Songs in Ordinary Time (30 page)

Sonny stared at his folded hands. He felt drained. It was getting late.

Time, what time was it, and what the hell was Creller talking about? He looked up to see eyes quickly averted. Creller had meant him!

“Now, I’m only telling you what was reported to me. I’m only saying that something’s very wrong with a dead man sitting in his chair for two SONGS IN ORDINARY TIME / 143

days and nobody says a word! I’m telling you it’s all going to pieces! They tear up our public property! There’s a stink hanging over this town so bad people can’t sleep nights.

“The way I was raised, you got a problem, you root it out!” Creller shook his head bitterly. “But of course the way I was raised don’t count no more.

Used to be, every kid was in his house
before
the ten-of even blew. But now everything’s changed. Nobody listens to good men anymore. Now you break and enter and what do you get? A slap on the wrist, that’s all! A ride to the enlistment office, in the Chief’s car, if you please! I tell ya, our kids are running wild. You go up to that park right now and you’ll find their kinda hero with his radio blasting and kids hanging all over the bandstand, smashing bottles and calling filth out to our women passing by.”

“You’re kidding,” Sonny muttered, but no one heard him. He wondered if this could be true, if in the malaise of the past weeks such events had indeed transpired while he had been too preoccupied to notice.

“He’s the seed, the cause,” Creller ranted. “You can tell him to go home till you’re blue in the face, but he don’t give a damn for anyone or anything, and those kids know it. And they won’t go home, neither. So go ahead, keep on looking the other way, keep on honoring liars and thieves—”

Sonny Stoner jumped up so fast that the table lifted against his legs.

“Honor! You call that honor? Harnessing a proud man like Joey Seldon to that ragtag of a stand? Putting him at the mercy of men like you, Creller?

That ain’t honor. Nossir! I call that the worst punishment of all. I call that degrading!”

A pulsing had begun in the tall man’s head, like red-hot pumping blood that both frightened and cleansed him. They looked up stupidly and a little hurt, and yet he kept on, his gentle voice growing so loud that he was sure someone else was talking. “I was just thinking, listening to all this talk, how this is the one meeting out of the whole year everybody shows up for, and you know why? Because it’s a chance to play God for a night. We’re not here to vote from our hearts. We’re here to pass judgment on Joey Seldon one more time. So forget it, John, of course we’re never gonna vote down his stand, ’cause if we do that, then we can’t go home feeling good about ourselves that we saved Joey one more time! That we were good men! Well, that don’t make a good man, damn it!” He grabbed his jacket from the back of his chair. “I’ll tell Joey he’s got to close at ten of nine.” He leaned his long body right at Creller, and he smiled. “And I’ll tell him tomorrow morning a crew’ll be up there to fix the place up, and God help you, Creller, if you vote no.”

“Is that a threat?” Creller gasped, his puffy face white with shock.

“Yup,” Sonny said as he zipped up his nylon windbreaker. “And carrying it out’ll be a real pleasure, too.” He grinned.

As Sonny drove toward the park he was struck by the clarity of the stars over the black mountaintops and the sharp dark outlines of roofs, and he could hear warm voices through the lit-up windows, and he felt strong, and 144 / MARY MCGARRY MORRIS

he felt clean, and for the first time in weeks he could think, and he knew he could take care of everyone. He would take care of his town again. He had never stopped being a good man. Until now he just hadn’t been good enough.

Joey chuckled when Sonny finished talking.

“Cite me the law that says I have to close at ten of nine, Sonny.”

“Just do it, Joey. Don’t make problems,” Sonny said.

Joey tilted his head toward the park and smiled. “Tell you what, Sonny.

The minute I hear the curfew blow, I’ll start closing up.”

Sonny unpeeled a stick of gum. “It’s almost ten of now, Joey. Can I give you a lift home?”

“No thanks,” Joey said. “I like the walk, and besides, takes me a while to close up.”

E
ven as Alice knocked on the Stoners’ door, she knew she shouldn’t have come. But Lester had called back to apologize to her mother, who then insisted she take the phone. In a low rambling voice Lester had whispered how lonely he was, how unfair God was, how it was all his father’s fault, that he and his father had just had a terrible fight, that there was too much pressure on him, that everyone expected too much of him, that he’d be better off dead. Please come, he’d begged. Please…

When he opened the door, she was shocked at how pale and drawn he was. His skin had erupted in sore red pimples. He needed a haircut, and his clothes were soiled and wrinkled as if he’d slept in them. Every time she said anything, he would blink.

