Nobody's Fool

by Richard Russo

  She’d meant this remark as a joke, but it had come out with such conviction it had startled her. Why had she said such a thing? She had no doubt that if Audrey Peach had not put Clive Sr. through the windshield of the driver ed car, they’d still be happily married, that Clive Sr.’s surprising love for her would still be the centerpiece of her life, even as its memory was now. She could think of no reason for this sudden regret about having loved and been loved.

  Clive Jr. cocked his head. “I think I hear her,” he said.

  Miss Beryl shook her head and pointed at the ceiling with her thumb. What Clive Jr. had heard was the thud of Sully’s heavy feet hitting the floor upstairs. For the last ten minutes she’d been vaguely aware of the buzzing of Sully’s alarm, not quite so audible to her in the kitchen as it was in her front room. On Clive Jr. the sound had apparently not registered at all, which allowed Miss Beryl to indulge an inward smile. Her faculties, or at least one of them, were intact.

  When Clive Jr. looked at the ceiling, his face clouded over, and together they listened to Sully’s footfalls traverse the ceiling and into the upstairs bathroom. Which meant they were about to resume an old discussion.

  “Have you given anymore thought to … things?” Clive Jr. said. “I know you don’t like the idea, but you should sell me the house while you still can.”

  “You’re right,” she told him. “I don’t like the idea.”

  “Ma,” he said. “Let me explain something. If you got sick tomorrow and you had to go into the hospital, they wouldn’t let you sell it. The law wouldn’t allow it. You have to sell before you get sick. They don’t let you sell to avoid loss.”

  “What happens if I sell it to you and you get sick tomorrow?”

  Clive Jr. massaged his temples. “Ma,” he said. “You have to play the odds.”

  Miss Beryl sighed. She knew the odds. She didn’t need to be lectured about the odds. She just hated conceding arguments to Clive Jr., who was, as a general rule, easily vanquished in debate. “I’ll take the matter under advisement,” she promised, hoping this would satisfy her son for the moment.

  “What about upstairs, at least?” he said, his voice confidential now, as if he suspected that Sully might somehow be eavesdropping on their conversation, ear to the radiator. Clive Jr. always referred to Sully as “upstairs,” just as Sully always referred to Clive Jr. as “The Bank.” “The first of the year would be a perfect opportunity for a new arrangement.”

  “I’m content with the old arrangement,” Miss Beryl said.

  “You promised—”

  “I promised to think about it,” Miss Beryl reminded him.

  “Ma,” Clive Jr. said. “Keeping the house is dangerous enough, but Sully has to go.”

  Right on cue, the upstairs toilet flushed. Miss Beryl smiled, grudgingly, and was ashamed of herself again.

  “You need another sign?” Clive Jr. was also smiling, smug again. “Even God agrees.”

  “That wasn’t God on the commode,” Miss Beryl reminded him. “Just a lonely, stubborn, unlucky man.”

  “Whose bad luck is going to rub off on you someday,” Clive Jr. insisted.

  Miss Beryl sighed. Like most discussions with her son, this one always went exactly the same way. Next Clive Jr. would remind her that Sully had once burned down another house he was living in.

  “He’s already burned down one house in Bath,” Clive Jr. recalled innocently. “You should see it upstairs. There are cigarette burns everywhere. Fresh ones, Ma.”

  Here, so soon after the last, was another point Miss Beryl had to concede. Sully did smoke, did forget lighted cigarettes, letting them tip off ashtrays onto the floor and roll under the sofa, probably even smoked himself to sleep. Clive Jr. swore he’d seen brown cigarette holes in Sully’s pillowcases.

  “Don’t believe me, Ma,” Clive Jr. insisted. “See for yourself. Go up and see the condition of that flat. Count the cigarette burns. See for yourself how many bullets you’ve dodged.”

