Songs in Ordinary Time Read online

  “I hate quiet, and you hate noise.” Astrid sighed, staring, for a moment awed by another of life’s conundrums.

  Marie kept typing. Frowning, she bent closer to the letter, as if Astrid’s chatter were obscuring her vision.

  “Of course, I don’t have kids and all that, so I guess I just got used to my own commotion.” She paused. “Speaking of which, I hear Sam’s locked up.”

  She looked up, blinking, not certain she’d heard correctly.

  Astrid smiled. “Must be so nice now, not having that worry hanging over you, you know, of him barging in here or bothering you at night.”

  Marie started to say something, then closed her mouth. There was nothing she knew to say; not a word came to mind. These were her troubles, which she had never discussed with anyone, and certainly wasn’t about to with this gum-snapping sleazy showgirl who had obviously lived such a low life herself she considered everyone else’s misfortunes public property like her own. Marie had never understood how women could bare their souls with such ease, exposing themselves so shamelessly to one another. It was a weakness she had always despised. Sometimes the most unsettling legacy of Sam’s failure as a husband, father, provider seemed to be this viraginity, this obdurate male soul in female flesh that set her apart from women as well as men. Well, people might find her abrasive, but she’d choose strength and honesty any day over Astrid’s perfumed guile and featherbrained duplicity.

  “Do him good,” Astrid was saying. “One of these days he might shock the hell out of you and just never take another drink.” She shook her head and smiled. “They’re sweet guys, too, the lushes; you know they’ve been there. Hey!” Astrid gave a sly wink of her blue-lidded eyes. “Who’s the dreamboat I saw getting out of your car last week? Tall guy, dark hair, hanging over your window like he hated saying goodbye. I saw him, and I said to myself, ‘Hey now, Marie don’t fool around.’” She raised her hands over her head and shimmied in her chair. “‘She’s got herself a man,’ you know what I mean?”

  Marie jumped up and started for the door. Around her, everything blurred. Hearing Astrid talk about Omar suddenly confirmed her loss, her failure to keep him.

  “Oh Marie,” Astrid called, hurrying after her and throwing her arms around her. “Oh you poor kid. You poor, poor kid,” she crooned, holding her close, so close that Marie was shocked to feel Astrid’s breasts press against her. “It’s not easy, is it?” Astrid said softly, and Marie shook her head. Astrid patted her back, and she didn’t dare move. “They’ll drive you crazy,” she whispered. “They will.” She stepped back and held Marie at arm’s length, then laughed that quick hard laugh that set everything back where it had been before.

  Marie hunched over her typewriter as Astrid’s adding machine seemed to keep time to her words.

  “Christ, it’s hot. You know, I was telling Bobby we should get a place at the lake. Nothing big, just some shacky little cabin-type thing. Hey, maybe you and the kids could come out. We could have a big party! Starting early in the morning—you know, all day long, a beach party! I could invite all my wire plant friends….” She looked up and sighed. “Bobby kills me. He’s got all this money from this big bonus and every time I mention…Hey, I just thought. You ever need a loan or anything, kid, you just let me know. I mean that!”

  Marie kept her eyes on the letter, her face blank. Hell would freeze over before she ever begged from someone like Astrid Haddad.

  “Shit!” Astrid suddenly cried, sucking the tip of her forefinger, ragged with a broken nail. “That was my best one!” With the alacrity a bleeding wound required, she opened her huge white purse and from it seized a red leather case containing small glinting scissors, some curved, some blunt-tipped, and tweezers, and nail files, and tiny bottles of oils and polishes.

  Marie shivered. The rough drag of the file back and forth over Astrid’s nail gave her goose bumps.

  “Damn, damn, damn,” Astrid muttered with her furious sanding. “I’m so mad I could scream!”

  There grew now in the deeper woodshade of the fully leafed trees, blue gentian, and smelly black snakeroot, upon whose feathery white flowers flies clustered, and vines of young bittersweet that had begun to inch toward him. Around his leg, where the trouser had been torn, the first creeper curled, thin and waxy against his skin. His bloated body strained against his clothes, so dust-darkened now that fabric and flesh seemed one.

