Songs in Ordinary Time (58 page)

“That asshole!” he groaned.

“You’re a good Christian woman, Marie,” Duvall continued in a pained voice, “and I know you’ve been hurt, but there has to be more between a man and a woman than a peck on the lips and laying side by side. Comes a time when it just ain’t natural!” he said with a bawdy laugh that enraged Norm.

Her reply was indistinct and small with apology. Duvall was whispering.

He could hear a window being closed, the click of a light switch. Her flat shoes scuffed grittily along the floor toward the living room. He stiffened back. She wasn’t going to bring him up here to her bed, was she? And she couldn’t very well do it right out in the open down there on the couch. A chair scraped out from the table.

“Come here,” Duvall coaxed through the darkened kitchen. “Come on, now. Oh,” he sighed. “You are light as a feather. Just as soft as fluff.”

He waited until he couldn’t stand it another moment, then he came down the stairs. When he turned on the lamp in the living room they pulled apart.

She started to get up from Duvall’s lap, but he held her there.

“What do you want?” she said as Norm went to the refrigerator.

“I’m hungry,” he said, taking ice cream from the freezer. Behind him he heard her trying to struggle free of Duvall. “Let her go, you asshole!” he said turning, wielding the quart box like a brick. “I said—”

“Norm!” she cried, then burst into tears. She ran into the bathroom.

“Now look what you’ve done,” Duvall said, coming toward him. “Your mother’s a good woman and she deserves better than that.”

“Come on! Come on!” He held up his fists, but Duvall just shook his head, chuckling as he went past him to the bathroom door, where he called in softly to tell Marie he thought it best to leave now. He’d call her tomorrow.

Norm hugged the pillow over his head so he wouldn’t have to hear his mother crying.

282 / MARY MCGARRY MORRIS

M
arie’s day had started badly. Alice had come in late last night, her cheeks raw with whisker burns while she continued to insist she had been hanging out with a bunch of girls from work. Instead of being contrite for his behavior last night, Norm had announced at breakfast that he wasn’t going to spend the rest of his summer grounded. He intended to go out that night. Actually, she’d been relieved. It would mean a little more privacy in the house for herself and Omar. But then, right before she’d left for work, Omar had come by to tell her his good news. Claire Mayo had agreed to give him his room back in the boardinghouse. “She thinks she’s so shrewd, but I know,” he said, laughing. “She figures by keeping track of me, she can keep track of her sister May’s franchise investment.”

She watched him take his razor and shaving cream from the back of the toilet. “But you can stay here. You know I want you to,” she said.

“I know that, but it’ll be better, Marie. Just for a time. Alice is staying away more and more. Norm and I could go to the mat any moment, you know that, and Benjy, my Lord, I worry about that boy. I think he needs his mother right now.”

“No, what he needs is a man in his life.” Her fierce stare held his bright eyes.

“Maybe, but not me, not right now. I seem to be the agitating factor in this whole situation, and so I’ll remove myself. But just for a time.” He took her chin and lowered his face to hers. “I’ll still be coming down that driveway right about suppertime. I just won’t be cluttering things up for a time, for the children, Marie.”

For a time
. She kept repeating the words.
For a time
. She had lost control these last few weeks. She would get it back. She would be just as strong, just as tough as she used to be, and she would get her life and her children back on track. So when Mr. Briscoe offered to take Benjy fishing the following Sunday, she accepted gratefully.

All week long, whenever she reminded Benjy of his fishing date, he’d mutter, “I’m not going,” and she’d growl back, “Oh yes, you are!”

Mr. Briscoe arrived early Sunday morning, laden with poles, tackle boxes, and bait. He was wearing a wide-brimmed canvas hat with feathery lures tucked into the leather band. Benjy would be right out, she said through a hard smile. He offered to wait in the car, and she could tell he was disappointed when she agreed.

Benjy was in the bathroom. “I’m not going,” he said at the other side of the locked door.

“You have to. He’s out there. He’s waiting.”

“Tell him I’m sick.”

“You’re not sick!”

“I’m going to throw up.” He gagged.

“Goddamn you, Benjy, open this door!”

“I can’t,” he moaned. “I’m throwing up.”

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The retching intensified.

“You’re not sick! You’re afraid. You can’t do this. You’ve got to go!”

“I’m sick.”

