Songs in Ordinary Time (34 page)

You see, I’m trying to prove beyond a shadow of a doubt to my skeptical peers that some men are not just alcoholics, quote unquote, but victims of opinion, victims of labels, if you will, labels pasted on their foreheads sometimes as early as birth, labels that say such ridiculous things as: ‘Your father was an alcoholic, your grandfather was an alcoholic, old Uncle Jim is an alcoholic. It runs in the family. It’s in our blood.’” Litchfield wagged his finger and deepened his voice. “‘Therefore,
don’t drink
, or you will be an alcoholic, too.’” He laughed lightly and popped another cracker into his mouth. “So what was the first thing you did when you got old enough?”

His eyes bulged toward the decanter. He didn’t answer.

Litchfield raised the decanter in both hands. “You sneaked a drink, right?”

SONGS IN ORDINARY TIME / 163

His grin rippled through the amber liquid. “Out behind the proverbial barn, right, Sam?”

“Behind the furnace in high school after a baseball game.” Sam gulped and closed his eyes. “Can I have a drink, Doc?”

Litchfield placed the decanter in front of him. “In just a minute, after you understand what I’m trying to do.” He hunched eagerly on his elbows. “I’m going to teach you how to taste. How to swallow. How to drink. And the key here will be control—a little bit at a time. When we’re done, Sam, you are going to be able to drink socially, like a gentleman, not guiltily, not furtively. But right out in the open—one drink, maybe two, after a lot of therapy, of course, but never, never more than that. Control, Sam. That’s the key here, control.”

By the time the glasses were finally filled, Sam was in a cold sweat. His hand jerked across the desk, but Litchfield pushed it back. He shook his head. “No, Sam! Relax. Let it sit there a while. Close your eyes. There’s no hurry. We’re having a lovely little talk here, just you and me. It’s been a long day.” Litchfield dimmed the lamp. “Picture it now. We’re in a small café outside of town, about to have a leisurely drink before we drive home to the wife and the kiddoes….” Litchfield’s fuzzy voice droned at his ears.

He ground his teeth until they ached.

“Go ahead, now. Open your eyes. Casually place your hand around the glass, each finger closing, one by one, so you can savor the moment, the anticipation that is probably more pleasurable than the actual act. Now raise it…slowly, slowly to your lips. That’s it. There’s no hurry. No rush. It’s only—”

“Tea!” he cried, spitting it out. “Weak tea! Christ!”

Litchfield pounded his fist down on the desk. “I was about to tell you that, but you couldn’t wait!”

Stunned, he watched Litchfield refill the glass, then calmly raise his own.

He stood up and stalked toward the door. “I’m through playing games, you asshole!” he yelled, suddenly sickened by the desperate pitch of his own shrill voice.

T
onight was Alice’s turn in the far end of the A+X lot, which was considered the worst station because it only got busy when the rest of the lot was full. But for Alice, its worst feature was the nearness to the bright kitchen doorway, where Anthology Carper lounged between orders, his short legs dangling from the tall metal stool, a cigarette burning between his gray teeth, his colorless eyes trailing her every move.

It was the Monsignor’s long black Oldsmobile with Father Gannon at the wheel, and beside him, Father Krystecki, a pale skinny priest with big ears.

Father Krystecki had been at Saint Mary’s a few years ago, but Alice had only ever talked to him in the confessional. He had been a popular confessor, his most common penance the exhortation to “Be kind.”

“Hello, Alice,” Father Gannon said, sticking his hand out the window to shake hers. “This is Father Krystecki.”

164 / MARY MCGARRY MORRIS

Father Krystecki reached across Father Gannon and also shook her hand.

“Nice to meet you,” she said, her face flaming. Why were they here? What did they want? Had something happened? Norm. He’d been in an accident.

Norm with his rage, and lately all his drinking. No. Omar had the car again tonight. Maybe that was it. Maybe Omar Duvall had smashed into a tree and died. God, what a relief that would be.

“Father Krystecki used to be at Saint Mary’s. Until he got called up to the majors,” Father Gannon added, his sudden pronged laughter jolting up her spine.

She nodded, managing a smile.

“I’d hardly call Saint D’s the majors,” said Father Krystecki.

“Well, being pastor certainly is!” Again Father Gannon’s laugh seemed forced and unnatural.

“Oh well, I don’t know about that,” Father Krystecki demurred.

