Songs in Ordinary Time (10 page)

Ahead on the right aisle was the baseball display. If no one was around he could get a glove for Norm. But he didn’t dare. Mr. Briscoe might be down any one of these aisles, and besides, taking something from the store really would be stealing. Tennis balls and badminton birdies and fishing flies from the boxes out back were one thing, but a catcher’s mitt right off the counter, with a price tag—no, that was too expensive, too planned. He put it back on the counter.

He continued to the back of the store, through the warehouse, toward his mother’s office, a windowless cubicle she shared with Astrid, the part-time bookkeeper. Astrid’s slurpy voice and the steady tap of a typewriter filled the dim warehouse like gray rain. Directly under Mr. Briscoe’s office, he paused. The windows on this side had also been replaced with mirrors. He looked around at all the cartons and wooden crates. One entire wall was lined with bicycle boxes. He proceeded slowly, hands clenched in his pockets, eyes scanning labels on the stacked boxes. His last time in here, he’d gotten Norm a jar of cream to rub on his glove. While Norm professed dismay with his thievery, he always kept what Benjy brought him. It had come to be their punishment for Briscoe’s underpaying their mother.

Whenever there were loose tennis balls he always took a couple for Klubocks’

dog.

“It was just three couples,” Astrid was saying. His mother’s office had no ceiling, only walls, and a frosted-glass door. He knew his mother must be glad Mr. Briscoe couldn’t look down into the office anymore. As much as she admired Mr. Briscoe’s keen business sense, she thought he was too 44 / MARY MCGARRY MORRIS

nosy. “Some people from the wire plant,” Astrid continued. His mother’s typewriter never stopped. “Well to hear him, you’d think I’d invited the whole town.”

The phone rang once. The typing stopped and his mother’s musical store-voice answered, “Briscoe’s Sporting Goods. Yes, we carry them, but Jake’s not on the floor right now…. That’s right…. He’s at the Judge’s funeral….

Call back around four.” His mother resumed typing.

“I think we drank maybe three six-packs total.” Astrid sighed. “The thing is, because he’s older, he thinks I’m always comparing him to younger guys.” There was a pause and then she giggled. “And I keep telling him,

‘No, Bobby, it’s you I want, you and all your money.’”

The typing continued. His mother never said a word. Astrid better watch it, he thought as he opened the door.

Astrid grinned at him. “Hey! Look who’s here!” she laughed. “My favorite boyfriend!” She winked, snapping her gum as her fingers darted over the adding-machine buttons. A long roll of paper unfurled to the floor. Astrid was small; a woman’s body at child’s height. Her harlequin glasses flashed with rhinestone chips. Her teased and sprayed hair seemed an aureole of spun glass. Her skin was lovely, so clear, so moist it glistened. He loved looking at her. Certainly she was the most exotic woman he had ever known.

She had started working here last fall. His mother said she wouldn’t last very long, that she was out of her element in this dull little town, a Las Vegas showgirl married to a homely insurance man old enough to be her father.

“Just a minute, Benjy,” his mother said. Here, she acted different; she never swore or banged things in anger. Like the pleasant voice that had just answered the phone, this smile was seen only here, set with a calmness that looked almost painful. Only her eyes betrayed her; boiling and quick, they probed him like fingers. Compared with Astrid, his mother looked tired and plain. He waited by the desk while she finished typing a letter. “She’ll be right with you, honey. Your mom’s a champ, a real champ. ’Course what she needs is a little fun.” Astrid gave a rueful laugh. “Don’t we all. I mean, you’d think three couples was a mob or something.”

It was a moment before he realized she was talking to his mother again.

After each phrase she slurped saliva in through her teeth. In a picture she’d shown his mother she was dressed in a skimpy black costume, spike heels, and a little white apron. It had been a year ago in Las Vegas that she met Bob Haddad one night and married him the next. Benjy had seen them together recently and he’d been shocked at how homely Haddad seemed, how dark and loutish next to Astrid’s clear pink skin and silvery hair. She had a brand-new convertible and she wore outrageously glamorous clothes for a place like Atkinson. People said Bob Haddad was going crazy trying to please her. He’d bought her a new house and new furniture. Astrid claimed she did part-time bookkeeping here and at the wire plant just to keep busy and meet people, but his mother said the word around town was that Bob Haddad was deeply in debt. Benjy knew a lot of odd facts like that SONGS IN ORDINARY TIME / 45

about adults in town. Alice said it was because their mother had no friends, no one else to talk to but her children.

“So now he says no more parties. He says we got to get more serious about life. More serious! If he gets any more serious, I tell him, he’ll be dead.

