Songs in Ordinary Time Read online

  He would not look at him.

  “What’s wrong?” the priest kept asking as he led him to the side of the rectory and sat him down on the steps. “Tell me what’s wrong. Maybe I can help. At least give me a chance. Tell me what’s wrong. Come on, now!”

  “I’m gonna be alone,” he cried in a high stringy voice. “I’m gonna be all alone.”

  “Maybe you’ll like it,” the priest said after Howard explained Jozia’s plan.

  “No,” he groaned. “I won’t never like it. I won’t!”

  The priest stared down at him. “You probably won’t,” he sighed. “Do you think maybe your sister would take you with her?”

  He shook his head. “She said we gotta have our own life.”

  Father Gannon slapped his knee. “Well, then, you’re just gonna have to make the best of it, Howard. Look on the bright side, now. You’ve got a good job, people who like you. People who…who care about you.”

  He had been shaking his head. His nose was running. Few people had ever heard him speak, but no one had ever seen him cry before. Ashamed as he was, he couldn’t control himself. “But nobody loves me,” he sobbed. “Nobody. Not even Jozia now.”

  “Howard! Howard! People love you. Of course they do!” the priest kept insisting as his fingers dug into his wet shoulders. “I love you! Do you hear me? I love you! Do you understand?” he shouted. “I love you, Howard!”

  “Oh dear,” came a woman’s sigh from behind. The Sodality executive committee had left the rectory and were following Monsignor Burke down the flagstone walk to the driveway.

  Howard hung his head in shame.

  “Monsignor Burke loves you!” the priest cried, pointing. He darted toward the women. “And all these ladies, they love you.” He ran back and gripped Howard’s shoulder again. “We all do, Howard! We all love you!”

  “Father Gannon!” commanded the Monsignor. “Mrs. Arkaday needs you inside.”

  As if a spell had been broken, the young priest blinked, and his hand fell to his side. He started toward the rectory, then looked back at Howard with a trembling smile. “I’ll be right back,” he said.

  “Howard’s going home now,” the Monsignor said. “He’s done for the day. Aren’t you, Howard?”

  That night he threw the leftovers into the garbage. He would cook his own food. The macaroni boiled over and then the cheese slices burned in the fry pan, but he ate it anyway, feeling stronger with every mushy noodle. After that he tried to watch television by himself. But it was a scary murder show, so he turned it off and sat staring at the sweet plaster face looking back at him from the coffee table. Poor Baby Jesus, Jozia had lost interest in them both. That’s when he got the idea of changing the Infant of Prague’s clothes. Maybe if he did, God might start paying a little closer attention to how bad things were going in Howard Menka’s life.

  He looked through all the boxes in Jozia’s closet but he couldn’t decide which outfit to choose, so he worked up all his courage and went downstairs to the Holy Articles Shoppe to ask if there were any special holy days coming up. Miss Brastus, a shy woman with a faint mustache, whispered through the chained door. She and Howard weren’t used to each other. It was Jozia she always dealt with. “It’s ordinary time,” she said, looking down the hallway.

  “I mean now. This month,” he tried to explain, glancing back to see what she was looking at.

  “That’s what this is. The whole summer, it’s ordinary time. There aren’t any special feasts then.”

  “Oh,” he said, and with her closing door, everything felt flat and hopeless again. It was ordinary time, and there was nothing to look forward to and no one to love. There wasn’t even a special outfit for the Infant to wear.

  Howard’s eyes shot open. It was the middle of the night. One by one through the darkness, familiar shapes drifted to the surface, a plaster horse lamp, his Fort Ticonderoga mug, the nude Infant of Prague. Waiting for Jozia, he had fallen asleep in the chair. He felt his way to her room, where the white emptiness of her bed was all he could see.

