Songs in Ordinary Time

by Mary McGarry Morris

  The phone rang once. The typing stopped and his mother’s musical store-voice answered, “Briscoe’s Sporting Goods. Yes, we carry them, but Jake’s not on the floor right now…. That’s right…. He’s at the Judge’s funeral…. Call back around four.” His mother resumed typing.

  “I think we drank maybe three six-packs total.” Astrid sighed. “The thing is, because he’s older, he thinks I’m always comparing him to younger guys.” There was a pause and then she giggled. “And I keep telling him, ‘No, Bobby, it’s you I want, you and all your money.’”

  The typing continued. His mother never said a word. Astrid better watch it, he thought as he opened the door.

  Astrid grinned at him. “Hey! Look who’s here!” she laughed. “My favorite boyfriend!” She winked, snapping her gum as her fingers darted over the adding-machine buttons. A long roll of paper unfurled to the floor. Astrid was small; a woman’s body at child’s height. Her harlequin glasses flashed with rhinestone chips. Her teased and sprayed hair seemed an aureole of spun glass. Her skin was lovely, so clear, so moist it glistened. He loved looking at her. Certainly she was the most exotic woman he had ever known. She had started working here last fall. His mother said she wouldn’t last very long, that she was out of her element in this dull little town, a Las Vegas showgirl married to a homely insurance man old enough to be her father.

  “Just a minute, Benjy,” his mother said. Here, she acted different; she never swore or banged things in anger. Like the pleasant voice that had just answered the phone, this smile was seen only here, set with a calmness that looked almost painful. Only her eyes betrayed her; boiling and quick, they probed him like fingers. Compared with Astrid, his mother looked tired and plain. He waited by the desk while she finished typing a letter. “She’ll be right with you, honey. Your mom’s a champ, a real champ. ’Course what she needs is a little fun.” Astrid gave a rueful laugh. “Don’t we all. I mean, you’d think three couples was a mob or something.”

  It was a moment before he realized she was talking to his mother again. After each phrase she slurped saliva in through her teeth. In a picture she’d shown his mother she was dressed in a skimpy black costume, spike heels, and a little white apron. It had been a year ago in Las Vegas that she met Bob Haddad one night and married him the next. Benjy had seen them together recently and he’d been shocked at how homely Haddad seemed, how dark and loutish next to Astrid’s clear pink skin and silvery hair. She had a brand-new convertible and she wore outrageously glamorous clothes for a place like Atkinson. People said Bob Haddad was going crazy trying to please her. He’d bought her a new house and new furniture. Astrid claimed she did part-time bookkeeping here and at the wire plant just to keep busy and meet people, but his mother said the word around town was that Bob Haddad was deeply in debt. Benjy knew a lot of odd facts like that about adults in town. Alice said it was because their mother had no friends, no one else to talk to but her children.

  “So now he says no more parties. He says we got to get more serious about life. More serious! If he gets any more serious, I tell him, he’ll be dead. You can’t get much more serious than dead, huh, kid?” She winked. Her fingers tapped, the rings sparkling as they flew. “Everything’s such a goddamn calamity, you know…”

  When Marie finished typing she opened her desk drawer and took out a paper bag. The broken washing machine dial was in it.

  “…like this thing up in the park,” Astrid continued, “the blind man’s popcorn stand. So what if it looks shitty. So what if it’s gonna fall down! Who cares! Who the hell cares!”

  “Bring it to Uncle Renie,” his mother was saying, so inured to Astrid’s monologues that she hadn’t bothered to apologize. “Tell him if it’s not one thing wrong, it’s another, and I’m sick of it!”

  Astrid glanced their way. “Yah! And that goes ditto for me, too!”

  “Remind him this is the eighth time in two years that washing machine’s broken down on me!”

  “Yah! And don’t take any crap from him, either, kid!” Astrid grinned.

  “Astrid!” his mother said, her voice tight. “Would you please shut up!”

  He cringed, afraid his mother would start screaming the way she did at home.

  “I was tryna help!” Astrid said. “That’s all….”

  “Well I wouldn’t do this to you if you were in the middle of a conversation,” his mother said.

