A Widow for One Year by John Irving Read Free Book Online Page A

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