Songs in Ordinary Time Page 54

  “Yah, and how come you didn’t?” Mooney leered at him.

  He drew back his hand. “You’re trash, Mooney,” he said, slapping him again and again. “Just like your brother, nothing but trash.”

  Mooney lunged for him, but Harrison and Needer were on each arm now, pinning him in place. When it was over, Sonny walked back to his cruiser holding his heaving stomach. It was the first time he had ever beaten a man.

  The oldest cells were in the basement under the police station in town hall. Bootsteps scraped along the dark granite passageway. His head ached with the approaching echo. One eye was still swollen, his cheek bruised a reddish purple. He lay curled on the damp cot, pretending to sleep. Needer had been the last one down. It was Sunday, and for two days they’d taken turns at this, but his story hadn’t changed. He’d given his cousin a ride home from work, then had driven back to town, parked his car, and gone for a walk, alone. He wouldn’t involve her. He wouldn’t even think of her while he was here. The cell door creaked open.

  “Wake up!” Stoner ordered with a jab at his back.

  He lowered his feet to the floor, then sat up and pressed his temples.

  “I can’t keep you anymore, Mooney, but just so you’ll know”—Stoner stood so close he had to lean back to see him—“We’re going to be watching you.” Stoner smiled. “And one of these days you’re finally going to get what you’ve been looking for.”

  “You think so?” he said, only now that he was on his feet allowing himself thoughts of her, and these dizzied him more than the pain in his skull.

  Sonny’s eyes moved wearily over him. “You make me sick. You haven’t even asked one time how poor old Joey’s doing.”

  “Oh yah.” He held on to the bars and looked back. “How’s he doing? Better than me, I hope.” He had to take deep breaths to keep from passing out.

  Sonny just shook his head and stalked out into the corridor.

  It was early Sunday morning. The kitchen smelled of bleach as the washing machine gurgled and vibrated from cycle to cycle. The table was covered with red-inked bills and the dreaded budget book, each fold-out pocket labeled mortgage, gas, electricity, food, clothes, entertainment, medical. Every week two dollars went into the electricity slot, ten into food, two into gas, twenty-five into mortgage. Clothes, entertainment, and medical were always empty. Anytime they dared complain about not having something, Marie would unpleat the budget book to show how close to the bone they lived.

  Right now she was looking at Alice’s bankbook. Benjy sat across the table from Alice. They were both in their pajamas. Norm was still in bed. There had been an argument late last night between Marie and Omar. It was the first time Benjy had heard Omar angry at his mother.

  According to her calculations, Alice’s earnings from the A+X, even counting these next few weeks, would pay only part of her first semester’s bill.

  “I told you,” Alice said, her uncombed hair sticking out from her head. She’d gotten in late again last night, long after the argument, long after Norm told Benjy if Omar said one more word to her he was going down there and throw him out. She had gotten home long after Omar slammed the front door and drove off, long after their mother cried herself to sleep. “I could’ve made ten times that much at the lake, but you wouldn’t let me.”

  “Norm!” his mother called again toward the stairs. “Get down here right now.”

  He came into the kitchen, squinting and scratching his chest. She didn’t want any argument, she said, pacing back and forth, but she was going to have to use some of his money for Alice’s first semester bill.

  “That’s okay,” Norm said with a shrug. “Long as I have enough for my car,” he muttered, and Benjy was relieved his mother hadn’t heard. Ever since Weeb’s accident Norm had been very quiet. In these last few days he seemed older, certainly more considerate. Both of Weeb’s legs were in casts. Donna Creller had a mangled foot and a ruptured spleen, and the police had declared war on underage drinking.

  Alice shook her head with a long sigh, which his mother pounced on. What? Didn’t Alice approve? Well, maybe if she hadn’t waited until the last minute she could have gotten a better-paying job in town. The nerve, sitting there sighing and giving one another looks, the three of them. Well, what else could she do? If they knew of a better way, please tell her. Please! Because she was at the end of her rope. This was it, the end of the line. “It only goes just so many ways, and then that’s it!” she cried, grabbing the budget book and with a flick of her wrist snapping it so that like a card trick the manila pockets cascaded open.

