Richard Russo - Nobody's Fool

When Miss Beryl heard the outside door grunt open, she opened the door to her own flat to confront the young woman, who apparently intended to head upstairs to Sully’s apartment. “Move it, Birdbrain,” she said, apparently to the child, though she was looking directly at Miss Beryl when she spoke.

“May I help you?” Miss Beryl said, not particularly trying to convey any real desire to be helpful.

“He up there?” the young woman wanted to know. Up close, she looked vaguely familiar, like she might once have been one of Miss Beryl’s eighth-graders.

“Who?” Miss Beryl said. Sully had few visitors, and Miss Beryl knew most of them by sight, if not by name.

“The guy who lives up there,” said the young woman with undisguised irritation.

“He’s not in,” Miss Beryi said.

“Good,” said the young woman. “Something was bound to go right today if I waited long enough.”

Miss Beryl paid no attention to this. She was looking at the child, who stood motionless at her mother’s side, staring at Miss Beryl. Or she would have been staring, if something hadn’t been wrong with one of her eyes, which looked off at a tragic angle, at nothing at all. Miss Beryl felt her heart quake but was only able to say, “This child should be wearing a coat. She’s shivering.”

“Yeah, well, I told her to stay in the car,” the young woman said, “so whose fault is it?”

“Yours,” Miss Beryl said without hesitation.

“Right, mine,” the young woman said, as if she’d heard this before. “Listen. Do me a megafavor and mind your own business, okay?”

The sheer outrageousness of this suggestion left Miss Beryl momentarily speechless. She hadn’t been sassed since she retired from teaching, and she’d forgotten what she used to do about it. The moment of stunned silence was apparently enough for the young woman to reconsider her tactics.

“listen,” she said, her shoulders slumping. “Don’t mind me, okay? Everything is mega-screwed up right now. I don’t usually yell at old ladies.”

Just children, Miss Beryl almost said, but held her tongue. That was how she’d always handled sassing, she remembered. She’d said nothing and glared at the miscreant until it dawned on him or her that a serious mistake had been made and that Miss Beryl hadn’t been the one who’d made it.

“It’s just Birdbrain here,” she explained. “I’d like to give her to you for about an hour, just for laughs.”

They were both studying the silent child now. The little girl, for her part, might as well have been standing all alone in the hallway for all the sense she conveyed of being in the proximity of other human beings.

“Hello, sweetheart,” Miss Beryl said, and hoped that she wasn’t glowering at the child as she had been at her mother. She’d more than once been accused of frightening small children, though no one had ever explained to her precisely what she was doing to frighten them.

“That’s a good idea,” the young woman said. “Make friends with this nice old lady while Mommy makes a phone call.” Then, to Miss Beryl, “He got a phone up there?”

“Use mine,” Miss Beryl said, still not sure she should be allowing the young woman into her tenant’s flat. Not that Sully probably would have minded or had any cause to object, since he never locked up when he left.

“Suit yourself,” the young woman said, slipping her shoes off. “I wasn’t planning on stealing anything. Take your shoes off, Birdbrain. We’re going in here for a minute, I guess.”

The child was wearing cheap blue canvas tennis shoes, and Miss Beryl could tell that they were wet, as were the child’s socks.

“Don’t touch nothing in here,” the young woman warned the child. “These aren’t our things, and Mommy doesn’t have money to pay for what you bust.”

Miss Beryl showed the young woman where the telephone was in the front room. The young woman picked up the receiver and looked at Miss Beryl. “Thanks,” she said. “Been awhile since I’ve seen one of these,” she added in reference to its rotary dial. In fact, the phone did go back about thirty years. “Regular museum you got in here,” she said, looking around the room.

Before Miss Beryl could respond to this observation, the young woman was talking into the phone. “Ma. He there yet?” A brief pause. “No, I’m at the old lady’s downstairs. I don’t think she’s too thrilled about us going up there.”

Miss Beryl could hear the tinny voice of whoever she was talking to, but not clearly enough to make out any words. She still couldn’t take her eyes off the child, who stood patiently at her mother’s side, facing Miss Beryl. The child’s good eye was taking her in, Miss Beryl decided.

“The more I think about it, the more I doubt he’s even coming, Ma. He’s just pulling your chain. How the hell should I know? He probably guessed. He’s probably threatening everybody. That’s the way he does things. Threaten everybody. That way you’re sure. You want to know how I know? Because if he was coming here like he said, he’d have to give up a day of deer hunting. No, he won’t. You don’t know him like I do. Besides, if he was coming, he wouldn’t call to warn us, he’d just be here.” Another pause. “No, you’re wrong. He’s out in the woods, is where he is. He’s out there laughing at you for believing him. Believe me, he’s out in the middle of the woods. Maybe I’ll get lucky and he’ll get lost and freeze to death out there. That’d be a break, huh?”

To Miss Beryl’s way of thinking, the most objectionable thing about this objectionable conversation was the fact that the child was listening to it. Since the little girl was still staring at her, Miss Beryl picked up her red, two-headed Foo dog from the coffee table and showed it to the little girl. The dog had the same grinning head on both ends of its body.

“See my Foo dog?” she said, offering the stuffed animal to the child, who made no move to take it. Miss Beryl rotated the dog so that the child could see its two heads, that it was the same at both ends. If the little girl noticed this unusual feature, she gave no sign, though she studied the animal dully.

“You know what a Foo dog says?” Miss Beryl asked.

The child’s good eye found her again.

“Foo on you,” Miss Beryl said, hoping for a smile.

The little girl’s eye again found the animal, again studied it seriously, as if to determine whether the dog in question would say such a thing.

“I call him Sully,” Miss Beryl said, “because he doesn’t know whether he’s coming or going.”

This time when she offered the animal, the child took it, without enthusiasm, almost as if she were doing Miss Beryl a favor.

“Yeah … yeah … yeah,” the child’s mother was saying. “Okay, I’ll go upstairs if I can talk her into letting me. Call me up there in half an hour. You should see the phone I’m talking into. It must’ve been made during the Civil War.… Okay.… Go back to work.… Yeah, okay.”

When she hung up the phone, the young woman picked the little girl up and rubbed noses with her. “False alarm, Birdbrain. Daddy pulled a fast one on Grandma. He’s probably real proud of himself too. Daddy doesn’t get to outsmart people very often.” Then, to Miss Beryl, “You gonna let us go upstairs, or what?”

“I guess if you know Mr. Sullivan, he won’t mind,” Miss Beryl said.

“Yeah, well, I don’t know him,” said the young woman on her way to the door. “He’s been balling my mother for about twenty years, though. She’s the one who knows him.”

Once again, Miss Beryl was speechless. She watched her visitors go, watched the door close behind them, watched it open again. “Here’s your dog back,” the young woman said, setting the Foo dog back on the table. “And thanks again for the phone.” She cast a half-amused, half-contemptuous glance around Miss Beryl’s flat. “You’re missing the boat. You should charge admission to see this place.”