“Open this goddamn door or I’ll smash it open!” she cried, beating it with her fists and kicking it. The hollow door banged against the frame. Benjy’s gagging grew louder. Mr. Briscoe’s car idled in the driveway. “Benjy, how can you do this to me? That’s my boss out there! Don’t you understand?

He’s out there, waiting!” The bones in her hands throbbed.

“Mom! Stop it! Stop it!” Alice cried, pulling her away as Norm hurtled down the stairs in his underwear. “Jesus Christ!” he said, then raced to the door and told Benjy to come out.

“Make him go,” she groaned.

“I’ll tell him Benjy’s sick,” he said, starting for the front door.

“No,” she said. That wasn’t what she meant. She couldn’t lift her head.

Here it was, all over again, the never-ending chain of weakness and failure.

“You make Benjy go with him.”

“He’s sick, Mom.”

She looked up now. “Don’t you understand? He needs to go. He has to!”

“No, Mom, not like this, you can’t make him. You can’t!”

“Yes, I can and I will!” she said, pushing past their reaching hands.

“Benjy, you open this door!”

It opened, and on the floor Benjy sagged against the spattered toilet bowl.

The smell of sickness spewed out of the damp little bathroom. His skin was white and there were circles under his eyes.

She burst into tears. “Now what do I do?” she sobbed. “I don’t know what to do.”

“I’ll go,” Norm was saying. He ran upstairs to put on his pants, then ran back down, carrying his sneakers. “Me and Mr. Briscoe’ll have a good time.

Everything’s going to be all right, Mom. You’ll see,” he said at the door.

H
ere, in the middle of the lake, soft breezes undulated their drifting lines. Waves stirred by distant boats slapped the sides of Mr. Briscoe’s dinghy. Mr. Briscoe had packed ham-and-cheese sandwiches. There were crunchy dill pickles and hard-boiled eggs, peanuts, potato chips, cupcakes, and ice-cold sodas. Out here everything was different. The food tasted great, and Mr. Briscoe wasn’t half the creep Norm had always thought he was.

“This is the life, isn’t it, Norm?” Mr. Briscoe sighed again. He stretched back in the boat, arms under his head, his hat brim covering his eyes, his white legs crossed at the ankles.

“Sure is,” Norm sighed, squinting back at the crowded green haze of the shore.

“Keeps me sane,” Mr. Briscoe said.

“Fishing?” he asked, the conversational shorthand more natural as the day wore on.

“Not even. The daydreaming.”

“Yah?”

284 / MARY MCGARRY MORRIS

“Sometimes things get too much, I put my head down on the desk and see myself out here just floating along, not a care in the world, not a one.”

“Yah,” he said, eyes closed, his face and bare chest baking in the sun.

“Too bad about Benjy,” Mr. Briscoe said.

“He’ll get over it.”

“I know how it is.”

“Probably the grippe or something.”

“I mean his, uh, his problems.”

Norm opened one eye into the searing sun. He clenched the oarlock. The asshole was still an asshole. “What problems?”

“Well, you see, Norm, I caught Benjy taking something from the store. I told him it would be our little secret. I promised him.”

He sat up, shielding his eyes. “Then how come you’re telling me?”

“Because I know how it is for a boy, how hard it can get and how much it can hurt. A boy needs a man in his life.” He reached out to touch Norm’s knee. “Do you know what I’m talking about?”

“No,” he said, moving so that Briscoe’s hand fell away. He felt drained by the ease of Mr. Briscoe’s familiarity.

“Just try to be the man in your brother’s life, Norm. He needs that. And don’t say anything to your mother about the glove. I’ve been really worried about her lately. Really worried.”

Suddenly the air glittered with sunlit spray as they heaved back and forth in the wake of a speedboat skimming past. Norm gripped the seat, feeling puny and naked. He had been the man in his brother’s and his mother’s life. Until Duvall.

B
enjy sat stiffly in Mr. Tuck’s living room. A cat jumped onto his lap and rubbed her back against him. Mr. Tuck’s little girls peered through the glass door. The taller child with the long sausage curls was making faces at him. Her younger sister giggled and held herself as if she had to go to the bathroom.