You can’t get much more serious than dead, huh, kid?” She winked. Her fingers tapped, the rings sparkling as they flew. “Everything’s such a goddamn calamity, you know…”

When Marie finished typing she opened her desk drawer and took out a paper bag. The broken washing machine dial was in it.

“…like this thing up in the park,” Astrid continued, “the blind man’s popcorn stand. So what if it looks shitty. So what if it’s gonna fall down!

Who cares! Who the hell cares!”

“Bring it to Uncle Renie,” his mother was saying, so inured to Astrid’s monologues that she hadn’t bothered to apologize. “Tell him if it’s not one thing wrong, it’s another, and I’m sick of it!”

Astrid glanced their way. “Yah! And that goes ditto for me, too!”

“Remind him this is the eighth time in two years that washing machine’s broken down on me!”

“Yah! And don’t take any crap from him, either, kid!” Astrid grinned.

“Astrid!” his mother said, her voice tight. “Would you please shut up!”

He cringed, afraid his mother would start screaming the way she did at home.

“I was tryna help!” Astrid said. “That’s all….”

“Well I wouldn’t do this to you if you were in the middle of a conversation,” his mother said.

“Well I wouldn’t care if you did,” Astrid said, pouting. “I wouldn’t get all worked up!” Her voice grew whiny and small. “I wouldn’t say anything to hurt your feelings. You think you’re the only one with problems. Well you’re not!” She stood up so suddenly that her chair flew back. “Other people have problems too, you know!” she shouted, slamming the door behind her. The cubicle’s walls shook.

His mother had been staring down at the desk. She took a deep breath, then looked up, her eyes as flat as her voice. For a moment he had a sense that, like him, she had another life and this other life was a terrible burden sometimes. “You tell Uncle Renie he either fixes the timer or gives me a new washing machine, okay?”

“Okay,” he said, knowing he could never say any of it.

“Benjy!” she called when he was at the door.

“Yah?” He started back. His toes curled in his shoes. Was it the lost glove?

“Oh, nothing,” she said, gesturing him off. “Just…just…if Mr. Duvall comes to the house, would you call me?” she said thinly, breathlessly, hopefully. “I want to be sure I have food…if he comes, that is. I asked him, but he never really said.”

He hurried through the warehouse to avoid Astrid, who must have run into the bathroom. The toilet kept flushing. He squinted now as he entered the store, blindingly bright with its fluorescent lights and shelves of colored 46 / MARY MCGARRY MORRIS

boxes and glass cases of hunting knives and pistols. In the middle of the store, dangling by nylon wires from the ceiling, was an orange rubber life raft. As he passed underneath, it rocked gently as if on invisible waves. At the baseball display he stopped. There, heaped on the counter, were baseball gloves of every size and shape, and right on the very edge was a soft lustrous catcher’s mitt exactly like Norm’s. Opening his bookbag he tapped the glove into it, then ran to the front of the store. He grinned as his hand closed on the cold brass handle.

“Hold it!” a voice boomed from above, from everywhere. “Hold it! Hold it right there!”

He turned. Overhead a mirror slid open. Mr. Briscoe leaned out from the waist and pointed down at him. “You wait right there, young man! Don’t you dare move!”

It took Mr. Briscoe a few minutes to get down into the store. He was a portly man, red-faced and always panting. By the time Mr. Briscoe reached him, Benjy realized he should have put the glove back on the counter, but now it was too late. Mr. Briscoe had just retrieved it from his bag. He held it up and rocked back on his heels.

“You didn’t have to do this, son. No boy ever has to steal from Briscoe’s.

Especially you, Benjy. Why’d you do this?”

His eyes fixed in terror on the door into the warehouse. He expected to see his mother charge through it, her face white, eyes wide, her fists swinging.

“You want this glove?” Mr. Briscoe asked, holding it out to him.

He shook his head no. He could not speak. He could barely breathe.

“Take it,” Mr. Briscoe said, jabbing the glove into his chest. “It’s yours.

You can have it!”

He shook his head, his hands heavy at his sides.

“Here!” Mr. Briscoe insisted. “Take it!” His face was getting redder. “Don’t you want it?”

All he wanted was to get out of here before his mother saw him. “I’m sorry,” he tried to say, but it wrung out of him like a whimper.

Mr. Briscoe tossed the glove onto the counter and sighed. “I know what it’s like growing up in a house without a father. Things get all out of whack, don’t they?” He touched his breast pocket. “You get this empty feeling. You want something, but you never know what.” His cheeks blistered with a fine sweat as he bent closer. Benjy could almost taste the sweet cologne seeping from his pores. “Isn’t that right?”

