Songs in Ordinary Time (39 page)

“Didn’t want to worry—”

“No. No. Now listen! I already took care of it. A few changes here and there, that’s all, some adjustments. No big deal.”

“Changes, what kind of changes?” Hands shaking, she turned off the burner and laid down the spoon. “I mean, all my expenses, my income, I had everything down. I couldn’t have made a mistake. I know I couldn’t.”

“The income was too low. It just needed a little…” He smiled and leaned close. “Help,” he whispered.

“What do you mean?” She spoke carefully because something sharp and hard and deadly like a bone or shard of glass lay across her throat. A single word might dislodge it.

“I colored in the background a little,” he said.

She shook her head. Colored in the background? What did that mean?

He grinned. “I changed a few things here and there, that’s all.” With a flourish as if he were daubing paint on air, he said, “See, a little gray here, a little red here, a little green. I prettied it up.”

“I can’t believe you did that,” she said, hugging her arms against the shudder of a chill. In the other room Norm was telling Benjy that Father Gannon had been in a mental hospital. She turned and saw that the table sagged in the middle. She tried to concentrate on what Omar was saying.

She kept wondering why the table sagged like that. Was it the extra plate every night, the weight of his arms?

“Look, no harm done. It’s the American way. Everybody’s expected to shoot some bull—enough, anyway, to offset the other guy’s.” Now he was stirring the sauce, the spoon cutting through the oily red thickness. “You’re doing them a favor, that’s all. They want to make the loan, and you’ve just saved them some steps.”

I did
? she thought.
Me
?

He shook basil into the pot, then garlic powder, then black pepper. He stirred them a moment, then sipped from the edge of the spoon. “I don’t know. It needs a lift, something.” He glanced back. “Got any oregano?”

The bank called the next morning. Her home-improvement loan had been 188 / MARY MCGARRY MORRIS

approved. The papers could be signed in three days. “And is that also a good time for Mr. LaChance?” asked the loan officer.

“Yes,” she said, and the minute she hung up she dialed Renie’s number before she could change her mind.

“’Ello,” he answered breathlessly on the first ring. “LaChance Appliance Company! Renie LaChance speaking!”

She closed her eyes, repelled by his eagerness, the hunger she remembered.

“’Ello! ’Ello!” he kept calling. “Who is this? What do you want? This is Renie LaChance! Is that who you want? You want me? You want Renie LaChance?” he was shouting as she hung up.

The next morning she called from work, then hung up again, and as her ears rang with his desperate demand to know who was doing this, she made up her mind. She would ask Mr. Briscoe to cosign the note. If he’d said it once, he’d said it a hundred times: anytime he could help her, anything he could do, just let him know. She trusted Mr. Briscoe’s judgment. She was even tempted to tell him about the soap franchises, except that, shrewd businessman that he was, he’d probably buy them all up himself. She waited until he’d finished his coffee before she went up to his office.

“I don’t know,” he said when she finished. “Seems like real poor timing to me, Marie. I mean a rumpus room with all you’ve got going right now, kids to raise and Alice going off to college, not to mention that old clunker you’re driving.” His chair squeaked as he swiveled away from the one-way glass. He had been watching Morton, the bicycle salesman, trail two boys through the store. He squinted up at her. “Speaking of which, you sell your car? Twice this week I could’ve sworn I saw that old Chevy, but there was this fellow driving it. Big guy, black hair.”

“A friend of mine’s been using it. His own car’s not running right,” she said, smiling, relieved to finally speak of him.

Mr. Briscoe adjusted his glasses. “Hmm, don’t know him,” he said upon hearing Omar’s name.

“He’s not from around here,” she said.

He nodded. “Well, that explains it, then. You maybe oughta clue your friend in.”

“About what? What do you mean?”

“About that…that, well, that Bernadette Mansaw I’ve seen him with.”

“Oh! Well, that’s just some business thing,” she stammered, her face flushing.

“Monkey business if it’s a Mansaw,” Mr. Briscoe said with a sly grin.

“Mr. Duvall is a businessman like yourself, Mr. Briscoe! And just like you can’t control who shops down there in your store, he can’t stop people from investing in his company.” Her mouth was so dry her lips kept sticking together.

“What’s his company? The A&P?” Mr. Briscoe scoffed. “That’s where I saw them, loading groceries in your car.”

