Songs in Ordinary Time Read online

  All at once sheets of rain draped the windshield. The wipers were useless. The car sluiced through puddles that sprayed the top of the roof. Alice sat forward. “It’s really bad,” she said, looking at him.

  “It’s coming heavier, too,” he called. The torrent of rain beat on the roof. He leaned over the wheel. “I can hardly see. I think there’s a restaurant up there.” He braked and the car shimmied, its wet engine sputtering.

  “No, it’s just an old shack or something,” she called, her face pressed to the side window. “Keep going.”

  “But I can’t see anything. I have to stop here,” he shouted, pulling off the road. A buckled Coca-Cola sign dangled over the door of the boarded-up store. He ran his hands along the wheel. Rain poured down the windshield. “What a waste of time,” he sighed. Hour after hour, the Bishop had said, year after year.

  “I wish I’d never come,” she said, twisting the handle on her purse.

  “So do I,” he said. He thought he heard her gasp, then saw that she was crying. “Oh I didn’t mean that the way it sounded. I didn’t mean you,” he tried to explain. “Come on, don’t cry.” He raised his hand, then dropped it awkwardly on the seat between them. “It was the Bishop. I had a hard time, that’s all. I meant that I shouldn’t have gone up there to see him the way I did. That’s all I meant.”

  “I know what you meant,” she sniffed.

  He looked at her a moment. “Was it your father? It wasn’t a good visit, was it? It was a lousy visit. I’m sorry. Blame me. I shouldn’t have interfered. Alice? Alice, please don’t cry.” He tried to make her laugh. “You can’t do this to me, Miss Fermoyle. I never had this course at the seminary. I was flunking Latin, so they wouldn’t let me take it.” She hunched against the door, trying not to cry. He tapped her arm. “Want to know what the name of the course was? They called it Human Relations II, or What to Do When a Young Lady Cries in the Monsignor’s Car on a Lonely Road in a Downpour in the Middle of Nowhere and You Don’t Know What to Say. Please smile, please? Are you hungry?” he asked, opening the glove compartment. “I just happen to have this emergency doughnut here.” He held it up, slimy and shriveled now that its sugar had melted. “Every good priest carries one.”

  “It looks so disgusting,” she blurted with a teary laugh, then covered her face and began to cry again.

  “Aw, you might as well. Go ahead. Just like the rain, when it’s over, everything’ll look new again,” he said softly, then sat there with his arm over the back of the seat. But the more she cried the more helpless he began to feel. How many times had words failed; and yet it was all he had, words and prayers, his only tools from parish to parish. Words and prayers—when had they ever been enough? Jesus had beckoned the children to his side, then reached out and held them. The Bishop thought he wanted to set the world on fire, when all the time, every waking moment, it was himself that was on fire. His arm slid to her shoulder. “No,” she said, as he pried her fingers from her face, then lifted her wet chin. She would not look at him. He could smell her mouth, her hair, the sweat on her neck.

  “It’s okay. It’s okay,” he whispered, pulling her closer. He was conscious of the shallow flutter of her breathing at his ribs. “There. There now,” he said, touching her wet eyelids, her nose, her cheekbones, her mouth, her soft mouth, her chin, her throat. The rain beat over the car. Careful. He would be so careful. See, she had stopped crying. That’s all it took. He traced circles around her closed eyes, and then he kissed her.

  She sat wedged between the door and the seat, saying nothing, arms at her sides, unresisting. Rigid, he realized with a start. “Alice?”

  Her eyes opened wide with a shock that sickened him.

  “Alice, I’m sorry. I’m sorry. I’m so sorry.” It wasn’t until he moved behind the wheel that she sat up and smoothed her skirt over her knees. “Alice, please look at me.”

  She did and he wished she hadn’t, she looked so cold and angry.

  “I mean it, I’m really sorry.”

  “I thought you’d be,” she said, with a brusqueness that made him feel worse.

  “You mean you saved me from myself, is that it?” he said, with a bitter laugh. She flushed and it was all he could do to keep from touching her soft warm cheek.

