Nobody's Fool by Richard Russo

Mrs. Gruber was already standing on her porch and peering down the street at Miss Beryl’s house, fully expecting, no doubt, Miss Beryl’s car to be backing out of the drive. All of two minutes had elapsed since they’d hung up.
    Miss Beryl rose and sighed. She was just about to fetch her overcoat when a big, noisy car she’d never seen before pulled up at the curb outside her front window and a young woman who looked to be in her early twenties got out and checked something written on a slip of paper. She was wearing a sweater and no overcoat, and Miss Beryl could not help but notice, even at that distance, that the young woman had an absolutely huge bosom.
    â€œWho the heck are you?” the old woman said out loud. “Look at those bazooms,” she added to Clive Sr., on the TV, who smiled back at her appreciatively, though he was facing the wrong direction to see. “You too, Ed. Take a gander at those,” she instructed Driver Ed.
    Before closing the car door, the young woman leaned back inside. At first, she appeared to be looking for something on the seat, but then Miss Beryl saw a small head move inside the vehicle on the passenger side of the front seat.
    When the young woman started across the snowy terrace and up the walk toward the porch, the car door opened and a very small child clambered out. Apparently, the young woman (the child’s mother?) heard the door open, because she spun and almost flew back to the curb, shoving the child back inside roughly, punching the door lock down and slammingthe door shut. Even from inside, Miss Beryl could hear the young woman shouting. “Sit, goddamn it!” she was instructing the child. “I’m coming right back. You hear me? Just sit in the goddamn car and look at your goddamn magazine. You hear me? If you get out of this car again, I’m going to knock your block off, you hear?”
    â€œSomeone ought to knock
your
block off,” Miss Beryl said as the young woman turned on her heel and started back across the terrace. She wasn’t quite to the porch when the door opened again, and the child climbed back out. This time the young woman stayed where she was, looked up into the web of black elm branches as if some answer, in the form of a chattering squirrel perhaps, might be offering advice. “You could close the goddamn door, at least,” she yelled at the child, who had begun to follow and now stopped. Miss Beryl couldn’t tell if the child was a boy or a girl, but whichever it was turned, put a small shoulder to the heavy door and pushed. When the door swung shut, the child lost its footing and slipped to its knees. Again the young woman looked to the sky for answers. “Come on, then, if you’re coming,” she shouted, and the child, wet kneed now but surprisingly dry eyed, did as it was told. There was something frighteningly robotlike about the child’s movements, and Miss Beryl was reminded of a movie she’d started to watch on television years ago about zombie children, a movie she’d quickly turned off.
    â€œWhat’s wrong with that child?” she asked Clive Sr. as she moved from the front to the side window so she could watch the young woman and the child climb the porch steps. It was a little girl, Miss Beryl decided, and all she was wearing from the waist up was a thin T-shirt.
    When Miss Beryl heard the outside door grunt open, she opened the door to her own flat to confront the young woman, who apparently intended to head upstairs to Sully’s apartment. “Move it, Birdbrain,” she said, apparently to the child, though she was looking directly at Miss Beryl when she spoke.
    â€œMay I help you?” Miss Beryl said, not particularly trying to convey any real desire to be helpful.
    â€œHe up there?” the young woman wanted to know. Up close, she looked vaguely familiar, like she might once have been one of Miss Beryl’s