Songs in Ordinary Time Read online

  “Marie!” he said, reaching for her hand with a glance beyond into the redolent kitchen.

  “Give me back my keys!” she demanded, batting away his hand. “And then I want you out of here!”

  He was stunned, and yet it was all so familiar he could close his eyes and recite every line of her venomous charges. It would get ugly now. It always did, but in the end he would be relieved. Freedom had its price, but all it ever took was a few miles before the disappointment sloughed off like scaly old skin and hope infused his pores with the prickly tenderness of healing flesh. She had trusted him, and now she wanted him out of her life forever. Forever, forever, forever: the reverberation throbbed in his bones. But what about their business? There was no business, just talk, and talk was cheap. Talk was shit. She had children to take care of, and she had no time for any more of his talk or his shit. But he could explain. She didn’t want to hear it. She wanted him to go. She kept saying it. Go, just go. His chin trembled. His voice cracked. He had never felt so alone. She looked surprised; welcome to the club. But he had no one. Well, that was his fault, wasn’t it? But where would he go; what would he do? She didn’t care what he did or where he went, but she wanted him off her property right now, this minute. He didn’t dare move. Even if he wanted to, he couldn’t.

  “I can’t,” he said in a low voice. “I need you. You’re my future. You’re everything.”

  He was in the kitchen now, trying to convince her that his relationship with Bernadette Mansaw was purely business, which in a sense it was, he thought, because beyond the satisfaction of his more base needs, she meant nothing to him.

  Arms folded, shoulders hunched, Marie stared over the table. “Purely business,” she repeated. “Oh, so that’s why you went to the A&P together! Well, that explains everything. Now I understand.” She nodded. “Of course, business! After all, anytime Mr. Briscoe tries to sell someone an outboard motor or an archery set, the first place they go is the A&P.”

  He sighed. “What you have to understand is that going to the A&P was a desperate measure.”

  “Why?” she demanded. “Why desperate?”

  “Well…” He sighed again and for a moment wasn’t sure. He felt tired again, very, very tired, he thought, closing his eyes on this wounded woman hungering for persuasion in her dull kitchen that reeked of grease and more neglect than he could ever resolve.

  “Tell me,” she insisted. “Look at me and tell me!”

  Opening his eyes, he saw how near the edge he was, flesh-bound and artless, his cuffs soiled and frayed, his damp limbs heavy against their French seams. Once, in such cornered moments, grace would have come, an infusion of spirituality he felt only then, when his soul soared and he knew and saw and heard what others could not. It was inconceivable that he had been delivered from every hardship and adversity to have it all end, not in beauty or love or fortune, but in a petty, mud-grunting struggle with Earlie. Had that futile wallow been the quest every day, every mile of his way? Had he been buffeted and tumbled through life for that?

  “Why desperate?” she said through clenched teeth.

  No, it was more than that, because he was more than just a speck in time, an idea, an amusement, a conceit of some vain and twisted higher consciousness. Yes, he thought, feeling the heaviness subside, it really was quite simple. “Desperate,” he mused. “I had been desperate, I felt desperate because…because right on the verge of signing a franchise contract, Miss Mansaw went and got cold feet.” He sat back with a look of disbelief. “She insisted on comparing the price of supermarket detergent with my product, Presto Soap.” Yes! Yes, that was it, of course, he thought, buoyed by her relief as she sighed and ran her hand through her hair.

  “And I suppose while you were there on business, she just happened to buy her groceries!” Marie sniffed.

  “Yes!” he cried, awed by the facile logic of the tale and, once again, his skill, his power as its teller. Of course Bernadette might have, could have, so therefore had done, just such a thing. “She’s precisely that kind of young woman, capricious”—Marie blinked, and he knew the minute he left she would be at the dictionary—“and coarse, and selfish, but of necessity,” he added. “After all, she’s got two kids to feed and there she was in a supermarket when she needed groceries.”

  “Which you carried out to my car!”

  “Marie, oh Marie! What could I do? I’m a gentleman. I’m chronically polite. I’m incapable of hurting anyone.”

