Everybody's Fool

Electricity

THE SHORT DRIVE to Hattie’s was the best part of Ruth’s day, twelve selfish, quiet minutes to herself. This was true even when she had her granddaughter with her, like today. After all, being with Tina was a lot like being alone. How such a still, silent child could have come from a long line of mouthy women was a mystery. But then life was full of such puzzles.

Including electricity. Last night Zack’s shed had been struck by lightning with such force that it had ruptured a seam in the roof. The sound of the accompanying thunder had been apocalyptic, levitating all three of the house’s occupants off their separate beds. A moment later Tina, blinking sleepily, had appeared at Ruth’s bedroom door, looking for all the world like her mother at that age. Ruth had never seen a kid so terrified of thunderstorms.

“It’s okay, Two-Shoes,” Ruth said, using her pet name from when she was little. “You can come in.” And so she’d crawled into bed next to her and was instantly asleep again. A moment later, it was Zack in the doorway. “Come see this,” he said, and so she went into his room, whose rear window overlooked the shed. At the apex of the roof where the lightning had struck, a strip of corrugated tin now stood up like a sentinel, and at its tip was an eerie blue flame that was somehow burning steadily in the gale. When the skies opened and the rain came down in sheets, they expected the flame to be doused, but it continued to burn like a mirage, rain leaping off the metal roof all around it, until gradually the flame faded and disappeared, at which point Ruth realized that she and Zack were holding hands, something they hadn’t done in years. What they did next they hadn’t done in even longer.

Zack had awakened at five on the dot, dressed quietly and gone downstairs to make himself a cup of instant coffee, his usual routine. Ruth, half awake and already deeply regretting what had transpired, found this adherence reassuring, suggesting as it did that her husband wasn’t placing too much importance on what had happened between them. With any luck he understood that, like the lightning strike itself, this bout of sex was an anomaly, statistically improbable, unlikely to happen again in their lifetimes. When was the last time she’d even been in this room? She wouldn’t even clean it. She was willing to wash his sheets with her own and those from Tina’s room whenever she stayed over, provided he strip the bed himself and bring everything down to the basement. After they were laundered, she left the sheets and pillowcases outside in the hallway, and he made the bed himself. Why had she even followed him in here last night? What had led him to believe that sex was remotely possible? The fact that she hadn’t withdrawn her hand from his as they watched the blue flame? And why had he wanted her to see that in the first place? Sure, it was a strange sight, almost miraculous, but why her? Tina was normally his appreciative audience. Had he stopped in her room first, seen she wasn’t there and only then come to Ruth’s? Somehow, she didn’t think so. He hadn’t seemed interested in waking the girl. No, the flame was something he’d wanted to show Ruth. That watching it had led to sex seemed as surprising to him as it was to her. It hadn’t been great, but it hadn’t been nothing, either, and this morning, nothing was what she very much wanted it to be.

When she heard his truck back down the steep drive, grinding the gears when he shifted from reverse into second — seeing little to be gained by first — and head toward town, she lay awake for a few minutes, still trying to make some kind of sense of what had happened and why. Was it just that she’d been celibate for so long? Or was there some connection between the blue flame they’d seen atop the shed and the long dormant, barely guttering flame of their dimly recalled intimacy? Stirring the curtains was a lovely breeze, fresh and delicious, the essence of not-yet-arrived morning, and she might’ve lazed there a bit longer except she heard the alarm go off in her own room and didn’t want Tina to find her in Zack’s, since she might tell her mother, who in turn would want to know all about it, her curiosity further stoked because it was none of her damn business.

At some point during the night Tina must have awakened and shuffled back to her own room because the bed was now empty. Later, after Ruth had showered and was joined in the kitchen by her groggy granddaughter, the girl claimed to have no memory of the jolting thunderclap or of coming to her bed, and Ruth then wondered if the entire sequence of events — from lightning strike to blue flame to sex — had actually happened or was just a particularly vivid dream. Outside, though, the black scorch mark on the roof was visible even in the dark, and the strip of corrugated tin still stood erect, so at least that part was real.

“Can we go by Main Street?” Tina asked when they hit the outskirts of town.