SONGS IN ORDINARY TIME / 189

O
mar Duvall felt drained. He had spent most of the day in pay phones trying to get through to Roy Gold, who finally came on the line after he told Gold’s secretary that he had “spectacular, absolutely fabulous news.”

“Wait, wait, wait, wait!” Gold interrupted. “This is fabulous news? That some woman’s got an appointment at a bank?”

He tried to explain that at nine o’clock tomorrow morning Marie would be signing the note for money to buy two franchises.

There was a pause, then Gold sighed. “Don’t you understand? That’s just another promise, another maybe, Mr. Duvall. You see, right now, at this very moment, I have hundreds of men out in the field doing, I repeat,
doing
the very thing you only want to talk about. And that’s selling, Mr. Duvall.

Actually
selling
franchises. I’m a very busy man, Mr. Duvall. In fact right now, at this very moment, there are twenty different lines all lit up here, calls from all over the world. England, Germany, Europe, France. Montana!

God almighty, now Montana’s just come on! Miss Handy”—he yelled away from the phone—“take care of Montana, will you? No matter what, this country comes first!

“You see, Mr. Duvall, these are all my district distributors and franchisers trying to call in orders, real orders, while we’re chitchatting about maybes and promises. No! No, Mr. Duvall! This is for real! I’ve got a huge operation to run here. I thought you understood that. We may look small, but this isn’t some two-bit, penny-ante front job I’m running here. This is global, Mr. Duvall,
global
!”

“I know that, sir!” he said quickly. “I just didn’t want you to think I wasn’t trying, that I’d given up and gone away or anything.”

“Look, Mr. Duvall, I like you, and I have faith in you. A man like you could have a great future here, but God almighty, man, you’ve got to come cash in hand to prove it. Do you understand, Omar? Cash in hand!”

Yes sir, cash in hand, he thought as he drove, more determined than ever to prove himself to Roy Gold. As of tomorrow morning he’d finally have a future. With Marie’s money he’d finally be in on the ground floor of something as big and as innovative as Presto Soap. Gold was right. The days of maybes and promises were over. He wasn’t getting any younger. Lately there were too many days when every bone in his body ached, when he was almost too tired to talk or even think, which was the way he felt now as he pulled into Marie’s driveway. He got out of the car with a groan and rubbed his back, then sniffed the air. He could smell onions frying and green peppers. Adjusting his tie, he hurried up the back steps. Marie stood in the doorway and held out her hand.

“Marie!” he said, reaching for her hand with a glance beyond into the redolent kitchen.

“Give me back my keys!” she demanded, batting away his hand. “And then I want you out of here!”

He was stunned, and yet it was all so familiar he could close his eyes and 190 / MARY MCGARRY MORRIS

recite every line of her venomous charges. It would get ugly now. It always did, but in the end he would be relieved. Freedom had its price, but all it ever took was a few miles before the disappointment sloughed off like scaly old skin and hope infused his pores with the prickly tenderness of healing flesh. She had trusted him, and now she wanted him out of her life forever.

Forever, forever, forever: the reverberation throbbed in his bones. But what about their business? There was no business, just talk, and talk was cheap.

Talk was shit. She had children to take care of, and she had no time for any more of his talk or his shit. But he could explain. She didn’t want to hear it.

She wanted him to go. She kept saying it. Go, just go. His chin trembled.

His voice cracked. He had never felt so alone. She looked surprised; welcome to the club. But he had no one. Well, that was his fault, wasn’t it? But where would he go; what would he do? She didn’t care what he did or where he went, but she wanted him off her property right now, this minute. He didn’t dare move. Even if he wanted to, he couldn’t.

“I can’t,” he said in a low voice. “I need you. You’re my future. You’re everything.”

He was in the kitchen now, trying to convince her that his relationship with Bernadette Mansaw was purely business, which in a sense it was, he thought, because beyond the satisfaction of his more base needs, she meant nothing to him.

Arms folded, shoulders hunched, Marie stared over the table. “Purely business,” she repeated. “Oh, so that’s why you went to the A&P together!

Well, that explains everything. Now I understand.” She nodded. “Of course, business! After all, anytime Mr. Briscoe tries to sell someone an outboard motor or an archery set, the first place they go is the A&P.”

