Songs in Ordinary Time

by Mary McGarry Morris

  But look at my children, she thought, turning back to the table, their shabby clothes, their thin nervous faces. I am a terrible mother. He doesn’t know that. He doesn’t know this rage.

  “Lovely, lovely,” Omar said when she sat down. “Heavenly.”

  But she was looking at Alice’s plain, ten-dollar dress, wishing it had come from Cushing’s instead of the Bee-Mart Outlet, where the farmers’ wives shopped when they came to town.

  “What’s Mary Agnes’s dress like?” she asked, moving her food on her plate.

  “I don’t know,” Alice shrugged. “Her aunt took her to Albany.”

  “Naturally,” Marie said so bitterly they all looked at her.

  “Who’s her aunt?” asked Omar, chewing as he speared his second helping of steak.

  Norm looked at her. It had been the last piece.

  “One of our local phonies, that’s who,” she said, staring Norm down, her tone all the warning he would get.

  Alice laid down her fork. “Mom! Why do you say things like that? You don’t even know Mrs. Mangini.”

  Her eyes blazed at her daughter. Mrs. Mangini was a widow. I’ll tell you why, she wanted to say, the words bile on her tongue. Because her husband is dead, she has everything she wants. She doesn’t have to work a day or a minute for the rest of her life. She can go to a movie with a man on a Saturday night, and the next day in church no one looks at her and thinks, Harlot, sinner, as she marches up to the Communion rail, while I kneel alone, surrounded by empty pews, judged and condemned for a sin that is not mine, but your father’s.

  “Cooked to perfection,” Omar sighed, his round smooth cheeks swelling with the meat, mashed potatoes, and peas he had stuffed in his mouth.

  She took a deep breath. She would start over again. Calmly. She would be happy and strong, and then so would they. She would make them happy. She sensed that this might be an art, a weaving in and out of who they were and what they knew about each other, the light and breezy way people talked in movies. “Lester’s giving the valedictory speech tonight,” she told Omar.

  “An ordeal I well remember,” Omar replied.

  Relieved, she turned to Alice. “Is Lester’s mother going to be there tonight?” she asked, pouring more milk into Benjy’s cup. She would try. For them she would try. For them she would do anything.

  “I don’t know.” Alice shrugged.

  “That poor woman,” she said. Actually she’d never liked Carol Stoner. But now with her illness and her husband’s betrayal, she felt a kinship: Carol Stoner had slipped into the ranks of wounded women. She glanced at Alice, puzzled by her expression. “Well, Sonny will be there, I’m sure.”

  “I don’t know. He’s been out almost every night on some big investigation,” Alice added quickly.

  Omar’s eyes darted from the bread he was buttering to Alice.

  “What’s he investigating?” Norm asked eagerly, but Alice didn’t answer.

  “I can just imagine,” Marie blurted.

  “Maybe it’s those men,” Benjy said softly, glancing at Omar.

  “What’re you talking about?” Alice asked Benjy.

  “Pass the potatoes, please,” Omar said, loosening his tie. He dabbed his temples with his napkin.

  “That poor thing suffering all alone,” Marie mused, sad now for Carol Stoner. “And you watch, when she’s gone he’ll be tearing his hair out, but it’ll be too late then.”

  “Maybe he saw them,” Benjy said, gripping his fork at the edge of the table.

  “What’s he talking about?” Norm asked Alice. “What the hell men’re you talking about?” he asked Benjy.

  “Dad,” Benjy said. “I meant Dad.”

  “Where there is no wife, he mourneth that is in want,” Omar said quickly, his watery eyes fast upon the untouched meat on Marie’s plate.

  “That’s beautiful,” she sighed.

  Omar steepled his fingertips over his empty plate and smiled at her. “He that possesseth a good wife hath all possessions. She is a help, a pillar of rest and trust to him who hath no rest and must lodge wheresoever the night taketh him.” He lowered his eyes. “As a wanderer that roameth from city to city,” he whispered.

  Now her heart swelled again. She blushed and had to look away from this good and gentle man who was so much alone, who seemed at moments like this almost priestly, beyond love, beyond understanding. And yet she felt she had known him forever. Had he come only weeks ago? The lilacs had been blooming.

