Nobody's Fool

coincidence—that he was going to marry some nursing-home proprietress. Only later was she able to sort it out, that this woman’s connection to social work and nursing homes had existed only in her own imagination.
    And so, this morning, Miss Beryl was still furious with Clive Jr., and with the dreadful Joyce woman, but during the long sleepless night she’d also begun to entertain again the terrible possibility that the time
had
come, that she no longer had any business living alone. She was no longer safe on the interstate. She got confused going places she’d been to a hundred times before. She was becoming suspicious and paranoid. Miss Beryl had always believed that she herself would know “when the time came” for her to give up her independence. But what if she didn’t? What if everybody else knew already? Miss Beryl, who had always suffered the cruelty of her eighth-graders’ jokes, had no desire to become a legitimate figure of fun for these same children, now age forty.
    And so, just before dawn she’d made up her mind to apologize to both her son and his fiancée, a resolution she began to entertain second thoughts about at first light. These seconds thoughts had evolved into reluctance by the time the sky outside her bedroom window had become white. Clive Jr.’s appearance, before she’d even made her tea, put the resolution to rout. Now, watching him ineffectually trying to match the splintered pieces of the Queen Anne had the effect of causing her to wonder what had possessed her to even consider yielding territory to her son.
    â€œJoyce feels terrible about the chair, Ma,” Clive Jr. said, as if he suspected her decision to tough things out.
    Actually, Miss Beryl had mixed feelings about the Queen Anne. The chair’s destruction afforded her the opportunity to continue her instinctive dislike for Clive’s fiancée, who was mouthy and full of silly opinions about subjects of which she was wholly ignorant, the length and breadth of which had been discussed during the course of what had been for Miss Beryl one of the longest evenings of her life. Among the dreadful Joyce woman’s devotions was the president, newly elected to a second term. Having
lived
in California, the Joyce woman said, of course she
knew
Mr. Reagan far better than non-Californians. She had
campaigned
for him there and, ofcourse, again here in New York when he ran for president. Fixing Miss Beryl rather unpleasantly with her doughy eyes, the Joyce woman had stated, without apparent irony, that the
only
thing that concerned her was the president’s age, a man that old, doing a job which
aged
you so. “He seems so
tired
” the Joyce woman said seriously, as if she had a personal relationship with the president, feared not just for the office, but for the man, “but I truly think he’s sharp as ever.”
    â€œSo do I.” Miss Beryl had fixed her savagely and excused herself from the room under the pretext of scrounging up a plate of cookies and some coffee.
    â€œDecaf?” the Joyce woman had pealed. “Oh, I’d
love
some decaf.”
    Clive Jr., who’d lapsed into comatose silence during the Joyce woman’s soliloquy, followed Miss Beryl into the kitchen. “I wish you’d quit glaring as if you meant to murder her,” he complained.
    â€œI can’t help it,” she told him. “I have what’s called an open face.”
    Handing her son the plate of cookies, Miss Beryl shooed him out of the kitchen, then searched out the instant coffee in a remote cupboard. It took her a few minutes to boil the water, arrange the coffee cups on a tray, compose herself and return to the living room, where the Joyce woman was brushing cookie crumbs from her ample bosom. The plate was empty.
    â€œMmmm,” the woman cooed when she sipped her coffee. “I’m sorry to be such trouble, but
honestly
, if I have caffeinated after five, I’m up
all night long!
”
    And then she was off again, explaining how she had always
adored
coffee, had always drunk twenty cups a day and never had problems until recently. But now,
lord
, it was simply
tragic
what coffee did to her. There was no other
word
for it besides tragic, but wasn’t that the way with all the good things, the things you
really loved
. Everything good was either immoral or fattening, she added, apropos of nothing, and then cackled as if the cleverness of