Songs in Ordinary Time Read online

  “It shouldn’t, not if you like him. I guess your mother’s entitled to a little companionship, right? She must get awfully lonely sometimes.”

  She kept her eyes straight ahead. The sun had broken through, miraging the asphalt with puddles of light.

  At Applegate, Alice flipped through a magazine as she waited for her father in the solarium. It was twelve-thirty, and Father Gannon would be back at one. She was feeling more and more uneasy.

  Why hadn’t her father come down by now? What had he been doing for the last half hour? The head nurse said he was in his room. He had been called. He knew she was down here. She squirmed in her seat and put down the magazine. The nurse smiled quizzically from her glass cubicle. With her eyes on Alice, she pushed one of the buttons on her console and spoke into the microphone. She held up a finger, nodding to indicate that he would be right down.

  The French doors from the stone patio were opened by a haggard woman in a violet robe. She leaned against the doorframe and removed her velvet slippers, then folded them carefully into her pocket before stepping inside. Her toenails were painted red. She patted her long gray hair and stole a look at the nurse, who hadn’t yet seen her.

  “Is it lunch now?” the woman asked, sitting in the chair next to her.

  “I don’t know,” Alice said, picking up the magazine again and pretending to read.

  The woman rocked silently. She curled her painted toes into the light carpet, then rubbed them together. “The president sends me this polish,” the woman whispered, exposing teeth as gray as her hair.

  “Really?” Alice locked her gaze on the elevator door.

  “I saw him at a party once. He made the orchestra play, ‘Ain’t She Sweet.’”

  “Oh!”

  “I was seven then. I used to hide in his garden when we went to visit, and nobody could find me.” She giggled into her hand. “It was a magic garden, and these little tiny men used to take my clothes off. They ever do that to you?” The woman cocked her head.

  “No.” She cleared her throat. A bell rang. A man was laughing in another room. Someone began to play “Chopsticks” on a tinny piano.

  An attendant passed through the solarium and into the next room, where the piano was playing. The woman’s shoulders hunched in gleeful anticipation. “It’s Marlin,” she whispered. Her eyes narrowed as the attendant led a blond man in a red-plaid shirt into the room. The attendant told Marlin to sit and wait for the lunch bell with the others. He meant her, Alice realized; she was one of “the others.”

  “What’s for lunch today?” the woman called as the attendant went down the hall.

  “Finnan haddie in cream sauce,” he answered without looking back.

  The woman clapped her hands and stamped her feet. “I love finnan haddie in cream sauce,” she squealed.

  “I hate finnan haddie in cream sauce,” Marlin snapped in a reedy voice.

  “Who asked you?” the woman spat. “You never like anything nice, anyway.” She leaned close to Alice. “Want to know something Marlin really likes?”

  “I don’t like you, dirty old fart!” Marlin turned huffily away.

  “Marlin likes little boys,” she whispered in a girlish taunting voice. “Marlin likes little boys. Marlin likes little boys. And that’s why Marlin’s hee-yer!”

  Marlin rolled his eyes and shrugged. “What’s your name?” he asked, peering at Alice. “My name is Dr. Leonard,” he said when she told him hers.

  “He’s lying to you,” the woman said.

  Marlin laughed politely. “Actually my name is Leonard Doctor.”

  “Liar!” the woman said. “His name is Marlin Ray and he’s been here almost as long as I have.”

  Marlin rolled his eyes and sighed. “Are you a Democrat or a Republican?” he asked, as if these were questions on a practiced list, just formalities. It was vital they be asked, though the answers seemed of little consequence or interest to him. He waited, blinking when she hesitated.

  “Democrat, I guess,” Alice said. “I’m not sure. I’ve never—”

  “Where do you live?”

  “What do you care?” the woman hissed at him. “Don’t tell him!” she warned Alice.

  “Where do you live?” he repeated, pursing his lips impatiently.

  “In Vermont.” She turned the pages, frowning, as if she were looking for something.

