Nobody's Fool

in the phone booth, he could see his grandson fidgeting nervously. Finally, he got up on his knees so he could see over the back of the booth. When Sully waved, the boy smiled, clearly relieved to have located his grandfather.
    â€œThey’re all out combing the neighborhood, Sully,” she said, her voice still rich with accusation.
    â€œWell, now they can stop,” he said. “I’ll have him home in half an hour.”
    The line was quiet for so long that Sully wondered if Vera had hung up and he’d missed the click. “You still there?”
    â€œI don’t know.”
    â€œYou don’t know if you’re there?”
    â€œHaven’t you ever felt like that?”
    â€œLike what?”
    â€œLike you don’t even exist?”
    This was not the kind of conversation Sully wanted to be having with his ex-wife, whose capacity for self-pity was without limitation, in Sully’s view. “Never,” he said. “Not even once.” He said this because it was true and because he wanted to make his lack of sympathy for her position clear.
    â€œLucky you,” Vera told him and hung up.
    When Will finished his ice cream, Sully showed him the cherrystone clam he’d discovered was still in his pocket while he was on the phone.
    â€œIt’s a seashell,” Will said, touching the clam where it lay in the center of the table.
    â€œRight,” Sully said. “Except there’s something inside.”
    Will drew back his hand, reevaluated the clam.
    Sully tapped it with the butt of his knife. The clam made a fizzing sound.
    â€œCan it get out?”
    â€œIt’s attached to the inside of the shell,” Sully explained. “It doesn’t want to get out.”
    â€œI would,” Will said.
    â€œNot if you were a clam. It’s safe in there,” Sully said. “You and your brother fight all the time?”
    Will wasn’t sure how to answer this question. In fact, they never fought, unless Wacker’s terrorist attacks on himself constituted fighting. If those attacks were what Grandpa Sully meant by fighting, then they fought all the time. Will decided to split the difference. “Sometimes,” he said.
    â€œI used to fight with my brother, too,” Sully told him.
    â€œNot anymore?”
    â€œHe died in a car accident,” Sully told him.
    This information startled Will, who had stopped just short of wishing his brother dead for fear that it might come true and somebody would later find out about the wish.
    â€œI’m going to live with Dad,” Will blurted out his own wish and surprised himself in the process. What a strange day it had been. So far he’d retaliated against Wacker and driven a car, and now he’d told his grandfather a whopper. For about the last month, Will had begun to imagine a new and better life. His parents would divorce and he would live with his father. At first the idea had frightened him. He knew divorce was a terrible thing to hope for, but it wasn’t as bad as wishing Wacker dead, which he wasafraid he might do if he couldn’t think of an alternative. So he’d settled on the divorce. He hated to lose his mother in the bargain, but there was no help for it. She had to go.
    The best part of the divorce idea was that Will felt sure that with Wacker out of the picture he’d be able to demonstrate to his father that he was really a good boy, a boy worthy of great love, a boy who would never—or seldom—cause trouble. And once the family separated, his mother would soon realize that it had been Wacker who’d caused all the adversity all along. At present she seemed pretty confused. No matter what happened or who was to blame, she meted out equal punishment. She yelled at both boys, spanked both boys, sent both boys to their room. After the divorce, when Will was gone and trouble persisted, she’d call his father and the two would compare notes. She’d tell his father what a bad boy Wacker had been all week, and his father would say, “That’s too bad. Will’s been just perfect.” Then it would dawn on them both.
    Eventually they would get back together, Will always thought happily. Except everything would be different. They’d get a house, not an apartment. Each boy would have his own room, and his parents would take Will’s advice and lock Wacker in his and slide all his meals under the door. They wouldn’t let him