Somebodys fool, p.2
Somebody's Fool, page 2
Since Peter had no intention of living in his childhood home, his first thought was to sell the place for whatever it would bring. Later, when Will went off to college, Peter could use the money to facilitate his own escape. The problem was that the house, always neat and tidy when he was a boy, now needed a ton of work, both inside and out. After Ralph, his stepfather, retired, there hadn’t been much money, and when he fell ill, keeping the place up had fallen to Peter, who’d done, he had to admit, the bare minimum. Yes, he’d taken care of the seasonal chores: mowing the lawn in the summer, raking leaves and shoveling snow in fall and winter. If an appliance fritzed or a pipe burst, he came over and fixed it. Otherwise, though, he steered clear, because of his mother. Vera’s grip on sanity had always been relaxed, but over time her behavior was increasingly batshit. She viewed her son’s continued presence in Bath as a betrayal, and the mere sight of him was often enough to send her over the edge. In her mind’s eye she continued to see her son dressed like the college professor he’d once been—in chinos, a button-down oxford shirt and a tweed sport coat and loafers, whereas now when he showed up to mow the lawn or fix the burst pipe he was invariably dressed in work boots, faded jeans, a coarse denim shirt and, if you could believe it, a feed-company bill cap, as if he were announcing to the whole neighborhood that despite her efforts to make a cultured man of him, he’d chosen instead to be a common laborer like his father. “Take it off!” she shrieked at him one day when he came inside for a glass of water. “I can’t bear it!” What she couldn’t bear, it turned out, was the sight of him wearing a tool belt, a hammer dangling from its iron loop. When he appeared unexpectedly, she would usually make a show of going into her bedroom, closing the door and remaining there until he was gone. Other times she’d come busting out, wild eyed, and launch into one of her melodramatic tirades about how she’d much prefer that the sidewalks go unshoveled, the grass unmowed, than to see him looking like this. Let the burst pipe gush water. What did she care? Let her drown. Couldn’t he see she’d been drowning for years? Let the whole house fall down on her. Just go ahead and finish her. Didn’t he know that this was what she prayed for each and every night?
Well, if that’s what she’d been praying for, by the time he inherited the house, it appeared to Peter that at least some of those prayers had been answered. Every window in the house needed replacing, as did the roof. The brickwork needed repointing. Inside, everything—appliances, countertops, kitchen cabinets—was dated. There was faded wallpaper everywhere. When it rained, the basement flooded. “Fix the place up yourself,” Sully had advised. “It’s not like you don’t know how.” Which was true. Working with his father, Peter had learned basic construction skills. He could frame and roof and throw up drywall and use a circular saw. He could also handle basic plumbing and even a little electrical. Better yet, he was, unlike Sully, patient. He could read a schematic and knew to measure twice so that he’d only have to cut once. (His father tended to measure once, incorrectly, and cut a half-dozen times, all the while muttering, “You motherfucker,” when the board that had been too long a moment ago was now inexplicably too short.)
Perhaps because renovating Vera’s house had been his father’s idea, Peter was slow to warm to it. (He was more his mother’s son than she knew; indeed it would’ve cheered her to know how deep his lingering resentment of his father ran and how often it flared up.) Not long after her death he’d gotten a part-time position teaching composition at Edison College, which gave him more than enough to do, and while his adjunct professor salary was meager, he had relatively few expenses. The rent his father charged him and Will was well below market, and there was just the two of them. Charlotte, his ex-wife, had remarried a couple years after their divorce, which meant an end to his alimony payments, and the small loans he’d taken out to help pay for college and grad school were by then paid off. But Sully was right. If he did the necessary work on his mother’s house himself, it would bring a better price, and his Saturdays were mostly free. Why not spend them fixing the place up? If it took him a year to get it shipshape, so what? At least get started. If it turned out the work bored him, he could always hire others to finish up.
Except the work hadn’t bored him. Quite the opposite, in fact. After grading papers all week, he found himself actually looking forward to Saturdays, to strapping on the tool belt that had so shamed and infuriated his mother. Sully, who was by now mostly retired, had offered to lend a hand, but Peter had told him thanks anyway. For one thing, his mother would turn over in her grave if she knew Sully was tromping around in there with his muddy boots muttering the word cocksucker under his breath, but it wasn’t really that. In the end what it came down to was that with help, even Sully’s, he’d finish sooner, and he didn’t want to. Nor was it just that work was pleasurable after a week of lecturing and paper grading. Something else was going on that Peter was having a hard time wrapping his head around. Maybe his hadn’t been what you’d call a happy childhood—his mother’s various neuroses had seen to that—but it hadn’t been an unhappy one either, thanks in large part to his stepfather, who’d treated Peter like his own flesh and blood. Surely Ralph deserved to have that kindness repaid. Also, not long after his mother’s death, Peter had begun to imagine her suffering, something he’d never been able to do when she was alive. Okay, she’d always been crazy, and that made her mean, especially to Ralph, but Peter also suspected that she had never in her life been truly happy. He’d always believed she brought that unhappiness on herself, and maybe that was true, but what if it wasn’t? Did she consider herself a disappointment to her adored father? What if, for her, happiness simply hadn’t been in the cards? In the beginning the work Peter was doing in his mother’s house felt almost vengeful, like he was paying her back for her undisguised disappointment in him. But gradually the renovations took on a different meaning entirely. Recalling her taste, her favorite colors and styles, as well as her many aversions, he began to take pleasure in doing things in the house that might’ve pleased her. What the hell was that about? Was he offering some sort of belated apology? He couldn’t say for sure, but whatever the reason, he found he wasn’t anxious for the work to end, and when it finally did, he was surprised to feel a powerful sense of loss. Whatever those Saturdays had been about, it apparently wasn’t money, and when the place went on the market and sold for far more than he’d expected, he couldn’t help feeling as if some sort of debt he hadn’t even known he owed had been paid.
