Songs in Ordinary Time

by Mary McGarry Morris

  “Someone broke into Marco’s Pharmacy last night.” Sonny’s blue eyes swam over him.

  “Yah, so?” he said, pulling down his sleeves and trying to button the cuffs. His hands were shaking. No. No. Colter was heading down the ramp.

  “They broke a cellar window to get in,” Sonny said.

  “And they must’ve cut themselves because we found blood,” Heinze added.

  “Well, it sure as hell wasn’t me, Chief.” He ignored Heinze. “Look, these are dirty old cuts….”

  “Where were you last night? You gonna tell me this time? ’Cause now I’m going to have to start looking beyond certain things. Now I gotta go on my instincts, Blue. And my instincts tell me you’re heading out of control.”

  “I was at my mother’s.”

  “Oh yah!” Jimmy Heinze snorted. “Sure!” He kept pacing back and forth behind Stoner.

  “All night?”

  “All night.”

  “Jimmy, go get Hildie Carper.”

  “She ain’t there now.”

  “You said—”

  “I stayed there last night. She said I could. Only she and my brothers went to Saratoga.”

  “Hey, Sonny, how you doing?” Colter said as they shook hands. “What’s going on?” He looked at Blue.

  “I just gotta talk to him for a minute, Jake, in private if you don’t mind,” Sonny said.

  “Is there some kind of problem?” Colter asked.

  Sonny gave Blue a quick look. “Nothing I can’t handle, Jake.”

  “Well, that’s good to hear,” Colter said, smiling, though his flinty eyes shot from face to face. “Blue’s a good worker. One of these days I’m gonna hate like hell losing him to the Corps.”

  Heinze rocked back on his heels and chuckled. “I wouldn’t worry about it, Mr. Colter…”

  “Jimmy!” warned the Chief, but the words had already met the air.

  “…seeing as how they drummed him out.”

  The three men stood there looking at one another.

  “What’s he talking about, Blue?” Colter asked.

  But he couldn’t answer. Arms at his sides, head up, gaze level, jaw clenched, he did not, could not, dared not move or speak.

  As Howard Menka came down the street early in the morning with his landlady, Lucille, he saw the rectory door fly open. Unshaven and red-eyed, Father Gannon was fastening his clerical collar as he ran toward the church, late again for Mass. Howard felt bad. He usually tried to wake Father Gannon up in time, but he’d taken the day off. Today was a special day.

  He and Lucille were on their way to the depot. He tried not to walk too fast. The first bus to Burlington left in twenty minutes. He and Jozia always got to the depot an hour early. Waiting was half the fun. They’d buy candy bars from the vending machines and eat them on the bench in front of the door where they sat watching the buses come and go with all their passengers. But Lucille said her nerves were in a bad way and she didn’t want to sit in a depressing terminal any longer than she had to. He’d been both pleased and bewildered to find her so dressed up this morning. She wore a white dress, a big black picture hat, and white high heels that made her walk funny—like her pants were wet, he thought.

  The excitement of planning a trip was one thing, but she could see that for Lucille, actually taking one was something else. At her worst Jozia had never been this snappish.

  “I hope this cousin of yours isn’t all stuck up,” she huffed, trying to keep pace with him.

  “No, she’s not,” he said.

  “I hope we don’t get there and she’s too sick for company.” She kept stopping to straighten her hat. She peered up at him. “I forgot her name again.”

  “Perda. Perda Menka.” As they started walking, he glanced down at those wobbly high heels. He didn’t dare tell her that when they got to Waterbury it was still a two-mile hike from the bus stop to the hospital, mostly uphill.

  “And what’s Perda’s problem? You never really said.” She made a face as if nothing could possibly warrant all this effort.

  “I don’t know for sure. She’s just always been that way.”

  “What way?”

  “Sick.”

  “How sick?” She rolled her eyes.

  “Well, lemme see. She can’t get out of bed. And she don’t talk, I know that.” He turned back to see where she was. She had stopped dead in the middle of the sidewalk, her hands on her hips.

  “What do you mean, she don’t talk?”

  He shrugged. “I don’t know. She just don’t.”

