Somebody's Fool, page 33
“Dawg?” said a voice so loud and close that it seemed to originate inside Raymer’s skull. Was Jerome in his head now, like odious Dougie had been before? But no, the man had somehow materialized at his elbow and was regarding him with a look of profound concern, and for the second time that day Raymer suspected Jerome of being able to levitate. Otherwise, how had he managed to climb the creaky stairs without Raymer hearing his approach? Was it even possible to be that deep in thought?
“Jerome,” he said, embarrassed. “What’s up?”
“We need to go,” he said. “Right now.”
“Why?”
“Now,” Jerome repeated.
Too Late
“HOLD ON,” Ruth said. “You’re asking my advice?”
Janey sighed. Nothing was ever easy with her mother. Why did she think this would be? “That’s right, Ma. That’s why I’m here. To ask you for your wisdom. Is that okay with you?”
They were seated in her mother’s kitchen, which, except for appliances that had crapped out and been replaced over the years, hadn’t changed much since Janey was a child, probably because Ruth never really thought of it—or the rest of the house for that matter—as truly hers. It had originally belonged to Zack’s mother, a horrid old woman. For years, patiently waiting for her to die, Ruth had imagined all the changes she’d make, but by the time the old woman finally kicked the bucket Ruth had realized that her mother-in-law wouldn’t truly be gone until her mama’s boy son was gone as well. After Zack’s passing, Janey had expected her mother to gut the house back to studs, but she didn’t, because, Ruth explained, there was such a thing as being too late. At the time Janey hadn’t known what to make of this uncharacteristic pronouncement. Her mother wasn’t usually a defeatist. But who knew? Maybe she just realized that what she thought she wanted for so long no longer mattered. A depressing thought. As was the idea that there was such a thing as being too late, which, despite being obviously true, had never really occurred to Janey. Or if it had, she’d imagined it applied only to people her mother’s age, not her own. Once you accepted the possibility that it might also apply to you, it was hard not to begin a mental list of all the other things in your own life that it might be too late for.
“Of course, it’s okay to ask for advice,” Ruth assured her. “I just can’t remember the last time you did, is all.”
“That’s because you’re always giving it before you’re asked,” Janey explained.
“In any event, you never take it.”
“Ma,” Janey said. “Could you not, please, just this once—”
“You’re right,” Ruth said. “I’m sorry. What’s going on?”
“I’m not sure,” she admitted. “Remember yesterday when you were telling me Tina thought she saw Sully’s grandson Will at the Upper Main Street house?”
“Yes, but it wasn’t,” Ruth told her, then explained how she’d talked to Peter earlier that morning. “Turns out it was Will’s younger brother. I guess they look a lot alike.”
“Here’s the thing, though,” Janey said. “I’m pretty sure he was out at the Hand last night.”
Ruth looked dubious. “According to Peter, he was on his way to Canada. He’d just stopped by for a quick visit. That was late morning. By the time you got out to the Green Hand he would’ve been long gone.”
Janey shook her head. “He must’ve changed his mind. There was a bright yellow car with West Virginia plates in the parking lot when we left.”
Ruth clearly found this possibility unsettling.
“I noticed him at the bar when I walked in,” Janey continued, “though it didn’t dawn on me why until this morning. It’s not just his brother he looks like. He also looks like his grandfather.”
Ruth still appeared unconvinced. “Why would he have gone there, of all places?”
“I don’t know, but he got really hammered and ended up blacking out and falling off his barstool.”
“Was he hurt?”
Janey shrugged. “They tried to wake him up, but he was out cold. Del and I ended up dropping him off at the station so he could sleep it off in the drunk tank.” Knowing how her mother would react, she left out how they’d tossed him in the trunk of Del’s vehicle and later bungeed him onto a trolley.
“Seriously? What if he had a concussion and needed to go to the hospital?”
“Don’t start, Ma, okay? I wasn’t the one in charge, and at the time it kind of made sense. Everybody was pretty shit-faced.”
Ruth shook her head. “The more you tell me about this Del character the more I think you need to lose him.”
“See what I mean about you not waiting for me to ask advice?”
They were both quiet then, until Janey said, “It gets even weirder. At one point I glanced in his direction and he was watching me. It was almost like he’d recognized me, too. He pretended it wasn’t me he was watching but it definitely was.”
“Maybe he was trying to figure out why you were looking at him earlier. Or wondering if you were easy.”
“Thanks, Ma. Thanks for that.”
“I’m kidding, Janey. Jesus.”
Janey ran her fingers through her hair. “You say you’re kidding, but sometimes it’s like you think I’m this horrible person.”
“No,” Ruth said, suddenly serious. “I never think that.”
“What do you think?” Janey said, and hearing the words, she realized she actually wanted to know. “Of me, I mean.”
Her mother didn’t answer immediately. “When I look at you, I mostly see myself,” Ruth said finally, as if she wished it were otherwise. “I see someone who’s good and trapped who keeps on doing the same things over and over hoping for different results.”
Janey would’ve liked to take issue with this blunt assessment but found she couldn’t. More than anything she disliked the idea that she was living her mother’s life, not her own. “Okay,” she said, “how about this? If you could do things over, what would you do differently?”
