Richard Russo - Nobody's Fool

The child glanced at the puzzle and then back at Miss Beryl, causing the old woman to wonder if the little girl’s grandmother might be expressing a wish — that the child would be interested in something. When Ruth took a seat on the sofa, the child turned her back to the puzzle, climbed onto the sofa next to her grandmother and, all the while never taking her eyes off Miss Beryl, found Ruth’s earlobe with her thumb and forefinger. An expression like serenity came over the child’s face then.

Ruth got off the sofa then and sat on the floor beneath the child. “There. Now you can reach it, huh,” she said.

“Are you quitting the IGA?” Miss Beryl wondered in response to Ruth’s remark “at least for a while.”

“It’s quitting us. They haven’t said so in public, but they’re going to close the store.” Ruth explained that the new supermarket at the interstate had put the financially troubled little IGA out of its final misery, just as the IGA had killed the corner groceries two decades earlier.

“Will you go to work out there?” Miss Beryl wondered.

Ruth shook her head. “I don’t think they’ve hired anybody over twenty-five. No, Grandma will have to find something else, right, Two Shoes?”

The little girl continued to stare at Miss Beryl.

“We don’t know quite what yet, but some damn thing,” Ruth continued. “You can’t stand still in this life or you get run over. We’ll have to figure out something when the time comes. If all else fails, maybe we could find Grandpa Zack a job. That’d be a kick, wouldn’t it? Watch Grandpa Zack work for a change?”

Miss Beryl listened to the woman, fascinated by her vocal resemblance to her daughter. It was as if the younger woman had suddenly awakened thirty years older and wiser, the sharp edge of her anger and tongue having eroded while leaving the same bedrock personality.

“Maybe something will present itself,” Miss Beryl said, trying to sound encouraging. “Clive Jr., star of my firmament, claims this is going to be the Gold Coast before long.”

Ruth looked vaguely puzzled by this, though Miss Beryl couldn’t be sure whether the source of her puzzlement was that she didn’t know who Clive Jr. was, or whether she didn’t know what a firmament was, or whether she shared Miss Beryl’s own doubts about the existence of a Gold Coast anywhere near Bath. In any event, she didn’t seem interested in contesting the point. “We could stand a little gold, couldn’t we, Two Shoes? We’d know just what to do with it.”

“How about that cookie?” Miss Beryl said, remembering her promise.

“We might eat one,” Ruth answered for the child. “You never can tell.”

Miss Beryl went into the kitchen to fetch cookies. When she returned, to her surprise the little girl had left her grandmother and was standing at the table where Miss Beryl had set up the jigsaw puzzle, her arms hanging straight down at her sides. Miss Beryl set the plate of cookies down on the coffee table and joined the little girl. “Find me that piece right there,” she suggested, pointing at the small space in the upper right-hand corner. “I’ve been looking for that piece for three days, and I don’t think it’s here. It’d be just like the people who make these dern things to leave one piece out, just to torment old ladies.”

“Check the floor,” Ruth suggested. “That’s where the pieces I need always are.”

“I’ve checked everywhere,” Miss Beryl said, returning to her seat opposite Ruth, who had taken and was chewing a cookie thoughtfully as she studied her granddaughter.

Miss Beryl was delighted to see that Ruth had been right, after all. The little girl did appear interested in the puzzle, which meant that the child’s grandmother had a better understanding of her than the mother, who, Miss Beryl suspected, would have interrupted her daughter and tried to get her to eat a cookie. Indeed, Miss Beryl could almost hear the young woman. (“Come eat a cookie, Birdbrain. This old lady was nice enough to get it for you. The goddamn least you can do is eat one.”)

“Did you say her mother gets out of the hospital tomorrow?”

“They’re unwiring her jaw right now,” Ruth explained. “Tomorrow she’ll be ready to come home. We’ve been having a lot of trouble understanding why Mommy doesn’t talk to us. Normally we can’t get her to shut up, and now she won’t talk. But the main thing is that she’ll be home … and that other person won’t be.”

“What’s wrong with him, anyway?” Miss Beryl wondered out loud. There’d been something strange and military about the way the man had methodically and without visible emotion shot out the windows of the house next door, as if he were acting on orders that were being transmitted that moment through headphones.

“He’s a moron,” Ruth said. A simple explanation that fit the facts. “Comes from a long line of them. With him out of the way it’ll be a second chance for my daughter. Who knows? She might even be smart enough to realize it.”

“Maybe you and your mom can come visit me sometime,” Miss Beryl said to the child, who continued staring at the puzzle without exhibiting any inclination to touch it. “I’m an old lady, and I don’t get very many visitors, except that lady down the street I told you about.”

Was it a smile that began to form on the child’s lips? A smile, Miss Beryl realized, became an ambiguous thing when the eyes were not in harmony. “Snail,” the little girl whispered.

“Right,” Miss Beryl said, cheered by this response. “The one who ate the snail.”

Ruth smiled. “So that’s where the snail came from. Snails are all we’ve heard about for two weeks.”

“Well, if you come back and visit me, we’ll call up the lady who ate the snail and ask her to come over so you can meet her. She even looks like somebody who’d eat a snail,” Miss Beryl said, then glanced at Ruth. “Grandma’d be welcome too if she felt like coming.”

“Grandma will be back to work by then,” Ruth said, leaning forward, running the backs of her fingers along her granddaughter’s calf. “Besides. If I started coming over here regular, people would think I was visiting someone else.”

At this reference to Sully, Miss Beryl felt guilt rise in her throat like illness. “Donald will be moving the first of the year,” she said. “He didn’t tell you?”

“We’re on the outs at the moment,” Ruth admitted. “I’d heard a rumor, though.”

“I’m going to miss him. Clive Jr., star of my firmament, is convinced he’s a dangerous man, but he’s wrong. Donald is careless, but he’s always been his own worst enemy.”

“I know what you mean,” Ruth said. “I’ve finally given up, though. I’m going to be fifty on my next birthday. Which means some damn thing, I’m not sure what. That I’m too old for all this foolishness, I guess. And I’ve got a feeling I’m going to inherit a responsibility soon”—she nodded almost imperceptibly at the little girl—“and responsibility is not our mutual friend’s long suit.”

“He might fool you,” Miss Beryl said, regretting this observation immediately. In truth, Miss Beryl, who was simply inclined to think well of Sully, had long been waiting for him to redeem himself somehow, but it was beginning to look like his stubbornness was going to outlast her faith. It had always been her belief that people changed when life made them change, a belief Sully’s dogged daily struggles — what he himself called “shoveling shit against the tide”—seemed designed to challenge.

“He might.” Ruth smiled sadly. It was a wonderful open smile that transformed her appearance completely, softening it, making her almost beautiful, and Miss Beryl thought she saw what must have kept Sully interested all these years, because otherwise she was a very plain-looking woman. The mystery of affection, in particular Clive Sr.’s affection for her, was one of life’s great mysteries. What, she had often wondered, had made her the center of his life? Miss Beryl had always been realistic about her odd physical appearance, and even as a young woman she’d concluded that Clive Sr. must have possessed the special gift of being able to see past that appearance. She remembered her mother’s slender consolation to her unpopular child: “Don’t you worry. You have what’s called inner beauty, and the right man will see it.” Ruth’s remarkable smile offered a subtle variation on her mother’s clichéd wisdom.