“Why not,” Ruth said, though they were running late and this was several blocks out of the way. Actually, she wasn’t anxious to get to the restaurant. Having told Sully it might be best for him not to come by so much, she now thought she’d miss him if he took her advice to heart. Hard on the heels of that worry came another. Had Sully died in the night? Was that what the blue flame atop the shed had been about — announcing his departure from the world? Had some part of her understood it even then? Just yesterday she’d been thinking how nice it would be to live in a world without men. Had that daydream somehow set something in motion? Was what had happened between her and Zack a grim acknowledgment that he was now the only man in her life?

When they passed the Upper Main Street house Sully owned but refused to live in, Tina leaned forward to peer at it. Back in the fall the poor girl had developed a crush on Will, Sully’s grandson. Ruth doubted Will was even aware of it, and he certainly hadn’t encouraged it, but according to Tina he was kind to everyone, even the uncool girls, and not stuck up, like he had a right to be, popular as he was. When he came into the restaurant with his grandfather, he made a point of saying hello. Always using her name and asking how she was. Like it really mattered. So she’d fallen hard. But now he was off to New York City for a summer internship and then college, and she didn’t know when or even if she’d see him again. That she still wanted to drive by the house struck Ruth as particularly heartbreaking.

Only when they’d gone another couple blocks did it occur to Ruth that Sully’s truck hadn’t been out front, which meant he was up and out early. Sometimes, when he couldn’t sleep, he’d be waiting out back of the restaurant when she arrived to open up. If he was there this morning, she’d give him a little grief, but in truth she’d be glad to see him, if only so she could rest easy that the blue flame hadn’t been about him. God, life was a complete mess.

“You know about sex, right?” Ruth was surprised to hear herself ask.

Tina turned to regard her blankly.

“I’m talking to you,” Ruth said. “If you hear me, raise your left hand.”

Tina raised her right.

“Very funny,” Ruth told her, though not at all sure she was joking. Her granddaughter had always had trouble distinguishing left from right. Ruth had tried to help her when she was little by taking her wrists and holding both hands straight in front of her, palms out, and explaining that the thumb and index finger of her left hand would naturally form the letter L. Later in the day, she’d tested her on the concept, and Tina dutifully held both hands out in front of her, palms in this time, and confidently identified her right hand as her left. Had she been joking even then?

“I’m serious,” Ruth said. “Boys want sex. Even the nice ones.”

Tina regarded her for another long beat, her face still an expressionless mask, then went back to staring out the window, as if neither of them had spoken.

“You know you can get pregnant, right?” Ruth continued. “You know how all that works?”

Tina raised her right hand.

“What’s that mean? That you heard me, or that you have a question?”

That half smile again.

“You want to know what I thought when I was your age?”

Again she raised her right hand.

“I thought you could get pregnant if a boy touched your breast.” Which was true. She had thought that, though she’d been much younger than Tina. “Then one did.”

She turned into the alley between the restaurant and the Rexall drugstore. Her daughter’s car was parked behind the Dumpster. There was no sign of Sully’s truck, nor had it been parked in the street. She thought again about the blue flame.

“Did you?” said her granddaughter.

“Did I what?”

“Get pregnant?” There was definitely a smile now.

“Are you having fun? Messing with Grandma?”

The girl nodded, her smile broadening. “Was Grandpa the boy?”

Ruth turned off the ignition. “I hadn’t even met your grandfather yet.”

“Then who was it?”

“Just a boy. Nobody you know. He died.”

“When?”

“In the war.”

“Which one?”

“The one he was fighting in.”

“Are you mad at me?”

“No, I’m mad at the war.”

“Why’d you let him?”

“Go to war?”

“No, touch you.”

“I didn’t let him. He just did.”

“Did you let other boys?”

“Why are we talking about me?”

“I’m trying to learn.”

“Yeah, right,” Ruth said, putting the keys in her purse, then adding, “It felt good, I guess.” The admission caused her to flush, though she couldn’t decide which version of herself she was more ashamed of, the girl she’d been when she first started letting boys feel her up or the one attempting to dissuade her granddaughter from sexual activity. “It made me feel like I mattered. There was nobody else around to tell me I was special, so when boys said I was, I believed them.”

The smile was gone from Tina’s face now. “So I shouldn’t believe what boys say?”

