Nobody's Fool

her future to another human being had been when she’d allowed Clive Sr. to talk her into marrying him and living out their lives in Bath. How had he ever managed that? she wondered. Love, dern it, was how. He had loved her, and in return for this great gift she had allowed him to bring her to Bath, where he had then promptly abandoned her to a life of fighting with eighth-graders. Then he’d gone and let himself be killed and left her to live out the rest of her many years with “Finally Fed Up” and “A True Christian” for company. Now here she was contemplating mortgaging her independence to this same man’s son, a man who’d grown to resemble his father so minutely that he might have been Clive Sr.’s clone.
    â€œI’m sorry if I sound grumpy,” Miss Beryl told Mrs. Gruber. “I was just sitting here wishing I had somebody to fight with when you called.”
    Mrs. Gruber ignored this explanation. “I saw Clive Jr. drive by,” she said. “Was that a woman with him in the car?” Mrs. Gruber knew perfectly well it was.
    â€œClive Jr., star of my firmament, is to wed,” Miss Beryl said. “I only just learned of it myself.”
    â€œAnd that’s made you grumpy.”
    â€œHardly,” Miss Beryl objected. “I’m perfectly happy to turn Clive Jr. over to any woman who will have him, and this one apparently will.”
    â€œWell, I’m eating like a bird today,” said Mrs. Gruber, who had little use for transitions. “Prune juice. Later a little dry toast and tea.”
    Dry toast, tea and prune juice was Mrs. Gruber’s way of warding off the constipation that tormented her after a heavy meal at the Northwoods Inn. Yesterday she had eaten a green salad, ambrosia salad, carrot-raisin salad, pea-cheese salad and macaroni salad from the buffet. Then Old Tom, stuffing, cranberries and a candied yam. Then pumpkin pie and whipped cream. There wasn’t room for all of this on Mrs. Gruber’s ninety-five-pound frame, and today it all weighed on her rather heavily.
    The other thing that weighed her down was guilt. For more than a year, as Miss Beryl suspected, she had been secretly feeding information concerning her friend to Clive Jr., who called her at least once a week to make sure that his mother was okay. She wasn’t spying for Clive Jr. exactly, just passing along information. For Miss Beryl’s own good, as Clive Jr.himself insisted. His mother was too stubborn for her own safety. Hadn’t she tried to keep a secret of her fall last summer, along with the badly sprained wrist that resulted? Mrs. Gruber understood Clive Jr.’s concern for his mother, and so she told him little things. In return, he told her things, too. She already knew, for instance, that Clive Jr. was getting married, and she now made a mental note to pretend she hadn’t known.
    The only misgiving that Mrs. Gruber had about her arrangement with her best friend’s son was that sometimes she ended up telling Clive Jr. things she never intended to. This morning, for instance, when Clive Jr. called from the bank to inquire whether they’d had a pleasant Thanksgiving dinner at the Northwoods Motor Inn, Mrs. Gruber hadn’t the slightest intention of telling him how Miss Beryl had gotten lost in Albany and how they’d nearly not found the restaurant at all.
    â€œTell me about her,” Mrs. Gruber said.
    â€œAbout whom?”
    â€œClive Jr.’s young woman.”
    â€œShe’s not young,” Miss Beryl said. “She’s late fifties, if she’s the girl in the yearbook.”
    â€œIs she nice?”
    â€œShe talks a lot,” Miss Beryl said. “She’s a fan of the president’s.”
    â€œShe sounds nice,” said Mrs. Gruber, who also liked the president and didn’t mind talk nearly so much as the silence of her big house. “When will the wedding be?” she asked, anxious to find out how much Clive Jr. had told his mother. Early spring was what he’d told Mrs. Gruber. Around Easter.
    â€œI neglected to ask,” Miss Beryl admitted. “I don’t believe there’s any hurry. I’m sure the bride’s not pregnant.”
    â€œWill Joyce work at the bank?” This was actually a question she’d been meaning and kept forgetting to ask Clive Jr., who had mentioned that his wife-to-be was an accountant.
    Miss Beryl was about to