Triad

The Widow

Marge Littleton would, in the long-gone days of Freudian jargon, have been thought maternal, although she was no more maternal than you or you. What would have been meant was a charming softness in her voice and her manner and she smelled like a summer's day, or perhaps it is a summer's day that smells like such a woman. She was a regular churchgoer and I always felt that her devotions were more profound than most, although it is impossible to speculate on anything so intimate, She was on the liturgical side, hewing to the Book of Common Prayer and avoiding sermons whenever possible. She was not a native, of course--the last native, along with the last cow, died 20 years ago--and I don't remember where she or her husband came from. He was bald. They had three children and lived a scrupulously unexceptional life until one morning in the fall.

It was after Labor Day, a little windy. Leaves could be seen falling outside the windows. The family had breakfast in the kitchen. Marge had baked johnnycake. "Good morning, Mrs. Littleton," her husband said, kissing her on the brow and patting her backside. His voice, his gesture seemed to have the perfect equilibrium of love. I don't know what virulent critics of the family would say about the scene. Were the Littletons making for themselves, by contorting their passions into an acceptable social image, a sort of prison, or did they chance to be a man and a woman whose pleasure in each other was tender, robust and invincible? From what I know, it was an exceptional marriage. Never having been married myself, I may be unduly susceptible to the element of buffoonery in holy matrimony, but isn't it true that when some couples celebrate their 10th or 15th anniversary, they seem far from triumphant? In fact, they seem duped, while dirty Uncle Harry, the rake, seems to wear the laurels. But with the Littletons, one felt that they might live together with intelligence and ardor--giving and taking until death did them part.

On that particular Saturday morning, Marge's husband planned to go shopping. After breakfast, he made a list of what they needed from the hardware store. A gallon of white acrylic paint, a four-inch brush, picture hooks, a spading fork, oil for the lawn mower. The children went along with him. They went, not to the village, which, like so many others, lay dying, but to a crowded and fairly festive shopping center on Route 64. He gave the children money for Cokes. When they returned, the southbound traffic was heavy. It was, as I say, after Labor Day and many of the cars were towing portable houses, campers, sailboats, motorboats and trailers. This long procession of vehicles and domestic portables seemed not the spectacle of a people returning from their vacations but rather like a tragic evacuation of some great city or state. A car carrier, trying to pass an exceptionally bulky mobile home, crashed into the Littletons and killed them all. I didn't go to the funeral, but one of our neighbors described it to me. "There she stood at the edge of the grave. She didn't cry. She looked very beautiful and serene. She had to watch four coffins, one after the other, lowered into the ground. Four."

She didn't go away. People asked her to dinner, of course, but in such an intensely domesticated community, the single are inevitably neglected. A month or so after the accident, the local paper announced that the State Highway Commission would widen Route 64 from a four-lane to an eight-lane highway. We organized a committee for the preservation of the community and raised $10,000 for legal fees. Marge Littleton was very active. We had meetings nearly every week. We met in parish houses, courtrooms, high schools and houses. In the beginning, these meetings were very emotional. Mrs. Pinkham once cried. She wept. "I've worked sixteen years on my pink room and now they're going to tear it down." She was led out of the meeting, a truly bereaved woman. We chartered a bus and went to the state capital. We marched down 64 one rainy Sunday with a motorcycle escort. I don't suppose we were more than 30 and we straggled. We carried picket signs. I remember Marge. Some people seem born with a gift for protest and a talent for carrying picket signs, but this was not Marge. She carried a large sign that said Stop Gasoline Alley. She seemed very embarrassed. When the march disbanded, I said goodbye to her on a knoll above the highway. I remember the level gaze she gave to the lines of traffic--rather, I guess, as the widows of Nantucket must have regarded the sea.

When we had spent our $10,000 without any results, our meetings were less and less frequent and very poorly attended. Only three people, including the speaker, showed up for the last. The highway was widened, demolishing six houses and making two uninhabitable, although the owners got no compensation. Several wells were destroyed by the blasting. After our committee was disbanded, I saw very little of Marge. Someone told me she had gone abroad. When she returned, she was followed by a charming young Roman named Pietro Montani. They were married.

Marge displayed her gifts for married happiness with Pietro, although he was very unlike her first husband. He was handsome, witty and substantial--he represented a firm that manufactured innersoles--but he spoke the worst English I have ever heard. You could talk with him and drink with him and laugh with him, but other than this, it was almost impossible to communicate with him. It didn't really matter. Marge seemed very happy and theirs was a pleasant house to visit. They had been married no more than two months when Pietro, driving a convertible down 64, was decapitated by a crane.

She buried Pietro with the others, but she stayed on in the house on Twin Rock Road, where one could hear the battlefield noises of industrial traffic. I think she got a job. One saw her on the trains. Three weeks after Pietro's death, an 18-wheel, 36-ton truck northbound on Route 64 for reasons that were never ascertained veered into the southbound lanes, demolishing two cars and killing their four passengers. The truck then rammed into a granite abutment there, fell on its side and caught fire. The police and the fire department were there at once, but the freight was combustible and the fire was not extinguished until three in the morning. All traffic on Route 64 was rerouted. The women's auxiliary of the fire department served coffee.

Two weeks later, at eight P.M., another 18-wheel truck, with a load of cement block, went out of control at the same place, crossed the southbound lanes and felled four full-grown trees before it collided with the abutment. The impact of the collision was so violent that two feet of granite was sheared off the wall. There was no fire, but the two drivers were so badly crushed by the collision that they had to be identified by their dentalwork.

On November third, at 8:30 P.M., Lieutenant Dominic DeSisto reported that a man in working clothes ran into the front office. He seemed hysterical, drugged or drunk and claimed to have been shot. He was, according to Lieutenant DeSisto, so incoherent that it was some time before he could explain what had happened. Driving north on 64 at about the same place where the other trucks had gone out of control, a rifle bullet smashed the left window of his cab, missed the driver and smashed the right window. The intended victim was Joe Langston of Baldwin, South Carolina. The lieutenant examined the truck and verified the broken windows. He and Langston drove in a squad car back to where the shot had been fired. On the right side of the road, there was a little hill of granite with some soil covering. When the highway had been widened, the hill had been blasted in two and the knoll on the right corresponded to the abutment that had killed the other drivers. DeSisto examined the hill. The grass on the knoll was trampled and there were two cigarette butts on the ground. Langston was taken to the hospital, suffering from shock. The hill was put under surveillance for the next month, but the police force was understaffed and it was a boring beat to sit alone on the hill from dusk until midnight. As soon as surveillance was stopped, a fourth oversized truck went out of control. This time, the truck veered to the right, took down a dozen trees and drove into a narrow but precipitous valley. The driver, when the police got to him, was dead. He had been shot.

In December, Marge married a rich widower and moved to North Salem, where there is only one two-lane highway and where the sound of traffic is as faint as the roaring of a shell.