  Alice was staring at Benjy. They had been whispering. “Who told you that?” she asked again.

  “Mom,” he answered.

  She looked at her mother. Her whole body had slackened. “Dad was in jail?” She threw down her napkin.

  “Here,” Marie said, pushing her plate over to Omar. “Finish this while I get the dessert. Wait now, Alice, this is special.” Why had Benjy told her that? They had been talking about the Stoners. She hadn’t been listening, hadn’t been alert, in charge.

  “Oh that’s nice. That’s really nice,” Norm said. He started to get up.

  “You stay right there,” Marie ordered. “I have a special dessert. In Alice’s honor. Sit down, Norm, and tell us what happened with Jarden Greene while I get it.” She felt short of breath. She tried to smile. Damn it, this was all her fault. Damn it, damn it, why couldn’t things ever go right?

  Norm slouched in his chair. “Nothing happened. Can I go get dressed?”

  “Nothing?” she said, her voice rising. “What do you mean, nothing? Did you see him? Did you talk to him? What did he say?”

  “I saw him, and he didn’t say much.”

  “Well, do you have the job or not?”

  Norm stared at her. “I don’t want the job. But I’m not going to talk about it now.” He glanced at Alice. “Not now. I’m tired, and I want to get dressed.”

  “Tired!” She laughed. She couldn’t help it. “You’re tired?” She thumped her chest with her fist. She couldn’t help it. He had pushed her. He had gone too far. And look at her, that one, sitting there, sulking as if it were Marie’s fault her father had been put in jail. Why did they do this to her? “I’m the one that’s tired from working my fingers to the bone for lazy kids who don’t give a damn!”

  Norm stood then and stalked from the table.

  She grabbed his arm and spun him around to face her. “You’ll take that job. You’ll take it, you hear me?”

  “Don’t,” he warned, pulling from the bite of her grip.

  “Mom!” Alice pleaded.

  “You’ll take it, and you’ll pay me ten a week room and board, and the rest you’ll put in the bank so you don’t end up like Miss High and Mighty over there, looking down her nose at everyone, Miss Lazy Ass who’s supposed to go to college in three months, three goddamn short months and not one red cent to pay for it.”

  Alice ran out of the kitchen.

  “Look what you did!” Norm cried. “What the hell did you do that for?”

  “What I did? What I did? No! What you did, damn you!” she roared, bringing her hand across his face in a stinging slap.

  “You go to hell!” he snarled.

  She slapped him again, this time with such force he stumbled against the wall. His mouth was thin, his eyes cold and dark. Instinctively, his hands had closed into fists. Now they fell limply to his sides, as had hers. They couldn’t look at each other.

  “…see here,” Omar was saying, “…way to speak to your mother…down on your knees…thank God…such a wonderful mother…”

  They did not listen, did not speak, instead turned from each other. “Sit down,” she told them, calling Benjy back from the living room, where he had turned on the television, and Alice back from the bathroom. Her hands shook as she opened the cake box. The glazed blue letters had begun to run in the heat. Under the window, Klubocks’ dog was barking. Omar belched softly into his napkin; then Norm burped loudly, imitating him, she knew. She couldn’t get the cake out of the box. A car was coming down the street.
A huge ant walked across the windowsill. She had smeared frosting on her blouse. Klubocks’ dog snarled frantically. “Damn dog,” she muttered as she lifted the cake onto a cookie sheet, then turned with a forced smile and placed it in front of Alice.

  “Oh,” Omar sighed. “What do you think of that, now, Alice?”

  “It’s nice,” Alice said quietly.

  Nice? she wanted to scream, wanted to grab those scrawny arms in that cheap white dress and demand, Nice? Five ninety-five and all she could say was nice when her mother didn’t even own a dress, would sit there tonight with all those dressed-up people looking at her in the same skirt and blouse she wore to work. No. Not tonight. Tonight was special. “Here. You cut it,” she said, giving the knife to Alice. She couldn’t breathe. Her hands still trembled. Someone was out in the back hall. Not those nosy Klubocks, she thought, turning to see the back door fly open. It was Sam. He leaned in the doorway, his shirttail hanging, his hair strung thinly over his forehead, his nose red, his bleary eyes adjusting to the light.

