Songs in Ordinary Time (80 page)

He felt his confidence ebb. If he told her about Alice, she would blame him.

He’d never been a father to them. What did he expect? He tried to tell her about his job. Now that he had established his own rhythm with the loader, the hours passed quickly. The night watchman continued to be a problem, but—

“Sam,” she interrupted. “What about the money? Did you talk to Helen?

Is that why you’re calling?”

“Well, I’ve been working on the figures to show her.” He thought he heard Marie groan. He cupped the mouthpiece with his hand. “Mother’s very sick,” he whispered. “Helen says no, but I think she’s in a coma.”

She didn’t say anything.

“This may be it,” he said, throwing the old hook, anything to keep her believing, anything but action.

“I don’t know what to say. I’m sorry, Sam. And whatever happens you can’t let it destroy you.”

“It won’t.” He sighed, flushing with the old warmth of her attention. He couldn’t remember when he’d last heard caring words from her. He closed his eyes.

“You’ve been doing so well.”

“I know,” he said, smiling.

“You’ve really been trying.”

“I have,” he said, grateful for her acknowledgment.

“She’s lived a long life, and these last few years haven’t been pleasant ones.”

“No, they haven’t.”

“How’s Helen handling it?’

“Oh typically. It’s just a cold, she says, that’s all.”

“Maybe she’s right. Of course, at her age even a cold could be…terrible.”

“Marie, I called to find out about something. I heard something. It’s about Alice….”

“What?” she cut in. “What about her?”

He repeated what the Monsignor’s housekeeper had told Helen.

“Oh my God,” Marie groaned. “No, that’s impossible. It can’t be true.”

“But that’s what the priest said. That’s what he told the Monsignor.”

390 / MARY MCGARRY MORRIS

“I wondered why he was giving her rides and coming around so much.

And here I was beginning to think he was, well…Oh God, what’s wrong with her?”

“Well, she’s always been a quiet kind of kid, a good girl, a—”

“A coward!” Marie spat, and his ear rang with the familiar sibilance.

“Always trying to find the easy way out.”

“Marie! She’s not a bad person because she wants to become a nun.”

“She doesn’t want to become a nun!” she said with a bitter laugh he remembered only too well. “She just doesn’t want to have to work. She just doesn’t want to have to go to college. She just doesn’t want to have to listen to me anymore!”

“No, Marie.”

“It’s true. She wants to hide, just like the rest of them. They haven’t got a backbone between them, the three of them. Well, I’m sick of being the only one who cares, the only one who tries. Oh God…” There was a long, wet sob, and then she hung up.

“Top of the seventh, and the Yankees lead eight to three,” Renie’s radio announced in a sudden swell of clarity from his room.

Sam laid out four pieces of bread for tonight’s sandwiches, the four thin slices of ham, two of Swiss cheese. He spread the thinnest skim of mustard on it all, then wrapped the sandwiches in waxed paper and put them in the same brown bag used every night to achieve the constancy, monotony enough to keep from feeling the grooves or seeing the strings. If Alice wanted to hide, the convent was one hell of a better choice than booze. He returned the ham to the refrigerator and wiped crumbs from the counter. He covered the butter dish and switched off the light over the sink. Now that Alice wouldn’t be needing money for school, his campaign of annoyance was over. Imagine, Sam Fermoyle’s daughter, a nun. He grinned. Now wouldn’t that make people sit up and take notice.

O
n Sunday the church was only half filled for the eleven o’clock Mass.

Because of the heat most people had gone to the early Masses and were now probably sitting on the beaches at the lakes and ponds.

The Consecration over, Father Gannon turned to face the congregants.

Accompanied by the altar boy, he carried the Host-filled chalice down the wide crimson-carpeted steps to the marble Communion rail. As he placed the small white Host on each quivering tongue, he would glance up from time to time. When he came to the end of the rail, he turned back to begin again. Pausing, he smiled, relieved to see Alice in the last pew, her head bent over her folded hands. Last night he had talked her into at least attend-ing Mass, even if she would not receive Communion. What they shared was not only beautiful but sacred, he had told her. He might think so, she had countered, but the Church said it was a sin. Some things transcend the Church’s scope, he had said. What? he had wanted her to ask, what things, so that he could tell her. Love did. Love! Instead she had burrowed into that frustrating remoteness of hers.