  “I didn’t want to embarrass you,” she said stiffly.

  “Embarrassed! I’m not embarrassed, Alice. I’m ashamed. You’re the one that’s been embarrassed. You are, aren’t you?”

  She shook her head yes as she toyed with her purse.

  “Oh my God,” he sighed with a bitter laugh, and her head shot up.

  “I don’t think this is very funny, Father. I don’t know what I’m supposed to say now or what I’m supposed to do.” She looked as if she were about to cry again.

  “I don’t, either.” He hit the wheel and groaned. “God, what a fool I am, what a stupid, stupid fool.”

  “I think it’s letting up a little,” she said, staring at the windshield.

  Her mother followed her into her room and sat on her bed while she dressed for work.

  “How does he look?” her mother asked.

  She turned her back as she stepped out of her dress. “He looks okay.” She threw the damp wrinkled dress onto the bed, annoyed not to have even a few moments of privacy. She felt sweaty and soiled, as if there were handprints all over her body. Father Gannon had barely spoken on the trip back. By the time they got to Atkinson his eyes were heavy and hooded and he was hunched over the wheel, gripping it with both hands, his misery so pervasive that she had gotten out of the car feeling guilty, convinced that by letting the mask slip, by losing control, she had tempted him.

  “Is he better?” her mother asked.

  “I guess so.”

  “You guess so? Well, is he or isn’t he? Was he shaky?”

  “He’s sober,” she answered.

  “Well, what did he say about the money?”

  “Not much,” she said, slipping her uniform pants up under her slip.

  “What do you mean, not much?” Her mother’s mouth was thin and white.

  “He said he had to get out first, that he’d take care of all that when he got out.”

  “Damn it!” Her mother scowled up at her. “And you just let it go at that? Like it didn’t even matter? What the hell’s wrong with you? Where in God’s name do you think that money’s coming from? I ask you!” She pounded her fist into her palm.

  “Don’t blame me! I tried. I went up there with that…that weird priest. I didn’t want to, but I went. And then I had to sit and wait for most of the hour with all these crazy people talking to me. And then when Daddy finally came, all he talked about was lunch and getting Aunt Helen to let him out of there, and he told a few jokes, and then he couldn’t wait to get away from me. Here,” she said, tossing the slip of paper and the box into her mother’s lap. “That’s all I got out of him, and now I’m tired and I’m hungry and I’ve got to get ready for work.”

  Her mother read the saying, then looked down at the wallet he had tooled, the edging he had laced. She closed her eyes. “That bastard. That no-good bastard.”

  Just as the first lights dimmed in the lot, a long, black Oldsmobile pulled into Alice’s station. She was shocked to see Father Gannon, red-eyed, his pale face shadowed with stubble. He asked if they could talk for a few minutes. She explained that she had to help close up now, but he offered to wait and give her a ride home. She told him she already had a ride. What she did not say was that it would be Omar Duvall, because Norm had been grounded and her mother’s car still smelled. Never again would there be a personal word between them.

  “I really have to talk to you,” he said. “I need to explain—” His voice broke off as Mr. Coughlin approached the car.

  “Hey, come on, let’s get a move on here!” Coughlin called with a jerky wave. It was said that by summer’s end Coughlin was always in a state of nervous collapse. “Save the chitchat for later. On your own time,” he bellowed, then raced into his offi
ce. Blue Mooney had just pulled in to pick up Anthology. Arms folded, he leaned against his car talking to Fawnie Anuta, a tiny black-haired girl with feline eyes. She was so obsessed with Mooney that she had taken to pumping Alice for information about herself that she could pass on to him. Looking at Alice, Mooney said something and Fawnie shrugged.

  “I have to go,” Alice said. This was so awkward. The priest kept rubbing some invisible spot on the door leather. She stepped back, and he looked up.

  “I have to straighten this out.”

  “That’s okay,” she said.

  “No, I need to explain it,” he said. “I’m just so worried about the effect this could have.”

  “I’d never say anything. Honestly.” That would be the last thing she’d ever do.

