Songs in Ordinary Time (76 page)

“I’ll tell you what,” Hinds said with a wave of dismissal. “I’ll call her.

We’ll see what she says.” Hinds patted his shoulder. “I’m going way out on the limb here, but we’ll work this out.”

“I appreciate it,” Renie said.

“Well, I know you do,” Hinds said.

“You’ve always been good to me, Mr. Hinds. Like the loan for all the fans last year.” He smiled, expecting praise for paying that loan off in half the time.

“And the tax money,” Hinds reminded him.

“Most of all, that,” Renie said, his stomach suddenly churning with the sense that it might all be connected. Cosigning the mortgage and the humiliating audit with the IRS had both happened the same year, the same year he won the turkey at the Elks’ Christmas raffle and brought it to Marie’s house. It was late and he’d been drinking. He remembered her standing in 370 / MARY MCGARRY MORRIS

the doorway in her pajamas looking grateful and confused. She told him how her father had always brought the turkey home the night before Christmas. In the snowy darkness a wild joy had risen in him and he’d staggered closer, seizing her arms and pressing his mouth over hers. She had pushed him down the steps and sworn at him as he ran to his car. Could it have been her, he wondered, Marie Fermoyle, who had turned him in to the IRS? She’d probably collected some kind of a reward, blood money off the one person who cared for her.

“You’re a good man, Renie,” Hinds said, with an even more vigorous shake of his hand. “A real solid citizen.”

No, I’m not
, he thought as he watched Hinds head down the sidewalk, tipping his hat to the ladies and stopping to shake eager hands all along the bright busy street.

T
he next day, Marie stood at her kitchen counter, jaw clenched as she tenderized a chuck steak with a wooden mallet, the red fleshy
whack
whack whack
grimly satisfying. Norm sat at the table telling her and Benjy about the trouble in the park today. It had started with a couple of kids leaning on Joey’s stand and Joey warning them to get away before it collapsed. When a few more kids came and began to taunt him by deliberately shaking the stand, Joey started hurling soda bottles and cans at them. Some of the bottles smashed on the sidewalk, and then when the kids tried to sneak up behind him, he’d turned and thrown more bottles at them as they fled across West Street. Some of the bottles smashed in the road and one even dented the hood of a woman’s car.

“What a mess,” Norm said. “Greenie sent a crew up, and they had to stop traffic so we could broom all the broken glass. And then Chief Stoner came, and he was talking to Joey and trying to get him to go home in the cruiser, but Joey refused.”

“That poor man,” she said, flipping over the steak to pound the other side. “That’s what happens. The minute you’re down, the slightest crack they see, they’re all over you.” She knew by their silence they were probably exchanging glances. Let them. Someday they’d know; when the dogs were nipping at their heels, then they’d understand all she’d been through for them. Once again she thought of that goddamn Cleveland Hinds calling Mr. Briscoe about her loan.
And that goddamn Omar and goddamn Sam, all the
no-good, goddamn bastards
, beat the rhythm of the pounding mallet. There wasn’t any kindness in this life. None. None at all.

“Joey said they’d have to arrest him to make him leave, that he was only trying to protect his property,” Norm said. “And then this lady that lives by the park starts screaming that it’s not his property, that he’s nothing but a charity case and she’s sick of having to see that shack out her front window twelve months a year, and maybe everyone else was afraid to speak up, but she wasn’t.”

“Wow,” Benjy said. “Sounds like a show or something.”

“Bastards!” she said, pounding the meat, pounding it, and pounding it.

SONGS IN ORDINARY TIME / 371

“Mom! Mom!” Norm said, tapping her shoulder. “Someone’s here.”

She spun around, shocked to see Cleveland Hinds in the back doorway.

She hadn’t heard him knocking.

“Hello, Marie,” Hinds said with a smile.

“What do you want?” She almost hadn’t gotten that out. The nerve of him, coming here after he’d called Mr. Briscoe.

“Well, I was on my way home and I was going by here…”

“It’s a dead-end street!” she said.

“Well, in a manner of speaking, going by. In any event I thought I’d stop by and see how the repairs are coming along.” He glanced up at the stained ceiling, then down at the cracked floor tiles.

“Norm,” she said, conscious of her sons’ rapt attention. “I need milk.”

She pressed the money into his hand and told him to take Benjy with him.

