Richard Russo - Nobody's Fool

1. Don’t invest in any of Clive Jr.’s sure things.

2. Don’t tell him how much money you have. It would not be good for him to know this until you are dead and it’s his.

3. Don’t sell Clive Jr. your house, because then it will be his house. Don’t listen to his reasons, because they’re good ones.

4. Don’t let him convince you to vote Republican. This would not be in your spiritual best interest.

The question was whether to add number five:

5. Don’t let Clive Jr. talk you into evicting Sully, who is fond of you, just as you are fond of him. If Sully burns your house down with you in it, he will not have meant to.

Miss Beryl frowned at her mental list. Each item on it struck her as dubious, and number five was especially unconvincing. At bottom, the other four represented a failure of generosity to Clive Jr., not to mention a near total collapse of any natural maternal instinct to accord one’s children more credit than they are due. They were Driver Ed speaking, not herself.

So deeply was Miss Beryl plunged into these interior considerations that she did not hear footsteps on the stair outside or notice that she was no longer alone. And when the intruder spoke, the old woman nearly jumped out of her skin, not so much out of surprise to discover that she was not alone as because for a split second it seemed to her that the new voice, one she recognized vaguely, was in her head. What this new voice said was: “Six. Quit talking to yourself. Everybody will think you’re nuts.”

Miss Beryl could not take her eyes off the little girl, who sat perfectly still, staring without apparent comprehension at Miss Beryl, her tiny legs hanging over the cushion, not quite touching the floor. Another child would have swung her legs, banged the backs of her shoes against the sofa. But this child’s legs remained preternaturally still. Which wasn’t even the most amazing part. Her mother had declined to be seated on the sofa next to her daughter, planting herself on the floor, back braced against the sofa arm, as if in sad acknowledgment of unworthiness. But once she got situated, Miss Beryl learned why the child’s mother had settled herself at her daughter’s feet, for, without actually looking at her mother, the girl’s small right hand found her mother’s upper arm, then the fingers traveled lightly along the shoulder and up the young woman’s neck until they located her ear. Miss Beryl watched, fascinated, as the child gently caressed her mother’s earlobe between her thumb and forefinger. The young woman even helped the little girl locate it by brushing back her hair with her opposite hand and holding it until the tiny fingers had located the lobe, explaining, “Birdbrain here likes to keep in touch, don’t you, Birdbrain?”

The child did not react to this observation, though, Miss Beryl noticed, she now looked more relaxed and tranquil as she caressed the lobe of her mother’s ear. Miss Beryl also saw once again that the little girl had a migrating eye, and since she had located her mother’s earlobe, the bad eye had wandered more noticeably, glancing off at the ceiling while the good eye continued to fix Miss Beryl, who suspected the little girl might literally be blind in the wandering eye. Perhaps she was blind in both, Miss Beryl considered, there was so little recognition or expression in either. The way she sat there, so still, gently massaging her mother’s earlobe, as if she could only ascertain her mother’s presence by touch, she might have been both blind and deaf.

“Anyhow,” the young woman continued, “I’m sorry about the other day. I was just pissed at the world. You ever have days where you don’t know whether to shit or go blind?”

Miss Beryl chose to ignore this question, guessing that it must be rhetorical.

“What’s your name?” Miss Beryl said, looking first at the girl, then at her mother. “I assume ‘Birdbrain’ is a term of endearment?”

“It’s a perfect description, is what it is,” the young woman said matter-of-factly, cocking her head just slightly to wink up at her daughter. “Tina’s her real name, isn’t it, Birdbrain? Tiny Tina Two Shoes.”

Tina kept after the earlobe. Otherwise, nothing.

“We’ve been doing this ever since we finally stopped breastfeeding, haven’t we,” the young woman explained. “I hope it don’t go on too much longer, either. It’s like wearing a forty-pound, vibrating earring.”

Miss Beryl focused on the little girl’s good eye and addressed the child slowly. “Would you like a cookie , Tina?”

“She’d probably eat about twelve if we were home. I doubt she’d eat one of yours, though.”

The little girl was silent.

“She’s not much of a talker, as you probably guessed. Some days there’s just nobody home, is there, Birdbrain?”

Miss Beryl rose, too angry with the young woman to stay in the room. “Let’s see about a cookie anyway. I had a houseguest last night who ate a whole plateful, so I know they’re good.”

In the kitchen Miss Beryl could hear the little girl’s mother, her voice lowered only slightly, talking to the little girl. “This here is some place, huh, Birdbrain? You ever see so much shit in one place? It’s kind of like that museum I took you to in Albany, isn’t it? Look at that big old Victrola over there. Music used to play out of that. How about that guy on the wall with the horns and the beak?”

There was a pause. Had the little girl spoken?

“You remember the big museum? Remember how we saw the Indians? How they all sat around the fire? You remember the fire? That was your favorite. Remember the big dinosaur? All those bones standing up so tall?”

“Dear God,” Miss Beryl whispered to herself in much the same fashion as she had that morning when she saw old Hattie heading up Main into the wind, her housecoat billowing out behind her. What a crazy thing life was. Returning to the living room with the plate of cookies, she set them on the coffee table. Neither of the child’s eyes located them.

The young woman took one. “Sometimes if I go first,” she explained, taking a bite, chewing and finally swallowing thoughtfully. “Some guy ate a whole plate of these?” Incredulity.

“A woman,” Miss Beryl said. “I’m sorry you don’t like them.”

“No, they’re okay,” the young woman said. “I’d puke if I ate a whole plateful of them, though.”

“Now there’s an expression I haven’t heard in about twenty years,” Miss Beryl said.

The young woman grinned mischievously. “Yeah, I remember you weren’t too fond of it.” Then, “You don’t remember me at all, do you.”

In fact, now that she thought about it, the young woman did look vaguely familiar to Miss Beryl. But so did nearly everyone in Bath between the ages of twenty and sixty, which represented the span of her tenure as the eighth-grade English teacher.

“Don’t worry, I looked like a boy then,” the girl explained. “These came in ninth grade,” she added, indicating her enormous breasts with her two index fingers.

“Donnelly,” Miss Beryl said, the girl’s family name taxiing back to her suddenly. “I also attempted to teach your father, Zachary. I see the resemblance now.”

Janey Donnelly’s eyes narrowed. “You’re sure.”

Miss Beryl was reasonably sure. Having taught several generations of many North Bath families, she considered herself something of a reluctant expert on the local gene pool and its predictable eddies. “The mouth and chin mostly,” Miss Beryl said. It had occurred to her that she might have insulted the girl by recognizing Zachary Donnelly in her features. “And I’m relieved to learn that I didn’t allow you to use the term ‘puke’ in my classroom.”

“You wished you had at the time,” the girl recalled. “I said I was sick and needed to go to the can so I could puke. You didn’t think much of the word ‘can’ either. You said I could just stand there until I came up with ‘synonyms suitable for a decent audience.’ ” She mimicked Miss Beryl rather effectively here, without malice.