Songs in Ordinary Time (99 page)

“Pipes,” he had whispered, pulling Benjy toward the door. They had driven up to Seward’s for ice cream.

He watched Weeb come down the walk to the car. “I’m impressed,” Weeb said, leaning in the window. “What’d you do, finally catch him with the douche bag?” Weeb climbed in and turned the radio up as they drove off.

“I saw her the other night,” he yelled, drumming his fingers on the dashboard.

“Who?” Norm demanded, turning the radio down.

“Bernadette Mansaw,” Weeb said. “I picked my father up down the bowling alley and she was there.”

“Yah. So?”

“You know what she had on the counter? That soap, the same stuff as your mother. She was selling it.”

“Oh yah? I guess a lot of people are doing that now.” He nodded. “Going into business. Selling soap. That Presto Soap’s pretty good stuff, I hear. It’ll clean just about anything.” He felt like stopping the car and shoving Weeb into the gutter for making him sound like such an idiot.

“I should tell my sister.” Weeb shook his head. “She’s always puking all over the place. Morning sickness, my mother calls it. Morning, noon, and night sickness,” Weeb said with a shudder.

They drove around, but the streets were empty. There were only a few cars at the A+X. It was still summer, but there was a depressing chill in the night air. Hoping to see Janice, Norm kept suggesting they go back to the house, but Weeb didn’t want to. He was sick of being in every night. But after a while his legs began to ache, and he said he’d better go home and put ice on them.

After Weeb filled the ice bags, they went downstairs to watch television in the rec room. Norm asked about all the boxes stacked in the corner. Weeb told him they contained Janice’s belongings that were going to her future in-laws’ house in Rhode Island, where she and her new husband would be living after they were married. He kept glancing at the boxes. So it was true.

It was really happening. He asked if that meant Janice would be dropping out of school. Weeb shook his head. Russ wouldn’t be going back to school, either, he said. He would be working for his uncle’s construction company while he took night classes. Weeb said Russ’s parents were barely speaking to Janice, they were so mad.

Norm and Weeb sat on the musty divan watching
Dragnet
. He could tell his questions were annoying Weeb, so he tried to pace them. They stared at the screen as Joe Friday jumped from his police car and ran into the lobby of an apartment building.

484 / MARY MCGARRY MORRIS

“So what are they mad about?” Norm asked when the commercial came on.

Weeb gave him a weird look. “Who?”

“That guy. Russ, his parents.”

“I don’t know. Everything. They’re just mad.” He looked at Norm. “What do you care?”

“I don’t know. I just…I guess it’s just interesting, that’s all.”

“Yah, well,” Weeb began, then seemed to change his mind abruptly.

“Well, maybe to you it’s interesting, but I’m not used to all this commotion, all this trouble!”

Norm’s cheeks stung. “What I meant was, well, you’re going to be an uncle, for instance. Now, that’s interesting.” He knew exactly what Weeb had wanted to say. Every time there had been some new mess in Norm’s life, Weeb had never once said anything, not even when Alice got caught with Father Gannon.

“Yah, that’s right.” Weeb grinned. “I am. I’m going to be an uncle, huh?”

Norm felt something in his chest jerk out of place. What if this Russ’s family hated the kid? What if Russ hated this kid that might not even be his? He told Weeb he’d be right back, he had to go to the bathroom.

Janice was in the kitchen. With one foot propped on a chair she was painting her toenails a bright pink. A cigarette burned in a cut-glass ashtray.

Her wet blond hair was done up on enormous black mesh rollers that bobbed as she bent forward. Glancing up at him, she continued to stroke polish on the nail of her big toe. Cotton balls were wedged between each perfect toe.

His heart ached. He had loved her for as long as he could remember.

“What do you want?”

“Oh, nothing. I just came upstairs.” He gestured feebly at the basement door. “
Dragnet
’s on.” He put his hands on his hips and exhaled through his mouth the way Omar would right before a sales pitch. “I don’t know. It’s kind of juvenile, if you ask me.”

She took a puff of her cigarette, then blew the smoke straight up into the light over the table. “I didn’t,” she said.

