Songs in Ordinary Time

by Mary McGarry Morris

  She laughed. “God! Sam doesn’t have two nickels to rub together. Helen’s a bitch, but at least she takes care of her brother.”

  “With such funds to use as she sees fit to insure his good health and well-being,” Omar said.

  “What’s that supposed to mean?” she said quickly.

  “You forget whose room I occupy, whose bed I sleep in, whose ancient file cabinets are in every corner.”

  “Old Judge Clay!”

  “Judge Clay, who, as the Fermoyle family lawyer, drew up a trust apparently at the behest of old Bridget Fermoyle. A trust that named Helen LaChance as trustee and Sam as beneficiary. Because of the pending divorce trial and Sam’s”—here, Omar cleared his throat—“uh, weakness, the very existence of the trust was to be kept a secret from him.” He shook his head ruefully. “And apparently from you, under the heading of ‘all others.’”

  She was confused, amazed, shocked that Bridget Fermoyle would have done this to her, to her grandchildren. “How much was in the trust?”

  Omar had stepped closer to her. “Ten thousand dollars, which in all likelihood has been accruing interest all this time. And if you consider the fact that the man, your former husband, has few if any expenses, certainly no overhead, living as he does in his mother’s home, then I think you’ll agree that the trust is probably pretty close to being intact.” His eyebrows arched with his dazzling smile. “Wouldn’t you say?”

  From outside came another quick whack of the mallet. Her stomach twisted with sourness.

  “It appears, Marie, that you have been the victim of a vast conspiracy here. You’ve got to do something! For your children!”

  He seemed to loom, to be everywhere her eyes darted.

  “You just might be able to parlay this debt into something big, into some kind of”—he paused, searching for the words—“some kind of investment—maybe even your own business!”

  She felt dizzy. He had folded the thin dish towel over his forearm and stood now with clasped hands. Sweat ran down his face and his eyes glistened. “Think of it!” he whispered, bending as if she were a child. “Independence! Security! A better life for your children!”

  He stood so close her legs felt weak, as if she should be kneeling.

  “Call Sam,” he urged. “Tell him what you know.”

  “I can’t. Not when he’s drinking,” she whispered, looking toward the other room, where Benjy was watching television.

  “Speak to the trustee, to his sister, to her Christianity, and if that tack fails…” He snapped his fingers. “Then tell her you’ll sue, you’ll take her to court.”

  “I couldn’t do that,” she said faintly.

  “Of course you could! You can do anything, Marie Fermoyle, once you make up your mind.”

  “But not that…not court again,” she said, remembering the shame of testifying to Sam’s blows with the eyes of everyone in the courtroom turned on her with loathing and condemnation, judging her, their suspicions confirmed: the butcher’s daughter had only gotten what she’d asked for; of course he hit her; of course he resented those children who had trapped him; of course he drank; who wouldn’t?

  So here she was, on her way to 15 Kensington Avenue, to the home she hadn’t entered in years. She bit her lip, then turned the bell key and heard its jarring buzz inside. When she was first married and searching for clues to Sam’s drinking, she had even seized on the stab of this doorbell’s angry ring as a cause.

  She glanced up at Sam’s darkened window, praying he was either asleep or out. The house was in the worst shape she had ever seen it. The paint was peeling. Some of the porch floorboards had rotted through and the steps sagged back against the house. This is what they’ve come to, she thought, rot and neglect, wasted lives.

  To her right a curtain fluttered; then Helen’s small tight features flicked into the door opening.

  “What is it?” her former sister-in-law asked, her eyes filming coldly.

  “I have to talk to you,” she whispered, her throat constricting. She coughed.

  “I was going to get ready for bed,” Helen said, her imperious tone chiseling each consonant to a sharp edge.

  “It’s important, Helen,” she whispered. “I tried to call, but it was busy.”

  There was a creaking from the end of the dark hallway, and Marie stiffened. “Is he here?” she whispered.

  “Sam’s at the jail,” Helen said. “They’re keeping him for the night,” she said with a long, enduring sigh. “I called Hale Longly. It’s not an arrest, so it won’t be in the paper.”

