Richard Russo - Everybody's Fool

No doubt her strategy had been flawed from the start. Why inform the enemy of your endgame? Why let him in on what you cared about most, what you meant to defend at all costs? Collect all the crap you want, she’d told her husband, just don’t bring it in the house. Even birds know enough not to shit in their own nests. And with this declaration the long proxy conflict had begun. Its first arena had been the garage, which had two large bays, with room to spare for both their vehicles, or so she’d thought, although the flatbed truck Zack used to haul his shit in was half again as wide as the largest pickup. When the floor-to-ceiling shelving started going up along the interior walls, she’d thought, Overkill. (Failure of Imagination Number One: underestimating both the enemy’s ambition and his tidal persistence.) By the end of that year every last shelf was bowed and groaning under the weight of more and more crap. Then, down the middle of the garage, in the space between their vehicles, came the lawn mowers — push and power — as well as rusty bicycles with flat tires and brake pads dangling from detached cables, assorted posthole diggers and Weedwackers. Suddenly the whole place was so booby-trapped that you had to go slow and pay attention both driving in and then stepping out, because there were land mines everywhere — skateboards, Wiffle balls, Hula-Hoops, even lumps of Play-Doh. Along the exterior walls, dented metal drums appeared. Into the empties Zack poured used oil and grease. The others — some decorated with smiling skulls and crossbones — contained the industrial solvents and toxic chemical baths he needed to remove rust from bike chains and other hardware.

Even more demoralizing than the junk itself was her husband’s unshakable conviction that it was all valuable, or would be as soon as he could locate the handle, screw, lid, link, cap, clasp, rubber grip or wheel that had gone missing. That what you needed would turn up eventually was one of the central tenets of his scavenging faith. Another was that people who tossed things out because they didn’t work anymore were stupid. That someone would go out and spend good money on a new power mower because the pull rope on the old one snapped off filled Zack with the kind of pure wonder that he was forever attempting to evoke in his unsympathetic wife. To her way of thinking, the fact that people threw away stuff that maybe could be repaired meant they were busy, not stupid, and even if they were stupid it didn’t necessarily require you to get up at five in the morning to go digging through their trash in search of evidence. If they put an old sofa out on the curb, that didn’t mean you had to load it onto the back of your truck and haul it home, all proud of yourself (“I can get that cat-piss smell out”). And it certainly didn’t mean you spent your entire adult life in an activity that, if you succeeded, meant only that you’d relocated the public landfill to your own property.

In Ruth’s considered opinion, hers was a winning argument, but for some unknown reason, instead of pressing it, she’d instead granted a concession — Major Tactical Error — by reminding herself that every man needs a hobby, especially someone like Zack who might otherwise be tempted to stay home watching TV in his skivvies and collect unemployment or unearned disability. And it wasn’t like he fought her on every little thing. He was capable, at times, of reason. When she told him to open his own bank account, he did; and when she warned him never to touch the money in their joint account to finance his purchases at flea markets and yard sales, he agreed. Every now and then she checked to make sure he was abiding by that stipulation and damned if he wasn’t. To hear him tell it, he never bought anything for fifty cents that he didn’t eventually sell to somebody else for a dollar, which might even be true for all she knew. As long as he stayed out of her hair, what did she care? This had been her thinking. Let him fill up the fucking garage. As long as there was room for their vehicles…

Then one day she came home, and his truck was parked outside. In his bay, upside down, rested a long wooden canoe with a hole in the bottom. Her own bay, cramped and crowded now, was vacant, but upon pulling in she discovered she couldn’t open the car door, thanks to a ropeless toboggan — it was mid-August! — that hadn’t been there in the morning and now lay lengthwise against the shelving. She was about to resort to her horn when Zack appeared in the rearview mirror. “I meant to move that,” he said, standing the toboggan up on one end so she could get out. “That boat’ll be gone by next week,” he added.

“Yup,” she agreed. “There’ll be three more of something else, though.”

He smiled, apparently pleased she understood. “The business is growing,” he said.

“I’m sorry, the what?” Because she’d gotten used to describing all this as a hobby, and embedded in that word was the concession she’d granted.

“I’m in business here,” he told her. “Ma thinks it’s a good idea to ramp things up.”

“Well, there you go, then.”

“I’m getting a sign made,” he added, as if this was his trump card.

“You can’t find one out at the dump?”

“It wouldn’t be mine.” That was the thing about Zack. He always answered her questions, even the ones that were snide, mocking criticisms, as if they were serious.

Later that night she warned him again. “Not so much as one rusty wing nut in my house.”

“It’s Ma’s house,” he said. “We just live here.”

“Well, thanks for reminding me.”

“It will be. I ain’t sayin’ it won’t. I’m just sayin’—”

“I know what you’re saying.”

“You could take an interest,” he said, sounding plaintive, and she felt her hardened heart soften a little. “In what I do, I mean.”

“I’m exhausted, Zack. I work three jobs.”

“I work, too. You’re not the only one.”

No, just the only one who makes money. Did he know that this was on the tip of her tongue? Maybe. Probably.

The following week a snowmobile appeared in her bay. “It’ll be gone in a day or two,” he assured her.

“Where am I supposed to park?”

“It’s summer,” he pointed out, not unreasonably.

By the time winter rolled around, though, her bay was crammed, from floor to ceiling. After a blizzard camouflaged both their vehicles under a foot and a half of snow, he told her, “I’m looking at sheds.” Right, she thought. As if invading armies ever gave back conquered territory. The garage was now Poland. Occupied.

The next theater of war had been the yard itself. They had over an acre of land, but except for where the house and garage stood, and a small lawn, most of it was wooded. At first a few miscellaneous, awkwardly shaped items — a rowing machine, its oarlocks missing, a large collection of mismatched fireplace utensils — were partially hidden among the trees and bushes, but before long other crap appeared, such as the outboard motor that materialized one day like the world’s ugliest lawn ornament. Had the time come to make a stand? Probably, but in truth Ruth decided she didn’t really care (Alert! Conflict Fatigue!). Unlike many women, Ruth had never much concerned herself with appearances, and where they lived, a good half mile out of town, there were no neighbors to complain about them ruining the neighborhood and driving down property values. Moreover, it was about this time that she’d taken Hattie’s over from its previous owner, a woman roughly her own age who’d fled to Florida after her mother, the original Hattie, died. A businesswoman now, Ruth began to separate her homelife from the restaurant. Mother Ruthless was still out at the county nursing home, but her speech had improved a little, and when they brought her home for holidays and special occasions it was clear that she still considered this her very own shithole and looked forward to the day when she’d be able to return and claim it. Her doctors had privately assured them that this would never happen, that she would always require round-the-clock nursing, but for the time being the house was still in her name, whereas Hattie’s was in Ruth’s. Let the old woman croak on her own schedule, she told herself. Then dig in and fight your fight. Sure, it was disheartening to see the property overrun with weeds — with so much shit everywhere, you couldn’t mow it — but the perimeter of the house had not been breached, and that, she reminded herself, was the important thing (Grave Tactical Error! Never surrender your DMZ!). Evenings, after the sun went down, were the worst. Then the taller items in the yard, the ones he’d left leaning up against trees, put Ruth in mind of troops massing at the border. Could there be any doubt of their intention to invade?