  “Well I wouldn’t care if you did,” Astrid said, pouting. “I wouldn’t get all worked up!” Her voice grew whiny and small. “I wouldn’t say anything to hurt your feelings. You think you’re the only one with problems. Well you’re not!” She stood up so suddenly that her chair flew back. “Other people have problems too, you know!” she shouted, slamming the door behind her. The cubicle’s walls shook.

  His mother had been staring down at the desk. She took a deep breath, then looked up, her eyes as flat as her voice. For a moment he had a sense that, like him, she had another life and this other life was a terrible burden sometimes. “You tell Uncle Renie he either fixes the timer or gives me a new washing machine, okay?”

  “Okay,” he said, knowing he could never say any of it.

  “Benjy!” she called when he was at the door.

  “Yah?” He started back. His toes curled in his shoes. Was it the lost glove?

  “Oh, nothing,” she said, gesturing him off. “Just…just…if Mr. Duvall comes to the house, would you call me?” she said thinly, breathlessly, hopefully. “I want to be sure I have food…if he comes, that is. I asked him, but he never really said.”

  He hurried through the warehouse to avoid Astrid, who must have run into the bathroom. The toilet kept flushing. He squinted now as he entered the store, blindingly bright with its fluorescent lights and shelves of colored boxes and glass cases of hunting knives and pistols. In the middle of the store, dangling by nylon wires from the ceiling, was an orange rubber life raft. As he passed underneath, it rocked gently as if on invisible waves. At the baseball display he stopped. There, heaped on the counter, were baseball gloves of every size and shape, and right on the very edge was a soft lustrous catcher’s mitt exactly like Norm’s. Opening his bookbag he tapped the glove into it, then ran to the front of the store. He grinned as his hand closed on the cold brass handle.

  “Hold it!” a voice boomed from above, from everywhere. “Hold it! Hold it right there!”

  He turned. Overhead a mirror slid open. Mr. Briscoe leaned out from the waist and pointed down at him. “You wait right there, young man! Don’t you dare move!”

  It took Mr. Briscoe a few minutes to get down into the store. He was a portly man, red-faced and always panting. By the time Mr. Briscoe reached him, Benjy realized he should have put the glove back on the counter, but now it was too late. Mr. Briscoe had just retrieved it from his bag. He held it up and rocked back on his heels.

  “You didn’t have to do this, son. No boy ever has to steal from Briscoe’s. Especially you, Benjy. Why’d you do this?”

  His eyes fixed in terror on the door into the warehouse. He expected to see his mother charge through it, her face white, eyes wide, her fists swinging.

  “You want this glove?” Mr. Briscoe asked, holding it out to him.

  He shook his head no. He could not speak. He could barely breathe.

  “Take it,” Mr. Briscoe said, jabbing the glove into his chest. “It’s yours. You can have it!”

  He shook his head, his hands heavy at his sides.

  “Here!” Mr. Briscoe insisted. “Take it!” His face was getting redder. “Don’t you want it?”

  All he wanted was to get out of here before his mother saw him. “I’m sorry,” he tried to say, but it wrung out of him like a whimper.

  Mr. Briscoe tossed the glove onto the counter and sighed. “I know what it’s like growing up in a house without a father. Things get all out of whack, don’t they?” He touched his breast pocket. “You get this empty feeling. You want something, but you never know what.” His cheeks
blistered with a fine sweat as he bent closer. Benjy could almost taste the sweet cologne seeping from his pores. “Isn’t that right?”

  He shrugged and nodded. He was losing track of Mr. Briscoe’s meaning.

  “You thought you wanted a baseball glove; well, you didn’t really, did you? You just wanted something. You weren’t sure what, so you picked up the first thing you saw. And the whole time, all you really wanted was a friend, Benjy. That’s all!” Mr. Briscoe said, his voice rising. He clapped his hands together and grinned. “And by golly willikers, young man, you’ve got one now!” He extended his hand, and Benjy was surprised at how hard and rough it was. “Ferdinand T. Briscoe at your disposal!” he said with a vigorous shake. “Just name your pleasure, son.” Briscoe’s gleaming gaze swept over the shelves and counters of merchandise. “Baseball, badminton, golf, swimming or camping, or backpacking, or fishing. Fishing!” Briscoe cried. “We’ll go out in the boat.”

