Songs in Ordinary Time (2 page)

These were the Menka twins, Howard and Jozia. Howard was the Monsignor’s handyman at Saint Mary’s. Jozia worked across the street from the church for the Fermoyle family, whose housekeeper she had been for thirty years.

They began to climb West Street hill, Jozia’s long legs carrying her yards ahead of her shorter brother. Every now and again he trotted to catch up.

This morning she walked even faster. Today was trash day, and she wanted to finish her work early so she could go down and visit with Grondine Carson, the muscular garbage man. This time she’d make sure it was all done so Mrs. LaChance wouldn’t get mad like last week when she came out on the porch and yelled down to Grondine, didn’t he know a standing swill truck drew flies and oughtn’t he hurry it up and move on, instead of bothering people that had plenty of work to do?

“Slow down!” Howard ran up to her. “What’s your big rush?” He glanced away sadly when she did not answer. He knew what her big rush was, just as he knew the reason for the pin curls under her yellow kerchief and the blue perfume bottle in her pocketbook. He had seen her gooney-eyeing that 4 / MARY MCGARRY MORRIS

old pigman Carson over the Fermoyles’ barrels enough times now to know what was happening. Last Friday Carson had given her the blue perfume bottle. All weekend long, it sat on the kitchen table staring at him like a cold watery eye. He shivered.

“Lookit them geraniums,” he chattered now in a high-pitched nervous voice. “Not half’s big as the ones I did.” He trotted up to her again. “I put manure on mine. Miz Arkaday said not to, but I did.” He giggled into his palm. “I did anyways.”

Jozia glanced down at him. “You oughter do like you’re told,” she said.

“Specially to Miz Arkaday.”

“She ain’t my boss,” said Howard. “The Monsignor’s
my
boss. Not her!”

“Miz Arkaday runs the reckery,” Jozia said. “So she’s your boss to the Monsignor. Jest like Miz LaChance’s my boss to her mother. It’s called a…a change of demand, Miz LaChance says.” She flicked him a haughty smile, then strode briskly on.

Howard paused, fists clenched, mouth trembling. He ran up to her. “You think you’re so smart. You think you know everythin’, don’t ya?”

“Shet your mouth,” Jozia snapped. “Or I’ll shet it for ya.” She did not break stride.

Hurt swamped his sluggish face. “Least on my job I ain’t got four bosses!”

he yelled after her.

She turned. “Who’s four?”

“The two ya got and Sam and Mr. LaChance,” Howard said, pleased that she was waiting.

“Sam Fermoyle ain’t my boss. You know that! And Mr. LaChance, he don’t count. He ain’t nobody’s boss,” she huffed, and started walking again.

Secretly she considered herself Mr. LaChance’s boss. She liked to think that Mr. LaChance was as scared of her as he was of his wife, Helen. “And pretty soon,” she called back to Howard, “you’re gonna have three bosses.

Monsignor’s getting a new priest.”

“I know that!” Howard said. “I knew before you did!”

“You did not!”

“I did too!”

“Did not!”

“Did too!” he shouted, running up to her.

They were in front of the armory. Across the street on the corner of the park, Joey Seldon was stocking his red cooler with cans of soda. Like the milk truck rattling by and his radio songs, their voices were such a part of the blind man’s morning that he did not raise his head as they passed.

“Then how come you never said nothin’?” Jozia demanded.

“’Cause!” Howard’s chin went out. “Monsignor said I’m not sposta say what I hear. What I hear’s God’s business and nobody else.” He looked up slyly. “And I hear all kindsa good stuff.”

Jozia rolled her eyes. “You’re jest full of it. Fack, you’re so full of it, I got to laugh. Ha ha!”

With Jozia in the lead, they continued across Main Street.

SONGS IN ORDINARY TIME / 5

“There’s the Judge,” Howard said as they approached the Mayo sisters’

boardinghouse, where the familiar figure in the upper window stared past them.

“Finer man ever live,” Jozia sighed in the same tone Mrs. LaChance always used. As they passed the gabled and turreted house with its weedy front lawn and its striped awnings faded and torn, Jozia’s eyes blurred and her mouth sagged in a wet smile.

Her faraway look frightened Howard; she was thinking about that pigman again. He nudged her. “I know somethin’ else too. Somethin’ about Miz LaChance,” he said loudly.

She blinked. “You don’t know nothin’ I don’t know,” she sniffed. She held up two knobby crossed fingers. “’Cause Miz LaChance and me’re jest like that. Jest like sisters almost.”

A little smile perked Howard’s face. “I know that house ain’t hers. Not really.”

