Nobody's Fool

by Richard Russo

  When he awoke with a start, he saw that over half the boxes in the living room were now unpacked and the floor-to-ceiling bookcases were now full of books. Toby Roebuck, barefoot, her hair still damp, dressed in jeans and a sweatshirt, was standing on a chair and filling up the top shelf with volumes Peter was handing to her. The empty boxes they had used to form a wall between themselves and him. It was Toby Roebuck who first noticed he was awake. “Sully,” she said. “How can you sleep sitting up like that?”

  In fact, he wished he hadn’t, at least not for so long. He’d slept slumped against the wall, and his neck was stiff. “Hello, Mrs. Roebuck,” he said, trying to stretch some of the kinks out.

  She gave him a look. “Don’t Mrs. Roebuck me, Sully,” she said cheerfully. “You’re a documented sinner.”

  “That was a long time ago,” he said, standing up and testing his knee. “Anymore I’m too tired to sin.”

  “My point exactly. Don’t criticize people who have the energy.” She cast a glance at Peter, who didn’t look like he had any great wealth of energy himself. He must have, though, Sully reflected. There were at least two women who thought so.

  “I don’t recall saying anything except hello,” Sully told her. “If you decide to get married, let me know. I’ll give away the bride.”

  “Don’t pretend you approve, either,” Toby Roebuck said. “That’s even worse.”

  Sully flexed tentatively at the knee. “Let me see if I understand. I’m not supposed to approve and I’m not supposed to disapprove. What the hell am I supposed to do?”

  “Break down some of these boxes,” Peter suggested. “There’s a pair of scissors right behind you on the desk.”

  “Just don’t throw them all away,” Sully told him, picking up the scissors. “I’m moving myself in a couple days.”

  “I’ll save a couple,” Peter agreed. “You think two will do it?”

  “I wish I’d known you were attracted to smart-asses,” Sully told Toby Roebuck.

  “He has other qualities,” she said. “If it were just being a smart-ass, I’d be attracted to you.”

  They finished about half an hour later. With all the books on the shelves and the boxes broken down and in a single tall pile, the flat again looked bare. “You’re going to need a few things, aren’t you,” Sully said.

  Toby’s voice came in from the kitchen. “Pots and pans and plates and glasses and silverware, for instance.”

  “I’ve got all that stuff,” Sully said. “We can bring it over tomorrow.”

  “Then what would you use?” Peter asked.

  “I haven’t eaten a meal at home in five years,” Sully told him truthfully, pulling on his coat and gloves to leave.

  “That’s sad,” Toby said from the kitchen doorway.

  “Not really, dolly,” Sully said, going over to the window. The street was dark, but he could make out the shape of Carl Roebuck’s sports car at the curb below.

  Peter put on his coat too. “I’ll walk you down. I’ve got to close up the trailer anyhow.”

  Sully glanced around the room again. Even empty it looked good. The fireplace, surrounded by books. He hadn’t seen that in his mind’s eye when they’d looked at the flat this morning, hadn’t imagined how it might look. “The place is going to be all right,” he admitted. “Bring your mother over tomorrow. It’ll make her feel better.”

  Peter nodded. “Nothing reassures her like books.”

  “She’ll love it here, then. It’s a regular library,” Toby said, pronouncing it “lie-berry,” and Sully thought he saw Peter smile.

  Sully led the way down the dark stairway, holding on to the railing and taking the stairs one at a time, both feet on each step before proceeding to the next. What had possessed him, he wondered, a few hours ago, to back up these same stairs with a heavy oak desk? On the other hand, what had possessed him to punch a policeman last week or Carl Roebuck this afternoon? As always, to Sully, the deepest of life’s mysteries were the mysteries of his own behavior.

  At the foot of the stairs, Peter flicked a wall switch to no purpose. “One more thing to do tomorrow,” he said, staring up into the dark of the vaulted ceiling. “Thanks for the help with the desk.”