  He went outside and sat on the narrow porch, which was crowded with Jozia’s summering houseplants. He tried to think of happy times, people and places he liked, but not one good thought came to him. After a few minutes, he got up and walked to the corner, standing close by the streetlamp, looking first one way and then the other for his sister. Slowly he began to walk up the hill. He headed south on Main Street, turning left at the church, past the rectory, past the Fermoyles’. He kept looking back over both shoulders, sometimes stopping and completely turning. Now that he was on Stratton Road he could hear dogs barking. Gravel crunched underfoot and roadside weeds snagged his ankles. The distance between houses increased until he was passing long wooded stretches that hummed with the dark rush of water and the steady beat of crickets, and now, the ghostly hoot of an owl. A branch snapped. His eyes widened and his mouth puckered with the parchedness of dry cotton.

  He began to blink as his brain pinged with hundreds, thousands, millions of random words, thoughts, sounds, flashes of memory distant as stars—images of her hair, thin and grayly dry against her face; of her lost slipper found after its mate had finally been thrown out, and how sad that made them both feel, how frustrated, how stupid; of the quick scared way she’d call out his name through the dark: Howard! Howard!

  He rubbed his nose against this stench that signaled the hot humusy rot of the dump and, a little farther on, the sourness of the pig farm. He passed a high chain-link fence clotted with blown paper, the mounds beyond glinting with sand and glass shards; and now, ahead on the same side of the road, Grondine Carson’s house loomed tall and stark in the bright moonlight. Three trucks were parked in the front yard; the big black garbage truck, a panel truck mounted on cinder blocks, and the green pickup that usually brought Jozia home. Behind the house, two wide barns were linked by a maze of low, slant-roofed sheds and outbuildings, some so dilapidated, their fallen doors lay long composted in the weed-patched earth, and their windows, where there were any, hung by dint of a rusted hinge or stubborn splinter.

  He hurried on, drawn to one lit window at the rear of the house. He ducked under a tree and stared at the long aperture of bright glass that seemed to grow both in size and brilliance until, like a giant blazing star hurtling straight at him, it was all that he could see, indeed was all there was to see. Now, as he crept closer, his eyes glowed with the light that contained Carson with a can of beer in his hand, and, across the table, Jozia, her eyes soft with an expression Howard had seen only in movies. He stood there for a long time, watching sadly as they talked. It seemed such a serious and important conversation that he knew it had nothing to do with him.

  Suddenly a dog barked. Carson cocked his head, listening. Howard ran in a crouch, then flattened himself against a tin-walled shed. A door creaked open. “Better get the hell outta here!” Carson warned. For a moment there was no sound. “Probably them raccoons again,” Jozia said, with such familiarity that a piece of his heart hissed out like a quick weak match.

  When the door creaked to a close, he darted past the first barn. He ran, jumped, hopped, sloshed through muck, stumbled, then with skidding feet reeled headlong through a wooded darkness and down an embankment, and by then he knew he was completely out of control, helpless and unstoppable. He was panting, and sweating, and crying to himself when finally he fell and just lay there on his side, caught by brambles, but grateful that the earth held him and would not give him up.

  At first he thought he was in a cave, but then he saw stars glimmering through the tangled branches overhead. After the few seconds it took for him to adjust to this deeper-bellied night, he continued to peer at the moonlit eyes staring up from the dark clover. And then he knew by its foulness and the slick darkness of its bloated gleam that he had done a terrible thing, that he had come too far to ever find his way back to the way things used to be. And worse, there was no one he could tell.

  Another week had passed, a week of such intense he
at that the tar on busy roads softened to ruts and people stayed in their houses all day, their shades pulled and curtains drawn. Business was slow downtown, but the lakes and the town pool were always crowded, and every night cars waited in line to get into the A+X.

  In the two weeks since Marie had signed the money from her bank loan over to Omar, she had heard from him twice. His most recent call had come last week to tell her he was still in Connecticut in Presto Soap’s training program. They had him out in the field covering small towns in the western part of the state. He had sounded tired and flat.

  “I’m a little too old for all this driving around,” he had sighed into the phone. “Tell you the truth, this is work for a younger man.”

  “Driving?” she’d asked. “Whose car are you using?”

  “Damn! That was supposed to be my big surprise, but I can’t keep anything from you, can I?” He had paused. “Marie, I went and bought a new car!”

  “New?” she had said, almost choking. “How could you afford a new car?”

  “Well, it’s a used car, but new for me. It’s a ’fifty-six Caddy,” he had whispered. “White. Not one bit of rust. I can’t wait for you to see it. I can’t wait for you to be in it—with me.”

