Songs in Ordinary Time Read online

  “Summer’s here,” someone at the counter said. “Just like fleas, Mooney and his nitwits are out.”

  “Just for a time,” the Chief said. “He’s home on leave. Some special assignment he’s waiting to be called up for.”

  “Special assignment!” another man scoffed. “He’s nothing but trouble waiting to happen, that’s all.”

  “You done?” Eunice snapped, glaring at the man, without its being at all clear whether she meant his sarcasm or his coffee. She laid a top slice of bread on the sandwich.

  “Onion on that, Eunice,” the Chief said quickly.

  “No kisses for you tonight.” She laughed and the Chief blushed.

  The men at the counter shifted uncomfortably. A couple of them exchanged looks. “What a thing to say to a man whose wife’s dying,” the man across from Benjy whispered.

  “Well,” his companion said, his shrug summing up all of Eunice’s troubles, excusing her.

  Eunice had been married to Al Bonifante, the Chief’s brother-in-law. Three years ago Al had committed suicide. He had been a hardworking, quiet man, who’d owned the Mobil station and this luncheonette, which Eunice had always run. After Al died, she just threw herself into both businesses, working night and day, weekends, holidays. That had ended a year ago, when she ended up in the hospital completely broken down. Just when her sister-in-law Carol and Sonny got her back on her feet, Carol found out about the cancer.

  “It’s for Joey,” the Chief was saying.

  “You should’ve said,” Eunice said, slapping on a wheel of red onion. She reached for the mayonnaise jar. “Joey’s always onion and extra mayo.”

  At the far end of the counter a stool turned with a squeal. It was Jarden Greene, his thin mustache quivering. He had recently been re-elected head of the town’s Public Works Department. He was also the conductor at the Sunday-night band concerts in the park. Greene had come up through department ranks on a street crew, scooping sludge from catch basins and raking leaves from gutters with hands God had created to make music. Now he wore his power as trimly as his pin-striped suits and small lustrous black shoes.

  “Did I hear correctly?” Greene said in disbelief, as he tightened the knot of his tie. “Our police chief is now a common errand boy for Joey Seldon?”

  Stoner turned, his taut face white. “What’s that, Jarden?” he said.

  Greene passed a cool smirk to the men beside him. On his right was Thomas Holby, who owned the Holby Coal Company.

  Greene spoke loudly and now the entire luncheonette grew silent. “I’ll tell you what, Chief. When I ran for Public Works, I ran on a platform of public trust and honesty. I promised if I was elected, I would root out greed and corruption and the god-awful waste of taxpayers’ hard-earned money. And I was elected and, by Jesus, I won’t stand by silent while Joey Seldon’s raking in the dough from his popcorn shanty that stands rent-free on town property. And I won’t stand silent while our chief of police commandeers a town vehicle and town gas to run sandwiches up to that leech!” Greene pounded his fist on the counter. “I’m too much of an honest man…too much of an…”

  “Asshole,” Eunice groaned, rolling her eyes. She came the length of the counter and threw down his check. Greene pushed it away. “I’ll pay when I’m through.”

  “You’re through,” she said. She picked up his coffee cup and the plate of half-eaten chocolate cake.

  “Eunice!” the Chief said, trying to set things straight again. Greene’s humiliation embarrassed him. Like his father, who had been chief before him, Sonny Stoner believed himself keeper of the town’s virtue, and to this end had kept his heart as accessible and unblemished as his badge.

  Greene was demanding his cake back. “This is an outrage!” he cried.

  “Get the hell out!” Eunice growled.

  “You can’t do that,” Greene fumed. “This is a public establishment and I’m entitled to that cake.”

  “That’s right,” Ferdinand Briscoe called down the counter. “Jard ordered that cake fair and square and you can’t take it away just because you don’t like what he said.”

  “Oh yah?” she said, reaching for Briscoe’s cherry pie.

  “I paid for that!” Briscoe cried.

  “Not yet you didn’t!” she howled. Her eyes moved menacingly along the counter, threatening Bart Doore’s muffins and Holmby’s hot dog, which was halfway to his mouth. Holmby glanced from side to side and under Greene’s peevish stare laid down the hot dog. He chewed drily and coughed a little before he spoke. “Jard and Ferd have every right to say what’s on their mind.”

