Songs in Ordinary Time Read online

  “Thank you, Monsignor,” Alice Fermoyle was saying, as she accepted her diploma. She blushed and quickly switched the tassle on her cap and had just started back to her seat when a slurred voice rose from the back of the gym.

  “That’s beautiful…tha’s really, really beautiful,” Sam Fermoyle cried.

  With their car blocked they were stuck in the parking lot. Benjy sat in back, his mother and Alice rigid in the front seat. The minute the ceremony ended, Norm had left to find his father.

  “I hate him,” Alice groaned. She took a deep breath, fighting tears as her classmates milled around outside having their pictures taken.

  “It’s all right,” Marie said, staring over the wheel as two squealing girls ran by the car.

  “I’m not going to the dance. I just want to go home.”

  “No, that only makes it worse,” Marie said. “Believe me.”

  “I’m not going!”

  “Yes you are!”

  Lester was making his way through the cars, looking for Alice.

  “Oh God,” Alice groaned with his approach. He tapped on her window.

  “I don’t feel well,” Alice told him, barely opening the window. “I’m just going to go home.”

  “No, you promised me, Alice,” Lester begged. “I don’t want to go alone. It’ll be all right, Alice. Please! You have to! You said you would!”

  “Get out of this car!” Marie ordered in a low voice. “Right now!”

  “No!” Alice shook her head. “I can’t.”

  “Please, Alice! This is such a special night!” Lester said, his mouth at the narrow opening.

  “He’s right,” Marie said, turning now, glaring. “Alice, if you don’t open that door and get out of this car, I’ll open it and I’ll drag you out in front of everyone, damn it, and you know I will.”

  “Please? Please, Alice?” Lester begged.

  “Just open the door. Open the goddamn door and everything will be all right,” Marie said, her low voice steady and sure like a dark path they were compelled to follow.

  Benjy stared down at the floor. The door opened. When it closed he heard a sob catch in his mother’s throat.

  “Help me, sweet Jesus, please help me!” she gasped, watching Alice follow Lester, her shoulders slumped, head down.

  What about Alice, Benjy thought. How could his mother do that? How could she make Alice go out there in front of all those people? Sometimes he thought his mother just didn’t care. She just didn’t love them enough.

  When the fire whistle blew the ten-of-nine curfew, Norm had looked everywhere for his father, even Hammie’s Bar and Grill. Now he climbed West Street toward the park lights and the tinny music of Joey’s radio at the top of the hill.

  “Here, have a bag, Norm,” Joey said, holding out a grease-streaked bag of popcorn.

  “No thanks, Joey,” Norm said, still out of breath as he scanned the shadows of the trees and the bandstand in the middle of the park. Before the night was over he was going to beat the shit out of that no-good, fucking drunk. Poor Alice, humiliated like that in front of all her classmates and their families and every fucking teacher in the fucking school. His fists rapped a marching beat on the countertop. “My father been around?”

  “He’s long gone now, kid. Probably sleeping it off somewhere. Here,” Joey said, gesturing with the popcorn. “On the house.” He smiled and his eyes rolled to whites.

  As Norm took the popcorn Joey’s hand groped up his arm to his shoulder. “You don’t want to find him now, Norm. What good’s it going to do?”

  “I gotta go now, Joey. Thanks,” Norm said, easing from the embarrassingly urgent grip.

  Joey’s hand tapped along the countertop for his rag. “Be seeing you, kid,” Joey called out.

  “Yah, Joey, be seeing ya.” Norm tried to laugh. It was expected.

  He walked through the park eating the popcorn. Joey was right. He didn’t want to find him. If he did he might kill him. He took off his tie and stuffed it into his pocket. To hell with his father. To hell with all of them, he thought as he turned up the path toward Main Street. It wasn’t his fault his father had showed up at the house tonight. It wasn’t his fault his father had gone to the graduation. He was sick of being blamed; sick of his mother slamming doors and banging windows shut so the neighbors couldn’t hear, when, of course, the crashing-down windows were their signal to listen. He was sick of her pulling that crummy bathrobe tight as a noose around her neck as she turned those dark-circled eyes on him, those eyes that accused and at the same time expected something, needed everything from him, but nothing from the others, because they were the victims while he was supposed to be her one great hope in life or something….