  “But you hurt me. Doesn’t that matter?” She stared, her gaze so keen it seemed to pour into him.

  It mattered. Of course it mattered. Looking at her, he felt his chest expand with a sense of abundance, of himself filling the night. “I need you,” he said, almost crushing her in his arms. “I need you, Marie,” he whispered, meaning more than she could understand, because what he needed was beyond flesh or love. What he needed, what he most craved, was her eager faith to continue providing his words with resolve and, ultimately, with truth.

  Later, as he drove, the night cooled, sagging low with bright stars that flooded every street and yard. He drove past the boardinghouse.

  The television was on in Bernadette’s apartment. He crept by the couch where she lay curled, snoring with her mouth open. Her shiny slip sagged below one breast. He tiptoed into the bedroom and closed the door. He sat on the edge of the bed and removed his shoes, setting them down without a sound. He undressed, then crawled between the gritty sheets, wincing with each creaking spring. He closed his eyes and slept.

  It was the middle of the night when she knelt over him.

  “I thought something happened,” she whispered, stroking his arms, his legs, his chest, and now his belly. “I told my mother I’d get the kids tomorrow.” Her hair whisked his face as she kissed his throat, his chin, his mouth.

  Clutching the cold bedpost while she nibbled his earlobes, he drifted in and out of sleep and the glow of Luther’s and the Reverend’s eyes through an old dream, dark and speechless.

  “I went looking for you,” she said with a slurp in his wet ear. “The lady at the boardinghouse said maybe you were outta town on business.”

  “Umm, lady at the boardinghouse,” he muttered. His eyes opened wide.

  “Yah, ‘Or maybe at Marie Fermoyle’s,’ she said. Why there?”

  “She’s an investor,” he said, pulling the sheet to his chest. “And please don’t go tracking me down again like that. I told you before, this is a small town and I have to be very, very circumspect.”

  She sat up and folded her arms. “What’s that mean? Embarrassed? Ashamed?”

  “Careful,” he said, reaching to touch her face. “Extremely careful.” Her cheek was cold.

  She looked down at him. “Omar?” Her voice trembled. “Who’s car’s that you drive?”

  “One of my investors. I already told you that.”

  “Yah, but the way you said it, I thought you meant some guy.”

  “Well, it’s not,” he sighed. “It’s Mrs. Fermoyle, who as of tomorrow morning will be my very first franchisee.”

  “Jeez!” she squealed happily. “Well, let’s celebrate, then! C’mon!” She tugged on the sheet.

  “I’m really very tired,” he said, anchoring it at his chin.

  “Are you and her, you know, are you doing it?”

  “What? For God’s sake, child, the woman is an associate, a respected member of the business community, a vital link in my franchising network. Please!” He shuddered.

  “So. You could still be doing it.”

  “Bernadette, listen to me. I swear to you. On my honor, Mrs. Fermoyle and I are not doing it. You and you alone are the only one I do it with.”

  “Yah? Well, anyway, I wish I could be your first franchisee,” Bernadette said, pouting.

  “Well, you can be my second, dear.”

  “Yah! With what, my good looks?”

  He glanced up at the sound of a car slipping into the alley. The window swelled with light. The car idled a moment
, then backed out. “Who’s that?”

  “I don’t know.” She yawned. “My X-ray vision’s a little off tonight.”

  He grabbed her wrist. “Don’t you be flip with me! Did you tell anyone I come here?”

  “No! I swear! I said I wouldn’t and I haven’t! Honest!” she cried, pulling away from him. “It’s probably just the cops. Sometimes they check the back door of the fruit store.”

  The cops. He jumped up and crept from window to window. He ran down the hallway and stood on the wooden landing. Except for Marie’s car and a jumble of crates, the alley was empty. His heart was racing. The biggest mistake would be to start thinking everyone was after him. He assured himself that he hadn’t made a false step in this town. Not a single law had been broken. This was his fresh start, the reason, the justification, for every other fiasco. The old ways were over. Now he would do it with honesty and hard work.

