Songs in Ordinary Time Page 32

  “Must be crossed lines again. You really ought to have your phone checked. For all you know, somebody’s listening in on your calls.”

  “But all they keep hearing is me being stood up again.” She laughed uneasily. He had promised to come to dinner tonight with the paperwork for her two franchises.

  “I wish you could see this, Marie, the people here just hanging on my every word,” Omar whispered into the phone.

  “I should hope so, with all the money you’re giving them.” All your money, she expected him to say.

  “Well, this is a different element now,” he said with the hushed urgency of a reporter calling from the midst of some tumultuous event. “These are the men that make the world turn, and they don’t do it with small talk.”

  “Are you coming back tomorrow?”

  “I hope so. There’s so much to learn. I can’t keep all the different solvents straight, much less all the new business terms,” he said. In the background there was a woman’s sudden laugh.

  “Where are you calling from?” she asked, hating the shrillness that betrayed her fear, her certainty that in the end no man could be trusted because she herself was so inadequate.

  “Somebody’s office, I’m not sure whose. I’ve met so many different people.”

  “What’s the number there?”

  “I’m not sure. Let me see here….” In the pause came a rustling sound. “Well, I’ll be…it doesn’t say. That’s strange.”

  “There must be a phone in another office,” she said, her temples pulsing with the old dread. He seemed so far away. When Sam was drinking she never knew where he was.

  “They’re all locked, though.”

  “Where are you staying?”

  “Tonight I’m not sure. I couldn’t get my room back at the motel. Why, Marie? Did something happen? Is anything wrong? Is anyone looking for me? Do you want me to come back? I’ll tell Gold some other—”

  “No! Oh no, no, don’t! Don’t change anything. Just do what you have to.”

  “I miss you,” he said.

  Her eyes filled with tears. “I miss you, too,” she said, looking up as Norm’s bright whistle carried down the street. She quickly removed Omar’s place setting from the table.

  At dinner Norm had seconds of everything, but Benjy only picked at his food. He kept glancing at Omar’s empty chair. Norm was telling them how every time Joey Seldon complained about his popcorn stand Jarden Greene made sure he accompanied the laborer who would be repairing it. Aside from these tales about Greene, Norm seldom complained about his job anymore. He liked his work crew, especially his foreman, Kenny Doyle. She could see how much he enjoyed not having Omar here. He had the floor to himself again. “When something breaks, like today it was the whole front counter, Greene says, ‘Don’t rip it out. Just nail a new board over it.’”

  A car pulled into the driveway, and Benjy looked toward the door. Outside, Harvey Klubock was clapping his hands, calling the dog.

  “What’s the matter, Benjy?” she asked.

  “Nothing.” He shrugged.

  “One of these days you’ll go up and find the whole thing boarded up,” Norm was saying. “Just this little hole for Joey to stick his hand through.” He plopped more mashed potatoes onto his plate. Tanned and with his hair streaked blond from the sun, he was becoming a handsome young man, she thought. Now when he came into the office Astrid flirted with him. Compared to his brother, Benjy looked peaked, almost sickly. Last night he’d run downstairs after another one of his nightmares. She’d found him on the couch watching television with all the lights on. He pushed back his plate now. He had hardly eaten.

  “Omar called,” she said, watching Benjy. “He’s coming back tomorrow!”

  “He is?” Benjy grinned.

  “He has to spend another day with the company president.” Repeating everything he’d said made her so happy she felt lightheaded. “They’ve got all these solvents and each one has its own ingredients. And Omar has to learn what’s in each one. The chemical names.” He hadn’t actually said this, but she was sure it was true.

  Norm had been looking at her. “Where is this soap place?”

  “Connecticut,” she said, pushing Benjy’s plate back. “Come on, Benjy, finish up.” She snapped her fingers, and Benjy picked up his fork.

  “Didn’t he say where in Connecticut?” Norm asked.

  “Hartford,” she lied, rather than admit she still didn’t know.

  “How’d he get there?” Norm asked.

  “On the bus.”

  “The bus! Boy, that must really impress everyone.” Norm laughed as he reached for the last slice of bread. “’Course he probably said it’s his own private Greyhound.”

