Richard Russo - Everybody's Fool

“If you’re in a funk, why not go away for a while? Take a vacation,” she suggested. “A change of scenery might be just what you need.”

“A vacation from what? I’m retired.”

She shrugged. “I don’t know. From Bath. From the Horse. From this place.” Here she made a sweeping gesture. “Maybe from me. From Peter, for that matter. How can he miss you if you won’t go away?”

How could she miss him if he wouldn’t go away was what she also seemed to be saying. “Where would I go?” he said, curious about what she had in mind.

“Pick a place,” she said. “Aruba.”

He snorted. “What the fuck would I do in Aruba?”

“What are you doing here ?”

“You mean in Bath?”

“No, I mean here. As in this minute. This restaurant.”

Sully’s need to speak in his own defense took him by surprise. “I thought I was helping out.” Helping her open the place most mornings, filling in at the grill or busing dishes, as needed. “But if I’m in your way…”

“You’re in your own way, Sully,” she told him. “As always. You know I appreciate the help but…” This time when she touched his cheek, the effect wasn’t nearly so pleasant, perhaps because he was pretty sure this gesture’s source was pity.

“Okay, Aruba it is,” he said. “You can come along, since you think it’s such a great idea. Let Janey run this show for a week or two.” She could, too. Janey might be a royal pain in the ass, but she had her mother’s work ethic. Three or four day shifts a week at Hattie’s and another four or five nights at Applebee’s, the occasional stint out at the Horse when one of Birdie’s regulars called in sick.

Ruth was grinning at him now. “Should we invite my husband?”

“I wouldn’t, personally, but if it’s important to you…”

She massaged her temples, as if at the approach of a migraine. “He’s been acting so weird lately.”

“Really? How?”

“He’s being thoughtful. Almost…considerate,” she explained. “It’s messing with my head. I’ll look up and there he is, staring at me, like he’s just noticed I’m there.” She shrugged, and her expression looked for all the world like shame, though it couldn’t be, could it? In all the years they’d been lovers, Ruth had never given any indication of being ashamed of the no-good they were up to. She didn’t hate her husband, and even early on, when she and Sully were hot and heavy, she never talked about leaving him. But neither, so far as Sully knew, had she ever felt like she was betraying the man. It was Sully himself who sometimes felt guilty, because Zack, though a total doofus, wasn’t a bad guy. “I’m trying to be nicer to him,” she admitted. “I tried the same thing thirty years ago and it didn’t work, but it might now.”

“So,” Sully said, letting the word trail off and allowing both what she was saying and not saying to come into focus, “is it because of Roy Purdy that I shouldn’t come in here anymore, or Zack?”

“I didn’t say you shouldn’t come in anymore.”

“No, you said I should go to Aruba.”

She didn’t respond right away. “You know what Janey said to me last week?”

Sully put his index fingers to his temples, closed his eyes and pretended to concentrate. “Wait. Don’t tell me. That I should go to Aruba?”

“She said, ‘Why is he in here all the time if you guys aren’t screwing anymore?’ ”

“And you replied?”

“She also said, ‘Do you know how fucked up it is that most mornings the first voice I hear on the other side of my bedroom wall is my mother’s former boyfriend?’ ”

“You didn’t answer my question.”

“I told her it was none of her damn business.” But she wasn’t meeting his eye. “I can kind of see her point, though.”

“Me too,” Sully admitted.

“And then there’s Tina.” Her granddaughter. “I know she seems slow, but she’s not stupid. She watches. Takes everything in.”

“You’re right.”

She rotated the newspaper so that Miss Beryl was now looking up at her, not Sully. “What do you think?” she said. “Will that no-good son of hers show up?”

Clive Jr., she meant. Who’d been the driving force behind the Ultimate Escape Fun Park. Who’d invested funds from his savings and loan and encouraged others to do likewise, then skipped town when, at the last possible second, the out-of-state developer pulled the plug, leaving local investors in the lurch.

“No,” Sully said. “I suspect we’ve seen the last of him.”

“What?” she said, apparently puzzled by his tone. “You’re feeling sorry for him now? How many times did he try to get his mother to evict you?”

Over Sully’s smoking, mostly. Clive Jr. had been worried that Sully would go off someplace and leave behind a lit cigarette, burn the house down and Miss Beryl in it. But their ongoing conflict went deeper than Sully’s carelessness, which was real enough. Miss Beryl and her husband, Clive Sr., seeing how miserable Sully’s homelife was, had welcomed him into their home and treated him like a son. Young Clive, their actual son, had to have seen that as an intrusion and might even have felt that they preferred Sully to himself. Later, as adults, they’d never had much use for each other. Sully always referred to Clive as “the Bank” and took genuine pleasure in making him look like a fool in places like Hattie’s. Did the man have any idea that Sully had inherited his mother’s house? Would that corroborate his fear that his mother had favored him over her own flesh and blood?

“Maybe I’m getting soft in my old age,” he admitted, sliding off his stool and pocketing his keys.

“Look,” she said, “don’t get the wrong idea. What I said earlier really isn’t about Zack or Janey or Tina. It’s…you really don’t come in here because of me anymore.” When he started to object, she held up her hand. “I’m not saying you don’t care about me. I know you do. But you come here because you don’t know where else to go. Lately you just sit there staring into your coffee, and it breaks my heart. And you—”

She didn’t get a chance to finish. From somewhere down the street came a loud whomp! a concussion so forceful that the restaurant’s windows rattled. Two water glasses toppled off the shelf and shattered. A moment later the ground shuddered, as if impacted, making the salt and pepper shakers all along the counter leap and skitter.

“What the—” Ruth said. She’d grabbed on to the counter to steady herself and was looking to Sully for an explanation he didn’t have. They both remained frozen until Ruth made a beeline for the front door. Sully, who no longer leaped into action, followed, out of breath, by the time he got to the door, his heart pounding. Outside, people were streaming into the street from stores and businesses. A police cruiser roared by, its siren blaring. Jocko, who owned the failing Rexall next door, came over to where he and Ruth were standing, Sully bent over with his hands on his knees.

“Jesus,” Jocko said, “you don’t suppose it’s the Japs again, do you?”

A cloud of yellow-brown dust was rising over the rooftops at the lower end of the street, maybe half a mile away. The awful stench that had plagued the town over the last several days was suddenly even more intense, causing the morning’s coffee to rise dangerously in Sully’s throat.

Ruth had a hand on his elbow now. “Are you okay?”

“Yeah, fine,” he said, straightening up, trying to look like a man who might just — what the fuck? — go to Aruba, instead of one with two years left but probably one. “I just felt light-headed. The heat after air-conditioning probably.” And maybe that’s all it was, because he started feeling better as soon as he said it.