  “Omar?” she had interrupted, softly, so the children wouldn’t hear. “When’s the soap coming?”

  “Let’s see.” Papers rustled. “Here we go. From the looks of these back orders, well, a couple weeks, anyway.”

  “A couple weeks! I can’t wait a couple weeks! Omar, the first payment on the loan’s due in two weeks.”

  “And that’s right about when the soap’ll get there, so don’t worry. Relax, Marie. Just—”

  “Omar, I need time to sell the soap to get the money for the loan. I mean I can’t just get the soap…I mean the bank won’t…oh God, Omar, do you see what I’m saying?”

  He had assured her there was nothing to worry about. If worse came to worst, he’d make the first payment himself. Soon she’d have her soap and in no time at all the money would be pouring in. He said he’d be back in Atkinson just as soon as his training ended, but then he’d hung up without telling her when that would be or where he was staying in Connecticut. The next day on her lunch break she had seen a white Cadillac coming along Merchants Row. Certain it was Omar, she had left work early, expecting to find him waiting for her at the house. That had been five days ago.

  She looked up now as Mr. Briscoe rushed through the door with an invoice. He was angry because he had waited all last winter for Kruter skis and now all they had sent him were children’s lengths. A note on the invoice said the adult skis would come later.

  “Call Kruter,” he fumed, flipping through her Rolodex for the number. “Because they’re getting the whole mess back. They must think I’m some kind of fool, some jerk they can keep putting off. Well, I’m not that desperate that I’m taking this crap. No sir. No way. And you can tell them that!” he said, stabbing his finger at the card. “You tell them if they want to do business with Ferdinand T. Briscoe, then they’re going to have to deliver more than promises!” Wiping his brow, he stormed out.

  Promises. The word emptied her with the eviscerating deftness of a gutting blade. She had signed over a thousand-dollar check to a man she had known for only a few weeks. He had her money, and all she had was a promise. I’m a fool, she thought, beginning to whisper, “a pathetic ignorant fool, always thinking I’m so smart, just getting into one mess after another, always thinking I’m so strong, so tough, and then what do I do but fall for the first man who pays me the slightest bit of attention, the slightest shred…Oh God, what am I going to do?”

  The office door burst open and Mr. Briscoe rushed back in from the warehouse, demanding to know what was wrong. What was that moaning? What happened? Who said what? What? What?

  Sobbing into her hands, she couldn’t speak, couldn’t admit that she had risked everything she had ever worked for—her house, Alice’s education, her own reputation. “I’m such a fool,” she wept. “Such a goddamn fool.”

  Mr. Briscoe wanted her to call Norm to drive her home. Alice, then, he said when she shook her head, gasping that Norm was at work himself. No! She wasn’t going home. She couldn’t afford to lose a day’s pay, especially now. Mr. Briscoe assured her it would be a day off with pay, but that was even more painful. No sir. She hadn’t taken charity before and she wasn’t about to start now. She’d stay right here at this desk and do her work, come hell or high water.

  “Marie, you need—” Mr. Briscoe was saying when the telephone rang.

  “Briscoe’s Sporting Goods,” she answered in a ragged voice, before transferring the call to Don in the repair shop.

  Mr. Briscoe backed into the doorway. “Look, Marie…”

  “I’m fine!” she insisted, tears running down her face as she began to type, fingers scurrying over the keys, her hand shooting up to bat back the carriage return with increasing vehemence. “I’m going to be just fine,” she sobbed as the door closed.

  After that, everything she did or said was tinged with a sadness so palpable, it hung from her shoulders like a leaden cloak, causing her to stoop, pitching her forward with her head down, swishing behind her in a chorus of baleful sighs. She had been tricked, betrayed, swindled. Twice when Lester had called for Alice she had almost asked to speak to his father. This was clearly a matter for the police. But she was too ashamed.

  Benjy and Norm were eating supper with their mother’s untouched plate on the table between them. Without a word she had jumped up a few minutes ago and run upstairs to her room. Norm scowled as he cut his chicken, but Benjy could tell he was determined to ignore what was happening.

