Nobody's Fool (46 page)

" She sounds nice," said Mrs. Gruber, who also liked the president and didn't mind talk nearly so much as the silence other big house. " When will the wedding be? " she asked, anxious to find out how much Clive Jr. had told his mother. Early spring was what he'd told Mrs. Gruber. Around Easter.

" I neglected to ask," Miss Beryl admitted. " I don't believe there's any hurry. I'm sure the bride's not pregnant. "

" Will Joyce work at the bank? " This was actually a question she'd been meaning and kept forgetting to ask Clive Jr." who had mentioned that his wife-to-he was an accountant.

Miss Beryl was about to confess that she didn't know the answer to this question either when something occurred to her.

"How did you know her name was Joyce?" Mrs. Gruber froze. Despite her intention to be careful, she'd spilled the beans.

"I have to go," she said.

"My telephone's ringing."

"You're on the telephone," Miss Beryl pointed out.

"It can't be ringing."

"The doorbell, I meant," Mrs. Gruber said. And hung up. Miss Beryl hung up too but let her hand rest on the phone while she thought. At least now she was sure who the snitch was. Lately she'd begun to fear it might be Sully. Her advisers had been divided on this issue, just as they were on all issues. Clive Sr. subscribed to his son's view that Sully had had her snookered for years, while Driver Ed assured her that Sully was loyal and even whispered suspicions about Clive Jr."

suspicions Miss Beryl felt guilty about listening to. Now that she was sure. Miss Beryl couldn't help smiling.

"How do you like them apples?" she asked Clive Sr.

Clive Sr. looked sheepish behind glass. Miss Beryl's hand was still on the phone in its cradle when it rang again.

"There wasn't a soul at the door," Mrs. Gruber said, as if this were a great mystery.

"I can't understand it. I heard the bell."

"You know what you are?"

Miss Beryl said ominously, winking at Driver Ed across the room. Mrs.

Gruber gulped.

"What?" she asked a little fearfully.

"You're all discombobulated." Ruth was in a good mood and at a loss to explain why.

Just yesterday, Thanksgiving, of all days, she'd hit some sort of new low.

Things had been so rotten she'd telephoned Sully, hoping he'd cheer her up.

Talk about desperation. After so many years the one thing she should have known about Sully was that he was better at prolonging the good mood you happened already to be in than getting you out of the doldrums. He was far too honest to cause anybody to feel better than they were inclined to feel on their own. And so, not surprisingly, Sully, who had failed dismally to cheer Ruth up yesterday, had been just the thing she needed today, when her own inclination was toward high spirits. Today Ruth felt fine, despite the tawdriness of the motel room, the grunginess of its shower and the fact that Sully had fallen dead asleep no more than a minute after they'd finished making love for the first time in many months. When she emerged from the shower, wrapped in a motel towel, he was snoring peacefully, his eyes half open but showing nothing but the whites.

Though it was late November, he still hadn't entirely lost his summer coloration, which always made Ruth smile, the way his face and neck and forearms were brown, almost gray, from exposure to sun and wind while the rest of him remained pale, almost translucent. Always a strangely shy man, he'd taken the trouble of pulling the sheet up to his waist before falling asleep. His head lay tilted up against the bed's headboard, his hands locked behind his neck, a posture designed, in all probability, to ward off the sleep that had overtaken him anyway. That he should try to stay awake when he was so tired struck Ruth as sweet, the sort of small gesture Sully was capable of at times. She knew he needed the sleep a lot more than he had needed to make love. Ruth, on the other hand, had needed to make love. She no longer granted her husband conjugal privileges, a fact he seemed barely to have noticed.

It was possible he had another woman, but Ruth doubted this. As far as she could tell, Zack was just one of those men who gravitated naturally toward abstinence, as if celibacy were an old La-Z-Boy recliner, comfortable and molded and requiring more effort to get out of than into. She doubted he cared much about her affair with Sully.

He was capable of jealousy when properly instigated, but she understood that what really bothered him was being made a fool of. And Ruth suspected that what Zack really would have liked was for people to quit telling him about her and Sully so he could pretend ignorance. He pretended ignorance as convincingly as laziness, and his pretense of laziness was indistinguishable from the real thing. Nearly two and a half months of "being good" had left Ruth needy, and making love with Sully this afternoon had made her happy without, unfortunately, diminishing her need. What she hoped was that the pendulum of their affair was swinging back again, that their being good for a while would have the salutary effect of rekindling both their passions. She felt such tenderness for Sully as he lay before her now, asleep, that she indulged for a moment the idea of accepting his proposal of marriage, contemplating what their life together would be like. That, however, was an excellent way to spoil a good mood, something Ruth adamantly refused to do.

Instead she let the towel fall to the floor, carefully drew back the sheet and began to stroke Sully, whose eyelids fluttered by way of response, though for a few seconds he continued to snore.

When he finally opened the eyes that never entirely closed, even in sleep, he grinned at her.

"Oh," he said.

"It's you."

"Yes, it's me," Ruth said.

"And watch yourself. You see what I've got here, don't you?"

Sully closed his eyes again, inhaling deeply.

"I just hope you don't have any further plans for it. I'm sixty, remember. And in no shape for doubleheaders."

"Too bad," Ruth said.

"And here I was actually considering your proposal."

"Which?"

"Yesterday's. You asked me to marry you." Sully thought about it.

"No, I didn't," he said finally.

"I asked you why we didn't get married. I knew there was a good reason. I'd just forgotten what it was." Ruth continued stroking.