  She folded her hands over her plate and took a deep breath.

  “They took his car, Norm! It’s not his fault,” Benjy said quickly, looking between the two of them.

  “Yah, that’s his story,” Norm said.

  “No, it’s true. They did. They were looking for him. There was this old Negro man with white, white hair and the other one, he was young, and they were driving Omar’s station wagon. They were!”

  “When?” she and Norm both asked.

  “That day. When he came.” Benjy’s eyes darted between them.

  “What do you mean, white, white hair, how do you know?” Norm asked the very thing she was wondering.

  “I guess Omar told me.” Benjy shrugged. “I don’t know, maybe I just thought so because he said one of them was real old. Remember? He said that.”

  She looked away. She hated seeing him squirm like that, his shirt collar hanging off his bony shoulder, his eyes, cornered and miserable because Norm had caught him trying to defend Omar.

  “I saw Uncle Renie today,” Benjy said quickly. “He bought me a piece of cake.”

  “Uncle Renie!” Norm said. “Don’t tell me you’re hanging out with him now!”

  “No, I went to see his cat, but his sign said he’d be back at two, and it was almost two, so I walked down to the luncheonette—”

  “Two!” she snapped. “But don’t your swimming lessons start at one forty-five?” She watched him shrink into the chair. “Did you have a swimming lesson today?”

  He stared at the table.

  “Did you?”

  “No.”

  “How many lessons have you had so far?”

  He shrugged.

  She watched him. “You never signed up, did you? You lied to me! Benjy, come here,” she said, gesturing.

  “Shit,” Norm muttered, pushing his plate away.

  Wincing, Benjy stood in front of her.

  She put her hands on his sweaty shoulders and could feel the same caged tension as in his father’s bones. “What are you so afraid of?” she asked, struggling to stay calm. “I wouldn’t let anything happen to you.”

  She blamed herself for their fears. They had seen her hope for too long for Sam’s recovery. With each birth, each new job, the separation, the divorce, with her tears, with her love, and with every denial she had continued to plumb him, sinking deeper each time in the search for his decency, his strength, his love, drowning, pulling her children after her, instructing them not with words but with example and the tenacity of her hope that if they loved him enough, if they were patient enough, if they were good enough, and kind enough, and forgiving enough, then he would not drink again. He would mend his life and theirs.

  But she was beyond that now, beyond believing in broken things. Her future extended past this narrow yard, this town, those mountains. Omar had brought her the world. He had been places, seen things. He knew people. He was making her feel young again and whole. Less and less this sexless man-woman, every day she grew more conscious of the weight of her breasts, her firm thighs and slim hips, along with this longing, this ache in her heart and her belly.

  The next day his mother picked him up on her lunch break and they rode in silence to the municipal pool, which stood higher than the road, a colossal bowl of b
lue water, deep, deep blue water. Benjy hadn’t slept most of last night, dreading this very moment, his mother in her wrinkled skirt, her worn brown pumps skimming over the slimy concrete to Mr. Tuck, who sat behind the counter on a tall metal stool, purveyor of the hundreds of mesh baskets in the wall grid behind him. Each basket held a swimmer’s clothes. Down here below the pool, the air reeked of mildew and rancid sneakers. His mother leaned over the counter and said she wanted to sign him up for lessons. That would be twenty-five cents a day, Mr. Tuck explained, fifteen cents for the lesson and ten cents basket rental.

  She glanced at Benjy, who was wearing his bathing suit under his pants. “You don’t need a basket, do you?”

  “He needs one,” sighed Mr. Tuck as he removed an empty basket and set it on the counter.

  “But he’s already got his suit on. I can take his clothes with me,” she said.

  Benjy looked at her. Didn’t she care that he’d have to walk the three miles home in a wet bathing suit with no shirt on? No, she wouldn’t. He could see that.

  “His sneakers.” Mr. Tuck smirked. “Or is he gonna go home barefoot?” He was a teacher. During the summer he ran the pool.

  “I didn’t even think of that,” Marie said with a nervous laugh as she gave him a dime.

