Richard Russo - Nobody's Fool

Nor did her rage diminish. As the shadows of her customers continued to move past the old woman relentlessly, the door opening and closing just beyond her reach, Hattie had hurled first warnings, then obscenities. Her customers didn’t mind so much being called fart blossoms, but the sight of an old woman so possessed was unnerving, and those who’d escaped were glad to be safely out in the street. When it became clear to Hattie that neither warnings nor insults stemmed the tide of her customers out the front door, she picked up and chucked a full salt shaker, hitting Otis Wilson behind the right ear, spinning him around on his seat at the lunch counter.

“Christmas,” Cass said to Sully now, her voice low and threatening. Sully didn’t usually notice such things, but he observed that Cass looked exhausted this morning, herself yet another old woman.

“She’s all right,” he said, hoping to strike a note of comfort and, of course, hitting something else entirely. “She’ll quiet down.”

They both studied the old woman then. Hattie’s jaw was set in such a way that it was difficult for either of them to imagine that she’d changed her mind about anything recently. Or conceded anything.

“After Christmas is when she’ll be all right,” Cass said.

This morning Sully had noticed on the way in that there was a sign taped to the front door announcing that Hattie’s would be closed the week between Christmas and New Year’s, which, if true, would be a first. The diner was often shut on major holidays, but a whole week between Christmas and New Year’s had never been done before, so far as Sully recollected. The hasty lettering on the sign, taken in conjunction with the fact that Cass had said nothing to Sully about the closing before, suggested to him that she’d arrived at the decision during the night. The deep lines etched beneath her eyes suggested early morning. “She’s not going to go for that,” Sully said, nodding at the sign and noticing as he did so that Rub was there on the other side of the door, shifting his weight from one foot to the other in the gray half light of early morning, his hands thrust deep into his coat pockets, clearly hoping to attract someone’s attention inside, where it was light and warm. He was just tall enough to see over the top of the sign, and Sully could tell he was pleased to have attracted notice, though his face clouded over when nothing came of it. He consulted his wrist then, as if to check how long it would be before the diner officially opened. Since Rub never wore a watch, there was nothing on his wrist that was of the slightest use in this regard. Sully wondered where he could have possibly picked up such a gesture.

“She hasn’t got any say in the matter,” said Cass, who hadn’t noticed Rub. The tone of this observation suggested a challenge. Sully could dispute the statement if he dared.

“Okay,” said Sully, who didn’t dare. “I just meant she wasn’t going to like the idea, that’s all.”

“No,” Cass said. “You meant more than that. You meant that I’d never make it stick and that I shouldn’t even try. You meant that it would be simpler to let her have her way like always, since she’s going to get it in the end anyway. That’s what you meant by ‘she won’t go for it.’ ”

Well, it was true. That was pretty much what he’d meant. “I didn’t mean that at all,” he objected.

“Yesterday was the last straw,” she told him, pointing a handful of knives, fresh from their rack on the drainboard, at him. “Yesterday tore it. She’s going into professional care. She can abuse people who are paid to take it.” She slung the knives into the plastic trough beneath the counter.

“Okay,” Sully agreed. “Fine.”

Somehow, by appearing to question her judgment or perhaps her will, he’d managed to get Cass angry at him . There were times when he wondered if this were a special skill he possessed, this ability to redirect almost any woman’s anger to himself. They all seemed perfectly prepared to surrender their original object of scorn. Whenever Ruth was angry at Zack, Vera at Ralph, Toby Roebuck (and all the other women in Carl’s life) at Carl — these women were all apparently satisfied to vent their fury on Sully if he happened to be handy, as if he embodied in concentrated form some male principle they considered to be the cause of their dissatisfaction with their own men. Which made him wonder if there might be a way to distract Cass before she got up a good head of steam. “You want to let Rub in?” he suggested.

Rub was dancing faster now in the entryway.

“He gets here earlier every morning,” Cass said. “If I let him in, it’ll look like we’re open.”

“He’ll make you feel better,” Sully predicted.

“How?”

“I don’t know,” Sully confessed. “He always does, though.”

“You just like tormenting him.”

“Wave to him,” Sully suggested.

They waved. Rub scowled, did not wave back.

“All right, I can’t stand it,” Cass said, trying to suppress a smile. “Go let him in.”

“See?” Sully said, moving past her.

“Before you do,” she caught him.

“What?”

“I’m going to need some help next week. I don’t know who else to ask.”

“Okay,” Sully said.

“Don’t say you will unless you mean it.”

“I’ll make time.”

“One morning should do it. There’s two places I want to look at. One in Schuyler, one in Albany.”

“Okay.”

“Quit saying okay.”

“Okay.”

“Go let him in.”

Sully did.

“You two were talking about me,” Rub said as Sully closed the door behind him and relocked it. “I could tell.”

“Make him pay,” old Hattie said audibly at Rub’s elbow.

Rub, who was frightened of all old women, stepped quickly aside to look at Hattie and determine, if possible, if she’d been addressing him. She never had, even once, during all the years he’d been coming there, though it appeared she was doing so now, and, even worse, demanding money he didn’t have. Without taking his eyes off the old woman, he whispered, “Could I borrow a dollar?”

When Peter, sleepy-eyed but dressed for work, emerged from the room he and Will were sharing at his mother’s, he caught Ralph poised and listening outside his wife’s bedroom door. In times of trouble, their bedroom became her bedroom, and Ralph knew he was not allowed in without permission. Together the two men stood in the narrow hallway between bedrooms, listening for sounds on the other side of the door. But the only sounds in the whole house emanated from downstairs in the kitchen, Will’s spoon scraping his cereal bowl. When Peter turned and headed down, Ralph followed him.

“You ready, sport?” Peter said.

Will was ready. He’d finished his cereal and was engaged in a scientific experiment with the few remaining Cheerios in his bowl. In the beginning, they floated. You could hold a Cheerio under the surface of milk for a long time, but as soon as you removed the spoon, it floated right to the top. You could break it in half, and then the two halves floated. Break the two halves in half and all four floated. But when you broke them into smaller pieces, they bloated up, lost their buoyancy, turned to brown muck in the bottom of the bowl. Without arriving at any conclusions as to what this phenomenon might mean, Will nevertheless found it interesting. It was nice to be able to think such thoughts in peace. Until recently, he’d get about halfway through such a complex thought and Wacker, who could sense other people thinking, would do one of his sneak attacks. Will rubbed the tender flesh along the inside of his right arm between the elbow and the armpit. The soreness was going away. He was beginning to heal. He smiled at his father and grandfather.