“’Course it’s hers,” Jozia said. Now that they were a block from church she pulled off the kerchief and slipped the bobby pins from her hair. The little curls clung to her head like shiny round worms. “Hers and old Miz Fermoyle’s, and someday,
all
hers.”

“Oh no, it ain’t,” Howard whispered. “Nossir!”

“Oh you’re jest so full of it, you make me wanna puke sometimes.”

Howard shuddered. Jozia knew he hated that word,
puke
. Just the sound of it turned his stomach.

“Whose house is it then if it ain’t hers?” Jozia smirked.

“Never mine,” he said, lagging behind.

“Never mine ‘never-mine’!” Jozia snapped. “’Cause you don’t know, that’s how come ‘never mine.’”

“I do so know! I know better’n you!”

“You don’t know nothin’ better’n me! Fack, you don’t know nothin’ better’n anybody. Fack, you’re ’bout the dumbest person I ever knowed!”

“Oh yah?”

“Yah!”

“Okay! Okay! Then I’m not tellin’! And next time you wanna know who was that comin’ outta the reckery crying, go and ask…somebody else.”

Howard blinked. He had almost said,
Go and ask Grondine Carson
.

“See! You’re jest making things up again to get my goat.”

“Okay, then. It’s Sam’s house, that’s whose house!” he blurted.

“Is not!” Jozia said bitterly.

“Is so!” His chin went way out this time. “And Miz LaChance’s scareda him finding out. She told Monsignor, she said it’s all a trust. That only the Judge knows. And her.” There were a lot of things only Mrs. LaChance knew, like poisoning her husband’s nice dog Riddles and making Howard bury him out in the backyard before Mr. LaChance got home from work.

After that he’d quit working for Mrs. LaChance. A lady that could do that to such a nice dog could do anything to anyone.

Jozia shook her head so violently that her lips trembled. “You’re crazy.

6 / MARY MCGARRY MORRIS

You got it all messed up. It’s old Miz Fermoyle’s house. Then when she dies, it’s gonna be all Miz LaChance’s house. Jest yesterday Miz LaChance, she said to Sam, ‘This is my house,’ she said. “And I don’t hafta put up with no crazy drunks.’” Jozie nodded vehemently. “That’s what she said and everybody knows what a holy woman Miz LaChance is.”

“She ain’t holy,” Howard muttered. “Jest cheap.”

“Cheap!” Jozia laughed that shrieky superior laugh of hers that so rankled her twin. “Cheap don’t go buying two new doors for the church!”

“That’s when I heard her!” Howard said. “After the man from the paper took the picture of her and Monsignor with the doors, and Monsignor said thanks, and Miz LaChance said it was least she could do. ‘Beside,’ she said,

‘better the money be going to the church than the barroom.’ And Monsignor said, ‘Acourse not,’ she could trust him. And Miz LaChance said she knew that, and Monsignor said how the church needs a new roof and the convent boiler’s not gonna make winter and the Bishop’s all outta money to help, so’s the only way to do all them repairs is bake sales and bingo, only he don’t have a church hall. And then he said how she and her mother’s house being right across the street’d be perfeck and would she ever thinka selling to the parish. Acourse he shouldna even ask, ’cause he could never pay the whole price it would cost. And Miz LaChance said she was awful shamed to say it, and how nobody knew but the Judge and now him. She said the house was her brother’s and her mother’s, and after her mother dies, it’s all Sam’s house, and not one bit hers, after all her work, all her slaving. And Monsignor said how that ain’t fair, and Miz LaChance said her mother spoiled Sam rotten, and how he was always the favorite and she was always the one to pick up the pieces, and Monsignor started saying he thought the phone was ringing, so he’d better go get it, like he does when he’s sicka talking. And Miz LaChance started crying and saying how all she ever got was leftovers her whole life, nothing but everbody’s leftovers, and if anything ever happened to her mother, she’d be out in a street. And Monsignor said, ‘Well, probably you’ll be getting your mother’s three tenement houses, Helen.’ And Miz LaChance really started bawling then, and she said no, she wouldn’t even get them. She said they’s going to Sam’s kids. Each kid’d get one.”

Jozia blew her red nose into her kerchief. Tears streamed down her face.

“Poor Miz LaChance,” she sniffed.

“How ’bout poor you?” Howard said. “Soon’s old Missus Fermoyle’s dead, they ain’t gonna be no more job left. And then watcha gonna do?”

“I dunno and I don’t care!”

“You gotta care!”

“You shut up, Howard! You jest shet your mouth!” she said, speeding ahead. “I’m so sicka you and your mean mouth!”

