Songs in Ordinary Time (56 page)

It bewildered her—not only what he was saying, but that he was telling
her
. She didn’t know what to say. Like beating Mr. Quillan at horseshoes—this was a distant world. “Well, you could still be a good person and help people without being a priest,” she said.

“I know. Of course you can. But I think a priest can do more. I mean, being a priest carries more weight. People listen to you.” He laughed. “That’s what I always thought, anyway. But you see, my point is, then something like the other day happens, which was wrong, which never should have happened, and that’s the terrible dilemma of making mistakes as a priest.

It makes it all that much more confusing and burdensome for you. I mean my…my actions.” He shook his head with a futile sigh. “I’m afraid I’m not articulating this very well.”

“No, I understand. I do,” she said, afraid he’d start explaining it all over again.

He started to say something, then stopped with a rueful snort. “You’re a good kid and I appreciate your patience and your understanding.” He patted her shoulder and told her she was too fine a person and too vulnerable right now for anyone to mess up. “I’m sorry. I’m really sorry for what happened,” he said.

“That’s okay,” she said. “Really.”

“No,” he said sadly. He kept looking at her. “No, it’s not. Believe me.”

272 / MARY MCGARRY MORRIS

He turned suddenly and started the car. He drove slowly, the silence awkward between them. When he pulled into the driveway she fumbled for the door handle and thanked him for the ride.

“Alice,” he said as the door opened; then he cleared his throat.

Looking back, she was repelled again by his intensity, a rawness pulsating like an exposed nerve.

He took her hand. “Thanks,” he said, squeezing so hard her fingers hurt.

“Thanks for listening to me.”

“Oh God,” she groaned, running up the driveway.

N
orm was allowed out of the house to go to work, but he had to come straight home afterward. He still couldn’t use the car or the phone or see his friends. He lay on his bed like this in the dark, night after night, his insides shriveled, a mass of pain in the cavity where his heart had been.

Even swallowing hurt, with this constant lump in his throat. Every day a new crop of pimples erupted on his cheeks and the bridge of his nose. With his hands under his head he listened to the branch scraping back and forth across the screen. Hearing another sound, he sat up and listened. Was someone crying? He put his ear to the wall, but his mother’s room was silent.

Was it Benjy? Was it Mrs. Klubock?

His stomach turned every time he thought of driving the car over Klubocks’ dog. He’d tried to get Benjy to tell him what had happened, but he wouldn’t. Benjy could barely look at him. The poor kid had probably felt every crunch and crack under the tires. His last memory that night was Weeb’s sister, Janice, pushing him away as she told him to stop slobbering over her. He didn’t know why his pants were unzipped, and he couldn’t even remember driving home. When he asked Benjy if there had been any close calls, all he’d said was “Nope.”

He was worried about his brother, but if he said anything the whole mess would be thrown in his face again. Benjy was always in the house, either watching television or sleeping. And now that the couch had become Duvall’s bed, Benjy spent most of the night in his room.

There it was again. He sat up. It sounded as if Benjy was crying. He got out of bed and tapped lightly on his door. Shadows flickered on the stairway wall. Omar was down there, laughing at something on television. Benjy didn’t answer, so he opened the door. Benjy was sitting on his dark bed in this niche the previous family had used as a sewing room. There was just space enough for a bed and small chest of drawers. There was a doorless closet and one narrow window, directly over the bed.

“Jesus, Benjy, it must be a hundred degrees in here.” He knelt on the bed and opened the window. He braced it with the split yardstick from the windowsill. This had been the last sash rope to fray and break. Getting off the bed, he told Benjy he still remembered how when they’d first moved in every window had stayed open by itself. He knew from Benjy’s breathing he was trying not to cry. “I even remember there was a door on that closet, but it wouldn’t open with the bed in the room, so me and Mom had to take SONGS IN ORDINARY TIME / 273

it off.” He didn’t say it, but his most vivid memory of the day they had moved in had been their mother’s elation at having their own home, and his sense of power and pride at being the man of the house carrying boxes and dragging rugs inside with his mother. Funny how these tiny rooms had seemed so enormous then.

Benjy knelt on the bed. He was trying to close the window.

“What’re you doing?” he asked.

