Richard Russo - Nobody's Fool

Miss Beryl vaguely remembered the incident now. And Janey Donnelly had looked like a boy, her hair chopped severely, her features and carriage and language all distressingly masculine. Where the other eighth-grade girls had all been experimenting with makeup to vulgar excess, Janey’s pale features were sadly unhighlighted.

“I got ‘bathroom’ right away,” Janey recollected, “but I puked before I could come up with “regurgitrate.’ ”

The young woman was clearly enjoying herself, and for some reason Miss Beryl was less angry with her. “Regurgitate,” she corrected.

“Whatever,” the girl said, having turned her attention to her daughter.

“How about it, Birdbrain? You want some cookie or not?”

No response.

“Just the ear, huh? How about we take a couple for later?”

Janey Donnelly took two of the cookies, wrapped them in a napkin and deposited them in her purse. “This okay?”

“I insist,” Miss Beryl said.

“I guess they probably miss you over at the junior high,” the girl continued. “I don’t know who they got to be the hard-ass after you quit.”

Miss Beryl couldn’t help but smile. “It’s my understanding that they decided to do without one.”

Janey Donnelly shrugged. “Too bad,” she said. “I still like to read stories, in case you’re interested. I never get the chance, but I like to. I bet Birdbrain here will like it too if she ever learns. She’s nuts about anything she can do on her own, aren’t you, Two Shoes?”

“How old are you, Tina?” Miss Beryl said to the child, who was still staring at her with one eye.

“She just turned five,” her mother answered. “Kindergarten in the fall, though I have my doubts. School in the fall, right, Birdbrain? No more Mommy’s earlobe then. We’ll have to sit you next to somebody with big ears, huh. Put the desks right together.” Then, to Miss Beryl, “If life ain’t an adventure, what the hell is it?”

The young woman consulted her watch. “Would it be okay if I used your phone? It’d just be local.”

Miss Beryl gestured to the phone, the same one the girl had previously insulted. “Sorry there’s no place to sit. I used to have a chair over there,” she told the young woman. “Something happened to it.”

“That’s okay,” Janey assured her, turning to face her daughter and gently removing the little girl’s thumb and forefinger from her earlobe. “Why don’t you just sit here and look at these magazines, okay? You listenin’ to me, Two Shoes? See all the pretty magazines the old lady’s got here? Look at all the pictures. You look ’em all over and when I come back you can tell me which one’s your favorite. How’d that be? Maybe we could find you a pair of scissors so you could cut out pictures like you do at home. How’d that be?”

She opened one of Miss Beryl’s magazines to a two-page insert of holiday pastries and set it on the little girl’s lap. “Oh boy,” she said. “Those there look yummy, don’t they? We could eat all of them, just the two of us, huh? You look at all these pictures for a minute while Mommy makes a phone call, okay? I’m just gonna be right over there by the door, okay? Right where you can see me, okay? That okay with you?”

During this entire performance the little girl’s expression never changed, though she did finally consent to look at the picture before her. “You let Mommy make her phone call, then we’ll go back to Grandma’s.”

The Donnelly girl was on her knees facing her daughter as she pleaded, unnecessarily, it seemed to Miss Beryl, since the child now seemed lost in contemplation of the pastries. Why didn’t the young woman just get up and go make her call?

“Mommy’s only gonna be gone a minute. You look at this picture, and before you’re done I’ll be back, okay, Tina? I’ll be right over there. See where the phone is? I’m gonna call Grandpa, and then I’ll be right back, okay? You stay right here and look at the pictures, and maybe we can find you some scissors.” Here she looked pleadingly at Miss Beryl, who was less than thrilled with the idea of the child cutting up her magazines.

When the Donnelly girl got to her feet, she just stood there a moment, staring down at her daughter, then turned and made for the phone across the long room. As soon as she was out of the little girl’s peripheral vision, the magazine slid from the child’s knees and she stood up, clearly intending to follow her mother, who spun around angrily.

“Tina, you sit your ass right back down there this minute!” she shouted, stopping the little girl in her tracks. The child did not sit back down, though. Her mother was halfway across the room, and it was as if, somewhere in the little girl’s brain, she was measuring the distance between them and gauging that she could not sit down without risking her mother’s loss. There was nothing Miss Beryl could do but watch, fascinated and horrified.

“This here’s the shit that drives me stark raving,” the young woman said to Miss Beryl, as if she were glad to have a witness. “You ever see anything like it? Watch this.”

She turned and took a step toward the phone, stopped and spun around again. The little girl, without actually looking up at her mother, had also taken a step, then stopped when her mother turned.

“How’d you like to deal with this for about a week?” the young woman asked Miss Beryl angrily. “How about for a day? After twenty-four hours you wouldn’t know whether to eat shit, chase rabbits or bark at the moon.”

“I’ll get scissors,” Miss Beryl offered weakly.

“Yeah. And stab me with them, would you? Put me out of my misery.” Then she addressed the little girl again. “How the hell am I gonna be able to go back to work with you like this? Tell me that. How can I waitress at the Denny’s with you? I’m gonna carry you up and down the goddamn restaurant all day so you can feel my ear? I can just explain it to the customers, right? Here’s your eggs. This here’s my daughter. She’s five years old but she goes ape-shit if she can’t feel my earlobe every minute of the goddamn day. I’m sure everybody’ll understand that, right?”

If the little girl heard or comprehended a word of this, she gave no sign. To Miss Beryl, she appeared oblivious to the sound of her mother’s voice. She was simply waiting for the next signal she understood. If her mother moved away from her, she’d follow. If not, she looked prepared to stand right where she was for all eternity.

Oddly, having shouted at the little girl, her mother’s anger seemed to have leaked away. Or perhaps she was just resigned. “Just what the hell we gonna do, Birdbrain? That’s what I’d like to know, and I’ll listen to any advice on the subject. You got the answer rattling around inside that head of yours? If so, let me in on it, okay?”

The little girl stood.

“All right, come on over here,” her mother finally gave in. “We’ll call Grandpa together. That suit you? We’ll call Grandpa and see if your daddy’s been and gone. Then we’ll leave this poor old lady alone before she calls the cops and reports us crazy.”

The little girl still had not moved, and she didn’t until her mother got down on her knees and extended her arms. Then she went to her mother slowly, almost cautiously, and they hugged there in the middle of Miss Beryl’s living room, an embrace that lasted almost long enough to break an old woman’s fragile heart. The hug ended with a loud slap and the little girl’s hand shooting down to her side.

“Don’t start with the goddamn ear again,” her mother said, getting back to her feet. “I need the ear for the telephone. Jesus.”

Then she took her daughter by the hand she’d slapped and led her across the room to the phone, picking up the receiver and staring at the phone critically. “I bet you’ve had this since Christ was a corporal,” she hollered to Miss Beryl, who had gone into the kitchen to look for the scissors because she could think of nothing else to do.