Songs in Ordinary Time (79 page)

384 / MARY MCGARRY MORRIS

He blew his nose, then wiped tears from his eyes. “Do you think you’d be interested, Renie?”

Renie couldn’t stop grinning. It was a dream come true, working with other people, supervising other workers. Helen would be so proud. People everywhere would know him. He could get Marie’s children any job they wanted in town. But then he remembered Tom. What would he do with him? There was no place for Tom to go.

“No,” he said. “I can’t.”

“Why?” Mr. Cushing asked.

“Because, because,” he stammered. “Because my cat has to live in the store, because my wife hates animals.”

“And I hate cats, Renie,” said Mr. Cushing. “It’s the one animal I can’t stand.”

Renie was turning his CLOSED sign to OPEN when Robert Haddad came to the door. The insurance agent wanted to buy his wife an electric mixer, the fanciest model Renie had.

“This here’s the best one. MixMaid,” he said, sliding a heavy white mixing set from the shelf. He blew dust from the box as he carried it to the counter.

“It’s got your four different-sized bowls,” he said, tearing it all from the box. His hands could not work fast enough. He had to make this sale before Haddad heard about Cushing’s new appliance department. “Your three different-sized beaters. Your special dough thing here,” he said, holding up the rectangular steel paddle. “Your wife make bread?” he asked doubt-fully. Mrs. Haddad sure didn’t look like a lady that made bread.

“Well, let’s put it this way, she’s gonna be making a lot of dough.” He laughed.

“Then maybe she oughta have more the commercial mixer,” Renie said, crestfallen. He didn’t sell commercial mixers. “This here ain’t gonna give her the volume for a lotta dough.”

“No. No, Renie, it was a joke.” Haddad rolled his eyes and sighed. His wife was going to sell soap at parties. The mixer was a surprise. He was hoping to get her interested in cooking and baking.

“Then this’ll do it!” Renie cried with relief. “See, it’s got your seven different speeds, all the way from High whip to Slow blend. Your automatic beater ejection.” He pushed a button on the side.

“How much?” asked Haddad.

“Thirty-nine ninety-nine,” he said.

Haddad whistled. “That’s expensive! I can go up to Monkey Ward’s and get one half that price, but the thing is, I’d rather keep my business downtown.”

“But they’re not gonna be selling MixMaid,” Renie said. “That’s the thing.

This here’s a quality machine. Listen. Listen to this,” he said, turning on the mixer. The beaters spun to a silver blur in the clear glass bowl. Renie moved the dial from speed to speed, his spirits climbing.

He looked up to see Haddad standing by the cellar door. “What’s down SONGS IN ORDINARY TIME / 385

here, storage?” he asked, opening the door. “Jesus Christ!” He jumped back, startled to see Tom pass in front of him. Tom sprang onto the counter.

“I don’t keep much inventory,” Renie said, stroking the cat’s rippling back as it curled against him. Haddad didn’t like Tom and the cat could tell. “I sell off the floor,” Renie explained.

“Keeps things simple that way, huh?” Haddad asking, peering down the dark stairs.

“Yah, so I don’t get stuck with ten models of last year’s washing machine,”

Renie boasted. Of course, he couldn’t afford to buy ten models in the first place. But Cushing’s would be able to. Soon when his customers didn’t see the model they wanted, they’d only have to cross the street for it.

“Yah, I know what you mean,” Haddad sighed, returning to the counter, where he stood back, away from the cat. “I’m at the point now, I don’t even trust banks, everything’s so controlled and regulated.”

“Me neither,” Renie agreed with a vigorous nod.

“The way I figure it, they’re gonna spy on me, I’m just gonna have to play it a little closer to the vest, that’s all.” He winked and patted his back pocket.

“You know what I’m saying, right?”

“Yah, yah!” Renie cried, grateful for the camaraderie.

“You have to!” Haddad said. “They don’t give you any other choice.” He looked around. “I got a place, a box right in the store for certain transactions.

Cash,” he muttered, clearing his throat behind his hand. “If you know what I mean.”

“Me, too!” Renie laughed.

“Mine’s under the rug. I just lift up a floorboard,” confided Haddad.

“Mine’s down—” He caught himself, his eyes on the cellar door. “I almost forgot. You want the MixMaid?”

