Songs in Ordinary Time Page 46

  Benjy kept swallowing and trying hard not to blink. “Look him right in the eye,” his mother had said, “and answer his questions, except if you think he’s just being nosy about my private life or something like that, because, after all, don’t forget, he is Mr. Briscoe’s nephew.” With so many secrets, this was going to be tricky.

  Mr. Tuck was trying to light a pipe. He sucked at the stem, frowning when he couldn’t get it lit. Mrs. Tuck came to the door and glared through the glass. Her daughters were still screaming. Mr. Tuck smiled sheepishly as his wife opened the door. The cat ran inside and jumped into Benjy’s lap.

  “That wasn’t necessary,” Mrs. Tuck hissed.

  “This is a private session, Grace!” he snapped.

  She wiped her hands on her apron. “It’s a fine turn of events, David Tuck, when your own children have to be beaten so that you can help some stranger’s child.” She slammed the door.

  Mr. Tuck’s stomach burned. He hadn’t even begun and it was falling apart. He looked back at the boy stroking the cat. It wasn’t going to be easy. He would have to partition off that door from the rest of the house to keep his family life from interfering with his professional life.

  “Well, Benjamin, where should we begin?” The boy’s stare made him nervous. “At the beginning, I guess. Let’s see, you don’t have any friends, you’re scared of water, and, let me think now, there was something about a dog. Give me a minute now, it’ll come to me.” His laugh was meant to relax the boy, but it came out high and cackly. The frown slipped back over his face. He felt himself blush. “I know! You saw a dog get hit by a car, am I right, Benny?”

  “No sir, I didn’t see the car hit him. I just felt it.”

  “Hm! Now, was this your dog? I think your mother said you and the dog were close.”

  “No, he was the Klubocks’ dog from next door.”

  “I see,” Tuck said, flipping through a notepad for a clean page. Damn, he should have been making notes from the beginning. This would go in the boy’s record, in his file. He would need file cabinets. The girls’ piano would have to be moved into the den. Another battle with Grace. He glanced up, pen poised. “Do you know what today’s date is?”

  “No.”

  “Well, anyway. You were in this car and the driver’s intoxicated.” He looked up from his notes. “Now it’s your father that drinks, right?”

  “Sometimes.”

  “So it’s late at night and you’re in the car and you don’t see the dog, but the car hits the dog. Have we got that right so far?”

  “Well, the car ran over the dog. It didn’t just hit him. You know the wheels, they went over him.”

  “The wheels, they went over him. Okay! Good! Now tell me what happened next.”

  “I don’t remember. I’m not sure.”

  “Hm! You don’t remember. You’re not sure,” he said, pen scratching as he recorded the boy’s every word. “Well, what did you say?”

  “I don’t remember what I said.”

  “You must have said something. Try to remember. Maybe you said, ‘Oh my God’ or ‘Shit.’ I mean under the circumstances that would certainly be acceptable, don’t you think?” He chuckled to loosen the boy up.

  “Yah, I guess so.”

  “So what did you say?” he asked, pen poised.

  “I don’t know. Probably I didn’t say anything. I was pretty upset.”

  “Is that what you do when you’re upset, Benny, you go silent?”

  “Yah.” The boy shrugged. “I guess. Sometimes.”

  “What about your father? What did he say?”

  “He didn’t say anything. He wasn’t there.”

  “You mean, in a manner of speaking, not there?”

  “No, he’s in a hospital.”

  “Oh I didn’t realize he’d been injured. No wonder! Oh my heavens!”

  “No, he’s in a hospital for drinking. He wasn’t in the car that night.” He blinked. “My brother was.”

  “I see,” Tuck said with a skeptical glance. Classic case of denial, he thought. He continued writing: “Benny and brother in car.” He looked up. “Now, your mother says you’re so upset, so haunted by this tragedy that you won’t leave the house, that it’s all you think about.”

  “It’s not all I think about. I try and think of other things.”

  “Are you sublimating your grief, son?” he asked. He’d done some reading in his old textbooks last night.

  “I don’t know what that word means.”

  He tried to light the pipe again. “Of course you don’t.” He coughed. “This is your first encounter with psychiatry, isn’t it?” He waved away the smoke between them.

  “I guess so.” The boy kept looking toward the door.

  Tuck sensed that he was honing in on something here. Better not to seem too eager, though. Take it slow and easy. “What that means, Benny, do you mind if I call you Benny? Benjamin’s such a mouthful.”

  “No sir, I don’t mind, if you want to.”

  “What that word means is that you’re hiding your true feelings, that you are pretending the accident never happened.” He paused. “Is that what you’re doing, Benny?” he asked softly.

  “I know it happened.” The boy shrugged. “I just try and make it seem different.” The cat purred loudly as he stroked it.

  “How do you do that, son?” Maybe the cat would be a good idea after all. An innovative technique to relax his patients. The cat food would definitely be deductible. Grace would have to start saving the grocery slips.

  “I just think about it like it was a program I saw or a movie or something.”

  “That’s sublimation, Benny,” he said, checking his notes. There was still the fear of water to cover. And no friends.

