Songs in Ordinary Time Page 30

  She wasn’t so sure. “But what if I do get the loan and the money’s all tied up in the franchise and then Alice can’t get Sam to give her any money for school? I can’t very well come back here and apply for another loan.”

  “I told you,” Omar said. “Your investment will double in less than sixty days.”

  “How do you know? How can you be so sure?”

  “Because I’ve seen the statistics!” he cried, throwing up his hands. “I’ve met the sales force!”

  “But you’ve never even sold one of these before!” There. She’d said it. But it was true. His eyes widened. He didn’t know what to say. With all his big talk he was just as scared as she was.

  He looked at her. “You’re right. I haven’t.”

  “For all I know this could be some big swindle here, some…some flimflam.” Her heart was racing, but it had to be said. Maybe he could afford to take chances, but she had three mouths to feed, three lives that mattered more than anything else.

  “Well, if so, then we’ve both been taken,” he sighed. “The two of us. But no matter what happens, at least you’ve got your job and your family.” He reached for her hand. “Do you have any idea what emptiness feels like? To wake up every morning with nothing to look forward to? I’ve told you before, Marie, I can endure any privation, but not the loss of hope.”

  She closed her eyes. Hope: God, there was more of that in her veins than blood.

  “That’s what sets my feet on the floor in the morning and keeps me starting over, day after day after day. Even if everything I touch turns to ashes, hope still keeps me going. I’m a believer, Marie, first, last, and always. I need to have faith. Faith gives me hope. Hope gives me faith. You ask me how I know about these franchises. I can only believe in the people who tell me about them. If I don’t, then what do I have? Where do I go?” He gripped her arm. “It’s the same way I believe in you. That very first moment I saw you, I knew I’d found something.” He tapped his breast and lowered his voice. “I knew I’d found someone so unusual, so unique, so genuine, and so rare that I knew if I left, if I kept going, that…that something terrible was going to happen to me. It felt like I’d been sent here. That everything I’d ever done in my life had all been geared toward that moment. And there you were. And for the first time in my life I had no choice, absolutely none.” He tried to laugh, but his mouth trembled and he looked away. “You know when I said I had no money for a bus out of town? Well, I lied. I had just enough for a ticket.”

  “Oh no,” she said, realizing how close she’d come to never seeing him again. “And then I gave you money and I even drove you there, but the bus had already left.”

  “No,” he said, his head hanging. “I’m ashamed to say I lied about that, too. The bus was due any minute. I couldn’t wait to get out of there.”

  “I remember you were so nervous.”

  “Nervous! I was shaking. I was dizzy. The whole ride back I had the strangest feeling.” He looked at her. “The strangest desire.”

  Her face burned. She could barely keep her eyes open.

  “I wanted to hide, to hide inside you. I had this feeling that I’d finally found something safe and good. Which I have. You are! And I’m not going to do anything to endanger that. This has to feel as right for you, Marie, as it does for me.” He turned the key and started to back up.

  “But what about the loan?” she called over the racing engine.

  “To hell with the loan! I just want you to be happy, that’s all.” He drove down the street.

  “I am! I’m happy!” she insisted as he turned the corner.

  “But you’re not ready for this. You don’t trust it. And because of it, you don’t trust me!”

  He was driving fast, too fast for these streets. She held on to the door even though the cars both in front and behind were traveling at the same speed. It wasn’t him. It wasn’t the car.

  “No! No, it’s not that. It’s me. I’m just scared, that’s all. I’m so damn scared! And I’m so sick of being scared.”

  “Is that all?” he called. “Just fear? Puny fear?”

  “Yes!”

  “Well, now, that’s something I can handle, lady. Fear’s an old friend of mine. Fear and I have been on intimate terms for more years than I care to remember. You know what they say, don’t you? Show me a fearless man and I’ll show you a fool.”

  “I must be a genius, then,” she said.

  “Yes, because fear can be a good thing. It sharpens the instincts.” The tires squealed around the corner. “It heightens the truth.”

  They were in front of the bank again now, sliding into the empty space. Without another word, she jumped out and hurried inside.

