Songs in Ordinary Time Read online

“Jesus, I can’t believe you’re still falling for his crap!” He shoved the boxes into Benjy’s arms.

  “He is, Norm. I saw all the money! He showed Mom!”

  At that, Norm kicked one of the boxes, puncturing it. A stream of white granules gushed onto the floor. Benjy tried to hurry outside, but Norm pulled him back. He brought his face close to his brother’s.

  “Am I the only one? Don’t you see? Can’t you feel it?” he hissed.

  “What?” Benjy whispered.

  “The disaster that’s coming.”

  Benjy swallowed hard. “What do you mean?”

  “Well, for one thing, them getting married,” Norm said, annoyed by the relief on his brother’s face. “Don’t you see? It’s going to be a total disaster!”

  “Oh” was Benjy’s only response.

  They both looked toward the door as Marie called for them to bring more soap out.

  “There’s got to be something she’ll listen to. Everything I say, she’s got an answer for. I mean I could tell her he’s wanted for murder and she’d say, ‘Oh no, you don’t understand. It wasn’t really murder. It was just a little business thing, that’s all!’”

  Marie called in again. “What are you two doing in there, making the soap?” She and Omar laughed.

  “What do you mean, wanted for murder?” Benjy asked.

  He looked toward the driveway. “I mean she’s getting just like him. Twisting the facts to fit the way she wants things to be. That’s how desperate she is, because nothing fits together, nothing’s real.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “I mean him. Duvall, he’s not real!”

  Just then the garage darkened as Duvall stepped into the doorway, blocking the setting sun. “Don’t tell me I’ve stumbled into some kind of brotherly conspiracy here,” he said, laughing, and a chill went through Norm to see the cold fix of Duvall’s eyes on Benjy before he hurried outside. Duvall picked up a carton of soap bottles and started for the door. “Come on, now. Your mother’s waiting.” He grinned, then added, “Son.”

  Norm watched the three of them pushing cartons into Duvall’s trunk. Alice had gone to the lake to spend a few days with her girlfriend Mary Agnes. Without her he had the sensation of being the outsider, a stranger this family had to humor but found threatening. How long had it had been like this, the three of them standing so close, the quick hand on an arm, the wordless amusement of intimates. Seeing them this way through the garage door, framed by hazy shadows and the weathered beams, he felt the same compelling contradiction of tension and distance as if he were watching a movie. Nothing was real, and yet anything could happen, anything, at any moment, and there would be nothing he could do. Let them believe his lies, he thought, picking up the punctured soapbox and hurling it in a spray of white powder across the garage. Let them be destroyed. But not me, he vowed, hurrying outside and realizing as he bore down on them that he enjoyed their fear and apprehension. He had become the spoiler, a force to be reckoned with.

  Later that night, Weeb pulled up outside and honked the horn. It was Weeb’s first night out since he’d had his casts removed. Norm was halfway out the door when Marie insisted he take his brother along. Benjy didn’t want to go, but she was adamant, and he knew by the way she and Omar did not once look at each other, the reason for Benjy’s eviction.

  It was his first night out with Weeb in almost two months. It was a relief being able to burst into hysterical laughter at the sight of Myrna Merganzer in an orange dress arm-in-arm with her boyfriend, Freddie, their beefy hips and thighs grazing with every waddling step.

  “Toodle!” Weeb cried, and Norm collapsed against the dashboard with tears running down his cheeks.

  “What’s toodle mean?” Benjy asked, leaning over the seat.

  “It means…it means…oh shit, you tell him,” Weeb gasped.

  “I can’t. Oh shit, I can’t,” Norm squealed. It was too complicated, too dirty and dumb, so long between them that it had come to mean just about anything.

  A few minutes later, he asked Weeb the question that had been on his mind for days. “Has your sister gone back to college yet?”

  “School,” Weeb corrected him. “You don’t say ‘college.’ That’s taken for granted.”

  “Oh, okay, Weeb.”

  “Well, you don’t want to sound like a jerk, do you?”

  “So did she go?” he asked, rolling his eyes.

  “She’s not going back.”

  “She’s not!” he cried so eagerly that Weeb looked at him. “How come?”

