Straight Man

when he saw the two of them together—realized they were two peas in a pop—did he finally grasp who this woman was. It must have been a long weekend.
    My father, according to Mr. Purty, was exactly no help, which I could have told him in advance. The only real work I ever saw William Henry Devereaux, Sr., do when I was growing up was dig the grave for Red, and he complained of blisters on his palms for a week afterward.
    “He don’t look too good,” Mr. Purty admits, “so I didn’t want to ask him to help out. How comes he cries like that?”
    Cry? William Henry Devereaux, Sr.? It’s hard to imagine this. Crying is not an ironic stance. “What are you talking about?” I ask, a little sharply perhaps.
    “He cries all the while,” Mr. Purty explains, minimally.
    “He cries?”
    “Damnedest thing you ever saw. One minute he’s sitting there smiling, then all of sudden he’s bawling like a little kid. Then, bam! he stops again. Grins at you again like he don’t remember he’s just been blubbering.”
    “You witnessed this yourself?”
    “I guess you ain’t seen him in a while.”
    In the literal sense it hasn’t been so long. A couple of months or thereabouts. My mother and I went to New York when we heard about his collapse, but he was in the hospital then and pretty heavily sedated, so in the truest sense Mr. Purty is right. It’s been a long time, probably five years, since I’ve seen my father, a fact that doesn’t seem so strange to me until I think about how I might explain it to a man like Mr. Purty, who may have concluded from talking to my mother that my father and I are on the outs.
    “Your ma said just ignore him,” Mr. Purty’s explaining. “Just let him cry. He’ll quit it eventually. She was right, I guess.” He shakes his head, remembering. “The way he cries you’d swear he meant to keep it up forever. Then he’ll just stop and grin at you. You’ll see,” he adds.
    I try to imagine this, and, failing, I consider for the first time the possibility that my mother may be right, that I’m not prepared for my father’s return.
    “
You
aren’t going to start blubbering, are you?” Mr. Purty asks. He’s staring at me suspiciously.
    I assure him that I’m not.
    He looks unconvinced but hopeful. “I was going to come by your place after breakfast,” he explains, wiping his eggy mouth with a napkin. “Your ma said to put everything in your garage for now.”
    “She did?”
    “Didn’t tell you, I guess.”
    I can’t help it. Suddenly, I’m furious with her, and not over her presumption that Lily and I would be pleased to give over the better part of our garage to William Henry Devereaux, Sr.’s private library. “Did she even say thank you, Mr. Purty?”
    He shrugs, pushes his plate away. “Not yet,” he admits. “Course the job ain’t done yet. She’s probably waiting, so she don’t have to say it twice. Aren’t you going to eat?”
    It’s true. I’ve eaten only a couple forkfuls of eggs. My stomach is churning, and I’m not sure it’d be wise to fill my intestines with other intestines.
    “That plate of eggs right there would cost you thirteen, fourteen dollars in New York City. Why would people live in a place like that?”
    I slide my plate of eggs over to Mr. Purty. “Doesn’t it bother you when people take advantage of your good nature?” I ask him.
    He shovels my bleeding eggs into his mouth and chews thoughtfully, as if paying such an exorbitant price for eggs has deepened his respect for them. “I’m glad if she’s happy, I guess. But this whole deal didn’t turn out the way I’d hoped, I gotta admit.”
    “You think she’s happy?” I wonder, genuinely curious about Mr. Purty’s opinion on this subject.
    He shrugs. “They talk just alike, the two of them.”
    I consider this prescription for happiness.
    “So do you,” he adds. I can tell it’s not his intention to hurt my feelings.
    “I have to go pee, Mr. Purty,” I tell him.
    “Go ahead,” he says.
    “And then I have to go in to campus for a while.”
    “Go ahead.”
    “Just unhitch the U-Haul and leave it in the drive.”
    “Your ma won’t like that.”
    “So what? Just walk away from it, Mr. Purty. It’s not your problem.”
    “She’ll have to pay a late fee if the trailer don’t come back today.”
    “Let her.”
    He considers this course of action. “Actually, I’m the one put down the deposit.”
    “I’ll try to get back at noon,” I sigh. “Leave