Songs in Ordinary Time Read online

  The truck had pulled out of Klubocks’ driveway and was backing into theirs. Her mother told Norm and Benjy to go out and help unload the soap. At the door Norm paused and seemed to flex his entire body. Omar winked at Alice as he came into the kitchen. He carried three red roses wrapped in tinfoil. “The day has finally come,” he said, holding them out to her mother.

  “How could you do that?” she asked, ignoring the flowers. She couldn’t believe he had sold a franchise to Harvey Klubock after assuring her he wouldn’t. What was he thinking of, two franchisers living side by side selling the exact same products?

  “A franchise?” He seemed bewildered; then his eyes widened. “Oh no. No, no, no. Harvey’s just going to be a kind of warehouseman for me. This way I won’t have to keep running to Connecticut every time a franchiser needs restocking. It’s a favor.”

  She looked out the window. “I don’t want any favors from those Klubocks. I know how that goes.”

  “Actually, it’s not really a favor,” he confided. “I’m paying Harve rent.”

  “Rent! How much?”

  He touched her cheek. “Marie, what do I keep telling you? Some things you just have to leave up to me. Like the Klubocks, for instance.” He looked over at Alice. “There’s a young man out there’s been asking me all about you,” he said, grinning.

  She turned and went upstairs to dress. When she came down her mother was outside with Omar. Alice looked out the window. Mooney worked from the back of the truck, sliding cartons along the ramp he had fashioned from two planks. Norm and Benjy ran back and forth carrying cartons into the garage. Mooney kept glancing at the house. She went to the front door. If she slipped out this way, he might not see her. She shut the door quickly when she saw so many of the neighbors out there. The busy Bartleys, the Branches from across the street, the Wilburs, and Mrs. Rose, the cheeriest woman in the neighborhood, were all standing in front of the house. Nervous little Mrs. Merton was being pulled along by her dachshund straining on its leash toward the Bartleys. Little Bobby Rose was pedaling his tricycle toward the gathering. Trapped, she went to the kitchen window.

  Omar was giving some kind of a speech out there. Mr. Klubock had come to the edge of the driveway. The young couple who always played badminton on their front lawn stood beside him. All were careful to stay on the Klubocks’ side. Up on her back porch Jessie Klubock was wiping a pot lid over and over with a red dish towel. Louis sat a step below her.

  “Right now,” Omar was saying, “I’ll bet you’re all wondering, Did Tide start this way? Did Rinso start this way? Did Cheer and Fab and Ivory Flakes? I know I always wondered. And guess what? The answer is yes. Yes, yes!”

  Her mother’s face was red. Her hands fluttered around her throat. Alice could tell by the way she stared at Omar that she was as proud as she was self-conscious. “All giants have small beginnings, humble commencements,” he continued.

  Mr. Klubock, Mrs. Rose, and the young couple were on the Fermoyles’ side of the driveway now. Bobby Rose came pedaling into the backyard. Louis Klubock bounded across the yards to join him. Together they ran alongside Benjy as he worked.

  “Of course they did!” Omar said with a clap of his hands. “And the product we offer is such as theirs, purity, cleanliness, spotlessness, neat and tidy lives, if you’ll overlook my cheery pun, my fabulous play on word flakes.”

  Everyone chuckled. Ginny and stern Edgar Bartley, who had not spoken to Marie, nor she to them, for three years, were halfway down the driveway now. Mrs. Rose followed with Mrs. Merton. The dachshund kept circling her until the leash had wrapped around her legs. Omar grinned and with his sleeve blotted the sweat trickling into his eyes. He held out a plastic bottle of frothy pink liquid to them on the heel of his hand.

  “Here it is, the magic liquid, the elixir of lustration. It will dry-clean!” His fingers snapped the bottle with each claim. “It will fumigate. It will disinfect. It will sanitize! It will be found in every toilet bowl, every shower stall, every sink and laundry room of America! Because…” He leaned forward and crooned hoarsely, so softly even Marie strained to hear. “Because this is more than just a bottle of soap. This is opportunity and freedom that’s come to Edgewood Street.”