He shrugged and nodded. He was losing track of Mr. Briscoe’s meaning.

“You thought you wanted a baseball glove; well, you didn’t really, did you? You just wanted something. You weren’t sure what, so you picked up the first thing you saw. And the whole time, all you really wanted was a friend, Benjy. That’s all!” Mr. Briscoe said, his voice rising. He clapped his hands together and grinned. “And by golly willikers, young man, you’ve got one now!” He extended his hand, and Benjy was surprised at how hard and rough it was. “Ferdinand T. Briscoe at your disposal!” he said with a SONGS IN ORDINARY TIME / 47

vigorous shake. “Just name your pleasure, son.” Briscoe’s gleaming gaze swept over the shelves and counters of merchandise. “Baseball, badminton, golf, swimming or camping, or backpacking, or fishing. Fishing!” Briscoe cried. “We’ll go out in the boat.”

Benjy’s eyes widened in horror on the swaying orange raft.

“That’s what we’ll do! The perfect sport. Oh Benjy, you’ll love it. We’ll go fishing. Just the two of us. There’s something about fishing, Benjy, a man and a boy in the middle of a great body of water…”

“But I can’t!”

“Of course you can! I’ll speak to your mother. We’ll go as soon as school’s out.”

“No, I don’t like boats.”

“Don’t like boats!” Briscoe cried. “What kind of a boy doesn’t like boats!”

“I can’t swim.” To be in water over his head terrified him.

“Can’t swim!” Briscoe reached down to muss his hair. “Well, you’ll just have to learn how, then.”

“No, I can’t,” he said, shaking his head. “I don’t want to.”

Briscoe looked at him. “I’ll tell you what, you learn how to swim and I won’t tell your mother about you taking the glove.” He smiled and held out his hand. “How’s that for a deal? Then, when you can swim, we’ll go out in the boat.”

As they shook hands Benjy felt sick to his stomach.

Benjy stood in front of Uncle Renie’s appliance store. A billhead was taped to the door. It said:

Closed for funeral.

Please
come back at 5.

I will be open an extra hour tonight to make up for any inconvenyunce.

Sorry and thank you

Yours truely,

Renie LaChance

With his cheek against the glass door, he peered into the long, narrow store. Uncle Renie’s big yellow cat was asleep on top of a washing machine.

He banged on the door, but the cat did not look up. “Here, kitty, kitty, kitty,”

he called, and still the cat did not stir.

From the corner of his eye he saw the dark uniforms of two girls in his class crossing the street at the corner. He headed in the opposite direction.

The minute he was out of their sight, he began to run up the hill. As he neared the park he could hear the tinny music from Joey Seldon’s radio.

Joey was all dressed up. He wore a gray suitcoat, pale blue pants, a white shirt, and a gold string tie. He sat on his stool, his hands in his aproned lap, his big fleshy head swaying to the music. Benjy crossed the street, passing onto the grass so he wouldn’t be heard as he came by the dilapidated popcorn stand. He looked up to see Joey’s head cock back, and then his hands reached out and gripped the sagging boards of his serving counter. He faced 48 / MARY MCGARRY MORRIS

Main Street, where a black hearse turned the corner. As it approached the stand, the hearse tapped its horn lightly and Joey’s hand shot to his temple in a stiff salute. His cheeks shone with tears.

Next round the corner chugged the Mayo sisters’ ancient Ford, with its running boards and rumble seat. High at the wheel sat Claire Mayo, her square jaw chomping up and down, while beside her, tiny and black-veiled, was May. Her gaze never left the hearse. In the second car came all the boarders, little ladies with pastel waves and bright anxious eyes. A parade of cars followed, all flying small blue flags on their hoods. Twenty-eight, twenty-nine, Benjy counted and then in the thirty-fourth, the last car, he saw Uncle Renie, waving proudly from his old green Nash. Beside him Aunt Helen’s profile was as sharp as cut stone under her black velvet cloche.

She stared straight ahead.

Benjy continued through the park, where the sight of the trampled shrubs and torn-up grass shocked him. In the distance was Saint Mary’s Church, its white marble spire gleaming oddly cold in the afternoon sun. Behind the church was the rectory. It was a trim white house with a ladder leaning against it. Balanced on the top rung was Howard Menka. He was brushing dirt from the black shutters. When Howard worked for Benjy’s grandmother he used to give Benjy sour balls. Always soft and fuzzed with pocket lint, they would sit on his tongue like dry bitter cotton. Now that Howard worked for the Monsignor he and Benjy pretended they did not know each other.