  He came back to bed, apologizing and trying to explain what a bad day he’d had. “I finally get there with the papers and it’s the night before the loan and Mrs. Fermoyle goes and gets cold feet. It took me hours! Hours! I thought I was going to jump right out of my skin. There weren’t—”

  “Omar?” she interrupted. “How could I be your second franchisee? What’d you mean by that?”

  “Well, it would probably take a little juggling of the figures, but it looks like I’m going to make enough cash off Mrs. Fermoyle to maybe—just maybe, now—eke out a franchise for you. Provided,” he said over her squeals, “provided you can come up with some money. Maybe, I don’t know, fifty, seventy-five? Could you manage that?”

  “Maybe!” she cried, collapsing next to him.

  “But of course Mrs. Fermoyle can’t know any of this. That, you see, is being circumspect.”

  “I don’t even know Mrs. Fermoyle,” she said. “But I know her kids.”

  “What do you mean, know them?” he gasped as she curled close, her face in the crook of his arm.

  “I mean I know who they are. Alice and me were in the same grade. She was always real quiet, one of those goody-goodies.” She slid her hand down the front of his shorts.

  “Not like you,” he muttered, spreading his legs.

  “Yah, and her brother, he tried to put the make on me.”

  “What? He what?” He kept trying to sit up, but she had climbed on top of him.

  “Yah, but that was before I knew you.” She was licking his mouth. “So how would I come up with the money?”

  “What about your diamond?” he said, feeling it graze his thigh.

  “I couldn’t do that,” she gasped, pulling away. “That’s my engagement ring from Kyle!”

  Marie couldn’t stop shivering in the bank’s air-conditioned conference room with its marble walls and high paneled ceiling. Opposite her at the long oak table were Jim Hubbard, the senior loan officer, and Cleveland Hinds in their dark suits, white shirts, and striped ties. Grunting from line to line, Hubbard read another form, which he passed to Hinds for his elaborate signature.

  Hubbard glanced up at her. “Will Renie be here soon?” He slid over another paper, and Hinds’s pen scratched his name.

  “Umm. No, he won’t be,” she said, trying to clear the nervous tickle in her throat.

  Both men looked at her.

  “You see, I’d really like to do this myself. You know, to keep my business to myself,” she tried to explain, squirming under their gaze. “I mean, I have a good job and my own car and, you can check for yourself, I just finished off paying on the refrigerator, and right now the only money I owe is Dr. Yale and really, that’s my son’s—”

  “It’s out of the question,” Hubbard sputtered, gathering up the papers. He held them against his chest. “I’m really rather surprised, Mrs. Fermoyle. I thought I’d made everything quite clear.” He slid the papers into a folder, to which he gave a sharp tap for proper alignment before pushing back his chair.

  He couldn’t be leaving. No, this couldn’t be it. “Wait!” she said, hitting the table as he stood up. “I need this loan!”

  “You need a cosigner,” snapped Hubbard.

  “Why? I’ve never once been late with a mortgage payment, you know that! That house is all I’ve got. I’d never let anything endanger that,” she said, her voice rising.

  “Now, Marie.” Hinds sighed. “What can I say? This is the way we do it. This is the way it’s done. This is the way!” He threw up his hands. “We know you’re a good person, a hard worker. But the only income you’ve got is your own. Someone in your circumstances needs a cosigner, someone who’ll—”

  “My circumstances? You mean because I don’t have a husband?”

  “Yes,” said Hinds with a smile and a grateful nod.

  “Because I’m divorced.” She stared at him.

  “Well, now, not just that you’re divorced. It would be the same if you were a widow. It’s because you’re a woman alone. And a woman alone is a woman in tenuous circumstances and therefore needs a cosigner, someone who’ll pay the bank if you should get sick or laid off or if you can’t pay.” He took a breath. “Nine times out of ten it doesn’t matter. It’s really just a name on the dotted line, you know, to satisfy the auditors and all the darn government regulations.”

