Songs in Ordinary Time Read online

  “I’m divorced, Father Gannon,” her mother said warily.

  “Well, then,” he said nervously. “I guess you’re all set, then. I mean, you don’t have to go. Alice…I could bring her or the other children….”

  The phone rang and Alice answered it. Lester’s voice was harsh in her ear.

  “I’ve been trying to get you since Friday night,” he said.

  “Guess I’ve been busy,” she said, turning her back to her mother and the priest.

  “I just want to tell you I’m sorry. I hurt your feelings and then when I saw that hood put his—”

  “I’ve…someone’s here,” she said, lowering her voice.

  “I heard about your father,” he said quickly.

  “I really have to go,” she said.

  “Will you call me back?”

  “Well, I…”

  “Please, oh please, Alice. My mother’s been real bad. I haven’t been out of the house once.”

  “I’d better go.”

  “You don’t even care, do you?” he said, his voice thinning. “You think you’re the only one with problems, don’t you? Well, don’t call me back! Don’t bother!” The phone slammed in her ear.

  Father Gannon was out on the steps now. “So, I can call,” he was saying to her mother. “Soon as I know when I’m going up, I’ll call, and if Alice wants…”

  “For God’s sake,” her mother muttered, at the window watching him go up the street. “Bad enough to have a priest nosing around, but a nervous wreck like him.” She went into the kitchen to finish ironing Duvall’s suit.

  Benjy was still at the table working on the shoes. He daubed more polish onto a dark splatter on the toe. Omar was leaving for Bennington in the morning on some mysterious trip that brought a flush to her mother’s cheeks every time it was mentioned. Alice watched her match the trouser creases and set them carefully on the ironing board. Her mother smiled absently as she ran the wrinkles flat with her fingers. Then she wet a dish towel and wrung it out over the sink and spread the towel over the pants.

  “I’m not going to Burlington or anywhere with him,” Alice said.

  “I didn’t say you were,” her mother said as the iron sizzled against the wet towel. She blew up at the perspiration on her forehead and looked at Alice. “But then again, it might be a good chance to talk to him when he’s sober, to see if he’ll give you any of the trust money for college.”

  A knot pulled in Alice’s stomach. It was time to tell her. She’d made up her mind Friday night. She had to get away from here, away from everyone. “I’m taking that job at the lake,” she said as resolutely as she could under her mother’s cold stare.

  Her mother moved the towel down to the cuffs. The iron hissed on the wet cloth. “No.” She turned over the pants, then wet the towel again and wrung it out over the sink.

  “What do you mean, no? They make great tips. It’s the best—”

  “No.” The iron sizzled again.

  “Mom!”

  “You’ll spend as much as you make. They all do.”

  She stepped closer. “I’ll send every penny home, I swear!”

  “You think you will, but you won’t.”

  “I will!” Her hands clenched into fists. “I swear I will. I give you my word, Mom!”

  Her mother laughed sharply. “Hah! Just like you gave me your word yesterday that you’d go to the A+X and apply.”

  “I did!”

  “And?”

  “They said they’d call,” she lied. All she’d done was get an application from one of the carhops. She hadn’t even filled it out. The A+X was a dump, and every tramp in town worked there.

  “Don’t wait! Call them!”

  “Well, the guy said he’d call if anybody quit. Or something like that.” She could feel her mother’s eyes boring through her skull.

  “Is that so?” Her mother lifted the steaming pants and draped them over the back of the chair.

  Benjy’s rag whipped faster and faster over Duvall’s shoe. He looked up with a sad smile. He thought she was beaten, but she would go to the lake. For once she would stand up to her mother and do what she wanted. Norm always did, and her mother respected him because he had backbone enough to defy her and prove her wrong.

  Her mother was ironing the lapel of Duvall’s jacket. That bitter smile crimped her mouth again. “Better face the facts, Alice.” She looked up and sighed. “You’ll work in town, and you’ll live here, and you’ll save every grubby penny you can get your hands on.”

  Alice turned and walked out of the kitchen.

  “Like I do,” her mother called. “Every grubby penny I can get my grubby hands on, every grubby day of my grubby little life…”

  She was at the top of the stairs when she heard her mother start on Benjy. “Do it again! If you’re going to do a job, do it right! That’s it…rub! That’s the way, harder! Harder!”