“Oh, hell, Two-Shoes, I don’t know. They believe it themselves when they say it, or some of them do. What’s important is how you feel about yourself.”

“And how do you feel about yourself?”

“Now?”

The girl shrugged.

“Old,” Ruth admitted. “Stupid. Confused.”

Tina just looked at her.

“I know what you’re thinking,” Ruth said. “If I’m so stupid and confused, why am I giving you advice?”

“That’s not what I was thinking.”

Ruth leaned across the front seat and took her granddaughter in her arms, holding her tight. “I just don’t want you to get hurt,” she said, her tears spilling over.

“Mom says you don’t love Grandpa.”

“She does, huh?”

“She thinks you love Sully.”

“She told you that?”

She shook her head. “She thinks it.”

“And you’re a mind reader.”

The girl nodded seriously.

“Okay, what am I thinking now?”

“We’re late.”

“Good guess,” Ruth said, because that’s what she had been thinking. Day was upon them.

When she wiped her eyes on her shirtsleeve and took a deep breath before getting out of the car, Tina said, “You’re the hurt one, Grandma, not me.”

—

THEY WENT IN through the back, Ruth propping the heavy door open to help air the place out. Deliverymen would start arriving soon. In the back room, with the dishwasher and the small walk-in cooler, she noted that Cleary had been in and mopped the floors. He was a drinker and not to be depended upon, especially after Friday nights. Sometimes on Saturday mornings she’d find him stretched out on the long stainless-steel drainboard, but last night he’d mopped up and even emptied the trash. “I could use a hand unless you have homework to do,” Ruth said.

“It’s the weekend.”

“Did you finish that book you were supposed to read? Animal House?”

“Animal Farm,” she said. “Animal House is a movie.”

“Did you finish it, is what I asked.”

The girl just looked at her. She’d answered the question already, was her point.

“You could start by unloading the Hobart,” Ruth told her. Last thing out the door, she always ran a load. If they were busy this morning, she’d need every available mug.

Out front, she put the coffee on and filled the grill with bacon and sausage links in orderly phalanxes. It was her practice to cook them halfway, then return them to the grill as individual orders came in. If Sully were here, he’d have grabbed a hunk of yesterday’s stale bread and used it to soak up the sputtering grease. Though he claimed to have no interest in cooking, Ruth had never seen a man more comfortable in a kitchen. He seemed to intuit its rhythms, to know when she’d need to sidle by him in the confined space between the grill and counter, whereas her husband, both at home and in the restaurant, always managed to be standing in front of whatever door — fridge, oven, pantry — she needed to open. His size was part of it, of course, but he was simply incapable of anticipating what came next, even when the operative sequence was entirely predictable and unfolding right before his eyes. While Sully, even when he had his back to her, was able to sense where she was and why, and he’d take a small step forward or back that allowed her to get where she wanted to go. He had similar instincts in bed, which had been nice. If only, she often thought, he was as emotionally prescient. But of course men had to be told things, repeatedly. And even then…

When Tina, hands wet from the dishwasher, came out with a double tray of water glasses and coffee mugs, she momentarily lost her grip and managed to bang them all against the counter, rattling everything. “Easy,” Ruth snapped. She had an order in to her Albany restaurant-supply house, but until it was delivered, she was short on glasses and couldn’t afford to break any.

“Sorry,” the girl said, aggrieved.

“You will be if you wake your mother up.” She knew Janey had taken a shift out at the Horse last night and would’ve laid dollars to donuts that she’d gone out drinking afterward, knowing that Tina was spending the night with her and Zack. She watched her granddaughter stack cups and glasses on the shelf and wondered whether, a few years down the road, she’d have a child of her own, one Grandma Janey would find herself watching. This possibility was so depressing that she turned her attention back to the splattering grill, flipping the bacon and sausage links with her long spatula. In her peripheral vision she noticed Tina, returning to the back room with her empty trays, stop in her tracks. “Grandma?”

“What?”

When she didn’t answer, Ruth looked up and saw that the door leading to her daughter’s apartment was open. In it stood Roy Purdy, barefoot and shirtless, his jeans slung so low that a few wisps of curly pubic hair were visible above the beltline. His pale chest sported the tattoo of a sword, the tip of which disappeared comically beneath his foam neck brace. His face was still grotesquely swollen, and his eyes were dilated. How long had he been standing there watching them?