SONGS IN ORDINARY TIME / 391

“
Corpus Domini nostri Jesu Christi
,” he murmured over a kneeling child with long, dark pigtails. Seeing Alice look up, he paused, still holding the Host above the child’s head.

The child stuck out her tongue.

He couldn’t help but smile. Alice’s pale face glowed from the shadowed depths below the choir loft like a keyhole of light from which he could not look away.

The child looked up.

Alice bent so far forward that her forehead met her clenched hands.

“Father!” the child whispered loudly.

All along the rail, the communicants stared up at him.

“Why won’t you give me Communion?” the child asked.

T
he heat filled every room in the Stoner house but Carol’s. Here the windows were closed, the shades and curtains drawn. On the cluttered bureau a silver fan oscillated in a gentle rattle between the closed door and the small mound in the bed. For the past hour she had been trying to wet her lips with her tongue, but she couldn’t. The door opened. It was Sonny.

He tiptoed in and leaned over the bed. His cool fingertips trickled down her cheeks. Her eyes moved from the glinting badge on his chest to the wide belt and holster at his hip, the black gun butt.
Kill me. Take it out, shoot me
, she was screaming.

“You’re a good girl,” he whispered in the maddening silence.

Do it! Do it! Like that deer that was hit up on the Post Road
.

They had found it writhing in the stony gully, a bloody gash in its side, legs twitching, its mournful eyes following the quick wordless arc of Sonny’s aim.
Don’t look, don’t look, don’t look now, Carol
. Closing her eyes her head had jerked back with each blast.
Pow! Pow! Pow
!

The door closed after him with a whoosh of air and light.

I am a poor dumb creature too
, she screamed. But in the quiet no one heard.

T
he hood was raised and Norm was cleaning the spark plugs with gas-oline. He spent all his free time working on the engine. Now that this had become the family car he felt an enormous responsibility to keep it running. His mother might have to wait for Omar’s soap, her investment that had impoverished them, but it was his car that got her back and forth to work every day.

He had been daydreaming about Astrid Haddad. He’d almost convinced himself that Benjy had misinterpreted everything. But then when Astrid quit her job, his mother said she couldn’t help thinking it had something to do with her. She said Astrid couldn’t seem to look her straight in the eye anymore. Norm knew what it was. She’d quit because of him.

Twice last night he’d parked down the street from her house, staring at the light streaming through her filmy curtains, trying to work up the courage to ring her doorbell. Never had he felt lonelier than in these past two weeks.

392 / MARY MCGARRY MORRIS

Sometimes it seemed that there was a hole so big inside him nothing would ever fill it.

When he was done with the car, he ate supper, and then he drove slowly around the park to see if any of his friends were at the band concert. It was a cool starry night with enough of a breeze so that people stood shivering with their blankets around their shoulders. Many had begun to leave. As he came down West Street he was surprised to see Joey Seldon sitting on his stool. Victor the cop stood next to the stand with his arms folded. It had been a week since Joey had been ordered to vacate the stand. Each day another town official came to reason with him, but Joey would have no part of their hypocritical logic. He had an agreement, a contract with the town, and it was the town that had failed to meet its own stipulations, he explained to anyone who’d listen. Even Friday’s editorial in the
Atkinson Crier
was calling for “a reexamination of this most sensitive issue.”

Norm parked the car and was reading the editorial, which was tacked on one of the cornerposts. “See,” Joey said, poking a hand out between the boards. He pointed to the last line. “See what it says here. ‘The shameful condition of the stand in the park represents the town’s dereliction of responsibility to one of its most colorful citizens.’”

“Hey, that’s pretty good, Joey,” he said, pitying the old man’s proud grin, and for a minute he didn’t know what to say.

“So how’s the new car?” Joey asked.

“Great! ’Course I got some work to do on it. The timing’s all off.”

“As well as most of the paint,” Joey said, laughing, and Norm didn’t say anything. Their eyes met and Joey looked away. “Here,” Joey said, handing him a bag of popcorn. “It’s on the house,” he said with an unmistakable glance at the dime Norm held out.

Up in the bandstand Jarden Greene’s arms were a blur as the musicians played “The Syncopated Clock” faster and faster. Greene kept glancing back at the steady stream of people leaving the park.