  “It’s okay, Mom,” Norm said. “Whatever you have to do is fine. I can probably even get some overtime these next few weeks.”

  She bit her lip and took a sharp breath. She’d done her best, she said, but as always it just wasn’t good enough.

  “Mom, that’s not true,” Alice said. “Besides, we can get a loan. Other people do.”

  “No.” She shook her head and her eyes shimmered with tears.

  “It’s not like you’re asking for charity or anything,” Alice said softly.

  “I can’t. I’ve already got a loan.” She laughed bitterly. “And I can’t even come up with the next payment, so they’re sure as hell not going to give me another one.”

  “A loan for what?” Norm asked, but she didn’t answer. Eyes closed, she kept shaking her head and swallowing hard. “The car?” he asked. “Something in the house? What?” He pointed. “The roof? Mom? What is it?”

  “Was it for Dad, Mom?” Alice asked. She touched her mother’s hand. “It was, wasn’t it?” she said with a rueful sigh. In this painful way they were all still a family. “You tried to help him, and he just messed everything up again, didn’t he?”

  “Oh God, no!” She gasped as if that would have been the ultimate folly. She explained that it had been an investment in Omar’s new business, which she continued to have faith in, but her timing had been all wrong. Instead of being so impulsive she should have recognized Omar’s promise of such a quick return on her money for what it was, his unrestrainable enthusiasm and optimism. She had no doubt that the soap was coming, and she knew she’d be making money as soon as she got out there and started selling such a surefire, wonderful product as Presto Soap was. But in the meantime, there were all these regular bills as well as Alice’s first-semester bill, forget about back-to-school clothes, and now on top of all that, there was the loan. And if she didn’t come up with the money, they could lose the house. No one said anything.

  “What’re we going to do?” Alice said.

  “I don’t know. That’s what I’m trying to figure out.”

  “I could postpone—”

  “No!” she cried, staring Alice down, as if she were just trying to find a way out of going to school. “What I’m going to do is call your father and tell him he has to do something, that we’re desperate.”

  “I’ll say,” Norm said. “That’s pretty desperate, all right.”

  “Oh! And do you have a better idea?”

  Benjy and Alice exchanged looks as once again their mother and brother geared up for battle, each drawing strength from the other’s challenge.

  “Yah I do, as a matter of fact.” His eyes didn’t waver from hers. “Why don’t you get your money back from Duvall?”

  Because, she explained, it had already been invested in her franchise.

  “Yah, and in his Caddy and his mysterious trips and his—” Realizing she was crying, Norm jumped up. “I’ll get your money, Mom. I swear I will!”

  “No!” she said, ordering him back down, but he remained standing. She had faith in Duvall, she said, faith in the company. No, the trouble had been her poor timing.

  Benjy had been folding an envelope smaller and smaller.

  “That’s not the trouble, Mom!” Norm cried, leaning over her. “When are you going to face the facts? When are you going to see what Duvall really is?”

  She didn’t answer, and in the silence Benjy folded the
tiny wad again, now bit the edges to make it hold.

  “I must have known in the back of my mind she’d arranged something,” Sam was saying of his mother as Marie drove. “But if I did, well…I never knew what it was, exactly. And you know the Judge. He wouldn’t give me the time of day without Helen’s permission.” He chuckled, then looked at her with a bitter sigh. “But I swear to you, Marie, I never knew there was a trust. I mean, ten thousand dollars! Don’t you think if I had, I would’ve made sure you and the kids got part of it?”

  No, she thought, he wouldn’t have. If he had known he probably would have drunk himself to death with it. But she didn’t say this; she didn’t dare make him mad. She wanted to appear both firm and sympathetic. He said he’d spent these past two weeks at home getting himself ready. For what? came the old sour voice in her head. He’d spent a lifetime getting ready, getting geared up, trying to get back on track—God, she knew all the lines.