“Not much of a welcome,” he said, apparently to his daughter, though his eyes remained on Ruth. “Aren’t you going to give your poor old dad a hug?”

Ruth stepped in front of her granddaughter. Still holding the long spatula, she was tempted to use this lethal instrument to extend his insolent smirk from ear to ear. “What’re you doing here, Roy?”

“Well, Ma, I guess you could say I’m here by invitation.”

And then she was in motion. “Out of my way,” she said, pushing past him into the apartment, where in the murky bedroom Janey lay splayed on top of the sheets, naked. Dead, was Ruth’s first impression, and for a moment Janey was her little girl again, toddling around on fat little legs, arms outstretched and crying Up! Up! He’s finally killed her, she thought. But then she smelled the sex in the airless room and saw that her daughter was not only breathing but gently snoring. There was an empty bottle of Southern Comfort, Roy’s revolting liquor of choice, on the nightstand. Turning on the harsh overhead light, Ruth kicked the mattress, hard.

“What?” Janey said, bolting upright and squinting at her. “Fuck.”

“What’s he doing here?” Ruth said, pointing the glistening spatula at Roy, who’d drawn himself a glass of water out front before following her back into the apartment.

Janey looked at him and groaned, then turned to Ruth. “Don’t start, Ma,” she said, sliding under the top sheet and pulling it up to her chest. “I’m warning you, okay? Just don’t.”

“Too late. I’ve already started.”

Roy thumbed the cap off his prescription pill bottle expertly and shook a capsule into his palm, then washed it down with the entire glass of water, his Adam’s apple bobbing dutifully.

“He needed a place to stay, all right?”

“They’re not letting nobody back into the Arms till they find that damn snake,” Roy said, looking around aimlessly for a place to set down the glass.

“I’m not talking to you, Roy,” Ruth told him. “I’m talking to my dimwit daughter.”

“Right,” Janey said. “I’m stupid. You’re smart; I’m stupid.”

“What would you call it? You take out a restraining order against this man, then invite him into your bedroom?”

“That’s right, Ma. I did,” Janey said, the bit in her teeth now. “And you know what? I fucked him, too.”

“She sure did,” Roy corroborated. “Like old times, right, babe?”

Ruth turned on him. “Which ones, Roy? When you punched her in the face? Banged her head into the wall and gave her a concussion? Those the old times you’re talking about?”

He ignored all of this, staring at Janey. “So tell her.”

She was sitting there, massaging her temples, her breasts exposed again, the sheet having fallen. “Tell her what, Roy?”

“You know. How we’re gonna be getting back together. Be a family again, like before, only better.”

Janey regarded him with undisguised disbelief. “Don’t be a complete moron, Roy. Of course we’re not getting back together.”

“Singin’ a different tune last night, girl. You forget already?”

“It was a good fuck, Roy. That’s all I said. I was horny, okay?”

“Well, there you go. More where that came from.”

Janey stared at him for a long, incredulous beat, then addressed her mother. “Okay, fine. It was stupid letting him in, but you know how scared I get when there’s lightning.”

“Lightning,” Ruth repeated. “The man beats the shit out of you—”

“All that’s in the past,” Roy said, scratching himself below the beltline of his jeans, then inspecting his fingernails.

“Did you notice,” Ruth said to Janey, “how he balled up his fist when you contradicted him just now? Did you? You think he’s through whaling on you just because he says he is? Last time you were in the hospital for three days. And it’s lightning that scares you?”

“A person can’t help what they’re scared of,” Janey said, but clearly at least some of what Ruth had said was getting through. Either she’d seen Roy clench his fist or trusted that her mother had. “And he didn’t beat me up. You can see that, right?”

“That doesn’t mean he’s not going to.”

“All that’s in the past,” Roy said, his new mantra, though the hand not holding the water glass was a fist again. “And that’s for true.”

“It was just the once,” Janey said, apparently referring to the sex, not the previous beatings. “He knows that.”

“That’s where you’re wrong, girl. I don’t know no such thing.”

“Well, then you are a fucking moron, Roy.”

“What’s that you just called me?” he said.

“Get out of here, Roy,” Ruth said, “before we call the cops.”