  If she waited much longer she’d be late for work. She opened the front door and hurried down the walk. None of the neighbors saw her because they were all facing Omar. She started down the road.

  “Alice!” Omar called, gesturing as everyone turned.

  She gave a little wave, but he kept calling her name and insisting she come back and speak with this young man. Barechested, Blue Mooney sauntered around from the back of the truck.

  “Alice, come say hello to Mr. Blue Mooney here,” he said as she came back to the head of the driveway. “A fine young man if ever there was one,” he said, thumping Mooney’s back.

  With the notorious name, a hush fell over the neighbors.

  “Hi, Alice.” Mooney smiled. “How’re you doing?”

  Face red, all she could do was nod.

  “Blue was hoping you’d be here,” Omar said.

  “I’m late. I have to go,” she told Omar. She saw Mooney stiffen.

  “Well, then, this just works out so fine,” Omar said as Norm and Benjy emerged from the garage. “Blue’ll give you a ride in his handsome white truck that now stands empty and idle.”

  “Sure!” said Mooney. He grabbed his shirt and ran to open the door for her.

  The neighbors formed a little cluster around Mr. Klubock and Jessie, who had come down from the porch. She knew they were talking about her, trampy little Alice Fermoyle, look what she’d come to, my God, the town hood with a full moon tattooed on his back.

  She tried to tell Omar that she wanted to walk. She needed to walk. She stepped closer to tell her mother she didn’t want to go with him.

  “Go!” Marie ordered through a clenched smile. “Just go now!” Her mother wanted the spectacle to end, wanted the neighbors to leave, wanted Omar to stop passing out bottles of Presto Soap to everyone.

  “Mom!” Norm said, looking at Alice. “I’ll give her a ride!”

  “In what?” she snapped, the smile now trembling. “Go! Just go!”

  As they drove off, Alice stared down at her folded hands. Her feet were close together on the mat. Her hair fell forward onto her face.

  Mooney drove slowly. “That Duvall’s something, huh?”

  “Um.” She nodded. The slower he went, the more nervous she became, and yet the closer she got to the A+X now, the more her heart began to pound. She was short of breath. She felt so lightheaded that she was afraid she might faint. She was drifting and his deep voice was something to focus on.

  “I just met him and you’d think we were best friends or something.” He kept looking over at her. “He knows so much about things. Everything you mention he’s seen it or done it or been there.”

  “He’s an entrepreneur,” she said, swallowing hard.

  “Huh?” said Mooney. “He told me was a salesman.”

  She pretended to look out the side window, but her eyes were closed.

  “You’re awful quiet.” He cleared his throat. “I said, you’re awful quiet.”

  “I’m late.”

  “You still got a few minutes.”

  She turned to see him biting his lip. “No, I don’t. I should be there right now.”

  “Look, I just want to talk, okay?” he said, turning the wheel sharply. He pulled onto a narrow road through a wooded lot off Main Street. He parked, letting the engine idle. “You heard what happened, right? I know you did. You must have. Everyone else did. I got a real raw deal, but you want to know something funny? The whole time I was there it never really got to me, because then I would, I’d get bitter, you know, real piss—real mad. But then this other thing kept happening. All of a sudden I’d be thinking of…of things, nice things. Like seeing you up at work, and talking to you, and the night I walked you home. And that night at the lake. Graduation night.”

 
Her eyes were closed and she covered her mouth to hold all these pieces together, to keep from laughing or crying, or both. The crazy film was playing again. The pieces were falling. Her head was made of wooden blocks that kept falling into her lap. How had she gotten here? How had any of this happened?

  “And then the rest of it didn’t seem so bad.” He sighed. “Alice?” He sighed again, then cleared his throat. “I’m starting to feel like a real jerk here.” He laughed nervously. “Oh boy, this is turning into a real mess, isn’t it?”

  “I have to go to work,” she said.

