Richard Russo - Nobody's Fool

“Donald?”

“Sullivan,” she said. “You probably don’t know him.” Indeed, she had promised Sully she’d go to the doctor. It had been the only way she could get him out of her flat so she could clean up the bloody mess she’d made. In fact, Sully had insisted on driving her to the doctor over the noon hour, had promised to drop by and pick her up. Probably he’d forget, but the way her luck was going this would be the time he’d remember, so she made an appointment at the clinic in Schuyler, called Mrs. Gruber for company, explaining that she’d been referred to the clinic for her annual checkup, and left Sully a note on the door, explaining that she’d gone to the doctor without mentioning which one or where, confident that Sully seldom required more information than people gave him. What she’d had in mind, though, was a doctor like her own in Bath, an older man, understanding but not too swift, but a stranger, someone who wouldn’t snitch. She hadn’t been prepared for this mere boy.

“You live alone?” asked the mere boy.

Miss Beryl said she did, adding that she had done so, pretty much without incident, since her husband’s death nearly thirty years before.

“And you fear losing your independence?”

Miss Beryl raised his grade from a B-plus to an A-minus. “Such as it is,” she admitted.

“Do you drive?”

“Seldom. To the store and back. I’m thinking of giving it up altogether. Frankly, I’ve never understood this nation’s obsession with cars. It means something, and I hate to think what. I also hate to think I might do something foolish and harm someone. My husband, Clive — star of my firmament — was killed in a car, and my son’s fiancée, who is a wrecker even when afoot, nearly killed him in one yesterday.”

The young man was nodding at her, clearly pretending comprehension.

“I only use the Ford for grocery shopping,” Miss Beryl repeated. “And when there’s a grand opening in some store between here and Albany I get roped into taking Mrs. Gruber, my neighbor. She’s a snitch too.” In fact, Mrs. Gruber was waiting for her in the lobby of the clinic, happily contemplating lunch in the new hospital cafeteria she’d read about in the North Bath Weekly Journal and had long hoped to visit. Miss Beryl had told her friend nothing of the gusher, fearing that the information would find its way back to Clive Jr. “So you see I wouldn’t miss driving. My independence is my routine, my way of doing things, which is not the way others do them. I eat what I want and when I want. I read and talk to myself and look out my window and contemplate the verities. I know my neighbors and I like them, but I wouldn’t want them any closer, and I certainly wouldn’t want to share living quarters with the best of them. I have a boarder upstairs, and the best thing about him is that he’s seldom home. He drops in in the morning to find out if I’m still alive and then he leaves, doesn’t come home until the bars close. He’s a free spirit. Donald Sullivan. I may have mentioned him. Clive says I’d be happier if I had companionship. He doesn’t count his father and Ed.”

The young man frowned. “I thought you said your husband was killed in a car accident.”

“He was,” Miss Beryl said, delighted to discover that her listener had been paying attention.

“And yet …”

“I keep his photograph on the television, and we continue many of the discussions we had when he was alive. We never reached conclusions then, and we still don’t.”

“Which leaves … Ed?”

“Ed’s a Zamble.”

“A which?”

“An African spirit mask. Part human, part animal, part bird. Like the rest of us.”

The young man smiled. “I think I see what you mean about talking to yourself. Do you find yourself entertaining?”

“Mildly,” Miss Beryl told him. “Compared to television. Clive thinks I should get cable. That’s what he means when he says I should have more companionship.”

The doctor was squinting now.

“Clive Jr.,” Miss Beryl decided to help the young man out, since he was trying. “Clive Sr. is dead. His son survives.”

“ His son?”

“Our son,” Miss Beryl conceded. “There. I’ve admitted it. I hope you’re happy.”

“You and your son don’t see eye to eye, I take it?”

“He’s a banker,” Miss Beryl explained.

The doctor appeared to be waiting for her to continue.

“You don’t think that’s sufficient reason, I gather.”

More confusion. “For what?”

“He’s the one responsible for that new theme park they’re going to build. He thinks Bath is the Gold Coast. He says money is creeping up the interstate.”

“Hmmm,” the young doctor said.

“Let’s discuss something you may know about,” Miss Beryl suggested. “What’s wrong with me? In addition to my being eighty years old.”

When the young physician opened his mouth to speak, Miss Beryl interrupted him.

“Don’t pussyfoot. Pretend you’re telling Clive.”

“Which Clive?”

“Junior. This is just pretend. You won’t actually tell him anything. Ever.”

“Well, Mrs. Peoples—”

“This isn’t going to be very convincing,” she interrupted again, “if you call Clive by his mother’s name.”

The young man was grinning broadly now. “Well, Clive,” he went on, “the best I can do right now is give you an educated guess.”

“Ma’s an educator,” she said, imitating her son’s voice. “She’ll understand.”

Her listener grew sober. “I think — I’m reasonably certain — that your mother suffered a stroke this morning. Call it a ministroke if you like. They’re not at all uncommon among women of your mother’s advanced age. A momentary disruption of oxygen to the brain, causing a feeling of light-headedness, the illusion that it was snowing. Cause? A small blood clot, likely, though we may never know. The causes may have been building up for weeks.”

Miss Beryl took this in, wondering whether the causes the young fellow alluded to were strictly physical or whether there might be spiritual causes as well. Could betrayals cause clots? Miss Beryl was inclined to believe they could. “Should she expect more?”

The doctor hesitated, then nodded. “You — sorry— she might not have another for a year or longer. She could have another next month. The next one could be stronger or less strong. If she starts to have a series of them, they could presage a more damaging stroke down the road. If she has any more symptoms like she had today, she should see me immediately. You should impress that on her.”

“Ma’s pretty stubborn,” Miss Beryl heard herself say in her son’s voice. It was startling how easy it was to do Clive Jr.’s voice. And not just the more irritating aspects of his speech, like his referring to her as “Ma,” but the more subtle tone and cadence of his words. It was as if she could call upon some complex genetic common denominator in their physical makeup (in the vocal cords themselves?) to reproduce Clive’s sound exactly. This was the first time she’d ever done her son’s voice for a stranger, and she felt the quick betrayal of it and wondered if she’d just formed another clot. “You could wallop her on the head with a stick, but you couldn’t get her to change her mind once it’s made up.”

“That was my impression of her exactly,” the doctor responded, grinning at her now to show how much he was enjoying the game. “She’s a corker, in feet.”

The doctor stepped out into the corridor then and flagged a nurse. “When I’ve had a look at your blood work, I may write you a prescription for a blood thinner,” he said. “Until then, you take care, Mrs. Peoples … it is Mrs. Peoples I’m addressing?”