Songs in Ordinary Time (102 page)

“Marie?” his father cried. “Oh pet…”

“She’s not here,” he said.

“She’s there,” his father insisted. “I know she’s there.”

He held his breath as his father began to sob. It was true in every way.

She wasn’t here. The angry panicky woman she’d been was gone. That was Omar’s power, he suddenly realized, the calm, the force that could pull them along with him. Bad things happened, and yet Omar was able to rise above it all.

Norm grabbed the phone away, but Benjy could still hear his father’s voice. “You tell her over my dead body she’ll marry that fucking—”

“I’ll tell her, Dad!” Norm shouted over the drunken raging. “I’ll gladly tell her!” He slammed down the phone, then stood there, hand poised, waiting. It rang again, and he jerked it to his ear so suddenly that Benjy heard it clunk against his head. “Don’t call here again, you hear me? If you—” Norm’s head shot up. “Oh. Umm, no, he’s not. Can I take a message?” He gestured for Benjy to get him a pen and some paper. “Claire Mayo,” he repeated, then nodded, listening. “Yah, yah, I’m getting it. I’m writing it all down. Basement filled with sister’s soap nobody wants….

Better come get it out or you’ll call the police…. Gee, Miss Mayo, have you tried selling it? Okay, okay, I’m listening. Yah, I’m writing it down. A what?

A shower hookup? A turquoise bath mat and eight dove-gray plates?” He looked at Benjy now with disbelief. “Your white urn lamp and the month’s rent he still owes you.” They both stared at the lamp their mother was so proud of.

“What the fuck does this mean?” Norm said after he hung up. He threw down the list.

“May Mayo’s crazy, so maybe they both are,” Benjy said weakly.

The phone rang again. It was their father. Norm bellowed that if he called again he’d go over there and rip the goddamn phone out of the wall.

Norm waited until their mother had gone to bed before he showed Omar the list. Omar laughed and said May Mayo had sold him those things and now must be afraid to tell her sister. The month’s rent had been part of the price of her franchise, which she was also probably afraid to admit to her sister.

“Oh well,” Omar sighed. “The Good Samaritan gets it again, right between the eyes.” He started up the stairs, sighing with every step.

SONGS IN ORDINARY TIME / 499

“Didn’t he say he bought the shower thing from some plumbing guy or something?” Norm asked after they heard the door close.

“I don’t know,” he said. But he knew, just as Norm did.

“Boy, they must really be weird, huh? Those Mayo sisters,” Norm said.

“Yah,” he said. “They must be.”

They turned off the lights and had started up the stairs when the slow creaking began overhead. They whispered good night and tiptoed to their rooms. Benjy knelt on his bed and forced the window open. Cool air rushed into the room. He lay down and tried to hear only the crickets.

O
n Saturday, Benjy was helping Norm transfer the junk from Norm’s dead car into their mother’s trunk. They had just returned from the dump, with another trip to go. This morning Omar had told Norm that when he got the car cleaned out and had all his parts together he would give him a hand on the engine.

“Check under the seats,” Norm ordered before Benjy could close the front door. Norm’s back glistened with sweat as he stretched and grunted with a pleasure Benjy did not share. Didn’t he know Omar wasn’t going to help fix his car, that it was just another promise, as easily uttered as his compli-ments, and as empty? The washing machine was still in the kitchen, the paint can still in the corner. Last night’s wind had bounced the last shutter off the house. The back door squeaked again, the kitchen chairs had begun to wobble, and the shower hose had slipped from the tile so often it always lay in the tub now, like a long green snake slick with soap slime.

“What the hell’s this?” Norm said, pulling a stained leather shoe from under his seat. “Oh,” he groaned, flinging it into the tall grass. “What a disgusting smell.”

It was Earlie’s shoe. In panic, Benjy kicked the grass to cover it.

“I’m waiting for you!” Norm yelled from the back of the car. “What are you doing?”

“Nothing.”

“Nothing! I thought you said you’d help me!”

“I am!”

“Jesus, I never saw anyone get so distracted. That was Dad’s problem, too, you know,” Norm said with that worried look Benjy hated. “Mom said he could never finish anything.”

“Dad’s problem is drinking.” He looked straight up at his brother. He knew what was going on with Norm’s daily bar stops with Omar. “I don’t drink, and I’m never going to drink. Never!”