  “Make him sit back,” Weeb said with a glance in the rearview mirror.

  “Benjy, sit back!”

  Benjy sank low in the seat.

  “How come?” he asked again.

  As he spoke in a low voice, Weeb kept looking in the mirror. “She’s gonna have a baby, so she has to get married to her boyfriend from college.”

  School, Norm wanted to say, but didn’t. Janice Miller, whom he had secretly worshiped since first grade, would soon be a bride, a wife, a mother.

  They drove down Merchants Row. The stores were closed. They turned onto Center Street, where a line waited to get into the Paramount theater. Weeb honked the horn and a bunch of girls waved and gestured for them to come join them.

  “Arf, arf,” Weeb barked under his breath and drove on.

  “What’d your mother and father say?”

  “My father didn’t say anything. He just punched out all the windows in the garage. My mother had to take him to the hospital for stitches.”

  He was shocked by Weeb’s offhandedness. Of all the times his father had kicked in doors or been hauled off in a cruiser he had never spoken of it to Weeb. There had always been this fragile duality: the devastating fear that everyone knew and the desperate need to believe that no one did.

  “He hasn’t been to work all week. His hands are all bandaged. He just sits around playing his Glenn Miller records.”

  “That’s weird, huh?”

  “Yah, well, my mother’s afraid he’s having a nervous breakdown. Now he says he’s going to quit his job. He says it was his work, that it was a bad influence, you know, sex and everything.”

  “Can I sit up now?” Benjy called. “I can’t see.”

  “Shut up!” Norm said, waving his arm over the seat. He looked at Weeb. Something had just occurred to him, a nagging pinprick of doubt and fear.

  Pain swelled in his chest as he recalled waking up in Klubocks’ garage with his pants undone.

  “Oh jeez,” Weeb cried as a pickup truck slowed to a stop beside them at the red light. It was Jozia Menka snuggled so close to Grondine Carson that they both fit behind the steering wheel. “Let’s go!” Weeb hollered, turning when the light changed. “It’s egg-run time!”

  They sped up the long dirt road to the untended pig farm, where their only concern would be the barking dogs. But Weeb knew exactly how to do it. He pulled in so close to the chicken coops that they only had to jump from the car to the coop door. Benjy had begged them not to come here, and now he refused to leave the car. He crouched low in the back seat, arms folded, eyes closed, lips moving as if he were praying. Inside the chicken coop it was hot and quiet until Weeb turned on the light, and then all the chickens started squawking. Hundreds of them, Norm thought, coming down the narrow walkway between the nesting birds. Their heads rose and their bright sideways eyes gleamed nervously. The reek of shit and ammonia stung his eyes. An old hand at egg runs, Weeb went straight to the end of the coop, where the egg boxes were stacked on shelves. They took ten boxes each, then ran back to the car, leaving the lights on in the coop and the door open.

  “Hey, you wanna go to the wedding?” Weeb asked as they raced back to town.

  “No!” he said too quickly. “I can’t. I got something else that day.”

  “What do you mean? I didn’t even tell you when it is yet.” Weeb gave him a sour look.

  “When is it?”

  “September the sixteenth,” Weeb
said. “Come on, Norm. I’d do it for you.”

  Norm looked at him. Did he mean Alice? Had he heard about her and the priest? He was getting paranoid. “Janice won’t want me there.”

  “I’ll ask her,” Weeb said, parking on Main Street across from the A+X. They didn’t have long to wait. As soon as Coughlin’s office door opened, they pulled into the lot. The minute he stepped outside, Norm rose up through the open window and pelted him with a flurry of eggs. He sprinted after them with yoke running down his face and chest, but they were already gone, on their way to Jarden Greene’s house, then Kenny Doyle’s, then Coach Graber’s, Donna Creller’s, the Monsignor’s gleaming Oldsmobile. Benjy turned out to have the best in-flight arm. Splat, spat, splat. No questions asked. Back behind the fruit store. Splat, splat, splat, right up at the cardboard taped in Bernadette’s broken window. They drove down to the baseball field and left the car running with the lights on the infield. Weeb stood on the mound, egg cartons at his feet. Norm’s bat was a fence picket. Benjy sat on the hood, laughing and clapping every time Norm hit an egg. The impact sent shells and egg slime flying back at Weeb, but most of the mess covered Norm. It was disgusting, but strangely pleasurable, the sticky goo running down the bat between his fingers, down his wrists. It was dripping from his elbows. From his chin.

