A Widow for One Year - Page 162

There was a cold rain that Sunday at the end of the Thanksgiving weekend. In her bath, Ruth remembered that it was the anniversary of the night her father had made her drive him to the Stanhope, where Ted had taken so many of his women. En route he’d told her the story of what had happened to Thomas and Timothy, while Ruth had kept her eyes on the road. Now Ruth stretched out in her bath, hoping that Harry had dressed himself and Graham properly for their walk on the beach in the rain.

When Eddie picked up Hannah, the Dutchman and the boy were getting into Kevin Merton’s pickup truck in their oilskin slickers and their broad-brimmed sou’wester hats. Graham also wore a knee-high pair of rubber boots, but Harry had on his familiar running shoes, which he never cared about getting wet. (What had worked for him in de Wallen would suffice for the beach.)

Because the weather was bad, only a modest number of New Yorkers were returning to the city on the late-afternoon train; many more of them had left earlier. By the time it arrived in Bridgehampton, the westbound 4:01 was less than packed.

Hannah said: “At least I won’t have to give up my virginity or something, just to get a fucking seat.”

“Take care of yourself, Hannah,” Eddie told her—with genuine concern, if not total affection.

“You’re the one who should take care of himself, Eddie.”

“I know how to take care of myself,” Eddie protested.

“Let me tell you something, my funny friend,” Hannah said. “Time doesn’t stop.” She took his hands and kissed him on both his cheeks. It was what Hannah did, instead of a handshake. Sometimes she’d fucked people instead of shaking their hands.

“What do you mean?” Eddie asked.

“It’s been almost forty years, Eddie. It’s time you got over it!”

Then the train left and took her away. The westbound 4:01 left Eddie standing in the rain, where Hannah’s remarks had turned him to stone. Her remarks were of the nature of such a long-standing sorrow that Eddie carried them with him throughout the inattentive cooking and eating of his Sunday-night supper.

“Time doesn’t stop” echoed in Eddie’s mind long after he’d plopped a marinated tuna steak on his outdoor grill. (The gas barbecue, on the front porch of Eddie’s unimpressive house, was at least protected from the rain.) “It’s been almost forty years, Eddie.” Eddie repeated this to himself while he ate his tuna steak, together with a boiled potato and a handful of boiled frozen peas. “It’s time you got over it!” he said aloud, as he washed his one dish and his wineglass. When he wanted another Diet Coke, Eddie was so despondent that he drank straight from the can.

The house trembled at the passing of the westbound 6:01—the later but not the latest of the westbound Sunday trains. “I hate trains!” Eddie shouted, for not even his nearest neighbor could have heard him above the noise of the clattering train.

The whole house shook again for the passing of the 8:04, which was indeed the last of the westbound Sunday trains. “Fuck you!” Eddie yelled pointlessly.

No kidding—it was time he got over it. But he would never get over Marion. Eddie knew he would never get over her.

Marion at Seventy-Six

Maple Lane, appropriately, is lined for half its length by dozens of old maple trees. A few other types of trees—an oak or two, some decorative Bradford pears—are mixed in with the maples. Approaching from the east, one forms a primary impression that is favorable. Maple Lane seems to be a well-shaded, small-town street.

Cars are parked in driveways—some residents park on the street, under the trees—and the presence of children is indicated by the occasional bike or trike or skateboard. Everything speaks of a comfortable if not grand middle-class population. The dogs, unfortunately, speak for themselves—and loudly. Indeed, the dogs watch over what is the heart of Eddie O’Hare’s neighborhood with a protectiveness that suggests to the outsider or passerby that these modest-looking houses must be vastly more chock-full of wealth than they appear to be.

Moving west on Maple Lane, Chester Street goes off to the south, revealing more pleasant, charmingly shaded houses. But then, almost exactly halfway along the lane—at that point where Corwith Avenue also heads south, to Main Street—the whole aspect of Maple Lane abruptly changes.

