such long hair.