  There was a tap on the door. Tuck looked up to see his daughter crossing her eyes and sticking out her tongue at his patient. He threw open the door. “Don’t you ever do this again!” he said, grabbing her arm and shaking her.

  “Mommy says it’s lunchtime and she’s not gonna wait around all day, so he has to go now, because Mommy said so!” his daughter screamed.

  Tuck released her, and seeing the print of his grip red on her flesh, felt dizzy. He tried to pull her close to soothe her, but she ran off shrieking to her mother.

  He closed the door quickly. He didn’t know what it was lately about his older child. Something about her was driving him to these frenzies. He felt the boy’s eyes on him, and he was ashamed. Last winter she’d spilled milk in his lap. In his anger he’d dislocated her shoulder. They told Dr. Lawson that she’d fallen down the cellar stairs. For months afterward she had had such terrible nightmares that Grace had to sleep with her. It was only two weeks ago that Grace had moved back into their bedroom. Since then she’d let him make love to her once, the whole time hushing him while she listened for her daughter’s cry.

  He bent over the boy, speaking rapidly, to fit it all in before the explosion. “Now, remember, Benny, don’t sublimate. What happened, happened. Talk about it to people.”

  The door opened. Her mouth twisted. “You make me sick, you hypocrite.”

  He hurried toward her with both hands raised in supplication. “Please, Grace, not now. Wait until he leaves. I beg you.”

  “Tell him to get out now!” she demanded, shaking her fist. “I want him out now!”

  Benjy jumped up with the clinging cat’s claws embedded in his chest as he headed for the door. Tuck wavered, glancing between his wife and his patient.

  “Tell your mother that’ll be a dollar, Benny, and I’ll call her to set up the next session,” he called.

  “No,” Mrs. Tuck was hollering. “There’ll be no more of your little sessions, you hypocrite, you monster.”

  The door slammed and the cat leaped onto the porch, and then Benjy heard a sound like a woman crying, as if she was in pain, as if Mr. Tuck had punched her in the mouth or something. He ran down the steps and up the street.

  The little room off the rectory parlor was a
warm gray fizz of television static. Mrs. Arkaday dozed in the green leather chair, her feet on the hassock, arms crossed. Her head bobbed with a drooling smile as she dreamed of Howard waving at her through the glass.

  “This is the end of our evening programming.”

  Her eyes shot open and for a moment she couldn’t stop trembling as she stared at the sputtering test pattern on the screen. She was exhausted after supervising Howard Menka’s window washing all day. Every time she tapped on the glass to point to a spot, he glared at her. One of these days he was going to haul off and hit someone. And what would the Monsignor do then? Whose responsibility would that be? Poor man, he certainly had his hands full, people always pestering him with their problems—now it was his cousins the Hindses and their dying son—when he had so much to run, rectory, church, school, and on top of it now, this strange new priest, prowling up and down the back stairway in his stocking feet all hours of the day and night on his way God knows where. He hadn’t worn his shoes inside since the polish fiasco. There were still streaks in the carpeting, and now every room smelled of his feet. “Father Gannon,” the Monsignor would shout, bearing down on her. “Where’s Father Gannon?” As if she should know, as if she had any say at all about what went on here. Good thing, too, because if she did, the first thing she’d do would be to fire Howard Menka, and then, next, she’d show Father Gannon these two red barrettes snagged with long brown hair that she’d been carrying like red-hot embers in her apron for days since first discovering them in his pants pocket.

  Hearing a sound now, she tiptoed to the door, a little woozy with the turbulence of sweet cologne in the dim hallway. “Father Gannon!” she called as the back door opened.

  He smiled as she hustled into the kitchen. He was freshly shaved, his cheeks high with color. His dark eyes glistened. “Kate, I didn’t want to disturb you, but would you make sure I’m up for the six?”

  “Where are you going?” she snapped. Her chin quivered. In all her years here, not a single priest had ever called her Kathleen or Kathy, much less Kate. “If the Monsignor asks me, I don’t know what to say. Especially at this hour.”

  “Oh, Kate, I’m sorry. That really puts you in the middle, doesn’t it?” He glanced past her to the dark stairs. “I haven’t wanted to say anything. You know how the Monsignor feels about politics. But I really like Jack Kennedy. They meet over in Woodstock—his committee, that is—and there’s not much I can do to help during the day, so at night…”

  “Of course,” she whispered, a finger sealing her lips. Of course, that handsome young Senator and his beautiful Jackie. Waving, she shooed him out the door. He had to say no more. Naturally, an energetic young priest would want to do all he could to help elect the first Catholic President, even if it meant dragging around dog-tired all the next day. She had to admit, it gave her a little thrill, the thought of him defying the Monsignor. Father Gannon was every bit as courageous and rugged as Senator Kennedy himself. She opened the trash basket and tossed in the barrettes. My Lord, all these days of worry, and they probably belonged to some child, and him like a child himself in so many ways. She stood by the window, smiling as she watched him go down the moonlit path. Must’ve broken a few hearts when he got the call. Her own heart stirred. It was a fine and noble life, this selfless giving to God. “Now what the devil’s he doing?” she muttered, startled to see him kneel by Howard’s perennial bed and cut himself a bouquet of Shasta daisies and baby’s breath.

