He shrugged. “They give me some pills.”
It was a very long light. After they’d been sitting there in silence for what seemed like forever, he said, “You look like you got something on your mind.” Because that’s exactly how she looked.
“Yeah?”
“Might as well go ahead and spill it.”
“Okay,” she said, studying him again, that direct look of hers making him squirm. “What would it cost to make you go away?”
“Go away where?” he said. Not that he had the slightest intention of doing any such thing. He was curious about what she might propose, though.
“We don’t have a lot of money,” she said. “The house has been refinanced twice for your daughter’s eye operations, and the restaurant…” She let that trail off. “But I might be able to put my hands on enough money to get you a one-way ticket out of Bath. Maybe a few bucks left over to give you a fresh start. First and last months’ rent on an apartment or something.”
“A fresh start where?” he said, still curious.
“You decide.”
“Schuyler?”
“That’s only three miles away, Roy. You’ve been arrested there half-a-dozen times. What kind of fresh start would that be?”
“Albany?”
“You’ve been arrested there, too.”
“Just the once.”
“Roy.”
“Far away, you mean, then.”
“That would be best.”
“For who?”
“Everybody.”
“I go far away, I don’t get to see my wife and kid.”
Ruth sighed. “It’s just the two of us here, okay? There’s no need for me to bullshit you, or for you to bullshit me. We both know you don’t care about Tina.”
“We do? We both know that?”
“Did you even send her a birthday card this year? You don’t have to answer, because I know you didn’t.”
“How was I supposed to buy her a birthday card when I was incarcerated?”
“You weren’t in jail then, Roy. See? That’s my point. You don’t even know when her birthday is. It was last week.” When he offered no rejoinder, she continued, “And you don’t have a wife. You have an ex-wife.”
The light finally changed and she made the turn, heading back toward town. Roy let her think he was considering the offer for a minute, then said, “Till death do us part. We said the words, her and me both. You was there.”
“She’s moved on, Roy. That’s what you need to do. If you stay here in Bath, this doesn’t end well.”
“You can see the future?”
“Enough to know she’s not coming back to you, Roy. Not ever.”
“She might.”
“No.”
“I guess we’ll just have to wait and see.”
“No. We don’t have to wait. It’s not like a roulette wheel. We don’t have to wait for it to stop spinning. You keep hurting her, Roy. Started out, you gave her a fat lip, then a shiner. Next you knocked out a tooth, then you broke her jaw. Last time you slammed her head into a concrete wall. You don’t need a crystal ball to see where this is headed. It ends when you kill her.”
“Me? Kill Janey?”
“Oh, you won’t mean to. You never mean to hurt her. But that doesn’t stop you from doing it. To hear you tell it, it’s more her fault than yours. She provokes you. Tells you to fuck off or calls you a name or something.”
“Girl’s got a mouth on, and that’s for true,” Roy conceded. “Maybe she’s the one you should be talking to. Tell her to shut it.”
“It’s you I’m talking to, Roy,” she said. “If I let you stay, I end up with a dead daughter, and you go back to prison for good. You understand what I’m saying? No winners.”
“If you let me stay.”
“Whatever you’re planning?” she said. “I can’t allow it. I won’t.”
They were in town now, and as his mother-in-law pulled into the Morrison Arms, Roy caught a glimpse of something shiny and red in the parking lot behind Gert’s. The old nigger who always sat in the lawn chair was waving his flag at them. Ruth waved back, then pulled into a parking space. Roy was curious to know what she thought his plan was. Women always claimed to know what he was thinking. Janey maintained she could watch thoughts scrolling across his forehead, which was bullshit. If she could do that, she’d know when to duck, and she never did. Ruth was different, though. She did often seem to know what was on his mind, more or less, and she never believed any of his bullshit. That was fine. Roy never expected her to. He mostly said things just to see how people would react. When it came to being taken seriously, he had low expectations. One of the paradoxes Roy had long ago stopped worrying about was that even though he didn’t expect people to believe anything he said, it stoked his rage when they didn’t. When he told them he was a changed man, why didn’t they pause, even for a second, to wonder if that might be true? Okay, sure, it wasn’t, but it could’ve been, right? To people like Sully and Ruth, he was just the one thing, when, for all they knew, he might’ve been something else, too. How could they be so damn sure?
“So, what kind of money we talkin’ about here?” he asked, keen to hear what she imagined it would take to buy him off. Also, how desperately she wanted to be rid of him. Which she would never be. His mind was made up on that score. That nasty chuckle she’d let escape on the phone guaranteed he was going nowhere.
“I could probably come up with three thousand,” she told him.
He put on what he hoped was a poker face. “Not much of a fresh start, is it?” he said. “That kind of money, you could start and be all done the same day.”
“It’s not a fortune,” Ruth allowed, “but it’s all I can offer you, and it’s free. I thought that might appeal to a man who hates honest work as much as you do. Somebody who never seems to have the price of a cup of coffee.”
“Five would be more interesting than three,” he said, though it wasn’t true. Five was just a bigger number, not a more interesting one. The only interesting part was how she’d react.
“I don’t have five to give you.”
“You could borrow it. You and Sully are still tight. He come into the old lady’s money…”
“I’m not asking Sully.”
He shook his head. “Just trying to help you get to five.”
“You should think about it, Roy.”
“The five or the three?”
“The three. I’ll look into the five, but it’s three I can offer you.”
“Suppose I was to take the three,” he said, enjoying himself now. “I’m not saying I will. But just suppose. I take the three and go someplace for that fresh start. Suppose I spend your three and find out I don’t like it there and come back.”
“The deal is you don’t come back.”
“Yeah, okay, but we’re just supposing, right? So suppose I get to thinking how much I preferred my stale ole life to my new fresh one. What’s to keep me from coming back?”
“We’re going to shake on it. You and I.”
“So it’s like my…word of honor.”
“Call it whatever you like, so long as you stay gone.”
“Something in this deal of yours kinda goes against human nature,” he said. “That’s what I’m getting at. Say you give me the three. Free money, like you say. But if I break my word and come back, maybe you’ll give me another three? Or this time maybe the five? Where’s my…what’s the word I’m looking for?”
“Incentive?”
“That’s it. That’s the word. My incentive to stay gone. I’m not saying I’d come back after we shook hands on it. But then again, I might.”
“Put it this way, Roy. It’s not really your word of honor I’d be putting my faith in. If you were ever dumb enough to come back here—”