Songs in Ordinary Time (94 page)

“Miller is on the mound,” Weeb continued, broadcasting every pitch. “He gets the sign, sets, checks the runner, winds, and throws!”

Norm swung and hit another one. “Jesus, Weeb. You’re gonna be great next year.”

“You too, Norm. You haven’t missed one yet!”

“I’ll show that fuckin’ Graber!” He crouched even lower over the plate.

Weeb fired it in, and he swung and missed. The egg flew into the dirt.

“Car!” Benjy yelled as headlights turned the corner. They jumped into the car and sped off.

They drove home, and Benjy went inside. Norm dragged the hose behind the garage. Weeb had gone first, and now it was Norm’s turn. He stood against the back wall of the garage, his arms over his head, while Weeb blasted him with ice-cold water.

“Okay?” Weeb called, his wet clothes plastered to his body. “I’m freezing.”

“No,” Norm called softly. “Keep going.”

“Shit,” Weeb groaned, moving closer.

The full force of the water pelted his flesh like needles. His eyes smarted.

SONGS IN ORDINARY TIME / 459

“Jesus Christ, Norm, are you through? You gotta be clean now,” Weeb called, his teeth chattering.

“No.”

“Are you through?”

“No!” he gasped, turning his head to answer. Each time the hose moved closer, and now Weeb was only a foot away. Norm was sobbing. Weeb dropped the hose and the water gushed through the tall grass around Norm’s feet.

“That was weird,” said Weeb, his wet pant legs slapping together as he started back to the car.

“What do you mean?” Norm said, catching up with him. Now he was shivering.

“I don’t know.” Weeb shrugged. “It was just weird, that’s all.” He got into the car.

“What the hell do you mean?” Norm grabbed his arm, afraid Weeb knew he’d been crying.

“Nothing, Norm.” Weeb looked up at him. “I didn’t mean anything.”

I
t was hot and every seat at the eight o’clock Mass was filled. The dazzling stained-glass windows were alive with light and heat. Flames danced under Christ’s thin white feet. The slender Virgin Mary smiled coyly at the muscular Angel Gabriel in his shimmering white gown. The Sacred Heart of Jesus pulsated with ruby blood, and saints trembled.

Every door in the church had been left open, which only drew in the exhaust of passing automobiles and the racket of barking dogs. The sound of fluttering paper grew as men and women fanned themselves with parish bulletins that were red this week. There was a large oscillating fan on the altar. Every time it turned toward the pulpit, Father Gannon’s lacy surplice billowed and his voice rose, though he was as unaware of the brief respite as he was of the heat and his squirming flock’s discomfort. There was coughing. Throats were cleared. Shoes shuffled and scraped on the dull oak floors. The sermon was now entering its twenty-sixth minute. At the rear of the church, ushers waited with their long-handled baskets poised. They kept looking at each other. If the parking lot wasn’t cleared out by the nine o’clock, there’d be a traffic jam out there, the likes of which they couldn’t imagine.

Father Gannon could see by the ushers’ grave expressions that he had plumbed some deep well of concern in them. He smiled and held out his arms. There was so much to share with these good people. He was past bitterness, though his heart was sore with loss.

“No sparrow falls unseen,” he said. “No cry goes unheard. It is when we feel most alone, when we feel most forsaken, that we are surrounded by angels, millions of angels, hordes of angels!”

Somewhere a baby began to cry. Their faces were a blur beyond the red flutter. He was telling them about the poor children he had tried to help.

He told them about the rent strike, the hundreds of donated blankets, and 460 / MARY MCGARRY MORRIS

now his voice broke as he shared the memory of the young woman and her dying infant, his tale all the more vivid with the baby’s wails. They stared up at him over the red wings.

“It does not have to be that way,” he told them. “We can stop that kind of suffering. Poverty is a man-made evil. God did not create some men rich and others poor. God does not allocate riches or misfortune. No, He creates all men equal. It is the choices we make that shape our destiny. This,” he said a bit louder, “this is the key, the crucial element in life. Choice.”

Hands on the pulpit rim, he drew a deep breath, and from the corner of his eye he was aware of an iridescent vapor shimmering in the sunlight through the open doorway at the side of the church. Howard was hosing down the Monsignor’s egg-spattered car. And what were Howard’s choices?

he wondered. Had he been born with the same opportunity as everyone else? No, but God watched over such people. They were part of His greater design. But the injustice of this rose in his chest like sudden bile.