He sighed. “What you have to understand is that going to the A&P was a desperate measure.”

“Why?” she demanded. “Why desperate?”

“Well…” He sighed again and for a moment wasn’t sure. He felt tired again, very, very tired, he thought, closing his eyes on this wounded woman hungering for persuasion in her dull kitchen that reeked of grease and more neglect than he could ever resolve.

“Tell me,” she insisted. “Look at me and tell me!”

Opening his eyes, he saw how near the edge he was, flesh-bound and artless, his cuffs soiled and frayed, his damp limbs heavy against their French seams. Once, in such cornered moments, grace would have come, an infusion of spirituality he felt only then, when his soul soared and he knew and saw and heard what others could not. It was inconceivable that he had been delivered from every hardship and adversity to have it all end, not in beauty or love or fortune, but in a petty, mud-grunting struggle with Earlie. Had that futile wallow been the quest every day, every mile of his way? Had he been buffeted and tumbled through life for that?

“Why desperate?” she said through clenched teeth.

No, it was more than that, because he was more than just a speck in time, an idea, an amusement, a conceit of some vain and twisted higher conscious-SONGS IN ORDINARY TIME / 191

ness. Yes, he thought, feeling the heaviness subside, it really was quite simple. “Desperate,” he mused. “I had been desperate, I felt desperate because…because right on the verge of signing a franchise contract, Miss Mansaw went and got cold feet.” He sat back with a look of disbelief. “She insisted on comparing the price of supermarket detergent with my product, Presto Soap.” Yes! Yes, that was it, of course, he thought, buoyed by her relief as she sighed and ran her hand through her hair.

“And I suppose while you were there on business, she just happened to buy her groceries!” Marie sniffed.

“Yes!” he cried, awed by the facile logic of the tale and, once again, his skill, his power as its teller. Of course Bernadette might have, could have, so therefore had done, just such a thing. “She’s precisely that kind of young woman, capricious”—Marie blinked, and he knew the minute he left she would be at the dictionary—“and coarse, and selfish, but of necessity,” he added. “After all, she’s got two kids to feed and there she was in a supermarket when she needed groceries.”

“Which you carried out to
my
car!”

“Marie, oh Marie! What could I do? I’m a gentleman. I’m chronically polite. I’m incapable of hurting anyone.”

“But you hurt me. Doesn’t that matter?” She stared, her gaze so keen it seemed to pour into him.

It mattered. Of course it mattered. Looking at her, he felt his chest expand with a sense of abundance, of himself filling the night. “I need you,” he said, almost crushing her in his arms. “I need you, Marie,” he whispered, meaning more than she could understand, because what he needed was beyond flesh or love. What he needed, what he most craved, was her eager faith to continue providing his words with resolve and, ultimately, with truth.

Later, as he drove, the night cooled, sagging low with bright stars that flooded every street and yard. He drove past the boardinghouse.

The television was on in Bernadette’s apartment. He crept by the couch where she lay curled, snoring with her mouth open. Her shiny slip sagged below one breast. He tiptoed into the bedroom and closed the door. He sat on the edge of the bed and removed his shoes, setting them down without a sound. He undressed, then crawled between the gritty sheets, wincing with each creaking spring. He closed his eyes and slept.

It was the middle of the night when she knelt over him.

“I thought something happened,” she whispered, stroking his arms, his legs, his chest, and now his belly. “I told my mother I’d get the kids tomorrow.” Her hair whisked his face as she kissed his throat, his chin, his mouth.

Clutching the cold bedpost while she nibbled his earlobes, he drifted in and out of sleep and the glow of Luther’s and the Reverend’s eyes through an old dream, dark and speechless.

“I went looking for you,” she said with a slurp in his wet ear. “The lady at the boardinghouse said maybe you were outta town on business.”

“Umm, lady at the boardinghouse,” he muttered. His eyes opened wide.

192 / MARY MCGARRY MORRIS

“Yah, ‘Or maybe at Marie Fermoyle’s,’ she said. Why there?”

“She’s an investor,” he said, pulling the sheet to his chest. “And please don’t go tracking me down again like that. I told you before, this is a small town and I have to be very, very circumspect.”

She sat up and folded her arms. “What’s that mean? Embarrassed?