Richard Russo - Nobody's Fool

“It’d be just like him to surprise me, now that it’s too late to make much difference,” Ruth said.

“We wear the chains we forge in life,” Miss Beryl said. “Donald said that to me one day not long ago. I almost dropped my teeth.”

Ruth smiled, then frowned deeply. “He’s going to end up alone, isn’t he,” she said, her eyes filling up.

“We all do,” Miss Beryl almost said. Beneath the dark branches of its ancient elms, Upper Main was full of lonely widows, solitary watchers and waiters. Miss Beryl didn’t worry about them. Didn’t worry about herself, not really. Why then worry about Sully? What if he did appear a little more ghostlike every time she saw him, as if he were fading out of himself, as if, when people finally lost faith in him and quietly drifted away as she and Ruth were now doing, they were taking part of him with them? His life seemed governed by some cruel law of subtraction, and his sum total was already in single digits. When he left the upstairs flat for new lodgings, would there be enough left of him to require a place? Why worry about someone ending up alone when that someone did everything he could to ensure it? “With Donald,” she explained, “I’ve always just left the door open.”

Ruth smiled her sad smile again. “That’s always been my strategy too,” she admitted, looking up at the second story of Miss Beryl’s house, as if she imagined Sully might be up there. “My problem is, I can’t stop watching the doorway and being disappointed,” she explained, then looked over at her granddaughter again.

Miss Beryl studied the child too, thinking, as she often had when she surveyed her eighth-grade classes, that maybe people did wear chains of their own forging, but often those chains were half complete before they’d added their own first heavy link. Maybe completing other people’s work was the business of life.

“Let’s go, squirt,” Ruth said to the child, who did not respond until she was touched, and then she slid back onto the sofa and began to grope for Ruth’s ear.

Ruth gently removed the little girl’s hand. “We’re going to see Mommy, and you can play with her ear all afternoon, okay? Give Grandma’s ear a rest.”

The child was staring at Miss Beryl again, almost smiling, it seemed.

“We know every bend in the road between here and the hospital, don’t we, Tina?” Ruth said, taking the child’s small hand. “We go back and forth to Schuyler once a day at least.”

“I thought about paying a visit,” Miss Beryl said, “but my driving isn’t what it used to be. The last time I went there I got lost.”

Miss Beryl walked grandmother and granddaughter to the door and watched them retreat down the steps and get into Ruth’s old car, which started up noisily and got even noisier when she shifted into reverse, put her foot on the gas and backed slowly, with an apologetic shrug for the noise, into Main Street. Feeling distant from her extremities, her toes and fingertips tingling vaguely, Miss Beryl went into the bathroom and blew her nose hard, inspecting the tissue for blood. When there was none, she returned to her front room, where the telephone was ringing.

“Why don’t I make us a big steaming pot of chicken noodle soup?” Mrs. Gruber said in lieu of hello. It would take her another minute or two of inconsequential small talk before she’d get around to mentioning that she’d noticed a strange car in her friend’s driveway. Instead of dropping her voice, she’d let the sentence hang, to signify her desire for a thorough, detailed explanation. It would be amusing, Miss Beryl thought to herself, to withhold that explanation awhile, to watch her nosy friend suffer.

“Because I’m feeling better,” she told Mrs. Gruber, which was true. For when she picked up the phone, Miss Beryl noticed the corner of the jigsaw puzzle and saw that the piece she’d been looking for was no longer missing. The child had found it, slipped it quietly into place, never said anything. “Let’s go someplace for lunch.”

“Goody,” said Mrs. Gruber.

“This is vintage Sully,” Carl Roebuck said.

The two men were standing on the back porch of the Bowdon Street house. Will, forgotten, stood off to one side. The weathered porch sloped furiously, the remnants of two-week-old snow having gathered in one corner where the sun didn’t reach. Will looked past his grandfather at the gray, crooked house. He did not want to go inside. He was hoping his grandfather would not be able to get the door open. The house was all crooked and haunted-looking, and he knew that his mother, had she been there, would not have wanted him to go inside. Grandma Vera wouldn’t have wanted it either, and when he thought of her he recalled a conversation he had overheard between her and Grandpa Ralph. In Grandma Vera’s opinion it was dangerous for Will to accompany Grandpa Sully on his morning rounds. She didn’t say why Grandpa Sully was dangerous, but Will, though his affection for the stranger of his two Bath grandfathers was growing daily, thought he understood why his grandmother was worried. Grandpa Sully took him up dark, smelly stairways in the back of buildings, and to places where there were wild dogs, and now to a house about to fall down. Some of Grandpa Sully’s friends smelled bad, too. In his grandfather’s company, Will found that he was often torn between opposing fears. He understood that getting too close to his grandfather was dangerous, especially if Grandpa Sully was wielding a hammer or, like now, a crowbar, or the long, sharp spatula he used in the restaurant to flip eggs. Even his father had warned him not to get too close to Grandpa Sully when he had any sort of tool in his hand, which was why Will had not even ventured up onto the porch when his grandfather started after the back door with his crowbar.

The problem was that Will knew he didn’t dare let his grandfather get out of sight either, sensing that if this happened he’d lose his grandfather’s protection in a hostile environment. He knew Grandpa Sully was forgetful, entirely capable of forgetting Will altogether. In fact, he’d done it once already. One day last week they’d gone to the lumberyard outside of town, and when they got inside, Grandpa Sully had stationed Will near the front door and told him to wait right there. Then he’d gone over and talked to the man behind the counter. After a few minutes the two men went out the side door and into the big yard where mountains of boards were stacked. Through the window Will had watched his grandfather and the man load a dozen or so boards onto the back of Grandpa Sully’s truck and tie them in place with the rope. To the end of the boards the man had attached a red flag, which blew in the breeze. Will made a mental note to ask his grandfather what the flag was for. The two men outside shook hands then, and Grandpa Sully got back into the truck and drove off, the red flag waving good-bye around the corner. Will then watched the hands of the big clock inch around the dial, forever it had seemed, until Grandpa Sully returned, going, it seemed to Will, dangerously fast, even in the parking lot.

The truck came to a skidding halt, pebbles rattling against the window through which Will stood peering, his eyes liquid. He was not actually crying, though, and he was proud of that. In fact, since returning to North Bath with his father he hadn’t cried once, having resolved not to. He’d decided now that Wacker was gone that he’d try to be brave. When Grandpa Sully got out of the truck and headed inside, he was moving faster than Will had ever seen him go. He looked scared too, which made Will feel better, knowing that a man as fierce as Grandpa Sully could worry.

“I bet you thought Grandpa’d forgotten all about you,” he said.

Will nodded. That was exactly the conclusion he’d come to, there was no denying it.