Songs in Ordinary Time (70 page)

He sighed. “You want to know the truth? I almost didn’t go down. I couldn’t face her. I mean, ruining her graduation was bad enough, but here she is a beautiful young woman, and she has to come to a place like that to see her father.” His voice broke. “She looks just like you. You weren’t much older than that when we met.” He put his hand on her shoulder, squeezing until it hurt. They both stared straight ahead. There were no words for that kind of loss, she thought. It never went away. The thing it had been, whatever was left, was as much a presence, as molecular, as organic as the children they had created. Yes, time helped, and yet even a word, a smell, 340 / MARY MCGARRY MORRIS

the creak of the darkened bed in the night, could still bring it all back. Time helped in the bearing, the enduring, the hauling of it from crisis to crisis.

“Jesus!” he said, rubbing his eyes. “I don’t know how you’ve hung in there all this time, pet.”

“The kids,” she said against the lump in her throat. “They keep me going.

They’re good kids. They really are.” She took a deep breath to keep from crying.

“I’ve certainly screwed things up to a fare-thee-well, haven’t I?” He sighed bitterly. “But I swear, pet, I’m going to make it all up to you and the kids.”

He groaned. “All the shit I’ve given you. Oh God, I can’t even think of it. I can’t believe it. I wake up sometimes in the middle of the night, and I lie there with my eyes wide open, thinking, So where’s my life? What’d I do with it? How’d it all get this bad?”

“Well, that’s a start, isn’t it, Sam?”

“I don’t know. I don’t know how many more starts I have left in me, to tell the truth. I’m really scraping the bottom of the barrel, pet.”

“You’re feeling sorry for yourself, Sam. I’m sorry, but that’s what you’re doing.” She tried to fight this surging anger.

“No, you’re right. It’s always this way. After all the promises and all the best intentions and fighting it off minute by minute, day after day, the same thing happens. It starts feeling like I’m banging my head against the wall.

No matter how hard I try, I just can’t put anything together. I get just so far, and this voice starts in my head. ‘S-O-S. S-O-S. Same old shit. Same old shit.’

It’s this twisted cynicism. Me that can’t believe me. I get up early. I shave and get dressed, and I say, Okay, this is the day. Today you’re going to find a job. You’re going to call your wife and kids. You’re going to get things straight for once. And then the voice starts. ‘Oh yah, yah, yah. Same old shit.’ And that’s about as fucking far as it gets.” He gave a bitter laugh. “Me standing in front of the door, all dressed up and shaved, trying to work up enough courage to turn the knob.” He looked at her. “Just to turn the knob, pet,” he whispered, eyes wide with disbelief. “I can’t even do that!”

“Yes, you can. Of course you can. Oh Sam, you’re just so used to hiding out you don’t know where to begin. Damn it! Damn it! Sam, sometimes I look at the kids, especially Benjy, and I get so scared. I’m afraid if I let up for even a minute they’ll quit, they’ll give up, they’ll spend the rest of their lives taking the easy way out.”

“Yah, just like dear old Dad!”

“That’s not what I meant,” she lied. “I’m talking about pushing yourself.

I’m talking about putting your hand on the doorknob and turning it, Sam.

What I mean is, I make sure the kids do that. No one ever made you do that, Sam.”

He looked out at the street and smiled. “Being married to you, pet, was the happiest time in my life.”

My God. All she remembered of it was tears and overturned chairs, broken windows, broken promises.

“The one thing that keeps me going, and damn it, I vowed I wasn’t going SONGS IN ORDINARY TIME / 341

to say this, but I want you to know, pet, I’m going to put this all back together. I swear, I am! I’m going to make you love me again, Marie. I am.”

Poor Sam. Was that all he had to cling to? She sat with her eyes closed.

She didn’t want to feel anything right now, not for him or any man.

“You know, I may be a dumb son of a bitch, but I’m a lucky one. In what was probably the biggest foul-up of my life, I ended up with you! And the kids! I was telling the hospital shrink how I was supposed to marry Nora Cushing and how it was probably the smartest move I’d ever made. And then I told him what happened. How I started sneaking around after you, even though I knew it was crazy. You were so young, and there I was, thirty years old, with the biggest wedding in town planned to the richest girl in town. And you know what he told me? He said I couldn’t stand the certainty and the deliberateness of success. He said I didn’t think I was good enough, and so instead of facing what I didn’t think I deserved, I found a way to foul myself, to ruin everything. In Nora’s eyes and in my mother’s eyes.”