“He’s very modest, isn’t he, for the youngest pastor in the diocese?”

“You’re really embarrassing me,” Father Krystecki said softly.

Father Gannon smiled up at her, and her face grew redder. “Could I take your order, please?” she asked.

“Two root beer floats,” he said, still smiling.

While she was clamping their tray onto the car door, a pickup truck peeled out of the lot. Father Gannon craned his neck to watch it speed up the highway. “This must be a great place to work,” he said, rubbing his hands together. “All this action! All this life!”

“A bit too lively for me, I’m afraid,” Father Krystecki said between slurps.

Father Gannon had yet to take a sip of his float. “By the way, what are your hours?” he asked.

“Four to twelve,” she said, sliding her pencil over her ear. A car was pulling in next to the priests’, and now another. The movie must be getting out. The lot was almost full.

“Twelve,” Father Gannon said with a glance at his watch. “Long day.”

As she walked away she could see his reflection in the tall angled sheets of tinted glass. He was watching her and smiling.

At midnight Blue Mooney was in the kitchen eating hot dogs while his cousin scraped the grills clean and drained the fryolaters. Alice watched for Norm by the side of the road so Mooney wouldn’t see that she was still here. He had offered her a ride home again tonight, and Anthology Carper had hissed under his breath, “No thanks, scum, I’d rather crawl than be seen with you.”

The office telephone was ringing. Coughlin opened his door and called out that her brother said to start walking, the car still wasn’t back. That could only mean Omar Duvall hadn’t brought it back yet. Lately he drove it so much that he was picking her mother up in the morning and dropping her off at work. Alice didn’t mind as much as Norm, who couldn’t believe any of this was happening.

The minute Mooney and Carper came out of the kitchen, she hurried up Main Street. The tips in her sagging pockets jingled and banged against her SONGS IN ORDINARY TIME / 165

leg. Behind her the headlights of a slowing car flicked three times from high to low beams, each with a soft tap of the horn. She walked faster. “Alice!”

called a voice, and she groaned. After that night at the lake, Mooney was never going to leave her alone. He would hound her forever, because now he knew who she was and what she was, and soon everyone would know.

She was almost running when the car pulled alongside.

“Alice! Wait! Want a ride?” It was Father Gannon. He said he’d just dropped off Father Krystecki in Proctor. She accepted gratefully when she saw Blue Mooney’s car roar out of the lot.

At home, the driveway was empty. She wanted to get inside before Omar Duvall arrived in her mother’s car, before she had to explain or lie or, worse, introduce the two men. Father Gannon kept initiating new conversations that fizzled into throat-clearing and now just the uneasy tap of his nails on the steering wheel.

“Well, thank you for the ride,” she said, starting to open the door.

“Alice! There’s just one thing!” he said with such startling intensity that his voice trembled and his cheeks flushed. “You know, this wasn’t a coincidence, my coming to the A+X tonight.” He blinked and clenched his fists.

“I didn’t want to say anything in front of Father Krystecki, but Saturday, I have to drive up to Burlington to take some papers to the Bishop. Applegate’s on the way, and if you felt like it, I could drop you off there to see your father, then pick you up on the way back. So, what do you think?”

“No, I can’t,” she said quickly. She couldn’t recall any nun or priest ever embarrassing her about her father until this insensitive, nosy priest. Her mother would have a fit.

“He’d like to see you,” Father Gannon said softly. “You know, this is when he needs his family most.”

Two weeks ago she had written her father a letter, which he still hadn’t answered. She had been careful to write only of cheerful, funny things: Norm washing the car’s engine until it gleamed but then wouldn’t start because all the water had flooded it; the afternoon when Benjy fell asleep at the movies until six at night, when they called the theater and an usher found him and woke him up; her job, which she had tried to make sound interesting; the robbery at Marco’s Pharmacy. “I miss you,” she had written,

“and I hope you’re feeling much better.”

“He never writes unless he wants something,” her mother had said yesterday as she came in empty-handed from the mailbox.

“The Monsignor got this letter from your father this morning,” Father Gannon said, handing her an envelope. “He says he misses his children dearly. He’d like to see you.”

She turned it over, then looked up blankly.

“It’s all right. Go ahead and read it. The Monsignor gave it to me. I answered it, and he signed it. That’s what’s meant by religious hierarchy,”

he said laughing.

