“What I was thinking about was giving it to Peter,” he said, wondering what Ruth’s reaction to this idea would be. She was alternately solicitous and resentful of Sully’s son, whom she had never met.
“That doesn’t solve your problem,” Ruth pointed out.
“I’d give it to you if there was a way,” he smiled. “It might make Zack suspicious if I gave you a house, though. People have been telling him about us for twenty years, and that might just convince him they weren’t all lying.”
“Thanks anyway,” Ruth smiled, “but I’ve already got a decrepit house.”
“What about if I sold it and slipped you the money somehow? You could use it for Gregory’s college. Zack wouldn’t have to know.”
“It’s a sweet offer, but Gregory’s my responsibility,” Ruth said.
The way she emphasized her son’s name made clear that they were going to talk about her daughter—their daughter, Ruth liked to think—which meant they were destined to enter the old argument. The girl had Zack’s features written all over her, though Ruth wouldn’t admit it. “I’m sure,” she kept telling Sully. Most of the time Sully was just as sure of the opposite. Ruth just had some woman’s need for Janey to be theirs, not hers and Zack’s.
There’d only been one time Sully had seriously doubted his conclusion, and that had been a year ago spring, a few months after his accident. He’d gone to the IGA and stood in Ruth’s checkout line as the shifts were changing. When she finished ringing up Sully’s purchases—a tube of toothpaste, a pack of cigarettes—she rang out her register and they walked out together. “Here’s somebody I want you to meet,” Ruth said when a loud rusty old Cadillac pulled up alongside and tooted.
Ruth towed him over and was about to introduce him to Janey when she noticed the small child sitting next to her mother in the front seat. “Where the hell’s the car seat I bought you?” Ruth said, immediately angry.
“I figured you’d notice that, first goddamn thing, before hello even,” Janey said.
“It cost sixty bucks,” Ruth told her. “You’re damn right I noticed.”
“Guess Who sold it,” Janey informed her. Sully couldn’t help smiling to himself at the fact that Ruth’s daughter had picked up her mother’s terminology for referring to her husband.
“I buy her a car seat and he sells it?”
“Well, it’s not like I didn’t warn you,” the girl said, without apparent sympathy for her mother’s position. “Buy another one and see if the same thing doesn’t happen, you idiot.”
Ruth was glaring at her daughter now.
“Don’t look at me like that,” Janey told her mother. “Wasn’t me that sold it. All I did was inherit my mother’s bad judgment in men.” She eyed Sully suspiciously as she said this, as if to suggest he’d been put there in her field of vision at that moment to illustrate her point.
Which did not escape her mother. “Say hi to Sully,” Ruth told her. “Don Sullivan, actually.”
The girl shook Sully’s hand like a man would. “Hi,” she said, adding, to Ruth’s apparent surprise, “Heard a lot about you.”
“Yeah,” her mother said. “Well, small towns …”
“Right.” Janey grinned. Then to her mother, “You want a ride home or not?”
Ruth, peering inside the car again, ignored this. “You want to come see Grandma?” she said.
“Go ahead,” Janey told the child, who climbed over her mother’s lap, then to the open window and Ruth’s waiting arms. Only then did Sully see the child’s eye and feel something inside him lurch.
“Listen, I’ve got to run,” he’d told Ruth.
“Yeah, I know,” Ruth said. “I’ll see you sometime.”
Later that night she’d called him at The Horse. By then he’d had time to consider why he’d seen himself in the child’s deformity, why his heart had leapt to responsibility even as it counseled flight.
“I didn’t mean to embarrass you this afternoon,” she’d told him.
“You didn’t,” he lied.
“Like hell.”
“I have a son, Ruth,” he told her. “No daughters. No granddaughters.” Then he hung up on her.
He and Ruth had “been good” for a long while after that.
“My landlady tells me I had visitors yesterday,” he ventured now, since the subject was going to come up anyway.
