Nobody's Fool

their bitterest arguments tended to be over who it was that decided to be good for a while, who was responsible for their lapse into virtue, who had been avoiding and ignoring whom. Sully could feel one of these arguments coming on now, and he also sensed that he was going to lose it.
    â€œSo you’re saying that when I said ‘a while,’ you thought I meant three months,” Ruth said, her thumbs digging deeper now between Sully’s shoulder blades, skillfully crossing the boundary between pleasure and pain.
    â€œNo,” Sully countered. “I thought you meant seven. I thought you wanted Gregory graduated and away at college.”
    An indirect hit, apparently, since Ruth’s thumbs returned a little closer to affection mode. “Well, you didn’t have to go along so agreeably.”
    â€œI’m not a mind reader,” he said, deciding to press his luck a little further, a tactic that seldom reaped dividends with Ruth. “You have to let me know what you want.”
    Ruth stopped the massage and did not answer immediately. “What I want,” she finally said, “is for
you
to want. I think I could be reasonably content if I were sure you couldn’t get through the day without thinking about me. If I knew you picked up the phone half a dozen times just to tell me different things. That’s what I’d like, Sully.”
    â€œYou’d be happy if you knew I was miserable?” Sully paraphrased her position.
    â€œYou got it.”
    â€œHow about if I just tell you I’ve missed you?”
    Ruth resumed the massage. “I guess I’d settle for that and an explanation of why your son was chasing you across the IGA parking lot.”
    So Sully explained how his grandson had cracked his bad knee with Dr. Seuss, mentioning also that he’d received an invitation to stop by Vera’s tomorrow. Ruth always felt bad about the holidays Sully spent alone, but she also harbored a deep distrust of Sully’s ex-wife that he’d never been able to account for until Ruth confessed to him one day that she always feared they’d end up remarried, an irrational fear that persisted even though Vera was already remarried to someone else. “Are you going to go?”
    â€œI may drop by when I finish up work,” Sully said without much enthusiasm. “I promised Dummy I’d sheetrock a house for him tomorrow.”
    â€œOn Thanksgiving?”
    Sully shrugged. “Why not?”
    There were so many reasons why a sane man would not want to sheetrock a house in the freezing cold on Thanksgiving that Ruth declined to select among them. When Sully asked why not, he didn’t mean that he couldn’t think of any reasons. He meant that he’d decided in advance not to accept their validity. Ruth quit the massage for good and slid into the booth feeing him. “Will it take all day?”
    â€œMight,” Sully admitted. “I had a half-day job today and it took all day and half the night. Rub did most of it.”
    â€œYour first day back. What’d you expect?”
    â€œMore.”
    â€œMaybe tomorrow will be better.”
    â€œTomorrow will be worse,” he told her honestly. “That much I’m sure of. The day after that might be better. I can’t work at the old pace, that much I know already. I might not be able to manage at all.”
    â€œWant some advice?”
    â€œNot really.”
    â€œGo back to school.”
    Sully didn’t respond immediately, hoping to create through silence the impression that he was actually considering her wisdom. “I can’t make any money at school, Ruth,” he said finally.
    â€œYou need some money?”
    He shook his head. “Not right this very minute. I might someday, though. I’m for sure going to need a new truck, probably by the first of the year. The back and forth to school has just about finished mine. I’ve half planned for that, but if there are any surprises …”
    â€œRolling with the punches is what you’re good at,” Ruth reminded him. “It’s what we’re both good at.”
    Sully nodded, because he knew it was true and because it heartened him to have Ruth say so. Sitting across the table from her this way brought home to him how much he had indeed missed her. There were times when he wondered if perhaps they couldn’t continue in just this way, content with each other’s