Richard Russo - Everybody's Fool

When Tina, hands wet from the dishwasher, came out with a double tray of water glasses and coffee mugs, she momentarily lost her grip and managed to bang them all against the counter, rattling everything. “Easy,” Ruth snapped. She had an order in to her Albany restaurant-supply house, but until it was delivered, she was short on glasses and couldn’t afford to break any.

“Sorry,” the girl said, aggrieved.

“You will be if you wake your mother up.” She knew Janey had taken a shift out at the Horse last night and would’ve laid dollars to donuts that she’d gone out drinking afterward, knowing that Tina was spending the night with her and Zack. She watched her granddaughter stack cups and glasses on the shelf and wondered whether, a few years down the road, she’d have a child of her own, one Grandma Janey would find herself watching. This possibility was so depressing that she turned her attention back to the splattering grill, flipping the bacon and sausage links with her long spatula. In her peripheral vision she noticed Tina, returning to the back room with her empty trays, stop in her tracks. “Grandma?”

“What?”

When she didn’t answer, Ruth looked up and saw that the door leading to her daughter’s apartment was open. In it stood Roy Purdy, barefoot and shirtless, his jeans slung so low that a few wisps of curly pubic hair were visible above the beltline. His pale chest sported the tattoo of a sword, the tip of which disappeared comically beneath his foam neck brace. His face was still grotesquely swollen, and his eyes were dilated. How long had he been standing there watching them?

“Not much of a welcome,” he said, apparently to his daughter, though his eyes remained on Ruth. “Aren’t you going to give your poor old dad a hug?”

Ruth stepped in front of her granddaughter. Still holding the long spatula, she was tempted to use this lethal instrument to extend his insolent smirk from ear to ear. “What’re you doing here, Roy?”

“Well, Ma, I guess you could say I’m here by invitation.”

And then she was in motion. “Out of my way,” she said, pushing past him into the apartment, where in the murky bedroom Janey lay splayed on top of the sheets, naked. Dead, was Ruth’s first impression, and for a moment Janey was her little girl again, toddling around on fat little legs, arms outstretched and crying Up! Up! He’s finally killed her, she thought. But then she smelled the sex in the airless room and saw that her daughter was not only breathing but gently snoring. There was an empty bottle of Southern Comfort, Roy’s revolting liquor of choice, on the nightstand. Turning on the harsh overhead light, Ruth kicked the mattress, hard.

“What?” Janey said, bolting upright and squinting at her. “Fuck.”

“What’s he doing here?” Ruth said, pointing the glistening spatula at Roy, who’d drawn himself a glass of water out front before following her back into the apartment.

Janey looked at him and groaned, then turned to Ruth. “Don’t start, Ma,” she said, sliding under the top sheet and pulling it up to her chest. “I’m warning you, okay? Just don’t.”

“Too late. I’ve already started.”

Roy thumbed the cap off his prescription pill bottle expertly and shook a capsule into his palm, then washed it down with the entire glass of water, his Adam’s apple bobbing dutifully.

“He needed a place to stay, all right?”

“They’re not letting nobody back into the Arms till they find that damn snake,” Roy said, looking around aimlessly for a place to set down the glass.

“I’m not talking to you, Roy,” Ruth told him. “I’m talking to my dimwit daughter.”

“Right,” Janey said. “I’m stupid. You’re smart; I’m stupid.”

“What would you call it? You take out a restraining order against this man, then invite him into your bedroom?”

“That’s right, Ma. I did,” Janey said, the bit in her teeth now. “And you know what? I fucked him, too.”

“She sure did,” Roy corroborated. “Like old times, right, babe?”

Ruth turned on him. “Which ones, Roy? When you punched her in the face? Banged her head into the wall and gave her a concussion? Those the old times you’re talking about?”

He ignored all of this, staring at Janey. “So tell her.”

She was sitting there, massaging her temples, her breasts exposed again, the sheet having fallen. “Tell her what, Roy?”

“You know. How we’re gonna be getting back together. Be a family again, like before, only better.”

Janey regarded him with undisguised disbelief. “Don’t be a complete moron, Roy. Of course we’re not getting back together.”

“Singin’ a different tune last night, girl. You forget already?”

“It was a good fuck, Roy. That’s all I said. I was horny, okay?”

“Well, there you go. More where that came from.”

Janey stared at him for a long, incredulous beat, then addressed her mother. “Okay, fine. It was stupid letting him in, but you know how scared I get when there’s lightning.”

“Lightning,” Ruth repeated. “The man beats the shit out of you—”

“All that’s in the past,” Roy said, scratching himself below the beltline of his jeans, then inspecting his fingernails.

“Did you notice,” Ruth said to Janey, “how he balled up his fist when you contradicted him just now? Did you? You think he’s through whaling on you just because he says he is? Last time you were in the hospital for three days. And it’s lightning that scares you?”

“A person can’t help what they’re scared of,” Janey said, but clearly at least some of what Ruth had said was getting through. Either she’d seen Roy clench his fist or trusted that her mother had. “And he didn’t beat me up. You can see that, right?”

“That doesn’t mean he’s not going to.”

“All that’s in the past,” Roy said, his new mantra, though the hand not holding the water glass was a fist again. “And that’s for true.”

“It was just the once,” Janey said, apparently referring to the sex, not the previous beatings. “He knows that.”

“That’s where you’re wrong, girl. I don’t know no such thing.”

“Well, then you are a fucking moron, Roy.”

“What’s that you just called me?” he said.

“Get out of here, Roy,” Ruth said, “before we call the cops.”

“Who’s gonna do that?” Roy wanted to know. “You? Or her?”

It was then that Ruth remembered her granddaughter out in the restaurant, hearing all this, no doubt, probably cowering in a neutral corner like she used to do when she was little and these same two people started screaming at each other until the hitting started. “You need to go, Roy. Before this gets worse.”

“Whose fault would that be? You’re the one give her that mouth.”

Seeing her come toward him, Roy made no move to let her pass. “Step aside, Roy,” she told him.

And just that quickly she was on the floor, blinking up at him, tasting salt. Janey screamed.

“There now,” Roy said, pleased, as if he’d just won an argument.

Try as she might, Ruth was having trouble drawing the various elements of her unfolding experience into a coherent whole. Roy was standing directly over her, his right hand bloody. He’d struck her, she realized, with the empty glass. There was a large bloody shard in her lap.

“So whose fault is this right here, huh, Ma?” Roy was asking, his voice sounding far off. “Tell me that.”

“Momma!” Janey was screaming from even farther away. “Don’t, Roy!”

Ruth had managed to get onto her knees when Roy hit her again, this time with his fist. The back of her head hit the wall, causing very little pain but a frightening explosion of sound.