Richard Russo - Everybody's Fool

When they passed the Upper Main Street house Sully owned but refused to live in, Tina leaned forward to peer at it. Back in the fall the poor girl had developed a crush on Will, Sully’s grandson. Ruth doubted Will was even aware of it, and he certainly hadn’t encouraged it, but according to Tina he was kind to everyone, even the uncool girls, and not stuck up, like he had a right to be, popular as he was. When he came into the restaurant with his grandfather, he made a point of saying hello. Always using her name and asking how she was. Like it really mattered. So she’d fallen hard. But now he was off to New York City for a summer internship and then college, and she didn’t know when or even if she’d see him again. That she still wanted to drive by the house struck Ruth as particularly heartbreaking.

Only when they’d gone another couple blocks did it occur to Ruth that Sully’s truck hadn’t been out front, which meant he was up and out early. Sometimes, when he couldn’t sleep, he’d be waiting out back of the restaurant when she arrived to open up. If he was there this morning, she’d give him a little grief, but in truth she’d be glad to see him, if only so she could rest easy that the blue flame hadn’t been about him. God, life was a complete mess.

“You know about sex, right?” Ruth was surprised to hear herself ask.

Tina turned to regard her blankly.

“I’m talking to you,” Ruth said. “If you hear me, raise your left hand.”

Tina raised her right.

“Very funny,” Ruth told her, though not at all sure she was joking. Her granddaughter had always had trouble distinguishing left from right. Ruth had tried to help her when she was little by taking her wrists and holding both hands straight in front of her, palms out, and explaining that the thumb and index finger of her left hand would naturally form the letter L. Later in the day, she’d tested her on the concept, and Tina dutifully held both hands out in front of her, palms in this time, and confidently identified her right hand as her left. Had she been joking even then?

“I’m serious,” Ruth said. “Boys want sex. Even the nice ones.”

Tina regarded her for another long beat, her face still an expressionless mask, then went back to staring out the window, as if neither of them had spoken.

“You know you can get pregnant, right?” Ruth continued. “You know how all that works?”

Tina raised her right hand.

“What’s that mean? That you heard me, or that you have a question?”

That half smile again.

“You want to know what I thought when I was your age?”

Again she raised her right hand.

“I thought you could get pregnant if a boy touched your breast.” Which was true. She had thought that, though she’d been much younger than Tina. “Then one did.”

She turned into the alley between the restaurant and the Rexall drugstore. Her daughter’s car was parked behind the Dumpster. There was no sign of Sully’s truck, nor had it been parked in the street. She thought again about the blue flame.

“Did you?” said her granddaughter.

“Did I what?”

“Get pregnant?” There was definitely a smile now.

“Are you having fun? Messing with Grandma?”

The girl nodded, her smile broadening. “Was Grandpa the boy?”

Ruth turned off the ignition. “I hadn’t even met your grandfather yet.”

“Then who was it?”

“Just a boy. Nobody you know. He died.”

“When?”

“In the war.”

“Which one?”

“The one he was fighting in.”

“Are you mad at me?”

“No, I’m mad at the war.”

“Why’d you let him?”

“Go to war?”

“No, touch you.”

“I didn’t let him. He just did.”

“Did you let other boys?”

“Why are we talking about me?”

“I’m trying to learn.”

“Yeah, right,” Ruth said, putting the keys in her purse, then adding, “It felt good, I guess.” The admission caused her to flush, though she couldn’t decide which version of herself she was more ashamed of, the girl she’d been when she first started letting boys feel her up or the one attempting to dissuade her granddaughter from sexual activity. “It made me feel like I mattered. There was nobody else around to tell me I was special, so when boys said I was, I believed them.”

The smile was gone from Tina’s face now. “So I shouldn’t believe what boys say?”

“Oh, hell, Two-Shoes, I don’t know. They believe it themselves when they say it, or some of them do. What’s important is how you feel about yourself.”

“And how do you feel about yourself?”

“Now?”

The girl shrugged.

“Old,” Ruth admitted. “Stupid. Confused.”

Tina just looked at her.

“I know what you’re thinking,” Ruth said. “If I’m so stupid and confused, why am I giving you advice?”

“That’s not what I was thinking.”

Ruth leaned across the front seat and took her granddaughter in her arms, holding her tight. “I just don’t want you to get hurt,” she said, her tears spilling over.

“Mom says you don’t love Grandpa.”

“She does, huh?”

“She thinks you love Sully.”

“She told you that?”

She shook her head. “She thinks it.”

“And you’re a mind reader.”

The girl nodded seriously.

“Okay, what am I thinking now?”

“We’re late.”

“Good guess,” Ruth said, because that’s what she had been thinking. Day was upon them.

When she wiped her eyes on her shirtsleeve and took a deep breath before getting out of the car, Tina said, “You’re the hurt one, Grandma, not me.”

—

THEY WENT IN through the back, Ruth propping the heavy door open to help air the place out. Deliverymen would start arriving soon. In the back room, with the dishwasher and the small walk-in cooler, she noted that Cleary had been in and mopped the floors. He was a drinker and not to be depended upon, especially after Friday nights. Sometimes on Saturday mornings she’d find him stretched out on the long stainless-steel drainboard, but last night he’d mopped up and even emptied the trash. “I could use a hand unless you have homework to do,” Ruth said.

“It’s the weekend.”

“Did you finish that book you were supposed to read? Animal House ?”

“Animal Farm,” she said. “ Animal House is a movie.”

“Did you finish it, is what I asked.”

The girl just looked at her. She’d answered the question already, was her point.

“You could start by unloading the Hobart,” Ruth told her. Last thing out the door, she always ran a load. If they were busy this morning, she’d need every available mug.

Out front, she put the coffee on and filled the grill with bacon and sausage links in orderly phalanxes. It was her practice to cook them halfway, then return them to the grill as individual orders came in. If Sully were here, he’d have grabbed a hunk of yesterday’s stale bread and used it to soak up the sputtering grease. Though he claimed to have no interest in cooking, Ruth had never seen a man more comfortable in a kitchen. He seemed to intuit its rhythms, to know when she’d need to sidle by him in the confined space between the grill and counter, whereas her husband, both at home and in the restaurant, always managed to be standing in front of whatever door — fridge, oven, pantry — she needed to open. His size was part of it, of course, but he was simply incapable of anticipating what came next, even when the operative sequence was entirely predictable and unfolding right before his eyes. While Sully, even when he had his back to her, was able to sense where she was and why, and he’d take a small step forward or back that allowed her to get where she wanted to go. He had similar instincts in bed, which had been nice. If only, she often thought, he was as emotionally prescient. But of course men had to be told things, repeatedly. And even then…