  She went into her mother’s room, straight to the closet, and drew the old suitcase down from the top shelf. She’d pack tonight, and in the morning she’d call Mary Agnes at the lake. This would be the best summer she’d ever had. As she turned from the closet, her hand flew to her mouth. There on her mother’s unmade bed dozed Omar Duvall, arms spread, legs splayed, both his mouth and the fly of his undershorts wide open. Caught in the shaft of window light was his limp penis. She hurried into her room and packed; then she hid the suitcase under her bed. She spent most of the day in her room, reading and waiting. Lester kept calling, but she told Benjy to say she wasn’t home. Omar and her mother sat at the kitchen table talking through the afternoon, talking into the night, talking and talking. Soon she would be free of them.

  All that night she slept fitfully, and through the dark heat seethed a ferment of dreams, her father weeping and beating at the door while Lester hissed, “Slut, slut, slut,” and her mother shook Benjy’s chair chanting, “Harder, harder,” while Omar Duvall’s soft moonlit penis grew longer and longer slithering down the black corridor to her silent door, then lapping up from the side of her bed like a monstrous viper.

  The next morning she woke up to a battle between her mother and Norm. It ended with her mother ordering him down to Jarden Greene’s office. She lay in bed waiting for her mother to leave for work. When she still hadn’t heard the old car pull out of the driveway, she went downstairs. Benjy was at the kitchen table reading a comic book that was propped against a stack of books.

  “Where’s Mom?”

  “At work,” he said.

  “I didn’t hear her go.”

  “She walked. She left the car for Omar to take to Bennington,” he said.

  “You’re kidding! Why?”

  “I don’t know. For some job or something.” He looked up at her now. “Mom said for you to wash the dishes and put the garbage cans in the garage after the truck comes.”

  “And what’d she say for you to do?” she snapped.

  He gestured at the books. “She said to sit here and read, and then at noon she said I have to go up to the pool.”

  “To do what? To swim?”

  “No.”

  “Well, what’ll you do if you don’t swim?”

  “Nothing. Same as last summer. Just sit on the bars and watch kids. And then after, I’ll walk through the showers to get wet.”

  “Isn’t that boring, just watching people swim?”

  He shrugged. “Sometimes.”

  “Don’t you get tired of yessing people all the time, Benjy?”

  He shrugged again. “I don’t know.”

  “Why do you always let people push you around? Don’t you ever do what you want to do?”

  He thought for a moment, then said softly, “I do what I want.”

  “No, you don’t.”

  “I do too,” he said, his chin jutting out. “I just don’t like fights. I don’t like people yelling at me.”

  “Well then, Benjy, I’d say you’re in for a pretty sad life. That’s what I think,” she said smugly, folding the dishrag o
ver the spigot.

  After she had rolled the empty barrels back into the garage, she went inside and called the bus terminal. The two lake buses were at noon and at seven tonight. It was ten now, so if she hurried, she’d make the noon bus. Next, she called Mary Agnes at the lake. The phone in the cabin rang a long time before it was answered by a sleepy-voiced girl who said Mary Agnes wasn’t back yet. Back from work? Alice asked, and the girl laughed. No, what she meant was, Mary Agnes wasn’t back from last night yet. She felt a surge of giddy courage. After all, they were out of high school now and free to make their own decisions. God, look at her own mother, pregnant and married at eighteen. She knew two girls her age who were getting married this summer. And then there was Bernadette Mansaw, who had dropped out of school freshman year, pregnant, and now had two kids.

  Alice opened the door and set the suitcase on the front steps. She looked up to see Mrs. Klubock waving from a second-floor window, where she sat backward out on the sill spraying glass cleaner on the windowpane. She wore a bathing suit and a red bandanna tied behind her head.

  “It only looks like work! I’m really working on my tan! Come up and join me!” Mrs. Klubock called with a wave of her rag.

  “I wish I could,” Alice called back, emboldened by the warmth of Mrs. Klubock’s easy laughter.

  She hurried back into the house. Taking her pocketbook from the closet, she said goodbye to Benjy and told him she was going downtown. She checked her wallet to be sure she’d have enough for the ticket. Three dollars was missing. There were only two left. “Who took my money?” she demanded.