  “And I got a perfect right not to listen,” Eunice said, snapping up the hot dog plate and throwing it onto the stainless-steel work bench.

  Sonny winced. The shattering plate might as well have struck him, for the pain and the misery on his face. A dark murmur rose among the diners. From out on the street came the squeal of brakes and then the blast of Mooney’s motorcycle.

  “Aw c’mon, Eunice,” pleaded Sonny as she moved along the counter with a plastic bin, into which she slid everyone’s cups and glasses and plates. “Just settle down now.” He looked at the sputtering men. “Everybody just settle down…. There’s no need to—”

  “Shut up,” Eunice said.

  “No! This is all my fault,” Sonny was saying. He leaned over the counter toward her. “Maybe Jard’s right. I probably should’ve used my own car on my own time.”

  Robert Haddad, Astrid’s husband, stood up and tried to mediate. “You gotta understand Jard’s position, Eunice. He makes some good points.”

  “Shut up, Haddad,” she said.

  “Now that’s not fair, Eunice!” Haddad fumed. “We’re all tryna make a living and do what’s right.” He looked around at the nodding men. “Nobody gives us free rent. Nobody sets us up in business. It’s like there’s two sets of rules. Hell, morality’s right out the window.”

  At that, she spun around, certain he’d meant her as well.

  “Get your ass out, Haddad, and get it out now!”

  He opened his mouth and she pointed at him. “Don’t!” She shook her head. “Don’t!”

  He eased past the man beside her and left, closing the door without a sound.

  Now she moved from booth to booth, clearing each table. Benjy and Renie’s half-eaten pies were the last she took. She turned off the fryolaters, the grill, the overhead lights, and the ceiling fan. Its grease-slicked paddles whirred to a sluggish stop. The sudden dim silence was frightening.

  “Out!” Eunice ordered, pointing at the door. Like admonished children they hurried to leave.

  At the counter Sonny turned on his stool. “This is crazy!” he said. “Eunice, what’s got into you?”

  “You too!” she said, chest heaving and eyes thick with tears.

  He said her name again, but now Benjy and his uncle were out on the sidewalk.

  They parted at the appliance store, with Benjy promising to drop in again soon, though he knew he wouldn’t. To avoid running into his father he stayed off the streets and came through back alleys. He was behind the luncheonette now. The metal-sheeted back door was open to the narrow white kitchen and inside he saw Chief Stoner and Mrs. Bonifante.

  The Chief held her uniform collar down while he kissed her throat and her shoulder. Mrs. Bonifante’s head was back, her eyes closed, her hands down the back of the Chief’s blue trousers. Just as Benjy stepped back, her eyes opened. She was crying. Biting her lip, she stared back at him while the Chief kept kissing her.

  Renie LaChance watched the gold-banded glass doors that led into Cushing’s Department Store. Every time the doors opened the sun struck them with a beam of light that bounced off Renie’s store window. Most of Cushing’s customers were women. He estimated that those leaving with purchases must have spent an average of three dollars each. Here came another now, an older woman with two shopping bags. He glanced down at his tally. Two hundred and twenty-two dollars and that didn’t even include the times he’d had
to hide today when his brother-in-law, Sam, showed up or the twenty minutes in the luncheonette with Benjy. Twenty minutes wasted, he thought, then corrected himself. No. It had been good seeing the boy. He only wished the other two would come more often. Especially Alice. Just thinking of her pleased him. She was pretty like her mother, but without Marie’s sharp tongue and suspicions.

  He looked up as another woman left Cushing’s, this one also carrying a bag. He opened his ledger and crossed out $222 and wrote $225; and that was just what came through the back door! The day before Christmas, 1959, had been the best ever: 326 people times $3 had come to $978. He wondered if old Mr. Cushing knew how many people came through that back door. Maybe he’d like to see the records, he thought, idly stroking the cat’s neck. Maybe they could have lunch together, him and the old man…. His heart sank as his fingers snagged in the silky fur. Without an introduction Mr. Cushing wouldn’t know who he was. Mr. Cushing might think he had nothing better to do than stare out the window all day counting Cushing’s customers.

