Somebody's Fool, page 16
“Right,” Peter said. “Maybe I live in California. That’s the whisper I heard.”
“Anything is possible,” she said, with added emphasis on the word anything.
“Wait,” Peter said, catching—maybe?—her drift. “I’m not American?”
She shrugged. “Like I said, I’m in residential, not commercial, but I do know that in the present economy American real estate is particularly attractive to foreign buyers, and there are always people out there with money to park. The question is where to park it. London? Manhattan?”
“Schuyler Springs seems a bit out of the way.”
“Maybe out of the way is what you’re looking for,” she said, now raising her empty glass in Alan’s direction. Peter made a mental note not to try to match Toby, drink for drink. Alcohol seemed to have no effect on her.
“So…,” he said. “I have all this money to park, but I’m actually less interested in what I’m buying than in avoiding scrutiny and publicity?”
“Who knows? Maybe you plan to flip it later.”
“Which would make the money I’m spending now somehow…clean? Jeez. You’re making me sound almost…Russian.”
She cocked her head to study him. “Hey,” she said. “You do look like a bit of a thug at that. I never noticed before.”
Alan arrived with her fresh martini, which she raised in a toast. “Nastrovia!”
They clinked glasses. “I hope my thuggish appearance doesn’t alter your plans for later in the evening.”
“I guess we’ll have to see,” she said, picking up a menu, and signaling thereby that she’d said all she was going to say about the Sans Souci. “Should we see if we can get a table, or just order small plates here at the bar?”
“Why go to a table?” Alan said. “If you stay here, you get to talk to me.”
“A table, I think,” Peter said.
“He’s so, so mean to me,” Alan complained to Toby, his shoulders slumping again, but he motioned for the hostess, pointing first at a small table that was being bused, then at Peter and Toby.
They were gathering their drinks when Peter happened to glance at the backbar mirror just as a big, canary-yellow beast of a Cadillac slid by in the street outside.
Normal
BY TEN O’CLOCK, when Janey finished up at the Horse, she was so exhausted she considered doing the sensible thing and just heading home. She’d promised Del she’d come by the Green Hand, though, and knew he’d get bent out of shape if she didn’t. That afternoon, when she called to tell him that Birdie had offered her a shift—her regular waitress having called in sick—he said, “Now why the fuck would you do that? It’s Saturday night.”
“See?” she said. “You answered your own damn question.” Del went quiet then to let her know she’d pissed him off. According to her mother, it was the same mistake she’d been making her entire life: running her big fat mouth. Nor, admit it, was she wrong. For some reason she just couldn’t seem to get it through her thick skull that men—pretty much straight across the board—didn’t appreciate being told off. When she used to sass Roy, if he happened to be in a good mood, he’d say, “Why do you always have to be such a mouthy cunt?” If he was in a bad one, he’d just haul off and smack her. No warning, either. Just whack! Del didn’t hit. At least not yet. He just went perfectly still, almost priestlike, as if he was offering her the opportunity to repent being such a bitch. Somehow, when she thought about it, that stillness was even scarier than Roy’s fists.
“Friday and Saturday nights are where you make your money,” she explained, hoping, since mouthing off hadn’t worked, to elicit his understanding or, failing that, forgiveness.
And in truth, her shift at the Horse had been only so-so. A few tables had tipped decently, but thanks to the deepening recession people were cutting back, twenty percent tips becoming fifteen, fifteen becoming ten. It was the same at Hattie’s. To make matters worse, Birdie always removed the expensive entrées—steaks and prime rib and seafood—from the dinner menu during the off-season, which meant you were getting ten percent of an already reduced tab. Worse, when she got to the Hand, Del would ask her how much she made and she’d have to decide whether to lie. If she inflated the amount she’d earned to win the argument, he’d say, Good, you can buy the drinks tonight. If she told the truth, he’d say, What did I tell you? You’d’ve been better off here, having some fun. Very little that Janey did seemed to make sense to Del, who was forever advising her to quit “her job” at Hattie’s, claiming he could get her on at the Hand. He’d said it again this afternoon.
