Songs in Ordinary Time Read online

“You plugged it up with toilet paper,” Hammie said, laying the shot glass and the beer mug on the counter. “And then you flushed it.”

  “Asshole,” someone muttered.

  “I’m sorry,” he said, turning now with his beer. He’d already downed the shot. There was no place to sit.

  “This time you wanna piss, you leave,” Hammie warned. “Next time it’s not no lockup. Next time I press charges!”

  Sam just stood there. Fuckingsonofachickenshit, he thought, his eyes and mouth heavy with insult, his head bobbing slightly. As a kid he had felt sorry for Abraham Hammelwitz’s son, covered with chicken crud, delivering the family eggs from store to store, house to house.

  “Got a job, Fermoyle?” asked the dark man hunched next to him. He gestured at Sam’s wadded bills and said his name was Haddad.

  Squinting through the haze, Sam tried to place him. Plastic pocket liner stuffed with pens. Renie wore one, too. Some kind of salesman…some kind of poor sniveling, pestering bastard no one likes.

  “Beer, buddy?” Sam asked, nudging his arm. Sam’s beer sloshed from the mug and ran down the counter.

  “For chrissakes!” Haddad exploded, jerking his arm from Sam, who tightened his grip as he tried to apologize. “Look what the hell you did!” The thick dark hairs on Haddad’s hands and arms glistened with beer.

  “Jesus Christ,” another man said as Sam lost his balance and collapsed against his back. His money fell to the floor.

  “Get out!” Hammie ordered.

  “Now look,” Sam began, but Hammie’s dense flesh was already at his elbow, nudging him along. “Now look…that’s my…” he kept saying and trying to turn back. He wanted to tell Hammie his money was back there on the floor, but Hammie had butted him to the door. “Stay outta here!” Hammie growled, opening the door. “Go someplace else to die!”

  “My rents!” Sam cried, clutching his wrist. His voice broke. “Oh shit, Hammie. My sister’ll kill me. All the rents’re in there. I dropped the fuckin’ rents!”

  Hammie turned toward the bar. “See any dough on the floor?”

  Some of the men glanced down and shook their heads. Hammie took a step inside. “You see his dough, Haddad? Maybe you got it for him?”

  “Oh yes!” Haddad said, jumping off the stool and making his way toward them. “I didn’t think he should…you know,” he said, gesturing, his mouth at Hammie’s ear. “I was gonna have you hold it…you know, after.” He gestured at Sam.

  “Really? Is that what you were gonna do?” Hammie sneered. He snatched the bills from Haddad and stuffed them into Sam’s shirt pocket. The men at the bar laughed.

  “C’mon,” Haddad grunted with a tug at Sam’s elbow. “C’mon, old buddy. Let’s get a move on,” he said, steering him onto the sidewalk. “I’ll give him a hand,” Haddad called.

  “Yah, I’ll bet you will,” Hammie called back sourly, and the men laughed even louder.

  Haddad’s office was a dingy haze of dented file cabinets and dust. There were three different calendars on the wall, each showing a different month. In the corner on the floor was a large black typewriter. Sam sat at Haddad’s desk, which was strewn with papers and with an ashtray overflowing with butts. From here, Sam could see the blue tubing that said HAMMIE’s BAR AND GRILL.

  “I’m Bob Haddad.” He held out his hand to Sam. “Haddad Realty Insurance and Finance Company. Haddad RIFCO.” He cleared his throat and drew back his hand. “My wife, Astrid, works with your uh…with Marie.”

  “Marie,” Sam repeated numbly, nodding again. The steel wall rose in his brain, blocking thought and memory.

  “I see your daughter around with Les Stoner, the Chief’s kid. Boy, that’s a tough one. Stoner’s one of my policyholders. His wife. She’s kind of had the course. Won’t see Christmas, last I heard.” Haddad’s face darkened and he shook his head. “My luck, let me tell you. Twenty-five thousand and the week after he signs the policy they find out she’s gonzo!” Haddad wiped his sweaty brow.

  “Gotta butt?” Sam asked thickly. His tongue swelled in his mouth. His jaw hung open. He had to keep refocusing to see Haddad, who shook a cigarette from his pack and gave it to him. Sam let Haddad light it, but it kept sliding from his lips. It fell onto the papers, and when he didn’t pick it up, Haddad placed it in the ashtray.

  “What time is it?” Sam asked. “I gotta go.”

  “You going to the graduation? You got plenty of time.”