Tears ran down his cheeks now. He shook out his handkerchief and blew his nose. “Oh pet,” he sobbed.

“You bastard,” she said, starting the car and shifting into gear. “You no-good bastard,” she said over the roar of the engine as they lurched around the corner.

“Pet!” he called, reaching toward her. “Pet!”

“Well, the dirt you stepped in eighteen years ago is still here, like it or not. You’ve never done anything for those kids, but this time you’re going to, damn it. Alice may be nothing more to you than a disgusting shameful mistake that ruined your whole life, but now you’re finally going to have to pay for that. I want half that trust, do you hear me, Sam? I want five thousand dollars, and I want it right now. Those shitty tenements aren’t doing my kids any good right now. And right now, right now, damn it, is when we need the help.”

All the way back to Bridget’s, his voice rose over hers, trying to explain.

She’d misunderstood. What he’d meant was that she and the kids were the best, the finest part of his life. They were everything to him. Everything!

“Then you tell Helen that,” she said. “And then tell her this for me—tell her I’m taking you both to court. And when I’m done those kids will have everything they deserve. This house and every penny you and your miserly sister have ever hidden away.”

“You’ve got to listen, pet, please,” he begged when she stopped the car.

“No. No, I don’t. Do you know how many times I’ve heard that when you were roaring drunk? But for you to sit there, cold sober and say that to me—oh! Who the hell do you think you are?”

“A piece of shit,” he said in a low voice. “A no-good piece of shit.”

“Well, you’re right there, Sam. Now get out!”

As she drove off, she refused to look in the rearview mirror and see his stooped figure in the pathetic jacket dragging up the stairs of that miserable house. When would she learn? He deserved no pity. None. He had spoken the truth. Skinny arms and legs with her baby belly bulging against her 342 / MARY MCGARRY MORRIS

cheap cotton dress, she had been his masterstroke, the cruelest blow he could wield against those determined to love him, determined to save him.

“I
s your dear mother home?” trumpeted Omar Duvall as he hurried into the house. For the past three days he hadn’t come or called.

Benjy waited for Norm to answer, because that was who Omar was staring at.

“I said, is your mother home?”

“Nope,” Norm grunted without looking up from the newspaper. He had been reading aloud the latest report on Joey Seldon, who was still in the hospital with a fractured skull.

“Do you know when she’ll be back?” Omar asked with a hopeful glance at the cold potless stove.

“Nope,” said Norm.

“Do you know where she went?” His tone grew strained.

“Yah.” Norm glanced over the paper. “She’s with my father. I’ll tell her you were here.”

Omar smiled, obviously pleased to hear this. “Save you the trouble, son, I’ll wait.” He pulled out a chair and settled down in a sigh of sweaty cloth and flesh.

His face flushed, Norm turned the pages.

“So what’s new, Benjy?” Omar asked. He removed a toothpick from his breast pocket and began to clean his teeth in a delicate whittling motion, sucking the toothpick clean after every couple of teeth.

“Not much.” Benjy shrugged, trying to hide his relief from Norm. With Omar here, their mother would be in a good mood again. Things would be better tonight, he thought, then shuddered, remembering his dream of that bloated body swelling in the damp heat until it finally exploded, its volcanic spew raining entrails and blobs of flesh over all the streets and houses. He’d knelt on his bed watching the bloody mess slide down the window glass.

They said he’d been screaming. He only remembered crying.

“Well, it’s certainly been a busy week for me, if not a profitable one,”

Omar was saying. He’d been on the road most of the time, trying to establish franchises in some of the more rural parts of the state. His target group had been farm families. The party-marketing concept had great appeal for such isolated women.

“Speaking of which,” Norm interrupted, “where’ve you been staying?”

Omar looked right at him. “What do you mean, speaking of which? What exactly are you asking me, Norman?”

“I asked you where you’ve been staying.” The corners of Norm’s mouth flicked. “That’s all.”

“Kind of here and there, I’ve been on the road so damn much,” he said with such a derisive snort his nose leaked. He groped in his pockets for a handkerchief.

Benjy’s eyes widened. He thought Norm would surely laugh, but every feature was rigid as stone.

SONGS IN ORDINARY TIME / 343

“I see your car down in back of the fruit store a lot,” Norm said.

Omar made a face. “The fruit store?” he asked incredulously.