  But it was true; lately business was terrible, his stock outdated, overpriced, and covered with a fine soot he could not muster the energy to wipe away. Ever since the big Montgomery Ward catalog store had opened up on Route 4, his business had nose-dived. A year ago February, in a burst of optimism one morning after Helen had been unusually pleasant at breakfast, he had ordered seventy-five fans and twenty air conditioners from a young Fridge-Kool salesman he’d taken a shine to the minute he came into the store. The young salesman had reminded Renie of himself at that age. As soon as the salesman had removed his gloves, Renie’s heart had ached at the sight of the man’s wide palms and short thick fingers. Could it be? he had asked himself. Was he the child Renie had never seen? In a cold sweat he had nodded at everything the young man said. “Yes…Yes…Okay…Uh-huh…” He had stared at the young man’s face, pleased to find him not at all ugly, as he’d dreaded, but appealing, round-faced and blond.

  “Supposed to be a scorcher this summer,” the salesman had said, scribbling to get his pen working.

  “Yup.”

  “I’d figure a good-size order early. Then when they drag in here boiling hot, you’re ready. You’re merchandisable!” The young man had smiled and handed him the pen. “Because you’ve got the goods!”

  Renie had signed the order, his swollen heart crowding out every other organ in his body.

  “Great!” the young salesman had said, checking the signature.

  “How old are you?” Renie had blurted.

  “Twenty-three,” the salesman had answered.

  “You sure?” Renie had cried. “You sure you’re not twenty-eight? You were born in New York in 1931. In the fall sometime.”

  “I’m twenty-three,” the salesman had said, hurriedly packing his leather valise. He gave Renie a copy of the order. “I was born in Burlington,” he had said, backing out the door. “Delivery’ll take three to six weeks, sir.”

  Of the original order Renie still had sixty-nine fans. All of this year’s models looked smaller, and his seemed even bigger than they were last year. Sometimes he thought they had actually grown bigger. Sometimes he thought God hated him. No matter what he did or how hard he tried, God thwarted him. If he weren’t a Catholic he might even wonder if there was such a thing as God. Maybe there was only love. Maybe that’s how it was two thousand years ago, with people crowded around Jesus to hear him speak of love the way Frank Sinatra sang about it now. Love, that old hot rush rose in his groin. He reversed the OPEN sign on the front door to CLOSED and hurried into his windowless, airless chamber where he sat on the closed toilet lid and began to dial. He knew most of the numbers by heart now. The first one wasn’t home. The second one answered on the first ring, her small voice breathless and sweet. “Hello?” she kept saying.

  He closed his eyes and pictured that blur of yellow curls and creamy pink skin. “I love you,” he whispered.

  “Who is this?” Jessie Klubock demanded.

  “I love you so much.”

  “Don’t do this,” she said. “Please stop…please….”

  “I love everything about you,” he said, eyes closed.

  “You’ve got to stop. My husband…he…oh, please don’t call here anymore….”

  “I love your sw—” he said, then, realizing she’d hung up, he dialed the next number.

  “Hello,” answered a woman who’d bought an electric mixer from him two years ago.

  “I love you,” he whispered, his thick lips close to the mouthpiece.

  “Go to hell!”

  He dialed the next number, a young woman who worked at the candy store.

  “Hello,” a man answered, and Renie hung up quickly. wiping sweat from his upper lip.

  His favorite was Eunice Bonifante. Usually he had to wait until late at night to get her home, but now he dialed the luncheonette.

  “Hello!” she answered irritably.

  He listened a moment.

  “Oh shit. It’s not you, is it?”

  “I love you,” he whispered.

  “Not today you don’t. Today’s the worse day I ever had. Jesus, it was bad.”

  “I love you any day.”

  “Yah? Well, you must be pretty hard up, then.” She sighed and he could tell she was lighting a cigarette. “I’m kinda crazy today. You know what I did? I went and threw all my customers out!”

  She laughed bitterly. “Some days I just don’t give a damn. Some days all I think about is dying. I don’t mean me. I mean everything, all the people I care about, it seems.” Her voice broke off.