  He closed his eyes and sighed. “I mean the effect on you, Alice. The effect of my poor judgment. Please, give me the opportunity to make this right. I beg you, please.”

  Coughlin opened his door and yelled for her to start cleaning up so everyone wouldn’t be stuck here all night.

  “Father, I have to go. I really do.”

  “Tomorrow, then,” he said.

  Tomorrow was her day off. Sometime next week, then. He’d come by at closing and give her a ride home, he called as she hurried into the kitchen. When he showed up she would say she’d forgotten, that her brother was on his way.

  She was scrubbing trays when Blue Mooney strutted into the kitchen. He wore his uniform pants and a white T-shirt. He grabbed a towel and picked up a wet tray. She worked with her head down, determined to ignore him. She could feel him watching her over the tray he kept drying. He was a pervert like his cousin Anthology and Coughlin, just waiting for the carhops to leave so they could drink and look at their filthy pictures.

  “You’re real quiet tonight. You tired?”

  “Yah.”

  “Long day, huh?”

  “Yah.”

  “You look tired. Hey, I could finish this up so you can leave. I gotta wait, anyway.”

  “No, that’s okay. But thanks.” She held her breath. Would this, the longest, strangest day of her life, ever end?

  “That guy out there, the one that just left, was he bothering you?”

  “No.”

  “You didn’t look too happy,” he said. He rubbed the tray as he followed her between the sink and the dirty stack at the order window. “Something about him—I don’t know. You know how you can tell about a person sometimes? You know what I mean?” he asked, right on her heels as she went back to the sink.

  “Uh-huh,” she said, scrubbing furiously, as if this dull brown plastic required all of her attention.

  “Some people you just get certain feelings about,” he said.

  His toweled hand paused on the tray. He was staring at her. “So what’re you gonna do in October, when this place closes?”

  “I won’t be here then,” she said.

  “Where you gonna be?” He stepped up beside her at the sink.

  “College. I’m going to UVM.” Just saying it was a release.

  “Oh! College. UVM.” In the moment’s quiet she heard him swallow. “Yah, I know where that is. Burlington.”

  Burlington. And that was probably all he knew, she thought, feeling more confident than she had in weeks.

  He took a deep breath. “So when’re you going?”

  “In a month.” She turned on the hot water, grateful for the steam billowing up from the deep gritty sink.

  “A month. Wow. That’s not very long, is it?”

  “I’m just counting the days. I can’t wait!” she said with such forced exuberance that she was ashamed. She felt as if she’d just been bragging.

  “Well, that’s about when I’ll be leaving, too. Probably right about that same time. In a month or so, right around then.” He kept clearing his throat.

  “You’re not looking forward to it, I guess, huh?” she asked, confused by the unhappy eyes over his broad toothy smile.

  “Oh no, I love the Marines. That’s my whole life, the Corps,” he said, his stance oddly rigid, his chin raised, gaze fixed. “There’s nothing else I want to do. Nothing!” He looked down at her. “So I know what you mean about counting the days. Believe me, I know.”

  “Yah, well, won’t be long now,” she said, sighing.

  “Sure won’t,” he agreed, with a hollow laugh.

  She turned the water off and stacked the trays, banging them noisily together, then reached under the sink and dragged out the metal carton of disinfectant bottles. He began to wipe the stainless-steel hood above the grill, reaching high over his head, straining and grunting, while she bent close to the countertop she was scrubbing. It seemed that they were both trying to work their way back from some fragile precipice.

  In winter the restaurant’s knotty-pine walls, red tiled floor, and cavernous stone fireplace provided a cozy spot for skiers, but on this summer night the dining room was almost empty and the dusty hearth reeked of creosote and damp ashes. The Killington View was on the access road up the mountain, so no one from town would see them here. Omar had been hoping that dinner out might placate Bernadette, but at the moment she was threatening to call the police if he didn’t give her back her hundred dollars. She had just found out that her fiancé’s parole hearing would be at the end of the month, and she needed the money for her wedding.

  “I don’t give a shit how many fucking contracts you say I fucking signed.”