“Didn’t what?” he asked, smiling, then caught himself. “Oh well, no, I know, but I just thought I’d…come up and say…say…” His face burned and sweat rolled down his back. He couldn’t get it out. She stared at him as he continued to stammer. “The thing is, you see…well, first off, I want you to know I never…Oh God,” he moaned and shook his head.

“Norm, don’t worry about it.”

“But whatever happened…I mean, if it did, that is, I just want you to know I’m…”

“Forget about it,” she said with a shrug. “No big deal. Really.”

“But it is!” he said, pulling out a chair and sitting next to her. “For me it is. I’m not like that.”

She couldn’t look at him. “I know. And that’s why I felt so guilty.”

“Well, don’t!” he pleaded. “Don’t feel guilty! I don’t.”

“Well, I do. I mean, I was the one that started the whole thing.”

SONGS IN ORDINARY TIME / 485

“You did?” He could feel himself getting excited. If only he could remember it. “But I wanted to, too. I know I did!” He didn’t want her feeling like a tramp when they were both responsible.

“Yah, because you were trying to impress everyone. They were all laughing and clapping.”

“They were?” He was shocked. “You mean people were watching?” It had been an orgy. No wonder he’d blanked it out.

She gave him a funny look. “Well, yah, what do you think? They were even taking bets on how long you’d last.”

His mouth hung open. He didn’t know what to say or where to look as she continued speaking in a low voice. “I tried to get you to stop, but you wouldn’t, and things were just out of control, and I didn’t know what to do. Norm, promise me you’ll never again let anyone talk you into another chug-a-lug.”

A chug-a-lug. Oh Jesus, she’d been talking about a beer-drinking match, not sex.

She leaned toward him in a dizzying rush of smoke and scented soap. “I mean, God, Norm, you were so sick it was…it was pitiful. I mean everyone was blasted, but you…you barfed, and then you started to cry and say things, and then you passed out. God, you were laying in it. Your whole face was in it. We didn’t know what to do. And this woman was there. She said she knew you, so we let her get you home.”

His eyes widened with the humiliating image of himself with his hands over his face as she begged him to stop crying. “Well,” he said. “I’m glad we finally…” He cleared his throat. He couldn’t look at her. “You know, got this out in the open, then. Because that’s what I wanted. I wanted to tell you I was sorry.”

“That’s what you kept saying then, how sorry you were.”

“Well yah, for embarrassing you in front of your friends,” he said, hoping to sound at least a little lighthearted.

“Don’t worry about it. Besides, they all felt really bad for you.”

Felt bad for him! Jesus Christ!

“You kept saying all these things about your father.” She glanced away, adding softly. “I almost cried myself.”

He turned to go. The bitch, he hoped he never saw her again. He was through with Weeb, through with this whole frigging town.

“Norm!” she called, following him to the door. “I probably shouldn’t say this, but if I don’t and then something happens, like, you know, years from now…you know, like, well, like your father…I mean, in a way you’re like my little brother.” She reached up and put her hand on his shoulder. “Just be real careful, will you?” She stood on her tiptoes and kissed his cheek.

He drove home, turning into the driveway so fast that the tires squealed.

His mother and Omar were in the kitchen. “That boy’s gotta go bad,” Omar laughed as he stormed past them. He ran upstairs and slammed his door.

A few minutes later there was a knock on the door. “What do you want?”

he bellowed.

486 / MARY MCGARRY MORRIS

“I want to talk to you,” his mother called back.

“Well, I don’t feel like talking, all right?”

“Open the door, Norm.”

“No, just leave me alone. Everyone just leave me the hell alone!”

The door opened and she stepped inside. “Omar was just telling me you’re the best salesman he’s ever seen. And I told him how proud I am of you, and he said I should be telling you that. And he’s right.” She came closer and scratched the back of his head. “I’m very proud of you, Norm,” she whispered. “Very, very proud.”

Today they had made so many sales that by midafternoon they were out of soap. Norm and Omar were a well-drilled team now, their every word and gesture significant, including his nervous stammer as he introduced Omar as his boss to each housewife. “I haven’t been doing too well,” he would confide, clearing his throat while the woman glanced uneasily at the tall man in the rumpled suit. Omar would merely nod, his sharp-eyed stare furrowing to disapproval the moment Norm patted his pockets, then began fumbling through sales folders for the missing product brochures. Shaking his head, Omar would watch him race back to the car. “It’s a shame,” Omar would confide to the concerned woman. “He’s such an earnest young man.