  The minute she left the bank, Omar started the car, and began inching from the space with her approach. “I feel like we just robbed the bank or something,” she said, laughing, as he pulled into the traffic.

  He looked over, grinning. “You mean you got it? You got the money?”

  “No, but I did what you said. I put my fear to work. I went right to the president, Cleveland Hinds, and he said, ‘Gosh, Marie, I’d like to help, but we’re just not making very many business loans right now.’ And all I could hear was this awful roar in my head, and I started to get up and go, and then I said, ‘Well, you make loans for home improvements, don’t you?’ ‘Well, yes,’ he said. ‘We’re always doing that. Depending, of course, on the kind of improvements you’re talking about.’ ‘Improvements that are investments in the future,’ I said, staring him right in the eye, ‘that’s what I’m talking about.’ ‘Sounds good to me,’ he said, staring right back, ‘but we’re going to need something more specific than that on the application, like a new roof, you know, or rewiring, or maybe you’re thinking of paving your driveway or finishing the basement off into a rumpus room.’ And just like that, I said, ‘Rumpus room. And a whole lot of other small jobs, too, like new chimney flashing and some reroofing. And new floor tiles in the kitchen.’” She held up the application. “All I have to do is fill this out and the money’s mine.”

  “What makes you so sure?” Omar asked, trying to sound skeptical through his wide grin.

  “Because it was like you said. He does want to help. All he needed was for me to show him how.”

  “Aren’t people wonderful if you just give them half a chance?” He took her hand and held it tightly while he drove her to work.

  All the next week she would try to recapture even some of that exhilaration while she waited for the bank to process her application. But every time she thought about the loan, this rushing would start in her ears again. The trouble was that she needed a cosigner. No problem, Mr. Hinds had said, the obvious choice was Renie LaChance. She’d start to dial Renie’s number, then slam down the phone. The last thing she wanted was another favor from her ex-brother-in-law, oh God, with his wet mouth plunging hers, the naked turkey cold against her chest, a disgusting price to pay for kindness. When he’d cosigned the note on her mortgage he seemed to think he was buying himself a family, that he could just show up at midnight with a turkey and be welcomed with a kiss. She’d pushed him down the stairs and thrown his raffle turkey after him. But in the end she’d gotten her revenge when she reported him to the IRS.

  So now a week had passed, and she still couldn’t bring herself to ask Renie. Typical, she berated herself. Put things off, wait just long enough until she had a disaster on her hands. But then again, she reminded herself, she still didn’t know if the bank had even approved her application.

  In the meantime she wished Omar wouldn’t keep asking about the loan. She didn’t want the children to know. They wouldn’t understand. They’d misinterpret it the way they did anything connected with Omar. Lately their superior attitudes were starting to wear her down. Astrid was right about one thing. The more she gave, the more they demanded. Because she had devoted her life to her children, they thought they owned her now, thought her every waking moment, every scrap of energy and attention should
be theirs.

  The back door flew open and Norm rushed in, pulling off his filthy T-shirt. He threw it on the washing machine, then opened the refrigerator. “Hi, Mom,” he said, turning with a bottle of milk and loaf of bread. He kicked the door shut, then reached past her and took a glass from the cupboard. She looked up with the sudden realization that he was a head taller than she was. His chest was broad, his arms newly muscular.

  “Guess what I just heard. Weeb says Father Gannon’s mental.”

  “Your friend Weeb should talk—anyone who’d blow up a cat.” She stared at the meatball she was rolling, at the grease coating her palms.

  “Why do you always bring that up? Why do you always have to say things about people I like? Besides, he didn’t actually blow up the cat. He was just tryna have some fun.”

  “Some fun?” She looked at him.

  “Jeez, Mom, he was twelve years old!” he said, pouring his milk. “Give the guy a break, will you? It’s not like he was in some loony bin, some funny farm, like the priest there, Father Gannon!”

  “Like your father,” she said.

  He glanced at her. “Why’d you say that?”

  To take the wind out of your huge sails, she thought. To cut you down to size. To hurt him, she knew, and could not understand why.

