Songs in Ordinary Time (12 page)

Uncle Renie’s appliance store was on a narrow back street between a shoe repair shop that opened only on Saturdays and a card shop that had closed two years ago when Cushing’s Department Store had added its own card and wrapping-paper department. Twirled across Uncle Renie’s window was a faded streamer of red crepe paper, a courtesy purchase from the card shop’s bankruptcy sale.

Across the street were the parking lot and the glass vestibule that was the rear entrance to Cushing’s Department Store. Customers streamed in and out of Cushing’s, carrying its familiar red bags with the big black
C
.

No one was in the LaChance Appliance Company. Benjy tried the door but it was locked. He peered through the grimy glass, relieved. All the lights were off inside. As he started to turn away, Uncle Renie’s balding head shot up from behind the counter. Smiling eagerly, Uncle Renie unlocked the door. “It’s so good to see you!” he cried, locking the door behind them.

Something about his uncle always made Benjy uneasy. It was a kind of stale breathlessness, as if the stout little man were always waiting for some wonder or cataclysm to occur, had always been waiting, would wait forever.

He gave his uncle the dial and explained that his mother wanted a new one.

54 / MARY MCGARRY MORRIS

The store smelled of fish. Benjy looked around. “Where’s the cat?” he asked and just then the door to the basement opened and the enormous cat appeared, strutting to the front of the store, as if he were the boss here and Renie LaChance had better watch his step. He jumped onto the counter, stretching, and arching his back, purring while Benjy stroked his sleek fur.

“See? He heard you,” his uncle said. “He likes you. Tommy likes you.”

Uncle Renie turned the dial over and poked inside with a nutpick.

“Nice kitty, kitty, kitty,” Benjy whispered against the cat’s neck.

“He don’t like too many,” his uncle said. “He’s a very excriminating cat, that Tommy is.”

“He ever run away?” Benjy asked.

“Oh no! Tommy wouldn’t do that. He’s very homey. And he don’t go out ever.”

“Where’s he sleep?”

“Down the cellar,” his uncle said, moving nearer the window for light.

He peered into the dial. “He got his own bed and his food and box for bat’room.” He looked up and smiled. “You should see how fancy I made it. You should see. It’s got two pillows in that there velvet and all his toys, his catnip mouse. There,” he grunted, squinting and biting his thick lip as he probed the pick deeper. “Same as last time…just a loose setting…one more turn…” He grinned and held out the dial. “Good as new and no charge, tell your mother.”

From out on the street came a screech of brakes followed by a roar of drunken curses. Uncle Renie ran to look through the door. “Quick,” he called, gesturing. “Get outta sight. It’s your dad again.” Uncle Renie ran around the counter, grabbed the cat, and sank onto a wooden box that he used to stand on to adjust the ceiling fan or to sit on back here when he had to hide.

Benjy opened the door at the end of the counter and ran into the bathroom.

He could hear the front-door glass rattling as his father shook the knob.

“Open up! I know you’re in there,” Sam Fermoyle bellowed and pounded on the door. “C’mon, Renie! You son of a bitch, you…” he muttered darkly.

There was silence, and it was a few moments before he dared open his eyes. When he did, what he saw on the walls of the sour-smelling little bathroom shocked him. Every inch of space was covered with glossy colored pictures of naked ladies. His face flamed. He felt dizzy. He held his breath against the pissy stink as he turned in dizzy wonderment at all those shiny arms and legs and breasts and nipples writhing out toward him.

His father was still bellowing from the street.

On the floor beside the toilet was the telephone and the phone book. He sat on the closed lid and picked up the phone book to keep his eyes off the walls. Some of the numbers were underlined and some were circled. Turning a few pages he saw that Klubocks’ number was underlined and next to it his uncle had written
Jessie
. Next to every underlined number a woman’s first name was written. Bonifante:
Eunice
, his uncle had printed.

“If you open the fuckin’ door, I’ll tell you where your fuckin’ dog, SONGS IN ORDINARY TIME / 55

whashisname, Riddles is.” His father paused and then he laughed. “Yah, dead fuckin’ Riddles. Your fuckin’ wife, my fuckin’, whashername, sister poisoned him. You hear me, Renie? She gave him rat poison and then she took him out back and she had Howard bury him in her garden. You hear me? We got a real problem on our hands. We gotta stick together, boy.

