Songs in Ordinary Time

by Mary McGarry Morris

  They drove with all the windows open to flush out the smell of beer. Weeb told his father they were going back to Norm’s house and try to cram one more history chapter in before tomorrow’s final.

  “Good luck, men,” Mr. Miller said, giving them the thumbs-up sign as he got out of the car. With his long, straight stride up the moonlit path to his front door, he looked like the officer he’d been in the war. Weeb said his father had a scar from his groin to his neck that was purple and lumpy and throbbed in cold weather. Norm had told Weeb that his father had been wounded in the war too, but then when Weeb didn’t ask him about it, he felt like an asshole for lying.

  As soon as Mr. Miller was in the house, they burst out laughing and turned on the radio as loud as it would go. Fats Domino was singing “Blueberry Hill,” and with Weeb rapping his sticks all over the inside of the car and Mullins singing, they headed back toward West Street along the route Norm said Bernadette Mansaw would be taking.

  “What’d she say?” Mullins asked.

  “It’s not what she said,” Norm said, his heart a strange pinching beat in his chest. “It’s what she wants.” He scanned the sidewalks ahead.

  “What’s she want?” Weeb asked, his voice pitching recklessly high the way it did whenever girls or sex was the subject.

  “Me,” Norm laughed. “She fucking wants me!”

  “She’s fucking married!” Mullins gasped.

  “She’s not fucking married,” Weeb said.

  “Well, she’s got two fucking kids,” Mullins said.

  “So?” Norm laughed.

  “And her boyfriend’s a fucking convict. He’s in fucking jail!” Mullins said. “And his fucking brother’s Blue fucking Mooney!”

  “Holy shit, that’s right,” Weeb said, turning down the radio. “Norm, I don’t want to—”

  “There she is!” Norm yelled. “There she fucking is!”

  Ahead, teetering along the dark sidewalk on stiletto heels, her beehive hair swaying, her small round hips churning, her arms hugging two grocery bags, was Bernadette Mansaw, seventeen-year-old legend.

  “Slow down…slow down!” Norm cried with a jab in Weeb’s ribs that made him yelp. “Want a ride?” he called out the window.

  “Oh shit, do I ever! Am I happy to see you!” Bernadette groaned.

  Norm made a squealing noise, and in the back seat, Tommy Mullins giggled as Bernadette climbed eagerly into the front between Norm and Weeb. She smelled of leather and shoe polish. Norm put his arm over the back of the seat, his fist nudging Weeb, who stared over the wheel, his mouth fixed in a foolish smile as they cruised along.

  Bernadette lived across from the post office, above a fruit and vegetable store. To get to her apartment she had to go down the alley and then climb an exterior flight of wooden stairs.

  “I can get ’em…I got ’em,” she said, backing out of the car with her groceries.

  “No sir,” Norm insisted. “Those’re too heavy. You’ll hurt yourself.”

  “You might get a hernia,” Weeb called out the window. “Let Norm carry them.”

  “Yah,” Mullins chimed in. “Old Norm’ll be glad to.”

  Her apartment was at the end of a damp black corridor lined with boxes and fruity-smelling crates.

  “So you got kids,” Norm said as she unlocked the door. She turned on the light. Her apartment was small and surprisingly neat. The stove and refrigerator were on the wall opposite a red couch that was already pulled out and made up into a bed with sheets and a spread.

  “Yah, I got kids all right,” she sighed. “Two, Merry and Noelle. They’re both Christmas babies.” She took the bags from him and set them on the table.

  He wasn’t sure what to do next. “Well,” he said somberly. “It was nice uh, carrying your bags…. Unh, I guess I better go.”

  She was taking cans and boxes out of the bags. “Hey, want a drink or something?” She looked in one of the bags. “This week I got root beer. It was on special.” She dropped ice cubes into a glass and poured in root beer. After she gave it to him, she kicked off her shoes and reached back to undo the top two buttons of her sweater, then continued to unload her groceries.

  “Good root beer,” he said, wiping froth from his mouth. She was so short he looked down on the crown of her head.

  “If you want some more, help yourself.”