JMJ

166 / MARY MCGARRY MORRIS

Dear Monsignor,

It is difficult for me to write this letter in view of these bleak facts: I am (1) a prisoner here, (2) a mental patient, and thus, (3) not to be taken seriously, and (4) without much hope of a near release from this expensive hell hole unless you intercede on my behalf as I, your faithful parishioner, have implored you to do in my previous, unanswered letters.

I am writing this letter in order to humbly ask your forgiveness for the events preceding my internment here. If, as I suspect, I embarrassed or insulted you or yours in any way, I am sincerely and most soberly contrite.

There are some inevitable events in a man’s life over which he has little or no control. In my own I am all the “events.” Beyond that, I offer no excuses but my own pitiless state of being (or non-being, whichever your viewpoint).

Again, my plea is the same. Please see my dear sister and convince her that she must get me out of here. (1) This is a godless place. They tinker with our minds and care not for our souls. (2) The rates are exorbitant. $70 a day, special treatments extra. Where will that money come from? (3) I cannot exist much longer without seeing my children. They are all that I live for.

Please speak to Helen. Tell her I wither here without the solace of my Church and family. I want to receive Communion, but I am denied sacraments. Helen would be much better off giving her money to you than to this bunch of fatcat Protestants. For what she pays here, the Pope would say a special Mass for her, I’m sure.

Thank you, Monsignor. Please pray for me if you get the chance.

Sincerely yours in Christ,

Samuel A. Fermoyle

Postscript—Bubbles, you still have not sent that letter to Dr.

Litchfield attesting to my sanity. Just as surely as you know I am not insane, know that I will do the same for you if your Bishop should ever decide to farm you out. S.A.F.

She folded the letter, stunned that he would write to the Monsignor but not to his own daughter.

“I mailed a letter back tonight,” Father Gannon was saying. “On my way up to the A+X as a matter of fact.” Pausing, he leaned toward her. “Are you all right? The letter, it didn’t upset you, did it? Oh, listen to me. Of course it did. I mean, this must be all so painful for you. Believe me, I know it is.

SONGS IN ORDINARY TIME / 167

And I also know how personal this is. Alice, believe me, this is so confidential it’s sacred. I mean, as far as I’m concerned, this is the same as being in the confessional together.”

“What did you say to him? In your letter. What did you write?” she asked, rubbing her eyes. The last thing she wanted to do was cry. She pretended to yawn.

“Oh, let’s see. It was a long letter. I told him so many things—to keep the faith and pray, and cooperate with the doctors, that God would help him, that his children stood by him, that…” He stopped, shocked by what he had just heard. His face reddened. “What did you say?”

“Nothing.” She covered her mouth. She couldn’t believe she’d said that.

It had slipped out.

“You called me an asshole, didn’t you?”

“No!”

“I heard you.” He looked every bit as shocked as she was.

“I said the word, but I didn’t mean to! It just slipped out.”

“I’m such an inspiration!” he said.

“I’m sorry,” she said. “I’m so embarrassed.”

“Don’t be. I’ve been called worse,” he said, trying to laugh.

“I didn’t mean you!” she said, desperate for a way out of this mess. “You see, I’d go with you to see my father, but I know it would really make my mother mad. She’s—”

“No, no! As a matter of fact, she said she thought it was a good idea. She said you’d be the best one to go.”

“You already talked to my mother about this?” she asked, stunned.

“Well, I called her.”

“And when did she say I could go?”

“Next weekend? That’s when I have to go up.”

“What time did she say you should pick me up?”

“Well, she didn’t really say. But after I leave the nursing home? Ten?”

“And what time would we get back?”

“She said you have to be at work by four.”

“Of course,” she said with a bitter sigh. “She wouldn’t want me to miss work.”

“It’ll be just the boost he needs,” he said as she got out of the car. “You’ll be so glad you did it.”

Klubocks’ dog was sitting by the back steps with a long rag dangling from its mouth. The dog stood and wiggled its rump, but she opened the back door quickly. “My God, you stink! Go on!” she hissed, stamping her foot. “Get out of here!”

H
oping to shorten his stay, Sam Fermoyle was trying his best to relax and become more a part of the Applegate routine. He made up his mind to participate in the group therapy sessions he had been sitting through mutely. He would become the perfect patient. The nurses noticed the change.