“Yah, that’s what I said, too. But you’ll see,” Norm said with a worldly chuckle as he started to drag a heavy old steam presser toward the driveway.

Benjy followed its path through the flattened grass. “The trick is moderation.

When you stop for a beer, you stop for
a
beer. Remember, Benjy,” he said solemnly. “Know thyself. Every heart vibrates to that giant tune.”

“I know myself,” he said quickly. He was so sick of these comparisons to his father.

500 / MARY MCGARRY MORRIS

“You think you do, but Omar says you live in a dream world. He says people do that to protect themself. The problem is, the made-up stuff gets all mixed up with real life.”

Benjy felt the hairs on his arms stand on end. Why would Omar have said that? He wished he could put the truth out of his thoughts the way Omar could. He wished he didn’t know about Earlie. He wished it had never happened. No, the dream world was Omar’s, but it was Benjy’s fault that his mother and Norm had been seduced into it.

“Lift up that end,” Norm said, and together they hoisted it into their mother’s trunk. When they were in the car, Norm asked if Benjy remembered the time their mother had set up the presser in the kitchen, hoping to run an ironing service.

“No,” Benjy muttered, staring out the window. As they drove, Norm recalled how she had put an ad in the paper and been flooded with work, only to fall as far behind with everyone else’s ironing as she was with her own. More than once, while she was at Briscoe’s, people had come to the house, looking for a certain blue skirt or the pink blouse they needed right away. They would search through the piles in the kitchen until they found their own, often mingling the contents of one family’s ironing basket with another’s.

“It was a disaster.” Norm chuckled. “You can’t believe what a fucking disaster it was!”

If that was a disaster, he wondered, the stench of the shoe still in his nose, then what was all of this?

“And you know Mom,” Norm continued. “The minute they started bitching, that was it. She’d tell them to come get their goddamn ironing and do it themself then, if they were in such a rush. You know, like it was all their fault.” He shook his head. “Like she didn’t have anything to do with it. Jesus, she kills me.”

This morning she had snapped at Norm for pestering Omar about his car. She said Omar had enough on his mind with the business.

“She forgets,” Norm said. “She acts like I put all that crap in my car. The way she talks you’d think I just took the engine apart for no fucking good reason. Jesus, she always does that in front of Omar. I don’t know why. It’s like she’s always trying to make me look like a jerk in front of him or something. Why does she do that?” Norm asked as they turned into the dump.

Because, Benjy realized with a sudden and utter helplessness, this was Omar’s power, to be as irresistible to the son as to the mother, so that in vying for his affection each scrutinized the other, but never him. And this was his power, too, his easiest seduction, his beguilement of the younger son with their happiness.

It was later that same afternoon. Norm was in the house. Omar had promised to look at Norm’s car after Omar and Benjy finished counting the boxes and bottles of soap in the garage. They were so low on stock Omar SONGS IN ORDINARY TIME / 501

was afraid they might not have enough to sell this week. “Ninety-four,”

Benjy said, counting the last bottle. Glancing back, he saw that Omar hadn’t even unstacked any of the cartons yet so he could count the boxes of laundry detergent.

“Well, that’s a relief,” Omar sighed. “I was dreading that trip to Connecticut, let me tell you. I don’t know, all this commotion, it’s taking its toll.”

Commotion? Benjy froze. Did he mean the body finally being found?

Don’t
, he thought.
Don’t talk about it. You don’t have to say anything
. “I thought you liked it there,” he said nervously as he dragged the carton against the wall. The blue-sky holes in the roof were darkening. Thunder rumbled closer. There was no light in here. Omar loomed over him.

“I do,” Omar said, looking down. “It’s the traveling I’m tired of. I just don’t want to do it anymore. A lot’s changed in these last few months.”

“It’s like a mansion, you said, right?” Benjy asked, eager for any subject but the one he most needed to talk about and most dreaded hearing.

“Yes, it certainly is that.” Omar sighed. He looked up as the rainburst began. Shafts of rain poured down through the holes in the roof. “I got an idea,” he called over the downpour. “I’m going to take you with me next time I go. Just the two of us. What do you—”

“Quick!” Benjy cried, darting outside as if there had been some respite, when it was raining even harder now.

They were dripping wet when they came into the kitchen. Norm had been trying to close the window over the sink, but it wouldn’t budge.

Rainwater gushed from a hole in the drainpipe onto the windowsill.