"That's not how I remember the conversation."

"I guess if you insisted," Sully said, wide awake now.

"I would marry you. You're one of the better-looking older women in Bath.

Owl"

"Take that back."

"You're not one of the better-looking older women in Bath? Ow again."

"You know what?" Ruth said.

"I think you like pain."

"Just don't lean on my bad knee," he warned.

"I've enjoyed about as much of that pain as I can stand."

"I didn't hurt before, did I?" she said, recalling their lovemaking.

"No," Sully assured her, feeling a little guilty about his own greatly reduced abilities as a lover.

"It couldn't have been much good for you."

"It was grand," she told him dreamily.

"I like being on top."

Sully grinned at her.

"You and every other woman." Ruth ignored this.

"I like being on the bottom, too."

"Well, I'm glad you're flexible," he told her.

"But I think you're going to be on top from now on." She was tracing a line down the inside of his thigh with her fingernail, stopping just short of the swelling, as if she knew precisely where the pain began.

"It's gotten worse, hasn't it?" she said. The sight of his knee had surprised her when he slipped out of his pants. He'd done this with his back to her so she couldn't get a good look, but she'd seen enough.

"It's just fluids, probably," Sully told her.

"I'll go in to the VA one of these weeks and let the bastards drain it. I've got even bigger headaches right now, if you can believe it. You wouldn't happen to have a spare two grand on you?"

Ruth propped herself up on one elbow.

"On me?"

"I didn't think so." He explained to her about the truck, about the one HCarld wanted him to buy, about the snowplow blade.

"Sounds perfect," Ruth said.

"Therefore, you won't do it, right?"

"I don't see how I can," Sully said.

"Even if I could find somebody dumb enough to lend me that kind of money. I'm getting too old to owe people more than I can make in a month or two."

"Will you get mad if I remind you that you own property?" Sully shook his head.

"Not if you don't object to me reminding you that I don't.

At least not really. "

" Then who does. Sully? " Ruth wanted to know.

"If you don't own your father's property, who docs?"

"I have no idea," Sully told her.

"The town of Bath, probably. My father hadn't paid his taxes in years, and I sure haven't paid any. They keep telling me they're going to sell it at auction. They may have already, for all I know."

"They'd notify you first. Sully."

"They may have. I throw all that shit out unopened along with the sweepstakes entries."

"Would you like me to find out for you?"

"No.

I don't want anything of his, Ruth," he told her for the umpteenth time.

"You know I don't."

"It's not a question of want anymore.

Sully. It's need.

You need transportation. Sell the place and use the money for what you need.

Forget your father. "

" That would be the sensible thing," he admitted, hoping that this would end the discussion. Sometimes admitting that Ruth was right satisfied her. " Which is your way of saying you won't, right? " Sully sat up, found his cigarettes, lit one and shared it with Ruth. " I drove by there today, oddly enough," Sully admitted. Even this much, acknowledging the existence of the house and his possible interest in it, was hard. So hard he'd been guilty of a half truth by suggesting that all he'd done was drive by, that he hadn't stopped, hadn't looked the house over from outside the gate, thought about what the land it was sitting on might bring.

" Back taxes would probably be more than it's worth. Not that it matters, since I don't have the back taxes. "

" Suppose you sell the property and it only brings ten thousand, which is nothing. And suppose there's seven thousand in back taxes. That'd be a lot. That's still three grand left.

But you don't need three grand, is that what you're telling me? "

" What I was thinking about was giving it to Peter," he said, wondering what Ruth's reaction to this idea would be. She was alternately solicitous and resentful of Sully's son, whom she had never met. " That doesn't solve your problem," Ruth pointed out. " I'd give it to you if there was a way," he smiled.

" It might make Zack suspicious if I gave you a house, though. People have been telling him about us for twenty years, and that might just convince him they weren't all lying. "

" Thanks anyway," Ruth smiled, " but I've already got a decrepit house. "

" What about if I sold it and slipped you the money somehow? You could use it for Gregory's college. Zack wouldn't have to know. "

" It's a sweet offer, but Gregory's my responsibility," Ruth said. The way she emphasized her son's name made clear that they were going to talk about her daughter--their daughter, Ruth liked to think-- which meant they were destined to enter the old argument. The girl had Zack's features written all over her, though Ruth wouldn't admit it. " I'm sure," she kept telling Sully. Most of the time Sully was just as sure of the opposite. Ruth just had some woman's need for Janey to be theirs, not hers and Zack's. There'd only been one time Sully had seriously doubted his conclusion, and that had been a year ago spring, a few months after his accident. He'd gone to the IGA and stood in Ruth's checkout line as the shifts were changing.

When she finished ringing up Sully's purchases--a tube of toothpaste, a pack of cigarettes--she rang out her register and they walked out together.

"Here's somebody I want you to meet," Ruth said when a loud rusty old Cadillac pulled up alongside and tooted. Ruth towed him over and was about to introduce him to Janey when she noticed the small child sitting next to her mother in the front seat.

"Where the hell's the car seat I bought you?"

Ruth said, immediately angry.

"I figured you'd notice that, first goddamn thing, before hello even," Janey said.

"It cost sixty bucks," Ruth told her.

"You're damn right I noticed."

"Guess Who sold it," Janey informed her. Sully couldn't help smiling to himself at the fact that Ruth's daughter had picked up her mother's terminology for referring to her husband.

"I buy her a car seat and he sells it?"

"Well, it's not like I didn't warn you," the girl said, without apparent sympathy for her mother's posit ion.