“And I keep telling you I can’t quit on account of it’s not a job. I own the fucking place.”
“Sell it, then.”
“I can’t.”
“Why not?”
“Because it’s all I’ve got, Del. I know it’s just a shitty lunch counter, but it’s mine, okay?” And just that quickly she’d been on the verge of tears. “Can we not fight? Please?”
“Okay,” he’d told her, relenting a little. “No need to get your knickers in a twist. Just don’t change your mind later. I don’t want to hear about how tired you are after working a double you could’ve turned down.”
She promised she wouldn’t.
“It’s Saturday night,” he said again.
“I know what night it is.”
She also knew what his reminder really meant. For some strange reason Del equated Saturday night with sex. It wasn’t that he didn’t feel the urge on other nights, but on Saturday night he felt entitled to get laid. Another man would be disappointed but figure Sunday would be just as good. Not Del. Sunday wouldn’t be as good for the simple reason that it wasn’t Saturday. How long had he been like this? Janey wondered. How exactly had a particular night of the week and the need for sex gotten tangled up in that screwball brain of his? Was Saturday night when his parents had done it? Being Italian, he was raised Catholic and they had all kinds of batshit rules—Mass on Sunday, fish on Fridays—so maybe that was it. If they kept seeing each other, maybe she’d get him to explain. She didn’t expect them to last, though. They were together for now, but after Roy, Janey was dead set on not remarrying, and Del had been equally clear that when his divorce from his second wife became final, that was it for him. What they had was fun and, when it stopped being fun, sayonara.
Outside, in the Horse’s parking lot, Janey climbed in behind the steering wheel of her aging Jetta and inserted her key in the ignition. It would take her about fifteen minutes to drive out to the Green Hand, which was good. She could use the time to decide whether to mention she’d waited on Charice Bond, Del’s boss, at the Horse. Her and Doug Raymer and, later, a tall Black man who, according to Birdie, was Charice’s brother, Jerome. He’d showed up a good forty-five minutes after they did, carrying two large suitcases and looking like some kind of hobo. Del would want to hear all about it, especially what Charice and Raymer had talked about. They’d kept their voices low, but Janey was pretty sure she’d heard Charice say Del’s name. Which wouldn’t please him, convinced as he was that she was trying to get him fired. It might be best not to even bring the subject up, now that she thought about it. It was interesting, though, that she and Doug Raymer, who’d been Bath’s chief of police until recently, were a couple, or had been once upon a time. Birdie said she heard they weren’t together anymore, but they certainly looked like one tonight. They hadn’t engaged in any public displays of affection, but still, you could tell. Janey didn’t share Del’s unshakable conviction that interracial relationships were “unnatural,” but she had to admit these two were tough to figure—him overweight, white and older, her Black and good-looking. Del, of course, would never admit that Charice Bond was attractive. In his opinion a woman couldn’t be both Black and good-looking, except for Halle Berry, who he claimed was basically white. Being a boob guy, Del was willing to cut her some slack. He freely admitted that Janey’s boobs were what first caught his attention from all the way across the room, and she was pretty sure they were what kept that attention even now. He never seemed to tire of pawing them. Not that she minded, really. She’d always known that it wasn’t her face that men were attracted to. When her make-up was right, she was plain-looking and borderline homely when it wasn’t. There’d been a time when that bothered her. Back when she and Roy first started going out, she’d told him she knew she was on the plain side, hoping he’d tell her no, she was pretty enough, but instead he’d said not to worry about it. “Nobody’s gonna look all the way up there anyhow.”