  Benjy’s eyes widened in horror on the swaying orange raft.

  “That’s what we’ll do! The perfect sport. Oh Benjy, you’ll love it. We’ll go fishing. Just the two of us. There’s something about fishing, Benjy, a man and a boy in the middle of a great body of water…”

  “But I can’t!”

  “Of course you can! I’ll speak to your mother. We’ll go as soon as school’s out.”

  “No, I don’t like boats.”

  “Don’t like boats!” Briscoe cried. “What kind of a boy doesn’t like boats!”

  “I can’t swim.” To be in water over his head terrified him.

  “Can’t swim!” Briscoe reached down to muss his hair. “Well, you’ll just have to learn how, then.”

  “No, I can’t,” he said, shaking his head. “I don’t want to.”

  Briscoe looked at him. “I’ll tell you what, you learn how to swim and I won’t tell your mother about you taking the glove.” He smiled and held out his hand. “How’s that for a deal? Then, when you can swim, we’ll go out in the boat.”

  As they shook hands Benjy felt sick to his stomach.

  Benjy stood in front of Uncle Renie’s appliance store. A billhead was taped to the door. It said:

  Closed for funeral.

  Please come back at 5.

  I will be open an extra hour tonight to make up for any

  inconvenyunce.

  Sorry and thank you

  Yours truely,

  Renie LaChance

  With his cheek against the glass door, he peered into the long, narrow store. Uncle Renie’s big yellow cat was asleep on top of a washing machine. He banged on the door, but the cat did not look up. “Here, kitty, kitty, kitty,” he called, and still the cat did not stir.

  From the corner of his eye he saw the dark uniforms of two girls in his class crossing the street at the corner. He headed in the opposite direction. The minute he was out of their sight, he began to run up the hill. As he neared the park he could hear the tinny music from Joey Seldon’s radio. Joey was all dressed up. He wore a gray suitcoat, pale blue pants, a white shirt, and a gold string tie. He sat on his stool, his hands in his aproned lap, his big fleshy head swaying to the music. Benjy crossed the street, passing onto the grass so he wouldn’t be heard as he came by the dilapidated popcorn stand. He looked up to see Joey’s head cock back, and then his hands reached out and gripped the sagging boards of his serving counter. He faced Main Street, where a black hearse turned the corner. As it approached the stand, the hearse tapped its horn lightly and Joey’s hand shot to his temple in a stiff salute. His cheeks shone with tears.

  Next round the corner chugged the Mayo sisters’ ancient Ford, with its running boards and rumble seat. High at the wheel sat Claire Mayo, her square jaw chomping up and down, while beside her, tiny and black-veiled, was May. Her gaze never left the hearse. In the second car came all the boarders, little ladies with pastel waves and bright anxious eyes. A parade of cars followed, all flying small blue flags on their hoods. Twenty-eight, twenty-nine, Benjy counted and then in the thirty-fourth, the last car, he saw Uncle Renie, waving proudly from his old green Nash. Beside him Aunt Helen’s profile was as sharp as cut stone under her black velvet cloche. She stared straight ahead.

  Benjy continued through the park, where the sight of the trampled shrubs and torn-up grass shocked him. In the distance was Saint Mary’s Church, its white marble spire gleaming oddly cold in the afternoon sun. Behind the church was the rectory. It was a trim white house with a ladder leaning against it. Balanced on the top rung was Howard Menka. He was brushing dirt from the black shutters. When Howard worked for Benjy’s grandmother he used to give Benjy sour balls. Always soft and fuzzed with pocket lint, they would sit on his tongue like dry bitter cotton. Now that Howard worked for the Monsignor he and Benjy pretended they did not know each other. In a way being rid of Howard’s awkward attention was a relief, and yet he never passed by without feeling bad about his silence. He did not turn the corner. This was his father’s street and he would not walk here when his father was drinking.

