Songs in Ordinary Time Read online

“Remember, now, Norm, you’re going to teach Benjy how to swim,” his mother said.

  “Well, I hope that’s not all he’s gonna teach him,” she said with a wink at Norm and a tweak of Benjy’s nose. “Want Auntie Astrid to come, too?” she asked, and Norm burst out laughing, his face reddening.

  “Go ahead, now.” His mother steered them to the door.

  Astrid ran into the warehouse after them. “Hey, Marie! I just thought. My party tonight! You said you couldn’t come cuz of the kids, but they’re going out, so now you can! I got tons of food and you’d really like the wire plant people. I mean it. They’re all just a heck of a nice bunch. And besides, you’ll really bail me out if you come. Somehow I got more guys than girls coming and Bobby’s just gonna shit—oh, excuse me, boys, your Auntie Astrid slipped. But he’s gonna think I did it on purpose, I know he is. And really, I wasn’t even thinking, you know, boy girl boy girl or anything like that. I just went around inviting people I liked, and I’ll be darned, most of ’em turned out to be guys. So will you come? Please? Please? Pretty please, with sugar on top?” She clasped her hands under her chin, pouting like a child.

  “Astrid, if you don’t mind, I have to tell my sons something,” his mother said with a cold stare.

  “Oh! Oh, yah. Sure,” she said, backing into the office. “I’ll be in here.” She gave a little wave, and Benjy waved back.

  “Why don’t you go to her party, Mom?” Norm asked when the door closed. “Maybe you’ll meet some nice guy. Some nice people,” he quickly added.

  “I have to learn the business tonight,” she said with an odd startled look. “Omar’s going to teach me.”

  “I’d like to know what the hell this is all about,” Norm said as they waited for the light to change. He drummed his fingers on the sideview mirror.

  “I don’t know,” Benjy said with a shrug, trying to seem as peeved as Norm, when actually he couldn’t have been happier. He liked being with his brother. His troubles seemed very distant right now.

  “I’ll tell you what it is,” Norm said. The light turned green and he shifted from park to drive; if they idled too long in gear, the engine would stall. The car lurched forward, and Norm banged the wheel. “She wants you out of the house so she can be alone with that fucking peddler.”

  “To learn the business,” Benjy said, letting his arm trail through the wind.

  “Yah, she’ll learn the business, all right, the slimy no-good bastard. Someday I’m gonna put my fist right down that no-good fucker’s mouth.”

  He could feel Norm’s eyes on him, but he kept staring over the dashboard.

  “I can’t believe this!” Norm said. “I could be at Weeb’s right now. Instead I gotta chauffeur you around.”

  “We can go to Weeb’s. I don’t care,” he said, and Norm groaned.

  “Hey! You used to always get carsick, didn’t you?” Norm asked.

  “No, you did,” he said. “And then when I saw you get sick, I’d get sick.”

  “But that’s it!” Norm cried. “I can drop you off, and you can say you almost threw up, so you have to go lay down.” He grinned. “Yah! What’s she gonna do, make you go sit on the steps all night so she and the fucking peddler can be alone?”

  “No. I don’t want to.”

  “Why?” Norm’s voice cracked.

  “I don’t know. I just don’t.” Actually there were three reasons. He didn’t want to spend the night in bed. He wanted his mother to be alone with Omar. And he wanted to have fun with Norm.

  “You know, Benjy, I think you’re probably the most selfish little asshole I’ve ever known!” Norm’s face curdled with disgust.

  Forget number three, he thought, his head snapping back as Norm hit the gas and they peeled down Main Street.

  At the lake Norm parked in the hotel lot. Leaning against the car, he took off his sneakers and stripped down to his bathing suit, which he had worn all day. Grimy from work, he couldn’t wait to get into the water. As he came down the grassy slope to the beach with Benjy on his heels he was relieved to see that he didn’t know anyone. Most everyone here was older. This was going to be some night. The little creep had deliberately forgotten his bathing suit, and all he kept talking about was food. Norm spread their blanket, then started down toward the water.

  “Can we eat now?” Benjy asked, hurrying after him. “Please, Norm. I’m really hungry!” He kept stepping on blankets and tripping over people.