  Suddenly he stopped. At the corner on the hood of his car sat Blue Mooney, his hair slicked back hard as a helmet, his sullen profile sharp under the streetlamp. Mooney was talking to three punks who lounged on the hood of the souped-up gray Chevy. His heart stirring with fear, Norm stepped behind a tree and felt on the ground for a rock. Then he slipped back into the shadows and threw the rock as hard and as high as he could, over the treetops; it was sailing, whizzing, then coming down, still coming while he ran across the street. Just as he darted into the narrow strip of darkness between two houses, he heard the rock’s thunk on metal and an outrage of curses, then the slamming of car doors as an engine started, and he ran, ran panting through backyards and over a picket fence, through bushes, past trees and frantic dogs.

  When he finally emerged from the branch-battering leafy darkness he was beside the library. His chest pounded and his eyes burned as a car came down the street, then slowed behind him. He kept walking, his fists sweating in his pockets.

  “Hey, Normy-baby!” Weeb called, grinning.

  Norm jumped into Weeb’s father’s car. “Hey, you dirty bastard,” he said with a poke at Weeb’s ribs.

  “How’d you do with Creller? Was she as good as I said?”

  “Better,” Norm sighed, watching for Mooney or the gray Chevy.

  “Yah?” Weeb was breathless.

  Norm turned on the radio. Fats Domino was singing “I’m Walkin’.” Norm played the dashboard like a piano and sang loudly, shaking his head from side to side.

  “What happened?” Weeb called over the music, barely able to keep his eyes on the road. Norm sang louder. Weeb switched off the radio.

  “Turn it back on!” Norm snapped. His mother’s car had no radio. He loved music in cars.

  “C’mon, tell me what happened,” Weeb begged. “Quick, before I pick my sister up at the armory.”

  Norm sat forward and looked at Weeb. “The armory?”

  “Yah, the bus is letting her off there,” Weeb said. “What’d Creller do?”

  “The bus from where?”

  “From college, stupid. C’mon, tell me quick!” Weeb slowed the car to ten miles an hour. “Get much?”

  “Enough,” said Norm as he looked up the street for Janice Miller.

  “How much?” Weeb demanded, and then he groaned. “Aw shit, there’s the ball-breaker.”

  In front of the armory, Janice Miller was sitting on her suitcases with her long legs crossed over the curb.

  “How much, for chrissakes!” Weeb squealed.

  “Everything,” Norm said, pulling the wrinkled tie from his pocket and slipping it under his collar.

  Weeb was too overwrought to notice. “All the way? You did the deed?” he screamed.

  “Shut up! Your sister!” Norm tightened the knot, and as the car approached, Janice got up and stepped down into the street.

  “Jesus!” Weeb groaned. “I can’t take this—was it all the way or wasn’t it?”

  Janice leaned down to the window on Norm’s side. “Running out of gas or just this anxious to have me home, little brother?” she asked, laughing.

  Norm jumped out and put her luggage in the trunk.

  “Have you grown!” Janice said as he got back into the car. She sat between them. “You must be almost six fe
et!” she said to Norm, then turned to her brother. “How tall are you?”

  “Five-six,” Weeb mumbled, straining his head over the wheel.

  Janice laughed and began chattering on and on about her sorority sisters’ farewell party and the jugs of Mateus rosé they had smuggled into the house and how sick she’d been all morning. “That’s why I called Mother to say I couldn’t get a bus out until tonight. I barfed all morning long! At one point there were six of us barfing into the same hopper. It was too much!” She lit a cigarette and the smoke curled in tendrils around her face. Her shoulder was touching Norm’s. Her perfume with its faint tinge of stale wine made him dizzy. “Oh God, look at those creeps,” she said as they turned the corner at the park.