In the front row a woman coughed softly into the palm of her hand, and the sound seemed an explosion in the hush. Sweat rose on Father Gannon’s back. He was stuck. There was no accounting for Howard. Because of him, nothing worked. Nothing was right or equitable. There had been Radlette.

He tried now to explain the story of the sickly child and what it had meant, not so much for Radlette finally to have a warm jacket that was his own, brand new and not secondhand, but for him, a young curate, to have received so much by giving so little. He looked up. The two were connected, Radlette and Howard, but he could not find the key.

“You see,” he tried to explain, sensing by the uneasy stir that he was losing them, not just their attention, but their faith. “There is giving of a higher order that the giving of things can only prepare us for. It is in the giving of one’s self that we come closest to divine nature, to God’s love.”

Yes, this was the key element, for without love what were any of them?

What was he? But still there was the problem of Howard, who had to be more than a testing ground for their values.

He began to tell them about love, all the kinds of love, and reasons for love, and how when he had nothing to give, he had given himself. And he would do it again and again, and in this giving he was sinless. This was the choice, he explained, truly the only one of importance, the choice to love or not to love. How simple. How pure.

“And so it comes in the end to that.” He shaded his eyes and peered into the recesses of the church. The doorways were filling with people, so many latecomers just arriving. She would not be among them. She was afraid.

She had not been ready to make the choice.

“Come in! Come join us!” he cried with an exultant wave. “Don’t be shy.

Let’s make room for one another here. Push in closer to one another,” he exhorted those seated as the new arrivals started hesitantly down the aisles.

His altar boys whispered a moment; then one, Harry, a tall boy, burst out laughing and could not stop. Father Gannon winked and the boy covered his face with his hands. The sound of idling engines surrounded the church SONGS IN ORDINARY TIME / 461

like buzzing around a hive. Patrick Muley, the head usher, made his way down the packed center aisle.

Watching him approach, Father Gannon waited with outstretched arms.

He was sure it was about the problem of Howard.

“Excuse me, Father, but it’s time for the nine o’clock. That’s what all the people are here for.”

Father Gannon pushed back his sleeve, but he must have forgotten to put on his watch this morning. He had stayed up late talking to the visiting priest sent from Boston to counsel him. All the counseling had consisted of was Father Norton’s trying to convince him he should return to the hospital for a few weeks of treatment. After that he never did get to sleep, and now he realized he had not even bathed or shaved. He rubbed his whiskery chin, relieved that no one had noticed.

“Well, then, we’ll just have to start over,” he said, and a loud groan filled the church. “Come on, now, let’s be good sports,” he urged, tugging at his collar. Just then the visiting priest came out from behind the altar, accompanied by two new altar boys. The Monsignor was entering through the side door, where in the background Howard stood by the gleaming car, his hands on his hips, watching. Patrick Muley whispered in the Monsignor’s ear.

“Come down now,” the Monsignor said, his voice soft.

“But I haven’t finished,” he replied.

“Father Norton will take care of it,” the Monsignor assured him, and the visiting priest nodded gravely.

A woman in a pink dress dabbed her wet eyes with a tissue. A few people looked down at their folded hands, but most stared at the disheveled priest in the pulpit, running his hand through his unruly black hair as his breathing tore through the loudspeakers in staticky gasps.

“Well,” he said with a little laugh. “I seem to have run over my time, as they say. I’m sorry. I’m very sorry,” he muttered, as both the Monsignor and the visiting priest raised their hands to guide him down the carpeted steps.

I
t was noon when Sam woke up. He smiled to see his paycheck on the nightstand. He sat on the edge of the bed and charted another day in his notebook.

25 min. BANK—cash and deposit 25% of check in savings acct.

20 min. JELMAN’S—3 pr. socks + new handkerchiefs.

10 min. TOLLIVAR’S—newspaper, get-well card—Nora’s boy.

sympathy card—Sonny Stoner. birthday card—Helen.

10 min. POSTOFFICE—2 stamps + mail cards.

10 min. MARCO’S—box candy for Alice.

15 min. A+P—oysters + 1/2 pt. cream for stew.