  “So what’re we gonna do, just sit and watch her?”

  “We talk to her, me and Jozia, that is. We tell her things. Things we been doing. Things we seen. And there’s all the others,” he tried to explain. “Some of them talk. And they like us!” He grinned.

  She didn’t say anything. She just looked at him, and all of a sudden he got this funny feeling as if his limbs had turned to stone. Everything—walking, carrying the lunch bag and the gift bag, even counting out the money for the two round-trip tickets—took such energy that by the time they were seated on the bus, he was so tired that he fell into a strange half-sleep. He was distantly aware of the wheels turning under them, the stench of exhaust through the dusty sliding windows, and beside him, the wet crunch of Lucille’s pointy teeth into a pear. And all the while, both awake and asleep, he dreamed. He dreamed of walking across the ice pond with Jozia on their way home from school. In his dream Jozia took his hand and they began to glide, their big black boots suddenly smooth as skate blades. Then he dreamed of hammering, pounding nails into wood while the Monsignor kept calling him. The Monsignor needed repairs done, but first he had to finish this enormous crucifix. Now he dreamed of Perda, the dream so real he could smell the stale pee in the ward as he and Lucille squeezed through the narrow space between the beds. When they got to Perda’s side, Lucille pinched her nose. He told her she’d get used to it. “Well, that’s her,” he said of the curled form under the sheet. Her kinky red hair, uncut since his last visit, spread over the pillow. Jozia usually trimmed it, but today he would do it.

  “Perda,” he whispered. “I brung somebody new. Turn over, Perda. Just for a minute.”

  She turned, and the long red hair fell back from the gleaming, bloated face, the deep-socketed dead eyes staring back at him.

  “Stop it! Stop that yelling! You’re embarrassing me,” Lucille said, shaking his arm. “They’re all looking at us.”

  From the front of the bus to the back, heads craned over the seats, and heads poked out into the aisles to see what all the hollering was about.

  About six thousand dollars, that’s what Sam figured his sister owed him from his mother’s trust. He had deducted expenses for whatever Helen had given him through the years for haircuts, papers, things like that, a pair of shoes a few years back, some dental bills, odds and ends really. For good measure he subtracted another ten dollars now, before putting away his papers.

  She was barely speaking to him, or to anyone else, for that matter. As always, when life turned on Helen, she turned on her brother. She didn’t call him to meals. His clothes went unwashed. Everyone in the house was sullen and miserable, except his mother, who hummed in her crib from sunrise to bedtime. Jozia crept past him in silence, her hounded eyes burrowing into her mops and rags. Renie shuffled from room to room to avoid the inevitable confrontation between his brother-in-law and his wife. In retaliation Sam had begun to cook his own meals, running the water minutes longer than he needed it. He spread the butter so thickly on his bread he could barely eat it, then laid the greasy knife on the tablecloth. He opened the refrigerator door countless times, wanting nothing from it but the satisfaction of hearing its motor rumble needlessly on and off. He left dirty dishes on the table, lights burning in empty rooms. When he bathed he used three facecloths, three towels, then left the floating soap to melt in the stoppered tub. But nothing was working. Nothing he did could rouse her to the confrontation he needed so that he coul
d throw down his calculations and demand his trust money.

  She ignored him. No one seemed to care one way or another that he was back. The only reason Marie had come was to badger him for money. Not one of his children had come or even called.

  At odd dragging moments he would find himself thinking of Applegate. He thought of Marlin playing the piano, the sun-washed walls, the lush warm flowers, the brilliant green lawns, the sturdy white backs of the attendants steering patients in wheelchairs along the bumpy stone paths, the mannered authority of the doctors’ voices drifting from paneled offices down the scented hallways, and the linened tables set with blue-traced china and sparkling goblets.

  Here in his stale room he began to miss the rising and bedtime chimes and the far-ringing call of the mealtime bells. He missed Applegate’s precision, its barricade of rules and schedules that protected him from all responsibility and decision and failure. He’d forgotten what this deadening emptiness was like. He’d forgotten how freedom afflicted him with this peculiar paralysis. He could hear Jozia dragging the vacuum cleaner up the stairs. She turned it on in the hallway. His heart raced with its sucking blast. His palms were moist. Squinting, he stood at the window. The rain had lulled him through the night, but now the sun swelled through the grayness. He leaned over the sill to watch the children skipping rope down on the sidewalk.