  “Hey, kid! Jesus Christ! Watch it, will you!” Voices cascaded after them.

  “Shit!” He turned and grabbed Benjy’s arm. “Will you leave me alone?”

  “Can’t we go eat? I’m starved!” Benjy begged so desperately that Norm was ashamed.

  “Soon as I’m done,” he promised, then trotted off down to the pier and dove into the cool water. He swam out to the floating dock, then climbed up and sat on the edge and looked back at the peeling gabled hotel, the bustling beach, and his skinny brother just standing there in pants that were too short, his arms folded, head hunched forward, with the water lapping only inches from his feet. Norm groaned. He still had his sneakers on, the little creep.

  Tonight would have been perfect. Weeb’s parents and his sister, Janice, weren’t going to be home, so they would have been able to drink Mr. Miller’s beer and listen to records in the comfort of Weeb’s bedroom. Instead he had Benjy on his hands and two lousy bucks for food. Benjy waved. He kept waving. Norm refused to wave at him. Finally he slipped into the water and swam back.

  “Wait! Norm! Wait!” Benjy kept yelling as he lurched through the coarse sand to the hotdog stand on the nub of the beach. They stood in line, reading the paper sign that listed the thirty different garnishes. “Here!” Benjy shoved something into his hand.

  “Where’d you get this?” he demanded, peeling apart the sweaty clutch of bills. He grabbed Benjy’s arm. “Steal it?” he hissed through a smile for the benefit of the throngs of people around them.

  “No!”

  His fingers dug into Benjy’s armpit. “From Duvall, right?” he snarled, and Benjy’s blank stare was answer enough. He turned away in disgust. The peddler was trying to buy Benjy off, and the little creep was just stupid enough and weak enough to fall for it. Since his return Duvall had surged in confidence around them, openly, brazenly embracing their mother, bragging about his mysterious connections and the vague distant trips he would take her on soon, soon. “As soon as this latest deal breaks even…soon as I see my way clear…soon as the market straightens itself out…soon as the big call comes…Soon. Even his mother was beginning to sound like him. Everything was “soon,” with her hand on the back of Duvall’s chair, her gaze focused on the top of his head as if she’d discovered some dazzling truth in the oily morass of his hair, her voice unfolding like tremulous arms to his lies. And lies they were, all lies. There was no Roy Gold, no soap coming, and he’d probably fast-talked that shitty Cadillac off some other desperate woman.

  “Two dogs with piccalilli and chili beans and a Coke,” he told the man behind the counter. “What about you?” he asked Benjy.

  “The same!” Benjy’s grin turned his stomach. Didn’t he get it? Didn’t he see how he was being used by Duvall to get to their mother?

  They sat on their blanket in front of a grove of blue-needled trees. Around them on the beach couples moved closer to one another as the red sun sank behind the dark mountains. Lifeguards moved along the beach, calling through their megaphones for everyone to come out of the water. Far across the lake, approaching the opposite shore, a small boat cut its motor and drifted silently in the fan-shaped breach between darkness and the last sliver of daylight. Suddenly the light was gone, leaving only a faint pink glow that silhouetted the black trees on the jagged mountaintop.

  They were going to leave at sunset. Benjy had agreed to go to Weeb’s, but he’d promised to wait in the car. For that favor, Norm said he’d tell their mother that Benjy had done well swimming in the lake.

  They ate with a startling ur
gency. “I was so hungry!” Benjy cried. “Let’s have some more!”

  Norm paused. He was ready to go now, but one more hotdog sounded good. “I’ll get it,” he said. He started to get up, then sank back onto his knees. “How come Duvall gave you that money?”

  “I don’t know. To be nice, I guess.” Benjy shrugged.

  Norm leaned close now. “Why do you think he’s so nice to you? Because he knows Alice and I are on to him, so he’s after you. He needs you on his side. I see him, the way he looks at you. The way he’s always trying to make you laugh or get you to do things with him. Like last night, saying it’s okay to quit swimming lessons. Why do you think he did that? He doesn’t care about you. Benjy, he doesn’t even like you. Can’t you tell? To him, you’re just…just Mom’s, you know, her weak spot. Don’t you get it? Don’t you see how he’s using you to get to her? I mean, tonight, right now, this very moment he’s probably fucking the—”

  “Shut up, Norm! You just shut up!” Benjy cried with a shove that reeled him back on his heels.