  “Miller is on the mound,” Weeb continued, broadcasting every pitch. “He gets the sign, sets, checks the runner, winds, and throws!”

  Norm swung and hit another one. “Jesus, Weeb. You’re gonna be great next year.”

  “You too, Norm. You haven’t missed one yet!”

  “I’ll show that fuckin’ Graber!” He crouched even lower over the plate.

  Weeb fired it in, and he swung and missed. The egg flew into the dirt.

  “Car!” Benjy yelled as headlights turned the corner. They jumped into the car and sped off.

  They drove home, and Benjy went inside. Norm dragged the hose behind the garage. Weeb had gone first, and now it was Norm’s turn. He stood against the back wall of the garage, his arms over his head, while Weeb blasted him with ice-cold water.

  “Okay?” Weeb called, his wet clothes plastered to his body. “I’m freezing.”

  “No,” Norm called softly. “Keep going.”

  “Shit,” Weeb groaned, moving closer.

  The full force of the water pelted his flesh like needles. His eyes smarted.

  “Jesus Christ, Norm, are you through? You gotta be clean now,” Weeb called, his teeth chattering.

  “No.”

  “Are you through?”

  “No!” he gasped, turning his head to answer. Each time the hose moved closer, and now Weeb was only a foot away. Norm was sobbing. Weeb dropped the hose and the water gushed through the tall grass around Norm’s feet.

  “That was weird,” said Weeb, his wet pant legs slapping together as he started back to the car.

  “What do you mean?” Norm said, catching up with him. Now he was shivering.

  “I don’t know.” Weeb shrugged. “It was just weird, that’s all.” He got into the car.

  “What the hell do you mean?” Norm grabbed his arm, afraid Weeb knew he’d been crying.

  “Nothing, Norm.” Weeb looked up at him. “I didn’t mean anything.”

  It was hot and every seat at the eight o’clock Mass was filled. The dazzling stained-glass windows were alive with light and heat. Flames danced under Christ’s thin white feet. The slender Virgin Mary smiled coyly at the muscular Angel Gabriel in his shimmering white gown. The Sacred Heart of Jesus pulsated with ruby blood, and saints trembled.

  Every door in the church had been left open, which only drew in the exhaust of passing automobiles and the racket of barking dogs. The sound of fluttering paper grew as men and women fanned themselves with parish bulletins that were red this week. There was a large oscillating fan on the altar. Every time it turned toward the pulpit, Father Gannon’s lacy surplice billowed and his voice rose, though he was as unaware of the brief respite as he was of the heat and his squirming flock’s discomfort. There was coughing. Throats were cleared. Shoes shuffled and scraped on the dull oak floors. The sermon was now entering its twenty-sixth minute. At the rear of the church, ushers waited with their long-handled baskets poised. They kept looking at each other. If the parking lot wasn’t cleared out by the nine o’clock, there’d be a traffic jam out there, the likes of which they couldn’t imagine.

  Father Gannon could see by the ushers’ grave expressions that he had plumbed some deep well of concern in them. He smiled and held out his arms. There was so much to share with these good people. He was past bitterness, though his heart was sore with loss.

  “No sparrow falls unseen,” he said. “No cry goes unheard. It is when we feel most alone, when we feel most forsaken, that we are surrounded by angels, millions of angels, hordes of angels!”

  Somewhere a baby began to cry. Their faces were a blur beyond the red flutter. He was telling them about the poor children he had tried to help. He told them about the rent strike, the hundreds of donated blankets, and now his voice broke as he shared the memory of the young woman and her dying infant, his tale all the more vivid with the baby’s wails. They stared up at him over the red wings.

  “It does not have to be that way,” he told them. “We can stop that kind of suffering. Poverty is a man-made evil. God did not create some men rich and others poor. God does not allocate riches or misfortune. No, He creates all men equal. It is the choices we make that shape our destiny. This,” he said a bit louder, “this is the key, the crucial element in life. Choice.”