  Mooney finally had a job. He was driving a truck for J. C. Colter and Sons, which was the biggest tire distributor in the state. He was on the road four days out of five, hauling threadbares up to Burlington for retreading. It wasn’t just any zombie steering job, either, since he had to load the truck himself here in town, unload up at the plant, then reload the return shipment of retreads; plus he was responsible for all the paperwork, every invoice and bill of lading, each of which had to be date-stamped and signed at both ends of the run. He carried all the forms in a green plastic folder attached to a clipboard he’d bought himself. Getting into his truck in the morning, he could almost hear the drumroll, the chorused voices heralding another successful mission.

  He smiled a lot more often. The old swagger was back. He wore his soft green collar up, and now, with his hair all grown out, he was cultivating just the slightest swell at the base of his sideburns. He bought himself brand-new hand-tooled cowboy boots and cigarettes by the carton, which he kept locked in his trunk along with every other possession—not that he was afraid Anthology would steal from him, so much as that it continued to make staying with his cousin seem like a temporary arrangement, one that could change at a moment’s notice. “Any calls?” was still his first question through the door. “No calls, no telegrams,” Anthology always answered back. In some illogical way it began to seem that this job was the special assignment, the lie becoming not only a force but a possibility for redemption.

  Colter didn’t pay big money, but he’d assured Blue the job was his as long as he delivered on time and didn’t get in trouble with the law, which included any kind of traffic violation as far as Colter was concerned. Like every other prospective employer, Colter had questioned his brief stay in the Marines, but he was the only one who’d accepted Mooney’s explanation without question. All he asked was to be notified the minute Mooney received his assignment, its covert nature thrilling the old man, a former leatherneck himself.

  “Yes sir!” Mooney had answered, as he did now to all of Colter’s orders, which continued to mitigate Colter’s initial misgivings. It was not kin or rumor that gauged a man’s true worth, but performance, Colter had said, looking him straight in the eye.

  BETTER DEAD THAN RED proclaimed the decal on every truck in Colter’s fleet, and every uniform had an American flag sewn on the sleeve. Mooney was proud of his new uniform, with his name scrolled on the pocket flap in orange thread. BLUE, plain and simple, like the dark-green pants and shirt, securing him in the ranks of like-minded men. Tonight before he picked up Anthology at the A+X he stood his collar straight up, turned his shirt cuffs back just one fold, and set the wave in his hair one more time before going inside.

  He followed Alice from the storeroom into the kitchen. “I saw your school today, your college, that is,” he said.

  “That’s good,” she said, hurrying back into the storeroom for straws. Wisps of hair had slipped from her ponytail and lay on her collar. He blew a quick puff of air, grinning as the little hairs riffled up and down. She glanced back at him.

  “I go right by it,” he said, returning quickly with her to the kitchen. “Hey! Maybe I’ll stop in and see you when you’re going there.”

  Her head shot up, and she opened her mouth, and her cheeks flared red, but she only took a deep breath.

  “If I can, I mean. There’s no telling how busy I’ll be then. And you, too,” he added quickly.

  “Yah, I probably will be.” She sounded relieved. “Especially at first.”

  “Yah, especially then.” A month, he thought. He’d give her a month, then he’d stop by and see her. Maybe take her out in the truck to eat someplace. Someplace nice. By then he’d have plenty of money. He’d buy her a present, maybe a book or a megaphone or whatever it was college girls liked.

  While she finished her chores, he sat on the counter, smoking a cigarette with Coughlin. A few minutes later a car pulled in at the back of the lot and doused its lights. Taking off her apron, Alice ran outside and climbed into the car. Mooney looked down as the car passed under the order window. It was him again, the priest. Alice’s head was lowered to smell the flowers she was holding.

  The priest’s car was in the distance as they pulled out of the lot. “Guess where they’re going!” Anthology called as he strained to see over the dashboard.

  “Jesus, he’s a priest!” Mooney said.

  “Yah? And what’s he picking her up this late for? To pray?”

  Mooney shrugged. “They’re friends. He’s a priest.”

&nbs
p; “Oh they’re friends. But the priest is plugging her, believe me. I can tell.”

  He held his breath. Anthology was baiting him. They’d really been getting on each other’s nerves lately. His cousin liked it better when Mooney was completely dependent on him. “Need butts?” he asked, slowing as they came to the gas station, where Anthology usually got them from the machine.

  “No, let’s follow them. Come on!” Anthology said.

  Saying he needed cigarettes himself, he pulled next to the air pump. But he already had a full deck in his pocket, Anthology protested. “Come on!” he squealed, pointing ahead. “Look! They went through the lights, right past the church.”

  “He’s taking her home,” he said as he got out of the car. “Down to Edgewood Street.”

  “Holy shit!” Anthology hooted out the window. “You even know her street!”

  When he got back in, he closed the door hard, then backed up and shifted forward with a jerk to remind Anthology of his status here. “I get any calls today?” he growled as they peeled down Main Street. If Anthology said one more word about Alice and the priest, he was afraid what he might do to him.