  The humpbacked old dog came daily, usually in the first pale stillness of morning. Watchful, it lay off a few feet on spread haunches, its wet black nose keen to this creature’s foul virility.

  Whatever gives form to humanness—its features, eyes, nose, mouth, and ears, every protrusion and concavity of bone that suggest strength, propulsion, and contraction—these had subsided and were sinking deeper into the gaseous chemistry of death. Perhaps it seemed to the patient dog, its own vermiculate belly rumbling, that something grew here, that in the carious mass a new life was forming.

  After a while the old dog’s square, blunt head sank onto its front paws, and it emitted a low imploring growl.

  Tonight’s Fourth of July band concert in the park would be the biggest one of the year. Alice had to work, and Norm was going with Weeb Miller. Marie had asked him to take Benjy, but he had refused, and then Benjy looked so hurt that she had told him she’d go with him.

  Supper was over and she was pouring hot chocolate pudding into three handleless teacups and two mismatched bowls. The extra serving was for Omar, should he happen to come. More than a week had passed without a word from him, and so she’d made up her mind. The days of Marie Fermoyle crawling after a man, any man, were over. Besides, today there had been a ray of hope. Mr. Briscoe said he had a friend who ran the cafeterias at UVM, and, if Marie wanted, he’d write to him about a job for Alice. If she wanted! She had typed the letter immediately and then had run it upstairs for his signature. Plus, she kept telling herself, there was always Sam’s trust money. Just knowing about it had given her a new sense of calm. Talking to Helen was useless. She would have to get at it through Sam, now that he was sober and healthier. She had even considered driving up to Applegate with the kids this weekend, but then she remembered that nosy priest, that Father Gannon, offering to bring one of them up to see Sam. Maybe she’d send Alice. Sam might listen to his daughter.

  She glanced at the telephone. Maybe Omar had been in Bennington all this time, looking into that soap business he’d told her about. Maybe he’d lost her telephone number. Or maybe he’d realized the last thing on earth he needed was to be saddled with a desperate woman and her three bickering kids.

  Norm was complaining about his job again. Today, all the Street Department laborers had been getting the park ready for the concert.

  “So I’m up at Joey’s stand getting some popcorn and a Coke and Greene drives up and he leaps out of the car and grabs me by the shirt and he says, ‘I’m docking you a half hour for this, Fermoyle!’” Norm looked at her now. “The guy’s nuts!”

  The phone rang and she jumped so fast to answer it that she was sure they were watching, pitying her for caring so much when Omar Duvall obviously cared so little.

  “If it’s Lester, I’m not here,” Alice called as she tied her A+X apron.

  “If he gets on my back one more time, I’m quitting!” Norm was saying. “And if he lays one more hand on me, I swear, I’ll deck him!”

  “I’m sorry, Les, she’s not here,” she said tersely, her eyes closed. Alice had told her how Lester had acted the other night, and yet she couldn’t help feeling sorry for him.

  “Would you have her call me when she gets home tonight, Mrs. Fermoyle? It’s important.”

  “Yes, I’ll tell her, Les,” she said, forcing control into her voice, when it was all she could do to keep from screaming. When she turned, they were eating pudding. Pudding, she thought. Pudding! she felt like screaming. How could they sit there eating pudding when she was going to pieces right before their very eyes.

  “You should see
what Greene did to poor Joey’s stand,” Norm was telling them. “He got two-by-fours and just nailed them on the sides from the ground to the roof. Like a jail. Like bars! Joey’s mad as hell.”

  She was running water to soak the pudding pan. She stared out at the two rakes leaning against the Klubocks’ house. She was tired of being alone.

  Once, soon after the divorce, she had gone out with a resin salesman from New York. At the end of the night she had cried all the way home. She had even considered going back to Sam. At least it would be better than being so alone, so desperate, she had reasoned, until the next time Sam had showed up, pounding on the door, demanding to see the kids he wanted to be with only when he was drunk.

  Norm had gotten up from the table to stand next to her. He put his hand on her shoulder. “Mom,” he said softly, “don’t feel bad about that creep Duvall. Okay? Believe me, the guy’s a bum.”

  She turned stiffly, eyes widening. “Don’t you, of all people, call anyone a bum! You, with your fights and all your bellyaching about your job!”