  Norm got up and stalked off toward the hotdog stand. It’s a good thing there were so many people around or else he might have beaten the shit out of the goddamn little creep, pushing him like that in front of all these people, the goddamn little bastard, forget the fucking hotdogs, he’d go back and drag him into the woods and beat the fucking living shit out of the goddamn little prick and teach him once and for all what the fuck loyalty was all about, the little—

  “Norman!” came a familiar voice, a sweet, sweet voice. “Norman Fermoyle! Oh am I glad to see you!” Weeb’s sister, Janice Miller, ran toward him with a cigarette in her hand.

  It didn’t matter if Omar liked him or not. The important thing was that Omar loved his mother, Benjy thought as he watched a boy and a girl on the blanket in front of him. The girl had short black hair and a deep tan. She lay on her side, squirming against the boy’s thigh. She drew her fingers down his bony chest and up again to his chin. The boy grabbed her arm then and rolled her onto her back. He lay across her chest and kissed her mouth. Benjy forced his gaze into the hole he had been digging in the sand. For one so much alone, so accustomed to hours without speaking and days untouched, this intimacy so near was alarming. Now the girl gave a little whoop and tried to wrestle free. The boy laughed and pinned her down. Closing his eyes, Benjy tensed, waiting for the moment to turn. The boy would hit her. She would scream. She would cry and then she would not be able to stop crying.

  All at once he remembered being a small boy perched on his father’s shoulders as he ran out of a thicket where dark vines had snagged his hair. A troubled voice had trailed them through the night. “Benjy…Benjy…Where is he taking you?” He remembered the whisk of the trees passing, passing between him and his mother’s voice, until all he could hear was the deep groan in his father’s labored breathing below him as he ran. He didn’t know where they had gone that night or why his father had taken him. He only remembered waking the next morning in a car behind a gray building. There were open garbage barrels and trash-filled cartons piled high against the wall. He remembered being afraid to move or speak under the weight of his father’s stale damp head on his stomach. He remembered his father snoring, and then how suddenly his stubbly face had loomed over him. He remembered his raw puffy eyes streaked with blood and confusion and then the terrible grinding of his teeth as he peered suspiciously at his son, as if Benjy had lured him there. He remembered being slapped hard and not knowing why. He remembered seeing his father weep and knowing then that it was all right, that it wasn’t anything he had done, or that anyone had done, that sometimes it just had to be that way.

  The boy and girl sat up now, facing the beach, with their arms around each other’s waist. It was taking Norm a long time to get hotdogs. It would be even darker than this in the woods, he thought, deep in the woods where Earlie lay. Maybe Klubocks’ dog thought Earlie was alive. Maybe he had ripped Earlie’s shirt and pants in an effort to drag Earlie back to Benjy. He sat up and hugged his legs. Maybe one of these days he’d open the door to find Earlie’s body on the back steps, staring up at him. And what would he do then? What would Omar do?

  “My roommate’s down there.” Janice Miller pointed toward the bathhouse on the far corner of the beach. The woods behind the bathhouse were where everyone went to make out or drink. “She met some guy and she hasn’t been back since,” Janice said, then took a long, deep drag on her cigarette.

  Norm cleared his throat, wishing he could do the same with his brain. Here he sat on the beach finally alone with Weeb’s beautiful sister and there was nothing on this earth he could think of to say to her. Damn it…He smiled, praying it wasn’t the fool’s grin it felt like.

  “So what am I supposed to do all night while she makes out down there? Some friend!” she huffed. “Some beach party!”

  “Where’s the beach party?” he asked, looking over the various couples, some playing catch, some just talking, some huddled nose to nose, their fingers sifting sand.

  “All around you, stupid.” She laughed. “See! That’s Sandy and Fitzie and that’s Billy…Hey, I’m sorry,” she said, realizing that he didn’t know any of them. “They’re all from school. My roommate was supposed to bring a date for me, but her date and mine never showed up, so off she goes with the first thing in…”

  “Your date?” His chest ached. “The guy you’re engaged to? The guy from college?”

