Richard Russo - Nobody's Fool

Vera answered on the first ring.

“Hi,” Sully said, not bothering to identify himself. With Vera, he always liked to go on the assumption that she’d recognize his voice, even if he hadn’t spoken to her in a year. This much he took as his due, the result of their having been married long enough to have a son. The way he saw it, any woman you married owed you that much, especially if you weren’t going to ask her for anything else. “What’s up?”

“Who is this?”

In fact, Sully was tempted to fire the same question back. Unless he’d dialed the wrong number, this had to be Vera, but it didn’t sound like her, the voice lower by several notes. Whoever it was sounded like she’d just awakened from a two-day sleep. “Vera?”

“Oh,” she said.

“What do you mean, oh,” he said, already annoyed. “I had a message you called.”

“Just to say you win.”

Sully considered this. He couldn’t think of anything he’d won. Certainly not anything concerning Vera. “What the hell are you talking about?”

“I just wanted to tell you that you’d won.”

“Won what, Vera?” he said, but she’d already hung up.

Sully stared at the phone for a second before hanging up and heading back to the bar where Rub and Peter were eating chicken wings. Since neither of them looked up, he went back to the phone and dialed Vera’s number again. This time the phone rang twenty times before she answered. “What the hell’s going on?” he said. “And don’t hang up on me, either. It’d take me about two minutes to get over there. Don’t think Ralph’ll keep me out either, because he won’t.”

“I have no illusions about my husband ever standing up for me, Sully,” she said, her voice full of self-pity. “At the moment, he isn’t even here.”

“I don’t blame him,” Sully told her. The words were out before he could call them back, not that he necessarily would have, had he been able to. When the other end was silent too long, he said, “What’s the matter, Vera? You wouldn’t have called if you didn’t want to tell me.”

When she spoke this time, he could hear the give in her voice. “It’s just that … I’ve tried … so … hard,” she finally sobbed.

Sully was suspicious of his ex-wife’s grief, knowing from long experience Vera’s inclination toward theater. With Vera the road to hysteria was short in all situations, large and small.

“You never tried at all,” she continued, “and you end up with him.”

“Is it Peter we’re talking about?” Sully said, catching, he thought, a glimmer. He’d been so sure this would be about Will that he couldn’t switch gears.

“You won,” she said again, “but you didn’t win much.”

“The hell with you, Vera,” he said, ready himself to hang up.

“Have him tell you about the foul-mouthed little tramp he’s got in Morgantown.”

“Peter doesn’t tell me shit, Vera,” Sully assured her.

“He will,” she told him. “You’re soul mates. I’m the one he despises.”

“You’re crazy, too.”

Silence again. More theater, probably. Though perhaps something else. “You know when you’ve lost somebody, Sully. At least I do. Practice makes perfect. When something means the world to me, I know it’s only a matter of time.”

“You haven’t lost Peter,” he told her. “And I certainly haven’t won him. I haven’t even tried to win him.”

“That’s what attracts him,” she said, sniffling now. “I’ve loved him until my heart broke right in two. You could care less, so you’re the one he wants.”

“Listen, Vera—”

“You should have heard the filth that little tramp said to me,” she said. “It was like a terrible smell coming out of the phone, polluting my home.”

“I wasn’t there, Vera,” Sully reminded her. “I didn’t hear it.”

“like a foul stench,” she went on. “I’ve made a clean home, Sully.”

“You sure have.”

“And this is what he trails into it,” she said. “What’s the use?”

“I don’t know, Vera,” he conceded, tired of the conversation. “I’m going to hang up now.”

“Right,” she said. “Run away.”

“Screw yourself, Vera.”

“Be thankful you can run away,” she said. “Be thankful you’re not the one with no place to go.”

Back at the bar Rub and Peter were right where he’d left them, and before them a pretty amazing pile of chicken bones. Peter met Sully’s eye, and his expression was that of a man who’d intuited at least portions of Sully’s conversation with his mother. Just as mysterious and annoying, Rub, for some reason, was crying.

“What the hell’s wrong with you?”

“They’re spicy,” Rub explained. He had the orange sauce all over him. His hands were orange to the wrist, as were his cheeks and the tip of his nose. There was orange in his crew cut.

“Messy, too, looks like,” Sully observed. Even Peter, a fastidious eater, Vera’s boy, had orange hands.

Rub examined his own as if for the first time, then began licking his fingers.

“I bet they were good,” Sully said. “You know how I can tell?”

Rub looked genuinely curious, as he usually was concerning all forms of mental telepathy.

“Because you didn’t save me a single one.”

Rub looked down at the pile of bones in front of him, as if in search of any that had not been picked completely clean. Not finding any, his expression darkened. “He ate as many as me,” he said, indicating Peter. “How come you never get mad at him?”

“I’m not mad at anybody, Rub,” Sully said. “I was just making a simple observation. I noticed you ate all the wings.”

“Him too,” Rub insisted.

Sully couldn’t help grinning at Rub’s wonderful ability to restore other people’s spirits at the cost of his own. “Don’t get me wrong. I’m glad you had a good lunch. You might have saved me one wing, but if you were hungry, I’m glad you ate them all.”

Rub’s head hung even lower now. For such a short man, he had a large head, and when it was full of shame, he was unable to hold it erect. Peter, who’d been toweling off with napkins and was apparently disinclined to share Rub’s burden of shame, leaned over and stage-whispered, “If he wants to talk about sharing, you might remind him that the six hundred Carl Roebuck paid us went right into his pocket and never came out again.”

Since this was true, Sully gave them each two hundred. Rub folded his bills carefully with orange fingers and put them in his shirt pocket. “How come you’re looking at me?” Rub said, since everybody seemed to be.

“What do you say we go back to work?”

“Okay,” Rub said, sliding off his stool.

“Wait outside a minute,” Sully told him. “I need to talk to my son.”

Rub’s face clouded over again.

“Next time save me a wing and I’ll talk to you too,” Sully said.

When he was gone, Peter said, “Jesus, you’re mean to him.”

“He knows I don’t mean anything.”

“You’re sure?” Peter said skeptically.

“Pretty sure.”

Peter didn’t say anything.

“You better take a few minutes and go see your mother,” Sully told him. “She’s all upset.”

Peter sighed, shook his head. “About Will?”

“About you.”

“Me? What about me?”

“Who the hell knows? I never pretended to understand your mother. She did say you’d gotten a phone call from some woman in West Virginia.”

Peter rolled his eyes. “Oh, Christ. Okay.”

“Your mother thought you might want to tell me about it.”

“I don’t.”

“I told her you wouldn’t.”

“You were right.”

“Fine. Keep all the secrets. Keep every fucking one. I’ll tell you one thing though. I don’t think I’m going to eat too much more of your sullen shit,” Sully told him. “I know you think I’ve got it coming, but that doesn’t mean I’m going to take it.”