“Go,” she ordered, as he stood there staring at her. “Now!”

They kept looking back as they headed out the door.

“Nice-looking boys,” Hinds said, loosening his tie and undoing his collar button. He stood by the table, smiling at her. “I’m glad you sent them on an errand. This way we can talk,” he said, sitting down at the table.

She remained standing. “How could you come here? How do you have the nerve after what you did?”

“What I did?” he asked.

“Calling my boss! Discussing my business with Mr. Briscoe! You had no right to do that! You could have called me!”

He closed his eyes with a sigh, then told her he had taken the liberty of speaking to Mr. Briscoe because he cared about what happened here, and he hoped he might save her any future embarrassment. He took out a cigarette and lit it.

“You care so much, then maybe I should take the liberty of speaking to Mrs. Hinds to save
her
any future embarrassment!” She banged the table, startled to see her hand and wrist speckled with bits of raw meat and blood.

“I’m shocked,” he said, gulping on the smoke he’d just inhaled. His eyes watered. “Shocked that you’d say such a thing. Especially under the circumstances.” He kept clearing his throat. “You may not think so, but what you did is a crime.”

“What?” She sagged back against the counter. “What are you talking about?”

“I’m talking about signing Renie’s name on the note. That’s forgery, Marie,” he said.

She opened her mouth, but for a moment couldn’t speak. This wasn’t happening. She hadn’t done such a thing. Had she? Had she? She had tried too hard for too long to be strong, and now she would pay. Merciless, they would swoop down, one by one, pecking, nicking her battered hide until she bled, until she could only crawl, until there was nothing left.

“Marie? Marie, listen. I’m sure we can work this out.” He got up and stood close to her. “There are ways and ways of meeting one’s obligations.

But the most important thing is that we don’t stop communicating. Listen, 372 / MARY MCGARRY MORRIS

Marie,” he crooned as she stared up at him, “we’ve got to talk about this, so why don’t we meet sometime next week, oh in some quiet, nonbusiness setting where the two of us can move this thing back and forth a little. And that way, I know what’s going on in your life, and you’ll feel more comfortable dealing with me. What say?” He flashed a grin. “Tuesday? Wednesday?

Let’s make it Thursday night! Sevenish. We can meet at the—”

“What do you want?” she demanded. “Tell me what you want me to do.”

“It’s what I don’t want, Marie. I don’t want to see you in trouble over this. Our connection goes too far back.”

“What’re you talking about? We have no connection!”

“Well, you know. Sam, Nora.” He grinned. “You know what I mean.”

“Get out!” Her hand moved to the mallet. “Get out before my sons come back.”

I
t was the next morning, and Omar Duvall lay in Bernadette’s bedroom.

The thin plastic window shade sagged with heat. In the other room Bernadette and her daughters were singing “Itsy Bitsy Spider” as she dressed them in bathing suits. The paper sack by the front door contained sandwiches and Kool-Aid she’d made for their day at the lake. He didn’t want to go, but it was a promise he’d already broken twice. At the screech of the little girls’ laughter he shuddered. His legs ached, and his heart was sore, actually tender now as he touched his breast. Each time Roy Gold had promised delivery he’d come away not only believing but inflamed, inspired, convinced that it was only a matter of time before the soap came. It wasn’t enough just to impress Gold; he wanted to dazzle him, and so he had invested most of his distributors’ money and his own. He wanted to be the best franchise supervisor Gold had. He had sold thirty-four franchises, with just about every cent of it going to Gold, and now the man wouldn’t see him, wouldn’t take his calls. His last trip to Westport he had to sleep in his car and slip out on diner tabs, and all he’d come away with was a carful of battered bottles and dented soapboxes, which he had begged from a warehouse worker.

“Is it because you’re so swamped with orders?” Omar had asked, blowing dust off a bottle.

“Nah,” the worker had scoffed. “Just one of them cease-and-desist deals.

They come shut everything down. A few weeks go by, and we start up again.”

How had this happened? he wondered. A few weeks! Everywhere he went, people wanted their soap, none more desperate now than Marie. Last night when he tried to make her see how bad things were, when he needed to confide in someone, she’d thrown him out of her house. She was giving him twenty-four hours to either return her money or deliver her soap, or else she was going to go to the police.