  The last thing Miss Beryl wanted to do was visit Sully’s flat. No doubt what Clive Jr. was reporting would be true. Perhaps not even exaggerated. Sully was negligent and therefore dangerous. She wasn’t sure there was any way to explain to Clive Jr. that having Sully upstairs was simply a risk she was willing to take. Maybe she couldn’t even explain to herself why she was willing to take it. Part of it was that she’d always viewed Sully as an ally, someone whose loyalty, at least, could always be depended upon. She still thought of him this way, even now that he was getting older and more banged up and forgetful. Even now that he reminded her more of a ghost every day, he struck her as a dependable spirit, despite the conventional wisdom that what he could be depended upon to do most was to bollix things up. Resisting Clive Jr. on this issue, Miss Beryl had to admit, was surely bad judgment on her part, yet she couldn’t banish the notion that evicting Sully would constitute a great treachery, a violation that would both surprise and wound him. And, irrational or not, she couldn’t help feeling that her own death, which could not be that far off, would not be the result of Sully’s bollixing.

  “I could do the whole thing if you don’t want to,” Clive Jr. offered, adding weakly, “I can handle Sully.”

  Miss Beryl couldn’t help smiling at this assertion, and her son’s face darkened, registering the insult.

  “He’s got you snookered, Ma,” Clive Jr. said angrily. “He always did. Even Dad saw that by the end.”

  “Let’s leave your father out of it,” Miss Beryl suggested.

  Clive Jr. smiled, apparently aware that this missile had located its target. He’d successfully invoked his father before, knew his mother could be approached through Clive Sr.’s memory.

  “I just wish you’d trust me,” he continued after a long silence, his eyes no longer focused on her, but on something else, close enough, almost, to touch. “This time next year, Ma, you aren’t even going to believe this town. The Gold Coast is what it’s going to be. Once they break ground on The Escape …” he allowed his voice to drift off into a pleasant trance, then, as if he understood that his mother was blind to what he was seeing so clearly, quickly came out of it. “Even Joyce is excited,” he said, as if to suggest that getting the woman he planned to marry excited was no easy task, and he looked around, as if in the hope that she’d materialize beside him and verify that, yes, she was excited.

  “And you plan to wed this Joyce person?” Miss Beryl said.

  “Yes, Ma, I do. I’m sorry you don’t approve.”

  “If she makes you happy, Clive, then I approve. I just thought I’d point out for the record that I’m not the only one in this kitchen who can be snookered.”

  Clive Jr. seemed to honestly consider this sad possibility, shaming Miss Beryl, who seldom gave much real consideration to her son’s views and advice.

  “You always see things going wrong, Ma,” her son said. “I see them going right.”

  Miss Beryl decided not to argue the point. It was true that they saw things differently and always had. She could tell by the way her son massaged the yearbook that when he looked at the dreadful Joyce woman, he saw the eighteen-year-old of the photograph. And he wasn’t kidding when he said he could see the Gold Coast from her front window. He seemed to see that past and the future with stunning clarity. The present just wasn’t there for him somehow.

  “I wonder if I should look in on her?” he said, pushing back his chair. He seemed so desperately unsure of whether this would be the right thing to do that Miss Beryl, having deposited the last of their dishes in the sink, felt less like being mean. “Let her sleep,” she suggested. “I’ll have her call you at the bank later.”

  “I should go on in, I guess,” Clive Jr. admitted, looking at his watch. “It’s only seven, but if I’m going to take the afternoon …” His voice trailed off as he stood and hitched his pants, preparatory to visiting the bathroom. Clive Jr.’s last official act before leaving was always to relieve himself.

  Miss Beryl thought about doin
g up the few dishes now, then decided to just let them soak. The Joyce woman would probably have something when she finally roused herself, and Miss Beryl decided she’d do them all together. At the sink she caught a glimpse through the kitchen doorway of Clive Jr. standing outside the spare bedroom, listening, no doubt, for some auditory signal that his fiancée was awake. And perhaps because Clive Jr. so resembled his father in outward appearance, and also because he looked so pitiful standing there, Miss Beryl thought her heart would break at the sight. When Clive Jr. noticed her observing him, he straightened guiltily and shrugged, then disappeared into the bathroom, shutting the door quietly behind him.

  Since he’d left the yearbook in the center of the kitchen table, Miss Beryl opened it again with the intention of having another look at the Joyce woman, this time out from under her son’s needy, watchful gaze. Instead, the book fell open naturally to a page that had been mutilated with a ballpoint pen that had been pressed into the glossy paper with such force that it had come through the other side, leaving an inky blotch on the page beneath. It took Miss Beryl a moment to realize that the defaced picture was of Sully. She was still staring at it when the toilet flushed in the next room.

