Richard Russo - Nobody's Fool

“So you’re saying that when I said ‘a while,’ you thought I meant three months,” Ruth said, her thumbs digging deeper now between Sully’s shoulder blades, skillfully crossing the boundary between pleasure and pain.

“No,” Sully countered. “I thought you meant seven. I thought you wanted Gregory graduated and away at college.”

An indirect hit, apparently, since Ruth’s thumbs returned a little closer to affection mode. “Well, you didn’t have to go along so agreeably.”

“I’m not a mind reader,” he said, deciding to press his luck a little further, a tactic that seldom reaped dividends with Ruth. “You have to let me know what you want.”

Ruth stopped the massage and did not answer immediately. “What I want,” she finally said, “is for you to want. I think I could be reasonably content if I were sure you couldn’t get through the day without thinking about me. If I knew you picked up the phone half a dozen times just to tell me different things. That’s what I’d like, Sully.”

“You’d be happy if you knew I was miserable?” Sully paraphrased her position.

“You got it.”

“How about if I just tell you I’ve missed you?”

Ruth resumed the massage. “I guess I’d settle for that and an explanation of why your son was chasing you across the IGA parking lot.”

So Sully explained how his grandson had cracked his bad knee with Dr. Seuss, mentioning also that he’d received an invitation to stop by Vera’s tomorrow. Ruth always felt bad about the holidays Sully spent alone, but she also harbored a deep distrust of Sully’s ex-wife that he’d never been able to account for until Ruth confessed to him one day that she always feared they’d end up remarried, an irrational fear that persisted even though Vera was already remarried to someone else. “Are you going to go?”

“I may drop by when I finish up work,” Sully said without much enthusiasm. “I promised Dummy I’d sheetrock a house for him tomorrow.”

“On Thanksgiving?”

Sully shrugged. “Why not?”

There were so many reasons why a sane man would not want to sheetrock a house in the freezing cold on Thanksgiving that Ruth declined to select among them. When Sully asked why not, he didn’t mean that he couldn’t think of any reasons. He meant that he’d decided in advance not to accept their validity. Ruth quit the massage for good and slid into the booth feeing him. “Will it take all day?”

“Might,” Sully admitted. “I had a half-day job today and it took all day and half the night. Rub did most of it.”

“Your first day back. What’d you expect?”

“More.”

“Maybe tomorrow will be better.”

“Tomorrow will be worse,” he told her honestly. “That much I’m sure of. The day after that might be better. I can’t work at the old pace, that much I know already. I might not be able to manage at all.”

“Want some advice?”

“Not really.”

“Go back to school.”

Sully didn’t respond immediately, hoping to create through silence the impression that he was actually considering her wisdom. “I can’t make any money at school, Ruth,” he said finally.

“You need some money?”

He shook his head. “Not right this very minute. I might someday, though. I’m for sure going to need a new truck, probably by the first of the year. The back and forth to school has just about finished mine. I’ve half planned for that, but if there are any surprises …”

“Rolling with the punches is what you’re good at,” Ruth reminded him. “It’s what we’re both good at.”

Sully nodded, because he knew it was true and because it heartened him to have Ruth say so. Sitting across the table from her this way brought home to him how much he had indeed missed her. There were times when he wondered if perhaps they couldn’t continue in just this way, content with each other’s companionship, with the memory of shared intimacy, the assurance of continued friendship. He knew better than to suggest this to Ruth, though. She was twelve years younger than he, and their lovemaking, however infrequent, was more important to her than to him. “I don’t know about you, but I wouldn’t mind slipping a few punches this round.”

He was trying to find a way to bring up the subject of Jane and her visit, which Ruth might or might not know about, when they heard a throaty rumble outside. Ruth stood quickly to peer out the window. “Well, I’m glad you’re in a peaceful mood because Guess Who just pulled up. It’s a good thing he’s too cheap to fix that muffler.”

“Go. I can handle Zack,” Sully said without much confidence, but Ruth had already disappeared into the kitchen. A second later, when the front door to the restaurant swung open, Sully didn’t turn around.

It took Ruth’s husband, Zack, a minute to realize who it was sitting down there in the closed section of the restaurant and another minute to decide what to do about it. What he’d come in for was to borrow some money from Ruth, since Wednesday was the night Vince paid her. Any public altercation with Sully would compromise this modest plan, and so Zack gave deep and careful consideration to just turning around and slipping outside again and waiting for Ruth to come out, which she’d have to do eventually. And he might have adopted this strategy if he could have been sure that nobody would see him slinking away. Zack was frequently accused of cowardice. People kept telling him they couldn’t understand why Zack didn’t just shoot Sully or at least club him a good one with a baseball bat. He disliked being called a coward, so he took a deep breath and attempted to summon an indignation he didn’t really feel at Sully’s presence.

“What do you know?” Zack said when he arrived at Sully’s booth, Sully still seated, his back to Zack. “Look who’s here. Sully, of all people.”

“Zachary,” Sully said, motioning to the empty bench opposite.

Zack considered this genial offer. Except for the rumors that persisted about his wife and Sully, Zack didn’t object to Sully personally. He had no hard evidence that Sully and Ruth were lovers (he himself did not love Ruth and couldn’t sec why anyone would), and this lack of evidence prevented him from building up a good head of righteous steam. Every time he tried, usually at someone else’s instigation, he ended up being made a fool. Sully had a way of besting him at prefight verbal sparring, and when Sully landed a good one, Zack took the mandatory eight count, trying to think of a retort. Sometimes, failing to think of one, he just threw in the towel right there.

The last time, this summer, had been the worst, and the confrontation was still fresh in Zack’s mind. He and his cousin Paulie had gone to find Sully at The Horse. Somebody had called to say he was there with Ruth, but when they arrived it was just Sully seated at the bar. At Paulie’s insistence they’d slid onto the two vacant stools next to him. “See this guy here?” Zack had announced in a stage whisper to his cousin. “He thinks he’s a real ladies’ man.”

Sully’d swiveled on his stool then and examined Zack so patiently and with so little concern that Zack’s confidence first eroded, then crumbled. “I am, too, compared to some people,” Sully finally said, a remark that struck Zack as neither confirmation nor denial and therefore impossible to act upon.

“A real ladies’ man,” Zack had repeated lamely. Then he decided on a veiled accusation. “Some people says he likes my wife, but Sully says no.”

Sully, who had swung back around on his stool, rotated again. He ran his fingers through the stubble on his chin thoughtfully. “I never said I didn’t like your wife, Zack,” he said. “I think she’s terrific, in fact. I probably like her better than you do.”