Everybody's Fool

“A banner was strung across Main Street for the Memorial Day weekend. THE NEW NORTH BATH: PARTNERING FOR TOMORROW. This was the brainstorm of Gus Moynihan, the town’s new mayor, who’d been swept into power the previous year on a tidal wave of born-again optimism, more than a decade after the demise of the Ultimate Escape Fun Park, an economic catastrophe that had ushered in a golden age of self-loathing and fiscal pessimism deeply rooted in two centuries worth of invidious comparison with Schuyler Springs, its better-looking twin and age-old rival.”

North Bath is constantly torn between pessimism and hope for the future. The Ultimate Escape Fun Park initiative, for which Beryl Peoples’s son, Clive Junior, was largely responsible, was a central focus of the first novel in the North Bath Trilogy, Nobody’s Fool. The hyperbole of the aborted theme park’s name is ironic given the town’s drabness and its disenchanted residents. The similar contrast between North Bath and its gentrified, affluent neighbor, Schuyler Springs, will be a recurrent motif throughout the novel.

“‘And what of God?’ Reverend Tunic wanted to know.

Good question, Raymer thought.

‘Does God love the shirker?’

Yes. He loves us all.

‘No!’ Tunic emphatically disagreed. ‘God does not.’

Well, fuck him, then, Raymer thought, giddy with heat and blasphemy. Shame on God.

‘Because a shirker is a coward.’

No, God is.

‘A shirker always assumes that the difficult duty of daily living is someone else’s, that the thunderclouds which darken the sun and obscure the light of reason are someone else’s problem.’

But why should clouds be anybody’s responsibility?

‘No, friends, Barton Flatt was no shirker. Shirking is not his legacy. And as he journeys to his final reward…’

Dirt? Decomposition Worms?

‘…we honor him one last time by reaffirming in his presence...”

His absence, surely.

‘…our faith. In God. In America. And in our fair city.”

As Raymer feels increasingly unwell in the heat at Judge Flatt’s funeral, he silently but mutinously answers back to Reverend Tunic’s sermon. While Tunic preaches civic responsibility based on the religious premise of reward in the afterlife, Raymer, who is undergoing an existential crisis, sees nothing after death except “dirt,” “decomposition” and “worms.” The complete inappropriateness of the preacher’s eulogy to the sardonic Judge Flatt, and the repeated references to the troubled town of North Bath as “our fair city,” are tragi-comic irony that reinforces Raymer’s vision of life as futile and absurd. While asserting the “presence” of the judge whose dead body lies before him, the reverend inadvertently foregrounds his absence—the insurmountable remove of the dead from the living.

“A new life. It would be nice to come home some afternoon and find a whole new life. Yet how crappy a wish was that? Pretty crappy, she had to admit. Was she actually wishing her husband dead? Not really, or at least she didn’t think so. What she had in mind was more along the lines of a parallel universe in which he’d never existed in the first place.”

The theme of Alternate Identities and Fate is recurrent throughout the novel. Here, Ruth guiltily imagines life “in a parallel universe” where she could be free of the everyday responsibilities of her family and her frustrations.

“Whenever she allowed herself to contemplate her granddaughter’s future, it was always the physical disability she focused on, and that wasn’t remotely fair. It reminded her of that story kids still had to read in school, the one where the guy kills an old man because of his ‘vulture eye,’ then chops him up and hides him beneath the floorboards. That’s what people wanted to do with abnormalities, put them somewhere out of sight. Under the floor or back in the steamy kitchen, where people wouldn’t have to see them. This sweet, slow girl. Hide her well enough and long enough and maybe she won’t ask the question you don’t know how to answer: Who will ever want to love me?”

As she considers her granddaughter, Ruth is torn between protectiveness about Tina’s disabilities and a certain degree of guilty resentment of the fact that she must care for this child. Ruth is pessimistic for the girl’s future, which causes her to alternate between tender melancholy and brutal bitterness.

“You are a fool […] and so am I. So’s just about everybody we know, dude. I mean, look around. Who’s not a damn fool most of the time?”

The word “fool” features in the titles of all three North Bath Trilogy novels. While the characters in these comic novels undeniably make foolish choices and perform foolish actions, Richard Russo’s absurdist landscape also suggests that all human activity is, to some extent, foolish.

“Because he knew from personal experience that the world was rational until it wasn’t, after which all bets were off. When, without warning, the world pivoted, it became in that instant unrecognizable. There you are, cruising along, confident in your knowledge of how things work, until one afternoon you come home and there’s your beloved wife on the stairs, her forehead seemingly stapled to the bottom step, the whole of her defying gravity. Suddenly you understand how wrong you’ve been about every last fucking thing, and that you have little choice but to adjust to this terrible new reality. What can’t be undeniably is and will be forevermore. Except here, too, you’re wrong. Because gradually, after the shock wears off, the world returns to its familiar old habits, seemingly satisfied to have thrown you for a giant loop and content to await the return of your compliance so it can slip a venomous snake into your damn sock drawer, thereby demonstrating yet again that it, not you, is in charge and always will be, you dumb fuck.”

