Richard Russo - Nobody's Fool

Well, he hadn’t meant to, was about all he could say in his own defense. He honestly hadn’t meant to. He hadn’t known what he was getting into, and he felt certain that the same thing must be true of Peter, whom Ralph refused to think badly of. If Ralph blamed anyone, as the two men and the boy stood awkwardly at the back door, limited in what could be said by the presence of the boy, he blamed himself for not knowing what to advise. He hadn’t even advised Peter about the existence of such women as this one he’d fallen in with, the kind who could make a man feel like something not quite a man and accomplish it in a way no other man, however jeering and contemptuous, could do. “You ain’t quite up for this, are you, Mr. Limp?” the sneering girl they’d hired in South Carolina had said after she’d been working on young Ralph awhile, to little effect, and a couple of his friends had howled appreciatively at this insult. But a boy who hadn’t had his turn yet and probably feared a similar difficulty had come to Ralph’s defense and told the girl not to talk with her mouth full, and this act of friendship had allowed Ralph to relax and concentrate until the vague rumbling finally came and went, like a train into and then out of the station of the next town over. No, Ralph refused to think badly of his stepson. He would have liked to say something witty and comforting like the boy had done in South Carolina, something like Sully always came up with, but about the best he could do was tell Peter he and the boy were welcome to stay with them as long as they needed to. Hiding, Ralph suspected, was what Peter was doing, and Ralph didn’t blame him a bit. Even forty years later, if that girl from South Carolina ever turned up in Bath, Ralph would have bolted, maybe up into the Adirondacks someplace into the deep woods, until he was sure she was gone again and it was safe to return. And Ralph didn’t consider himself a coward either. A man had a right to be scared of such women. A moral duty to, probably.

“You ain’t really going to quit your teaching, are you?” Ralph said. He’d been almost as surprised as Vera when Peter announced that maybe he’d just make a clean break — from Charlotte, a woman who hadn’t cared for him much until she’d discovered there was someone else; from Deirdre, the woman from the poetry reading; from college teaching, which had turned out to be the worst kind of servitude, the most unrewarding work he’d ever done; from West Virginia, which was, well, West Virginia. Besides, Peter said, Sully could use his help if he decided to stick around, and maybe they could use some help too, meaning Vera and Ralph.

“I don’t know, Pop,” Peter said now. “I’ve only got the one more semester anyway. This way I have the pleasure of quitting.”

“I guess I never did understand that whole tenure deal,” Ralph said. Peter had explained, more than once, that he’d been turned down the previous spring and given one academic year to find another position, but that didn’t make any sense to Ralph. How could you fire a man who’d done his job for five years? According to Peter, his boss (his department chairman, Peter had called him) admitted that Peter’d gotten a raw deal, that he’d been a good teacher and had high ratings or whatever you got when students liked you. But the college was going to let him go anyhow, because there’d been some way or other he hadn’t measured up and they could use that way to hire some new young professor cheaper than they could keep Peter. Vera had been furious, but Peter had told her not to be. The truth was, he said, that he wasn’t that great a teacher and he was no great scholar either, and they’d expected him to be both. That Peter would say such a thing had infuriated Vera — a woman who never granted a concession — almost as much as the tenure denial itself. And Peter’s announcement last night that he’d decided not to go back for his final semester had been proof positive that he was giving up his life, conceding defeat. She couldn’t believe he was any son of hers, she said. She couldn’t believe he was Robert Halsey’s grandson.

Peter had only smiled ruefully, said he wasn’t surprised he hadn’t measured up, in her eyes, to Robert Halsey, since no one ever had. And he told her the rest of what she’d said was off base too. He assured her he hadn’t any bridges to burn; they’d already been burned for him. He wasn’t turning away from teaching; he’d been terminated. He wasn’t even ending his marriage; Charlotte had done that. As soon as she’d returned to Morgantown, she’d withdrawn what little money they had from their savings account, rented a small U-Haul truck and returned with Wacker and little Andy to Ohio and her parents. The only thing waiting for him in West Virginia now was his landlord and the first-of-the-month bills he didn’t have the money to pay.

“I’m not giving up much by quitting now,” Peter assured his stepfather. “Once you’re denied tenure, you’re a leper. About the best I could do is teach in some Baptist college in Oklahoma. A community college in South Carolina, maybe. I’d rather not.”

Ralph shuddered at the mention of South Carolina. “At least that’d be something, wouldn’t it?”

“Depends on your definition of ‘something,’ ” Peter said.

Ralph nodded. “Well, I don’t blame you if you don’t want to. Your mother can’t quite understand, is all. You know how proud she is. First doctorate in the family. All your honors. Seems to her they should count for something.”

“I’m sorry to disappoint her,” Peter said. “I’m a little disappointed myself.”

“I would be too,” Ralph sighed. “You worked awful hard. I couldn’t sit and stare at books half as long as you did. Your mother’s right, though. There isn’t much opportunity around here.”

Peter shrugged. “Maybe I’ll teach a night class or two at Schuyler CC.”

Ralph nodded, trying not to encourage Peter too much. Truth be told, he liked the idea of having his stepson around. “You’d be keeping your hand in, anyhow,” he offered.

Peter was grinning now. “Dad says he knows a couple people there. That’d be a kick, wouldn’t it? If I got a job teaching college on Don Sullivan’s recommendation?”

Ralph didn’t see why that was so strange. “People like Sully,” he said. “I do myself. He’s …” Ralph tried to think what Sully was.

“Right,” Peter said. “He sure is.”

Ralph, feeling his throat constrict again with only love, looked around the garage for some object to distract him from his feelings. There in the corner of the garage was the snowblower Sully’d given him. “You know, it hasn’t snowed once since your dad give us that,” he remarked.

“That’s another thing Mom’s right about,” Peter acknowledged. “She always said if you needed something from Dad, it’d be the thing he didn’t have. And what he did have would be of no use.”

Together, Ralph and Peter regarded the snowblower, as if it contained significance worthy of such extended consideration. Outside, a car driving by backfired loudly, causing Will, stricken with fright, to squeal. “That ain’t nothin,’ ” Ralph told the boy. “There’s nothin’ to be scared of.”

“I know,” Will lied.

It was nearly ten-thirty when Sully tossed his grease-stained apron into the linen barrel, nearly half an hour later than he was supposed to finish up at Hattie’s, which had stayed busy longer than usual. The day before had been dramatic, and people wanted to see if old Hattie would still be on the warpath, hurling obscenities and salt shakers.

“What do you say, sport?” Sully called over to Will, who was bussing the last of the booths. “You ready to go see if we can get lucky?” Before joining Rub and Peter, they’d make a quick stop at the OTB.