“Wait fer me!” Howard cried as she hurried down the walk to the white marble church.

Jozia paused and shouted, “You jest go by yourself. And you jest sit by yourself, too. I’m sicka you!”

SONGS IN ORDINARY TIME / 7

Howard bounded up the steps and reached past her for the door, just as she reared back at him with her purse, and the perfume bottle inside met his cheekbone with a stinging jolt. She ran into the church. Touching the welt, Howard tried to blink back tears before going inside. He staggered down the aisle to the front pew, their favorite one, but Jozia knelt steadfastly at the entrance and would not let him in.

A
t eleven o’clock the Judge’s telephone rang.

“I’m sorry,” May said softly, “but the Judge can’t come to the phone just now.” She glanced at the back of his head and lowered her voice. “Could I take a message?”

“If you would,” replied a woman’s stern voice. “This is Helen LaChance calling. Helen Fermoyle LaChance. The Judge will know…. Would you tell him I’m having a…a bit of a problem here.”

“Of course,” May said. In the background she heard a man’s drunken bellow.

“Get back in your room,” Helen LaChance hissed away from the phone.

“This is my house just as much as yours,” Sam Fermoyle cried. “And if I say she’s fired, she’s fired.” His voice grew louder. “You hear me, Jozia, you’re done! You’re fired! Now get the hell outta my sight, you stupid, no good…”

“Excuse me,” Helen LaChance said into the phone, then with her hand over the mouthpiece, her muffled voice warned the obstreperous man, “I’ve got the Judge on the line….”

“Lemme talk…Judge!”

“Get away from me!”

“Give me the goddamn…”

With the dark struggle thrashing at the end of the line, May’s eyes held on the Judge as if to keep him from being toppled in the scuffle.

“Get back…”

“We’ll see who’s…”

“Don’t you touch me…. Judge! Judge! I want those committal papers signed….”

“Hey.” The drunken voice laughed, receding into the distance. “I was only kidding. You know what a kidder I am, Jozia. Jozia!”

“Get back in your room!”

A door slammed.

“I’m sorry,” Helen LaChance said breathlessly. “It’s my brother. He’s trying to fire my housekeeper…. Wait! You just wait! Where do you think you’re going?” Mrs. LaChance demanded suddenly. “Excuse me,” she said desperately. “But my brother just stormed out of here. Tell the Judge I don’t want Sam to see Mother’s papers. Tell the Judge…oh…oh, I’m sorry.”

T
he sun rose higher and higher and higher still, straight, straight up, until all at once, in a dizzying moment, there was heat. And from the percussion of glare and shadow, there erupted a blaze of bees on petals, a 8 / MARY MCGARRY MORRIS

dazzling blur of colored balls, spinning spokes and racing bikes, a motionless whir of skipping ropes and schoolyard screams, and the thump and clatter of quick dark burrowings, and scamperings, and the cicadas’ hard dusty hum, and the close ear-buzz of bugs and the tender flesh-bite of gnats, and the bone-clang of shovels sparking stone beneath the giddy, bright-flapping, tattered frenzy of birdflight, spinning faster and faster, nearer and nearer the sun. All over town winter-grimed windows rattled up, and front doors creaked open.

O
mar Duvall crept from yard to yard, his white suit streaked with dirt, his straw hat shapeless in his sweaty clutch. They were still looking for him. He had spotted them twice since morning, cruising the streets slowly, slowly, with all the time and patience in the world to search until they found him.

T
he early-afternoon sun poured in on the Judge, who had shifted in the chair. His chin hung farther down on his chest as his shoulders hunched closer together.

The phone began to ring. It was Joey Seldon. From the window May could see the blind man down in the telephone booth that was across the street from his popcorn stand. He shouted to be heard over passing traffic.

“I’m sorry,” May said. “But the Judge can’t come to the phone just now.”

“Tell him it’s Joey,” he hollered. “He’ll come.”

“I’m sorry, but he’s not feeling very well.”

“He’s not sick, is he?” Joey’s voice tightened.

“A little.” May closed her eyes.

“Oh no!” Joey groaned. “He won’t miss the council meeting, will he? It’s tomorrow night.”

“Um…I really don’t know,” May said, her eyes burning. There was no air to breathe.

“Look, tell him he’s got to make it. Tell him Greene just stopped by, and tomorrow night’s the vote. Tell him Greene says he’s got enough votes this year to turn down my lease for the stand.”

“Yes,” May muttered as if scribbling this all down. “Of course…enough votes…to turn down lease….”

“Tell him Greene’s on the warpath again….”