  He held up his hands as if in surrender. “I’m sorry. All right? I’m sorry, it’s just that he’s…” He shook his head and turned away.

  “What?” She spun around. “He’s what?” she demanded.

  At the table Benjy groaned and looked at Alice, who quickly gathered up the rest of the dirty dishes and brought them to the counter. Benjy fled into the living room, where he turned on the television.

  “You know where he’s been all week?” Norm asked, trembling. “Do you really want to know?”

  “Yes!”

  “No, you don’t,” Norm said. “Because then you’ll really feel bad!”

  Her face twisted. “What are you talking about?”

  “About Duvall and…and Bernadette Mansaw!”

  “Oh God,” Alice groaned.

  “Don’t be ridiculous!” Marie said. Muttering savagely, she turned on the water and started tossing the plates and cups into the sink. Had he been in town all week? Living somewhere else? That was worse than if he’d just taken off on her. “That doesn’t make any sense! He’s in Bennington! People in this town…they’re all…” Something cracked. She turned off the water and from the suds pulled out a broken plate. She held it up. “See! See what you made me do! Now all I have is four!” she said, then started to cry.

  “I’ll do the dishes,” Alice said, taking the dripping piece from her.

  “C’mon, Mom,” Norm said. He put his arm around her. “Go watch TV with Benjy.”

  At that, she pulled away and stormed around the corner, where Benjy sat smiling at Queen for a Day. She yanked out the plug and sparks flew from the outlet. “You and your goddamn television!” She stood over him. Blood seeped between her fingers. She had cut herself on the plate. Benjy kept looking at her hand with a dazed foolish smile that sickened her. “You’re twelve years old, damn it! Don’t you have any friends? Why do I have to go to the band concert with you? What’s wrong with you?” she demanded, all the while thinking What’s wrong with me? What’s wrong with me?

  “Mom!” Alice called from the sink.

  “Leave him alone!” Norm moaned from the kitchen. “He didn’t do anything!”

  She ran back into the kitchen, holding her bleeding hand up by the wrist. “I’ll leave him alone!” she screamed. “I’d like to leave you all the hell alone!” She held her throbbing hand under the running water.

  “Go ahead!” Norm muttered. “Do us all a favor! Ever since he came you’ve been running around like a chicken with your head cut off. You’re either giggling or you’re screaming!”

  She looked at them. She held on to the counter to steady herself. “Who the hell—”

  “Mom!” Alice interrupted in a cold voice. “Can’t you see what a phony he is?”

  She glanced frantically between them. Didn’t they understand that her every thought, every plan and dream was for them? Even the way she felt about Omar Duvall, it was for them. Her hand bled profusely now. She wrapped it in a towel, certain if she looked she would see a finger nearly severed.

  “…selling things from door to door with a bunch of con artists,” Alice was saying. “That’s so…so…”

  “No,” Marie said. “He did his own selling. Those were people he tried to help…”

  “Mom, everything he says is a lie!” Norm said. “He’s like a…a flimflam man…like one of those shell-game guys at the fair. He gives you a sob story and the whole time he’s with Bernadette Mansaw.”

  “Doesn’t that tell you anything, Mom?” Alice said, her voice dropping. “Bernadette Mansaw, Mom! She’s my age!”

  “And selling things door-to-door, Mom, doesn’t that prove anything?” Norm said.

  It was them against her. She rubbed her hand. Help me. God help me, she was thinking as they watched. Please help me.

  The back door opened then and Omar’s voice oozed over them like soothing ointment. He stood there with a paper bag under his arm. “Yes, Norm, it does prove something.” His eyes gleamed over a bruised smile. “It proves again the frailty, the folly of loving too much, of caring about someone so much that when you try to lead them to higher ground, you are often left with the slop of their sins on your own shoes.” He stepped into the kitchen and laid the bag on the table. The smell of his limey hair pomade filled the room. He laughed bitterly. “But when you’ve spent your whole life believing and hoping and wanting to help, you don’t ask for proof of someone’s goodness. For affidavits of someone’s worth.” Leaning closer to her, he whispered, “Do you?” He shook his head. “No! You ask for the only truth you’ve ever needed or known! The word of your fellowman!” His voice trembled, its wounded eloquence fleshing, clothing the words in such credence, breathing into them such wholeness that this room, the very air, seemed to her filled with an almost holy presence.

