What Sully gradually had come to comprehend was his son’s unhappiness, rooted deeply in his sense of personal failure. That made little sense to Sully, who thought Peter had done all right for himself. After all, he taught at Schuyler’s prestigious liberal arts college, and three years earlier, when the editor of the school’s glossy but failing alumni magazine had retired, Peter had taken it over and breathed new life into the publication. Also his movie, book and music reviews were regular features in Albany’s alternative newspaper. Though now middle aged, he was still good looking, and his easy charm a steady magnet for mostly younger women. And he’d raised a son who’d graduated in January, six months ahead of his high school classmates, and spent the spring semester taking college courses in Schuyler. In the fall he would enroll as a second-semester freshman at Penn on a full scholarship. Much to be proud of here, Sully figured.
Peter, of course, saw all this through a different lens. His once-promising career had never recovered from being denied tenure at the state university that had originally hired him. Now, as an adjunct instructor, he was a distinctly second-class academic, and thanks to the unforgiving nature of that world he would forever remain one. His salary was a fraction of what his full-time, tenured colleagues were making, and he had no job security. He was writing reviews, not books or scripts. His marriage had failed, and thanks to Charlotte, his vindictive ex-wife, he seldom saw his troubled middle son. Nor did it take long for the new women in his life to realize that, beneath his easy charm, he was bitter and discontented.
What Sully had the hardest time doping out was how Peter expected leaving Bath would improve any of this. He understood that with Will heading off to college, things were changing, and it made sense that he’d want to live close to his son. And, sure, there were more teaching opportunities in an urban setting, but if he moved to New York City, which seemed to be the plan, there’d also be more competition, wouldn’t there? And his cost of living would easily triple, probably even worse. But when Sully’d raised these issues, Peter — no surprise — took it poorly. “Dad,” he said, “once Will’s gone, why would I stay here? To take care of you in your old age?” Which hadn’t been what Sully was suggesting at all. He’d wanted Peter to understand that there was no need to rush off if he didn’t want to, that Sully himself was content to remain in the trailer if Peter wanted to stay on in Miss Beryl’s large downstairs flat. That way Will could come home on vacations. In fact, he was willing to sign the house over to Peter then and there. It’d be his one day anyway, maybe sooner than he imagined. “What would I do with this house, Dad?” Sell it when the time seems right, Sully had suggested, but Peter had just smiled that knowing smile of his that always annoyed Sully to the nth degree, the one that implied Sully was trying to put one over on him.
On the other hand, could he really blame Peter for being suspicious of his motives? If Carl Roebuck ever moved out of the upstairs flat, which Sully himself had occupied while his landlady was alive, it would make sense for him to move back in, and he could see how that might make Peter nervous. Maybe he had no intention of letting Peter or anybody else take care of him, but his son couldn’t know that. He was probably thinking ahead to the day when he’d fall and break a hip or have a stroke and end up in a wheelchair. He couldn’t blame Peter for wanting to be far away when any of that shit happened.
Still, if Peter moved to New York, Sully would miss hearing his footfalls on Miss Beryl’s porch and the ticking of his car engine as it cooled in the drive, miss having him show up unexpectedly and slide onto that stool at the Horse. And of course he’d miss his grandson, too. He actually had more in common with Will, which his father no doubt sensed. The boy may have inherited Peter’s intelligence, good looks and charm, but he was also tough, a talented three-sport athlete. In his junior year, he was the starting middle linebacker on the varsity football team, and Sully had secretly smiled when it became clear that Will enjoyed hitting people as much as he had himself. The boy’s tackles were always clean, never intended to injure, but they loosened molars just the same. What pleased him most about the boy’s physicality was that when he’d arrived in Bath a decade earlier he’d been afraid of his own shadow.
Peter seemed proud of his son’s toughness, too, but not, unless Sully was mistaken, unambiguously so. And while he was happy that Will loved Sully, he seemed less anxious for his son to admire or emulate him. Any youthful enthusiasm he expressed for how his grandfather navigated the world Peter considered his duty to temper, lest the romance of the tool belt and barstool take root. Indeed, by leaving Bath before Will reached legal drinking age, Peter might be trying to ensure that the stool next to Sully’s at the Horse would not be part of Will’s inheritance.
All of this, Sully supposed, was what Ruth objected to, the reason she couldn’t quite, as she put it, warm to his son.
“If you’re in a funk, why not go away for a while? Take a vacation,” she suggested. “A change of scenery might be just what you need.”
“A vacation from what? I’m retired.”
She shrugged. “I don’t know. From Bath. From the Horse. From this place.” Here she made a sweeping gesture. “Maybe from me. From Peter, for that matter. How can he miss you if you won’t go away?”
How could she miss him if he wouldn’t go away was what she also seemed to be saying. “Where would I go?” he said, curious about what she had in mind.
“Pick a place,” she said. “Aruba.”
He snorted. “What the fuck would I do in Aruba?”
“What are you doing here?”
“You mean in Bath?”
“No, I mean here. As in this minute. This restaurant.”
Sully’s need to speak in his own defense took him by surprise. “I thought I was helping out.” Helping her open the place most mornings, filling in at the grill or busing dishes, as needed. “But if I’m in your way…”
“You’re in your own way, Sully,” she told him. “As always. You know I appreciate the help but…” This time when she touched his cheek, the effect wasn’t nearly so pleasant, perhaps because he was pretty sure this gesture’s source was pity.
“Okay, Aruba it is,” he said. “You can come along, since you think it’s such a great idea. Let Janey run this show for a week or two.” She could, too. Janey might be a royal pain in the ass, but she had her mother’s work ethic. Three or four day shifts a week at Hattie’s and another four or five nights at Applebee’s, the occasional stint out at the Horse when one of Birdie’s regulars called in sick.
Ruth was grinning at him now. “Should we invite my husband?”
“I wouldn’t, personally, but if it’s important to you…”
She massaged her temples, as if at the approach of a migraine. “He’s been acting so weird lately.”
“Really? How?”
“He’s being thoughtful. Almost…considerate,” she explained. “It’s messing with my head. I’ll look up and there he is, staring at me, like he’s just noticed I’m there.” She shrugged, and her expression looked for all the world like shame, though it couldn’t be, could it? In all the years they’d been lovers, Ruth had never given any indication of being ashamed of the no-good they were up to. She didn’t hate her husband, and even early on, when she and Sully were hot and heavy, she never talked about leaving him. But neither, so far as Sully knew, had she ever felt like she was betraying the man. It was Sully himself who sometimes felt guilty, because Zack, though a total doofus, wasn’t a bad guy. “I’m trying to be nicer to him,” she admitted. “I tried the same thing thirty years ago and it didn’t work, but it might now.”