  Three girls had just come in. They waited as Mr. Tuck handed Benjy his numbered metal disk that matched the number on his basket. The disk was clipped to a big safety pin that attached to his bathing suit. Mr. Tuck explained that if the disk fell off in the water, he’d have to keep swimming around the bottom of the pool until he found it, or else he wouldn’t get his clothes back. Benjy fastened his pin and then he couldn’t stop checking it.

  “Intermediate?” Mr. Tuck was flipping through the water-curled pages of the lesson book.

  “He can’t swim at all,” his mother said. “He’s afraid of water,” she added in a voice that echoed off the damp concrete walls, “Afraid afraid of water water water.”

  “He’s afraid of water,” hissed the little girl behind him.

  “Shh,” said her older sister.

  “Beginner, then.” Mr. Tuck turned a page. “Fermoyle,” he repeated when Marie gave the name. “You work at Briscoe’s, don’t you?” he asked, extending his hand. “Dave Tuck. Ferd Briscoe’s my wife’s uncle, her mother’s brother.”

  Benjy’s hair stood on end. Mr. Briscoe, who wanted to take him out on the lake fishing, just happened to be related to Mr. Tuck. It was some kind of weird water conspiracy, and his mother was part of it. Mr. Tuck grinned at him, and he tried to smile back.

  As he went through the showers on his way to the pool, he could hear Mr. Tuck calling after his mother, “Don’t worry. He’s in good hands. We’ll take care of him…have him swimming like a fish….”

  The water in the crowded pool churned with twisting, flipping, glistening bodies. The announcement came over the loudspeaker that the beginners’ lessons were starting, but Benjy didn’t move. He sat on the lower pipe railing with his arms looped over the hot top rail so no one could push him in like they’d done last year. He watched the lessons from his perch, and when they were over he ran all the way home.

  Omar didn’t come for dinner that night, or the next. Marie’s face was drawn and her hands shook as she put milk on the table. When Norm asked where Omar was, she turned back to the stove, whipping the potatoes to a gluey thickness.

  “How did the swimming go?” she asked while they ate.

  “Good,” Benjy said.

  She nodded and said no more except for sighs that ended in little cries that gouged so many pieces from his own heart that his chest began to ache.

  Every time the phone rang he saw how still she sat, how she seemed to stop breathing. Omar hadn’t called in days.

  It was late and Benjy couldn’t sleep. The moonlit night was ripe with the smell of skunk and from a nearby street a dog howled.

  At midnight Norm came home with Alice. Downstairs, chairs scraped over the floor and the refrigerator opened and closed. Glasses and milk bottles rattled on the counter. In his bed Benjy sniffed hungrily at the hamburg and French fries that Alice was smuggling out nightly for Norm. They whispered and laughed softly together.

  The toilet flushed. Water splashed. Again the toilet flushed. Pipes clanged in the walls. The lights went out. For a time there was quiet and then he heard muffled sobs from the next room. “Oh God,” his mother wept. “What am I going to do? Help me. Please help me.”

  A week had passed with no word from Omar. Benjy went to the pool every day, paid his money, then twined himself around the hot railing, watching until the lesson was over. His mother had finally stopped asking about the lessons, so on Thursday he didn’t go. Tonight when supper was over she said she wanted him to go for a walk with her. She walked quickly and hardly spoke to him. He was convinced that she’d found out about the lessons and was taking him up to the pool, where she’d probably push him into the deep end and make him swim back. As they came along Main Street she kept staring ahead toward the distant boardinghouse, where the old woman, May Mayo, was sitting on the porch. His mother stopped and asked if Mr. Duvall was home. She was smiling, but Benjy could see the cords tighten in her neck as May Mayo said she hadn’t seen Mr. Duvall in almost two weeks now, but that she’d certainly tell him Mrs. Fermoyle was looking for him. Yes, just as soon as she heard from him. “Which better be soon,” she whispered as she leaned over the rail. “He’s only paid up three more days, and my sister doesn’t much like him, you know. She says he’s a fast-talking salesman, and Claire hates salesmen, you know.”