  “Shh. I don’t, either, Bernie. I mean if it was just me, I’d rip them up and write it off to unforeseen circumstances.” He stirred his drink. “But it’s not just me. It’s the whole GoldMine Enterprises empire you have contracted with.”

  “No! I keep trying to tell you, nothing counts. Nothing I sign. Nothing I say. Nothing I do.”

  “Come again?” he said, with a long, cool sip that choked him when she answered.

  “I’m underage.”

  “Precisely my point,” he wheezed, his mind racing as he cleared his throat. “You are so young, so inexperienced, so untested. You think it’s all got to happen now. Slow down. Be patient so you can have the kind of life you really want and not the kind of life that’s always being patched up and put back together. You are a top-of-the-line lady, so stop settling for secondhand all the time and second-best. It’s time to show people in this town just how classy you can be!”

  Time, that’s all it took, he tried to explain; time, patience, and the determination to get her business started, and then she’d be able to have a dream wedding. Her eyes glowed brighter than the wagon wheel of amber lights above them.

  He patted his breast pocket. “Sure, I could get you off my back and give this to you right now. But I’m not gonna be the one to dash those dreams. Not when I’m sitting here picturing you in one of them twenty-foot-long satin trains that Merry and Noelle each have ahold of, and this lacey kind of veil floating all around your pretty face,” he said, swirling his hands around his own head as she began to smile. “Can you imagine those two little angels in their own sweet little flower-girl dresses, all poufy with crinolines, and rosebuds in their hair? I can! That’s what I see for you. So don’t you go settling for some mousy little suit and hangdog hat that says I made two mistakes and now I got to pay by slinking into some JP’s ratty front parlor and hide my God-given moment of triumph, to do it in private like it’s some kind of dirty thing. No sir! You be patient and you do it right and you do it big. Proud, like you should! Like you deserve!” he said, stabbing the tabletop so hard his finger would ache all the next day. “All you gotta do is wait a bit,” he pleaded. “Just wait for the soap to come.”

  There was silence in the few moments before they both began to eat again. Well, maybe he was right, she said, chewing and gesturing with her fork as she spoke. She was so sick of being treated like dirt, people thinking they could say anything they wanted to her…. She looked at him, recalling the VD inspector at her door. He tried to explain how it had been a tasteless practical joke played
on him by this horny fellow….

  “Played on you!” she gasped, beginning to choke on the chunk of beef she had been chewing. Her face reddened as she gagged. She squeezed her throat.

  Should’ve ordered rare, he thought, already a leap ahead to the deposition, the testimony. Hadn’t he told her? Hadn’t he said, never order well in a two-bit place like that. Always order down from what you really want in degrees of doneness. Always. But the young never listen, do they?

  “Of course on you, too,” he said, leaning to peer into her stricken eyes. Just a momentary spasm here. That was all, but if something were to happen, if this was her time, then so be it, then the investment was meant to be his, free and clear. He patted her fists, gently harnessing them from banging the table again. “Especially on you, more than anyone, dear, who had to endure the vile and reprehensible questions…. Are you all right?”

  Her lips were blue and her nose leaked. She pulled free and stuck her finger down her throat. She gagged and the gray plug of beef shot onto the table with a disappointing little thud. She held her head, gasping for breath.

  Such a tiny piece, he thought, observing the few diners, who had no inkling what had nearly transpired. Imagine, cut just a wedge thicker and how different the mood would be. “My Lord, my Lord, my Lord,” he sighed as he wet his napkin and patted her sweaty face. “Look at this,” he murmured. “You’re so tense every vein in your temple’s just popping in and out.”

  “I was choking,” she said in a raspy, accusing voice.

  “Well, I thought things were getting a little strange. But you been so damn emotional all night long, I was confused.” He looked at her closely. “You okay?”

  She nodded.

  “You sure? Can you talk?” He took her hand and squinted at the wink of light that was her engagement ring. “I’ve missed you.” There was a stir in his belly.

  “What about that lady, that Mrs. Fermoyle?” she asked, closing her fingers over his.

  “That’s something else. That’s business. But this, this here’s a powerful natural attraction,” he said.