“I think about that a lot,” Ruth admitted. “I know you wish I hadn’t carried on with Sully all those years, and I admit that was selfish of me. But I can’t imagine what my life would’ve been like without him. He was the only thing that made me even close to happy.”
“Thanks again, Ma.”
“Come on. You know what I mean. I’m just talking men. Can I ask you a question?”
“Okay?” Janey said, wishing now that she hadn’t started them down this road.
“Do you have any women friends?”
“Fuck, no.”
“Have you ever?”
“Fuck, no.”
“You never wanted one?”
“Fuck. No.”
Ruth nodded. “Me either. My question is, how did we get that way? How did we learn to put such a high value on male companionship?”
“I have no idea where you got the idea from, but I know where I did, and I’m looking at her.”
Ruth nodded sadly. “Sorry.”
“Speaking of sorry,” Janey said, taking a deep breath. “That was a terrible thing I said to you last night.”
“What?” Ruth wanted to know.
“What,” Janey repeated, incredulous.
“Oh. You mean about me being old and ugly and not having a man in my life anymore and being jealous of you because you do?” Ruth said, with a wave of her hand. “Heck, I forgot all about that.”
“Yeah, right,” Janey said, adding, “And I never said you were ugly.”
Ruth smiled. “Maybe not, but that’s what I heard.”
“So, I’m forgiven?”
“Of course you’re forgiven.”
“I don’t know why I get like that,” she said. “I’ll try not to be so mean.”
“Mean is fine,” Ruth assured her. “Just try not to be so truthful.”
That didn’t seem like a bad way to end things, so Janey got to her feet. Her mother, much more stiffly, followed suit. At the door, Janey paused, staring out the window at the façade of Grandpa Zack’s Treasures. “Do you think Tina takes after us?”
“I don’t think she has any girlfriends, if that’s what you mean.”
“Does she have any men friends?”
“None that I’m aware of. She does have Jacks.”
“Don’t get me started on that fucking dog,” Janey said, remembering with horror how her daughter had gotten down on her knees and gazed into the animal’s runny eyes, the way she seemed to peer into its very soul. “If only I knew what was going on in that head of hers. What she’s feeling. Hell, I can’t even tell if she has feelings.”
“Maybe she isn’t as isolated as you think,” Ruth said. “And of course she has feelings.”
“You think?” Janey said, suddenly not wanting to leave. This was the longest conversation she and her mother had had in years that didn’t involve shouting and recrimination. “If only she could find somebody. He’s old enough to be her father, but I’m pretty sure Roger dotes on her. I think she’s the reason he hangs around.”
Her mother was regarding her strangely now.
“What?” Janey said.
Ruth shrugged. “Nothing.”
“No, what?”
“The reason Roger stays around isn’t Tina. It’s you.”
Stunned, Janey just stared at her. “You’re crazy.”
Another maddening shrug.
“No, I mean it. You’re fucking crazy. I’ve seen how he looks at her.”
“Yeah,” Ruth said, “but what you haven’t noticed is how he looks at you.”
And just that quickly Janey was furious again. “That is such a crock, Ma,” she said. “I mean where do you come up with this shit?”
“Fine,” Ruth said, throwing up her hands. “Have it your way.”
“No, seriously. Why would you say something like that?” Though now that she thought about it, the idea wasn’t so much lunatic as completely unexpected. “Has he ever said anything to you about me?”
“Of course not.”
“So you…what? Just pulled him being in love with me out of your ass?”
“Whatever,” Ruth told her. “If you think that’s what I did, then that’s what I did.”
As usual, Janey wanted to scream. Only the fact that she’d just a minute earlier promised not to be so mean kept her from doing so. Instead, trying her best to control her voice, she said, “Ma. Explain something to me. Why, why, why is it always like this between us?”
Instead of answering, Ruth pulled her in close and gave her a hug. Janey didn’t hug back, but neither did she pull away. She allowed the embrace to linger and then linger some more. “For what it’s worth,” her mother said, “I think you’re probably right about who you saw at the Hand last night.”
“Yeah?” Janey said, still not stepping away from her mother’s embrace. Huh, she thought. She hadn’t screamed something hateful like she wanted to and her mother had responded by conceding that she might be right about something. She was still in her mother’s arms. Was this how things were supposed to work? Could it be so simple?
Tag Team
TRAFFIC IN FRONT of the courthouse in downtown Schuyler was still being rerouted when Peter arrived there. The crowd that had gathered earlier to witness the fiery spectacle Carl Roebuck described on the phone had mostly dispersed, but the scene—which featured a wrecker towing away another wrecker that had in its bed a third, incinerated vehicle—still struck Peter as impressively surreal.
Even before he got there, his mind had been reeling thanks to a call from Ruth, who wanted to know if he’d heard from his son since yesterday. When he said no and wondered why she was asking, she told him she was pretty sure Thomas hadn’t headed up the Northway to Montreal like he said he was going to. Instead, he’d apparently gone to a local bar called the Green Hand where he’d gotten so blind drunk that he passed out and fell off his barstool. Her daughter, Janey, had been there and witnessed the whole thing. In fact, she and the guy she was seeing these days, who happened to be a cop, had gathered Thomas up and taken him to the police station so he could sleep it off in the drunk tank.