  Driving slowly along one of the paths was the gray Chevy with its high beams on, and sitting on the hood of the Chevy turning a flashlight from side to side was one of the creeps he’d thrown the rock at. Norm slid low in the seat.

  “I don’t know how I’ll ever get through the summer here,” Janice said, gesturing contemptuously at passing streets. “After Boston, this will be death, I know. And Russ can’t come up,” she sighed.

  “Who’s Russ?” Norm asked and sucked in his breath until his chest ached.

  “Russ is a Delt Psi. We’re lavaliered,” she said as if he must have known.

  “Oh,” he said weakly.

  “And what the hell is lavaliered?” Weeb sneered.

  She laid her head back on the seat and ran her fingers through her wavy blond hair, which undulated with the lights of a passing car. “That, dull boy, is the first step before getting pinned.” She handed Norm her cigarette to throw out the window.

  He held it a moment, wanting to put it in his mouth and taste the sweetness of her wet pink lips.

  “Big thrill,” Weeb said and turned on the radio.

  “Oh look!” she cried, leaning forward and pointing. “Who’s that? Look! Oh my God, will you look at that man peeing on the Monsignor’s geraniums. I don’t believe it!” She roared, laughing, and lit another cigarette. Her leg brushed Norm’s, and she glanced at him, at her cigarette butt that was burning down to his fingertips.

  His insides shriveled. That man peeing on the Monsignor’s flowers was his father. Weeb accelerated and never said a word.

  Blue Mooney sprawled on his mother’s new red couch. So his cousin Anthology had been right. Here it was only nine-thirty and already five different cars had come creaking down the dirt road. Each one had parked close by the mailbox, engine idling, waiting for the porch light to come on, which was the same signal their grandmother had used to show she was open for business. When the light didn’t come on, the cars had peeled out bitterly down the road.

  The television flickered over the dark room. A pillow half covered Mooney’s face. His two younger brothers lay on the floor watching 77 Sunset Strip on the television his mother had finally bought. She sat stiffly on a ladder-back chair in the kitchen doorway. A tiny woman with thin brown hair and a spray of freckles across her nose, she kept straining to see out the window. She fidgeted and bit her lip. She was dying for him to leave so she could get on with business. Anthology figured she was selling a good three cases a night, weekends twice that; and tonight being graduation and the party at the lake, there was no telling how much she’d sell. The minute that bug light came on, they’d start trooping up here, some so young they’d only have enough money for a couple of cans.

  When Mooney’s grandmother had sold beer out of her trailer he hadn’t cared at all. In fact it had been a kind of honor growing up as Hermione’s grandson. After his grandmother’s death he just never expected his mother to take over the selling. He watched her from under the pillow as another car came up the road now. This time the car stopped and a door banged shut.

  She looked right at him. “I got something to do here, Travis,” she said, starting for the door.

  “What’s that?” he asked, his sails for a moment sagging, for she was the only one who ever called him that weak-kneed, lily-livered, country-twanging name of Travis. Travis Ted Mooney. No sir, he was Blue Mooney, and that was all there was to it. Blue Mooney, a living legend in his own time.

  Heavy footsteps crossed the porch, bringing a hard knock on the door.

  “You just mind your business!” she hissed, switching on the porch light. All the windows glowed yellow.

  “Miz Carper!” called a voice outside.

  “Don’t, Ma,” he said, gesturing at his brothers. “Not in front of them.”

  “Miz Carper!” Now the knocking grew as insistent as the voices. “You got customers, Miz Carper.” With the light on, more cars were pulling in.

  “You don’t live here. I don’t see you helping out any, so you can just shut the hell up.” She put her mouth to the door. “How much?” she called.

  “Two six-packs,” came a shout.

  “Peter, go down get me four sixies,” she said to her son, who drew himself to his knees, his eyes lingering on the last few seconds of screen action before he ran down cellar.

  No, Mooney thought. No, no, no, no, no, no! Things were a mess. Not only had he been kicked out of the Corps, but he had no money, no job, and his mother wouldn’t let him move back in because of all his trouble. He jumped off the couch and reached past his mother. Out on the porch, jostling for position at the opening door, were five guys in suits and ties with carnations pinned to their lapels, all Saint Mary’s seniors with their crew cuts, and their wiseass grins dying on their faces.