  With trembling hands he poured more into the glass. He went to drink and his teeth clinked against the rim. He wondered if she’d charge him anything. He’d heard the guys she liked were free. He stayed close by the table, where she was checking the register slip against the items she’d unpacked. He thought of his thirty-one dollars. No. No, he wanted his car too much. Maybe she’d let him pay a little at a time.

  “Hey, Norm.” She looked up from the slip.

  “Yah!” He winced, knowing he’d sounded too eager.

  “What’s three for eighty-nine if you only get one?”

  “One what?” His voice cracked in his dry tight throat.

  “Tomato juice.”

  “Thirty,” he said, his heart thudding with her approach.

  She handed him the register slip. “What’s that one, two for sixty-nine if I only got one?”

  “Twenty. I mean, thirty-five!” he said, staring down at the beads of sweat on the back of her neck.

  “Well, thanks,” she said, looking up. “Thanks a hell of a lot.” She patted her hair and groaned. “I was beat, lemme tell you. Lately, I been working my tail off and I’m just beat all the time.” She grinned. “You waiting for something? A tip or something?” she said, giggling.

  “Oh no! I’m just leaving,” he said, his tongue growing heavy. “I’m just going.”

  “You’re cute,” she said, pulling his head down as her mouth covered his. “Okay?” she murmured, holding his face in her hands, and he nodded, but it wasn’t okay. He wanted more. This time he kissed her, running his hands up and down her back, squirming against her, moaning, his eyes closed so that he never saw the door swing open.

  Blue Mooney stood in the unlit doorway in his black pants, black T-shirt, black boots. Only his yellow hair and pale flesh gave any light through the darkness. In each arm he carried a sleepy-eyed child. The older girl, a redhead with pale blue eyes, leaned forward with her arms outstretched, crying, “Mommy, Mommy!”

  “Your ma said their pants’re…” Mooney said, then peered closely. “What the…Who the hell’s…Bernie!” he bellowed as she shoved Norm away.

  Just then, from the hallway came a roar as a stack of empty orange crates crashed to the floor. In one motion, Mooney set both children down and darted into the hallway, then returned a second later clutching Weeb and Mullins. He shoved them at Norm and they staggered into one another.

  “Son of a bitch!” Mooney snarled, his square jaw set, his sharp lower teeth exposed. “You ever come up here again, I’ll break your fucking legs and then I’ll break your fucking arms…”

  They were running out the door and down the creaking wooden stairs, and they could still hear his voice: “…and then I’ll break your fucking back and then I’ll break your…”

  Benjy dreamed. He dreamed clear dreams of such detail that they seemed more real than life itself. He dreamed that the man in the white suit was still outside, hammering and sawing, raising the rotted fence posts and laying on the rails, and tearing out the rooted vines and weedy trees with his bare hands, and every now and then his sighs stirred the night like a breeze through the leaves and curtains. He did not stop. In the cool night dirt, he dug and he raked and he dug and he raked, his soft leather shoe working the shovel like a spotless gloved hand, digging and raking, all night long, smoothing, sculpting the yard to the symmetry of a garden in bloom, fragrant and densely green with broad dark leaves that curled and swayed like fans, and tiny white blossoms and blue bell-like flowers that bobbed, and through the tender white roots worms burrowed, and a hard cold snail inched its way up each stem and down each leaf. Its shell was white in the moonlight a
nd its probing eyes at the end of the soft gray feelers were as blue as the morning sky.

  Benjy’s eyes opened wide. Doors were slamming. Windows were closing. Norm was home.

  “That’s my money!” Norm bellowed. “You can’t do that! You can’t just take my money!”

  “No! Not me, but you and your godddamn bullheaded temper, that’s what took your money! And for sneaking out of the house you can’t go out for two weeks.”

  “Two weeks!” Norm cried.

  “Two weeks, mister, and I don’t want to hear another word,” she shouted.

  When she had gone to bed, he could hear Norm sobbing in his room, and Benjy realized that it wasn’t just the money, but his glove. That must be where he’d gone tonight. Benjy felt terrible. Norm had been out all this time trying to find his glove for tomorrow’s game.

  No one was speaking. Benjy and Norm were eating breakfast when the back door creaked open. “Good morning, folks!” Omar Duvall called heartily. “And oh what a beautiful morning it is!” He had a stubble of whiskers and his suit was soiled and frayed. In the true north light he seemed much older. Wrinkles outlined his eyes, and his hair looked white at the roots, silvery white as if in a night he had lived twenty years.