In the wake of his wife’s Becka’s freak-accident death, Raymer developed a sense of destiny as inescapable and of the world as cruelly absurd and arbitrary. Now, this fatalism has intensified with the new and bizarre risk posed by the escaped snakes. Raymer is resigned to powerlessness and futility, giving up any claims of agency to happenstance: “it, not you, is in charge and always will be, you dumb fuck.”

“An odd sensation, not unlike vertigo, like something essential had been hewn in two. He’d entered the cemetery as Douglas Raymer, a man who for a very long time, maybe his whole life, had been going doggedly through the motions. Now he felt a second presence, as if the skin and bones that has until then belonged to him, and him alone, now played host to another. Douglas Raymer, wholly familiar, was still there, the same boy Miss Beryl had thrust books at, that had been bullied by boys like Roy Purdy and later mocked by scuffaws like Sully and ridiculed from the bench by Judge Flatt. Who had run for public office on the promise that he wouldn’t be happy until those he was serving were unhappy. A fool, face up to it. A fool and a milquetoast who was forever banging on about being a better cop, a better husband, a better man.

Strange that he should feel so familiar with the second presence even before being introduced, as if he’d known this ‘other’ all his life. Call him…what? Dougie, Raymer decided, because the presence seemed younger, like a kid brother. A mean one. The thing about his Dougie? He absolutely did not give a shit.”

After being struck by lightning, Raymer’s personality is sundered into the idealistic, civically conscientious “fool” Douglas, and the carefree, youthful, cruel and egocentric Dougie. Although Raymer has been a responsible citizen, pursuing the improvement of North Bath against the odds, this self-centered alter-ego is familiar to him—Dougie has always been present inside of Raymer on some level.

“It was something the way things kept grinding with no apparent reason or need, indifferent to life and death and all else, too. He thought about that stopwatch Will had now returned to him; its second hand just kept ticking away, seemingly content with its circular journey, forever in the same direction. That said, the mechanical world probably wasn’t so different from its living inhabitants, most of whom, Sully included, went about their lives, most days, taking it all for granted. His own happiness, such as it was, had always seemed rooted in his willingness to let each second, minute, hour and day predict the next, today no different from yesterday except in its particulars, which didn’t amount to much.”

Sully is looking at the stopwatch that he originally gave his grandson Will as a device for calming himself down when he was frightened by his parents’ arguing. However, this grandfatherly memento no longer holds the same sentimental meaning—Will has returned the watch, seemingly rejecting Sully’s presence in his life. Sully here considers how habit and repetition can help ward off the sensations of fear and hopelessness caused by the inexorable passage of time.

“Maybe Bath was bad luck. Out at Hilldale the dead were resurfacing after decades in the ground, a triumph of the past over the present. How could you expect people to imagine a better future when Great-Great-Grandma Rose launched herself out of the poisoned earth, seemingly in protest. In town the ground was so full of yellow pus that when it rained, the air became not just disgusting but probably toxic. On what basis could you tell people they were wrong to concede defeat? Or convince them that every problem has a solution when those you offer turn out to be so rickety and jerry-rigged that they tumble down in the street? How do you get a community to believe in itself, in its own fundamental goodness, when in its midst there are people who secretly fill apartments with illegal poisonous reptiles? How do you keep everyone else from peering into their own flawed hearts and seeing vipers stirring there?

The other thing that Karl had understood was that Gus would be unable to resist the challenge of fixing Alice. Not only would he want to repair what was wrong with her, he’d confuse his compassion for a damaged soul with love. Okay, he’d tried. Give himself that much credit. Like Bath, however, there was more wrong with Alice than he’d realized, and nothing he’d tried had worked. Though he hated to admit it, he’d bitten off more than he could chew, and now he was gagging. This sin had a name: pride. Nothing now remained but what pride goeth before.”

Gus is reflecting on his inevitable inadequacy in fulfilling his duties to his mentally ill wife and to the troubled community that he leads as mayor. In the face of the epochal decline suggested by events at Hilldale Cemetery and the Morrison Arms, Gus’s attempts at civic reform and improvement seem like nothing more than foolish hubris.

“In the fiction of these conversations, Alice never called anyone. He never heard her say, Hi, it’s me. I hope I haven’t caught you at a bad time. I was just thinking how long it’d been since we talked. No, it was always someone calling her. She was the needed one, the one who would listen without judging or arguing. The wise, trusted friend. The person you turn to when the chips are down. ‘You’re being too hard on yourself,’ he heard her say now. ‘I know how difficult it is,’ she continued, but the important thing is to remember you’re not alone. I’m right here.’”