“Yah. I drive my foreman there to get his paper. I see your car out back.”

“My car?” Omar frowned and shook his head.

“Four-two-six-nine-five. That’s your plate number, right?”

Omar glanced at Benjy and laughed. “Tell the truth, I don’t even know what my name is half the time.”

“Yah, I’ll bet you don’t,” Norm muttered.

“Come again?” Omar leaned across the table. “What’d you say?”

Benjy’s eyes darted between them.
Stop it. Stop it. Stop it
, he wanted to shout. Why did Norm always have to stir things up?

“You heard me,” Norm said each time Omar insisted he repeat what he’d said.

“You are pushing me, you hear me, boy? You are trying my patience, and I am sick and tired of it,” Omar snarled, the undulating cadence so swiftly perilous that Benjy gripped the chair seat.

“Does my mother know you’re living with Bernadette Mansaw?” Norm asked.

Omar’s chest rose and fell with panting. “Your mother knows Miss Mansaw’s one of my investors. But what she doesn’t know is about you and your friends terrifying that young woman. And in the process, daring to bandy about my good name, slandering me—that’s what your mother doesn’t know. But maybe she should. Maybe I shouldn’t protect you anymore, boy. Seems to me you’re on a downhill slide, anyway, drinking and brawling and killing an innocent creature in the process.”

“You asshole!” Norm cried, running at Omar, who only had time to raise his hands.

“Norm!” Benjy shouted.

Omar ducked as Norm swung. He grabbed Norm’s arm and yanked him off balance.

“Please, Norm!” Benjy yelled as Norm rushed at Omar again. Omar was on his feet now. He raised his hands, palms inward, like a priest’s silent prayer during Mass. He stared at Norm with a rapture that might have been pleasure but for the quivering bloodless mouth.

“Come on!” Norm said.

“Norm!” Benjy grabbed his brother’s shirt and tried to pull him back, a futile gesture against Norm’s straining chest and arms. But not strong enough, Benjy knew, remembering Earlie’s wide back and thick arms.

“Please don’t, Norm, please!” he cried, unable to contain the horror.

The kitchen shook with the familiar rumble of their mother’s car pulling into the driveway. Their hands fell to their sides.

She raced inside, too agitated to notice the breathless strain between them.

She tossed her purse onto the table. “Oh!” she said with a glance at Omar.

“How good to see you back.”

“I know. It’s been one hell of a week,” he said, ignoring her sarcasm. “But harder on you than me, I’m sure,” he added quickly, reaching to touch her 344 / MARY MCGARRY MORRIS

arm, but she darted away. He watched her rummage loudly through the cupboard for a pan. “So how’d it go with Sam?”

She stood at the sink filling the pan with water. “He knew about it,” she said in a high thin voice. “Of course he says he didn’t really know, that he wasn’t sure just how much it was. But he knew. I could tell. All this time when I never knew where our next dime was coming from, he’s been sitting on his nest egg.” She put the pan on the burner and looked back at Norm posted in the doorway, watching Omar. “You could’ve at least set the table,”

she said to Norm. “Is that too much to expect?”

“No sooner said than done,” Omar said, sliding the plates from the shelf.

“The boy’s had a long day.”

“Oh really?” Her voice trembled. “You want to hear what a long day is, I’ll tell you.” She was grabbing bowls of sauce, lettuce, and a cucumber from the refrigerator and banging them down on the table. “I’ve had it! I’m not fooling around anymore. I told him. He’s got a week. One week and then I’ll sue them all. Him!” she vowed, tearing the lettuce into chunks. “His mother! His sister! Renie! The whole goddamn warped bunch of them!”

Norm had gone to his room. Benjy turned on the television. Omar stayed in the kitchen, helping her cook and set the table, soothing her, finally making her laugh, softening her voice, whispering that he loved her. That he needed her so badly he was on fire inside.

After lying awake for hours, Benjy had made up his mind. To continue this way was too dangerous. He waited in the heat in his narrow room until the rest of the house lay dark and soundless.

He opened the door, listened, then tiptoed down the stairs to the couch, where Omar slept on his side, his naked back exposed, the rolls of flesh at his waist pale in the streetlight that shone through the open window. His shoes were on the floor, his suit and shirt draped over the chair. He did not snore, but wheezed, the high end of it like a whimper. Benjy stood by the couch, certain of his decision, but still not sure just how to handle it.