First Sentences: An Introduction to A Widow for One Year / Summer 1958 -- The Inadequate Lamp Shade -- Summer Job -- A Sound Like Someone Trying Not to Make a Sound -- Unhappy Mothers -- Marion, Waiting -- Eddie Is Bored--and Horny, Too -- The Door in the Floor -- A Masturbating Machine -- Come Hither ... -- The Pawn -- Ruth's Right Eye -- Dumping Mrs. Vaughn -- Why Panic at Ten O'Clock in the Morning? -- How the Writer's Assistant Became a Writer -- Something Almost Biblical -- The Authority of the Written Word -- A Motherless Child -- The Leg -- Working for Mr. Cole -- Leaving Long Island -- Fall 1990 -- Eddie at Forty-Eight -- Ruth at Thirty-Six -- The Red and Blue Air Mattress -- Allan at Fifty-Four -- Hannah at Thirty-Five -- Ted at Seventy-Seven -- Ruth Remembers Learning to Drive -- Two Drawers -- Pain in an Unfamiliar Place -- Ruth Gives Her Father a Driving Lesson -- A Widow for the Rest of Her Life -- Ruth's Diary, and Selected Postcards -- The First Meeting -- Ruth Changes Her Story -- Not a Mother, Not Her Son -- The Moleman -- Followed Home from the Flying Food Circus -- Chapter One -- Missing Persons -- The Standoff -- Ruth's First Wedding -- Fall 1995 -- The Civil Servant -- The Reader -- The Prostitute's Daughter -- Sergeant Hoekstra Finds His Witness -- In Which Eddie O'Hare Falls in Love Again -- Mrs. Cole -- Better Than Being in Paris with a Prostitute -- In Which Eddie and Hannah Fail to Reach an Agreement -- A Happy Couple, Their Two Unhappy Friends -- Marion at Seventy-Six.