Richard Russo - Nobody's Fool

The last thing Miss Beryl wanted to do was visit Sully’s flat. No doubt what Clive Jr. was reporting would be true. Perhaps not even exaggerated. Sully was negligent and therefore dangerous. She wasn’t sure there was any way to explain to Clive Jr. that having Sully upstairs was simply a risk she was willing to take. Maybe she couldn’t even explain to herself why she was willing to take it. Part of it was that she’d always viewed Sully as an ally, someone whose loyalty, at least, could always be depended upon. She still thought of him this way, even now that he was getting older and more banged up and forgetful. Even now that he reminded her more of a ghost every day, he struck her as a dependable spirit, despite the conventional wisdom that what he could be depended upon to do most was to bollix things up. Resisting Clive Jr. on this issue, Miss Beryl had to admit, was surely bad judgment on her part, yet she couldn’t banish the notion that evicting Sully would constitute a great treachery, a violation that would both surprise and wound him. And, irrational or not, she couldn’t help feeling that her own death, which could not be that far off, would not be the result of Sully’s bollixing.

“I could do the whole thing if you don’t want to,” Clive Jr. offered, adding weakly, “I can handle Sully.”

Miss Beryl couldn’t help smiling at this assertion, and her son’s face darkened, registering the insult.

“He’s got you snookered, Ma,” Clive Jr. said angrily. “He always did. Even Dad saw that by the end.”

“Let’s leave your father out of it,” Miss Beryl suggested.

Clive Jr. smiled, apparently aware that this missile had located its target. He’d successfully invoked his father before, knew his mother could be approached through Clive Sr.’s memory.

“I just wish you’d trust me,” he continued after a long silence, his eyes no longer focused on her, but on something else, close enough, almost, to touch. “This time next year, Ma, you aren’t even going to believe this town. The Gold Coast is what it’s going to be. Once they break ground on The Escape …” he allowed his voice to drift off into a pleasant trance, then, as if he understood that his mother was blind to what he was seeing so clearly, quickly came out of it. “Even Joyce is excited,” he said, as if to suggest that getting the woman he planned to marry excited was no easy task, and he looked around, as if in the hope that she’d materialize beside him and verify that, yes, she was excited.

“And you plan to wed this Joyce person?” Miss Beryl said.

“Yes, Ma, I do. I’m sorry you don’t approve.”

“If she makes you happy, Clive, then I approve. I just thought I’d point out for the record that I’m not the only one in this kitchen who can be snookered.”

Clive Jr. seemed to honestly consider this sad possibility, shaming Miss Beryl, who seldom gave much real consideration to her son’s views and advice.

“You always see things going wrong, Ma,” her son said. “I see them going right.”

Miss Beryl decided not to argue the point. It was true that they saw things differently and always had. She could tell by the way her son massaged the yearbook that when he looked at the dreadful Joyce woman, he saw the eighteen-year-old of the photograph. And he wasn’t kidding when he said he could see the Gold Coast from her front window. He seemed to see that past and the future with stunning clarity. The present just wasn’t there for him somehow.

“I wonder if I should look in on her?” he said, pushing back his chair. He seemed so desperately unsure of whether this would be the right thing to do that Miss Beryl, having deposited the last of their dishes in the sink, felt less like being mean. “Let her sleep,” she suggested. “I’ll have her call you at the bank later.”

“I should go on in, I guess,” Clive Jr. admitted, looking at his watch. “It’s only seven, but if I’m going to take the afternoon …” His voice trailed off as he stood and hitched his pants, preparatory to visiting the bathroom. Clive Jr.’s last official act before leaving was always to relieve himself.

Miss Beryl thought about doing up the few dishes now, then decided to just let them soak. The Joyce woman would probably have something when she finally roused herself, and Miss Beryl decided she’d do them all together. At the sink she caught a glimpse through the kitchen doorway of Clive Jr. standing outside the spare bedroom, listening, no doubt, for some auditory signal that his fiancée was awake. And perhaps because Clive Jr. so resembled his father in outward appearance, and also because he looked so pitiful standing there, Miss Beryl thought her heart would break at the sight. When Clive Jr. noticed her observing him, he straightened guiltily and shrugged, then disappeared into the bathroom, shutting the door quietly behind him.

Since he’d left the yearbook in the center of the kitchen table, Miss Beryl opened it again with the intention of having another look at the Joyce woman, this time out from under her son’s needy, watchful gaze. Instead, the book fell open naturally to a page that had been mutilated with a ballpoint pen that had been pressed into the glossy paper with such force that it had come through the other side, leaving an inky blotch on the page beneath. It took Miss Beryl a moment to realize that the defaced picture was of Sully. She was still staring at it when the toilet flushed in the next room.

Shutting the book and pushing it away before Clive Jr. emerged was easy, but what to do about the tears that had filled her eyes? How could she banish these when she didn’t even know who they were for? What did it mean that at age eighty she suddenly seemed unable to decide who she was angry at, who was deserving of pity and understanding?

In the living room, waiting for her son to emerge from the bathroom, Miss Beryl avoided entering into imaginary conversations with either of her advisers, unwilling to listen to her husband’s pleading on behalf of their son, the natural consequence of their love for each other, or Driver Ed’s subversive whispers from the opposite wall. “Pipe down, both of you,” she warned softly. In the lonely silence that ensued, the old woman peered out her front window at the street where she had lived all her mature life, the street where Clive Sr. had brought her to spend her days, a pretty street really, a comfortable street, the kind of street where she and her husband should have been able to raise a son less profoundly unhappy than she had always suspected Clive Jr. to be. She looked up into the black tangle of branches of the elms and then down the street in the direction of Mrs. Gruber’s house. It didn’t look like the Gold Coast, but no branches had fallen during the night, and Miss Beryl was about to conclude that God had lowered the boom on no one when a small movement caught her attention. Making her way up the very center of the street, dressed in a thin housecoat and fuzzy slippers, was an old woman whom Miss Beryl immediately recognized as Hattie. She was bent forward as if into a gale, her housecoat billowing out behind her in the breeze. “Oh dear,” Miss Beryl said to herself. “Dear, dear God in Heaven.”

Sully was outside in the hallway, struggling on with his boots as quietly as he could. He’d looked out the window and seen Clive Jr.’s car at the curb below. The last thing he needed in his present hungover condition was to encounter Clive Jr. True, if he ran into Clive now, it’d save him a trip later in the day, but right now, the way his head felt, he didn’t want to raise his voice. Also, he preferred to spare Miss Beryl. Just before falling asleep last night Sully’d caught a whiff of Clive Jr.’s perfumy after-shave lingering in the apartment, which meant that he’d been up there snooping around. Clive Jr. had been warned about this before, and now he’d have to be warned again. Later in the day Sully might even enjoy warning him. Clive Jr.’s fear of Sully was always rewarding. But Sully wanted to be fully awake and not hungover to appreciate it. And so, when his landlady’s door opened, Sully was relieved to see Miss Beryl emerge and not her son. “Good morning, Mrs. Peoples,” he said, struggling to his feet with the help of the banister. “You aren’t going to slam that door, are you?”