  A little while later Omar came through the door, asking the same question he asked every night. “Did you hear anything? Did the bank call?”

  “Not yet,” she said, turning up the burner. He was in a rush again. If she wanted them to eat together, she’d have to speed things up. The spaghetti sauce bubbled to a boil, so she stirred rapidly to keep it from burning.

  “Maybe you should call and make sure nothing’s wrong.” Omar opened the bag of bread Norm had left on the counter.

  “What could be wrong?” she asked. Hot sauce splattered her forearm.

  He shrugged. “Maybe some of your verifications—I don’t know.” He folded a slice of bread, which he dipped into the sauce. He ate it dripping over the pot.

  “No,” she said. “You know how many times I went over everything.”

  He redipped the bread, so sodden now that a chunk broke off into the pot. She tried to skim it out with the spoon, but it disintegrated into the sauce. She never would have allowed her children to do that. “And you even checked it all,” she reminded him.

  His chin glistened with bright red dots. Now he took a crust from the bag. He seemed preoccupied, uneasy.

  “You said you went over all the figures.” She kept stirring. “Were any of them wrong?”

  He dunked the crust until it bloated with sauce. “Nothing major,” he said. “Just a few things here and there.” He bent over the pot and slurped at the dripping crust.

  “What do you mean a few things here and there? You said everything looked fine!” she said, frightened by the shrillness, the familiar bitterness in her voice.

  “Well, I didn’t want to worry you.”

  “Didn’t want to worry—”

  “No. No. Now listen! I already took care of it. A few changes here and there, that’s all, some adjustments. No big deal.”

  “Changes, what kind of changes?” Hands shaking, she turned off the burner and laid down the spoon. “I mean, all my expenses, my income, I had everything down. I couldn’t have made a mistake. I know I couldn’t.”

  “The income was too low. It just needed a little…” He smiled and leaned close. “Help,” he whispered.

  “What do you mean?” She spoke carefully because something sharp and hard and deadly like a bone or shard of glass lay across her throat. A single word might dislodge it.

  “I colored in the background a little,” he said.

  She shook her head. Colored in the background? What did that mean?

  He grinned. “I changed a few things here and there, that’s all.” With a flourish as if he were daubing paint on air, he said, “See, a little gray here, a little red here, a little green. I prettied it up.”

  “I can’t believe you did that,” she said, hugging her arms against the shudder of a chill. In the other room Norm was telling Benjy that Father Gannon had been in a mental hospital. She turned and saw that the table sagged in the middle. She tried to concentrate on what Omar was saying. She kept wondering why the table sagged like that. Was it the extra plate every night, the weight of his arms?

  “Look, no harm done. It’s the American way. Everybody’s expected to shoot some bull—enough, anyway, to offset the other guy’s.” Now he was stirring the sauce, the spoon cutting through the oily red thickness. “You’re doing them a favor, that’s all. They want to make the loan, and you’ve just saved them some steps.”

  I did? she thought. Me?

  He shook basil into the pot, then garlic powder, then black pepper. He stirred them a moment, then sipped from the edge of the spoon. “I don’t know. It needs a lift, something.” He glanced back. “Got any oregano?”

  The bank called the next morning. Her home-improvement loan had been approved. The papers could be signed in three days. “And is that also a good time for Mr. LaChance?” asked the loan officer.

  “Yes,” she said, and the minute she hung up she dialed Renie’s number before she could change her mind.

  “’Ello,” he answered breathlessly on the first ring. “LaChance Appliance Company! Renie LaChance speaking!”

  She closed her eyes, repelled by his eagerness, the hunger she remembered.

  “’Ello! ’Ello!” he kept calling. “Who is this? What do you want? This is Renie LaChance! Is that who you want? You want me? You want Renie LaChance?” he was shouting as she hung up.

  The next morning she called from work, then hung up again, and as her ears rang with his desperate demand to know who was doing this, she made up her mind. She would ask Mr. Briscoe to cosign the note. If he’d said it once, he’d said it a hundred times: anytime he could help her, anything he could do, just let him know. She trusted Mr. Briscoe’s judgment. She was even tempted to tell him about the soap franchises, except that, shrewd businessman that he was, he’d probably buy them all up himself. She waited until he’d finished his coffee before she went up to his office.