Ruth nodded. “Crisis situation. You did offer, as I recall.”
Sully nodded. “They kind of threw old Beryl for a loop, is all,” he explained.
“Why?” Ruth frowned, instantly annoyed to learn this.
Sully shrugged, unsure how best to explain to Ruth that her daughter was a raucous, often crude young woman, something Ruth, who could also be raucous and crude, never seemed to notice. In truth, it wasn’t something Sully would have taken much notice of had it not been in connection with his landlady. “It doesn’t take much. She’s an old woman.”
Ruth seemed satisfied with this explanation. “Well, I wouldn’t have sent them over there if I could have thought of someplace else. I thought Roy was here in town.”
She explained then that Janey had finally decided to leave her husband. She’d snuck out when he was deer hunting. She had a job lined up in Albany. Also an apartment, as of the first of the month. Roy had discovered her gone and threatened to come get her, beat the shit out of her and bring her back home just as soon as he got his deer, which they were hoping would take a few more days. Once Janey got moved into her place in Albany, she was confident Roy would never find her.
A dime-store hood from Mohawk, Roy had spent his youth in and out of reform schools and jail. According to rumors Sully’d heard, he’d beaten a bartender half to death in the empty parking lot in back of a Schuyler Springs bar he’d been tossed out of earlier in the evening. Since there were no witnesses, Janey’s husband had walked. “Of course everybody told her he was no good when she married him, if I remember.”
“Right, Sully,” Ruth said. “You’ve never made a mistake. Is that what I’m hearing? That you’ve never ignored good advice? That you’ve never been stubborn and done something just because everybody told you not to? If anybody in this world ought to understand her behavior, it’s the man who won’t admit he owns the house he owns.”
“Here we are back at the house,” Sully observed.
“We’re not talking houses,” Ruth insisted. “We’re talking bullheadedness and who inherited it from whom.”
“You’re sure she got it from me,” Sully said. “Not from you, for instance. Or Zack.”
“Nope.” Ruth smiled. “This kind of stubbornness is so dumb it’s got your name on it. Who do we know that had a chance to be partners in Tip Top Construction and said no? Who could be sitting pretty now if he didn’t have rocks in his head? Who all these years later won’t admit what a dope he was?”
They’d been down this road too, of course. It was one of Ruth’s favorite arguments against him. It was true, of course, that Kenny Roebuck had offered him a sweat equity partnership in Tip Top Construction when they were both younger men. And it was also true that Sully probably should have said yes. Still, Sully didn’t see much margin in regret. If he allowed himself the luxury of lamenting that he hadn’t become a partner in Tip Top Construction, he’d just start regretting other things, and once he started in that direction there’d be no stopping. He’d end up a maudlin old fraud like his father, telling his nurses and anyone else who would listen that he’d lived a man’s life and made a man’s mistakes. No, Sully’d decided long ago to abstain from all but the most general forms of regret. He allowed himself the vague wish that things had turned out differently, without blaming himself that they hadn’t, any more than he’d blamed himself when his 1-2-3 triple never ran like it should at least once. It didn’t pay to second-guess every one of life’s decisions, to pretend to wisdom about the past from the safety of the present, the way so many people did when they got older. As if, given a second chance to live their lives, they’
d be smarter. Sully didn’t know too many people who got noticeably smarter over the course of a lifetime. Some made fewer mistakes, but in Sully’s opinion that was because they couldn’t go quite so fast. They had less energy, not more virtue; fewer opportunities to screw up, not more wisdom. It was Sully’s policy to stick by his mistakes, which was what he did now. “I was pretty smart to say no, as it turned out,” he told Ruth. “If I owned half of Tip Top Construction and saw Carl pissing it away, I’d have to shoot the son of a bitch. Then I’d end up in jail. As it is, I’m walking around a free man and I don’t care what he does.”
“Walking is right,” Ruth reminded him, “which brings us back to your needing a car.”
“I’ve got the El Camino right outside,” Sully reminded her.