An hour and a half. If he left at two he’d be back at three-thirty, time enough to read the paper, have his stew, and then a nap before work tonight.

462 / MARY MCGARRY MORRIS

He stood up and braced his foot on the windowsill to tie his shoe, and an odd sight caught his eyes. Sitting on the rectory’s back steps was Howard, with his arm draped over two large black suitcases. In front of Howard, yanking the starting cord of the lawn mower, was Father Gannon. He knew he should be angry at the young priest, but so far the only feeling he’d dared allow himself was concern for Alice, and even that was more intellectual than emotional. Recovery was so tenuous, such a precarious hope, that most days he felt as if he were cascading down a raging river while he tried to balance himself on a tiny section of board, with his legs drawn up and his chin in his knees, holding his breath, afraid to look left or right or even blink.

Across the street the rectory door opened, and he saw the Monsignor call out to Father Gannon, who continued to pull at the lawnmower cord. The Monsignor checked his watch, then spoke to Howard, who came down the steps toward Father Gannon. At that moment the lawn mower started with a roar and surged forward with the priest lurching after it. Howard looked back, and the Monsignor gestured angrily as Father Gannon mowed a long, pale strip through the broad church lawn. Howard chased after Father Gannon, then tapped him on the shoulder. He pointed back at the Monsignor, but the priest did not even look up. Instead, he swung the mower at a right angle across the front of the church, coming down its farther side, then back past the steps, where the Monsignor leaned over the rail, shouting at the heedless curate, whose cassock was salted to the knees with green grass spray. The Monsignor slipped back into the rectory.

Howard returned to the steps, where he nested himself between the two suitcases. The young priest hunched over the mower and went on carving great green squares around the church grounds.

A strange sight, he thought on his way to the kitchen, toward the vile smells of Helen’s canning. He paused at his mother’s crib. She lay against the stacked pillows, eyes and mouth open, her breathing shallow. “Hello, Mother,” he whispered and reached through the bars to touch the cold bone of her arm. He started to leave; then, seeing her mouth tremble, he took her hand. Her head turned slightly, and he realized she was staring at him. She strained as if to raise herself, her eyes bulging with the effort. Her mouth opened and closed soundlessly.

“What’s the matter, Mother? Everything’s fine. Just lay back now and rest. Everything’s fine. I’ll be back. I’m just going to run some errands and I’ll be back.”

She grew agitated again. Her hand groped feebly, as if to part a curtain.

“You’ll be pleased to know I have a very good job, Mother,” he said, easing her back down on the pillows and talking to her, something he hadn’t done in years. He described his job, and he told her how Renie was such a big deal at Cushing’s now that he picked up old Mr. Cushing and Arlo every day and drove them to the store. He told her about Renie’s new mustache and how tired Helen had been since Jozia finally quit. He told her that Alice would be leaving for college soon, and he lied and told her that he often SONGS IN ORDINARY TIME / 463

saw his sons, who were fine boys. “Marie’s done a good job with them. She really has.”

Her eyes closed, and he tiptoed into the kitchen. Helen was at the stove stirring a steaming pot with a wooden paddle. Her hair stuck out in dry clumps from the back of her neck. Her apron had come untied, and there was a yellow stain down the side of her dress. The table was strewn with vegetable peelings and sticky bowls. Sam cleared a spot and sat down with his coffee and toast. He tried to start any number of conversations, but Helen only grunted in reply. They hadn’t spoken in days. She was at the back door now, trying to drag a box of tomatoes over the threshold.

“I’ll get that,” he said, easily lifting the box. “Where do you want it?”

She pointed to the counter by the stove, and he set it down. “Thank you,”

he murmured, returning to his seat.

She turned now. “What is it? What do you want?” She peered over her glasses, which had slid to the tip of her nose.

“Nothing,” he said, watching her turn back to the stove and pick through the tomatoes, removing the largest ones from the box.

“Actually,” he said suddenly. “I was just thinking. Why don’t you and Renie go out some night? Just the two of you. I could take care of Mother.”

“Oh yes! You’d like that, wouldn’t you?” She began to plunk the tomatoes one by one into the kettle.

“No, really, Helen. I can take care of Mother. I’d manage just fine. I’m doing okay. I really am.”