  “Mom did,” Benjy called out from the kitchen. “She had to give it to Omar for gas.”

  “That bastard!”

  “I didn’t know you swore,” Benjy said, hanging on to the door frame so that he couldn’t be accused of leaving the kitchen.

  She snapped her wallet into her purse. “There’s a goddamn whole lot about me people don’t know yet,” she said, opening the front door. “But they will. And you can tell her that for me! You tell her I’m sick of being pushed around and I’m sick of being walked all over and I’m sick of—”

  The phone was ringing. Benjy held the receiver out. “It’s for you. It’s Uncle Renie.”

  She waved and shook her head no. Next to Lester, he was the last person on earth she needed to talk to now. Benjy nodded, listening to Uncle Renie. “Okay…okay…yup, I’ll tell her when she comes back.” He hung up. “He said he’s got good news. He said for you to call him soon as you get back.”

  She was about to close the door, when Benjy, heedless of his mother’s edict that he not set one foot in the living room or touch the television all day, rushed after her.

  “Call him, Alice! Maybe it’s a graduation present! Or maybe it’s money!” he shouted as she marched down the weedy walk with her suitcase.

  “Or maybe it’s shit,” she muttered, and then was ashamed because she had forgotten Mrs. Klubock perched up there like a bird—her mother was right—like a goddamn eagle, she thought, perched up there so she can keep a better eye on the whole neighborhood.

  Her arm ached from the weight of the suitcase as she pushed open the door to the LaChance Appliance Company.

  “Be right there,” Uncle Renie called anxiously as the cowbells clanged on the door.

  She rubbed her nose. Aside from the unpleasant smell, not much had changed. It was just as gloomy and dusty as ever. And she felt just as apprehensive as she always did here. Uncle Renie gave her the creeps.

  “Be patient,” he grunted.

  She picked up a brochure from the counter and fanned herself with it. A toilet flushed, then over the gurgle Uncle Renie called again, “Be right with you.”

  The bathroom door opened and Renie hurried out, buckling his belt. He grinned and his hands jerked up, tangling with the air as if he wanted to grab her. As he came toward her, a huge cat slid out from between two refrigerators and curled around his ankle. “Alice, you gotta meet Tom here.” He laughed, bending to pick it up.

  “Benjy said you had something to tell me, Uncle Renie?” She patted the cat’s head and looked expectantly at her uncle.

  “Tom likes you.” He chuckled as the cat’s tongue scraped her wrist. “He’s usually not this nice when he first meets people.” He stroked the cat’s chin, and it purred faster and louder and swished its great tail. “But then you’re a pretty good judge of people, aren’t you, Tom?” He laughed. “’Course, he sees your face all the time,” he said, pointing at the faded pictures on the back of the cash register.

  She laid the brochure down, and he picked it up. “See that? That’s the Golden Toastee line!” he said, his eyes widening as his voice shaded to a whisper. “And I might get the franchise. Look!” He pointed at the cover. “See where it says SOLD ONLY IN THE FINEST STORES? In gold letters!”

  This is ridiculous, she thought. Her eyes flickered over the narrow little store, its high tin ceiling strung with sooty cobwebs. Uncle Renie kept talking.

  “’Course, I’m fixing up before they send the sales rep out to check me over.” He reached into his pocket, and she leaned forward, thinking this was the surprise. “I got these today. Paint chips for the walls,” he said, spreading the colored disks over the counter. He held one up. “You like this green?”

  “It’s nice, Uncle Renie.” She glanced up at the clock. The bus was leaving in forty-five minutes.

  “Too dark?” he asked anxiously.

  “No, it’s nice. It’s just I’m in kind of a hurry.”

  “Oh jeez, listen to me going on.” He dropped the chip onto the pile. “I haven’t let you say a word in edgewise yet, I been yammering my head off so much.” He gestured ruefully down at the cat. “I get so used to not expecting talk back, I just get awful carried away.”

  She felt bad now. She picked up one of the disks. “This yellow’s nice, Uncle Renie.” She handed it to him. “Nice and bright.”