  He had gotten a haircut. His nails were trimmed, his old shoes shined, the cracks in the leather dark with polish. His faded shirt and shiny pants were pressed. The jacket he wore was a loud green-and-yellow plaid, the sleeves too short, the cut too wide. He’d probably taken it from Renie’s closet without even asking. In the old days he wouldn’t have left the house in clothes like that. Now he obviously thought he looked quite natty. He was telling her how he’d made a list of every suitable want ad. She tried not to wince: suitable—she’d heard that before. Eighteen years later and he was still trying to get started. Such a waste. He smelled of Old Spice. His face was fuller, his eyes healthily bright, his grin as quick and boyish as ever. His hair was just turning gray, though not as much as hers, and she was twelve years younger.

  “So how’re the kids?” he finally asked, mouth twitching either with nerves or guilt, probably both, she thought now as she told him. Alice had gotten really friendly with that new young priest, Father Gannon, so in a way she was glad Alice would be leaving for school soon, because sometimes she was afraid Alice might choose the religious life (she’d almost said the easy way out).

  Wouldn’t that be something, Sam said, smiling. Especially under the circumstances. She looked at him. Circumstances. Surely he didn’t mean that the way it sounded. Imagine, he said, their little girl, a nun. No, that would be terrible, she told him. That wasn’t at all the life she wanted for Alice.

  “Don’t you think that’s up to Alice?” he said, and again she bit her tongue: such wisdom from a grown man still bound to his mother. Had it been a life he had chosen? Yes. Yes, she had no doubt of it. Chosen, whether through decision or indecision, but still a choice: to do or to let happen. Just as all these years he’d known there was something his mother had done to take care of him, to protect him as well from the world as from his sister’s whim and anger. But by not asking he had chosen the blameless realm of ignorance in which he could dwell powerless as a child.

  The late-afternoon sun glared on the windshield as she turned onto West Street. When she’d called to say she needed to talk to him, he’d wanted to come to the house, but she never knew when Omar might pop in, and going to Helen’s was out of the question, so she’d suggested they ride around town. She took a left turn at the fruit market, amused to see his foot tense for a brake. He had taught her to drive. There had only been her father’s truck, so Sam used to take her far out into the country in the brand-new Chrysler his mother had bought for him when he and Nora Cushing got engaged. She began by sitting close and steering while he worked the pedals. She glanced over at him now, remembering the good times in those few months between their first meeting and their wedding. No, not their wedding. That would have been Nora Cushing’s event. Hers—theirs—had been a formality, a dour priest and the two witnesses, one a friend of Sam’s, a red-eyed man in a rumpled suit who kept calling her Nora. One drinking buddy doing another a favor, she’d come to realize. Her witness had been her younger cousin, who burst into tears when Sam told her to stop giggling.

  Without planning to come this way, she was driving past Bridget’s three run-down tenements. Built eighty years ago for quarry workers, they were home now to some of the town’s poorest people. Knotted curtains dangled from open unscreened windows. The roof on one of the front porches sagged in the middle. While news of the trust had not seemed to surprise Sam, hearing that his mother had willed his children these hovels gave him obvious pleasure. He leaned forward to peer up at the curled roof shingles. “All these years Helen’s been sucking money out of these dumps and never putting a penny back. And now I know why. God, the thought of it must kill her. No wonder she hates me. Once Mother dies she’s got nothing. Nothing!” He shook his head in bewilderment. “Not even the house!” Chuckling, he rubbed his chin. “Let me see, now. I wonder how much rent I should charge Helen and Renie.”

  Even though she knew he was trying to amuse her, the thought of Renie, Helen, and Sam living together for the rest of their lives was as depressing as it was likely.

  “I’m sure Bridget’s taken care of Helen in ways that don’t need a will. Her bank accounts are probably all in Helen’s name. I’ll bet they’ve been that way for years.” She thought of the bankbook being slipped under her door. Ten thousand dollars her mother-in-law had offered if she’d only take Sam back.

