Nobody's Fool

to Sully, though his statement contained an implied question (“Does she?”), as if to suggest that perhaps this berserk woman had a moral right but not a legal one.
    Vera flung another fistful of pages at him. “Filth!” she raged. “You brought filth into my father’s house.
You’re
filth.”
    At this moment a woman with two frightened children appeared from the back of the house. They were all bundled up in winter coats and hats and gloves, apparently prepared to vacate the premises, though clearly under protest. She steered the children around Vera, keeping them as far away as she could. Sully waited until they were out the front door, then said, “Vera.”
    His ex-wife refused to acknowledge his presence, but Peter did, turning around with the telephone still cradled to his ear, apparently on hold. The look on his face said, terrific, what else could go wrong?
    â€œVera,” Sully said again, and this time she looked up.
    â€œThis is all your fault,” she said.
    â€œYeah, I know it,” he said agreeably. “We’re going to have to leave now, though, old girl. The cops are coming, and you don’t want to get arrested.”
    She seemed actually to consider the wisdom of this for a moment, until she noticed the
Playboy
in her hands and commenced tearing again. When she finished that issue, she grabbed another. Either this was one of the fat man’s favorites or he’d simply drawn the line, because he lunged for the magazine and there was a brief tug-of-war, which Vera won, causing the man to throw up his hands. “There she goes again,” he said when she resumed ripping out the pages.
    â€œVera,” Sully said, stepping forward.
    Peter said something and hung up the phone. “Dad,” he warned, “you’ll only make it worse.”
    â€œLike hell,” Sully said. The only way he could see to make things worse was to let them continue. “Vera,” he said again.
    His ex-wife continued to struggle with the pages.
    â€œVera, you’re either going to stop this shit and go home or I’m going to knock you right on your ass,” he said, adding, “You know I will.”
    Vera’s problem appeared to be that she had ahold of a swatch of pages too thick to tear clean, though she refused to give up and tugged at them furiously, her face bloodred with effort.
    Sully made good on his promise then, slapping her harder than he meant to, so hard that the partial plate he didn’t know she wore shot from her mouth like a boxer’s mouthpiece and skittered under a chair. He stepped back then, as if he was the one who’d been hit, stunned at the sight of his ex-wife without her upper teeth. For her part, Vera seemed not to notice their absence. Everything else about her situation seemed to come home to her in that moment, however, and she sank to her knees and began to sob so hard her shoulders shook. “Ook ut ey’ve done, ’ully,” she wept, looking up at him from where she knelt on the floor.
    Peter, looking pale and shaken, moved the chair and located his mother’s partial plate. Ralph, Sully noticed, had turned away.
    â€œJesus Christ,” said the fat man on the sofa, “you didn’t have to knock her teeth out.”
    When Sully held his hand out to Peter, he handed over her plate, and Sully went down on his good knee, the bad one throbbing so horribly that he thought he might faint. Vera, still on her own knees, had buried her face in her hands now, and so he had to say her name twice before she’d look at him. “Here,” he said, handing his ex-wife her teeth.
    She took them, puzzled for a moment, then slipped them into her mouth.
    â€œWe’re going to stand up now,” he told her, and when she seemed incapable, he helped her and she allowed Sully to draw her to him. She buried her head in his shoulder and sobbed. “I hate you
so
much, Sully,” she told him.
    â€œI know, darlin’,” he assured her, steering her toward the door. Peter moved to meet them there, and Sully turned her over to him and Ralph. Outside, the siren, which had been getting ever closer, Sully now realized, burped once and was silent. Sully peered out the window and saw that it was an ambulance, and right behind it was a police cruiser. Sully decided to stay where he was for a minute lest the cops see him and jump to the wrong conclusion. He was pretty sure