Haddad said he did, but the problem was, it was just too expensive. Renie offered to knock five dollars off the price, them both being fellow downtown merchants. “Thirty-four ninety-nine,” he said as the cat jumped off the counter, its thick paws meeting the floor in a soft thud.

“I’ll tell you what,” Haddad said, moving out of the cat’s way. “Things’re slow so far this week. Give me a few more days and I’ll be in.”

“Sure thing,” Renie said. “I’ll even put your name on it.” He was still printing ROBERT HADDAD on the empty box when the door closed. “The trick is,” Renie instructed the cat, who had jumped back onto the counter and sat watching him, “to be flexible, and not be afraid to give a little.” Tom began to purr. Renie smiled and the purring grew louder and louder. It filled the store, the streets outside, like a great engine churning out such longing that he could barely walk. He locked the front door, then staggered into the bathroom, into the reek of glossy heat, his ears ringing, ring, ring, ringing, while just outside the door the cat purred, as he waited, yearning for a woman’s voice to answer, to speak to him.

“Hello?”

“Oh hello.” He closed his eyes. This one was new. She’d come into the store last week looking at stoves. “Hello, you beautiful thing, you.”

386 / MARY MCGARRY MORRIS

“Oh Lord, listen to you.” She laughed nervously.

“It’s you I like to listen to. Your voice is so sweet. It’s sweet, sweet as honey.”

“Lord!” She sounded different.

“And you got beautiful skin. It looks like there’s dew on it, you know, like on grass first thing in the morning.” The pause came like a flutter in the silence.

“Do I know you?”

“No.”

“Then why are you calling me?”

“Because I like to talk to you.”

“But I’ve never talked to you before.”

“Is this Mrs. Brewster?”

“No.”

“Well, who are you, then?”

“I’m not going to tell you! What do you want to know for?”

“I just want to talk to you.”

“Why? Don’t you have anyone else to talk to, a wife, a girlfriend, somebody?”

“No.”

“Well, I really can’t talk. My baby’s awake.”

“Oh I’m sorry. You go take care of the baby.”

“She’s crying.”

“Then you gotta go.”

“Don’t you have any friends?”

He paused to think. “Not really. I know people, but not like friends, you know?”

“Can you hold on a minute while I get the baby?”

“Yes. Oh yes, I can hold. You go get the baby.”

When she came back she was out of breath. She said she was in the kitchen warming a bottle. He could hear the soft cooing. He pictured her jiggling the baby on her hip while she stood in front of the stove watching the water boil under the bottle.

“How old’s the baby?”

“Seven and a half months.”

“What’s her name?”

“Kathi-jean. That’s
K
with an
I
, dash, small
j
.”

Kathi-jean. He told her that was a beautiful name. She thanked him and said her husband’s family didn’t like it, but then they didn’t like her, either, so she guessed it didn’t really matter. When he asked her why they didn’t like her, she said it was a long story. But basically it was because she had thrown him out last year, two months before the baby was born.

“Why’d you do that?” He could hear a wooden chair scraping over the floor.

“There. That’s better,” she sighed. “I’m sitting down now. Ooo, she can’t wait, the little pig.” She asked him if he could hear her sucking. He said no, SONGS IN ORDINARY TIME / 387

and so she held the phone to the baby’s mouth. “Did you hear it?” she asked, coming back on.

“Yes!” he laughed, overwhelmed with giddiness. “Yes! It was so loud, I…I…I…”

“She’s such a little pig. I just hope she’s skinny as her father. He’s like a beanpole.”

“Why’d you do that, make him leave?” he asked to avoid having to mis-pronounce
throw
as
trow
the way he usually did.

“Because he’s a bum. The whole time we were together he never stopped seeing all his old girlfriends. So I just got sick of it.”

“Why’d you marry him?”

“’Cause I was PG.”

“PG?”

“Pregnant! What, you never heard of that? Jeez, here I am with an obscene phone caller, and I’m doing all the talking.”

“I’m not an obscene phone caller.”

“Yes, you are. You said you call ladies you don’t even know, and you say things, right?”

“Yah, but never…never bad things.”

“Well, what kind of things, then?” There was a catch in her voice, an eagerness.

He shrugged and closed his eyes, ashamed of all the glistening breasts and parted thighs, the lush mounds of kinky hair.

“Well?”

“Just…just mostly things about them. Like what pretty eyes they got and things like that.”

