“I don’t know,” Peter admitted. “They’re going to keep her at Schuyler overnight. You know how she is. She’s not any different, really, just worse.”
“You could probably help her out more,” Sully ventured.
“Not really,” Peter said. “The world doesn’t do what she wants it to, and she gets frustrated.”
This was the same conclusion Sully had come to thirty-five years ago, of course, and Peter couldn’t make his mother happy or content anymore than Sully had been able to all those years ago. Still, it now seemed cowardly that Sully had not tried harder, endured more. It was one thing to realize you were shoveling shit against the tide, another to give up the enterprise before you got soiled. Especially when, in other respects, you intended to keep shoveling different shit against other tides. “It sure doesn’t take much to get her started anymore,” Sully reflected, recalling that the mere sight of Rub in her driveway had set her off. Or maybe it had been the knowledge that he himself had been inside, that he had invaded her home. Contaminate it, was what she’d said.
“There was more to it than you know,” Peter said. “Grandpa went into the hospital this morning. He couldn’t breathe, even with the oxygen.”
Sully thought about Robert Halsey, the way he’d looked at Thanksgiving, and made a mental note to shoot himself before he ever got like that. “When he dies, you’ll be all your mother’s got.”
“She’s got Ralph.”
“She doesn’t count Ralph. You know that.”
“I do,” Peter said. “Ralph’s the one I worry about.”
“He doesn’t look too good, does he,” Sully admitted.
“He’s a wreck,” Peter said. “If I ever get my shit together, it’ll be for him, not her. He’s been a good father.”
“And there’s Will,” Sully ventured.
“Kids are resilient,” Peter said. “Look at me.”
“I am looking at you,” Sully said to the darkness.
“Well,” he said. “If it’ll ease your mind, this isn’t anything serious upstairs.”
Sully nodded. He’d gathered that much. Seen it when Peter had smiled at Toby Roebuck’s pronunciation of the word “library.” Peter had too much of Vera in him, too much educational reinforcement ever to fall in love with someone who said “lie-berry.”
“I’m glad to hear it,” Sully said, because he was.
“I bet you are,” Peter said. Even in the dark, Sully could tell his son was grinning. Maybe that was all Toby Roebuck meant to him. They’d argued over a woman, and he’d won the argument.
“I was thinking of her husband,” Sully said, surprised to discover that this was true. “I’m not sure he’ll be able to spare her.”
“He’s not out of the woods yet,” Peter said. “There’s some woman in Schuyler.”
Sully snorted. “Carl’s got women everywhere, not just Schuyler.”
“It’s not Carl I was talking about.”
It took Sully a moment, but somehow this knowledge was easier to process in the dark. The possibility wouldn’t have occurred to him in a hundred years, but now that the words had been spoken in the intimate dark, he saw they must be true “Why, then?” he finally said.
“Why what?”
“Why are you doing what you’re doing?”
“I have no idea,” his son said, and for once it sounded like simple, unadorned truth. No irony, no sarcasm, no anger.
“Well,” Sully sighed, opening the door onto the porch. “It’s time I went home.”
He was on the top step when Peter said, “You going by Bowdon Street tonight?”
“I hadn’t planned to. Why?”
“That dog needs to be fed.”
“Shit. I forgot all about him,” Sully admitted.
“Hold that thought.”
“He’s not really my dog,” Sully said in his own defense.
“Right,” Peter said, his usual sarcasm back again. “Not really your dog. And the house he’s locked up in isn’t really your house. You’re a free man.”
“You’re damn right, son,” Sully said. “Don’t forget. Lock the door.”
Sully waited to hear the bolt fall into place behind him before he crossed the street to where Carl Roebuck’s car idled, a plume of white exhaust trailing off down the street. When he got close, Carl rolled down the driver’s side window halfway and said, “Hello, schmucko.”
“You follow me over here?” Sully wondered.
“I did,” Carl admitted. “I forgot my cigarettes, too. Let me take one.”
Sully shook a cigarette up through the opening in the pack. Carl took it. “Let me have the whole pack. I’m going to stick around for a while,” he said, studying Sully in the pale light of the street lamp. He tossed the pack of cigarettes onto the dash. There was just enough light for Sully to see that Carl’s jaw was a balloon, his grin hideous. “You look like a man who’s just discovered the cruel truth of life,” Carl ventured.
Something stirred inside the dark car, and Carl looked down at his lap. “It’s okay, darlin’. Go back to sleep,” he said. “I’ll roll up the window in a second.”
From inside, a murmur and then silence.
“You gotta see this,” Carl whispered after a moment, reaching behind him to flip on the dome light. He left it on for only a second, but that was long enough. At first Sully thought the girl Didi had simply fallen asleep with her head in Carl’s lap, but then saw that she had his flaccid penis in her mouth like a pacifier. “Isn’t that sweet?” Carl said.
“Adorable,” Sully said. “I hope she doesn’t have a nightmare.”
“You hope.”
“I’m going home,” Sully said. “I’m tired, and you’re too fucked up to talk to, even.”
“Ain’t it the truth,” Carl said.
“Don’t go upstairs,” Sully told him.
“Okay,” Carl said.
“I mean it,” Sully warned him.
“I know you mean it.”
“Then don’t.”
Didi sat up and rubbed her eyes. “It’s cold,” she said sleepily, shivering. “Hi, Sully.”
“Now look what you did,” Carl said, rolling up the window.
Sully would have liked to warn Carl one more time, but he was too exhausted to make him roll down the window again.
On the way to Rub’s an odd thing happened. The day’s bizarre events unreeling through his mind, Sully missed his turn, went one block too far and turned there, not realizing his mistake and suffering a stunning loss of orientation as a result. This dark street was clearly one he knew, a street in the town he’d lived his entire life, yet despite its familiarity he suddenly had no idea where he was. How had these houses come to be on Rub’s street? Where had the house that Rub and Bootsie rented disappeared to? He squinted in the dark at each house he passed, certain that theirs would appear any moment and his sense of equilibrium would be restored. When it didn’t he stopped in the middle of the street and just sat, thankful that it was late, that there was no one around to witness this, that he’d be spared the humiliation of rolling down his window and asking someone for directions. In the end there was nothing to do but back up, and so he did, understanding his mistake only when he’d backed all the way to the intersection and saw the street sign. A minute later when he pulled into the driveway next to the small two-family house where Rub and Bootsie lived, he gave the horn three short, light taps, his signal for Rub to come out and get instructions for tomorrow. Bootsie had made bail by calling her sister in Schuyler, and rumor had it she’d left the courthouse on the warpath. Sully had no intention of encountering her tonight if he could help it.