  Shutting the book and pushing it away before Clive Jr. emerged was easy, but what to do about the tears that had filled her eyes? How could she banish these when she didn’t even know who they were for? What did it mean that at age eighty she suddenly seemed unable to decide who she was angry at, who was deserving of pity and understanding?

  In the living room, waiting for her son to emerge from the bathroom, Miss Beryl avoided entering into imaginary conversations with either of her advisers, unwilling to listen to her husband’s pleading on behalf of their son, the natural consequence of their love for each other, or Driver Ed’s subversive whispers from the opposite wall. “Pipe down, both of you,” she warned softly. In the lonely silence that ensued, the old woman peered out her front window at the street where she had lived all her mature life, the street where Clive Sr. had brought her to spend her days, a pretty street really, a comfortable street, the kind of street where she and her husband should have been able to raise a son less profoundly unhappy than she had always suspected Clive Jr. to be. She looked up into the black tangle of branches of the elms and then down the street in the direction of Mrs. Gruber’s house. It didn’t look like the Gold Coast, but no branches had fallen during the night, and Miss Beryl was about to conclude that God had lowered the boom on no one when a small movement caught her attention. Making her way up the very center of the street, dressed in a thin housecoat and fuzzy slippers, was an old woman whom Miss Beryl immediately recognized as Hattie. She was bent forward as if into a gale, her housecoat billowing out behind her in the breeze. “Oh dear,” Miss Beryl said to herself. “Dear, dear God in Heaven.”

  Sully was outside in the hallway, struggling on with his boots as quietly as he could. He’d looked out the window and seen Clive Jr.’s car at the curb below. The last thing he needed in his present hungover condition was to encounter Clive Jr. True, if he ran into Clive now, it’d save him a trip later in the day, but right now, the way his head felt, he didn’t want to raise his voice. Also, he preferred to spare Miss Beryl. Just before falling asleep last night Sully’d caught a whiff of Clive Jr.’s perfumy after-shave lingering in the apartment, which meant that he’d been up there snooping around. Clive Jr. had been warned about this before, and now he’d have to be warned again. Later in the day Sully might even enjoy warning him. Clive Jr.’s fear of Sully was always rewarding. But Sully wanted to be fully awake and not hungover to appreciate it. And so, when his landlady’s door opened, Sully was relieved to see Miss Beryl emerge and not her son. “Good morning, Mrs. Peoples,” he said, struggling to his feet with the help of the banister. “You aren’t going to slam that door, are you?”

  “Thank heaven you’re still here,” Miss Beryl said. “Hattie’s escaped again.”

  “Uh-oh,” Sully said, not terribly alarmed. This would make the fourth time the old woman had flown the coop this year. She never got more than a block or two. He flexed his knee, just to see if it would. “You remember what we did with the net?”

  “Hurry,” Miss Beryl insisted. “She’s in the middle of the street.”

  “Hurrying isn’t what I do best, at least first thing in the morning,” Sully reminded her, putting some weight on the knee, which belted out a hearty hello. “Isn’t that The Bank’s car I saw outside?”

  Miss Beryl’s own coat was hanging just inside the door. When she started to put it on, Sully saw that his landlady was genuinely distressed.

  “Stay put. I’ll get her,” he assured Miss Beryl, zipping his overcoat and locating his gloves.

  “Hurry,” Miss Beryl said again.

  “I am hurrying. It just looks like slow motion.”

  “Should I call the daughter?”

  Sully was half out the door. “No,” he said. “I’ll just take her back. I was headed there for coffee anyhow, since I can see you don’t have mine ready again.”

  “Hurry!”

  “Tell The Bank I’ll be by to see him later. Tell him he’s in trouble again,” Sully said, and closed the door before Miss Beryl could tell him to hurry again. He consulted his watch. Not quite seven o’clock. Way too early for this shit.