Alice hallucinates that she is plays a supportive role within the community; despite being increasingly detached from reality because of her mental illness, she is still committed to the idea of neighborly bonds. The words of comfort she is offering (“You’re being too hard on yourself”; “You’re not alone. I’m right here”) are exactly what her over-stretched and disillusioned husband needs to hear; the sad irony is that Alice is not addressing him, but rather the deceased Becka.

“But mostly it’s us, Roy. People like you and me. We’re the ones get blamed. You know it’s true. Some rich lady? They don’t take her kid away. They take one look at me and say I’m unfit. They look at you and off you go to jail. Don’t that make you mad?”

Cora is reflecting on the extreme social injustice faced by those on the lowest socio-economic echelon of society, such as herself and Roy. While Roy is by far the least sympathetic character, the novel affords even him the dignity of contextualizing his brutality, some of which is the result of childhood privation and abuse. However, the novel suggests that most of Roy’s violence and sociopathy is a choice: Other characters, such as Rub and Sully, also come from similarly deprived backgrounds, but they maintain moral standards.

“On TV, one of the charismatic villains, dressed incongruously in a Stetson, is strolling past the crowded booths of the Paris stamp bazaar, himself clueless. All of a sudden he stops. There’s a quick series of shots, all close-ups of stamps, accompanied by pulsing music. Then right on the actor as he spins towards the camera. Eureka! Cary Grant’s observing all this from afar, still in the dark. Dumb fuck, Carl thought. Dumb, stupid fuck. Too dumb to live, really, though Carl knew he would. He doesn’t deserve Audrey. Or any woman, really. Well past his prime, he’s making do on charm from his own youthful self.”

In his mental tirade against the ageing Cary Grant in the movie Charade, Carl marks his own deterioration against that of the onscreen character. He echoes Raymer’s words when he calls Grant and implicitly himself a “dumb fuck” for failing to understand the solution to the movie’s mystery.

“Somehow he managed to bring out both the best and worst in his host, making Raymer at once a better cop and a much worse human being.”

Raymer’s alter-ego Dougie is intellectually sharper and more ruthless. At the same time, he lacks any empathy or sense of responsibility to others. The moral imperatives that drive Douglas Raymer to strive to better the lives of his community have worn him down mentally, limiting his ability to fulfill his responsibilities and resulting in the creation of this rebellious persona who shrugs off ties in favor of self-centeredness.

“Invent some crazy-ass story about how it was special water that would cure whatever the fuck ailed you. People wanted to believe shit. Take God. It was obvious to Roy that God was all bullshit.”

North Bath originally attracted tourists through its mineral springs; its economic and social decline began when those springs dried up. Throughout the novel, the loss of the springs is equated with the loss of hope. Here, Roy connects belief in the healing powers of waters—implicitly in the possibility for redemption and purification—with religious faith. However, he dismisses both as “bullshit”—platitudes meant to ease the reality that life is cruel and meaningless.

“The suites boasted king-sized beds with mountains of pillows piled high on pristine white comforters that proved irresistible to Roy pretty much every single time. He knew it was dumb but he just couldn’t help himself. Unzipping, he’d arc his stream at the center of the mattress until a bright yellow puddle formed there, after which, he felt empty and at peace. Why was leaving your mark so satisfying? That’s what this whole business with Sully was about. Squaring things. Leaving your mark. Making sure people knew you’d been there. That you were just as alive as them.”

From its opening scene at the graveside of Judge Flatt, Everybody’s Fool grapples with the existential question of whether human activity has any meaning given the imminence of death and a world devoid of justice. While other characters, such as Sully and Raymer, respond to the cruel absurdity of life by seeking to engage with their local communities and those around them, the sociopathic Roy is only capable of jealousy. His way of leaving his mark—of ensuring that his brief life is remembered—is by defiling and destroying whatever might bring someone else pleasure or reprieve.

“What he couldn’t get out of his mind was the look of dumb gratitude on her face. Or who knew? Maybe it was love. Or something with no name. Whatever it was, it was what he hated most and what allowed him to do what was necessary.”

As he strikes Cora over the head with a rock and abandons her by the lake, Roy again reveals an utter lack of compassion and empathy. While the other characters in the novel intermittently rebel against their responsibilities to others, Roy’s realization that Cora loves and trusts him provokes rage and hatred.

“When he was all wished out, Sully would tell him again to wish in one hand and shit in the other, then let him know which filled up first. Things were just the way they were, as they’d always been and always would be, and really—here was the important point—this life wasn’t all that bad, was it?”