  He sat back on the edge of his bed and flicked hairs off his pillow. He needed a haircut. The vacuum moved farther down the hall.

  “Yes,” he said in a low voice. “It’s eleven-thirty now. I’ll put on a summer shirt. Let’s see, here now, the blue one, and then I’ll walk downtown to the barber. When he’s not looking I’ll grab the paper and go read in the park awhile. Maybe feed the pigeons some popcorn. On the way back I’ll stop by the library and get three books, one for tonight and two for the weekend. Then maybe I’ll get a half pint of clams for clam stew tonight.”

  He began to feel better. Plans. That was the trick. He needed plans, things to look forward to. No long journey, just one small step after another.

  He tapped lightly on Helen’s door.

  “What is it?” she snapped.

  “I need two dollars for a haircut….”

  “Haircut’s seventy-five cents.”

  “I thought I’d get a paper and some clams for tonight,” he said, grimacing with his cheek at the door.

  “Tell the barber to put it on Renie’s bill,” she said. “We’re having smelt tonight.”

  He closed his eyes. “Don’t make me crawl, Helen.”

  “You crawled back here, didn’t you?”

  Now, now was the moment to throw open the door and demand what was rightfully his. But he wasn’t ready. It wasn’t the right time.

  He came down the stairs. On the street the jumprope stilled as the little girls watched him pass. The world smelled of grass clippings. He squinted under the hazy sun at people he had known for years, some all his life. They nodded uneasily, hurried on. That’s all right, he assured himself, lightheaded on the first leg of this shaky voyage into his new life. It was just a simple walk downtown. What was there to fear? After all, he was sober and he had plans, plans just like these people had. The trick was to stay focused, to keep himself small and so tightly bound that the dead space could not get bigger, because if it did, it would engulf him. A cold sweat rose on his back. Deep breaths now. In and out. There. There, that’s the trick.

  The closer he got to the bustle of the downtown streets the more unnerved he became. He had no money, nothing to do. Not even a dime for a cup of coffee. No. No, he’d make it work. He had to put himself together.

  Once, in the middle of group therapy, Litchfield had asked if there was anything or anyone in his life for whose sake he’d be willing to die.

  “A drink,” he’d said as much to jab Litchfield as to make the other patients laugh.

  “Then you, Sam Fermoyle,” Litchfield had said disgustedly, “are your own meager invention.”

  Now, as he neared the flat-roofed stores at the bottom of the hill, he tried to remember when he had not been poor Sammy, the gutless but witty Sammy, that lazy no-good Sammy who had spent a lifetime seeking and fleeing the smothering breast of his mother’s need and love, his father’s morose attention, his sister’s resentment, and somehow settling for a vantage point of weakened pity that not only served him well but satisfied their thirst for his thin blood. Even his wife and children had succumbed, finding refuge in his failure. If Alice did not go to college, it was his fault. If Benjy was afraid of his own shadow, it was his fault. If Norm was a brawler, it was his fault. “I am all things to all people,” he murmured through a forced smile.

  The record store was playing stringed music through a speaker over its doorway. A high-heeled woman rustled past him. Little boys huddled around the bench where their baseball cards were laid out in rows according to teams. He stopped to watch. They glanced up at him, then resumed their argument about Whitey Ford’s earned run average. He dug his fingers into the lint in his pockets. He felt shabby and useless. People strode by, resolute in their missions, shopping bags in hand, keys and coins, the minutiae of their successes, jingling with every step. He followed them, matching their brisk gait, their frowning concentration. He walked behind a thin-shouldered man half his age and trailed him up Merchants Row, silently, addressing the back of his head. I also have places to go and books to pick out, and people to visit. Even on these narrow streets I know hundreds of people who if they see me will call to me and beg me to come inside. In high school I wrote a paper on the Proctor Marble Company that the Atkinson Crier printed. My junior year I was a starting pitcher with a curveball no one could hit. They said I was going places. They did, believe it or not.