“I got hazel eyes and long eyelashes, dark like my hair. My hair’s brunette, but some people say black it’s so dark. Hello? You still there?”

“Yeah,” he said, grinning. “I’m still here.”

“Okay, so now you tell me something. Tell me something about you.”

“I got brown eyes and brown hair,” he said, touching the sparse strands on the back of his head.

She asked if he was tall. He said he wasn’t tall, and he wasn’t short, just kind of regular. He told her about Riddles and about Tom and all the animals he’d grown up with on his father’s farm in Quebec. He told her about his father and the little he could recall of his mother, the warm cream she would pour over his oatmeal and the way she patted water up her throat and rosy cheeks on hot days. He told her things he hadn’t thought of in years, the go-cart his father made him, then let him help paint red, the torture to speak English in school when his brain worked in French. He’d had a lucky charm, a rabbit’s foot that his mother said would let the English words slide over his tongue.

“Do you still have it?”

“No. I gave it to a girl. Her name was Solie. She was the first girl I ever kissed.”

“What a sap!” She laughed, and now he laughed with her.

388 / MARY MCGARRY MORRIS

There was so much he had forgotten. Once there had been another life than this, happier, hopeful. There had been a playful boy, a shy romantic young man. Once he had been loved. There had been friends, the two Brien boys up the road. They called him Bobo. He had worn black boots and a leather jacket with a sheepskin collar. One day a girl named Edith had ridden on his bike, her arms around his waist, her cheek against his back.

“Oh jeez. She just spit up all over the place. It’s running down my arm even. Call me back in a few minutes, okay?”

“Yah,” he said. “I will. I will!”

Her phone clicked. “Wait!” he shouted into the buzzing receiver. “I don’t know your number! I don’t know your name! I don’t know who you are!”

he cried.

A
fter so many years of forcing thoughts of his children from his consciousness, Sam didn’t know what to think about Alice’s entering the convent. Helen had heard it from Mrs. Arkaday when she brought a bag of tomatoes over to the rectory for the Monsignor. Of course it wasn’t official, but when the Monsignor had asked, Father Gannon had confided that he was helping Alice with her vocation. Mrs. Arkaday said she shouldn’t say anything, but she knew Helen would be “thrilled with the news.” If anyone deserved a member of the religious in her life, it was Helen LaChance. Mrs.

Arkaday asked her to please pass on her congratulations to Sam. At first he’d been depressed, embarrassed not to have known, then proud. And now he was frightened. Somehow this was his fault. He had forced his daughter into an austere and sterile existence. Just when he was rebuilding his life she would leave and become a stranger to him. But wasn’t she already a stranger? He had pushed her away. He still remembered that day at Applegate and the stricken look on her face as he hurried into the dining room.

He wanted to call Marie before he left for work. He started past the crib, where his mother sat propped against pillows, her eyes closed, as Helen tried to feed her. Every day her breathing worsened with wheezing so tor-turously long and deep that her jaw would tremble and her teeth would rattle. He was sure she was dying, but Helen insisted it was the same cold she herself had endured all week. Yesterday he had watched Helen trying to spoon-feed broth into that gaping mouth. Her trembling chin and neck had glistened with the yellow liquid. She was in a coma, he had told his sister, who insisted their mother’s deep sleep was the result of being awake at night when he was at work. Then feed her at night when she’s awake, he told Helen, but don’t submit her to such indignities. Helen insisted she had tried, but when Bridget was awake she wouldn’t open her mouth. Then at least use an eyedropper or something, he had said, surprised now to find his advice heeded as Helen squirted broth from an eyedropper down the back of Bridget’s throat. She kept gagging and choking.

“Hello?” answered Marie on the first ring.

“It’s me,” he said softly. He didn’t want Helen to hear him. Just a few SONGS IN ORDINARY TIME / 389

feet away, light glowed around the door to Renie’s room, where a ball game sputtered from the radio.

“Omar? Omar, where are you?”

“It’s Sam.” For a moment he was confused; then he remembered who Omar was.

“Oh,” she said in a flat voice.

“You sound tired,” he said, forestalling news of Alice, wanting at least a few moments of pleasant conversation.

Not tired, she told him, but exhausted. Her car had broken down and she was having to drive Norm’s junk, and then Astrid had quit last week, so now she had the bookkeeping to do as well as her own work.

Astrid? He couldn’t put a face to the name. Entire months had been lost.