  “Alice?” He held up a dented old typewriter, its keys sprung. “Look what I got for my little girl.” He lurched into the kitchen, then stopped short, pointing at Omar. “Who the hell’s that?”

  “Sam!” she gasped. Please…”

  “Who the fuck is he?” he asked, squinting at Omar.

  “A family friend.” Omar rose from the chair. “Merely a family friend,” he said, edging sideward like an enormous crab into the living room. The front door slammed, and Sam started to laugh as he staggered toward Marie with his arms out. “Daddy’s home,” he laughed.

  “Get out!” she warned. “Get out now!”

  “Baby. My pretty baby,” Sam said. He put his arms around her and buried his face in her neck.

  “Get away from me!” she said and pulled away, sending him reeling toward the table. His hand shot out for balance and rammed down into the cake. He wiggled his frosting-coated fingers, and he chuckled. “Alice, did your mother throw this cake at me?”

  “Bastard!” Marie screamed as she lunged, trying to drag him to the door. As if with a sudden unmanacled strength, he reared back, shoving her away. She grabbed the knife from the table and held it out in front of her. “You ruin everything. You ruin every goddamn thing I’ve ever had!”

  Sam teetered, blinking curiously at her.

  “Mom!” Alice screamed.

  “Don’t!” Norm was shouting. “I’ll get him out! I’ll get the bastard out,” Norm called as he swooped his father through the open door. Outside, there was Norm’s angry voice and then the car started with a roar.

  “He’s gone,” Benjy kept saying. “He’s gone, Mom!” He took the knife and threw it into the sink.

  She sagged into Alice’s arms. “I’m sorry. I’m sorry,” she moaned as Alice helped her into a chair.

  “It’s okay, Mom,” Alice kept saying as she patted down her mother’s hair.

  “No, it’s not,” she wept. “Nothing’s ever right! Nothing! Ever!” she sobbed into her hands. “Not even for your graduation.”

  “You don’t have to go,” Alice was saying. “You just rest. You stay here.”

  She lifted her head. Of course she’d go. She’d face them all, goddamn it.

  Norm knocked on the door, at the same time trying to support his limp father against his shoulder. Above them a window opened and Aunt Helen’s narrow face pressed against the screen. “Take him to your mother, or to jail, or dump him somewhere like the trash he is! He stole my rents and I wash my hands of him!” she called down.

  “Her rents!” his father muttered.

  “Aunt Helen, open the door or I’m going to kick it in!” Norm threatened.

  “Don’t you be fresh, Norman, or I’ll come down there and slap your face!” she hissed.

  He let his father sink to a mumbling heap on the porch floor while he beat on the door with his fists. When she still didn’t come, he rammed into it with his shoulder.

  “Tha’s-a-boy,” his father said. “Give it to the old bag, Normy! She can’t push us around.”

  He reared back and hit the door, this time so hard the frame cracked. As the door opened slowly, Uncle Renie’s pale face appeared over the chain. “Just take him away, Norm,” he whispered. “Bring him back at eleven. She’ll be asleep then, and I’ll let him in.”

  “Uncle Renie, I can’t!” Norm begged. “Please open the door!”

  “Renie!” warned his aunt’s shrill voice. “Don’t you dare let that trash in my house!”

  Sam raised his fist and shook it at his sister. “Get the hell out of my room, you skinny bitch!”

  “Your room!” she shrieked down. “Not anymore, mister!”

  “Uncle Renie!” he pleaded.

  “Here,” his uncle whispered. A five-dollar bill fluttered out through the closing door.

  He had driven all over town, and he still didn’t know what to do with his father, who alternated between incoherence and vile threats at passing motorists. A few minutes ago, Norm had almost given him Uncle Renie’s five and let him off in front of Hammie’s. Now he was driving past the park. The church bells were ringing. Seven o’clock. Graduation started in a half hour. He jammed on the brakes. “C’mon!” he said, hauling his father onto the sidewalk. He looked around. Except for Joey in his popcorn stand, the park was empty.

  “I wanna go home,” his father whimpered as Norm maneuvered him through the shadowy park and up the steep bandstand steps.