’Cause she’s after us next….” The door rattled again. “Okay, you ugly little frog, have it your way. But don’t say I din’ warn ya….” As after the quick burst of a storm, the dark voice drifted away. “…she tries to feed you those fuckin’ tomatoes…. Hey!…Watch where you’re…”

A horn blasted. Tires squealed. Someone shouted. In the distance a siren wailed.

I hope he’s dead
, Benjy thought.
I hope he’s dead. I hope he’s dead
.

When he came out of the bathroom his uncle was still sitting on the box.

He had his head in his hands. Benjy stood by the nickel-plated cash register, where his uncle had long ago taped pictures of himself and Norm and Alice.

Once when he had brought his mother’s shoes into the shop next door, the old cobbler had written LaChance on the ticket. He had thought Benjy was Renie’s son.

Uncle Renie looked up and took a deep breath. “Well!” he said. He didn’t move.

Benjy leaned in close to the curled and faded photos. He hated his father for saying that about Uncle Renie’s dog. But he didn’t feel much pity now for his uncle, not with those disgusting pictures plastered on his walls.

Slowly, with a great sigh, Uncle Renie stood up and fumbled under the counter for his CLOSED sign. He put the cat in the cellar. “We’ll go have pie.

I never do that and today I will,” he said, fastening the card on the door.

He turned the red plastic hands to 4:30—BE BACK. “C’mon,” he said to the boy. “Whoever comes comes, you know? I wait, they don’t come. If I leave they come. Maybe,” he added, locking the door with three different keys that were attached to a long leather cord snapped to his belt loop. Benjy recognized the cord as Riddles’s old leash. When Riddles disappeared, his uncle had shut down the store for three days to search for him.

As they walked around the corner, Benjy was conscious of his uncle’s labored breathing, the wheeze of his lungs with every step. They paused in front of the luncheonette and his uncle said, “You know that bat’room’s a sight. I’m sorry you seen that. The guy that owns my building put those pictures up and I been after him and after him to take ’em off, but he don’t care, I guess. Don’t say nothing, okay, Benjy? Your mother’d kill me, huh?”

He opened the door. “You like pie?”

Benjy nodded, then passed under the cabbagey smell of his uncle’s sweaty arm as he held open the door to the little restaurant. After the glare of the sidewalk it seemed black and white inside with upright gray shadows that materialized into people, all of them men, hunched over the counter and the little white-sparkled Formica tables and booths. Renie paused at every booth to say hello. A few men nodded.

“Here,” Renie said, pulling out a chair at a small round table set like an 56 / MARY MCGARRY MORRIS

afterthought by the swinging door into the kitchen. Benjy spotted Mr. Briscoe at the counter and he slouched to avoid being seen. Uncle Renie bobbed up and down in his seat trying to catch Eunice Bonifante’s eye, but she was at the end of the counter talking over her shoulder to Chief Sonny Stoner, her sister-in-law’s husband, while she made a tuna-fish sandwich.

“Guess she don’t see me,” Uncle Renie said before he finally got up to place his order at the counter, two apple pies, a coffee, and a milk. Without once looking at him, Eunice served him the pies, the drinks, took his money, rang up the sale on the register, and gave him change, while she continued her animated conversation with the Chief. Benjy noticed how the Chief said hello to Uncle Renie and handed him the napkins he dropped, and when he came back for their drinks, Chief Stoner passed him the sugar bowl.

Suddenly the plate-glass window shook with a blast of noise as two motorcycles roared down the street. On one of them was Blue Mooney, his pale blond hair blown against his cheek as he skidded around the corner. The Chief shook his head. Last year Mooney and his older brother broke into Eunice’s gas station up on Main Street just a few nights before Blue was supposed to leave for Marine boot camp. His brother, who had actually been inside the station, went back to jail, but Stoner got the D.A. to drop the charges against Blue provided he went straight into the Marines. But now for the last month Mooney had been back in town.

“Summer’s here,” someone at the counter said. “Just like fleas, Mooney and his nitwits are out.”

“Just for a time,” the Chief said. “He’s home on leave. Some special assignment he’s waiting to be called up for.”

“Special assignment!” another man scoffed. “He’s nothing but trouble waiting to happen, that’s all.”

“You done?” Eunice snapped, glaring at the man, without its being at all clear whether she meant his sarcasm or his coffee. She laid a top slice of bread on the sandwich.