“Teamwork!” Omar declared, taking one side of the window, and together they forced it down. Norm wiped the sill with a dish towel, then threw it so hard into the sink that water splashed onto the countertop. Benjy knew he was angry because Omar had put the car repairs off for so long, and now it was raining.

“Omar!” his mother called, hurrying in from the living room with the newspaper. “Listen to this.” She began to read. “‘Earl Lapham Jones is now believed to be the same man who posted bond last May in Woodstock for two Negro men arrested in a check-altering scheme.’”

Benjy saw Norm’s eyes shoot to Omar.

“‘The two men,’” she continued to read, “‘had been selling magazine subscriptions in the Woodstock area and had allegedly changed the amounts written to them on a number of checks. Earl Lapham Jones was last seen leaving the Woodstock police station with the two men.’” She held the paper at her side and looked up. “Those wouldn’t be the men you picked up, the ones that stole your car, would they?”

“Well, let me see now. What does it say? What’d they look like?” He took the paper, muttering as he read. “No. No, that’s too bad. For a minute there I thought I might be getting my possessions back.” He handed her the paper.

“But they were Negroes. Three of them; they were selling magazines,”

she said. She looked at the paper again.

502 / MARY MCGARRY MORRIS

“My cutthroats may have been blackhearted, but they were lily white on the outside,” he said with a sad smile.

“Can I see that?” Norm asked his mother, who hesitated a moment, then gave him the paper.

Alice came into the kitchen then. She was in her bathrobe, but her hair had been curled and brushed. “Excuse me,” she said to Norm, who stood by the sink reading the paper. She repeated it, and he looked up, startled, then stepped aside so she could turn on the faucet.

“But didn’t you say the men you picked up were selling magazines?” his mother asked.

“I have no idea what those scoundrels were doing, other than waiting for me to let my guard down,” Omar said with a sigh.

“I could have sworn you said they were Negroes,” his mother said. “I remember thinking what a kind man you must be.”

Alice turned from the sink, her glass filled with water. She looked right at Omar. “You did say they were Negroes.”

“Oh my Lord. I’m afraid my florid diction has made murky the memories here.” He kept smiling at her.

“No, I remember. I remember the exact conversation, word for word,”

Alice said, returning his smile.

Omar sighed and hung his head a moment. “I know you don’t like me very much, Alice, and I’m not sure why that is, but all I can do is keep trying to be a good man in the hope maybe that’ll prove how much I love your mother. I want to make her happy, just like I want to make you and your brothers happy.”

“No, you don’t,” she said, the glass trembling in her hand. “You just use people, that’s your idea of making them happy.”

“Alice!” his mother said, glaring at her as she carried her glass of water past them, then up the stairs. “I’m sorry,” she said to Omar.

“Well, don’t be,” he said, “I think our Alice just needs a whipping boy for a while.” He held his arms out at his sides and, rolling his eyes, tilted his head to one shoulder. “And I am just the man for the job.”

Each of them looked away uneasily. The only sounds were thunder and the heavy rain pelting the window. Benjy went upstairs to change into dry clothes. When he came down Omar was telling his mother that he and Benjy had determined that there was more than enough soap to last the week. When he made the trip to Connecticut he was going to take Benjy with him. Maybe next weekend. “After Norm’s fine company, I can’t imagine ever traveling alone again. I’ve been spoiled,” Omar said.

Norm was reading the paper again.

“That’s nice. Just the two of you,” she said distractedly. She kept glancing at Omar as if she needed to say something but kept thinking better of it.

The outside door opened, and someone came into the back hall and knocked on the door.

“Hello,” Blue Mooney said when Norm opened the door. “How’re you SONGS IN ORDINARY TIME / 503

folks all doing?” He grinned nervously, the umbrella at his side dripping onto his square-toed black leather boots.

“Well, Mr. Blue Mooney,” said Omar. “What brings you out in such beastly weather? Your sister-in-law hasn’t sold out of soap already, has she?”

“Bernadette’s not my sister-in-law. She’s my brother’s…my brother’s…”

“Fiancée,” Omar offered, smiling.

“Yah, that’s right! But I don’t know how her soap’s doing. I been out of town.” Mooney glanced expectantly from face to face, but it was apparent that no one knew why he was there. He wore tight jeans and, under his black leather jacket, a white shirt and a red tie with black and white circles that Benjy saw were white-walled tires. Norm’s hand stayed on the open door.