  “That’s okay,” he said tenderly. “Some days’re awful, huh?”

  “Some days! Lately, every day.”

  “Well, I love you…” He winced, adding, “Sweetheart.”

  “Yah?” She laughed. “I’m glad somebody does.”

  Alice waited in the Stoners’ living room while Lester got his instructions from Mrs. Miller before she went off duty. Alice loved this house. Even the television had doors to hide its blank gray screen. Every window was shuttered inside as well as outside. She glanced toward the kitchen, where the only jarring note was the police radio on the white metal utility cart. From the mantel she picked up the brass-hinged framed photographs of the Stoners, one taken on their wedding day and the other when Mr. Stoner had been sworn in as chief of police. With Lester a toddler in her arms, Mrs. Stoner gazed proudly at her handsome young husband, whose one hand was on the family Bible and the other upraised as he was sworn in by his father. Alice looked more closely at the wedding picture. Mrs. Stoner’s maid of honor had been Eunice Bonifante, her sister-in-law. Alice had heard the awful rumor about Mrs. Bonifante and Lester’s father, but she knew it couldn’t be true. Mrs. Bonifante might run around; she certainly looked the part with her big pointy breasts and messy hair and brassy makeup, but not Chief Stoner.

  “I had to give her another pill,” Mrs. Miller was telling Lester on their way down the stairs. “She was in a bad way and I hated doing it, but I had to. You tell your dad that, now….”

  “I will,” Lester interrupted with a glance at Alice that was heavy with longing. They came here straight from school every day now. Alice smiled at him.

  “The point is, she shouldn’t have her regular dose next time. She’s all set, but if she wakes up and says it’s bad, then you better call Dr. Hess. I wouldn’t give—”

  “I won’t, Mrs. Miller,” Lester said, opening the door. “I’ll call Dr. Hess first.”

  “Be sure, now,” Mrs. Miller said. “She wants them sooner and sooner these last few days. I know her pain’s—”

  “Don’t worry,” Lester said, starting to close the door. “When it gets bad, I just start talking and she can’t get a word in edgewise.”

  “God bless you, Les. You’re a good boy,” Mrs. Miller sighed before the door closed.

  Lester called to Alice that he’d be right back down. He had to check on his mother, he called over his shoulder as he bounded up the stair
s. He was back in less than a minute. “She wants to see you,” he said, rolling his eyes. “She’s funny-acting on these pills, so if she sounds weird, you’ll know why,” he whispered as she followed him upstairs into a dry redolence of sweet powder and undisturbed dust. He peeked into the bedroom. “Mother! You’re crooked,” he said, tapping the side of his head.

  Mrs. Stoner’s honey-blond wig was pushed back, exposing her patchy scalp. She looked old and befuddled. Her eyes were puffy and pinkish and her pallid skin gleamed with sweat.

  Alice forced a smile, hoping it looked natural, but she could feel her lips quiver.

  Distant and labored, Mrs. Stoner’s soft voice seemed more breathing than words. “Would you like lemonade?”

  Alice nodded, but Lester fibbed and said they’d just had some downstairs.

  “I have these delicious chocolates,” Mrs. Stoner said, straining forward. “Over there,” she told Lester. “On the dresser. Do you like chocolate?” Mrs. Stoner asked.

  “I love chocolate,” Alice said.

  Lester opened the door. “We have to study, Mother. And I’m working on my graduation speech. Alice has to be my audience.” He gestured for Alice to follow him.

  “She looked so disappointed,” Alice whispered as they hurried down the stairs.

  “She was just trying to be polite. She doesn’t even like chocolate,” he said so sourly that if he had added, “And she doesn’t like you either,” she wouldn’t have been a bit surprised.

  It was four-thirty, and they were still downstairs in the dark rec room, the high small basement windows curtained and the door at the top of the stairs latched. They sat on the musty divan with a scratchy wool plaid blanket covering them to their chins. They had been making out for an hour. Alice’s mouth was tender and her neck felt stiff. “Oh…oh,” she gasped, and Lester grunted, as the hand of each worked at the other’s crotch.