They were upstairs watching television with Mrs. Stoner in her bedroom.

Lester had made a large bowl of popcorn. He had arranged two chairs next to his mother’s bed, but it was soon apparent that Mrs. Stoner, in her medicated drift, had already forgotten Alice was there. At first, Lester did all the talking, his incessant, almost giddy chatter, gossipy and desperate to amuse her, to hold her interest, to keep her here, as if he feared that in a moment’s lull he might lose her. Everything he knew seemed to have come over the police radio, automobile accidents and domestic violence, and now the details of a prowler who had been in the alley the other night behind Hammie’s Bar and Grill.

“And Vic Crowley said he heard the guy running down the alley, but when he got on the street, the guy was gone! There was no one there!”

Lester’s eyes shone. “It was just like the night’d swallowed him up! Vic wanted to pick that creep Mooney up for questioning, but my father said no. There hadn’t been any crime committed. You know how all the tires were flat out at the lake that night? Well, I told my father it had to be Mooney. I told him I’d swear to it even in court, I was so sure. And he said,

‘But just because he was there doesn’t mean he did it.’ He said, ‘Because if that’s the way it works, then you were out there too, don’t forget.’ Can you believe it?” Lester said. “Can you believe my own father said that?” He SONGS IN ORDINARY TIME / 145

laughed, shaking his head. “About me! His own son!” He seemed dazed, out of step, like a first-time traveler to a treacherous land.

She stiffened against the hard-backed chair.

Mrs. Stoner’s chalky face turned on the stained pillow. She had been drooling. “What time is it?”

“Eight forty-five,” said Lester.

“Is Daddy home yet?” she asked.

“No, Mother,” answered Lester.

Mrs. Stoner’s eyes had closed again. “He’s so busy,” she sighed. “What is it tonight?”

“Council meeting—or so he said,” Lester added.

“Poor man.” She sighed again, then laughed weakly. “Lord knows there’s not much to come to here anymore, is there?”

Alice stared at the television so as not to see the crooked nylon wig. All the patterns had been wrenched: the bright rugs smelled of damp and dust.

In the bathroom, mildew had invaded the grout, and red towels hung over orange towels. The plants on the windowsill were spindly and yellowing.

It was hot in the bedroom, and the vase of red gladioli on Mrs. Stoner’s nightstand kept making Alice sneeze. She wiped her nose and watched the suntan lotion ad that was on television. It showed a girl strolling down a beach past three guys, who jumped up from their blankets and followed her. She envied Mary Agnes, who must be having so much fun at the lake.

She should’ve gone, should’ve done what she wanted instead of what everyone else wanted. Good little Alice, who always did what her mother said. Poor little Alice, afraid to say yes, afraid to say no. She felt like everyone’s wailing wall. If the Klubocks’ dog dumped under the clothesline and her mother stepped in it, it was Alice’s fault because if she hadn’t been

“lazy-assing out in the backyard all the day, the goddamn dog wouldn’t have come over in the first place.” Even the reasons for Omar Duvall’s continued absence had become so convoluted in her mother’s reasoning that she was to blame. Because so much money was needed to send Alice to college, her mother was being deprived of the opportunity of a lifetime.

She made little sense lately. It was getting so bad that Alice had almost begun to prefer being the butt of Anthology Carper’s sick jokes to spending a night at home.

“Want some more?” Lester whispered, passing her the popcorn bowl.

She shook her head and tried to see what time it was. Lester caught her looking at the clock, and he checked his mother to see if she had fallen asleep yet. Her eyes were closed, and her breathing verged on snoring. With a nod toward the door, he started out of the chair. Before Alice could get the tissue to her nose, she sneezed.

Mrs. Stoner’s eyes opened wide. “Bless you,” came her drugged, gluey voice. “You’re catching cold.”

Lester made a face as if she’d sneezed on purpose. He stared at the television, annoyed that his mother was awake.

146 / MARY MCGARRY MORRIS

“I think I am,” Alice said, getting up. “Maybe I’d better go, Les. I’ll call you when—”

“It’s these damn flowers!” he said, yanking the vase from the bureau.

“Aunt Eunice brought them over.” Mrs. Stoner sighed as Les swept past, taking the flowers downstairs. “Poor Eunice, all she did was cry. Do I look that bad?” Mrs. Stoner laughed. The wig dipped over her left temple like a rakish beret, exposing miserly patches of her own hair, which had once been as soft and wavy as Les’s.