“It’s that smell. I hate that smell.”

Norm sniffed. “It’s just the pig farm. It’s not even that bad tonight.”

“It makes me feel sick,” Benjy said, letting the window fall shut. He locked it, then sat back against the wall and slapped the broken yardstick against the mattress.

Norm turned on the light, and Benjy squinted in the glare. “You’re scared.

Why’re you scared?”

“I’m not scared.” Benjy stared down at the weathered stick.

“Then why’re you up in your room all the time? Why’re you acting so creepy lately?” His chest ached with anger. Why couldn’t Benjy be as strong as he was? There was nothing and no one to fear. No one but their mother.

Benjy shrugged.

“Why won’t you even look at me? What is it? What the fuck did I do?”

he demanded.

Benjy kept flipping the yardstick, his features dulled by teary bloat.

“You think I ran over that dog on purpose? You do, don’t you?” he cried, grabbing his brother’s wrist and yanking him close, but Benjy stared past him. “I didn’t do it on purpose. I didn’t! I wouldn’t have done that, you know that. I never would have. I know I wouldn’t.”

The tears running down his brother’s face revealed the truth, the vast and horrible truth about himself: he had aimed the car and killed the dog coldly and deliberately, and Benjy knew it. He stood up and began to pound his head with his fist. “Fuck! Fuck! Fuck! Fuck!” he groaned as Benjy sobbed into his pillow.

He was going into his room when the television went off. Duvall was roaming around downstairs. It was all his fault, the peddler, Norm thought, crawling into bed; because the money he’d gotten drunk on the night he humiliated himself in front of Janice Miller, the night he killed Klubocks’

dog, probably chasing him, crossing over the grass strip and Klubocks’

driveway as the dog dove into the lilac bush, that money had come from Duvall in a twisted convolution of betrayal and setup. And ever since that night Duvall had been completely in charge here. Duvall was calling the shots, with everyone just where he wanted them. He closed his eyes. Duvall was pulling the strings, making them all dance faster and faster. His heart began to race. And now through the hollow wall between the rooms, there came that thin cry, that gasping again.

He rolled over and listened in astonishment. That’s what he’d heard before. That’s what he’d walked in on. Jesus Christ, his little brother hadn’t been crying, but going at it full throttle. Imagine that. He pulled the pillow 274 / MARY MCGARRY MORRIS

over his head, to muffle the last pathetic groan. That bastard Duvall. It was all his fault, everything.

O
n Friday morning when Alice got up, Benjy told her that Father Gannon had called earlier. He’d said not to wake her up, just give her a message. He was going to be in Proctor late tonight helping Father Krystecki stack firewood, and he’d stop by the A+X and give her a ride home from work. She was mad at Benjy for not waking her up and mad at Father Gannon for being so nervy, but then by the end of the long, hot night was too tired to care anymore.

Father Gannon arrived the minute the lights went out. He waited while she finished her closing chores. She saw Blue Mooney peer down into the Monsignor’s car on his way into the kitchen. She began to hang the clean pots over the grill. Mooney was telling Fawnie Anuta about a fight he’d had earlier this evening with two creeps who thought he’d tried to cut them off the road. His voice rose and she realized the story was really for her benefit. Now he was bragging about some job he was trying to get. He’d be driving a truck. Far from here, she hoped.

Father Gannon grinned when she got into the car. As he drove he told her how Father Krystecki was clearing the lot behind the rectory himself so that a new parking lot could be paved. Whenever he could, Father Gannon went out there to help him split and stack the wood.

“What a workout,” he sighed.

“Sounds like it,” she said, both yawning and rubbing her nose against the sharp smell of sweat.

He slowed down as he approached her street. “You’re tired, huh?”

“Yah I am. I really am.” They’d been busy all night and she couldn’t wait to go to bed.

“Here we are,” he said, turning into the driveway. “Well, that didn’t take long.” Something in his voice made her think of that dark rectory, the only sound the Monsignor clearing his throat, grunting, and sneezing the way he did all through Mass. Before she could close the door he leaned across the seat to say he’d be coming back from Proctor this same time tomorrow if she needed a ride.