  As the creaking receded into the distance, she realized it had been Renie. “I saw the picture they took of you and the Monsignor and the new church doors,” Marie said, following Helen along the hallway with its familiar dank smell of musty horsehair and cedar and mothballs. She would be calm and as coolly duplicitous as Helen. “The new doors are beautiful,” she said, when in truth she hadn’t been able to look at them without bitterness, without thinking, New doors for the church from the Fermoyle family, when her children were Fermoyles; Fermoyles in old clothes and sometimes just barely enough food for the week; Fermoyles who were better and stronger than any of these.

  “Yes,” Helen said. That was all. Yes.

  They passed the dining room, and glancing in, Marie was sickened by the sight of the once fearsome old woman, now a foolish child with ribboned white braids, high behind the bars of her enormous crib, whispering slyly into the gnawed ear of a dingy cloth doll.

  “Bridget,” she said, approaching the crib. The old woman’s gaze lifted and held blankly while her flat white thumb stroked the doll’s frazzled yarn hair. “It’s Marie,” she said through the bars to the old woman she hadn’t seen in almost ten years, and now she remembered her odd affection for Sam’s mother, who had only wanted the best for her son, for whom the best was all he feared; and in a smothering alliance of distrust and hope, mother and wife had often conspired to make him whole, to sober him up, to get him working again.

  “She doesn’t know you now,” Helen said.

  At the sound of her daughter’s voice, old Mrs. Fermoyle looked toward the mirror at the foot of her crib.

  “Actually,” Helen sighed, “this is one of her better days. Lately, it’s become a matter of sustaining her.” She reached through the bars to fluff the pillows. “There, now,” she murmured, her glasses sliding to the tip of her nose. On the other side of the kitchen door, a cupboard squeaked open. A cup rattled against a saucer. Helen glanced peevishly at the door. “Would you mind?” she called in shrilly.

  Marie turned to face her. “Helen…I…You know I always thought the Judge took care of things,” she said, her thoughts rushing in a torrent now. “And so I never asked. You know that, Helen. The support money—I never made a stink out of things, you know that.”

  “That’s between you and my brother. It has nothing to do with me!” Helen drew back from the crib to look at her.

  “No—because you run things, Helen. I know that now…. I know all about the trust.” She stepped closer. “Helen, all I’m asking for is what’s mine and the kids’….”

  “Nothing is yours!” Helen said, blanching. “Nothing!”

  “That’s not true, and damn it, Helen, you know it’s not!”

  “Don’t!” Helen warned, drawing back. “Don’t raise your voice to me! Not in my house!”

  Marie looked at her. Now she understood. “You’re the one who set up that trust! You did it, after your mother was senile, when she—”

  “Oh no! Oh no!” Helen kept saying, almost laughing. “No! It was all her idea.” She gestured to the old woman, who stared at the mirror. “Believe me, this hell on earth was all her doing.”

  “I’ve got a lawyer, Helen. A damn good lawyer,” she lied, emboldened by Helen’s misery. “And if you won’t help me, then he will! I’ll get that money. I’ll fight you every inch of the way for it.” Her hands were shaking.

  “Maybe there is something,” Helen said in
a low voice. “Maybe there is a way. The only reason I’ve kept Sam here all these years is because of Mother. It hasn’t been any picnic. You must know that. My life hasn’t been my own. But I knew she wanted him sheltered. She wanted a roof over his head and she wanted him with people who cared.” She pushed her glasses back into place. The hairs on her upper lip were wet. “But what she wanted most was to see him back with his family…where he belongs.”

  “What are you talking about?”

  “Take Sam back and keep him,” Helen said. “Stay with him and be a family, and what’s left of the money is yours.” Her voice rose over Marie’s laughter. “I’ve never seen him this bad. He’s in terrible shape. It’s probably all he needs. Lord knows”—she sniffed—“things couldn’t get much worse for the both of you than they are right now.”

  “Oh yes they could,” Marie roared. “I could get like you, Helen. Married to a man I despise just to have a roof over my head and a ring on my finger! Just so I could kneel down at the Communion rail with all the other phony bastards! No, you keep him, Helen, like you keep her locked up in her cage, like you keep Renie on his leash….”

  “Get out!” Helen demanded, jabbing her finger in Marie’s face. “And if you ever dare step foot in here again, I’ll have you arrested!”