Turned out, Vera’s house was only the beginning, because in due course Peter came to inherit his father’s house as well. And when that happened, he was once again of two minds. Miss Beryl’s old Victorian, which was how his father always thought of it, was a fine property in one of North Bath’s best neighborhoods and, thanks largely to Will, who loved attending to whatever needed doing there, was much better maintained, so it was worth a lot more than Vera’s house. On the other hand, Peter was superstitious about the place. He’d always seen it as tethering him to Bath, which he meant to flee as soon as his son went off to college, lest he end up his father’s keeper. Will had certainly done his part. After applying to universities on both coasts, he was offered free rides everywhere (here, too late, was somebody Vera would’ve been proud of), and when he finally settled on Penn, Peter’s own exit strategy came into sharper focus. Once Will was settled at Philly, Peter himself would look for an apartment in New York, only an hour away by train, but far enough that he wouldn’t cramp his son’s style. Better yet, New York area colleges and universities were all hungry for adjunct professors who could be hired cheaply. He could teach a course here, a course there, and maybe, over time, wangle something a bit more permanent. He’d never be eligible for promotion or tenure or even health care, but thanks to the sale of his mother’s house he now had a financial cushion. For a while, he could make it work. At the very least he’d be out of upstate New York.
Okay, not completely. The clean getaway he preferred would require an additional four years because Will loved both his grandfather and the Upper Main Street house, and he was especially looking forward to spending vacations in Bath. He’d have no trouble finding a summer job and he could continue helping Sully out with house maintenance that required climbing ladders or going up and down stairs. For his part Peter would have preferred to remain in the city, but he had to admit that returning to North Bath for June, July and August made sense, for both of them, really. There would be fewer teaching opportunities in the summer, and New York would be a sauna. Also, he’d learned by renovating his mother’s house how much he enjoyed physical labor. The other old Victorian homes on Upper Main were all getting snapped up, and their new owners were clamoring for carpenters and plumbers and others in the construction trade. He could probably make as much money there in three months as he made as an adjunct professor in the city the other nine, and the hard work would help keep him trim, which lately had become an issue. The clean getaway that he craved—from Bath and, yes, from Sully himself—would just have to wait.
Except that April, three weeks before Will was set to graduate from Penn, Peter had gotten the call from Ruth, his father’s longtime paramour, that he’d been dreading. His father had been in an accident, she informed him. No, he wasn’t injured, but he’d totaled his truck and—surprise, surprise—alcohol had been involved. And because this was his third accident in two years (Wait, what? There’d been two others?) his license was being revoked, which meant he could no longer make his usual rounds (to Hattie’s, the donut shop, the OTB, the Horse).
“You’re telling me he needs a keeper?” Peter said.
No surprise, Ruth had bristled at that. “I’m telling you he needs his son.”
“Yeah, well,” Peter said, also bristling, “there were times as a kid when I needed him, and where was he?” Hearing himself say this, it occurred to him that somewhere his mother was smiling her cruel, vindictive smile.
“Two words,” Ruth told him. “Grow up.”
Though this crisp advice—if that’s what it was—had stung, it wasn’t exactly unexpected. How many times over the years had he watched this same woman turn both barrels on his father and pull the trigger? Anyway, what would be the point of getting pissed off at her? It wasn’t Ruth’s fault he’d waited too long to fly the coop. And if he was honest, he probably wouldn’t have lasted that much longer in New York anyway. Rising rents were quickly making the itinerant adjunct life, which had been crappy to begin with, unsustainable. And while it was true that his father hadn’t been around much when he was growing up, it was Sully who’d thrown him a rope that long-ago Thanksgiving when he’d slunk back into town, his marriage in tatters, and no idea what to do next. Worse, after grabbing that rope, he’d unjustly resented Sully for the loss of the academic life he himself had so royally messed up. So, he called Ruth back the next morning and told her he’d wrap things up in the city as soon as he could and return to Bath. “Do me a favor, though? Don’t tell him I’m coming?”