The north side of the street turns entirely commercial. From Eddie’s front porch, both a NAPA Auto Parts and a John Deere dealership are visible—they share a long, ugly building with the replete charmlessness of a utility shed. There’s also Gregory Electric, in an arguably less offensive frame building, and Iron Horse Graphics, which occupies a fairly good-looking modern structure. The small brick building (Battle Iron and Bronze) is positively handsome, but for the fact that in front of it—in front of all these buildings—is a wide, unkempt, continuous parking area, monotonously composed of gravel. And behind these commercial buildings is, finally, the defining feature of Maple Lane: the tracks of the Long Island Rail Road, which run parallel to the lane and lie within a stone’s throw north of it.

In one open lot, an unsteady-looking pile of track sections is stacked, and beyond the tracks are mounded heaps of sand, topsoil, and gravel—the storage area for Hamptons Materials, Inc., which is marked by a very prominent sign.

On the south side of Maple Lane, only a few private homes are squeezed alongside more commercial property—including the office for the Hampton Tank and Gas Service. Thereafter, the south side of the lane falls apart altogether. There are some seedy bushes, dirt, more gravel, and—especially in the summer months, or on holiday weekends—a line of cars parked at right angles to the str

eet. Albeit rarely, the line of parked cars might extend for a hundred yards or more, but now—on a desolate Sunday night at the end of the long Thanksgiving weekend—only a few cars are parked there. It has the appearance of a neglected used-car lot. However, in the absence of cars, the parking area looks worse than abandoned—it seems hopeless. All the more so for its proximity to the unhappy structure on the north side and poorer end of the street—the aforementioned relict of the former Bridgehampton railroad station.

The foundation is cracked. Two small, prefabricated shelters stand in mock replacement of what the station house used to be. There are two benches. (On this cold, wet Sunday night in late November, no one is sitting on either bench.) A hedge of ill-tended privet has been planted in an apologetic effort to disguise the degeneration of the once-prosperous railroad. The forlorn remnant of the station, an unsheltered telephone box, and a tarred platform that runs for fifty yards along the tracks . . . alas, for the predominantly well-to-do village of Bridgehampton, this passes for a rail-transportation site.

Along this sorry stretch of Maple Lane, the surface of the street is patchy asphalt that has been laid over the original cement. The verges are gravelly and ill defined; there are no sidewalks. And on this particular November night, there is no traffic. Busy traffic conditions don’t often occur or long prevail on Maple Lane, not only because the town of Bridgehampton is served by surprisingly few passenger trains but also because the trains themselves are cinder-stained relics. The passengers must disembark the old-fashioned way—namely, by clambering down the rusted steps at the end of each car.

Ruth Cole, and most travelers to and from New York who were in her income bracket, never took the train; Ruth took the jitney instead. Eddie, although he was decidedly not in Ruth’s income bracket, usually took the jitney to and from New York, too.

In Bridgehampton, not even a half-dozen local taxis await the arrival of those trains likely to have more than one or two off-loading passengers—for example, the Friday evening Cannonball Express, which arrives at 6:07 sharp (following a 4:01 departure from Penn Station). But, generally speaking, the west end of Maple Lane is a scruffy, sad, deserted place. The cars and taxis rushing east on the lane or south on Corwith Avenue, after a train’s brief appearance at the station platform, seem to be in a big hurry to get away from there.

Is it any wonder that Eddie O’Hare wanted to get away from there, too?

Of all the Sunday nights in the year—in the Hamptons, particularly— the Sunday night that marks the end of the long Thanksgiving weekend is conceivably the loneliest. Even Harry Hoekstra, who had every reason to be happy, could feel the loneliness of it. At fifteen minutes past eleven on that Sunday night, Harry was indulging in a favorite, newfound pastime. The retired police officer was pissing on the lawn behind Ruth’s Sagaponack house. The former Sergeant Hoekstra had seen several street prostitutes and drug addicts pissing on the streets of the red-light district; yet until he’d experienced the Vermont woods and fields, and the lawns of Long Island, Harry hadn’t known how entirely satisfying an outdoor act of urination could be.

“Are you peeing outside again, Harry?” Ruth called.

Tags: John Irving Fiction
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