  Sully nodded, didn’t say anything for a minute. Peter, he was coming to understand, was capable of generosity. Sully hadn’t been a help with the desk, he knew. He’d made more of a job of it, not less. His son was simply being kind. Maybe this was one of the other qualities Toby Roebuck was referring to. “I’d lock up down here if she stays the night,” Sully warned. “That’s her husband parked across the street in the red car.”

  “He followed us as far as Albany,” Peter said. “When we went to Morgantown.”

  “She went with you?”

  Peter didn’t say anything.

  “How did all of this come about?” Sully wondered, genuinely curious.

  “Quickly,” Peter said, as if this explanation might suffice. It did not. Sully had never fallen in with any woman quickly.

  “Well,” Sully said. “Look out for Carl. This is all new to him.” It was odd talking to Peter in such a confined, dark space. Easier, in some ways. Often it was the expression on his son’s face that made talking to him difficult, the wry, detached smugness. His voice, on the other hand, was pleasant enough. “He’s the one that’s always playing around,” Sully explained. “He’s got to get used to the shoe being on the other foot.”

  Sully could see just well enough to see his son shrug. “The shoe’s been on the other foot before,” Peter said. “At least according to Toby.”

  Sully considered this for a moment. “I doubt it,” he said.

  “Okay,” Peter agreed. “Have it your way.”

  “She’s a pretty nice girl.”

  Peter chuckled. “She’s a pretty nice woman. And you’ve put her on a pretty tall pedestal.”

  “Well,” Sully said and let his voice trail off, glad that Peter apparently had no interest in confiding to him Toby Roebuck’s past transgressions, if indeed he knew of any. “Swing by the house on Bowdon in the morning before you return the trailer. There’s some furniture in the spare room. If there’s anything you want, take it.”

  Peter said he would.

  “There might not be anything you can use,” Sully admitted. “Who knows?” He put his hand on the doorknob. “I’ll have a word with our friend on the way out. He’ll listen to me.”

  “Do me a favor and don’t,” Peter told him. “You’ll just make things worse. Again.”

  This, Sully realized, was a reference to his earlier refusal to wait for the ambulance when he’d slapped Vera. The horror of the scene had been running through his mind all afternoon, despite the excellent diversions—beer and poker and bare-breasted girls—with which he’d been surrounded. “You think your mother’s going to be okay?”

  “I don’t know,” Peter admitted. “They’re going to keep her at Schuyler overnight. You know how she is. She’s not any different, really, just worse.”

  “You could probably help her out more,” Sully ventured.

  “Not really,” Peter said. “The world doesn’t do what she wants it to, and she gets frustrated.”

  This was the same conclusion Sully had come to thirty-five years ago, of course, and Peter couldn’t make his mother happy or content anymore than Sully had been able to all those years ago. Still, it now seemed cowardly that Sully had not tried harder, endured more. It was one thing to realize you were shoveling shit against the tide, another to give up the enterprise before you got soiled. Especially when, in other respects, you intended to keep shoveling different shit against other tides. “It sure doesn’t take much to get her started anymore,” Sully reflected, recalling that the mere sight of Rub in her driveway had set her off. Or maybe it had been the knowledge that he himself had been inside, that he had invaded her home. Contaminate it, was what she’d said.

  “There was more to it than you know,” Peter said. “Grandpa went into the hospital this
morning. He couldn’t breathe, even with the oxygen.”

  Sully thought about Robert Halsey, the way he’d looked at Thanksgiving, and made a mental note to shoot himself before he ever got like that. “When he dies, you’ll be all your mother’s got.”

  “She’s got Ralph.”

  “She doesn’t count Ralph. You know that.”

  “I do,” Peter said. “Ralph’s the one I worry about.”

  “He doesn’t look too good, does he,” Sully admitted.

  “He’s a wreck,” Peter said. “If I ever get my shit together, it’ll be for him, not her. He’s been a good father.”

  “And there’s Will,” Sully ventured.

  “Kids are resilient,” Peter said. “Look at me.”

  “I am looking at you,” Sully said to the darkness.

  “Well,” he said. “If it’ll ease your mind, this isn’t anything serious upstairs.”

