Nobody's Fool

stream of pointless, breathless, one-sided conversation could ensure that Clive Jr. and Miss Beryl would be prevented from inquiring after her health, physical and emotional. Miss Beryl wondered if she’d popped a pill. The Joyce woman made no mention of the broken chair, refused, in fact, to glance in its direction.
    â€œShe’s really a wonderful girl, Ma,” Clive Jr. now insisted with uncharacteristic sincerity. “She wasn’t herself yesterday.”
    â€œWho was she?” Miss Beryl said, an unkind question perhaps, though not as unkind as the other that occurred to her: “What girl?” The woman had to be in her late fifties.
    Clive Jr. looked at his hands. “You’re always hard on people, Ma.”
    Miss Beryl had to concede that this was probably true. Clive Sr. had pointed it out to her more than once, and Mrs. Gruber was of the same opinion. So had been her legion of eighth-graders, whose mediocre efforts she’d rewarded with mediocre grades. “I wasn’t aware of being mean to her,” she told Clive Jr., “but if I was, I’m sorry. It’s not my opinion of her that matters anyway. I’m not the one who’s going to marry her. You’re the one that’s got to like her.”
    â€œWell, I do,” Clive Jr. insisted, that same stubborn quality to his voice that he’d had as a child. “I love her,” he added. He’d set the splintered sticks he’d been trying to match on the floor with the remains of the crippled chair and taken back from her the yearbook, the ribbed surface of which he massaged affectionately with his pink thumb, a gesture so pathetic that Miss Beryl felt herself soften toward him.
    Getting up from the table, she gathered her teacup and saucer. “I’mglad for you,” she said. “There are worse things than love. Give me a minute and I’ll think of one.”
    She’d meant this remark as a joke, but it had come out with such conviction it had startled her. Why had she said such a thing? She had no doubt that if Audrey Peach had not put Clive Sr. through the windshield of the driver ed car, they’d still be happily married, that Clive Sr.’s surprising love for her would still be the centerpiece of her life, even as its memory was now. She could think of no reason for this sudden regret about having loved and been loved.
    Clive Jr. cocked his head. “I think I hear her,” he said.
    Miss Beryl shook her head and pointed at the ceiling with her thumb. What Clive Jr. had heard was the thud of Sully’s heavy feet hitting the floor upstairs. For the last ten minutes she’d been vaguely aware of the buzzing of Sully’s alarm, not quite so audible to her in the kitchen as it was in her front room. On Clive Jr. the sound had apparently not registered at all, which allowed Miss Beryl to indulge an inward smile. Her faculties, or at least one of them, were intact.
    When Clive Jr. looked at the ceiling, his face clouded over, and together they listened to Sully’s footfalls traverse the ceiling and into the upstairs bathroom. Which meant they were about to resume an old discussion.
    â€œHave you given anymore thought to … things?” Clive Jr. said. “I know you don’t like the idea, but you should sell me the house while you still can.”
    â€œYou’re right,” she told him. “I don’t like the idea.”
    â€œMa,” he said. “Let me explain something. If you got sick tomorrow and you had to go into the hospital, they wouldn’t
let
you sell it. The law wouldn’t allow it. You have to sell before you get sick. They don’t let you sell to avoid loss.”
    â€œWhat happens if I sell it to you and
you
get sick tomorrow?”
    Clive Jr. massaged his temples. “Ma,” he said. “You have to play the odds.”
    Miss Beryl sighed. She knew the odds. She didn’t need to be lectured about the odds. She just hated conceding arguments to Clive Jr., who was, as a general rule, easily vanquished in debate. “I’ll take the matter under advisement,” she promised, hoping this would satisfy her son for the moment.
    â€œWhat about upstairs, at least?” he said, his voice confidential now, as if he suspected that Sully might somehow be eavesdropping on theirconversation, ear to the radiator. Clive Jr. always referred to Sully as “upstairs,” just as Sully