  “Yah,” he said, examining it at arm’s length. “That’s the one, all right.” He put the disk in his shirt pocket, then looked at her and took a deep breath.

  “What’s wrong, Uncle Renie?”

  He shrugged. “What happened was I told your mother what the guy said, and she said you’d already brought the papers in, so I called the guy right up, and I said, ‘Jerry, the other day didn’t you come in the store and say how you needed girls, and didn’t you look at my niece’s here picture on the register and say, ‘She’s hired if she wants’? And he said, ‘Yessir, I did.’ That’s how it all got started, Alice. So I called her back. Your mother.” He threw up his hands.

  He looked so stricken and confused that she couldn’t help laughing. “Uncle Renie, I don’t know what you’re talking about!”

  “The A+X. Your mother called me up and said you filled out the papers, and the guy I know said no, you didn’t fill out no papers up to his place. He went and checked.”

  “Does my mother know that?” she asked weakly, and his mournful nod betrayed the magnitude of her mother’s wrath. “Can I borrow three dollars, Uncle Renie?”

  He stirred a finger through the paint disks. “She said not to give you any money.” He cleared his throat. “And she said to tell you if you went to the lake, she’d come get you and drag you home.” He reached out, and she cringed with the touch of his damp hand. “Alice, don’t look at me like that! Don’t be mad at me. I can’t help you run away. I can’t do that.”

  She was crying now. “I’m not running away, Uncle Renie. I just want to go to the lake. I’m just so sick of it here. I’m just so sick of everything.”

  He threw his arms around her and hugged her tight and made a sound as if he were crying, too. “But you can’t just run away,” he said. “Things are always running away from me.” His head twisted to one side and she felt him jerk as if with an enormous jolt. “Oh…oh,” he moaned. “And I ran away, too….”

  The A+X manager was Mr. Coughlin. His bloodshot eyes narrowed on her chest. “Size six?” he aske
d, then smiled smugly when she nodded. “Here’s one,” he said, handing her the uniform: black pants, pink-and-black-checked blouse, black vest, and peaked black cardboard cap. “Nights,” he said, sitting down behind a ketchup-splattered table that was his desk. “Four to twelve.” He widened his eyes and lowered his voice. “The lunatic shift.”

  On the table was a bronze plaque with raised letters that said SCREW ME AND YOU’RE HIRED. CHEAT ME AND YOU’RE FIRED. The cluttered back room buzzed with flies. Outside in the lot, a car was honking its horn. The sign over Coughlin’s head said YOU DON’T HAVE TO BE CRAZY TO WORK HERE, BUT IT HELPS. Stacked in the corners were cartons of cellophaned hamburg rolls. The tiny office reeked of grease and pickles.

  “Gotta boyfriend?”

  “No,” she said.

  “Good. Because I won’t stand for the studs hanging out all night tying up the stations. Now, first off, take this menu home and study it. Spills and mistakes come outta your pay. Understand?”

  She nodded.

  “And second thing is, don’t try stealing food out to your buddies. It don’t work. We gotta system here of numbered checks. Got that?”

  She nodded.

  “And third, we got the A+X motto—GOOD FOOD WITH A SMILE.” He drew in his chin and looked around. “I got my own motto, Get ’em in and get ’em out—fast! Capeesh?”

  She nodded again.

  He screwed up his mouth disgustedly. “Jesus Christ! You some kinda mute?” He held out his hands. “What? What? You shy? You scared? What is it?”

  “I was concentrating on what you were saying,” she said stiffly.

  He looked at her. “Oh I get it.” He lit a cigarette and squinted through the smoke. “I shoulda known. You’re the type that’s too good to work here, right? You think this place sucks.” He laughed. “And you think I suck, too.”

  She had opened the door to go outside. He was a pig and she hated him.

  “Well, you’re right! I do!” he howled. “But you need a job, doll, now don’t you?”

  As she came to the front of the building, a buzzer sounded over and over again. Through the service window peered the blocky head of the cook, Anthology Carper, his eyes pink as sores, his blue-tinted flesh seeming to glow. “Ninety-two’s up!” he screeched into the microphone. “Seventy-five’s up!” His eyes caught hers and he stuck out his tongue and wiggled it at her. “Sixty-nine’s up,” he giggled, wiggling his tongue again.