Nobody's Fool

little more ghostlike every time she saw him, as if he were fading out of himself, as if, when people finally lost faith in him and quietly drifted away as she and Ruth were now doing, they were taking part of him with them? His life seemed governed by some cruel law of subtraction, and his sum total was already in single digits. When he left the upstairs flat for new lodgings, would there be enough left of him to require a place? Why worry about someone ending up alone when that someone did everything he could toensure it? “With Donald,” she explained, “I’ve always just left the door open.”
    Ruth smiled her sad smile again. “That’s always been my strategy too,” she admitted, looking up at the second story of Miss Beryl’s house, as if she imagined Sully might be up there. “My problem is, I can’t stop watching the doorway and being disappointed,” she explained, then looked over at her granddaughter again.
    Miss Beryl studied the child too, thinking, as she often had when she surveyed her eighth-grade classes, that maybe people did wear chains of their own forging, but often those chains were half complete before they’d added their own first heavy link. Maybe completing other people’s work was the business of life.
    â€œLet’s go, squirt,” Ruth said to the child, who did not respond until she was touched, and then she slid back onto the sofa and began to grope for Ruth’s ear.
    Ruth gently removed the little girl’s hand. “We’re going to see Mommy, and you can play with her ear all afternoon, okay? Give Grandma’s ear a rest.”
    The child was staring at Miss Beryl again, almost smiling, it seemed.
    â€œWe know every bend in the road between here and the hospital, don’t we, Tina?” Ruth said, taking the child’s small hand. “We go back and forth to Schuyler once a day at least.”
    â€œI thought about paying a visit,” Miss Beryl said, “but my driving isn’t what it used to be. The last time I went there I got lost.”
    Miss Beryl walked grandmother and granddaughter to the door and watched them retreat down the steps and get into Ruth’s old car, which started up noisily and got even noisier when she shifted into reverse, put her foot on the gas and backed slowly, with an apologetic shrug for the noise, into Main Street. Feeling distant from her extremities, her toes and fingertips tingling vaguely, Miss Beryl went into the bathroom and blew her nose hard, inspecting the tissue for blood. When there was none, she returned to her front room, where the telephone was ringing.
    â€œWhy don’t I make us a big steaming pot of chicken noodle soup?” Mrs. Gruber said in lieu of hello. It would take her another minute or two of inconsequential small talk before she’d get around to mentioning that she’d noticed a strange car in her friend’s driveway. Instead of dropping her voice, she’d let the sentence hang, to signify her desire for a thorough, detailed explanation. It would be amusing, Miss Beryl thought to herself, to withhold that explanation awhile, to watch her nosy friend suffer.
    â€œBecause I’m feeling better,” she told Mrs. Gruber, which was true. For when she picked up the phone, Miss Beryl noticed the corner of the jigsaw puzzle and saw that the piece she’d been looking for was no longer missing. The child had found it, slipped it quietly into place, never said anything. “Let’s go someplace for lunch.”
    â€œGoody,” said Mrs. Gruber.
    â€œThis is vintage Sully,” Carl Roebuck said.
    The two men were standing on the back porch of the Bowdon Street house. Will, forgotten, stood off to one side. The weathered porch sloped furiously, the remnants of two-week-old snow having gathered in one corner where the sun didn’t reach. Will looked past his grandfather at the gray, crooked house. He did not want to go inside. He was hoping his grandfather would not be able to get the door open. The house was all crooked and haunted-looking, and he knew that his mother, had she been there, would not have wanted him to go inside. Grandma Vera wouldn’t have wanted it either, and when he thought of her he recalled a conversation he had overheard between her and Grandpa Ralph. In Grandma Vera’s opinion it was dangerous for Will to accompany Grandpa Sully on his morning rounds. She didn’t say why