  Sam stared at the smoking cigarette. The graduation. Alice. Had it come so soon? She was just a baby. They were all babies, and he was a young man again. He felt in his pockets for her baby picture to show Haddad. He pulled the crumpled bills from his shirt pocket and dropped them on the desk. No pictures. Fucking Helen. She took everything. Everything! He picked up the cigarette and took a long, deep drag. “I gotta go,” he sighed.

  “You got her graduation present?”

  Sam shook his head.

  “You got the dough for one.”

  Sam looked down at the money.

  “’Course all the stores are closed now. I know! How about that typewriter?” Haddad said. “I’m selling it. It’s used, but all the keys work.” He pushed aside the money, papers, and ashtray and set the typewriter in front of Sam. He rolled in a sheet of paper and standing next to Sam began to type: My name is Sam Fermoyle. This typewriter is a gift for my lovely daughter, Alice.

  Sam smiled. Now that was nice. That was a really nice thing to do. “How much?” he asked.

  Haddad’s eyes fixed on the money. “Fifty dollars’ll do it.” He spit into his handkerchief and began to rub the grime coating the keys. “Belis is a really good name. Kinda like Mercedes. You only ever see a few.”

  Sam hunched over his money, peering as he unwrinkled five tens.

  “You got any life insurance?” Haddad asked, quickly slipping the money into his pocket.

  Sam shook his head.

  “You should, you know, for the kids and all.” Haddad squeezed his shoulder. “Those are great kids you got, but pow! What’re they ever going to have, Fermoyle, if anything should happen to you, God forbid.” He shook his head sadly. “Without you, Sam, they got nothing but nothing. Plenty of nothing.”

  Sam’s eyes blurred. He wiped his dripping nose with the back of his hand. He clutched Haddad’s wrist and with his free hand groped in the air for the words. “I love those kids!” He burst into tears. “I’d do anything for my kids.” He buried his head in his arms. “Anything,” his muffled voice bawled. He kept seeing Benjy’s fearful eyes staring at him through the leafy bars of his mother’s crib.

  “…to assure them a secure financial future,” Haddad was droning. “So many men like you, Sam, are so busy, so caught up with the todays, that they think they can put off the tomorrows.” Haddad leaned down, whispering hoarsely. “But all the tomorrows are gone, Sam. Today, right now, that’s all that’s left.”

  “Huh?” Sam said, his weighted eyelids sagging.

  “Here,” Haddad said, moving the typewriter, handing him a pen, blowing ashes off a paper before he smoothed it out on the desk.

  Sam couldn’t get his fingers around the pen. It fell to the floor. A trickle of sweat coursed the ridge of Haddad’s nose as he picked up the pen. He wrapped Sam’s fingers around it. “Where it’s underlined…right there…what do I have to do, fucking sign it for you?”

  Sam scrawled an S. He couldn’t remember how to start the a. He looked up sheepishly. He had forgotten why he was here.

  “Honest to God…you said you wanted the policy!” Haddad said as he pressed Sam’s fingers around the pen and, gripping them, completed his signature.

  “Very good. Very, very good, Sam,” Haddad said, examining the signature under the hanging bulb that lit his office.

  Sam smiled at him.

  “This,” Haddad said, slapping the paper, “is your new lease on life. You just bought a whole lot of tomorrows for everyone.” Haddad’s brain reeled with anticipation. It was his only sale after weeks
of febrile nights with Astrid’s back turned to him. She had come to loathe his promises and his coarse hairy body almost as much as he did.

  He was getting better every day, so much better, and yet business got worse and worse. For the last couple of months he’d had to live off the few premiums that came in. Like Stoner’s policy, many had been canceled now for lack of payment. That’s what he’d use this money for, to see if the main office would reinstate Stoner’s. At least that one. Oh Jesus, why now, just when he was getting better, when all he needed was a break. The main office hounding him, his wife belittling him with her two jobs; they wouldn’t be patient: graphs and figures were all that mattered to any of them. He was getting so desperate. They kept pushing. He was holding on by his fingertips and they just kept pushing, when all he needed was time to set this juggling act straight. All his life he’d had nothing but bad luck. Jesus Christ, there were so many unpaid policies out now, he could barely keep track. Life, auto, homeowners, it was all catch-up, like Stoner’s nonexistent policy. Jesus Christ, the chief of police. When he thought of it, the shit ran down his leg. He’d cover it somehow. This would help. He’d steal the rest, then beg if he had to, crawl into the main office on his hands and knees. Somehow he’d get it all straight. With this money. With time. Yes. Yes, with just the right break and just the right timing, all the pieces would fall into place.