Mr. Tuck had taken the afternoon off. He was all dressed up in his best suit, his only suit, the one he wore during the school year. He didn’t own a summer suit. All he needed at the swimming pool was a T-shirt and bathing suit. He came down the stairs, annoyed to see his daughters giggling at his first patient. Two quick whacks on their bottoms sent them howling through the house. He lifted the cat by the scruff of its neck and threw it out the door. He sat down across from the boy and tried to appear thoughtful, as if preoccupied with an earlier patient. This took the form of a scowl. He was grateful to his wife’s uncle Ferdinand Briscoe for this opportunity. It might be the beginning of everything, he’d told Grace in bed last night. Sending away for college catalogs for seniors and setting up class schedules for terrified freshmen was not enough. Who knows, he’d sighed to his wife, after the Fermoyle kid there just might be an avalanche of parents bringing their troubled offspring to his door for counseling. Exhausted, he steadied his frown on Benjy. He’d been up half the night figuring out how SONGS IN ORDINARY TIME / 285

much of the house expenses, including the mortgage, would be tax-deductible if he used the living room as his office. One sixth of everything would amount to quite a savings.

Benjy kept swallowing and trying hard not to blink. “Look him right in the eye,” his mother had said, “and answer his questions, except if you think he’s just being nosy about my private life or something like that, because, after all, don’t forget, he is Mr. Briscoe’s nephew.” With so many secrets, this was going to be tricky.

Mr. Tuck was trying to light a pipe. He sucked at the stem, frowning when he couldn’t get it lit. Mrs. Tuck came to the door and glared through the glass. Her daughters were still screaming. Mr. Tuck smiled sheepishly as his wife opened the door. The cat ran inside and jumped into Benjy’s lap.

“That wasn’t necessary,” Mrs. Tuck hissed.

“This is a private session, Grace!” he snapped.

She wiped her hands on her apron. “It’s a fine turn of events, David Tuck, when your own children have to be beaten so that you can help some stranger’s child.” She slammed the door.

Mr. Tuck’s stomach burned. He hadn’t even begun and it was falling apart. He looked back at the boy stroking the cat. It wasn’t going to be easy.

He would have to partition off that door from the rest of the house to keep his family life from interfering with his professional life.

“Well, Benjamin, where should we begin?” The boy’s stare made him nervous. “At the beginning, I guess. Let’s see, you don’t have any friends, you’re scared of water, and, let me think now, there was something about a dog. Give me a minute now, it’ll come to me.” His laugh was meant to relax the boy, but it came out high and cackly. The frown slipped back over his face. He felt himself blush. “I know! You saw a dog get hit by a car, am I right, Benny?”

“No sir, I didn’t see the car hit him. I just felt it.”

“Hm! Now, was this your dog? I think your mother said you and the dog were close.”

“No, he was the Klubocks’ dog from next door.”

“I see,” Tuck said, flipping through a notepad for a clean page. Damn, he should have been making notes from the beginning. This would go in the boy’s record, in his file. He would need file cabinets. The girls’ piano would have to be moved into the den. Another battle with Grace. He glanced up, pen poised. “Do you know what today’s date is?”

“No.”

“Well, anyway. You were in this car and the driver’s intoxicated.” He looked up from his notes. “Now it’s your father that drinks, right?”

“Sometimes.”

“So it’s late at night and you’re in the car and you don’t see the dog, but the car hits the dog. Have we got that right so far?”

“Well, the car ran over the dog. It didn’t just hit him. You know the wheels, they went over him.”

286 / MARY MCGARRY MORRIS

“The wheels, they went over him. Okay! Good! Now tell me what happened next.”

“I don’t remember. I’m not sure.”

“Hm! You don’t remember. You’re not sure,” he said, pen scratching as he recorded the boy’s every word. “Well, what did you say?”

“I don’t remember what I said.”

“You must have said something. Try to remember. Maybe you said, ‘Oh my God’ or ‘Shit.’ I mean under the circumstances that would certainly be acceptable, don’t you think?” He chuckled to loosen the boy up.

“Yah, I guess so.”

“So what did you say?” he asked, pen poised.

“I don’t know. Probably I didn’t say anything. I was pretty upset.”

“Is that what you do when you’re upset, Benny, you go silent?”

“Yah.” The boy shrugged. “I guess. Sometimes.”

“What about your father? What did he say?”

“He didn’t say anything. He wasn’t there.”

“You mean, in a manner of speaking, not there?”

“No, he’s in a hospital.”

“Oh I didn’t realize he’d been injured. No wonder! Oh my heavens!”

“No, he’s in a hospital for drinking. He wasn’t in the car that night.” He blinked. “My brother was.”