“Terrific,” Ruth said. “So instead of owning the company car, you get to borrow it.”
“I’d rather borrow it,” Sully told her truthfully, explaining that he’d already gotten a ticket in the El Camino this morning. “I put it in the glove compartment for Carl. Be a nice little surprise for him.”
“And what do you call that?” Ruth shook her head in disbelief. It was amazing how quickly Sully could exasperate her. “Having other people pay your tickets.”
“With Carl Roebuck I call it justice,” Sully grinned.
Ruth got angrily to her feet, started dressing. As she feared, her good mood had not survived a serious discussion with Sully. “I’ll tell Janey that’s what you call it.”
Sully blinked. “Were we talking about Janey just now?”
“One of us was.”
Sully sighed, swung his legs out of bed, searched for his shorts, which were somewhere in the tangle of bedding. “Well, as usual, you lost me,” he admitted.
“It’s never hard, once the subject of responsibility comes up,” Ruth told him, hooking her bra angrily.
Sully threw up his hands. “All I’d like to know is what you want, Ruth. One second we’re talking about traffic tickets, the next we’re talking about Janey. Is there something you want me to do for her? Is there something she wants me to do? I need a clue here, Ruth.”
“You might think about her, Sully,” Ruth explained, furious now. Maybe she wasn’t always clear in her expression, but she suspected there was something wrong with this man that he couldn’t follow connections that struck her as obvious. She suspected his blindness was intentional, that always making her explain was merely a delaying tactic. Probably he was hoping she’d be unable to put her feelings into words, a failure that would allow him to continue drifting. Trying to get Sully to see things her way was like trying to put a cat into a bag—there was always a leg left over. “You might even worry about her. That’s normal for people who care about each other.”
He was standing now with his back to her, but she could still see the swelling of his knee. “It’s the reason I worry about you, for all the good it does me.”
Sully stepped into his shorts before turning around to face her. “I never asked you to worry about me,” he said. “In fact, I’d prefer you didn’t.”
Ruth fought the tears she felt coming, finished dressing as quickly as she could, while Sully searched for his undershirt. “It’s really your plan to end up alone, isn’t it?” she said.
“It might be best,” Sully admitted.
At the motel room door, she turned back to him. “You should have forgiven your father,” she told him. “And I should have known what it meant when you didn’t.”
When she was gone, Sully studied the slammed door curiously. Somehow his father had sneaked back into the conversation. Even dead he was a crafty son of a bitch.
“You again,” Sully said, sliding onto the bar stool next to Rub, who was nursing a beer.
“Where’d you go?” Rub wondered. “I went over to Carl’s but you weren’t there.”
“I must’ve already left,” Sully explained.
“Where?”
“None of your business, Rub,” Sully told him. “There’s no law says I’ve got to spend every hour of every day with you, is there?”
Rub shrugged.
“Is there?” Sully said.
“You get mad when you want me and I’m not around,” he reminded Sully.
This was true. “Anyhow, here you are.”
“We got work?”
“Carl wasn’t there.”
“He’s in back, playing cards.” Rub nodded, indicating the big dining room, the one Tiny closed during the off-season.
“That explains it,” Sully said.
Birdie came over. “You had a call right after you left,” she said.
“Miles Anderson?”
“Miles Anderson. He wants you to call him back ‘at your very first convenience.’ ” Birdie imitated Miles Anderson’s speech. “Here’s his number.”
Sully took the slip of paper Birdie handed him and stuffed it into his pocket.
“Aren’t you going to call him?” Rub wanted to know.
“Not right now,” he said, though he knew that was exactly what he should do. That was the trouble with stupid streaks. You often knew the right thing to do, you just couldn’t locate the will.
“How come?”
“Because right now it’s not convenient,” Sully told him, confusing Rub, to whom the empty moment looked as convenient as could be. “Because I waited an hour for the bastard and now he can wait for me. Because right now I’d rather play poker. How about you?”
