49 pages • 1 hour read
Everybody's Fool
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Chapters 27-33Chapter Summaries & Analyses
Chapter 27 Summary: “Dougie Reneges”
At Hilldale Cemetery, Raymer hands Gus his resignation, but Gus refuses to accept it because the police chief is now a local hero.
Visiting Becka’s grave, Raymer addresses his wife’s spirit and promises to respect her privacy. He is interrupted by Rub, who has found the garage remote in the upturned earth. Dougie-Raymer promptly reneges on Raymer’s promise to Becka.
Chapter 28 Summary: “Charade”
Carl ponders his financial difficulties as he watches Charade, a 1963 film starring Cary Grant and Audrey Hepburn, on TV. He phones his ex-wife, Tobey, who asks him what he will do if the company fails. The company has always felt like a burden to Carl, who tells Tobey he wishes he were more like his father, who was faithful to his mother throughout their relationship and never remarried.
Looking down from his window, Carl sees Raymer try the remote on the garage door. He realizes Raymer wrongly suspects Sully’s son, Peter.
As his attention return to Audrey Hepburn on the screen, Carl is overjoyed to see that he has an erection.
Chapter 29 Summary: “Crazy Like a Fox”
As the pain from his wounded hand intensifies, Raymer calls Jerome to let him know that Roy Purdy vandalized his car. When Jerome does not believe him, Raymer drives over to his house. He finds Jerome slumped over the steering wheel of his rental car, an empty bottle of bourbon at his feet.
As Charice swiftly pulls up to the house, Raymer realizes that the remote control, which he is using to scratch his injured hand, opens Jerome’s garage door. Jerome, convinced that Raymer has always known that he was Becka’s lover, points a gun at him, while Charice desperately tries to defuse the situation.
Chapter 30 Summary: “Something With No Name”
Roy heads back into town, planning to approach Sully’s house by night. He is now alone, having knocked Cora unconscious with a rock and abandoned her by the lake.
As he passes the Sans Souci, he remembers how he used to earn money by selling off the new supplies coming into the hotel during one of its refurbishments. He was apprehended, in part, because he could not resist urinating on the pristine white beds in the suites. Then, he again recalls his resentment of the waitress at the diner.
Chapter 31 Summary: “Motion”
After fruitlessly trailing Roy and Cora, Sully visits his ex-wife Vera, who has advanced dementia. He tells her about his heart condition.
At the White Horse Tavern, Sully meets Carl, who proudly informs him of his restored penile function. Also there are Rub and his wife Bootsie, who are smartly dressed and out on a date (Sully made the suggestion that Rub should take Bootsie out and gave him the necessary funds). To Rub’s delight, Sully agrees that they will work together on the contract for the next two days. Sully confesses to Carl that he is planning to undergo the procedure to have a defibrillator fitted.
Sully concludes that at the Sans Souci, Clive seemed “Broken. Unhappy. Haunted” (442). Talking to Sully, Clive invented a clearly false success story about his current life and business ventures, and continued to exhibit jealousy for his mother Beryl’s preferential treatment of Sully.
Sully returns to the Sans Souci, spots Cora’s car, and calls out for Roy. He drives back into town, suffering from increasingly strong chest pains. He remembers Miss Beryl as he collapses on the doorstep of her old house.
Chapter 32 Summary: “Normal”
As Raymer leaves the hospital in Schuyler Springs, he is intercepted by Jerome’s psychiatrist. According to Jerome, Raymer has been tormenting him for months, depriving him of sleep and moving things around in his house. Raymer is fairly sure this is untrue, but has some vague suspicions about the malicious Dougie.
Raymer is resolved to leave North Bath, having lost hope for a relationship with Charice. In the garage, he meets a distraught Gus: After Gus confiscated her phone, Alice overdosed on her medications and is being sent to a mental hospital in Utica, New York.
As he drives through Bath, Raymer sees flames and finds the fire brigade outside Sully’s house, extinguishing the remains of the trailer. A body has been found, which everybody assumes belongs to Sully, but Raymer soon guesses that it is Roy Purdy. He drives to Ruth’s house and arrests Zack for the murder. Zack tells Raymer that he went looking for Sully to tell him that Ruth had awoken from her coma. He let himself into the trailer when he heard Rub the dog whimpering in pain. Roy was already there; he had attacked the dog and was planning to set fire to the trailer. After Roy attacked Zack with a hammer, Zack easily overpowered him, knocked him out, and lit the trailer on fire using the tools Roy had brought. Zack is unable to explain whether he truly intended to kill Roy or why he went ahead with Roy’s original intention of torching the caravan.
Chapter 33 Summary: “Cured”
Sully’s operation is a success. He visits Ruth in her hospital bed in the same hospital.
Chapters 27-33 Analysis
The notion that the discarded might hide great worth is reinforced by the novel’s reference to Charade. In this 1963 film, Audrey Hepburn’s character is pursued by various parties who assume that she is carrying $250,000 stolen by her dead husband. All he has left her is a small travelling bag full of seemingly worthless odds and ends—but these turn out to be treasures. In the novel, several characters undergo similar discoveries. As his sexual functioning is finally restored, Carl reassesses what is truly valuable in his own life, considering setting aside his corrupt money-making ventures to focus anew on human connections—such as the one with his ex-wife Tobey. Similarly, the pathetic and seemingly insignificant Rub finds that he has something to offer after all—on Sully’s suggestion, he cheerfully takes out his wife Bootsie. Adding to these examples is Sully. His decision to undergo the heart operation that will save his life is accompanied by a renewed engagement with those around him and an investment in improving their lives. As he returns from the brink of death, Sully opts back into the ties of interpersonal responsibility and compassion that he has been resisting throughout the novel, visiting his sick ex-wife, renaming Rub the dog, and taking a renewed interest in the wellbeing of Rub the human.
The novel’s approach to its mystery and detective plots borrows some of the elements of these genres, but Russo is less interested in sustaining suspense and raising tensions than a thriller would require. The novel’s climactic action scenes are instead defused in a variety of ways that add verisimilitude and mundanity to what could instead be portrayed with action-movie intensity. Zack and Roy’s fight in the trailer is not narrated on the page; rather, Raymer learns about what happened when Zack immediately confesses and describes events. Meanwhile, Jerome’s standoff with Raymer has an overarching element of pathos because of Jerome’s drinking and his worsening mental illness—details that make it hard to cast either of these men in the role of villain. Even the reveal that Jerome was having an affair with Becka is anti-climactic, since learning this does not give Raymer the chance to confront anyone.
As Raymer prepares to deliver his eulogy on Beryl Peoples at the end of the novel, he revisits the rhetorical triangle with which the novel opened—the triangle that posits a complex relationship between speaker, audience, and subject. Raymer expresses his gratitude to Beryl for encouraging him to be his best self in relation to those around him. Comforting Gus, who feels that he has failed in his duty of care to his wife, Raymer reaches the conclusion that shortcomings are inevitable and human, but that hope and optimism—even when they appear to go against all reason—are essential and laudable facets of human resilience and survival.
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By Richard Russo
