Richard Russo - Nobody's Fool

But Peter shook his head. “It’s me, not you,” he admitted.

Sully waited for him to elaborate, and when he didn’t, said, “I’m sorry to hear it.”

“She’s got cause, I guess.”

Sully studied his son, who was in turn studying his family as if they belonged to somebody else. His remark had been delivered in an offhanded way, but Sully thought for a second that he recognized it as a confidence of sorts. If so, it was a first, and before Sully could decide whether or not he liked the idea of being confided in, Peter followed the first confidence with another.

“I don’t suppose Mom told you I was turned down for tenure.”

This pretty much decided the issue of confidences. Sully already knew he was no happier for this knowledge. “No,” Sully said. “I wasn’t kidding. I haven’t seen your mother, even to say hello to.”

“This happened last spring, actually,” Peter said. “They give you a year to find something else.”

Sully nodded. “Any luck?”

“Yup,” Peter said. “All bad.”

“I’m sorry to hear it, son,” Sully told him, which was true, though not much to offer.

Peter had still not looked at him, was still studying his family, wedged so tightly into the battered Gremlin. “Sometimes I think you did the smart thing. Just run away.”

The usual bitterness was there, of course, but Peter’s observation seemed more melancholy than angry, and the only thing to do was to let it go, so Sully did. “I only made it about five blocks, if you recall.”

Peter nodded. “You might as well have gone to California.”

“You trying to get me to say I’m sorry?” Sully said.

“Nope,” Peter said. “Not unless you are.”

Sully nodded. “Say hello to your mother for me. And thanks for the lift.”

Peter studied his shoes. He looked suddenly ashamed, something Sully hadn’t intended. “Why don’t you stop by tomorrow?”

Sully grinned at him. “You better clear the invitation with your mother.”

“I don’t have to ask permission to invite my own father to stop by on Thanksgiving,” he said.

Sully didn’t contradict him. “She’s changed, then.”

“Will you be okay here?”

Sully said he would. There was a pay phone outside the IGA, and Sully promised he’d call Rub to come get him. He also promised to think about stopping by Vera’s the next day. According to Peter, his stepfather, Ralph, whose health had been poor for some time, had just gotten out of the hospital and things hadn’t been going too well. Sully said he’d try to stop by and cheer everybody up. One look at him should do it, he told Peter, who misunderstood and concluded it was Sully’s intention to come by in something like his present condition, which Peter counseled against. They managed to shake hands successfully then, all of this accomplished a few feet from the Gremlin, the windows of which remained tightly rolled up.

Sully knocked on the side window, startling Charlotte, who looked like she’d been somewhere else, as if she’d genuinely forgotten his existence. When she rolled down the window, he saw that her eyes were red and puffy. “Nice to see you’re still so good looking, dolly,” he offered, though in fact she’d put on weight, he could tell. The compliment failed to cheer her up.

“That’s a minority view,” she said.

“My views usually are,” Sully admitted, realizing as he did so that he’d just taken the compliment back. To get out of the awkward moment, he rapped on the window Wacker was seated next to. “Next time you whack me, whack my right leg,” he told his grandson, “That’s the good one. You ever whack the left one again, I’m going to chase you all the way back home to West Virginia.”

Wacker did not look impressed by this threat. In fact, he raised the Dr. Seuss over his head by way of invitation. The tiny white bubble of snot still pulsed calmly in one nostril. Will, by contrast, looked like he was about to wet his pants in sheer terror. When Sully flashed him a grin to show that it was all in fun, the boy was visibly relieved, and as the Gremlin pulled away, he offered his grandfather a shy smile.

Carl Roebuck’s house, the one where he’d found the coins in the attic, was about a block away on Glendale, and since this was more or less on his way downtown, Sully decided what the hell. Most of the morning was already lost and besides, it’d be nice to see Toby, Carl’s wife, again.

Toby Roebuck was, to Sully’s mind, the best-looking woman in Bath by no small margin. She had the kind of looks he associated with television. She was perfectly formed, confident, sassy, soap-commercial pure. The sort of girl he’d have fallen for hard had he been thirty years younger. He was sure of this because he’d fallen for her hard just last year at age fifty-nine and old enough to know better. He hadn’t seen her to talk to since he quit working for Carl back in August, when his swelling infatuation was yet another reason — along with his swollen knee — to give up manual labor for a while.

Who but Carl Roebuck, the little twerp, wouldn’t be satisfied with such a woman, Sully wondered as he limped up the driveway of the Roebuck house. Well, most men wouldn’t be, he had to admit, because most men were never satisfied. Still, he couldn’t help thinking he’d be satisfied, now, at age sixty. Of course, he was nearly twice Carl’s age and over the years he’d grown sentimental where women were concerned and had gradually developed the older man’s confidence that he’d know how to treat a woman like Toby, confidence born of the fact that there was now no chance he’d ever have one.

Toby Roebuck’s Bronco, a vehicle Sully had long coveted along with its owner, was in one of the open stalls of the Roebuck garage. The bay where Carl’s red Camaro usually sat when he was at home stood empty, which was good. Sometimes Carl came home for the lunch hour for a little afternoon delight. Most days, though, he went someplace else for the same thing. Sully had been hoping that would be the case today, because he didn’t want to run into Carl just yet. Alongside the back porch a shiny new snowblower was parked. The machine looked like it probably cost about what Carl Roebuck owed him. Maybe more. Probably more. Sully made a mental note to price them.

Since the back door was unlocked, he knocked on his way in, calling, “Hi, dolly. You aren’t naked or anything, are you?” Once last summer he’d come upon Toby Roebuck sunbathing topless in the back yard, a happenstance that had apparently embarrassed him far more than her. She’d hooked her bikini top quickly, chortling at his stunned confusion, his having flushed crimson.

“No, but I can be in about two minutes,” her voice, light and girlish, came down from somewhere upstairs.

“Take your time,” Sully called, pulling out a chair at the kitchen table and collapsing into it, his knee still humming from Wacker’s assault. This was one of the things he’d missed during these last four months, he realized. There were few places he enjoyed more than Toby Roebuck’s kitchen, where, miraculously, a pot of drip coffee, which Sully located by smell, was now brewing on the counter. “I need a cup of coffee first, as soon as I can find the energy to get up and get it.”

It was at this point that Sully noticed a man in gray work clothes on one knee at the front door, two rooms away. “That you, Horace?” Sully squinted, recalling now that he’d seen Horace Yancy’s green van parked at the curb outside, without drawing any inferences.

“Hi, Sully,” Horace said over his shoulder. “I ain’t naked either.”

“Thank God for that,” Sully said. “What are you up to?”

“I’m tightening these screws,” Horace grunted, twisting his screwdriver. “Then I’m all done.”