I was hoping to give him this one last chance to prove himself.” And then he’d smile. “It’s kind of you to be so patient.”

“Oh I don’t mind,” they’d usually say, often adding that they thought the boy was doing a good job. He was just a little nervous, they’d tell Omar.

When Norm returned they would listen intently to the rest of his pitch, to show Omar what a good salesman the boy could be. They always ordered something, even if it was just one bottle of dish detergent. And Omar always urged them to pay by check. “Here,” he’d insist, holding out his pen. “Use mine. No sense in wasting your own ink.”

It was one of those personal touches customers like. Norm was grateful to be learning so much about business and life at the hands of a master.

“Service in even the smallest details. That’s what makes for success,” Omar said, launching into yet another homily delivered in his hypnotic rhetoric as the big warm car cruised over the country roads. “People helping people, that’s the bottom line. You see, I love people, Norm. I really do. I’m not ashamed to say it, and I’m not afraid to show it. No sir, never have been and never will be, because that’s what being on this planet’s all about.”

He woke up every morning looking forward to another day on the road with Omar. They had already sold half his mother’s stock, earning enough to get her car back from Hillman’s garage and to make one of the delinquent loan payments. His mother treated him with a new respect, as if he were a peer. At this rate, she said, they would be able to start a savings account in a month or two. She looked younger. Her eyes glowed. Sometimes he would look up and find her smiling at him. Yesterday on their way home, after their sandwich and beer, Omar had taken him into a fancy dress shop on the outskirts of town. Omar kept holding dresses up and asking him how SONGS IN ORDINARY TIME / 487

he thought they’d look on his mother. At first he’d been embarrassed. But the saleswoman was so charmed by the idea of the son helping his father pick out a dress for his mother that she began to model the ones they liked.

They finally decided on a red dress with a black stand-up collar.

Marie was shocked when Omar handed her the box. It was too flashy, she said, not at all her type of thing. Norm could feel Omar’s disappointment.

“Well, try it on, Mom. At least give it a chance,” he said.

When she came out of the bathroom, he and Omar were both grinning.

With her dark hair and dark eyes, she looked beautiful.

“But when will I ever wear it?” she asked, glancing back at herself in the mirror.

“How about next week,” Omar said. “When we apply for the marriage license.”

It was late Friday afternoon when Alice came home, sunburned and irritable. She said she’d hated her week at the lake, but at least she seemed more like her old self, Norm thought.

“The wedding license!” she kept saying. “The wedding license!”

It was the first thing Benjy had told her.

“Oh God,” she groaned, throwing her bag onto the floor. “I don’t believe it! What is she, crazy? How could she do this?”

“But she’s really happy,” Benjy said. “You should see her. She doesn’t even yell anymore. Nothing makes her mad.”

She spun around to Norm. “What about Bernadette Mansaw? How could she forget about that?”

“That really was business,” Norm said; then, seeing her shocked look, added, “I know for a fact.”

“Norm’s Omar’s partner now,” Benjy said. “They go out selling every morning.”

“What?” Alice cried.

“Well, not his partner,” Norm said. “I’m just kind of helping, I guess.”

“But he said partner,” Benjy insisted.

He wished Benjy wouldn’t hit her with everything all at once like this.

She’d end up back under the covers in her sealed room and all the recrimination and despair would start again. He followed her into the kitchen and tried to explain how well things had been going here. He told her about the bills finally being paid. He opened the cupboard and pulled out a plate from the new set of dishes Omar had bought. He pointed to the can of paint in the corner. Omar was going to paint the kitchen pale blue, Mom’s favorite color. He told her how Marie and Omar had gone to the Klubocks’ soap party and stayed on, visiting with the Klubocks, long after the other guests had gone home. Jessie Klubock had come to the back door the other night to ask Omar about ordering more soap. “She almost made it into the kitchen!” Norm laughed.

“Oh God, into this dump! How humiliating!” she groaned, looking around.

488 / MARY MCGARRY MORRIS

She didn’t understand. Things had changed, he tried to explain. They hadn’t really understood Omar or given him a fair chance. “He’s really a sharp guy,” he said.

“Yah, he can sell anybody anything,” Benjy said from the doorway.