  The elevator door whirred open. Her father came toward her, carrying a small flat box. He wore a gray suit she had never seen before, the jacket too wide on his thin frame, the pants short and boxy. His red tie was bright and shiny. His slicked-back hair was still wet. He squinted in the solarium’s brightness. He bent to kiss the top of her head, and she could almost taste his cologne. “Welcome to my nuthouse,” he said. “I see you’ve already met Marlin and Miss Getchell. “They’re both longtime members of the staff here,” he said, winking. Miss Getchell sat rigidly in her chair, head cocked, trying to hear their conversation.

  He grinned as he handed Alice the box. “You don’t have to open it now. Just a little something I made in crafts.” He had her get up and sit in the corner, away from the two patients. “I do leatherwork. I signed up for it because I’ve gotten so good.” He laughed nervously. “You know, after being up at Waterbury so many times.” He laughed again. “After I get my master’s in leatherwork, I’ve been accepted in their doctoral program here in beading.” He paused, and she knew he could see how close to tears she was.

  He sighed. “Pet, I’m sorry you had to wait so long. I was trying to get a tie off somebody, you know, one that’d go with the suit. Like it? A guy up on three choked to death last week, and one of the orderlies is a buddy of mine, so…”

  “Is that what you’ve been doing all this time, Daddy? Trying to find a tie?” She felt numb.

  “I wanted to look nice for you. Better than the last time you saw me, anyway.” He hung his head. “I’m sorry about graduation night, pet. I can’t get that out of my head.” When he looked up his eyes were raw. “What can I say? How the heck can I make something like that up to you?” He squeezed her hand. “Forgive your old man? Huh? Because I am going to make it up to you, I promise. As soon as I get my walking papers outta here I’m getting a job and then I’m moving out of Helen’s, believe it or not. Don’t laugh. It’s true. I’m coming off the bench and into the ball game! You should see my room. I’ve got all these lists of everything I have to do, all the people I have to make things up to. And top of the list, babe, is you. I mean that.” He grinned. “I’m going to get a good job. Of course the work might not be quite as skilled as my last job, when I was a diamond cutter.” He looked at her expectantly.

  “When was that?” She couldn’t believe he would spend the few minutes that were left telling old jokes.

  “The summer I cut the grass at the ball field? Remember? I was a diamond cutter?”

  She nodded and forced a smile. He seemed relieved.

  “I gotta tell you this funny story. You’re going to like this one. There were these two old guys and—”

  “Daddy,” she interrupted, “Mom wants me to remind you that I’m starting college pretty soon, and it’s going to cost an awful lot, and I really need your help.”

  “I know, pet, but don’t you see? First I’ve got to get out of here. I’ve got to get this job thing lined up. I’ve got to find a place to live. I’ve got all these things to do, and here I sit.” He held up his hands in disgust. “Day after day doing nothing.”

  “Mom says there’s a trust, that there’s money Nana put aside.”

  “I know. She’s got this idea in her head. All of a sudden she thinks there’s all this money. So you’ve got to tell her, pet, tell her if there is any money it couldn’t be much. Just about every penny’s gone into Nana’s care.”

  “Yes, but she said—”

  “What about you, now, Alice?” he asked, in the stern fatherly tone she’d seldom ever heard. “Are you working as hard as you can and saving your money? You know, when you
get to be a certain age you really can’t keep coming to your parents all the time for help. Look,” he said, pulling a slip of paper from his pocket. “Here, read this.”

  I will be a man among men; and no longer a dreamer among shadows. Henceforth be mine a life of action and reality! I will work in my own sphere, nor wish it other than it is. This alone is health and happiness.

  —Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

  “That’s nice.” She handed it back, feeling empty and dazed.

  “Would you like a copy? Wait, I’ll get some paper and a pen, and I’ll do it right now.” Before she could say anything he was at the nurse’s booth tapping on the glass. He sat back down, and while he copied the saying onto the Applegate Hospital memo sheet, she tried again to explain how badly she needed money for school.

  “Here,” he interrupted, giving her the copy. “Whenever you’re feeling a little shaky, just read this. It helps,” he said, squeezing her arm, his voice trembling as if he’d just passed on the solution to all her problems. “It really does.”