Rub studied the dregs of his beer sadly. “Bootsie took my money,” he confessed. “I never should have gone by the dime store,” he admitted.
“How does she always know when I’ve paid you?” Sully marveled.
“She always guesses, somehow,” Rub said, himself mystified. “Don’t do no good to lie to her, either.”
“I thought you were working this afternoon,” Carl Roebuck said when he looked up and saw Sully. There were four players in the game seated at a round table directly beneath a chandelier. In addition to Carl, the others were all men Sully knew. They could all afford to lose, too, which was good, provided they could be coerced to do it.
“I thought I was too,” Sully said, pulling up a free chair. “Just as well, though. This looks like a better career move.”
“I wouldn’t be too sure,” one of the other men said. “This son of a bitch is winning every other hand.”
Everyone looked at Carl Roebuck, who did not look like a man ashamed of winning.
“Mr. Lucky,” one of the men said.
Sully took out some money in order to make himself truly welcome. “His secret is, he cheats,” Sully said. “Luckily I know all his tricks, which means he’s done cheating for today.”
Carl sold Sully some chips. “You could be roofing the house on Belvedere, you know.”
Sully nodded. “Just like you to send a one-legged man up on a roof. I fall off on my head and then you don’t have to pay me all the money you owe me.”
“Have it your way.” Carl dealt cards around the table. “Even with one leg you’d be safer up there on the roof than you are here, though.”
“Can I play?” Rub said. He’d been standing just inside the doorway since they came in, eyeing the one remaining free chair. These were not men Rub presumed in the presence of.
“No, Rub,” Carl said.
“Nope,” the others agreed.
Rub looked at the floor.
“Sure, Rub,” Carl said. “Jesus. Can’t you tell when people are pulling your chain?”
In fact, Rub couldn’t. Sometimes these same men refused to let him play, claiming he stank. He wasn’t sure how he was supposed to tell it was a joke now, when most of the time it wasn’t. “You didn’t deal me in,” Rub noted when he’d taken the chair next to Sully.
“You weren’t playing when the hand started,” Carl explained.
“I was standing right there,” Rub said, pointing at the air he had so recently displaced.
“How can I deal you in when you’re standing over there?
” Carl said. To illustrate, he sent a card whistling through the air toward the doorway. “That what you wanted me to do?”
“Misdeal,” somebody said.
“I had a pair of wired sevens,” one man complained angrily. “That was a deliberate misdeal.”
Carl turned over his own hole cards, revealing a pair of tens.
“Mr. Lucky,” the man who had said this before repeated, then whistled the theme song.
Rub went and fetched the card Carl had tossed across the room, then sat back down. Carl reshuffled. Sully cut. Carl dealt, skipping Rub again.
“What about me?” Rub said.
“Sony, Rub,” Carl said. “Did you want to play?”
Everybody tossed their cards back in, groaned.
“Make up your mind,” Carl said. “You want to play or not?”
“In about one minute I’m going to rip your head off,” Sully said.
Carl shuffled, dealt again. “I told you you’d be happier roofing. Some people don’t know what’s good for them.”
The man to Rub’s left opened. Rub, who was a surprisingly good poker player, raised.
“Did it ever occur to you that you might be one of them?” Sully asked, calling Rub’s bet.
“I know exactly what’s good for me,” Carl said, tossing his cards into the center of the table. Two others followed, leaving just the man who had opened, Rub and Sully. Sully consulted his hole cards, which made, together with his first two up cards, a Sausalito straight—two, four, six, eight.
Tiny had set up an old space heater near the table. Its whirring reminded Sully of the sound of approaching traffic. No doubt about it, the smart thing to do would be to fold. On the other hand, Sully considered, he’d come this far.
Miles Anderson called back three times during the afternoon. The last time Sully, an even hundred dollars down in the game, took the call.
“I thought we were going to meet today,” Miles Anderson said, his voice a study in impatience.