A Widow for One Year - Page 95

She could imagine it being funny in the interviews that lay ahead of her: “Traditionally, I’ve had a hard time with left-handers.” Or: “There’s always something with lefties that you don’t see coming.” (For example, they fuck you from behind, after you tell them you don’t like it that way, and they slug you when you tell them it’s time to leave—or they fuck your best friend.)

Ruth felt familiar enough with left-handed behavior to make up a pretty good story.

They were in heavy traffic on the Southern State Parkway, not far from the turnoff to the airport, when Ruth decided that she’d not defeated her father to her satisfaction. For fifteen years or more, whenever they drove anywhere together, Ruth usually drove. But not today. Back in Sagaponack, as he was putting her three bags in the trunk, her father had said to her: “Better let me drive, Ruthie. I can see out of both eyes.”

Ruth hadn’t argued. If her father drove, she could say anything to him, and he wouldn’t be permitted to look at her—not while he was driving.

Ruth had begun by telling him how much she’d liked Eddie O’Hare. She’d gone on to say that her mother had already thought of leaving before the boys were killed; it had not been Eddie who’d given Marion the idea. And Ruth told her father that she knew he had planned her mother’s affair with Eddie; he had set them up, realizing how vulnerable Marion might be to a boy who reminded her of Thomas and Timothy. And of course it had been an even easier assumption, on her father’s part, that Eddie would fall hopelessly in love with Marion.

“Ruthie, Ruthie . . .” her father started to say.

“Keep your eyes on the road, and in the rearview mirror,” she told him. “If you even think about looking at me, you better pull over and let me drive.”

“Your mother was terminally depressed, and she knew it,” her father told her. “She knew she would have a terrible effect on you. It’s an awful thing for a child to have a parent who’s always depressed.”

Talking to Eddie had meant so much to Ruth, but everything Eddie had told her meant nothing to her father. Ted had a fixed idea of who Marion was, and why she’d left him. Indeed, Ruth’s meeting with Eddie had failed to make any impression on her father. That was probably the reason that the desire to devastate her father had never been as strong in Ruth as it was when she began to tell him about Scott Saunders.

Clever novelist that she was, Ruth first led her father into the story by mis leading him. She began with meeting Scott on the jitney, and their subsequent squash match.

“So that’s who gave you the black eye!” her father said. “I’m not surprised. He charges all over the court, and he takes too big a backswing—he’s a typical tennis player.”

Ruth just told the story, step by step. When she got to the part about showing Scott the Polaroids in her father’s bottommost drawer, Ruth began to speak of herself in the third person. Her father hadn’t known that Ruth knew about those photographs—not to mention his night-table drawer full of condoms and the lubricating jelly.

When Ruth got to the part about her first sexual experience with Scott—and how she’d hoped, when Scott had been licking her, that her father would come home and see them through the open door of the master bedroom—her father took his eyes off the road, if only for a half-second, and looked at her.

“You better pull over and let me drive, Daddy,” Ruth told him. “One eye on the road is better than no eyes.”

He watched the road, and the rearview mirror, while she went ahead with her story. The shrimp hadn’t tasted much like shrimp, and she hadn’t wanted to have sex a second time. Her first big mistake was to straddle Scott for so long. “Ruth fucked his brains out” was how she put it.

When she got to the part about the phone ringing, and Scott Saunders entering her from behind—even though she’d told him that she didn’t like it that way—her father took his eyes off the road again. Ruth got angry with him. “Look, Daddy, if you can’t concentrate on the driving, you’re not fit to drive. Get off the road. I’ll take over.”

“Ruthie, Ruthie . . .” was all he could say. He was crying.

“If you’re upset and you can’t see the road, that’s another reason to pull over, Daddy.”

She described her head banging against the headboard of the bed, how she’d had no other choice but to push her hips back against him. And, later, how he’d hit her— not with a squash racquet. (“Ruth thought it was a straight left—she never saw it coming.”)

She’d just curled up and hoped that he wouldn’t keep hitting her. Then, when her head had cleared, she’d gone downstairs and found Scott’s squash racquet. Her first shot took out his right knee. “It was a low backhand,” she explained. “Naturally with the racquet face sideways.”

“You took his knee out first?” her father interrupted her.

“Knee, face, both elbows, both collarbones—in that order,” Ruth told him.

“He couldn’t walk ?” her father asked.

“He couldn’t crawl, ” Ruth said. “He could walk, with a limp.”

“Jesus, Ruthie . . .”

“Did you see the sign for Kennedy?” she asked him.

“Yes, I saw it,” he said.

“You didn’t look like you saw it,” Ruth told him.

Then she told him how it still hurt her to pee, and that there was a pain in an unfamiliar place—inside her. “I’m sure it will go away,” she added, dropping the third person. “I’ve just got to remember to stay out of that position.”

“I’ll kill the bastard!” her father told her.

Tags: John Irving Fiction
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