Richard Russo - Nobody's Fool

Some would call it justice, she supposed, the way things had turned out — file under “Be careful what you wish for.” As she had hoped, Sully showed even less interest in their son after he went away to prep school. It occurred to Vera too late that this would have happened in any case. The responsibility and burden of affection had always weighed heavily on her ex-husband. Given half a chance, he gravitated naturally to the easy camaraderie of the lunchroom, the barroom, the company of men, of another man’s wife. By sending her son away, Vera had prevented something that did not need preventing, and at a cost to herself. Her attempts to protect Peter, her devotion to him, had once again, just as it had with her father, set into motion the law of unintended consequences, along with the cruel laws of irony and paradox. For Peter, in becoming a son to be proud of — an educator like her father, a college professor at home in the very environment that had intimidated Vera — had learned to lose his interest in and affection for her, coolly dismissing the books she recommended to him, smiling his ironic smile at her political views as if to suggest that she was incapable of any opinion or observation that wasn’t entirely typical or predictable. There was so much she would have liked to tell him, now that they were both adults, and he wasn’t interested in any of it. He seemed more pleased to spend time with Ralph, her husband, who had no views at all, than with herself. That her son remained capable of affection but could spare so little for herself was the crudest twist of all.

Today, at their Thanksgiving dinner together, Vera had seen more clearly than ever before what a terrible thing love was, or at least the kind of love that had rooted most deeply in her own anxious heart. Knowing how difficult it would be, she had planned the day carefully. Yesterday she’d baked the pies and then had risen early this morning to stuff the turkey and prepare her father’s favorite squash. Then, midmorning, she’d driven to Schuyler Springs with Ralph to gather Robert Halsey from the dreadful veterans’ home, not an easy task because they had to transport not only the fragile man but also his breathing apparatus — the portable oxygen tank and mask — which they could not just put in the trunk, since her father might need it on the drive back to Bath.

For a while it had seemed the day would work. Back on Silver Street they’d been able to get her father, who was having one of his better days breathing and required the oxygen only sporadically, installed in the living room. Peter, who had always been fond of his grandfather, had drawn up a chair, and the two had swapped teaching stories, Peter suppressing for once his cynicism, along with, at Vera’s insistence, the fact that he’d been denied tenure at the university. Ralph had turned the football game low, and horsey Charlotte had managed to keep the horrid little Wacker, a truly monstrous child, from tormenting his brother and everyone else. Vera had stayed in the warm kitchen, humming over the final dinner preparations and allowing herself to become intoxicated by the smells and sounds of food and family and terrible, terrible love and longing. If she felt a fear, it was the distant one that Sully might show up and spoil everything, since Peter had informed her that he’d issued the invitation, surely to vex her. But she told herself that God would not be so cruel to her as to allow this, at least not today.

Half an hour before dinner, she got Ralph to help her slip the leaf into the dining room table, and together they covered it with the white linen tablecloth she saved for holidays. She set the table with the family silver she had inherited from her mother, who had died when Vera was a child. At each end of the table she set two candles, which she lit, then dimmed the lights before calling the family to the table. She instructed each person where to sit, an annoyance, she could tell, Peter and Charlotte exchanging glances, Wacker refusing to vacate a chair at the head of the table until horsey Charlotte physically removed him. She could tell that Peter disapproved not only of the concept of a seating plan in general but of her seating plan in particular, which called for her father to take the head and Peter the foot, and leaving Ralph, whose table it was, somewhere in the middle, though Ralph could have cared less, provided he was close to the platter of turkey.

And so, when the table was full of food and Vera’s family had come together, and Vera herself had the satisfaction of knowing that she’d skillfully accomplished a difficult task, when the image she’d borne in her imagination had been replicated as faithfully as possible in her dining room, her father, looking healthier than she’d seen him in months and having left his oxygen set up in the next room, anchoring one end of the table and Peter, looking handsome and only a little imperious at the other, when the family had begun to pass in the candlelight the food she’d prepared, only then when the doorbell did not ring and Sully did not show up at this perfect moment and spoil everything, only then did Vera have the leisure to note that the perfect moment, so long awaited and planned for, was a lie. As the platters of food got passed, Vera felt the truth rise in her throat, and she knew she would not be able to swallow so much as a mouthful. Only Ralph, who never noticed anything, seemed oblivious to this truth as he ladled gravy over everything on his plate, including the cranberries. Her father, she suddenly realized, had left his oxygen behind not because he didn’t need it but because he thought it would spoil everyone’s dinner. She could hear him wheezing, gasping really, as he awaited the turkey, and when it came, his hand shook so that he was unable to spear a slice and had to be meted a portion by horsey Charlotte, who gave him dark meat, not knowing his preference for white, and he was too tired to say anything. “Everything is delicious, Mom,” Peter said, looking down at his plate. Twice that day he and Charlotte had gone into the bedroom they used during these visits, and Vera had heard their angry, lowered voices and understood fully what she’d suspected for some time, that theirs was a worse-than-loveless marriage and that it would not hold together another year, maybe not even another month. “Yes … Vera,” her father managed. “Very … fine.” But he hadn’t the strength to say more, and she felt powerfully that he would not last the year, either. Neither of the men in her life had looked at her when he spoke, and she understood that neither was able to face her, or wanted to face her. What they needed from her was for this to be over, and neither looked up even when she did not respond to their compliments, her throat constricting with bitter truth, rising dangerously. Only Will, her grandson, seemed aware of her distress, and he watched her so fearfully that she wished there was a way to reassure him that this feeling would pass, that truth was something she’d always been able to swallow and keep down.

She was not surprised when her father pushed back his chair and rose unsteadily. “I’m … so … sorry … Vera,” he said, turning away from the table and heading for the living room.

She rose quickly to help him, but with the leaf in the table the room was crowded and horsey Charlotte and the horrid little Wacker were between them, and anyway, he didn’t need her. What he needed was oxygen. Air.

Outside Vera’s kitchen window the pickup truck at the curb continued to belch thick fumes, though it had grown dark enough now that the pollution was not clearly defined. Dark had overtaken dark, it occurred to her. As she watched, the street lamp kicked on, to little effect. She became aware of Peter then, and when she turned he was studying her from the doorway. He was carrying the cutting board that contained the turkey carcass. She’d bought a larger bird than necessary, and Peter had carved only half of it. Now, the way he held the cutting board, the uncarved portion facing her, the golden brown bird appeared intact, as if no one had eaten, as if her offering were being returned to her untouched, spurned. Peter, seeing there was no room on the counter around the sink, set the board and carcass down on the dinette table. “I told the boys to get started on their baths, if that’s okay,” he told her.