“Who’s gonna do that?” Roy wanted to know. “You? Or her?”

It was then that Ruth remembered her granddaughter out in the restaurant, hearing all this, no doubt, probably cowering in a neutral corner like she used to do when she was little and these same two people started screaming at each other until the hitting started. “You need to go, Roy. Before this gets worse.”

“Whose fault would that be? You’re the one give her that mouth.”

Seeing her come toward him, Roy made no move to let her pass. “Step aside, Roy,” she told him.

And just that quickly she was on the floor, blinking up at him, tasting salt. Janey screamed.

“There now,” Roy said, pleased, as if he’d just won an argument.

Try as she might, Ruth was having trouble drawing the various elements of her unfolding experience into a coherent whole. Roy was standing directly over her, his right hand bloody. He’d struck her, she realized, with the empty glass. There was a large bloody shard in her lap.

“So whose fault is this right here, huh, Ma?” Roy was asking, his voice sounding far off. “Tell me that.”

“Momma!” Janey was screaming from even farther away. “Don’t, Roy!”

Ruth had managed to get onto her knees when Roy hit her again, this time with his fist. The back of her head hit the wall, causing very little pain but a frightening explosion of sound.

Before she could bring things into focus, Roy was on his knees himself, straddling her, and when he drew back his fist, she closed her eyes and thought, Fine. He was punching her, not Janey. If he beat her to death, well even that was okay. He’d finally be put away for good, and Janey and Tina would at last be shut of him. Perhaps because the roaring in her head sounded like surf, she thought again about that gleaming white bathroom in the Aruba brochure, how pristine and perfect it was. Maybe heaven was like that. A clean place, with pure sunshine streaming down from an unseen skylight, the cleansing surf so near you could hear individual waves breaking.

When Roy’s next punch didn’t arrive and she could no longer feel him astride her, she was suddenly frightened. Had he turned his attention to Janey, or maybe even to Tina? But no. When she opened her eyes, Roy was sitting across from her, his back up against the foot of the bed, looking as dazed and confused as she felt. There was a bright bloom of blood on one ear. Where he’d been standing a minute earlier Sully had magically appeared, holding a skillet. Ruth began to cry, she was so happy. Not because Roy wasn’t going to be punching her anymore or that Janey had been delivered as well, but because Sully was alive. Whatever that blue flame on the roof of the shed had been about, it wasn’t him. She’d been mean to him yesterday, telling him to quit coming by the restaurant so much, to find someplace else, but he’d come anyway. Nor was this the ghost who’d been haunting her lunch counter lately, a geezer staring morosely into his empty coffee cup, his shallow breath an audible rasp. A dying man, it now occurred to her. The man who stood before her here was the Sully of old, fearless, game as hell, fully committed in this necessary moment to the murder of Roy Purdy, fuck the consequences.

But then he remembered her and their eyes met and he dropped the skillet, no longer interested in Roy. She must’ve drifted away for a moment, because when she returned he was kneeling next to her. When she tried to say his name, he said, “Shhh,” then took her face between his hands, holding her head still, so there was no place to look but at this man she’d taken up with so long ago because she was lonely, lonelier than she’d known a human being could be. She had understood how wrong it was, how doing what they were doing might open the door to some bad things down the road. Had they just now got there? She would’ve liked to ask Sully if he thought that the present scenario could be traced back to what they’d done those many years, because, if so, then Roy was right — it was all her fault. But her mouth refused to work, and whenever she tried to speak Sully kept shushing her. It was all over, he was saying, she was safe now and so were Janey and Tina, that there was nothing to worry about, she was going to be okay and at the hospital they’d fix her up as good as new. She was glad to hear all of this because in truth everything felt very wrong, the kind of wrong you couldn’t ever make right. But then again, what did she know? What the hell had she ever known, really, about anything, even as a girl, when that first boy had touched her breast and she’d let him, because it felt good and she felt good, when most of the time she didn’t. It had taken her years and years to understand that most other people didn’t feel good, either, that the world’s work was to make you feel like it was disappointed in you, that you’d never measure up, not really. But Sully said no, it was all going to be fine, and somewhere in the distance there was a siren that was getting closer, so Ruth closed her eyes and stopped trying to speak and allowed herself to believe every word that Sully was saying.