“He thinks if the band plays louder and faster, they’ll all stay.” Joey laughed.

Norm looked at him. How had he known? Just by all the car doors opening and shutting. Engines starting. Of course. After all these years Joey knew all the sounds. All you had to do was say hello and Joey’d know if you were happy or sad. “Want some help with the empties? They’re all over the place,” he said, picking up a bottle.

“That’s not even mine,” Joey said.

“What?” he asked slowly. “What’s not yours?”

“That bottle you got.”

“What is it?” he asked.

“Kelly’s LimeAde.”

“How do you know?”

“By the smell,” Joey said with an exaggerated wink and a grin.

Norm looked away. Could it be that he wasn’t blind? That it had been a scam all these years, an act? He probably
was
getting a kickback the night SONGS IN ORDINARY TIME / 393

Towler’s still blew up. Norm thought of all the times he’d crated Joey’s empties, guided him across the busy West Street intersection, felt so trust-worthy to be able to count his money at the end of the night, when the whole time Joey’d been watching him like a hawk. He remembered his anger at Jarden Greene’s insistence that Joey’s mugging had been staged. The old man probably tripped and fell and then said he’d been robbed so that people would feel so sorry for him they’d stop trying to close his stand. Nothing but a phony, a con man like Duvall, milking people’s kindness.

“Well I gotta go now, Joey.” He tossed the popcorn into the barrel, certain he saw old man wince.

“Wait, let me get you a Coke, then.”

“No, thanks,” he said, calling goodbye as he headed up the street.

“How about a 7-Up then?”

“I’m not thirsty!” he called, and when he got to the Hotdog Bus he stopped at the window and ordered a raspberry freeze. He turned with the tall frosted cup and, sure enough, Joey watched sadly. He looked right at the old man, forced a quick cold smile before turning away.

R
enie stared at the ceiling. In the kitchen Sam and Helen argued right outside his door. Water was running into a pan. Helen had just called Dr. Reynolds about her mother’s congestion.

“Congestion!” Sam roared. “She can barely breathe. Will you face the facts, Helen. Mother’s dying.”

The linoleum made squeaky sticking sounds as Sam paced back and forth.

Renie knew their footsteps, their sighs, and which closing door had been shut by whom. Surely now, Sam followed his sister from chore to chore. At their most agitated, each would be hard upon the other’s tender heels.

“Sorry to disappoint you, dear brother, but Mother is not dying. She has a cold, a very bad cold, which Dr. Reynolds is treating.” Helen’s voice quavered.

“What’s he going to do? Give her another shot?” Sam shouted.

“Yes, give her another shot! The penicillin’s working.”

“Come on, Helen!”

“Oh! And what’s your solution? You’re so involved, tell me what to do!”

Helen said, and a cupboard door banged shut, all the cups tinkling on their hooks.

“Face the facts….”

“The facts! Facts! I live with the facts every single minute of every single day and night….”

The doorbell was ringing. Helen’s heels hurried through the house.

“Jesus Christ,” Sam muttered.

Renie jumped up and raced around his room, dressing quickly. He put his razor and rolled-up tie into his pocket so he could shave at work. He’d leave while Dr. Reynolds’s presence kept them both at bay.

The driveway filled with a rumble that shook the walls. He peeked out 394 / MARY MCGARRY MORRIS

his window and saw the garbage truck idling below as Jozia kissed Grondine Carson goodbye.

“You’re late,” he heard Sam say when she came into the kitchen.

“Miz LaChance said I could,” Jozia replied.

“Well, she’s awful mad. She said she needs someone she can depend on.”

“She said that? Miz LaChance said that? After all I’ve done for her. Well, that’s it, I’m—”

“No, no, no. Calm down, Jozia,” Sam said. “I was only kidding. Helen says you can do what you want. In fact, she was just in here saying how you need a day off, but it was probably too late to call you.”

“Really?”

“Really.”

“Grondine’s still collecting. I can hear him.”

“Well, if you hurry you can catch up with him.”

“Will you tell Miz LaChance thanks?”

“Sure. I’ll tell her. Bye, Jozia.” The back door banged shut.

“Good morning, Renie,” Sam said without looking up from his coffee as Renie came out of his room. Just then Helen looked in past the swinging door. “Where’s Jozia? I need her.”