  She grabbed Helen’s wrist, her fingernails deep in Helen’s cold thin flesh. “You bitch!” she gasped. “You selfish, selfish bitch. I’ll get that money. You’ll see!”

  “Call the police!” Helen began to shriek, jerking her head back from Marie’s. “Call the police!”

  The door to the kitchen opened slowly on Renie’s tired, sad face. “You better go,” he said. “You better get out, Marie, so there ain’t no trouble now.”

  Bridget’s fingers skittered over the doll’s body as if they were typing. Fixed in the mirror, her eyes were small bright points and her breath came in eager pants. She started to hum. She remembered that one, remembered how she had knocked on the apartment door and had begged that one to take him back, her mouth at the door crack, the stripe of inner, lighter air cool against her dry lips that could not suck them through, could not set them straight, could not deliver him through love or faith or promises.

  “Whatever you want,” she had told that one, just as hard and deliberate as ever; not one whom she would have chosen for her son, but in the end she had come to believe that Sam must have somehow known she would be the better mate, young enough to be hopeful, base enough and coarse enough to fight against him and for him, though in the end not strong enough.

  “Just open the door,” the old woman had hissed, shamed to have her tenants witness this.

  “No!”

  “I’ll help you….”

  “Help him!”

  “Whatever you want…”

  “I want you to take him away!”

  “I’ll take care of things. I’ll—”

  “It’s too late. It’s him! He doesn’t want us.”

  “Oh I do,” Sam had moaned, his brow at the door. “I do, my pet. I do!” His soiled and shapeless clothes, his wet rheumy eyes leaking tears seemed too unjust.

  “Here!” the old woman had cried, her heart breaking. “Here!” And she had slid the bankbook under the door. “Ten thousand dollars,” she’d said, then listened to the pages being turned.

  “What good is this? It’s in both your names.”

  “It’ll be yours! Both of yours! Just be a family again!”

  The bankbook had skimmed back under the door.

  “Tell Sam that, Bridget. Not me!”

  The last day of school had just ended. Benjy walked slowly toward his grandmother’s house with his mother’s note in his bookbag. This morning his mother had still been mad after her fight with Aunt Helen, plus she was nervous about Alice’s graduation tonight. She had been running around the house in her slip trying to iron her skirt for work, write a note he was supposed to bring to his father after school, pick up the house, and plan for the special graduation dinner she was cooking tonight. Suddenly, she had been on them for everything, things that had nothing to do with Aunt Helen or graduation. It was always like that before an event or in any crisis: she would bring up the strangest things, complaining about old sins, while on her hands and knees she tried to sweep scarves of matted dust out from under the couch and growled up at Benjy that instead of hanging around the house watching TV all summer, he would walk up to the swimming pool every day for swimming lessons so he could go out in the boat with Mr. Briscoe. And Norm, she had yelled at the bathroom door, had better be at town hall today or not bother coming home. And Alice had better get off her high horse and realize there was more to life than mooning over Lester Stoner.

  Benjy rang the doorbell, then held his breath, waiting. He hated these missions to his father. Norm refused to go on them anymore and his mother wouldn’t think of asking Alice. Relieved when no one answered, he was tempted to leave the envelope in the mailbox, but his mother had insisted he make sure his father got it, and not Aunt Helen. He knocked on the door. Still no one came. Someone had to be inside with his grandmother, who throughout his memory had been senile and bedridden.

  The three of them used to visit here every Sunday after Mass. But that had ended when Aunt Helen accused Norm of stealing her mission box. She said there were five dollars’ worth of dimes in it, enough to feed two Chinese babies for one year. His mother went crazy. She told Helen she had a hell of a nerve accusing her son of thievery when she, Helen, was the biggest thief in the whole world. And, Benjy knew, a liar, too; there had been only thirty-one dimes in the box. Visions of those two Chinese babies’ shrunken cheeks and bloated, starving bellies so tormented him that he finally slipped the money into Sister Mary Agatha’s mission box at school. When the nun discovered the money, she told the class that among them sat a true Catholic, a giver who desired no recognition and no extra recess star on his tally sheet.