  They turned the corner and headed back home. “If he doesn’t come back, I don’t know what I’ll do,” she gasped, quickly covering her mouth. She began to walk so fast he had trouble keeping up with her.

  Later, he heard cries from her room. “Oh my God, he’s never coming back,” she sobbed, and he lay in his bed crying, too. Something terrible had happened to Omar, and without him something terrible would happen to his mother.

  His mother was late for work and the car keys were missing. Norm had already searched the house for them, and now he was outside on his hands and knees looking under the car. Alice had just come downstairs in her nightgown. She was positive she could remember Norm carrying the keys into the house last night. “We sat here and ate,” she said, yawning as she sagged into a chair at the table.

  Marie stood in the kitchen doorway in her slip while she brushed her teeth, telling them through the foamy toothpaste dribbling down the corners of her mouth that here she was, late for work again because of their carelessness. She spit into the sink, then threw down her toothbrush. How the hell would they like it if Mr. Briscoe fired her for being late all the time? What would they do then? She pounded the tabletop. How would they eat? How would they keep a roof over their heads?

  “Mom,” Alice said. “Please, Mom, don’t. You’re going to hurt yourself.”

  “And then I can’t work, right? And that’s all you care about, isn’t it?”

  “No, Mom!” Alice said.

  “That’s all any of you care about. I’m just a workhorse. That’s all you think of me. That’s all anyone in this whole goddamn world thinks of me, an ugly workhorse.”

  Norm came inside then and ran into his room. Benjy pushed the cushions back onto the couch. He didn’t know where else to look.

  “That’s all I’m good for, isn’t it?”

  “Will you stop? Please!” Alice begged.

  “I’ll stop! I’ll stop when I’m dead, that’s when I’ll stop.”

  “I can’t stand this,” Alice groaned, covering her face. “I can’t stand living like this anymore!”

  “Oh you can’t?” his mother taunted in that voice that turned Benjy’s stomach. “Poor thing! It’s just too much for you, isn’t it?”

  Norm raced into the kitchen. He’d found the keys in his pants. “Here they are! C’mon, Mom, it’s not her fault.”

  “Poor sensitive Alice!” she hissed, bending ov
er Alice. “You’re just too delicate for all this shit, aren’t you?”

  “Leave her alone! Will you just leave her alone!” Norm flipped the keys onto the table.

  “I’ll leave her alone. I’ll leave you all the hell alone.” She picked up the keys and threw them. As they hit the wall, the chain separated, scattering keys in both rooms. Norm turned without a word and ran upstairs.

  In the kitchen his mother crawled from key to key. She strung them on the chain while Benjy picked up the ones that had landed in the living room. “That’s right, Alice, don’t help. Don’t lift a finger,” she panted. “Just sit there. It doesn’t matter that I’m late for work.”

  “That’s not what’s wrong,” Alice replied coldly from the table. “That’s not what the real trouble is.”

  Benjy punched the sofa cushion. Don’t! he wanted to shout. Don’t say his name. Don’t say it.

  His mother grabbed the countertop and pulled herself to her feet. “What do you mean?” she asked. “What’s the real trouble?”

  “Nothing,” Alice muttered.

  “No, tell me. What do you mean, the real trouble? Go ahead, you said it, now finish it, you think you know so much.”

  Alice stared down at the table.

  “You think you know so much about real trouble, do you? Well, let me tell you what real trouble is. Real trouble is killing myself day in, day out, all my goddamn life, and for what? So you can sit there with your snide remarks, so your lazy brother up there can fling the keys at me like I’m some piece of dirt, like I’m annoying him, so Benjy here can hide out in the house all day and night turning into a zombie when he’s not with Klubocks’ weird kid, who only comes over here because his mother wants to find out what’s going on in this nuthouse I break my ass trying to make a home out of.”

  Throughout her tirade she had been sliding the rest of the keys back onto the chain, putting on her skirt, tucking in her limp blouse, and now jamming her callused feet into her shoes.

  They hung their heads and said nothing.

  She darted toward the door, then stopped. “I’m sorry,” she whispered without looking back. “Oh God! Oh God, God, God,” she moaned as she opened the door and ran outside.