Free Songs in Ordinary Time by Mary Mcgarry Morris

was under a sheet on an operating table. Every time the doctors and nurses touched him, he giggled. His mother laughed and Benjy smiled. Though he didn’t think Milton Berle was very funny, he loved watching this show with his mother because it made her so happy. She held up Norm’s ironed shirt and put it on a hanger. She paused now as Milton Berle ran around the operating room in his hospital johnny with the doctors and nurses chasing him. Suddenly Norm’s radio blared so loudly that they couldn’t hear the show. Marie sent Benjy upstairs to tell Norm to turn it down. When he opened the door the lights were on, and the bed was covered with textbooks and folders and papers, but Norm was gone. The window was open.
    Benjy turned down the radio and hurried back downstairs.
    “Is he still studying?” his mother asked.
    “I guess so.”
    “I don’t know how he can think with all that racket,” she said as she unrolled a wet towel on the arm of the couch. She shook out another damp starched shirt. The iron hissed as she pressed it into the collar. Benjy squirmed, wishing he’d turned the radio off. What if it got loud again and she went up herself?
    “God, he’s funny!” she said, shaking her head, as a new skit began. Milton Berle wore a wig and a dress as he battered a policeman with a purse. The audience screeched with laughter. Leaning over the ironing board, Benjy’s mother hugged herself and laughed until there were tears in her eyes.
    He smiled uneasily. Be careful , he was thinking. Be careful .
    “He’s so funny!” she gasped.
    Outside, a car had just pulled into the driveway. Klubocks’ dog was 34 / MARY MCGARRY MORRIS
    barking. The rap on the door was hard and curt. His mother opened the front door, which was beside the television, so in an odd way it seemed to Benjy that he was watching two screens, two shows. There was a Pepsodent ad now on one screen with a toothbrush dancing around a tube of toothpaste, while in the other stood Billy Hendricks with head bowed and a swollen lip he kept touching. Beside him was Mr. Hendricks, who still wore his mailman’s uniform.
    “Oh,” Marie said, stepping directly in front of them, making it clear they couldn’t come in. “It’s you, Eddy. The light’s broken….”
    “We just came from the dentist, Marie. Billy here’s got to have a new cap made and I know times are tough right now, but it seems to me fair’s fair, which is how I brung my boys up, so your Norm’s the one ought to be responsible now, Marie, because a lesson lived is a lesson learned, I always say. And believe me, I know how hard it is for—”
    “Eddy! What’re you talking about?” she finally broke in.
    “His cap,” Mr. Hendricks said, nudging his son. He was nervous. “Show her…show her!” Mr. Hendricks ordered until Billy opened his mouth, revealing the black gap of a missing front tooth.
    Just then, Alice came out of the bathroom in her old red chenille bathrobe with its raised white roses on the pockets. Her wet hair dripped onto her shoulders. “Oh!” she said when she saw Billy, his lip being stretched up now by his father, who was pointing at the damage and explaining that Dr.
    Yale had promised a rush job so it would look all right for graduation.
    “Agh…agh,” Billy groaned, pushing away his father’s hand.
    “Oh, hi,” Alice muttered, turning her head. Looking just as miserable, Billy muttered “Hi.” She ran so fast up the stairs that she tripped on her bathrobe and fell forward. Benjy stared down at the floor.
    “Norm!” Marie called. “Get Norm,” she said through clenched teeth.
    He closed his eyes on his way upstairs, praying, hoping that Norm had climbed back in through the window.
    “Bastard,” his mother groaned, flying past him into the room. “Where is he? Where the hell is he?” she cried, turning in a bewildered little circle.
    She ran to the window and looked out, and then she locked it. “He’ll pay,”
    she cried, kneeling by