  Hands on the pulpit rim, he drew a deep breath, and from the corner of his eye he was aware of an iridescent vapor shimmering in the sunlight through the open doorway at the side of the church. Howard was hosing down the Monsignor’s egg-spattered car. And what were Howard’s choices? he wondered. Had he been born with the same opportunity as everyone else? No, but God watched over such people. They were part of His greater design. But the injustice of this rose in his chest like sudden bile.

  In the front row a woman coughed softly into the palm of her hand, and the sound seemed an explosion in the hush. Sweat rose on Father Gannon’s back. He was stuck. There was no accounting for Howard. Because of him, nothing worked. Nothing was right or equitable. There had been Radlette. He tried now to explain the story of the sickly child and what it had meant, not so much for Radlette finally to have a warm jacket that was his own, brand new and not secondhand, but for him, a young curate, to have received so much by giving so little. He looked up. The two were connected, Radlette and Howard, but he could not find the key.

  “You see,” he tried to explain, sensing by the uneasy stir that he was losing them, not just their attention, but their faith. “There is giving of a higher order that the giving of things can only prepare us for. It is in the giving of one’s self that we come closest to divine nature, to God’s love.”

  Yes, this was the key element, for without love what were any of them? What was he? But still there was the problem of Howard, who had to be more than a testing ground for their values.

  He began to tell them about love, all the kinds of love, and reasons for love, and how when he had nothing to give, he had given himself. And he would do it again and again, and in this giving he was sinless. This was the choice, he explained, truly the only one of importance, the choice to love or not to love. How simple. How pure.

  “And so it comes in the end to that.” He shaded his eyes and peered into the recesses of the church. The doorways were filling with people, so many latecomers just arriving. She would not be among them. She was afraid. She had not been ready to make the choice.

  “Come in! Come join us!” he cried with an exultant wave. “Don’t be shy. Let’s make room for one another here. Push in closer to one another,” he exhorted those seated as the new arrivals started hesitantly down the aisles. His altar boys whispered a moment; then one, Harry, a tall boy, burst out laughing and could not stop. Father
Gannon winked and the boy covered his face with his hands. The sound of idling engines surrounded the church like buzzing around a hive. Patrick Muley, the head usher, made his way down the packed center aisle.

  Watching him approach, Father Gannon waited with outstretched arms. He was sure it was about the problem of Howard.

  “Excuse me, Father, but it’s time for the nine o’clock. That’s what all the people are here for.”

  Father Gannon pushed back his sleeve, but he must have forgotten to put on his watch this morning. He had stayed up late talking to the visiting priest sent from Boston to counsel him. All the counseling had consisted of was Father Norton’s trying to convince him he should return to the hospital for a few weeks of treatment. After that he never did get to sleep, and now he realized he had not even bathed or shaved. He rubbed his whiskery chin, relieved that no one had noticed.

  “Well, then, we’ll just have to start over,” he said, and a loud groan filled the church. “Come on, now, let’s be good sports,” he urged, tugging at his collar. Just then the visiting priest came out from behind the altar, accompanied by two new altar boys. The Monsignor was entering through the side door, where in the background Howard stood by the gleaming car, his hands on his hips, watching. Patrick Muley whispered in the Monsignor’s ear.

  “Come down now,” the Monsignor said, his voice soft.

  “But I haven’t finished,” he replied.

  “Father Norton will take care of it,” the Monsignor assured him, and the visiting priest nodded gravely.

  A woman in a pink dress dabbed her wet eyes with a tissue. A few people looked down at their folded hands, but most stared at the disheveled priest in the pulpit, running his hand through his unruly black hair as his breathing tore through the loudspeakers in staticky gasps.

  “Well,” he said with a little laugh. “I seem to have run over my time, as they say. I’m sorry. I’m very sorry,” he muttered, as both the Monsignor and the visiting priest raised their hands to guide him down the carpeted steps.

  It was noon when Sam woke up. He smiled to see his paycheck on the nightstand. He sat on the edge of the bed and charted another day in his notebook.