  “I got just so far,” Omar was telling Benjy’s mother, who had hurried into the kitchen at the sound of his voice, “and it was dark and this terrible feeling came over me….” His voice lowered. “I felt like I couldn’t breathe, like if I took one more step”—he sighed—“one more, and I would surely die.”

  “You were probably exhausted,” she said nervously. “All the commotion you’ve been through.”

  “I have passed through a torrent, through a water unsupportable,” Duvall drawled in a strange monotone. He stared at her. “And the snare, the snare is broken.”

  The two brothers looked at each other. “Holy shit,” Norm said under his breath. Benjy couldn’t tell if his mother was clearing her throat or laughing nervously, or both.

  “There’s more toast,” she said. “And there’s coffee. Would you like some?”

  “Oh this is wonderful!” Duvall cried, already chewing. “This is truly wonderful!”

  “It’s just regular bread,” she said.

  “I mean just being alive!” With his rising voice the very air seemed to darken and swell, the way air does before a storm. “And being here with all of you!”

  The woman lived in her dining room in an enormous crib with hinged, slatted sides. This was Bridget Fermoyle. At the foot of the crib there was a massive buffet that had once contained platters and linens and silver, and now was stocked with huge diapers, baby oil, cotton balls, and her pastel bed jackets. A large mahogany mirror hung over the buffet.

  Once again Bridget had no choice but to watch the old woman in that mirror. So homely, she thought. The old woman in the mirror had no teeth and her skin creped in dry folds over sharp bones and blue veins. Bridget watched her daughter, Helen, feeding the old woman mush on a spoon. Helen patted the dribbles that leaked down the woman’s chin. Helen and the housegirl, Jozia Menka, used to set the old woman on a bedpan. But a few years ago they had fractured her shoulder lifting her, so now they pinned big diapers around her skeletal hips. Since then Bridget had been spared the horrible sight of the old woman perched atop the bedpan, blinking and grunting, her wizened face reddening like a child’s as she strained.

  Today was a better day. Today she could see better. The vapors were gone. Today the voices were clear, not staticky and run-together. But the words still confused her. She recognized them, but could not always recall their meanings. It was the same with faces: like this grim-eyed daughter spooning mush into the mirror. What was her name? Bridget watched the old woman clamp her mouth shut to the raised spoon.

  “Open,” her daughter said wearily.

  The old woman in the mirror pointed at Bridget’s daughter. “Sam?” the old woman said, then gulped as the spoon spilled into her mouth.

  No, Bridget thought. Not Sam. Not Sam. Don’t say that! She gets mad. And sure enough, her daughter’s head drew back with a sigh of disgust.

  “Helen, Mother. It’s Helen, your daughter, who feeds you and washes you and changes your diapers.” As she spoke, she shaved mush from the old woman’s chin with the edge of the spoon. “It’s Helen, who cooks and slaves for a husband who brings home a handful of change from his store and dares tell me they’re the week’s receipts. It’s Helen, who hides her drunken brother’s bottles and cleans up his vomit and can’t hold her head up in public and—”

  “Sammy?” the old woman in the mirror said hopefully, raising a hand to the daughter’s.

  Helen’s eyes closed. “Oh Mother,” she sighed. “Why did you do this to me? I’m so sick of it. And now with the Judge dead it’s all up to me.”

  Bridget watched her daughter take the old woman’s bony hand and hold it against her cheek.

  “All I’m trying to do is what you wanted, Mother. But I’m so tired,” she whispered.

  Bridget picked up her sock doll and hummed softly. She was tired of the old woman and her bitter daughter, whose voice grew garbled and staticky. She hugged her doll and looked out the window at the locust tree. When Sam was little he used to climb to the top of that tree. Sometimes when everything was just exactly right, she could see him there still.

  Well, here it was noon with the gentlest of June breezes like fingers up and down his shirt back. Noon, and for twenty-four hours Omar Duvall had been free of them. Free! He felt so free he actually had to take deep breaths just to weight his feet to the pavement; so free, he was thinking now, he probably shouldn’t have told that woman and her children his name. He should’ve taken a new one, a name like Bart Truedell. Truedell had been his mother’s name, a good honest American name, the kind of name for the kind of man who’d make this country great.

