A Widow for One Year

by John Irving

  “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.

  “Honestly, Joe,” Dot said. “I sometimes wonder if you ever listen.”

  “My dear Dorothy, I’m all ears,” the old bore told her. They both had a good laugh over that. They were still laughing as Eddie dragged himself through the requisite motions of going to bed. He was suddenly so tired—so indolent, he guessed—that he couldn’t conceive of making the effort to tell his parents what he’d meant. If theirs was a good marriage, and by all counts it seemed to be, Eddie imagined that a bad marriage might have much to recommend it. He was about to test that theory, more strenuously than he knew.

  The Door in the Floor

  En route to New London, a journey that had been tediously over-planned—like Marion, they’d left much too early for the designated ferry—Eddie’s father got lost in the vicinity of Providence.

  “Is this the pilot’s error or the navigator’s?” Minty asked cheerfully. It was both. Eddie’s father had been talking so much that he’d not been paying sufficient attention to the road; Eddie, who was the “navigator,” had been making such an effort to stay awake that he’d neglected to consult the map. “It’s a good thing we left early,” his father added.

  They stopped at a gas station, where Joe O’Hare made his best attempt to engage in small talk with a member of the working class. “So, how’s this for a predicament?” the senior O’Hare said to the gas-station attendant, who appeared to Eddie to be a trifle retarded. “Here’s a couple of lost Exonians in search of the New London ferry to Orient Point.”

  Eddie died a little every time he heard his father speak to strangers. (Who but an Exonian knew what an Exonian was?) As if stricken by a passing coma, the gas-station attendant stared at an oily stain on the pavement a little to the right of Minty’s right shoe. “You’re in Rhode Island” was all that the unfortunate man was able to say.

  “Can you tell us the way to New London?” Eddie asked him.

  When they were back on the road again, Minty regaled Eddie on the subject of the intrinsic sullenness that was so often the result of a subpar secondary-school education. “The dulling of the mind is a terrible thing, Edward,” his father instructed him.

  They arrived in New London in
enough time for Eddie to have taken an earlier ferry. “But then you’ll have to wait in Orient Point all alone!” Minty pointed out. The Coles, after all, were expecting Eddie to be on the later ferry. By the time Eddie realized how much he would have preferred to wait in Orient Point alone, the earlier ferry had sailed.

  “My son’s first ocean voyage,” Minty said to the woman with the enormous arms who sold Eddie his passenger ticket. “It’s not the Queen Elizabeth or the Queen Mary; it’s not a seven-day crossing; it’s not Southampton, as in England, or Cherbourg, as in France. But, especially when you’re sixteen, a little voyage at sea to Orient Point will do!” The woman smiled tolerantly through her rolls of fat; even though her smile was slight, one could discern that she was missing a few teeth.

  Afterward, standing at the waterfront, Eddie’s father philosophized on the subject of the dietary excesses that were often the result of a subpar secondary-school education. In one short trip away from Exeter, they kept running across examples of people who would have been happier or thinner (or both) if they’d only had the good fortune to attend the academy!

  Occasionally Eddie’s father would interject, at random, sprinkles of advice that, out of nowhere, pertained to Eddie’s upcoming summer job. “Don’t be nervous just because he’s famous,” the senior O’Hare said, apropos of nothing. “He’s not exactly a major literary figure. Just pick up what you can. Note his work habits, see if there’s a method to his madness—that kind of thing.” As Eddie’s designated ferry approached, it was Minty who was suddenly growing anxious about Eddie’s job.

  They loaded the trucks first, and the first in line was a truck full of fresh clams—or, empty, it was on its way to be filled up with fresh clams. It smelled like less-than-fresh clams, in either case, and the clam-truck driver, who was smoking a cigarette and leaning against the fly-spattered grille of the clam truck while the incoming ferry docked, was the next victim of Joe O’Hare’s impromptu conversation.

  “My boy here is on his way to his very first job,” Minty announced, while Eddie died a little more.

  “Oh, yeah?” the clam-truck driver replied.

  “He’s going to be a writer’s assistant,” proclaimed Eddie’s father. “Mind you, we’re not exactly sure what that might entail, but it will doubtless be more demanding than sharpening pencils, changing the typewriter ribbon, and looking up those difficult words that not even the writer himself knows how to spell! I look at it as a learning experience, whatever it turns out to be.”

  The clam-truck driver, suddenly grateful for the job he had, said: “Good luck, kid.”

  At the last minute, just before Eddie boarded the ferry, his father ran to the car and then ran back again. “I almost forgot!” he shouted, handing Eddie a fat envelope wrapped with a rubber band and a package the size and softness of a loaf of bread. The package was gift-wrapped, but something had crushed it in the backseat of the car; the present looked abandoned, unwanted. “It’s for the little kid—your mother and I thought of it,” Minty said.

  “ What little kid?” Eddie asked. He clutched the present and the envelope under his chin, because his heavy duffel bag—and a lighter, smaller suitcase—required both his hands. Thus he staggered on board.

  “The Coles have a little girl—I think she’s four!” Minty hollered. There was the rattling of chains, the chug of the boat’s engine, the intermittent blasts of the ferry horn; other people were shouting their good-byes. “They had a new child to replace the dead ones!” Eddie’s father yelled. This seemed to get the attention of even the clam-truck driver, who had parked his truck on board and now leaned over the rails of the upper deck.

  “Oh,” Eddie said. “Good-bye!” he cried.

  “I love you, Edward!” his father bellowed. Then Minty O’Hare began to cry. Eddie had never seen his father cry, but Eddie had not left home before. Probably his mother had cried, too, but Eddie hadn’t noticed. “Be careful !” his father wailed. The passengers who overhung the rails of the upper deck were all staring now. “Watch out for her !” his father screamed to him.