  He counted out the bills for Fermoyle to see. “…seventy, eighty, ninety. That’s three months’ premiums. Now you can pay me ninety quarterly like tonight, or thirty a month; whichever’s easier on the budget….”

  Sam sagged forward onto the desk.

  “Shit,” Haddad muttered and set him upright before he called a cab.

  After he and the cabdriver got Sam into the car with the typewriter beside him on the seat, he turned off the light in his office and stood by the window, looking out. This was good, he told himself. He had done a good thing.

  In the distance he saw a woman with a blond ponytail coming down the street, her white shorts gleaming through the shade. His eyes narrowed on Astrid. A car drove by her and honked. She waved. Next came a motorcycle driven by that thug Blue Mooney. The cycle slowed down with Mooney’s black boots tapping the road alongside her. She said something and then he roared off.

  Haddad’s breast fired with rage. He grabbed the doorknob. Slut, his brain cried. Slut! “Get home!” he was screaming. “Get off the streets! How can you do this to me?” It wasn’t Astrid. The young woman looked at him and hurried across the street. He ducked back into the shadows, his face pressed to the door. The worse things got for him, the more moral he felt, the more indignant, the more outraged at women who flaunted themselves, women like that, women like Astrid, women he loved, women who thought him vile and repulsive, making him love them all the more. It was the same with his business: the more money he took from it, the more thievery sickened him.

  His indignation and outrage cleansed him, comforting him with the knowledge that things weren’t as bad as they seemed. They couldn’t be, not when a man cared so much. Such caring would make up for everything; that, and a few more premiums, just to keep the bank and the main office and his landlord off his back.

  Marie Fermoyle turned the sputtering steak, then wiped her eyes with the dish towel. All day long her insides had been this fierce jumble of dread and rage. She jammed the dish towel over her mouth to muffle the sob that surged in her chest. “No, not tonight,” she whispered into the towel. “I want them to remember tonight.” She took a deep breath now as Omar came into the kitchen and stood behind her at the stove. He touched her arm, and she cringed.

  “Marie? Marie! You’re crying! What’s wrong?”

  She shook her head.

  “Tell me,” he said, trying to lift her chin.

  She drew back stiffly.

  “It’s my fault, isn’t it? I shouldn’t have told you about the trust. I shouldn’t have interfered.”

  “No, it’s not that. I appreciate your trying to help me. I do.” She tried to smile, but was crying again. “Oh God,” she moaned, shaking her head. It was finally here, the most important night of her daughter’s life, and she was falling apart, going to pieces. She felt as limp and helpless as a child in the jaws of some rabid beast.

  “What, then? Is it the graduation? Are you nervous about tonight? You are, aren’t you?”

  She nodded. It was that. It was everything. “I never go anywhere,” she whispered, grateful for the anger steadying her voice. “Except to work and church, and this is the way I feel when I go there, only worse.”

  “Why?”

  “I don’t know. I go, but I don’t want to go! People look at me. I hate it! I hate the way they look at me!” she whispered, then bit her lip hard and stared at him as if looking away now might affirm the very worthlessness she felt.

  “Of course they look at you!” Omar laughed. “Every man there looks at you and thinks, ‘Now there’s one handsome woman.’ And all the women think, ‘There’s a woman who’s done what I could never do: she’s raised a good family—alone. She’s bought her own home—when every bank turned her down! She’s held the same fine job for eight years! Bought her own car! Her own clothes! Fed and clothed her children—alone! Without any man to hold her up!’”

  Now when he lifted her chin, she let him. “Because that’s what I thought the first moment I laid eyes on you. Your strength was a magnet, Marie.” Sweat bathed his face and his voice trembled. “I wake up in the middle of the night filled with despair at ever getting back on my feet, and I hear this sound, like a drum through the darkness, and it’s the beat of your heart, dear lady, your strong, strong heart.” He put his hands on her shoulders. “I do mean that.” He squeezed, working his fingers deep into her muscles. “I do!”

  Her insides weak, her brain not thought but colors, blinding ribbons of color, and all she was doing was turning off the burner—click—spearing the steak onto the dish as the grease sizzled in the pan on the chipped enamel stove, that was all. Supper was cooked. They would sit down and eat the way they had thousands of other nights. “Milk,” she whispered, taking it from the refrigerator. “Butter.” And salt. The shaker was empty. She threw open the cupboard. Where was the salt box? Oh God, what if there wasn’t any?