  Sully nodded. He’d gathered that much. Seen it when Peter had smiled at Toby Roebuck’s pronunciation of the word “library.” Peter had too much of Vera in him, too much educational reinforcement ever to fall in love with someone who said “lie-berry.”

  “I’m glad to hear it,” Sully said, because he was.

  “I bet you are,” Peter said. Even in the dark, Sully could tell his son was grinning. Maybe that was all Toby Roebuck meant to him. They’d argued over a woman, and he’d won the argument.

  “I was thinking of her husband,” Sully said, surprised to discover that this was true. “I’m not sure he’ll be able to spare her.”

  “He’s not out of the woods yet,” Peter said. “There’s some woman in Schuyler.”

  Sully snorted. “Carl’s got women everywhere, not just Schuyler.”

  “It’s not Carl I was talking about.”

  It took Sully a moment, but somehow this knowledge was easier to process in the dark. The possibility wouldn’t have occurred to him in a hundred years, but now that the words had been spoken in the intimate dark, he saw they must be true “Why, then?” he finally said.

  “Why what?”

  “Why are you doing what you’re doing?”

  “I have no idea,” his son said, and for once it sounded like simple, unadorned truth. No irony, no sarcasm, no anger.

  “Well,” Sully sighed, opening the door onto the porch. “It’s time I went home.”

  He was on the top step when Peter said, “You going by Bowdon Street tonight?”

  “I hadn’t planned to. Why?”

  “That dog needs to be fed.”

  “Shit. I forgot all about him,” Sully admitted.

  “Hold that thought.”

  “He’s not really my dog,” Sully said in his own defense.

  “Right,” Peter said, his usual sarcasm back again. “Not really your dog. And the house he’s locked up in isn’t really your house. You’re a free man.”

  “You’re damn right, son,” Sully said. “Don’t forget. Lock the door.”

  Sully waited to hear the bolt fall into place behind him before he crossed the street to where Carl Roebuck’s car idled, a plume of white exhaust trailing off down the street. When he got close, Carl rolled down the driver’s side window halfway and said, “Hello, schmucko.”

  “You follow me over here?” Sully wondered.

  “I did,” Carl admitted. “I forgot my cigarettes, too. Let me take one.”

  Sully shook a cigarette up through the opening in the pack. Carl took it. “Let me have the whole pack. I’m going to stick around for a while,” he said, studying Sully in the pale light of the street lamp. He tossed the pack of cigarettes onto the dash. There was just enough light for Sully to see that Carl’s jaw was a balloon, his grin hideous. “You look like a man who’s just discovered the cruel truth of life,” Carl ventured.

  Something stirred inside the dark car, and Carl looked down at his lap. “It’s okay, darlin’. Go back to sleep,” he said. “I’ll roll up the window in a second.”

  From inside, a murmur and then silence.

  “You gotta see this,” Carl whispered after a moment, reaching behind him to flip on the dome light. He left it on for only a second, but that was long enough. At first Sully thought the girl Didi had simply fallen asleep with her head in Carl’s lap, but then saw that she had his flaccid penis in her mouth like a pacifier. “Isn’t that sweet?” Carl said.

  “Adorable,” Sully said. “I hope she doesn’t have a nightmare.”

  “You hope.”

  “I’m going home,” Sully said. “I’m tired, and you’re too fucked up to talk to, even.”

  “Ain’t it the truth,” Carl said.

  “Don’t go upstairs,” Sully told him.

  “Okay,” Carl said.

  “I mean it,” Sully warned him.

  “I know you mean it.”

  “Then don’t.”

  Didi sat up and rubbed her eyes. “It’s cold,” she said sleepily, shivering. “Hi, Sully.”

  “Now look what you did,” Carl said, rolling up the window.

  Sully would have liked to warn Carl one more time, but he was too exhausted to make him roll down the window again.