Where was Thomas now? Ruth couldn’t say, but given how much he’d had to drink, he might still be sleeping it off at the police station. The other possibility—and to Peter, this one seemed more likely—was that he was being detained there. Ruth hadn’t said anything about Thomas being arrested, but maybe he had been, and if he couldn’t make bail, he’d likely remain where he was until he could be brought before a magistrate on Monday. Having never spent a night in a drunk tank himself, Peter wasn’t that clear on the protocols. What troubled him most was the likelihood that neither he nor Ruth had a full understanding of what had transpired at the Green Hand. For instance, why had the Caddy been towed to begin with? Was it parked somewhere it shouldn’t have been? Blocking a delivery door, for instance? Maybe. But given Thomas’s various run-ins with the law in West Virginia, wasn’t it also possible that he’d done something to piss somebody off? Had he become belligerent? Run up a tab he couldn’t pay? Peter also wondered why, if Carl Roebuck was to be believed, there’d been several containers of gas in the trunk of the car. Somewhat bizarrely, the explanation that occurred to him first was genetic. Sully, who all his life had driven beaters whose engines ran hot, always kept a half-dozen cans of motor oil in his toolbox for when smoke began to billow from beneath their hoods. Maybe his grandson’s ancient Caddy had a broken fuel gauge and Thomas kept enough gas on hand to get him to the nearest service station when the vehicle sputtered to a halt in the middle of nowhere.
Eventually, Peter figured, these minor mysteries would get cleared up, and a more coherent picture would emerge. In the meantime, though, the gaps in the narrative begged obvious questions. What had possessed his son to go out and get so purposefully drunk? Desperation? Despair? Was it possible he’d driven all the way from West Virginia because he needed money? Had he meant to ask Peter for a loan, then at the last minute found that his pride wouldn’t allow it? Peter hoped this wasn’t the case, but if it was, might it not be the very opportunity Peter had been hoping for? The chance to offer Thomas the same much-needed helping hand that Sully had once extended to Peter himself? Earlier this morning he’d been worried that it might be too late to make things right, but what if it wasn’t? With his Caddy reduced to charred scrap metal, Thomas was going to need his help getting back home whether he wanted it or not.
But first things first: Rub. Peter spied him on a park bench halfway down the block with his head in his hands, a study in dejection. Next to him sat Carl Roebuck, who’d promised to hang around until Peter arrived and apparently kept his word. Unlike Rub, he seemed to be in excellent spirits, perhaps because there was a third person on the bench, his ex-wife, whose expression suggested that the last half hour of her life would not be the one she’d tell people about if asked to explain why life was worth living. She and Carl both clocked Peter’s approach at the same moment and rose from the bench. “Hey, Rubberhead,” Carl said. “Look who’s here.”
If Rub heard this, he gave no indication.
“You’ve met my wife, right?” Carl said, nodding at Toby.
“I have, yes,” Peter assured him.
“Poor Carlos,” Toby sighed, giving him a chaste peck on the cheek. “Can I go back to work now?”
“Why not?” Carl told her. “The cavalry has arrived.”
At this Toby raised a dubious eyebrow. “Some cavalry.”
“Sorry,” Peter said. “My horse is back at the stable.”
“Too bad,” she said, flirty now, apparently for her ex-husband’s benefit. “We could’ve gone for a ride.”
Carl ignored the flirtation as if it was not happening. “Look at that ass, would you?” he marveled as they watched her go. “Forty-eight years old. I mean, seriously. How old would you guess that ass is?”
“Forty-eight,” Peter said, though Carl was right, it did look like a thirty-something-year-old tuchus.
“That,” Carl said, returning his attention to Peter now, “is exactly the sort of snide remark that will deliver her back into my arms one of these days. Which, as we both know, is where she belongs. Because, be honest. What’ve you ever done to deserve a woman like that?”
“Not a thing,” Peter admitted, though he couldn’t help smiling to himself. It was vintage Carl Roebuck to ask others the very question that might better have been directed at himself.
“And how about this?” Carl said, reaching into his pocket and pulling out a wad of cash. “The lady with the great ass generously offered to float me a loan for operating expenses.”
“Knowing the kind of operator you are, that surprises me,” Peter said.
“Go ahead and scoff, but all those years we were man and wife? Two hearts beating as one? Deep down, she still has deep feelings for me.”
“Either that,” Peter said, “or she’s paying you to go away and leave her alone.”
Seeing that Rub’s head was still in his hands, Peter sat down next to him. He was no longer blubbering, but his cheeks were tearstained and his nose crusted, as was the sleeve of his parka. “Hey, Sancho,” Peter said, nudging him. “What’s up?”
Rub refused to look at him. “What do you want?” he asked darkly.
Despite having been given unambiguous permission to leave, Carl sat back down on the bench so that Rub was sandwiched tightly between them, having apparently concluded that cheering Rub up was a two-man job.