  “Will you talk to me, Alice?” he begged, almost groaning. “Please, please talk to me. Try. Just give me a chance. Please? You think I’m a loser, but I’m not. You don’t know the first thing about me! Jesus!” He banged the wheel and the thud through the shaft seemed to vibrate in her head. “I don’t get it! I just don’t get it! You not only won’t talk to me, but you don’t even care how it makes me feel. Hey, what have I got, jackass written across my chest or something? You just sit there, you’re like everybody else. You don’t think I’m worth shit. I’m just here, right? This, this creep you don’t even have to look at, much less speak to.”

  “I’m sorry,” she whispered, but there wasn’t a thing she could think of to say. She had too little energy and no desire to help him. He was staring so hard she tried to smile. Suddenly she was laughing. She covered her face to hide it.

  “Hey, no problem!” he said with a bitter laugh. He backed down the road so fast he had to jam on the brakes to turn. “I get the point,” he called as the truck rattled up Main Street. “I’m a whole other species from you—or so you think. But I got news for you, you stuck-up little bitch, I’m just as good as you, and I’m just as smart as you!” He tore into the A+X lot, which was already starting to get busy. He drummed his fingers on the wheel, then looked at her when she didn’t move. “So go ahead. Get the hell outta here! That’s what you want, isn’t it?”

  “I’m…I’m…” she tried to say, but she couldn’t stop making this hideous sound.

  “Get out! Just get out!” he roared.

  A car pulled in and idled behind them. They were blocking the entrance. The car tooted once, then twice. Mooney jerked his arm out the window, gesturing for it to wait.

  “What? You don’t want to get out?” He watched her.

  She wanted to die, that’s what she wanted, to shrivel up and die. She closed her eyes.

  “You want me to pull over?”

  Now the driver behind them leaned on the horn, the close blaring like a drill on a nerve. She opened the door and was climbing down when Coughlin’s office door flew open. Enraged, he tore across the lot, cursing and waving his arms for the truck to move and the car to kill the horn. “I don’t need this!” he yelled. “Move it! Move it! Move it!” Seeing it was Alice, he grabbed her apron from her hand and held it up as if it were evidence of something. “First day back and you’re late!”

  “Shut up, Coughlin!” Mooney called from the loudly idling truck.

  He peered at her. “You think it’s funny? I don’t need this! I’m not putting up with it! You hear me? I’m not putting up with it from you or anyone else.”

  “Don’t be stupid, Coughlin. Leave her alone,” Mooney warned.

  Coughlin pointed up at him. “You! You get the fuck out of here, you hear me!”

  Waitresses paused with their trays to watch. Drivers stared from their cars. The horn had stopped.

  She started to walk away, but he yanked her back and whipped the apron at her. “You’re here! You work!”

  Mooney had jumped out of the truck. “You son of a bitch!” he yelled, grabbing Coughlin and spinning him around. “I said leave her alone!” He shoved Coughlin and the skinny man reeled backward, then tripped and went down on one knee. Whistling and cheering erupted from the cars, and now all the horns were honking. Alice tried to cover her face, but Mooney was hurrying her back to the truck.

  “I’m sorry,” she said as they pulled out of the lot. “I’m so sorry.”

  “You don’t have anything to be sorry for, believe me. Not you, Alice.”

  It was Sunday. In the middle of the table was Marie’s engagement ring. The big day had come and gone, and here she sat, trembling and alone. Because Omar had never paid her loan, she was two months behind and Alice was supposed to start school soon. She didn’t have a car. Both of her children had been fired from their jobs, and she’d just found out that Harvey Klubock was a franchiser. This morning she’d seen three neighbors coming out of Klubocks’ garage with king-size boxes of laundry detergent. Thinking it was her soap those nervy Klubocks were either selling or giving away, she’d called Jessie and demanded to know what the hell was going on. Jessie had been shocked to find out that Marie was also a franchiser. Omar had told them that he was using Marie’s garage for storage space.

  As the back door squealed open, she folded her arms to hide the trembling. Omar came in and sank into the chair across from her. He looked at the ring.

  “Why did you lie to me about the Klubocks’ soap?”