Her face, her boobs and her big mouth—all three inherited from her mother, thanks a ton. She’d gifted her own daughter that same chest and face but somehow not the mouth, which she supposed was a good thing, though in truth she’d always found her daughter’s long stretches of silence, even as a child, unnerving. How were you supposed to know what somebody was thinking if they wouldn’t tell you? Why would you not want people to know what you thought? Well, okay, in Tina’s case Janey kind of understood. The poor girl had grown up listening to her mother say the wrong thing and watching her father punch her in the face for it. The lesson there was pretty clear, and Tina had apparently learned it. According to Ruth, that vividly recollected violence was the reason Tina wanted so little to do with Janey now, why she refused to even enter Hattie’s, the scene of so much childhood trauma. Nor could Janey really blame her. She herself still had flashbacks. On the other hand, Roy was gone. He’d been gone for ten long years, and to Janey’s way of thinking the best way to make sure he stayed gone was to reclaim the emotional landscape he’d defiled. God knew, there were times Janey hated Hattie’s herself, days when she would’ve liked nothing better than to burn the place to the ground, but most mornings when she woke in her apartment, which was attached to the restaurant, her first thought was Hey, asshole—meaning Roy—look who’s still here and look who’s still fucking dead. A similar thought would sometimes enter her head on Saturday nights with Del: Look who’s fucking me now, Roy, and guess who never will again. There was satisfaction in all this, and she wished she could make her daughter understand that.
Janey was about to turn the key in the ignition when she remembered promising to call her mother when she got off at the Horse, so Ruth could bring her up to speed on Tina, who’d finally arrived at Hattie’s that afternoon, forty-five minutes late. They had a regular baton-passing routine. Tina would pull up in front of the restaurant and toot the horn to signal her arrival. By the time Ruth managed to pull on her parka and make her way outside, Tina would have the passenger door open and the step stool positioned so that Ruth, with Tina’s help, could hoist herself up into the cab. Today, though, when Tina pulled up, instead of tooting she just sat there, staring off into space. From her window seat inside the restaurant, Ruth could see that something was amiss, and grabbing her cane, she’d begun the arduous process of extricating herself, cripple-fashion, as she thought of it, from the booth.
Janey had offered to lend a hand, but Ruth said no, she’d handle it, her implication clear, that Janey would only make whatever was wrong worse. That had pissed her off, of course, though her mother was probably right. Oh, but it still hurt, because there’d been a time when Tina was little and Roy was downstate serving time, that she and her daughter had been inseparable, when Tina had insisted she be close enough to touch. How quickly that had changed. After she entered school, her daughter spent more time with her grandparents than with Janey, who told herself that this wasn’t so unusual, and even if it was, what choice did she have, working all the time like she did? Grandpa Zack didn’t mind Tina’s company on his travels, and he had an almost magical calming effect on the child. Later, after his death, Tina had transferred much of that attachment to Ruth, which of course hurt Janey’s feelings all over again. She’d hoped against hope that all would be well once Tina became an adult and started working herself. Maybe then she’d understand and find her way back to her mother. But that hadn’t happened. Would it ever? When Ruth died, who would be left for her daughter to cleave to but Janey?
Listening to her mother’s phone ring, Janey felt her resentment rise, like it always did these days, and when Ruth answered, she just dove right in, fuck the preliminaries. “So, what gives?” she said, not bothering to conceal the annoyance in her voice. “Is she okay?”
“Hang on a minute,” Ruth said, and Janey could hear her rustling around, probably searching for the remote to mute the TV. When she came back on the line, she said, “I haven’t been able to get much out of her. She claims she’s fine.”
“Good. Maybe she is. Did you ever think of that?”
“No, something upset her. I think…”
Janey waited, then waited some more. “What? What do you think, Ma? This is like pulling teeth here.”
“What are you? Double-parked?”
“No, I’m heading out to the Hand.”
“Fine. Go.”
“First tell me what you’re not telling me.”
“I could be wrong.”
At this Janey couldn’t help snorting. “That goes without saying, Ma.”
“It may have been one of her spells.”
At this, Janey let her forehead rest on the steering wheel, thinking, No, not this again. “Ma. It’s been years.”