  Benjy glanced back at the darkening stairs. Every day the sun set a minute sooner. In a few more weeks summer would be over. What if Omar Duvall wasn’t back by then and she was still this sad? What would she do if she found out? Again he tried to push from his thoughts the image of Earlie lying at the edge of the pig farm with the woods beginning to grow over him. The worst of it now was the double-pronged certainty not only of the corpse but of how quickly and completely its connection to Duvall would destroy his mother.

  “You think Omar’s ever coming back?” he asked.

  “Nah,” Norm said, spearing a chicken wing from his mother’s plate. “You kidding? That asshole’s long gone.”

  “How do you know?”

  “I know. Don’t worry.”

  “C’mon, Norm, tell me. How do you know? Did you do something? You did, didn’t you?”

  “Let’s just say I looked into it.”

  “C’mon, Norm! Tell me!”

  “All right, but don’t say anything!” His voice lowered, Norm leaned close. “You know that Bernadette Mansaw, right? Well, Weeb got his father’s work ID and we dressed Tommy up in one of his father’s suits and he went up there to Mansaw’s place and he says he’s a government VD investigator and he’s tracking down Duvall. And she goes nuts. ‘VD!’ she’s screaming and we’re out in the hall listening. ‘VD! Jesus Christ!’ So then she says, ‘That bastard. I gave him a hundred bucks, and then next thing I know, he’s calling me from Connecticut.’ So then Tommy figures, what the hell, while he’s there, you know, he might as well, so he says, ‘Well, there’s something else, ma’am. I have to know the names of all your sex partners in the last five years.’ And she starts telling him. Jesus! Naming guys like Billy Tides and Cleary from the bowling alley. But then he went too far. He looks up and he says, ‘Oh and by the way, were those blow jobs or normal.’ And that’s when she flipped out and told him to go fuck himself.” Norm’s head bobbed over the table as he tried to muffle his laughter.

  “Yah,” Benjy said, “but maybe Omar’s coming back. You don’t know.”

  “C’mon, jerk. Figure it out. He obviously ripped the slut off for a hundred bucks and then took off. And besides, even if he does come back, she’ll probably kill him or something.”

  He didn’t say anything. The house seemed vastly, precar
iously still, as if an exterior wall had just fallen and if anyone dared move or speak, the rest would follow.

  Norm peered at him. “You don’t want him back here, do you, Benj?”

  “No.” He glanced at her plate, her crooked chair wrenched from the table, all the emptiness here. “But Mom does.”

  “You know Mom, she’s all screwed up. She doesn’t know what the hell she wants.”

  “She wants to be happy, that’s all.” His eyes stung, and he could not swallow against the lump in his throat that was studded with lies and denial.

  “Well, have I got news for you! Nothing’s gonna make her happy. You got that? Nothing!”

  He wouldn’t argue, but he knew it wasn’t true. He’d seen how she was with Duvall, the high color of her skin, the light in her eyes, the ease of her laughter. No matter what Duvall was, he was good for his mother, and right now that was more important than anything.

  For the last mile along the winding country road, Roy Gold’s estate was enclosed by a high brick wall that had been painted black. The brick of the huge ivy-covered house, however, had been left in its natural state, as had the moss-chinked veranda that overlooked a large pond flecked with lily pads. In the soft light of sunset the pond glowed a warm shimmering green.

  Omar Duvall turned from the dining-room window and took his place at the table among the twelve executive candidates who had been invited to dinner this last night of training. On the walls above the raised white wainscoting had been painted a vivid fox-hunting scene that wended among delicate trees, past dark ponds and distant misty hills. The red-jacketed hunters hunched over their horses, most in full gallop around the room to a far corner, where a circle of agitated dogs strained toward a small fox. The fox crouched, ready to dart into a crevice beneath a large rock. As Omar’s eyes raced around the mural, he fully expected to see a horse suddenly rear back whinnying as its rider raised a strident bugle to his lips. Howling, the dogs would pounce, and there, there in the snarling, snapping blur of pursuit his breath quickened as he imagined the fox slithering down the hole, bellying through the damp hollow darkness, the safety of the tunnel beyond.