  The young man turned the corner at West Street, and Sam turned with him. Right here, on this very corner, there was an accident. I was on my way home from school. The car burst into flames and I helped the firemen lay down their hoses. The hair on the back of my hands was singed. My mother said…

  The young man went into the paint store. Sam watched the closing door. “Pathetic, isn’t it?” he murmured with a bitter chuckle. “High school! My mother!” It ended there. After that came failure and degradation. He continued walking until he came to Renie’s store, where a pyramid of dusty fans was displayed in the front window. A faded newspaper clipping was taped to the glass. The Fan Man, said the headline over Renie’s picture. He had started to read the article the day it came out, but then had been too embarrassed for Renie to continue.

  Renie’s face glowed hopefully with the opening door, then darkened as Sam approached the counter.

  “Hey, Renie, you’ve really fixed this dump up nice. I like the walls yellow like that.”

  “Brightens it up,” Renie murmured, then looked back down at his open ledger.

  “I’ll say.”

  “Hot day,” Renie said without looking up.

  “I’ll say.”

  “Muggy,” Renie said.

  “You can say that again.” Sam tugged at his collar. He watched Renie’s fingers grip the pencil stub and draw a heavy line through a row of figures. “How’s business?”

  “Could be worse,” Renie sighed.

  “Could be better, huh?”

  Renie looked up suspiciously. He closed the green book and laid his hand flat on its cover. He took a deep breath. “Look, Sam, if it’s money you want…”

  Sam raised his hand to silence him. “Nope. Just a friendly visit to my favorite brother-in-law.” He bent to look at the pictures taped to Renie’s cash register, annoyed to see they were his children.

  Renie smiled. “You know these walls, this color, this yellow—Alice was the one that picked that out.”

  “Well”—he chuckled—“what can I say? She’s got good taste, just like her old man.”

  Renie’s pride over his kids had always irritated him.

  “She’s a nice girl,” Renie said, grinning. “I got her that job, you know, up to the A+X. I kn
ow she didn’t want it, but you know Marie, how strict she is with the kids. She called me and she said, ‘I don’t want her at the lake. I want her home,’ so I called him—the guy up there, that Coughlin—and I said, ‘You know that walk-in cooler repair, that job I did, that bill I been after, well you give my niece Alice a job and then we’re even.” Renie gave a sheepish shrug. “’Course I never told Marie all of it. I learned that about her. She’s a very proud woman.”

  “Is that so?” Sam said. His brother-in-law was still thick as a post.

  “Oh yah. With her you gotta be so careful.”

  “Hmph, I’ll remember that.”

  “Yah. Like Norm’s job. I musta called Alderman Greene a hundred times, anyway. So then one day the town clerk comes in—you know, Bill Sheets—and he wants one of them meat grinders there. ‘For you, Mr. Sheets,’ I says, ‘that’s twenty percent off. Only catch is, I got a real fine nephew that needs a summer job.’ And just like that, Sheets says, ‘Send him down to Jarden Greene.’ But of course I never tell Marie the part about the discount. She’s funny about that stuff. It’s her pride, I can tell.”

  Sam ground his teeth. Was the dumb bastard trying to rub his nose in it?

  “You see Norm yet?” Renie asked.

  “Uh, no, not yet.”

  “Wait’ll you see him. You’re gonna be so amazed. He’s got these big muscles like this.” Renie’s fingertips formed a circle. “His neck, he’s just really filled in, like a man—you know, the job, all the hard work and the heavy labor.”

  “Renie, that reminds me,” he said, touching the back of his neck. “I was thinking of getting a haircut. You got a buck you can sport me?”

  “No, Sam, I don’t, as a matter of fact. I just made a deposit.”

  The ring-eyed little grunt was obviously lying. He didn’t want it to be his buck that knocked Sam off the wagon.

  A door creaked open at the back of the store, and Renie spun around. A large cat strutted toward them, then jumped onto the counter. Renie looked from the cat to Sam.

  “That’s Tom,” he said with stricken eyes.