  He was pinching the frayed crease on his knee. He said he hadn’t called the kids yet because this time he wanted things to be different. No false hope. No big burst and then the fizzle. This time he had to start with himself. “I have to do it for me first. Do you know what I mean, pet?”

  Pet. The old ache. No matter how long ago or far away, he was the first and only man she had ever loved until—no, she dared not even think it. Omar was starting to scare her. All his promises and disappearances, and the other night, his cold refusal when she demanded her money back. Was it Sam in another form? Was she one of those women who needed to be hurt in order to feel loved? She pulled up to the curb. She would get this over with.

  “I can’t keep letting them down,” he was saying. “You know, after Alice came to see me in the hospital I was so depressed I couldn’t get out of bed for three days.”

  Her head whipped around. “She said she was in the waiting room most of the time.” How did he do this? How did he always manage to make it their fault?

  He sighed. “You want to know the truth? I almost didn’t go down. I couldn’t face her. I mean, ruining her graduation was bad enough, but here she is a beautiful young woman, and she has to come to a place like that to see her father.” His voice broke. “She looks just like you. You weren’t much older than that when we met.” He put his hand on her shoulder, squeezing until it hurt. They both stared straight ahead. There were no words for that kind of loss, she thought. It never went away. The thing it had been, whatever was left, was as much a presence, as molecular, as organic as the children they had created. Yes, time helped, and yet even a word, a smell, the creak of the darkened bed in the night, could still bring it all back. Time helped in the bearing, the enduring, the hauling of it from crisis to crisis.

  “Jesus!” he said, rubbing his eyes. “I don’t know how you’ve hung in there all this time, pet.”

  “The kids,” she said against the lump in her throat. “They keep me going. They’re good kids. They really are.” She took a deep breath to keep from crying.

  “I’ve certainly screwed things up to a fare-thee-well, haven’t I?” He sighed bitterly. “But I swear, pet, I’m going to make it all up to you and the kids.” He groaned. “All the shit I’ve given you. Oh God, I can’t even think of it. I can’t believe it. I wake up sometimes in the middle of the night, and I lie there with my eyes wide open, thinking, So where’s my life? What’d I do with it? How’d it all get this bad?”

  “Well, that’s a start, isn’t it, Sam?”

  “I don’t know. I don’t know how many more starts I have left in me, to tell the truth. I’m really scraping the bottom of the barrel, pet.”

  “You’re feeling sorry for yourself,
Sam. I’m sorry, but that’s what you’re doing.” She tried to fight this surging anger.

  “No, you’re right. It’s always this way. After all the promises and all the best intentions and fighting it off minute by minute, day after day, the same thing happens. It starts feeling like I’m banging my head against the wall. No matter how hard I try, I just can’t put anything together. I get just so far, and this voice starts in my head. ‘S-O-S. S-O-S. Same old shit. Same old shit.’ It’s this twisted cynicism. Me that can’t believe me. I get up early. I shave and get dressed, and I say, Okay, this is the day. Today you’re going to find a job. You’re going to call your wife and kids. You’re going to get things straight for once. And then the voice starts. ‘Oh yah, yah, yah. Same old shit.’ And that’s about as fucking far as it gets.” He gave a bitter laugh. “Me standing in front of the door, all dressed up and shaved, trying to work up enough courage to turn the knob.” He looked at her. “Just to turn the knob, pet,” he whispered, eyes wide with disbelief. “I can’t even do that!”

  “Yes, you can. Of course you can. Oh Sam, you’re just so used to hiding out you don’t know where to begin. Damn it! Damn it! Sam, sometimes I look at the kids, especially Benjy, and I get so scared. I’m afraid if I let up for even a minute they’ll quit, they’ll give up, they’ll spend the rest of their lives taking the easy way out.”

  “Yah, just like dear old Dad!”

  “That’s not what I meant,” she lied. “I’m talking about pushing yourself. I’m talking about putting your hand on the doorknob and turning it, Sam. What I mean is, I make sure the kids do that. No one ever made you do that, Sam.”