  Hattie was only vaguely aware that she was in the middle of the deserted street. Her vision was dim at the edges of her milky cataracts, and anyway she was looking down at her slippered feet and watching them go. The sight impressed her, suggesting, wrongly, rapid flight. She’d made her break a full fifteen minutes ago and in that time had traveled a block and a half. The wind billowed her thin housecoat behind her like a sail. She was unaware of the cold or the fact that the slush had begun to seep through her slippers. She was bound for freedom.

  Sully, who didn’t feel like chasing anybody first thing in the morning, was grateful to be chasing Hattie, perhaps the one person in Bath he could catch before his knee loosened up. Since Miss Beryl had spied her coming up the middle of the street, Hattie’d traversed another twenty feet and was now directly in front of the house. Her stride, Sully calculated, was about six inches, but her feet churned dutifully, and she darted furtive glances over each shoulder to check for pursuit. She did not notice when Sully fell into step alongside of her.

  “Hello, old girl,” he said.

  Hattie let out a little cry and ran faster, as if on an exercise treadmill.

  “You running away from home?”

  “Who are you?” the old woman wanted to know. “You sound like that darn Sully.”

  “Right on the first guess,” Sully told her. A car turned onto Main and headed toward them. Sully got the driver’s attention, directed him around them.

  “No driving on the sidewalk,” Hattie yelled when she heard the car go by, close.

  “Where you headed?” Sully said.

  “To live with my sister in Albany,” Hattie answered truthfully, because this was indeed her plan, the most obvious flaw of which was the fact that her sister had been dead for twenty years. Also, Albany lay in the other direction.

  “How about I give you a lift,” Sully suggested. “We’ll get there a lot faster.”

  “Let’s.”

  Sully steered the old woman back toward Miss Beryl’s driveway, where they arrived a few minutes later. Clive Jr. had come out onto the porch and was watching. Before he could say anything, Sully held up a finger to his lips, then pointed at Clive Jr.’s car, which was nearest. Clive nodded, went back inside for his keys. Sully got the old woman into the backseat on the passenger side, then went around and slipped in beside her. Clive Jr. got in and started the engine.

  “Who’s driving?” Hattie said, squinting in the direction of the front seat.

  “Me,” Sully assured her.

  Hattie located his voice beside her. “Who’s up there?”

  “Me,” Sully insisted. “Who’d you think?”

  “My feet are cold,” H
attie said, noticing for the first time. She began to cry.

  Sully took her slippers off. Her feet were wet and ice cold. One of Clive Jr.’s sweaters was in the backseat, so Sully used this to dry and massage the old woman’s bony toes.

  “Who’s driving?” Hattie said.

  “Me,” Sully said. “How many times do I have to tell you? We’re almost there, too.”

  Sully had Clive Jr. pull in behind the diner and motioned for him to stay put while he went to fetch Cass. Miss Beryl’s son wasn’t happy to be left alone in the car with Hattie, partly because his continued nonexistence would be harder to prove with Sully gone.

  “I gotta get some gas, old girl,” Sully explained before he left them. “You wait here.”

  “Here,” Hattie repeated, wriggling her toes in the warmth of Clive Jr.’s cashmere sweater.

  Inside, Cass was taking the orders of two men Sully didn’t know who were seated at the counter. Sully waited for them to finish. “What kind of mood are you in?” Sully said when she put his usual coffee in front of him.

  “Rotten,” Cass said. “Like always.”

  “Good,” he said. “I’d hate to ruin your day.”

  “Impossible,” Cass told him, then frowned suspiciously, as if she knew it were all too possible. Instinctively, she glanced toward the rear of the diner and the attached apartment where she and her mother lived. “God, what?” she said, stepping back quickly.

  “She’s fine.” Sully held up a cautioning hand. “Clive Peoples has her out back in his car.”

  “I’ll wring her neck,” Cass said, her panic turning quickly to anger, and she bolted from behind the counter. “So help me.”

  Sully decided not to follow. Old Hattie was going to be furious, and he didn’t like to watch. The last time he’d brought her back, she’d called him a fart blossom and tried to kick him. Of the four times the old woman had tried to escape her daughter’s care, she’d been returned three of them by Sully. Luckily she never remembered his past treacheries. Only her distant memories were vivid and distinct. More recent perfidy she forgot almost immediately.