He rose up on his elbows, clutching his chest. This pain wasn’t fear of the police, but his dread of having to move on again, a life of running and hiding, curled up to sleep on the front seat. These last few days he had been racked SONGS IN ORDINARY TIME / 373

with hungers that food and comfort could no longer assuage. The worst deprivation would be losing Marie.

Bernadette’s and her daughters’ giddy voices rose against the door. “We’re ready!” she cried, throwing it open. They were dressed in bright bathing suits with bright beach towels over their arms, their smiles so eager, so voracious, that he felt sick to his stomach. He hurried into the bathroom, where he splashed water on his unshaven face. As he reached for a towel he noticed the sparkle of light from the toothpaste-smeared shelf over the sink. He slipped the ring onto his pinkie finger and stepped closer to the window to examine the tiny diamond in the light.

When he came out of the bathroom he told Bernadette that he didn’t feel up to going.

“Tough shit,” she growled. “You promised, and that’s all there is to it.”

“But I have this pain,” he said, wincing as he probed the tenderness in his chest.

“I don’t care if you’re having a fucking heart attack, they think they’re going swimming, and that’s where they’re going.”

They waited by the door with their sand pails and plastic boats, watching as hard-eyed as their mother as he buttoned his shirt. He bent to tie his shoes and pain shot down his arms to his fingertips.

“You’re going like that?” Bernadette asked, pointing as he put on his rumpled suit jacket.

“It’s all I have,” he said.

“I have to go to the bathroom,” Noelle cried, legs crossed and squirming.

“Then go!” Bernadette said, and Noelle ran into the bathroom.

“I can’t!” the child cried. “I’m tied.”

“Help her,” Bernadette ordered the older girl. “Untie her bathing suit.”

Merry ran into the bathroom.

“What’re you gonna do, sit on the beach in your suit all day?” she asked, setting down the bulging grocery bag. “There must be something of Kyle’s that’d fit you,” she said, hurrying into the bedroom.

In the bathroom the little girls’ voices rose querulously. Bernadette returned with a pair of red plaid shorts. “Come on!” she called, opening the bathroom door to find Merry kicking towels through the yellow puddle on the floor. “Goddamn it,” Bernadette cried, shaking Noelle, who was patting dry her wet bathing suit and dripping legs with a washcloth. Bernadette grabbed the washcloth and wet it in the sink, then knelt to scrub the sobbing child’s plump legs. Her head shot up, and then she stood suddenly, gripping the grimy glass shelf. Her cry of loss had an oddly soothing effect on Omar.

The pain was gone. He felt stronger, more confident. So here it was, another impulsive action now so imbued with plausibility that he understood, with perfect clarity and unshakable faith, its purpose.

“You bastard, you little bastard!” she cried, shaking one child and slapping the other. “What did you do with it? What did you do with my ring, my beautiful diamond ring?”

“Nothing! Honest, Mommy!”

374 / MARY MCGARRY MORRIS

“It’s down here, isn’t it?” She clutched the chipped rim with both hands, grunting and pulling as if to tear the sink from the wall. “You dropped it down the sink! My future, my whole life!”

“Now, Bernadette,” he said softly. “They’re children. They meant no harm.”

I
t was early evening. Marie’s car was gone and her house was locked.

Omar cupped his hands to his eyes and peered through the dusty windows. The television was off and the table was set for three. He came around the back of the house, wading through the tall grass. On the clothesline, which had begun to sag again, the clothes were already dry. As he unpinned them, he began to worry that she might have done something as reckless as driving to Westport for a personal confrontation with Roy Gold. Yes. She was just that impetuous and headstrong. He paused with a stiff towel bunched at his chest as he pictured those big eyes boring into Gold as she demanded her thousand dollars back. He would be so stirred by her pluck that he would get her soap sent out that day. He would fill all of Omar’s orders. One could never know good fortune’s spur. How many other times had despair turned out to be the first step, the bottom rung of joy.

Oh God, yes. He could feel it in his chest, the familiar swelling, this pro-found and ennobling exuberance reminding him once again that he was no ordinary man.

“Mr. Duvall! Mr. Duvall, I’d like a word with you,” Harvey Klubock called as he tried to hurry down his back steps. Harvey limped toward him.

Omar set the laundry on a broken lawn chair. Harvey wanted to know about his soap order, not that he was having any second thoughts, he added; it was Jessie. “You know how women are. They think everything’s a risk.”