  Watching him, she hugged her bound hand to her chest. He looked back at Norm and Alice then and said sadly, “You know, they were so simple, I made the mistake of thinking of them as children who could be shown, who could be taught, and the very night before they ran off with my goods and my car, I sat them down and told them there were two things I could not endure.” He looked hard at Norm, who was smirking, and Alice, who stared at the floor, and he said, “Dishonesty and sinful lust.” He sighed. “And look where that sermon left me. Plundered,” he whispered. “Deserted.” He looked at Marie. “Alone.”

  Benjy was glad to see Alice and Norm leave. He sat on the front steps waiting for his mother. It was seven-thirty, and the band concert would be starting soon. He couldn’t wait to see the fireworks tonight. His mother’s voice sifted through the screens as Omar bandaged her hand. She was happy again, but he knew it wouldn’t last. It never did.

  Just then, Klubocks’ dog came across the driveway. The dog hunched up and defecated on the one scorched patch of grass that was their lawn. The dog sniffed at its mess, then trotted up to the steps. Benjy glanced back at the door. He bent close to the dog and whispered, “Go on home! Go!”

  Panting, the dog sat at his feet.

  “Go on now before she sees you!” he said with a gentle nudge of his foot.

  The dog waddled off and sat between the two driveways, looking forlornly across at him.

  “Go on!” He said with a stamp of his foot, and the dog got up and started down the street, then disappeared into the woods. He thought of his grandmother behind the bars of her giant crib. His father was locked up somewhere in a place called Applegate. Somewhere far away, he hoped, hearing his mother’s sudden laughter.

  He blinked and looked up. Galloping down the street from the woods came the dog now with something brown and leathery dangling from its mouth. “Norm’s glove!” he gasped, chasing after the dog. “C’mon! C’mere, boy! C’mon!” he begged, zigzagging from lawn to driveway to lawn after the exhilarated dog. Just ahead, the dog paused, waiting. When he got close enough, he reached for the glove, and the dog, its ears pricked back, shot away from him.

 
Benjy came down to the road. He could hear the dog trotting at his heels, its nails ticking over the asphalt. Suddenly he whirled around and dove on the dog and, with his arms around its head, managed to twist the catcher’s mitt free from its strong wet jaw. He sat back on his heels, sorrowfully examining the ruined glove. It was not only stiff and cracked and stained, but it smelled so bad that he had to hold his breath. With his stomach turning, he picked up a stick, which he jammed into the glove. He carried it like that to the garage and hung it on a nail just inside the door.

  In the distance the band was starting to play. He started into the house to tell his mother, but stopped at the screen door when he saw Omar kissing her. She was up on her tiptoes with her arms around his neck. Omar’s back was against the refrigerator and his eyes were closed. Both of his big hands were open on her rear end. She was making hungry, slurping, groaning sounds. Benjy just stood there. He had never seen her kiss anyone before.

  Omar saw him. He said something, and they pulled apart and both started talking at once. She tugged at her skirt and adjusted her waistband. Her face was red. Benjy opened the door and came in. Omar moved quickly to the table and reached into his bag and pulled out a green-and-pink box. This was the soap America was waiting for, he was intent on telling Benjy. It seemed the most important thing anyone had ever said to him. All at once, unmoored, random facts like familiar distant stars suddenly had names along with the stunning realization that they were not just part of a pattern, of a constellation, but before his very eyes had become this great brilliant meshing of gears, driveshafts, pistons, and pinions that would transport them to happiness. Yes, even Benjy could make money selling it. On his bike, door to door. Did he have a bike? Well, then, with Presto Soap he’d have one in no time. Omar snapped his fingers like the guy who did the vegetable slicer ads on television, so much to tell and sell in thirty seconds. And here—Omar reached into the bag and held up a bottle filled with an orangy-pink liquid—here, this was its liquid counterpart, a concentrate so powerful one teaspoonful could eat through a ton of rust, a mountain of dirt.