Throughout the novel, Rub expresses his frustrations with his life by wishing things were otherwise. These hopeless wishes create pathos, but they are also indicative of Rub’s resilience—his refusal to “just give up” (41). While Sully continues to mock his friend, he also appreciates their connection, however troubled and imperfect.

“Does it ever trouble you that you haven’t done more with the life God gave you? Even now he couldn’t say for sure. Was it supposed to? Had he been wrong to take such pleasure in always doing things the hard way? And to banish self-doubt and regret before they could take root? Had it been selfish of him to make sure that his destination at the end of the day was a barstool among men who, like himself, had chosen to be faithful to what they took to be their own natures, when instead they might have been faithful to their families or to convention or even to their own early promise?

Not often, he’d told Miss Beryl. Now and then.

She’d immediately registered the change in him when he returned from overseas, no doubt sensing that his newfound ability to distance Sully from Sully would become his great skill in life. He’d always been bullheaded, of course, but the war had taught him to move forward, and as he saw it this meant putting one foot in front of the other, to keep going when other men stopped, to grind it out.”

As a teacher, Beryl often exhorted her students to realize their potential. Recalling her words, Sully reflects on his life, which has been driven by routine and habit—and during which he has explicitly refused to improve, justifying this resistance by describing his impulses as innate and unchangeable. Although he has stayed in North Bath and made no real efforts to better his condition, he decides that he does not particularly regret the course his life has taken.

“So, he thought. This was how it ended, how it had to end. They day had finally come when putting one foot in front of another was simply fucking impossible, when the forward motion he’d depended on failed him and he it. On your feet, Soldier, he commanded himself, but his body was all done taking orders […] With the last of his strength, he took out his grandson’s stopwatch. The ticking, when he depressed the stem, was loud and strong, a comfort, though it was also, he realized, the sound of time running out.

Footsteps approached, but Sully didn’t hear them.”

As he collapses with heart failure, Sully again contemplates his grandson’s stopwatch. Even as he continues to find the rhythmic predictability of the seconds going past reassuring, the watch’s ticking also comes to emblematize his life slipping away. The fleshly beating of his heart, which can alter speed in response to emotional stimuli, is replaced by the mechanically identical clicks of the second hand, which moves forward without meaning or purpose.

“Where were fools supposed to go? Was there someplace known for welcoming them, where he might blend in with others of his ilk? A place inhabited by middle-aged men. Who found it impossible to put their deceased wives’ infidelities behind them? Who fell in love again in the manner of teenage boys, too self-conscious and clueless to figure out whether their affections were returned? Was where such a place anywhere in the world?”

As Raymer considers moving on from North Bath and his job, he again comments on his own foolishness and associates it, to some extent, with his home town. The “fool” epithet that appears in the titles of all of Russo’s North Bath novels applies to all of the ageing, unambitious, emotionally inept, and professionally unsuccessful men who inhabit the pages of his books.

“I always think I can fix things. The whole town of Bath. Turns out I’m the one in need of repair.”

Following Alice’s attempt to die by suicide, Gus is overwhelmed by his inadequacy to perform well the various civic and personal responsibilities he has assumed. He feels unable to save either his troubled wife or his troubled town.

“What Raymer had intended to say, and what over the course of the last forty-eight hours he was coming to understand, was that it was a shame, indeed a crying shame, though probably not a crime, to be unequal to the most important tasks you’re given. That was true of just about everyone Raymer knew, including himself. All his life, it seemed to him, he’d come up short, but his shortcomings were not, he hoped, criminal. And who knew? Maybe telling Gus something like that would be helpful. On the other hand, he seemed to want something else entirely, and Raymer found he could deliver that as well. ‘In the end I think things are going to work out,’ he said. ‘I think Alice loves you more than you know, and I think you love her. I think this time the Utica doctors will know what to do. There’ll be a new medication to try, or somebody new on staff who understands. I think that in no time she’ll be back here with you. I also think it’s possible for us to be better people tomorrow than we are today.’

He had no idea, of course, whether any of these things were true, in whole or in part. Still, what possible good could come of believing otherwise.”

As he seeks to comfort Gus, Raymer reflects on his own struggles with futility. He concludes that though all human endeavor is, in some sense, “foolish,” the desire to support others is nonetheless laudable and vital. He also opts to continue hoping even when optimism flies in the face of reason.

“Raymer, like everybody else in Bath, had heard about Sully’s long affair with Ruth and also knew that her husband knew all about it. Apparently the fact that they’d been sharing her didn’t preclude the possibility of friendship and might even, weirdly, have been at its source. Would Raymer and Jerome have arrived at a similar arrangement if Becka had lived?”

Raymer is intrigued at the peaceful, almost affectionate equilibrium between Sully and Zack, who are united in their love of Ruth. Russo’s novel affirms the human ties of community and family, even when these affiliations are not grounded on traditional biological families or exclusive, monogamous pairings.