At eleven o’clock Saturday night it was still eighty degrees, with the temperature in the A+X kitchen at least a hundred degrees. They had been too busy all night for anyone to take breaks. Even Blue Mooney had been put to work on the grill with Anthology, who bullied him and laughed every time his cousin made a mistake. Mooney was rolling a trash barrel through the lot when Father Gannon pulled in. Alice saw him lean into the priest’s window to tell him they were closed. Father Gannon gestured toward the building. Mooney pointed toward the street and said something. When Father Gannon started to back up, she ran outside. “He can wait here!” she said.

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“Well, I just didn’t want people thinking we’re open,” Mooney said, his face reddening.

“I can wait out there. That’s no problem.” Father Gannon started to shift again.

“No!” she insisted, surprised at how angry she felt. “You wait right here, Father. I’ll be done in a few minutes. And no one’s going to think we’re open!” she said, glaring at Mooney.

“Father!” Mooney said, on her heels heading toward the kitchen. “What do you mean, father? Like someone’s father father?”

“He’s a priest,” she said, even more annoyed by his relieved grin.

Instead of his collar Father Gannon wore a soiled dark-blue shirt. He apologized for his appearance, the bits of bark on his shoulder and even in his hair. He and Father Krystecki had been splitting word since suppertime.

When they finished they’d collapsed on the back porch, both so thirsty that Father Gannon said they’d each downed three beers one after another.

Something went cold and tight inside. Three beers. She kept glancing at him, but he seemed perfectly normal. Definitely more relaxed, if not a little silly. He was laughing now because he had early Mass tomorrow and he still hadn’t prepared his sermon.

“So what’re you going to do?” she asked, yawning.

“Actually I was thinking I’d work on it now if you don’t mind riding around awhile.” He looked at her and smiled. “I’ve kind of got the gist of it.”

“Oh. Okay. Sure,” she said, trying not to show her exasperation. She was so exhausted she could barely keep her eyes open, and now she had to listen to a midnight homily.

He hunched over the wheel and cleared his throat loudly. He drove down Main Street. In the moonlight the marble church glowed a ghostly white.

He passed her corner. “My sermon today is about value and redemption,”

he began. “Now I know not everyone collects the same kind of stamps, but you probably all have the same difficulties when it comes to redemption….”

Her eyes closed. Her head bobbed as she dozed, lulled by the drone of his voice and the car’s engine. She dreamed she was in a store filled with feathered hats, bright silk dresses, and soft leather shoes. Her arms ached from carrying all the beautiful clothes she wanted to buy if only she could find a cashier. She staggered up and down the aisles, but there was no one to help her. Finally she saw a tiny woman standing by a cash register at the front door. The woman, who was no bigger than a child, kept shaking her head as she piled the clothes onto the counter. “You’re just wasting your time,” the woman said.

“Alice!” Father Gannon was nudging her arm. “Alice, wake up! You’re home.”

She stared at him. Her eyes were burning. Her thoughts raced. She was home. The woman would only take green stamps. And Father Gannon had just been saying there weren’t enough redemption centers.

“Are you awake?”

276 / MARY MCGARRY MORRIS

“Yes.”

“Boy, that was record time. You were sound asleep two sentences into my sermon.”

She tried to explain how tired she was and what a long day it had been, but that it had been a wonderful sermon, really. And now he was laughing so hard he could barely speak.

“I was only kidding,” he finally managed to say. “I was talking about saving green stamps. It was a joke.” He turned so instantly somber that she thought he might be angry. “I was trying to be funny,” he said with a self-conscious laugh. He kept looking at her as if he needed to say something.

She could feel him watching her as she hurried down the driveway.

She lay in bed for a long time, unable to sleep. She kept thinking of him saying her name, “Alice? Wake up, Alice,” over and over. Alice, Alice, with his hand on her arm.

By the end of the next night she kept glancing up at the clock. She was in the supply room when Mr. Coughlin limped out of Carla’s car on crutches.

Carla had driven him to the hospital, where they’d been for the last hour.

Earlier in the evening one of Carla’s customers had driven off with the tray attached to his car, an oversight that always enraged Mr. Coughlin. While he and Carla were screaming at each other, he reared back and kicked the side of the building. His big toe was broken.