  “So in other words, it’s like a formality,” she said slowly, taking care both to decode his message and show that she understood.

  “A formality,” he mused. “Well, I suppose, in a sense.”

  “So what you need is Renie’s signature on those forms?” She watched his face, relieved when he smiled and nodded. “Can I take the forms over to Renie?” she asked him.

  “I’m afraid not,” Hubbard spoke up. “Bank regulations mandate these be signed in person.”

  “But that way,” she tried to explain, “he won’t have to close up the store, and I won’t have to take time off work to come back, and you won’t have to take up any more—”

  “Hell, what’s the harm?” Hinds interrupted, with a sour glance at the piqued Hubbard.

  “Just drive around the block a minute,” Marie told Omar. “Go slow now,” she muttered as she signed “Renie LaChance,” on both documents. “It’s just a formality,” she said, uneasy with his silence. “Besides, it’s not as if he’d even care.”

  When she returned to the bank, Cleveland Hinds was alone in the conference room. With Hubbard gone, something had changed. Hinds seemed more subdued, distracted. Had it occurred to him that she might have forged Renie’s name? Forgery! The word’s reality stung her cheeks. Hubbard was probably calling Renie right now. Then he’d call the police. She held her breath as Hinds glanced at the forms. The check was being prepared, he said in a soft voice. If she had to get to work, she could pick it up later.

  Later! He was obviously stalling for time. Oh God, she never should have done it. What had she been thinking of? If she could only get the forms back, she’d rip them up and never do anything like this again.

  “I’ll wait, if you don’t mind,” she said in a small voice.

  “Mind! Heavens no! It’ll give me a chance to find out how things’ve been going for you lately.”

  “Oh, pretty good.”

  “That’s all? Just pretty good?” He smiled and slid the forms into the folder.

  “Very good, actually,” she said, relieved to see him push aside the folder. “Now with the refrigerator paid off. And the car’s running okay.” She knocked on the tabletop. “And the two oldest have jobs this summer, Norm and Alice. And Benjy’s taking swimming lessons. He’s always been afraid of water. Mr. Briscoe wants to take him fishing. He’s such a nice man. Such a good businessman.” She was beginning to babble with his eyes boring into her like this. “I couldn’t ask for a better boss.”

  “That’s good to hear. But how’re things with you? I mean with you personally, Marie.”

  “Everything’s fine,” she said stiffly.

  “I know it must be difficult with three children, but do you ever go out?”

  She fro
ze. She had been right. This was a trap.

  “You’re a very interesting woman,” Hinds said. He kept smiling at her, trying to give her time to confess, to stop this fraud before it went any further.

  “You know, Renie didn’t really read any of those papers,” she blurted, gesturing at the folder. “Maybe I should take them back and tell him to read them. I really rushed him. I’ve had so much on my mind lately.”

  Hinds chuckled. “About the most the women I know ever have on their minds is a hat.” He reached across the table and patted her hand. “The papers are fine,” he whispered. “Don’t worry about them.”

  “I just want everything to be done right,” she said, not moving.

  His hand covered hers. “And I just want to get to know you better, Marie. How do you feel about that?” He stared at her.

  “Well, I’m awfully busy and…” Shocked, she pulled away her hand. “And you’re married!” Not just married, but, my God, married to Nora Cushing, who’d been engaged to Sam.

  His cool gaze warmed with amusement. “And I’m a very nice man, too. And a very good businessman.” He grinned. “We’ll have a lot to talk about.”

  Omar hadn’t wanted to take her check from the bank, but she was glad she’d insisted. One thousand dollars had obviously snagged Roy Gold’s attention. For the last three days Omar had been in Connecticut, where Gold was giving him a personal run-through of the whole operation from top to bottom. Marie was cooking dinner when Omar called to say he’d have to spend at least one more day there.

  “He’s showing me everything,” Omar said, “the plant, executive offices, his suite, the distribution…”

  “What’s that?” she interrupted, straining to hear.

  “What? I don’t hear anything.”

  “Sounds like a little kid crying.”