  “Just sit here,” Norm grunted, easing him onto the concrete floor of the bandstand.

  “Don’t leave me,” his father begged, throwing his arms around his waist. “Please, Normy…”

  “C’mon, Dad,” he said, prying away his hands. “I’ll be right back!”

  “Promise?”

  “I promise,” Norm said.

  “I love you, Normy,” his father choked.

  “Okay, Dad,” he said, turning quickly from this helpless man who hadn’t been sober in weeks, this father who had lost control of his own life, yet still, bewilderingly, remained so fast at the helm of everyone else’s.

  The hot gymnasium was jammed with families. Benjy sat between his mother and Norm. Up on the stage, Lester Stoner stood at the podium reading his valedictory address. Benjy looked up at the clock. So far, the speech had lasted fifteen minutes. People were coughing, fanning themselves with programs as their feet shuffled under the creaking metal chairs. Lester’s father leaned against the side wall with his arms folded. Even he looked bored, Benjy thought as Lester’s voice pitched higher. “And into this new world, walk bravely with Christ always on your right and the most blessed Virgin on your left. And when temptation and adversity cross your path, you will find strength in your most holy guides and salvation at the end of this long, arduous journey we call life.”

  The audience burst into grateful applause. Lester bowed his head humbly, then with the back of his hand wiped his eyes. The audience clapped louder as he returned to his seat.

  “Poor thing,” Marie Fermoyle whispered on one side of Benjy, clapping furiously.

  “Jeez, what a creep,” Norm groaned and slid down in his chair. His mother reached across Benjy and pinched the soft underflesh of Norm’s arm. “Sit up!” she said through clenched teeth.

  “Cut it out!” Norm whispered loudly.

  Between them Benjy froze, fully expecting a flurry of punches to pass before him. There was an uneasy wait now, because Monsignor Burke had fallen asleep in his chair behind the podium. His young curate, Father Gannon, was trying to wake him up. During the lull the graduates on the stage smirked and elbowed one another, causing fat Jim Cox to slide from his end seat onto the floor. From the front row Lester Stoner turned and shook his head disapprovingly at his classmates. Sister Jean Andrew, the principal, stormed out of the wings and faced the class with her hands on her hips.

  Roused, the Monsignor hiked the skirt of his voluminous cassock and lumbered up to the podium. Sister Andrew returned to her post. The Mons
ignor adjusted his thick black-rimmed glasses, then took a deep breath into the microphone. “Well,” he began in that faint brogue with which he delivered all sermons and speeches. “I suppose you’re all saying to yourselves now, ‘Look at the old duffer. Time, maybe, we put him out to pasture; can’t even keep his eyes open.’” The Monsignor shook his head ruefully, and the audience roared with laughter. “But as dear old Da used to say to me mother after Mass, ‘Sure’n it wasn’t napping you caught me at, Meg, but meditating.’” He folded his arms high on his paunch in hearty laughter with the audience. After a moment he raised his hands for silence and said solemnly, “And that’s just what I was doing, ladies and gentlemen. Meditating! Marveling at the uniqueness of this singular group of young men and women, these fine young graduates of Saint Mary’s High School.”

  Moments later as the Monsignor began to pass out the diplomas, flashbulbs popped and a few home movie cameras whirred. The Monsignor patted his sweaty forehead. In the twenty-one years he had presided over these graduation ceremonies, nothing had changed; not the faces or the names, he thought. In a few months, a year or two, they would be trooping their troubles into his rectory, their babies into his baptistry. He looked up and forced a smile.

  “Alice Fermoyle,” he called, peering over his glasses as she came unsteadily across the stage on her new white heels. Like the mother, he thought irritably: skinny, suspicious, vaguely menacing, Marie Fermoyle was one of the parish’s few divorcées and the only one still brazen enough to attend Sunday Mass. Sometimes at the beginning of Communion, he had seen a look come over her, a flash of hunger, of a desperation so intense that he would find himself rushing through the distribution of Hosts, fearful that the next quivering tongue above the rail would be Marie Fermoyle’s. And then what would he do? Denounce her? Ignore her? Sometimes he imagined himself slapping her. She would shout some profanity. He would slap her again and again….