“You look fine,” Alice said, shredding the tissue in her lap.

The tumor in Mrs. Stoner’s belly swelled against the sheets. There was nothing the doctors could do; nothing anyone could do, but wait. Wait.

Wait for death. It was coming. Coming. No, it was here. There, rising and falling with her every breath.

Les had come back into the room. He bent over his mother and, all in a motion, plumped her pillows, adjusted her wig, and kissed her dry cheek so tenderly that Alice felt her eyes swell with tears. Poor Les. And now as he scooped the tissue bits from Alice’s lap and laid a new one there, his hand lingered on her thigh and she smiled weakly at him.

All the way down to the rec room, she reasoned it out. They were both lonely, so why not see each other once in a while. Only this time, they’d just be friends. This time, she’d be strong.

“See,” he was saying as he showed her the cord tacked along the stair molding. “I wired the police radio up to my room. I leave it on all night.”

“Doesn’t Mrs. Miller come anymore, Les?” she asked. It hurt to think of him in the dark listening to police calls all night long.

“That bitch!” he said. “I fired her. Now I’m the only nurse.”

When they got downstairs, he didn’t even turn on the light. “Oh Alice,”

he moaned, lying against her on the couch. “I’ve missed you so much….”

He kissed her frantically, murmuring against her lips, “I’ve been going crazy here. I’d write you a poem…and then you wouldn’t call me back and I’d burn it…here, here,” he moaned, pressing her open hand against his bulging fly. “See? See? See how much I’ve missed you….”

“No, Les,” she whispered, trying to pull away, but he held it there. “Let’s just be friends,” she whispered as he slid his hand inside her shorts. She moaned and lay back, her eyes wide in the darkness. The couch creaked and Lester was moaning.

“No! No!” she said, pushing him away. “No, Les!” She sat up. “It’s the same as before!” she said. “What you said that time…I was hurt when you said that, but it’s true in a way. Things seem all tangled, you know what I mean? Now you’re having problems and we’re all mixed up in each other’s problems. You see what I mean?” she asked. She turned on the light then and forced a smile. “Do you?” she asked hopefully.

“You’ve always had a twisted way of looking at things, Alice,” he said with a sneer. “If someone’s nice to you, you wonder what they want.”

“I have to go now,” she said, getting up. She would not play this game.

He chuckled. “I remember how all through school, you’d just sit there in SONGS IN ORDINARY TIME / 147

the back of the room, hoping nobody’d talk to you. Until I started going out with you, you sat in the lunchroom like such a creep, alone every day for four years!” He laughed. “So now you think you’re a big deal? Now you’ve got Mary Agnes and her shitty friends, so you don’t need me, do you? What do you do, go over to the lake all the time…. Oh, Alice!” he cried, trying to pull her back down.

“You let me go! You make me sick. You’re so damn mean. You’re the meanest person I’ve ever known.”

“And you’re the coldest person I’ve ever known!” he growled, clenching her wrist.

“Stop it, Lester! You let me go, damn it, or you’ll be sorry!” She couldn’t wrench her hand free.

He laughed and she froze. “What’re you going to do, Alice? Start screaming, Help! Help! Lester’s finally gone off the deep end! He’s crazy!

Crazy! Crazycrazycrazy crazy…” Tears bubbled down his cheeks.

Her hand was numb in his hold. If she moved, something would break, would smash into infinitesimal splinters.

“I’m sorry. I’m so sorry! Please stay! Please!” he panted, nuzzling his wet cheek against hers. He ran his hands up and down her back as if to resuscit-ate her.

Her eyes were on the stairwell. Someone was walking overhead, and now the door at the top of the stairs creaked open.

“You down there, Les?” Mr. Stoner called. “Les?”

“What is it?” Les called back. His eyes darted between her and the stairs.

“Got a little surprise up here. Alice there, too?” Mr. Stoner said self-consciously, as if he thought he’d caught them making out.

“I’m down here!” she hollered, yanking her wrist from the cuff of Lester’s fist. His head trembled and his shoulder twitched as if with a seizure.

“C’mon up, kids!” Mr. Stoner called with forced heartiness. “We’ll have a party! I’ll go see if your mother’s…”

She ran up the stairs, where Mr. Stoner stood smiling with two pizza boxes in his arms. “That’s what I call hungry…Alice!” He took a step as she flew past. “What’s wrong? Alice!”