“Onion on that, Eunice,” the Chief said quickly.

“No kisses for you tonight.” She laughed and the Chief blushed.

The men at the counter shifted uncomfortably. A couple of them exchanged looks. “What a thing to say to a man whose wife’s dying,” the man across from Benjy whispered.

“Well,” his companion said, his shrug summing up all of Eunice’s troubles, excusing her.

Eunice had been married to Al Bonifante, the Chief’s brother-in-law.

Three years ago Al had committed suicide. He had been a hardworking, quiet man, who’d owned the Mobil station and this luncheonette, which Eunice had always run. After Al died, she just threw herself into both businesses, working night and day, weekends, holidays. That had ended a year ago, when she ended up in the hospital completely broken down. Just when her sister-in-law Carol and Sonny got her back on her feet, Carol found out about the cancer.

“It’s for Joey,” the Chief was saying.

SONGS IN ORDINARY TIME / 57

“You should’ve said,” Eunice said, slapping on a wheel of red onion. She reached for the mayonnaise jar. “Joey’s always onion and extra mayo.”

At the far end of the counter a stool turned with a squeal. It was Jarden Greene, his thin mustache quivering. He had recently been re-elected head of the town’s Public Works Department. He was also the conductor at the Sunday-night band concerts in the park. Greene had come up through department ranks on a street crew, scooping sludge from catch basins and raking leaves from gutters with hands God had created to make music.

Now he wore his power as trimly as his pin-striped suits and small lustrous black shoes.

“Did I hear correctly?” Greene said in disbelief, as he tightened the knot of his tie. “Our police chief is now a common errand boy for Joey Seldon?”

Stoner turned, his taut face white. “What’s that, Jarden?” he said.

Greene passed a cool smirk to the men beside him. On his right was Thomas Holby, who owned the Holby Coal Company.

Greene spoke loudly and now the entire luncheonette grew silent. “I’ll tell you what, Chief. When I ran for Public Works, I ran on a platform of public trust and honesty. I promised if I was elected, I would root out greed and corruption and the god-awful waste of taxpayers’ hard-earned money.

And I
was
elected and, by Jesus, I won’t stand by silent while Joey Seldon’s raking in the dough from his popcorn shanty that stands rent-free on town property. And I won’t stand silent while our chief of police commandeers a town vehicle and town gas to run sandwiches up to that leech!” Greene pounded his fist on the counter. “I’m too much of an honest man…too much of an…”

“Asshole,” Eunice groaned, rolling her eyes. She came the length of the counter and threw down his check. Greene pushed it away. “I’ll pay when I’m through.”

“You’re through,” she said. She picked up his coffee cup and the plate of half-eaten chocolate cake.

“Eunice!” the Chief said, trying to set things straight again. Greene’s humiliation embarrassed him. Like his father, who had been chief before him, Sonny Stoner believed himself keeper of the town’s virtue, and to this end had kept his heart as accessible and unblemished as his badge.

Greene was demanding his cake back. “This is an outrage!” he cried.

“Get the hell out!” Eunice growled.

“You can’t do that,” Greene fumed. “This is a public establishment and I’m entitled to that cake.”

“That’s right,” Ferdinand Briscoe called down the counter. “Jard ordered that cake fair and square and you can’t take it away just because you don’t like what he said.”

“Oh yah?” she said, reaching for Briscoe’s cherry pie.

“I paid for that!” Briscoe cried.

“Not yet you didn’t!” she howled. Her eyes moved menacingly along the counter, threatening Bart Doore’s muffins and Holmby’s hot dog, which was halfway to his mouth. Holmby glanced from side to side and under 58 / MARY MCGARRY MORRIS

Greene’s peevish stare laid down the hot dog. He chewed drily and coughed a little before he spoke. “Jard and Ferd have every right to say what’s on their mind.”

“And I got a perfect right not to listen,” Eunice said, snapping up the hot dog plate and throwing it onto the stainless-steel work bench.

Sonny winced. The shattering plate might as well have struck him, for the pain and the misery on his face. A dark murmur rose among the diners.

From out on the street came the squeal of brakes and then the blast of Mooney’s motorcycle.

“Aw c’mon, Eunice,” pleaded Sonny as she moved along the counter with a plastic bin, into which she slid everyone’s cups and glasses and plates.

“Just settle down now.” He looked at the sputtering men. “Everybody just settle down…. There’s no need to—”