  “I don’t know,” he said when she finished. “Seems like real poor timing to me, Marie. I mean a rumpus room with all you’ve got going right now, kids to raise and Alice going off to college, not to mention that old clunker you’re driving.” His chair squeaked as he swiveled away from the one-way glass. He had been watching Morton, the bicycle salesman, trail two boys through the store. He squinted up at her. “Speaking of which, you sell your car? Twice this week I could’ve sworn I saw that old Chevy, but there was this fellow driving it. Big guy, black hair.”

  “A friend of mine’s been using it. His own car’s not running right,” she said, smiling, relieved to finally speak of him.

  Mr. Briscoe adjusted his glasses. “Hmm, don’t know him,” he said upon hearing Omar’s name.

  “He’s not from around here,” she said.

  He nodded. “Well, that explains it, then. You maybe oughta clue your friend in.”

  “About what? What do you mean?”

  “About that…that, well, that Bernadette Mansaw I’ve seen him with.”

  “Oh! Well, that’s just some business thing,” she stammered, her face flushing.

  “Monkey business if it’s a Mansaw,” Mr. Briscoe said with a sly grin.

  “Mr. Duvall is a businessman like yourself, Mr. Briscoe! And just like you can’t control who shops down there in your store, he can’t stop people from investing in his company.” Her mouth was so dry her lips kept sticking together.

  “What’s his company? The A&P?” Mr. Briscoe scoffed. “That’s where I saw them, loading groceries in your car.”

  Omar Duvall felt drained. He had spent most of the day in pay phones trying to get through to Roy Gold, who finally came on the line after he told Gold’s secretary that he had “spectacular, absolutely fabulous news.”

  “Wait, wait,
wait, wait!” Gold interrupted. “This is fabulous news? That some woman’s got an appointment at a bank?”

  He tried to explain that at nine o’clock tomorrow morning Marie would be signing the note for money to buy two franchises.

  There was a pause, then Gold sighed. “Don’t you understand? That’s just another promise, another maybe, Mr. Duvall. You see, right now, at this very moment, I have hundreds of men out in the field doing, I repeat, doing the very thing you only want to talk about. And that’s selling, Mr. Duvall. Actually selling franchises. I’m a very busy man, Mr. Duvall. In fact right now, at this very moment, there are twenty different lines all lit up here, calls from all over the world. England, Germany, Europe, France. Montana! God almighty, now Montana’s just come on! Miss Handy”—he yelled away from the phone—“take care of Montana, will you? No matter what, this country comes first!

  “You see, Mr. Duvall, these are all my district distributors and franchisers trying to call in orders, real orders, while we’re chitchatting about maybes and promises. No! No, Mr. Duvall! This is for real! I’ve got a huge operation to run here. I thought you understood that. We may look small, but this isn’t some two-bit, penny-ante front job I’m running here. This is global, Mr. Duvall, global!”

  “I know that, sir!” he said quickly. “I just didn’t want you to think I wasn’t trying, that I’d given up and gone away or anything.”

  “Look, Mr. Duvall, I like you, and I have faith in you. A man like you could have a great future here, but God almighty, man, you’ve got to come cash in hand to prove it. Do you understand, Omar? Cash in hand!”

  Yes sir, cash in hand, he thought as he drove, more determined than ever to prove himself to Roy Gold. As of tomorrow morning he’d finally have a future. With Marie’s money he’d finally be in on the ground floor of something as big and as innovative as Presto Soap. Gold was right. The days of maybes and promises were over. He wasn’t getting any younger. Lately there were too many days when every bone in his body ached, when he was almost too tired to talk or even think, which was the way he felt now as he pulled into Marie’s driveway. He got out of the car with a groan and rubbed his back, then sniffed the air. He could smell onions frying and green peppers. Adjusting his tie, he hurried up the back steps. Marie stood in the doorway and held out her hand.