  A tall woman in Indian moccasins slipped past the nurse’s station. She stood in the hallway, sniffing at the closed door. “That’s the one who keeps imaginary cats in her room,” her father whispered; his pleasure in telling the story to her now, here, in such detail was more devastating, more painful than if he’d been roaring drunk. Every day, he said, the woman pestered the orderlies to bring her cat food for her cats. Finally, after enough refusals, she figured out a way to convince them she wasn’t hallucinating. She would urinate on the floor and blame it on the cats when the orderlies came in to clean it up. They ignored her. So then she began to defecate on the floor and blame that on the cats. The orderlies cleaned it up, and still they ignored her. So then one day in the garden she caught three mice and killed them. She put the dead mice in her room and told the orderlies that her cats had caught them. The orderlies decided to teach her a lesson. They left the dead mice in the room. When they went in the next morning, the mice were gone. “‘What happened to the three mice?’ they asked her. ‘The cats ate them,’ she said. ‘I told you they were hungry!’”

  Her father chuckled and shook his head. “Can you believe it? She ate the mice! So now they’ve got a whole new problem on their hands. It’s the darnedest thing, but they say she’s quite a mouser.” He laughed, looking anxiously for her to join in. She tried to smile. He sighed, with an uneasy glance at the people lining up behind the woman in Indian moccasins. The lunch bell rang, and as the doors opened into the dining room, the line surged forward. Miss Getchell put on her slippers and hurried into the dining room.

  “All they think about around here is food,” he said as the faint odor of smoked fish drifted in from the hallway. He kept glancing toward the dining room. All the way up here she’d told herself to expect nothing, that it was a just a visit, something she had to do, when in truth she had expected something: that he had finally seen the light, that for her, because of her love and devotion, because she had written, because she had cared enough to come, he would repent and see that this one constant child, this chaste forgiver of his lies, this thirsty tongue lapping at his spilled and reckless love, could save him. But he didn’t care. He wanted her to go. He wanted to be released. He wanted her to leave.

  “I’d better get in there. If I miss lunch,” he said, squeezing her hand for emphasis, “then I won’t be able to eat again until dinner.”

  She laughed; she couldn’t help it. “That’s all right.” She got up. Her legs felt shaky.

  He fidgeted with his tie. “You could wait. What if you wait here while I eat? I didn’t realize you’d be here at lunchtime, and now it’s too late to get a guest pass. Can you wait?”

  “No, the priest is coming.”

  He couldn’t hide his relief. “Here, don’t forget this,” he said, handing her the box as he walked her to the door. Marlin watched from his chair.

  “When you get back, pet, go see Aunt Helen. She has to get me out of here. My thirty days are already up and I’m still here. This isn’t the same as the state hospital. The only way I can leave here is if she tells them to let me out. Will you do that for me, pet?”

  Nodding, she tried to smile.

  “Will you?” her father pressed. She had to help him, he insisted. Of all the people he had written to, not one had lifted a finger to help him. She was his only hope.

  “But what’ll I tell Mom about the money for school?” she asked, the ravenous claws opening slowly, slowly in her chest. His only hope, this dutiful child. What would he promise? What would he give in return?

  “Don’t you understand? That’s why I have to get out.” He gripped her shoulders. “What can I do in here? I can’t start putting my life together until I’m out. Will you help me? Will you go see your aunt Helen?”

  Just then the intercom sputtered on, consuming her father’s pleas in the staticky announcement of the afternoon’s croquet tournament. You help me, screamed a voice in her head. I’m the child! I’m the child! Me!

  “She had no right to send me here,” he continued when the intercom clicked off. “But don’t tell her I said that. No sense in aggravating her any more than she is.” His fingers dug into her bones. “What is it? Why are you crying?” He was astonished.

  “I don’t know. I’m just tired, I guess.” She turned her head, wiped her eyes. “I get home from work so late, and then this morning there was all this commotion. Norm got in trouble, and that dog Benjy likes is dead, and Mom was all upset, and the priest came and…and Omar Duvall was there.” She looked at him. “He’s always there!”

