But at family dinners during school vacations Eddie was exposed to the stultifying phenomenon of his parents’ perfect marriage: they did not bore each other because they never listened to each other. A tender politeness passed between them; the mom would allow the dad to speak, at length, and then it was the mom’s turn—almost always on an unrelated subject. Mr. and Mrs. O’Hare’s conversation was a masterpiece of non sequiturs; by not participating, Eddie could best entertain himself by trying to guess if anything of what his mother or father had said would ever be remembered by the other.
Shortly before his departure for the ferry to Orient Point, an evening at home in Exeter became a case in point. The school year was over, the commencement exercises recently concluded, and Minty O’Hare was philosophizing on what he called the indolence of the students’ behavior in the spring term. “I know that they are thinking of their summer vacations,” Minty said for perhaps the hundredth time. “I realize that the return of warm weather is itself an invitation to sloth, but not to slothfulness of such an advanced degree as I observed this spring.”
His father made these same statements every spring; the statements themselves brought forth a deadening torpor in Eddie, who’d once wondered if his sole athletic interest, running, wasn’t the result of trying to flee his father’s voice, which had the predictable, ceaseless modulations of a circular saw in a lumberyard.
When Minty had not quite finished—Eddie’s father never seemed to be finished—but he had at least paused for breath, or for a bite of food, Eddie’s mother would begin.
“As if it weren’t enough that, all winter, we were witnesses to the fact that Mrs. Havelock chooses not to wear a bra,” Dot O’Hare began, “now that the weather is warm again, we must suffer the consequences of her refusal to shave her armpits, too. And there is still no bra in sight. Now it’s no bra and hairy armpits!” Eddie’s mother declared.
Mrs. Havelock was a new young faculty wife; as such, at least to Eddie and the majority of the boys at Exeter, she was of more interest than were most of her counterparts. And Mrs. Havelock’s bralessness was, for the boys, a plus . While she was not a pretty woman, but rather plump and plain, the sway of her youthful, ample bosom had fully endeared her to the students—and to those uncounted men on the faculty who would never have confessed their attraction. In those prehippie days of 1958, Mrs. Havelock’s bralessness was both unusual and noteworthy. Among themselves, the boys called her Bouncy. For lucky Mr . Havelock, whom the boys deeply envied, they demonstrated unparalleled respect. Eddie, who enjoyed Mrs. Havelock’s bouncing breasts as much as anyone, was perturbed by his mother’s heartless disapproval.
And now the hairy armpits—these, Eddie had to admit, had been the cause of considerable consternation among the less sophisticated students. In those days, there were boys at Exeter who seemed not to know that women could grow hair in their armpits—or else these boys were deeply distressed to contemplate why any woman would . To Eddie, however, Mrs. Havelock’s hairy armpits were further evidence of the woman’s boundless capacity to give pleasure. In a sleeveless summer dress, Mrs. Havelock bounced and she was hairy. Since the warm weather, not a few of the boys, in addition to calling her Bouncy, had taken to calling her Furry. By either name, the very thought of her gave Eddie O’Hare a hard-on.
“The next thing you know, she’ll stop shaving her legs,” said Eddie’s mother. The thought of that admittedly gave Eddie pause, although he decided to reserve judgment until he saw for himself if such a growth on Mrs. Havelock’s legs might please him.
Since Mr. Havelock was a colleague of Minty’s in the English Department, it was Dot O’Hare’s opinion that her husband should speak to him about the disturbing inappropriateness of his wife’s “ bohemianism” at an all-boys’ school. But Minty, although he could bore with the best of bores, knew better than to interfere with the clothing or the shaving—or the lack thereof—of another man’s wife.
“My dear Dorothy,” was all that Minty would say, “Mrs. Havelock is a European.”
“I don’t know what that’s supposed to mean!” Eddie’s mother commented. But Eddie’s father would already have returned—as agreeably as if he had never been interrupted—to the subject of student indolence in the spring.
In Eddie’s unexpressed opinion, only Mrs. Havelock’s mobile breasts and furry armpits could ever relieve the sluggishness he felt—and it wasn’t the spring that made Eddie feel indolent. It was his parents’ unending and unconnected conversations; they left a veritable wake of slothfulness, a trail of torpor.
Sometimes Eddie’s fellow students would ask him: “Uh, what’s your dad’s real name, anyway?” They knew the senior O’Hare only as Minty, or—to his face—Mr. O’Hare.
“Joe,” Eddie would reply. “Joseph E. O’Hare.” The E. was for Edward, the only name his father called him.
“I didn’t name you Edward because I wanted to call you Eddie,” his father periodically told him. But everyone else, even his mom, called him Eddie. One day, Eddie hoped, just plain Ed would do.
At the last family dinner before Eddie left for his first summer job, he had tried to interject some of his own conversation into his parents’ endless non sequiturs, but it hadn’t worked.
“I was at the gym today, and I ran into Mr. Bennett,” Eddie said. Mr. Bennett had been Eddie’s English teacher in the past school year. Eddie was very fond of him; his course included some of the best books that the boy had ever read.
“I suppose we can look forward to seeing her armpits at the beach all summer. I’m afraid I just may say something,” Eddie’s mother announced.
“I actually played a little squash with Mr. Bennett,” Eddie added. “I told him that I’d always been interested in trying it, and he took the time to hit the ball with me for a while. I liked it better than I thought I would.” Mr. Bennett, in addition to his duties in the English Department, was also the academy squash coach—quite a successful one, too. Hitting a squash ball had been something of a revelation to Eddie O’Hare.
“I think a shorter Christmas vacation and a longer spring break might be the answer,” his father said. “I know the school year is a long haul, but there ought to be a way to bring the boys back in the spring with a little more pep in them—a little more get-up-and-go.”
“I’ve been considering that I might try squash as a sport—I mean, next winter,” Eddie announced. “I’d still run cross-country in the fall. I could go back to track in the spring. . . .” For a moment it seemed that the word “spring” had caught his father’s attention, but it was only the indolence of spring that held Minty in its thrall.
“Maybe she gets a rash from shaving,” Eddie’s mom speculated. “Mind you, not that I don’t get a rash occasionally myself—but it’s no excuse.”
Later Eddie did the dishes while his parents prattled away. Just before going to bed, he heard his mom ask his dad: “What did he say about squash ? What about squash?”
“What did who say?” his father asked.
“Eddie!” his mom replied. “Eddie said something about squash, and Mr. Bennett.”
“He coaches squash,” Minty said.
“Joe, I know that !”
“My dear Dorothy, what is your question?”
“What did Eddie say about squash?” Dot repeated.
“Well, you tell me,” Minty said.