  The church bells rang four times and he started to run, spurred on by the sudden hope that Klubocks’ dog might have retrieved the glove. Maybe it was beside him in the driveway right now or in the lilac bush, and if he ran really fast, he could get it down to the baseball field….

  “What’s your big rush?” someone hollered. He glanced back to see Norm, his hands in his pockets as he kicked a stone along the sidewalk. His chest ached. Norm hadn’t even gone to the game. Of course not. Without his glove he couldn’t play. Benjy waited for the thump on the back he deserved.

  “Guess who I just saw?” Norm said, catching up with him. He gave the stone a final kick into the gutter. “That peddler Duvall, walking along with a big loaf of bread under his arm.”

  The minute his mother got home from work Benjy told her about Uncle Renie’s store being closed. “I’ll bring the dial tomorrow,” he promised.

  She nodded absently and began peeling vegetables and chopping them into a stew that she put in the pressure cooker. Next, she made five bowls of chocolate pudding. He slipped into the front room and turned the television on low.

  “Benjy!” she called from the kitchen. He took a deep breath before going in. So this was it. Mr. Briscoe must have told her. She glanced into the front room. Norm was upstairs and Alice wasn’t home yet. She bent close, and his head ran with sweat. “Did Mr. Duvall call or come by?”

  When he said no, she turned down the burner on the stove. She got out the stubby broom and swept the kitchen floor, and then she opened the front door and swept out dirt from the rug. She tried to straighten the lampshade but it was still crooked. She went into the bathroom, where she stayed for a long time. When she came out, her thick dark hair had been brushed flat and her lips were red with lipstick and she smelled of a heavy perfume he would always associate with the sadness of his mother’s waiting. Norm had come down from his room and was sitting on the couch with Benjy.

  “Did you go see about that job today?” his mother asked. She and Norm were barely speaking.

  “I did,” Norm said, his eyes on the television. “But town hall was closed. The Judge’s funeral.”

  “You’ll go tomorrow then?”

  “Yah, I’ll go tomorrow,” Norm sighed.

  “You damn well better,” she said.

  “I said I would!”

  “Mr. Hendricks called me at work. He said the dentist’s going to charge fifty-six dollars.” She pointed at him. “That’s fifty-six you pay. Not me.”

  “I know that!”

  “Don’t be so damn smart!”

  “I’m not! But how come you just take Hendricks’s side? How come you never asked me what happened? What am I? What do you think, I’m some jerk that goes around beating people up for no reason?” His face was red.

  “I think you’re a hothead!” she said, her chin out like his, her face as red in their strange commingling of pleasure and rage. “A bullhead who doesn’t think, who just starts swinging!”


  “Yah?” he answered with every charge. “Yah? I just walked up to Hendricks and for no reason I hit him, huh? Is that what you think?” He kept glancing at Benjy.

  “That’s what I think!” his mother said.

  “Well then you’re st…wrong!” Norm caught himself.

  “Then tell me!”

  “He said something about Dad. They were all laughing about him being drunk.”

  “Oh God,” she sighed. “Oh God, God, God.”

  Out on the street, car doors began to open and bang shut. The Klubocks were having a party. It was Mr. Klubock’s fortieth birthday. Mrs. Klubock was twenty-eight. Louie had told Benjy that his mother had been planning this party for a long time.

  Marie stood behind the curtain with the light off, watching the cars arrive. “Some nerve,” she muttered as two cars pulled in front of their house, their wheels up on the grass. “Don’t give a damn about anybody else….” She leaned closer to the window and quickly ran her fingers through her hair, and then he was at the door with a stick of Italian bread wrapped in white paper, still knocking as she opened the door. Sighing at the wonderful smells from her kitchen, he apologized for being late, but the most wonderful thing had happened. He’d found a room in a boardinghouse run by two old women.

  “The Mayo sisters,” she said, taking the bread.

  “Why, yes,” Omar said. “And they’re letting me stay a night or two until I find work.” He sighed. “Or run out of money.”

  “Work?” she said. “Are you looking for a job? Here? In Atkinson?”

  Norm looked toward the kitchen.

  “A man’s got to work,” Duvall sighed as he sat down at the table. “Isn’t that what life’s all about?”