  “Lavaliered, we’re lavaliered! No, not him. He’s working. He couldn’t come up all this way just for a night.” She stubbed out her cigarette, screwing it into the sand.

  “Oh!” Norm said, with the faintest hope. She turned over on her stomach, facing him on the blanket. Her white bathing suit glowed in the night. Perspiration glistened between her breasts. She hunched up on her elbows and sighed, looking down at the water. He lifted his head, straining to see more. Nipple, he wanted to see nipple. She flipped over on her side, one arm under her head. He lay on his side now and refocused.

  “Well,” she sighed. “This is a lost cause. If I had a ride, I’d leave now.”

  There, there it was, one fat brown nippled breast slung heavily over the other. Oh God!

  “Are you here alone?” she asked.

  “What’s that?”

  “Are you here alone?”

  “In a way,” he said quickly.

  “Not with my brother, I hope.” She grimaced.

  “No…”

  “With a date?”

  “Not tonight,” he said lamely.

  “Would you mind terribly giving me a ride home, Norman? I have a brutal headache.” She pressed her fingertips against both temples.

  “Sure.” He shrugged, trying to appear calm. What would he do with Benjy? He could leave him here and come back for him later. No, his mother would kill him. Benjy could ride in the back seat and he’d drop him off at home first. No, too obvious. He’d think of something. Janice was kneeling, putting on her white beach jacket. She wrapped her yellow towel around her waist, and when she stood up, one long dark leg showed through the slit.

  “Hey Jan! Jan!” a girl called out. “Where you going?” A stocky girl in a red bathing suit ran up to them, waving her arms. She was out of breath.

  “I have a headache,” Janice said coldly.

  “Hey! Who is this?” the friend drawled, her grin verifying what he caught glimpses of in every mirror or storefront he passed. Tanned and muscular from his long days laboring in the sun, he now had the body of a man.

  “Norman Fermoyle, a friend of—” Janice hesitated, then added, “Mine.”

  The friend giggled and rolled her eyes. “Some headache, Jan. I should be in such pain!” she laughed, gesturing limply toward a skinny boy in plaid shorts who was hurrying toward her. “Jan and Norman, this is Peter Slavin from someplace called Dartmouth. Peter—Janice Miller, my roommate with the terrible headache, and this is Norman, her very obvious symptom. And I’m Kit Neal,” she laughed, eagerly grabbing his hand.
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  “Careful,” he warned. “It might be catching!”

  “You mean contagious,” Janice said through a taut smile.

  “God, I hope so!” Kit howled.

  “Actually I’m the remedy nine out of ten doctors recommend.” He leaned close to Kit with a sly wink. Smooth as smooth could be, this was the big time, and he was on a roll.

  “Oh God!” Janice groaned, slapping his arm.

  “A blatant case of muddled metaphors,” Slavin said, thumping a fresh pack of Marlboros on his fist.

  He glanced at Slavin. Meta-what? Whores? Spores? Well, the girls certainly didn’t look offended, though it seemed they should be. Janice and Kit whispered a moment, then said they were going down to the bathhouse to dress. Kit told Norm to wait and then they could all go into the hotel together. Before he could say anything, Janice grabbed his arm and pressed it against her chest. “Norman doesn’t have his ID,” she said quickly.

  “That’s all right,” Slavin said, lighting his cigarette and Norm’s with an engraved lighter that he stabbed in the air now to punctuate his plan. “He waits out here. We get a pitcher. He comes in, orders ginger ale, chugs it, and voilà! the man’s got himself a glass!”

  Norm hurried back to the car to put on his pants and sneakers and then he ran down to the beach.

  “Where’s my hotdog?” Benjy demanded as Norm snatched his shirt from the blanket.

  “Look, Benjy, just shut up and listen,” he panted. “I gotta do something that’s very important. And you wouldn’t understand, so I’m not going to go into details here.” Damn, he’d misbuttoned the shirt, so he started over. “I won’t be gone that long. I’ll be right back as soon as I figure this out. Don’t talk—just listen. Here, here’s some money. Go get the hotdog. But don’t leave here! Wait for me! You hear me? Just wait!”

  “Where you going?” Benjy tried to grab his arm, but Norm scrambled up the incline.

  “Hotel!” he called back over his shoulder.

  “What for?” Benjy shouted.