Nobody's Fool

soon enough, but rather control of the whole. But to what end? Miss Beryl had to admit that the logic of her suspicions was flawed. After all, her money, the house on Upper Mainand its considerable contents, everything would belong to Clive Jr. eventually, when, as he put it, “the time came.”
    One of the things that drove her son to distraction, Miss Beryl suspected, was not knowing how much “everything” amounted to. There was the house, of course, and the ten thousand dollars he knew his mother had because she’d loaned it to him. But how much more? It was this information about her finances that Miss Beryl did not trust her son with. She had an accountant in Schuyler Springs do her taxes each year, and she instructed him to surrender no information about her affairs to Clive Jr. For legal advice, she dealt with a local attorney named Abraham Wirfly, whom her son continued to warn her against as an incompetent and a drunkard. Miss Beryl was not unaware of Mr. Wirfly’s shortcomings, but she steadfastly maintained that he was not so much incompetent as unambitious, a character trait almost impossible to find in a lawyer. More important, she considered the man to be absolutely loyal, and when he promised to divulge nothing of her financial and legal affairs to Clive Jr., she believed him. Without ever saying so, Abraham Wirfly seemed also to entertain reservations about Clive Jr., and so Miss Beryl continued to trust him. Clive Jr.’s growing exasperation was testimony to her excellent judgment. “Ma,” he pleaded pitifully, pacing up and down the length of her front room, “how can I help you protect your assets if you won’t let me? What’s going to happen if you get sick? Do you want the hospital to take everything? Is that your plan? To have a stroke and let some hospital take their thousand a day until it’s all gone and you’re destitute?”
    The logic of her son’s concern was inescapable, his argument consistent, yet despite this, Miss Beryl could not shed the feeling that Clive Jr. had a hidden agenda. She knew no more about his personal finances than he knew about hers, but she suspected that he was well on his way to becoming a wealthy man. She knew too that despite his realtor’s eye, he had no interest in the house, that if he were to inherit it tomorrow, he’d sell it the day after. He’d recently purchased a luxury town home at the new Schuyler Springs Country Club between North Bath and Schuyler Springs. The house on Upper Main might bring a hundred and fifty thousand dollars, maybe more, and this was nothing to sneeze at, even if Clive Jr. didn’t “need” the money. Yet she was unable to accept at face value that this was her son’s design. There was something about the way his eye roved uncomfortably from corner to corner of each room, as if in search of spirit trails, that convinced Miss Beryl he was seeing something she couldn’t see,and until she discovered what it was, she had no intention of trusting him fully.
    Outside Miss Beryl’s front window a thick clump of snow fell noiselessly from an unseen branch. There was a lot of it, but the snow wouldn’t stay. Despite appearances, this wasn’t real winter. Not yet. Still, Miss Beryl went out into the back hall and located the snow shovel where she had stored it beneath the stairs last April and leaned it up against the door where even Sully couldn’t fail to see it when he left. Back inside, she became aware of a distant buzzing which meant that her tenant’s alarm had gone off. Since injuring his knee, Sully slept even less than Miss Beryl, who got by on five hours a night, along with the three or four fifteen-minute naps she adamantly refused to admit taking throughout the day. Sully woke up several times each night. Miss Beryl heard him pad across his bedroom floor above her own and into the bathroom, where he would patiently wait to urinate. Old houses surrendered a great many auditory secrets, and Miss Beryl knew, for instance, that Sully had recently taken to sitting on the commode, which creaked beneath him, to await his water. Sometimes, to judge from the time it took him to return to bed, he fell asleep there. Either that or he was having prostate problems. Miss Beryl made a mental note to share with Sully one of the ditties of her childhood:
    Old Mrs. Jones had diabetes

Not a drop she couldn’t pee

She took two