  On the way to Rub’s an odd thing happened. The day’s bizarre events unreeling through his mind, Sully missed his turn, went one block too far and turned there, not realizing his mistake and suffering a stunning loss of orientation as a result. This dark street was clearly one he knew, a street in the town he’d lived his entire life, yet despite its familiarity he suddenly had no idea where he was. How had these houses come to be on Rub’s street? Where had the house that Rub and Bootsie rented disappeared to? He squinted in the dark at each house he passed, certain that theirs would appear any moment and his sense of equilibrium would be restored. When it didn’t he stopped in the middle of the street and just sat, thankful that it was late, that there was no one around to witness this, that he’d be spared the humiliation of rolling down his window and asking someone for directions. In the end there was nothing to do but back up, and so he did, understanding his mistake only when he’d backed all the way to the intersection and saw the street sign. A minute later when he pulled into the driveway next to the small two-family house where Rub and Bootsie lived, he gave the horn three short, light taps, his signal for Rub to come out and get instructions for tomorrow. Bootsie had made bail by calling her sister in Schuyler, and rumor had it she’d left the courthouse on the warpath. Sully had no intention of encountering her tonight if he could help it.

  Blessedly, it was Rub’s round head that appeared at the window, and a moment later he came out in his undershirt, boot laces flapping, and climbed into the El Camino, where it was warm. He faced away, though, until the dome light went off. Sully opened his door so it would come back on and he saw Rub’s swollen eye.

  “Jesus, Rub,” he said, closing the door again.

  Rub shrugged. “What am I supposed to do? Guys aren’t supposed to hit girls.”

  “You aren’t supposed to let them hit you, either,” Sully pointed out for argument’s sake.

  “I didn’t let her,” Rub explained. “She just did it.”

  “You’re supposed to duck,” Sully explained.

  “I did,” Rub explained. “She done this with her knee when I did duck.”

  “Well,” Sully sighed. “I guess you did all you could, then.” Rub shrugged.

  “Meet me at Hattie’s in the morning. Early. Six-thirty. We’re going to move some shit out of the house on Bowdon first thing. I wish we’d thought to do it before we took the floor up.”

  Rub said he wisht they had too.

  “What are you going to do tomorrow? Say it back to me.”

  “Meet you at Hattie’s at six-thirty.”

  He’d be there, too, Sully knew, one of the few things he could count on. “I’ll buy your breakfast,” he promised.

  “Good,” Rub said. “I don’t have any money.”

  “I’ve got a hammer in back,” Sully suggested. “We could go in and whack her on
the noggin and bury her in the woods under all those blocks you broke. They’d probably never find her.”

  “I wisht we could,” Rub said, getting out of the El Camino again. “She’s fat and ugly and mean.”

  When Rub closed the door, Sully started to back out, only to hear Rub rap on the door as if he’d suddenly remembered something. He opened the door again. “And stingy,” he said.

  Sully, unwilling to get involved for long, checked out The Horse through the beer sign in the front window before entering. It looked like Tiny had only two customers. Wirf, predictably, and, less predictably, Jocko. Both men rotated on their stools when Sully entered and ducked into the men’s room.

  A moment later Jocko was standing at Sully’s side, unzipping before the second of the two wall urinals, making Sully glad that he’d decided, despite his exhaustion, to stand to pee.

  “Somebody told me this was your lucky day,” Jocko offered, awaiting his urine while Sully dripped toward unsatisfactory conclusion.

  Sully considered this, supposed it was true, after a fashion.

  “It figures your luck would turn around just as the town’s went south,” Jocko offered.

  “The town’s luck went south about two hundred years ago, pretty near,” Sully observed.

  “True,” Jocko admitted, still awaiting his water. “But this’ll finish it. A good strong wind’ll blow us all away now. I bet half of Main Street will be boarded up within a year.”

  Sully shrugged, zipped up, flushed. He usually felt at ease talking to Jocko, but this was a strange conversation. Jocko’s very presence in the men’s room felt not quite right in a way Sully couldn’t exactly put his finger on. They’d peed side by side into these same urinals on other occasions. Maybe it was that Jocko wasn’t peeing, he decided.