  “I didn’t lie,” he insisted.

  Of course he had; lied all along and right up to the very moment of delivery had lied, and if he would not admit it now, then he must be disturbed. There had to be something terribly wrong with a man who not only lied but had to have known when he told the lie that he would be found out.

  He hung his head and tried to explain that he hadn’t thought of it as lying. He had only wanted to help Harvey Klubock.

  “But by helping him, you hurt me!”

  “But that’s not the way I was looking at it,” he said.

  “Oh really? Well, it seems pretty obvious to me that two people right next door to each other, selling the exact same product, are going to be competing for the same customers! It seems like a pretty basic concept, doesn’t it? Doesn’t it?” she demanded.

  Eyes closed, he nodded.

  He had deliberately misled her, she told him. He had used her, had taken her good faith and trust and made a fool out of her in front of her children. “And that, that is the worst thing you could have done to me!” she cried, hitting the table.

  “You don’t understand,” he whispered.

  But now she finally did. She pushed the ring across the table. He had gotten all the money from her he was ever going to get and now it was over. She didn’t feel sad or even angry, just curiously quiet, still. She would find a way out of this mess even if it meant knocking on every door in town or setting up a roadside stand somewhere. She would get a second job if she had to. Nothing and no one, and certainly no man, would ever again threaten her children’s future.

  He had not meant to deceive her, had not intended it. “But you see,” he tried to go on. “You see…you see…” He buried his face in his hands.

  “If you have any of my money, I want it back,” she said.

  All he had after paying for the truck and the driver was this. He put the bills on the table. She counted twenty-one dollar bills.

  “Thank you,” she said with a bitter laugh. She stood up.

  “Marie!” he cried. “Help me! Please help me!” There were tears running down his cheeks. He had only wanted to help Harvey, he sobbed, and she was right, of course; what he had done made no sense. In fact it was perfectly bizarre. But that was how he always got into trouble, by making promises and telling himself he would deal with it all later, by wanting so badly to please everyone that once again he had ended up ruining his own chance for happiness. It had been the same with his road crew. He had been so good, so generous to them that they ended up wanting all the money and all the inventory for themselves.

  She was shocked at how frail he seemed, and for such a sophisticated man, how perilously innocent. She sat back down and tried to make him see how ruthless people could be. The more they were given the more they wanted.

  “I know that. I know that,” he said. “But knowing and doing have never been the same thing for me. It’
s a curse, a terrible, terrible curse.”

  “You promise too much. You give too much of yourself, Omar.”

  “I know, I know.”

  “Look at you, you’re a wreck. Your clothes are all wrinkled and dirty. You’ve got dark circles under your eyes.”

  “It was that late run to Connecticut. Just like you said, it turned out to be a total waste of time. I don’t know what’s wrong with me. I have all these great ideas, all this energy and ambition, but I never seem to get anywhere.”

  “Because you bite off more than you can chew, Omar.”

  “But why? Why do I do that?” he asked, gripping the table edge.

  “Because you don’t have a family to consider before you make decisions.”

  “You’re right. You are so very right,” he said, and then for a few moments neither one of them spoke. “Don’t send me away, Marie. Please don’t.” He reached for her hand and eased the ring back onto her finger. She would not have to sell soap door-to-door or set up a roadside stand. He would, he told her. He would! He would! He couldn’t bear the thought of being alone, of going on without her. “Marry me tomorrow,” he begged. “Tonight, right now, please.”

  Yes, but they would have to wait. There were the license and the blood test. And though she did not say it, she had to tell Sam.

  For the last two mornings Omar had driven off with his trunk loaded with soap that he was selling door-to-door along every back road he could find. Again tonight, Marie had been amazed to see his empty trunk.

  “They’re selling like hotcakes,” he said, over the armload of Presto laundry powder boxes he was packing into his trunk for tomorrow’s route.

  “Yah, I’ll bet,” Norm said to Benjy in the garage. “He’s probably dumping them someplace.” Norm picked up six of the boxes.

  “Oh no!” Benjy said. “He is! He’s selling them.”