  He knocked again, then listened. He could hear the drone of a vacuum cleaner. He ran off to the back door, where he knocked even louder. Still no one came. He could see the bars of his grandmother’s crib through the window. Growing close to the house was a gnarled locust tree. He climbed onto a lower branch and tried to see in her window, but he was too low. Holding his breath, he climbed higher, then eased along a newly leafed limb until he could lean both hands on the sill.

  There behind the bars his grandmother huddled in her pale bedclothes, her face narrow and small, her nose a sharp little beak. Her startled eyes darted toward his and she shivered. The gauzy bed jacket ruffled at her throat and her blue lips moved.

  “Samuel!” she said suddenly, pointing at the window. “You get down now!”

  “Wha…? What the hell!” came Benjy’s father’s voice from the rocker at the foot of the crib. He had been sleeping. “Shit,” he groaned, bracing his head on his hand.

  Benjy drew back from the window so quickly that he almost fell. His father’s blood-veined eyes peered blearily past the bars, and the old dread stirred in Benjy’s heart of the hot foul breath and the clutch of those long, hard fingers demanding love and loyalty or even the change he always thought he heard jingling in his sons’ pockets. Benjy held up the envelope. His father leaned closer, but Benjy had slid down the tree and was already at the back door, laying the envelope on the threshold. He ran down the driveway.

  Helen LaChance slipped the envelope into her apron pocket. Just then the inside door opened and her brother sagged against the frame.

  “Where’d he go?” he slurred, wincing in the sun.

  “Who?”

  “Benjy.”

  “He’s not here,” she said, heading back to her garden.

  “I just saw him.” Sam gestured. “Up in the tree there…”

  She rolled her eyes and sighed.

  Stepping past her, Sam bellowed, “Benjy! Benjy! Benjy!”

  “Get inside!” she hissed. Across the street the rectory door was opening. Howard Menka looked out.

  Sam looked u
p at the tree, then scratched his head and went back inside.

  Helen drove her rusty trowel deep into the warm black soil. In all the yard only this patch of earth was fertile enough to yield. This was all she had saved from the sea of weeds that by summer’s end would again be vined in a tumble of jungly growth. It was all Howard Menka’s fault. Now he was trying to turn his sister against her. But so far, Jozia was still loyal. “Thank God,” she sighed, crossing herself quickly with the trowel. She leaned back and pulled another tomato seedling from the flat. She set the plant in the newly dug hole and scooped soil over its thin white roots. She smiled. The Jet Stars were always the first to bloom and ripen. This year the Monsignor would have her juicy tomatoes before anyone else’s.

  Last summer Sam had staggered out here and fallen into the garden, crushing all her Jet Stars. Iris McAvoy’s Beefsteak tomatoes had gotten to the rectory before hers. So this year, to be on the safe side, she had ordered a roll of chicken wire and metal stakes. Six dollars’ worth. Six more dollars added to the tally of her brother’s sins.

  She sat back on her heels and ripped open her sister-in-law’s letter. Dear Sam, she read, shaking her head at the profane groveling, the threatening accusations…. Her eyes widened. I am hiring a lawyer to look into that trust fund, Marie had written. Helen’s mind quickly computed each account. In her file box was every receipt, every bill received since her first day as her brother’s guardian.

  That money is yours and therefore also your children’s. If you won’t help me with Alice’s tuition money, Sam, then my lawyer will take you and that sister of yours to court. I have been advised that we will end up with every cent of that ten thousand dollars.

  Let her, Helen thought, as she shredded the letter. With her trowel she dug another hole, into which she pressed the pieces. “Let her hire ten lawyers,” she muttered. Everything was perfectly legal and aboveboard. She had followed the old Judge’s counsel to a T. Her records were perfect. Every penny had been accounted for. “I am above reproach,” she whispered, and as she stood up, that old bile seeped into her throat to think that this house of her childhood would eventually be her brother’s and not hers. With her mother’s death she would be homeless. Odd, she thought, looking toward the buckled roofing shingles, odd that Marie hadn’t said a word about the house and the tenements going to Sam and his children. Maybe Marie didn’t know. She hoped not, because once Sam found out, her life would be a nightmare. Well, he won’t get much, she thought, her shrewd eyes scanning the peeling paint and rotting clapboard. Let it fall to pieces. He had never cared, so why should she?