  Ahead on the sidewalk was a young red-haired woman in a peach dress. She swung a bowling bag as she walked toward him. He smiled and she smiled back. He winked and saw the blood rise in her freckled cheeks. Yes, he thought, continuing along, he was that kind of man, the kind who could sell toothpicks one day and combustion engines the next, the kind of man for whom the marketplace was America’s last frontier, a virgin vastness of such hope and possibility that for a moment now his eyes blurred with tears as he stared at the street sign. Now, that meant something. Main Street, the very heart of America. He looked at the park across the street with its tall elms and its white globe gas lamps and its lovely round bandstand. What he did not notice were the rutted tracks scarred through the grass, because he turned suddenly when he saw the hand-lettered cardboard sign tacked to the porch rail of the old brown house.

  ROOM TO LET.

  He hurried across the street. He didn’t even see May Mayo, still as a bird in the dusty porch shadows, until he was on the top step.

  “Hello,” she whispered, the blue wash of her hair pale as her eyes. She twisted a hankie in her lap, weaving it tightly between her fingers. “I thought we had another hour,” she said, mistaking him for one of the Mounts from the funeral home. She started to get up. “I’ll get Claire.”

  “How much is the room?” he asked, motioning her back into the rocker.

  “Ten a week,” she said so softly he could barely hear her. “Fifteen with board.”

  “I’m a clean-living man,” he said, squatting next to her, and tall as he was, she had to look down into his eyes. “A man of religion,” and seeing the flinch in her gaze, he explained, “that is to say, of faith, of faith in my fellow man. Because of my lifetime of diplomatic assignments, I have been everywhere, lived everywhere, seen so much hoopla and exotica that all I want now’s a quiet little room on a quiet street in a quiet town, far, far from the dangers of communism,” he said, laying the ten-dollar bill in her hand. “I have family in town. Distant family that’s begging me to move in, and so as not to affront their generosity completely, I will be taking meals at their table. Thank you,” he said, rising now and tak
ing her hand in his. “Thank you, kind lady.”

  After school Benjy headed down the hill on the way to the store where his mother worked. She had errands for him to run. Like the streets downtown, Briscoe’s Sporting Goods was empty. Benjy came through the vacant aisles, his footsteps the only sounds in the store. With his hands jammed into his pockets he glanced up at the second level to the glassed-in walls of Mr. Briscoe’s office. He was surprised to see mirrors in place of the glass. Now it would be so much easier, he thought. Before when he had taken things, it had always been from the warehouse, never from the store. Ahead on the right aisle was the baseball display. If no one was around he could get a glove for Norm. But he didn’t dare. Mr. Briscoe might be down any one of these aisles, and besides, taking something from the store really would be stealing. Tennis balls and badminton birdies and fishing flies from the boxes out back were one thing, but a catcher’s mitt right off the counter, with a price tag—no, that was too expensive, too planned. He put it back on the counter.

  He continued to the back of the store, through the warehouse, toward his mother’s office, a windowless cubicle she shared with Astrid, the part-time bookkeeper. Astrid’s slurpy voice and the steady tap of a typewriter filled the dim warehouse like gray rain. Directly under Mr. Briscoe’s office, he paused. The windows on this side had also been replaced with mirrors. He looked around at all the cartons and wooden crates. One entire wall was lined with bicycle boxes. He proceeded slowly, hands clenched in his pockets, eyes scanning labels on the stacked boxes. His last time in here, he’d gotten Norm a jar of cream to rub on his glove. While Norm professed dismay with his thievery, he always kept what Benjy brought him. It had come to be their punishment for Briscoe’s underpaying their mother. Whenever there were loose tennis balls he always took a couple for Klubocks’ dog.

  “It was just three couples,” Astrid was saying. His mother’s office had no ceiling, only walls, and a frosted-glass door. He knew his mother must be glad Mr. Briscoe couldn’t look down into the office anymore. As much as she admired Mr. Briscoe’s keen business sense, she thought he was too nosy. “Some people from the wire plant,” Astrid continued. His mother’s typewriter never stopped. “Well to hear him, you’d think I’d invited the whole town.”