“I know. But remember what she was like, coming out of those?”
Dazed. Disoriented. Blinking. Scared. Yeah, Janey remembered. And worst of all, the expression on her daughter’s face, like they were calling her back from a really nice place to a shitty one, and why couldn’t they just leave her where she was? “Okay, go back and start at the beginning. After you left the restaurant.”
“On the way home, she wanted to go past Sully’s house.”
“Sully’s dead.”
“I’m aware of that. She kept saying, ‘He’s back.’ Over and over. It was all I could get out of her.”
“Who’s back?” Sully? Had her daughter lost her mind completely?
“I’m getting to that. So, we drove up Main Street past the house, but there was nothing to see. They’re doing some renovations, but nobody was around. ‘Right up there,’ she said, pointing at the porch. ‘He was right up there.’ Like, it was herself she was trying to convince. Anyhow, we kept going up the street and I figured we’d head home, but instead she made a U-turn and headed back the way we came. This time she pulled over to the curb and we just sat there staring at the house. Finally, she said, ‘He’s really changed, but it was him.’ ”
“Yeah, he’s changed. He’s dead.”
“Jesus, Janey, forget Sully, okay? This isn’t about Sully.”
“Then what the fuck is it about?”
“You don’t remember Will?”
“Will who?”
“Will Sullivan. Jesus, Janey. Try and keep up. Sully’s grandson. Remember the crush Tina had on him?”
What the fuck had possessed her to make this call? Janey wondered. Why hadn’t she just driven on out to the Hand? “Ma. That was a decade ago. Fucking high school.”
“She hasn’t forgotten him.”
“She told you this?” Her daughter, who wouldn’t say shit if she had a mouthful?
“Look,” Ruth said, sounding embarrassed now, “we share a computer, okay?”
The one in the kitchen, she meant. A couple years earlier, when it became clear that Ruth could no longer manage the stairs, Tina had had the first floor remodeled so Ruth could have a bedroom and bath down there. Tina would move into the large bedroom that had been her grandparents’, or anyhow that had been the plan, though in the end she’d preferred the smaller bedroom that had been hers when she was little and stayed overnight. And anyway, these days, according to Ruth, her granddaughter spent most of her time in the shed.
“I can see where she’s been,” Ruth was explaining. “She Googles Will constantly. Follows him on Facebook.”
“Okay, so what? They were friends. Everybody follows friends on Facebook.” Not that Janey did, herself. Most of her own friends had moved away and were living better lives than hers. Why would she want to know about their better jobs and expensive vacations?
“We’re talking every single day, Janey. She’s constantly hitting refresh.”
“Does she know you’re snooping?”
“I’m not. If I was sneaking into her bedroom and reading her diary, that would be snooping. Her browsing history is right there.”
She was ashamed of herself, though, Janey could tell. “So, if she’s still infatuated with Sully’s grandson, how come she’s never said a word about him to me.”
“When was the last time you two even had a conversation?”
“Thanks, Ma. Thanks for reminding me. It’s you she talks to. You’re the one she loves. I’m the one she hates. I really needed to hear that tonight. I was going to just drive out to the Hand and have some fun, but then I thought, No, I’ll call Ma. She always cheers me up.”
“This isn’t about you, Janey.”
“Yeah, but guess what? It never is. That much I can count on. It’s always about her or you or Sully.”
“There’s no reason to bring Sully into this.”
“I didn’t, Ma. You did. You’re the one who said Sully’s house. He’s dead and gone. Does he have to haunt every single conversation we have?”
“Now who’s blaming?”
“Me, Ma! This is me, blaming you, okay?”
“You get to blame me, but Tina’s not allowed to blame you?”
“You know what? Fuck this. I’m gonna go on out to the Hand and kick up my heels, okay?”
“Do that,” Ruth suggested.
“I’m going to. You know why? Because I’m sick of everything being my fault. Her father beats the shit out of me, and she’s still blaming me? How is that my fault?”