  “Shh,” he said, pressing his stained finger to her lips. She could smell the tobacco. He had even smoked a cigarette, probably two or three or four, while she had been waiting for him. “Look, you go see Aunt Helen. That’s the first thing that has to be done.” He glanced back. People were already leaving the dining room. He kissed her forehead. “I’ve got to run, pet, and grab whatever’s left. You write now,” he called, waving as he edged into the dining room. “Write and tell me what Aunt Helen says!”

  She turned with a gasp at the light tapping on her shoulder. “Excuse me,” Marlin said, batting short gray eyelashes. “Where in Vermont do you live?”

  Father Gannon found Alice walking down the road to the main gate. It had just begun to sprinkle. When he apologized for being late, she said she had left early. They rode silently in the car’s heat. Even with the window down, the air barely stirred. He drove deliberately, studiously, leaning forward, turning, squinting to appraise every sign and intersection as if the success of their journey hinged on each passing landmark. He smoked with the same intensity, taking such long, deep drags that the cigarette was burning his lips. He asked about her visit. It was all right, she answered in a flat voice. Just all right? She was tired, she said, turning her head to the side window.

  His sweaty hands grew slick on the wheel. Squirming, he sniffed, wondering with alarm if she could smell his body secreting the fluids he’d never been able to mask with scent or cleanse away. Twice daily he showered. He used the best deodorants and most expensive colognes.

  The Bishop had opened the windows before sitting down at his desk. “It’s not for you to decide,” the Bishop had said, fanning himself with Father Gannon’s request for transfer. “You write in here of needs, spiritual needs, moral needs. You go on and on and on, citing example after example. What makes you so certain these same needs don’t exist in Atkinson as well?”

  “They don’t. It’s not the same,” was all he could answer.

  “What’s not the same?” The Bishop had sighed with a frown that wrinkled his deep tan. He was a handsome man, dazzling eyes, silver hair, square-jawed. Before becoming a priest he had been an actor. Some people said he still was. “Everywhere sin is the same, and greed is the same, and poverty and despair and death. These are the same. Only the places, young man, are different and the faces—no, not even the faces.” The Bishop leaned over the inlaid desktop. “After
you’ve been a priest for as many years as I have, you will notice that the faces begin to be the same ones hour after hour, year after year. And this will wear you down some days to the bone, to the very marrow of your being. But on other days you will understand that everywhere, for everyone, life is sorrowful. You must minister to all these needs in all these places.” He sat back, smiling patiently, basking in his own eloquence as he stroked his cheek with his ringed hand. “Your ministry, Father Gannon, is wherever you are assigned. Accept that reality now while you’re still young and pliable. Be patient!”

  “But don’t you see, your Excellency, it’s because I’m young that I know I can help more where I was than at Saint Mary’s. In New York there were people who had to come to me at the rectory for milk for their children, for their babies. Some of them had no decent shoes, no blankets….”

  “Blankets!” the Bishop cried, throwing up his elegant hands. “Blankets! It’s blankets that I hear all the time about you, Father Gannon. Blankets and little boys’ jackets! Will you forget all that and just get yourself back on track? Please, please, please!” Clasping his hands to his dimpled chin, he whispered, “And now I am tired of this whole sophomoric discussion. You will remain in your present assignment until the Provincial sees fit to transfer you.”

  “But you don’t understand,” he said, and at that, the Bishop stood up, his face curdling with annoyance. “A bit of advice, Father Gannon,” he said sharply. “You have already strained my desire to be understanding. And now the Monsignor tells me you strain his daily. The Monsignor is a very valuable man to me. And I won’t have him upset just because you don’t think you can set the world on fire in Atkinson, Vermont. To be priestly, Father, is first to learn obedience. And, I might remind you, humility!”

  The Bishop stalked out, his cassock swishing through the closing door.

  Humility. If he was nothing else, he was at least humble—the proof: this very trip, this sullen schoolgirl, too immersed in her adolescent gloom to even speak to him, much less show any gratitude.