“But, Ruthie, she’s not married,” her father had replied. “She’s nobody’s mother. I thought you’d approve of that.” Ruth Cole the novelist would eventually come to describe her father’s line of work as “Unhappy mothers—that’s my father’s field.” But why wouldn’t Ted have recognized an unhappy mother when he saw one? After all—at least for the first five years that followed the death of his sons—Ted lived with the unhappiest mother of them all.