  “Now,” he was saying, rubbing his hands eagerly, “let’s get this kingly feast moving, strong heart, or I shall be forced to scratch on your neighbor’s window screens, begging a cheese sandwich.”

  They took their places at the table with an awkward, almost shy silence. They were already dressed for graduation, except for Norm, who had just come from his meeting with Jarden Greene. She could tell he was itching for a fight. Not tonight, she vowed, filling the shaker. Tonight was special. When Norm saw Omar take her chair at the head of the table, he gave a snide snort and sprawled in his seat.

  “Just so you’ll know, I’m not working for any creep this summer,” he said, looking up as she tied her apron around Benjy’s neck. His white collar was yellowed and frayed, and obviously too big. “Damn,” she muttered, then caught herself as Benjy glanced up at her. Be calm. Tonight is special.

  “Well, I’m not,” Norm said, then winced. “Ow!” he cried, grabbing his leg where Alice had kicked it. “Do it again!” he warned raising his hand. “Go ahead!”

  “Grow up!” Alice hissed.

  “Let us now give thanks,” Omar Duvall said, bowing his head. “Dear Lord,” he began, his prayerful ebullience clearly intended to drown Norm’s anger.

  Marie stood by her chair and surveyed the table nervously.

  “Amen!” Omar concluded brightly, shaking out his paper napkin as daintily as if it were linen.

  “Amen,” Alice and Benjy echoed softly.

  “Praise the Lord!” Norm called loudly, and Marie stared at him.

  “And pass the blessed butter!” Omar called even louder.

  Alice and Benjy looked around, then laughed.

  “And send down them holy rolls!” Norm shouted.
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  Now they were all laughing. Marie pulled out her chair, then turned abruptly to the closed curtains above the sink and with a defiant sweep pushed them open. Next door, on their back porch, Harvey and Jessie Klubock’s heads flicked in surprise at the naked window. Jessie’s hand lifted in an uncertain wave. Marie turned away quickly. Tonight the nosy Klubocks could look all they wanted. Tonight her oldest child graduated from high school. Tonight was special. She even had a cake from the bakery that said Best Wishes, Alice in blue icing.

  “Well! What’re you waiting for?” She laughed self-consciously when she realized Omar and the children were looking at her. They had been waiting for her to sit down. “Go ahead! Start eating!” She waved for them to start and felt her face flush as she sat down and lit the candle. The wick flickered hesitantly, then licked upward into a bright yellow tongue. Too happy to even lift her fork, she watched them eat, her temple moistening with this sudden warmth that bled through her like the bursting of some feverish organ. She loved them.

  I love you all, she thought. And it had been so long since she had felt or even thought of love that now the sense of it so startled her with its purity, with its ferocity, that her hand flew to her throat with giddiness and she wanted to pound her fist on the table and bellow, My God, how I love you all! Somber Alice, who could not bear to be touched, who even as a child would not be held; Alice inside Alice inside Alice inside Alice, who smiled and told her nothing. And strong handsome Norman, whose soul was stalked by the same angry cunning tiger that stalked hers, fierce son, fierce, fierce son. And Benjamin, in whose eyes the flame was now a dazzling orange iris, this sweet and gentle son who hid from all things cruel and hard. And you, she thought, lowering her eyes from Omar’s.

  She could not say it. They know, she told herself. They must know. She slumped in her chair, hands limp in her lap; feeling drained, diminished now by the passing of peas and butter and the clatter of a fork and the pouring of milk into cups and their one unbroken glass. The candle flame bent and glinted on the chipped rim of Omar’s plate, and she was alarmed that she had not given him a better one, but looking around, saw that they were all like that, the five she owned, grained with hairline splits, one so cracked—this one, hers—that now, as she began to cut her steak, her elbows stiffened, and she dared not press too firmly on the knife for fear the plate might break in two, spilling the meat’s juice like blood onto this cloth cut from an old sheet, the stain seeping through the threads, spreading red, red like some terrible wakening evidence of her shame, of her failure. No, no, she thought, getting up quickly to open the window, for suddenly there was no air to breathe. This is a special night, she kept telling herself as she watched the Klubocks down in their yard now, side by side, shoulders touching as they broke dead blossoms from the lilac bushes. Louis Klubock worked behind them, gathering the pinchings and stems in a peach basket.