  “Get the hell outta here!” he snarled, and they backed down the steps.

  “But we got…”

  “All we need’s…”

  “You get out of here! You!” his mother cried, pushing him with both hands out onto the porch. “And don’t come back!” She slammed the door in his face.

  He turned and caught them snickering. “I said get the hell outta here!” he bellowed, stalking them as they ran toward their cars.

  The Lake Hotel by night put Mooney in mind of an ocean liner, the way its bright windows shimmered and seemed to sway on the pitch-black water. There was dance music playing inside, and out here the parking lot was filled with their daddys’ cars, all washed and waxed for the big night. It was Saint Mary’s graduation dance.

  Blue Mooney squatted next to a pink-and-white Pontiac as he stabbed the ice pick into the fourth tire. Air hissed out of all the tires. He ran in a low crouch and started on the next row of cars. Jimmy and Al Bibeau were working so fast that the hissing was almost as loud now as the music. All around them cars sank slowly on their flattening tires.

  The main door to the hotel flared open, and Mooney ducked behind a car as a girl in a white dress rushed onto the veranda followed by a thin boy in a pale blue suit. The girl hurried down the steps and her date ran after her. “Wait!” he kept calling. “Will you just wait!” At the edge of the parking lot, he grabbed her wrist and tried to pull her back.

  “I can’t stand it! You’re making such a fool of yourself!” she said, yanking free.

  “I’m just having fun. I’m just dancing!” he pleaded in a high tremulous voice.

  “They’re all laughing at you. That’s why they’re all standing around clapping. Can’t you even tell when people are making fun of you, Les?”

  “Oh I guess I’m not as…as astute as you!” And with that he stormed toward the hotel, then suddenly turned and raced back after her.

  Mooney peered over the fender. For a second he thought sure the guy was going to hit her.

  “I can’t go back in there alone and you know it!” he said.

  “I just want to go home, that’s all,” she said.

  “That’s all, yah, sure! Go ahead and wreck the biggest night of my life, what do you care?”

  “Please, Les. I just want to go home,” she said, rubbing her arms as if she were cold.

  “This is all because of your father tonight, isn’t it? Well, did it ever occur to you that you’re not the only one in the world with
problems?”

  At that she turned and headed into the parking lot, and he grabbed her again.

  “Well, I’m not leaving, so you’d better get back inside,” he said, trying to pull her toward the hotel. “You’re just trying to make a fool out of me, aren’t you? Aren’t you?” he demanded.

  “Lester!” she cried, struggling. “You let me go!”

  “No! I’m not going back in there alone. You’re…”

  Mooney inched up behind the car. The creep was hurting her. Every time he shoved her back toward the hotel, she tripped on her high heels. The creep was making her cry.

  “Please…oh please,” she begged.

  Mooney glanced back as Al Bibeau crept up to him. Al gestured, whispering. “We better split, man. His old man’s…”

  “You son of a bitch,” Mooney moaned, leaping now when he saw him grab the girl again. He was shaking her and screaming, his words lost in the louder dance music.

  “Blue!” Bibeau called after him.

  The creep hadn’t even seem him coming. Mooney shoved him aside, and the girl sagged forward, her face in her hands, with muffled sounds, her shoulders trembling as she grew smaller and smaller in her white dress, which suddenly seemed to be all there was of her, just that thin white dress and air.

  The creep started toward her, his long face a mask of shock. “Alice!” he gasped, extending his hand as if over a stream he would guide her across. But she did not even look up.

  Mooney glared at Stoner, who suddenly turned and ran for the safety of the bright hotel. In the cavernous night he felt strong and hard, insuperable, with his arms around her like this. “Don’t cry. Please don’t cry,” he crooned over her head. She smelled of trees and grass and warm night air, light in his arms, and he could hear lake water lapping the shoreline in and out to the pulsating mud song of frogs, and then the band played louder. She stiffened and jerked away.