“Okay,” she agreed. “Mind telling me why?”
“I do, actually.” Because, for one thing, returning to North Bath would have a lot of moving parts—finishing his classes, turning in grades, severing ties with the various institutions where he’d been teaching, renting a van to transport the stuff he accumulated in the city, saying his goodbyes. Who knew how long that would take? More importantly, he was going to need time to come to terms with his decision. He didn’t want to arrive back in Bath nursing a sense of grievance, resentful of the choice he was freely making.
To his surprise, things had gone more smoothly than he would’ve predicted, and it was less than a month later when he sauntered into Hattie’s and slid onto the empty stool at the counter next to his father, who, absorbed in the newspaper’s sports page, didn’t immediately notice him. It hadn’t been that long ago—only since Christmas—that Peter had seen him, but in the intervening months it seemed that the man had segued into advanced old age, his hair and wiry stubble mostly gray, his eyes rheumy.
Finally noticing who now occupied the adjacent stool, Sully folded the newspaper, set it on the counter and said, “You’re just in time. You can give me a lift out to Rub’s place.”
If this hadn’t been his father he was talking to, Peter might well have concluded that Ruth had broken her promise and alerted Sully that his son’s arrival was imminent, but no, this was just his father’s way. One of the many maddening things about Sully was that he seemed not to fully believe in the world outside Schuyler County. Despite Peter’s absence, he didn’t truly accept that his son had moved away and now lived in New York. Somehow he’d been right here the whole time and they just hadn’t crossed paths. And now here he was, which proved him right. Therefore, no hello. No long-time-no-see. Just, Here you are. Good. I’ve got a job for you.
“You remember his wife, Bootsie?” Sully was saying. “She died last week. Did you hear?”
“I don’t think it made the New York papers, Dad.”
“She had a coronary getting out of the bathtub.”
Peter remembered her. An enormous woman. Three hundred pounds, at least.
His father read his thought. “I know. How’d she get into the tub to begin with?”
“That’s not what I was thinking,” Peter lied.
“Sure, it was,” Sully said. “You know what else you were thinking?”
“No, what?”
“That she must’ve made a hell of a racket when she went down.”
Which was true. Peter had been thinking exactly that. Sully was now putting some bills down on top of the check so they could leave.
“You mind if I have a cup of coffee first?” Janey, Ruth’s daughter, who now owned the place, had seen him come in and was already pouring him one.
“Look who’s here,” Sully instructed her, finally displaying muted surprise at Peter’s unexpectedly materializing on the stool next to him.
Janey set down a steaming cup of coffee and nodded. “My personal favorite of all your children,” she said, deadpan.
Doctoring the coffee, Peter said, “Has the funeral happened?”
“Yesterday.”
“Poor Rub,” Peter said. He’d always felt bad for the man, hapless as he was, the defenseless target of Sully’s relentless ribbing. “How’s he doing?”
His father shrugged. “How would you be doing?”
Again Peter pictured the woman in question, and again his father read his thought. “She was actually pretty nice when you got to know her,” he offered.
“I don’t doubt it.”
“And being married to Rub can’t have been easy,” Sully added.
“You would know,” Peter grinned. Because if Rub had been married to anybody these last thirty years, it was to Sully. Most nights he went home to Bootsie only when Sully told him to.
Sully was studying him now, apparently ready, finally, to address the fact of his presence. “Okay,” he said, “what gives?”
“As in?”
“As in, why are you here?”
Peter took a sip of coffee. He was, he realized, enjoying this. “I live here.”
“Since when?”
“Not long. A couple days. And not here, exactly. I rented an apartment in Schuyler.”
Sully scratched his stubble thoughtfully. “Why?”
“I like it there? There’s more going on? I might want to go to a movie or hear some live music.” He lowered his voice. “Get a decent cup of coffee.”
“Yeah, but you could live at Miss Beryl’s for free,” his father pointed out. Which never failed to make Peter smile. His father had owned the house for two decades.
“Compared to Brooklyn,” Peter explained, “the place I rented is practically free.”
“Suit yourself,” Sully conceded. “I’m just saying. There’s nobody in the upstairs flat. It’s yours if you want it. Or, if you wanted the downstairs, I could move back there. Makes no difference to me.”
Except it did matter, Peter knew. He’d moved downstairs reluctantly because the stairs had become too much for him.
“No, I’ll be fine in Schuyler,” Peter assured him. “Besides, I already signed the lease.”
Sully nodded at him, suspicious now. “What changed your mind? I just seem to recall you saying that after Will went off to grad school you were all done with this place.”
“I was. But then I heard you might need a chauffeur.”
“Right,” he said. “Somebody told you about my little accident?”
“I heard you had one. What happened?”
Sully paused, contemplating, Peter suspected, how best to make something that would happen only to him seem like it could happen to anybody. “You know how the parking lot out back of the Horse slopes down into the woods?”