  “Who?” Eddie cried.

  “ Her! I mean Mrs . Cole!” the senior O’Hare shouted.

  “Why?” Eddie screamed. They were pulling away, the docks falling behind; the ferry horn was deafening.

  “I hear she never got over it!” Minty roared. “She’s a zombie !”

  Oh, great— now he tells me! Eddie thought. But he just waved. He had no idea that the so-called zombie would be meeting his ferry at Orient Point; he didn’t yet know that Mr . Cole was not allowed to drive. It peeved Eddie that his dad had not allowed him to drive on the trip to New London—on the grounds that the traffic they would be facing was “different from Exeter traffic.” Eddie could still see his father on the receding Connecticut shore. Minty had turned away, his head in his hands—he was weeping.

  What did he mean, a zombie ? Eddie had expected Mrs. Cole to be like his own mother, or like the many unmemorable faculty wives who comprised almost everything he knew about women. With any luck, Mrs. Cole might have a little of what Dot O’Hare would call “ bohemianism” in her nature, although Eddie hardly dared to hope for a woman who gave such voyeuristic pleasure as Mrs. Havelock so amply provided.

  In 1958, Mrs. Havelock’s furry pits and swaying breasts were absolutely all that Eddie O’Hare thought about when he thought about women. As for girls his own age, Eddie had been unsuccessful with them; they also terrified him. Since he was a faculty brat, his few dates had been with girls from the town of Exeter, awkward acquaintances from his junior-high-school days. These town girls were more grown up now, and generally wary of the town boys who attended the academy—understandably, they were anticipating being condescended to.

  On Exeter dance weekends, the out-of-town girls struck Eddie as unapproachable. They arrived on trains and in buses, often from other boarding schools or from cities like Boston and New York. They were much better dressed, and seemingly more like women, than most of the faculty wives—excepting Mrs. Havelock.

  Before leaving Exeter, Eddie had leafed through the pages of the ’53 PEAN, looking for pictures of Thomas and Timothy Cole—it was their last yearbook. What he found had intimidated him greatly. Those boys had not belonged to a single club, but Thomas was pictured with both the Varsity Soccer and the Varsity Hockey teams, and Timothy, lagging not far behind his brother, was captured in the photographs of J.V. Soccer and J.V. Hockey. That they could kick and skate wasn’t what had intimidated Eddie. It was the sheer number of snapshots, throughout the yearbook, in which both boys appeared—in the many candid photos that make up a yearbook, in all those shots of the students who are unquestionably having fun . Thomas and Timothy always appeared to be having a ball. They’d been happy ! Eddie realized.

  Wrestling in a pile of boys in a dormitory butt room (the smokers’ lounge), clowning on crutches, posing with snow shovels, or playing cards—Thomas often with a cigarette dangling from the corner of his handsome mouth. And on the academy dance weekends, the Cole boys were pictured with the prettiest girls. There was a picture of Timothy not dancing with but actually embracing his dance partner; there was another of Thomas kissing a girl—they were outdoors on a cold, snowy day, both of them in camel-hair overcoats, Thomas pulling the girl to him by the scarf around her neck. Those boys had been popular ! (And then they had died.)

  The ferry passed what looked like a shipyard; some naval vessels were in a dry dock, others floated in the water. As the ferry moved away from land, it passed a lighthouse or two. There were fewer sailboats farther out in the sound. The day had been hot and hazy inland—even earlier that morning, when Eddie had left Exeter—but on the water the wind from the northeast was cold, and the sun went in and out of the clouds.

  On the upper deck, still struggling with his heavy duffel bag and the lighter, smaller suitcase—not to mention the already-mangled present for the child—Eddie repacked. The gift wrapping would suffer further abuse when Eddie shoved the present to the
bottom of the duffel bag, but at least he wouldn’t have to carry it under his chin. Also, he needed socks; he’d begun the day in loafers with no socks, but his feet were cold. He found a sweatshirt to wear over his T-shirt, too. Only now, his first day away from the academy, did he realize he was wearing an Exeter T-shirt and an Exeter sweatshirt. Embarrassed at what struck him as such shameless advertising of his revered school, Eddie turned the sweatshirt inside out. Only then did it occur to him why some of the seniors at the academy were in the habit of wearing their Exeter sweatshirts inside out; his new awareness of this height of fashion indicated to Eddie that he was ready to encounter the so-called real world— provided that there really was a world where Exonians were well advised to put their Exeter experiences behind them (or turn them inside out).

  It was further heartening to Eddie that he was wearing jeans, despite his mother’s advice that khakis would be more “appropriate”; yet although Ted Cole had written Minty that the boy could forget about a coat and tie—Eddie’s summer job didn’t require what Ted called the “Exeter uniform”—Eddie’s father had insisted that he pack a number of dress shirts and ties, and what Minty called an “all-purpose” sports jacket.

  It was when he repacked on the upper deck that Eddie first took notice of the fat envelope his father had handed him without explanation, which in itself was odd—his father explained everything . It was an envelope embossed with the Phillips Exeter Academy return address, and with O’HARE written in his father’s neat hand. Inside the envelope were the names and addresses of every living Exonian in the Hamptons. It was the senior O’Hare’s idea of being prepared for any emergency—you could always call on a fellow Exeter man for help! At a glance Eddie could see that he didn’t know any of these people. There were six names with Southampton addresses, most of them from graduating classes in the thirties and forties; one old fellow, who’d graduated with the class of 1919, was doubtless retired and probably too old to remember that he’d ever gone to Exeter. (The man was only fifty-seven, in fact.)