by Jim Shepard
“Sister Beatrice is supposed to be here,” she said finally.
They stood about with their candles burning, waiting. They began to feel embarrassed for her, sensing everything wasn’t going as planned. Biddy’s back felt chilly. Sister Beatrice came on the first and fourth Mondays to talk about Christmas and Advent. He supposed she had more training in that than Sister Theresa. She would stand near the font and speak deliberately, as if telling a ghost story. She always came after they finished singing, and they’d finished minutes ago. Sister peered down the passageway they had come in, and looked back at them. “Well, something’s holding Sister up,” she said, her voice hushed. “I can get you started.” She tapped her finger on the round cement top of the font, thinking. They hadn’t seen her unsure of herself in any way before, and they edged forward, beginning in a furtive, guilty way to enjoy it.
She hesitated. “This is not the best place to hold a discussion,” she said, almost to herself. The “s” sounds in her words seemed to linger in the empty spaces between the pews, in dark corners.
“Come on,” she said. “Why don’t we sing it again?”
And they raised their dittoed sheets again to the candlelight. They sang it once more, their voices alone and together in the darkness, the candles only half their original height and warm wax beginning to collect around their grip. She had only to signal with a nod once they’d finished and they repeated the song a third time, without hesitation, the final notes hanging reverently in the silence as she turned and led them back down the passageway and out of the darkness without a sound.
That night, in Fagan’s House of Beef, he craned his head back to look up into the darkness of the moderately high ceiling, trying to re-create the moment in the chapel. Around him his family was fussing over who sat where, trading seats with the Lirianos. Cindy sat directly opposite him. She smiled and edged the centerpiece forward, a challenge. The flowers trembled.
“Let’s get moving with those menus,” Dom said to no one in particular, to a passing waitress.
Ginnie remarked that she couldn’t believe they finally had everyone together. “Ronnie and Cindy together is one thing. And getting these two out—” She gestured toward his father and Dom.
“Yeah, it’s thrilling,” Dom said. “I could just spit biscuits thinking about it.”
“Well, I’m not sure your daughter is getting married,” Biddy’s mother said. “I never see her with her fiancé.”
Ronnie gave a small smile and Cindy blushed.
The waitress arrived and set menus in front of each of them. She spaced three baskets of breadsticks evenly along the center of the table as well.
“It’s not going to be long now,” Biddy’s father said, opening a flap of the menu. “When’s Memorial Day? June?”
“May thirty-first this year,” Ginnie said.
“You guys have only a few more months.”
Ronnie nodded, picking the cellophane from two breadsticks. He held them like drumsticks and began to tap quietly on his plate.
“Ronnie’s going to have brown tuxes at the wedding,” Louis said.
Ronnie smiled. “Louis is a Cleveland Browns fan. Brown tuxes and orange shirts.”
“Lovely,” Biddy’s mother said, sipping some water. “Do they rent helmets, too?”
“It’s going to be a punk wedding,” Cindy said.
“That’s a good idea.” Dom crunched a breadstick. “We’ll give you punk presents, too.”
“We were debating where you guys should send us on our honeymoon.” Cindy smiled, lifting a flower in and out of the vase with two fingers. “We were thinking Martinique.”
“I was thinking Danbury,” Biddy’s father said.
“I think we’ll settle for Captiva.”
“Dom’ll get right on it.”
Dom nodded. “Your check’s in the mail.” He turned the menu over. “Let’s see what the Fage can come up with here.”
Biddy opened his own menu, trying to interest himself in one of the categories, “From the Sea,” perhaps, or “From the Grill,” but the candlelit tables of the bar he’d glimpsed on the way in had reminded him strongly of the chapel in the morning, and he was having difficulty concentrating on the choices presented him. Veal was his favorite, but he couldn’t decide.
“More layoffs at U Tech?” Dom said.
His father turned the menu over, dissatisfied. “Everybody’s laying off. Everybody’s cutting back.”
“I thought defense plants were a little better off, though.”
“These are hard times.”
“I hope they can afford to pay me next year,” Louis said. Biddy’s father was supposed to be getting him a full-time job at Sikorsky once he finished high school.
“I don’t know, Louis. I hope they can afford to pay me. We’re talking about a three-year cost-of-living freeze right now.”
“Things’re that tough?” Dom said.
“Things’re that tough.”
“And, of course, everything’s going up.”
“Of course. No freeze on that. The school told us now that tuition’s going up. I’m thinking about taking the kids out. We’re supporting the public schools, anyway.”
Biddy looked up from the menu.
“How about it, guy? How’d you like to be in Johnson next year?”
He couldn’t think. One fact occurred to him: all his friends were in Our Lady of Peace.
“I wouldn’t know anybody,” he said.
His father sat back. “Oh, well. You didn’t know anybody when you went to Our Lady of Peace, either.”
“The kids’ll stay where they are,” his mother said. “We’ll manage.”
“I’m not sure we’ll manage. And I’m not sure there’s any great advantage to having them there.”
Dom and Ginnie looked down, embarrassed.
“What’s he getting for the extra money? Hymns?” his father said.
His mother said it wasn’t the time or place to talk about it.
His father ordered for him: veal. He cut it realizing for the first time that he had some sort of choice; it was possible he could belong or be somewhere else. He was going to Our Lady of Peace because his parents had made a decision to send him there years ago, not because of any implacable natural law. He had never stopped to consider whether he would be happier or unhappier in a public school; he had identified himself completely with Our Lady of Peace when he thought of school, for better or worse. And now all of it—the Sisters, the spelling bees, the mornings in the chapel—all of it was unstable, all could change if the need or desire arose. Events and forces he had never dreamed of could interfere and wipe out that part of his life and send him in another direction entirely.
He continued to consider the idea on the way home. Not attending Our Lady of Peace had seemed like announcing he was not a Catholic: not possible. Announcing he wasn’t a Catholic was the equivalent of announcing he wasn’t a boy. He was what he was.
He sat at the kitchen table while his parents and Kristi went to their rooms to change.
And yet he could go to another school: it was that simple, that liberating, and that frightening. He didn’t like it where he was. Catholics didn’t have to go to Catholic school. But what made him think he’d be any happier with kids he didn’t know? And what if it wasn’t the school’s fault he was never happy?
His mother came into the kitchen in her tan bathrobe and flopped a wicker basket of envelopes and cards onto the table, scattering them across the top as though someone had dropped an oversized deck of cards. She sat and began to sort them into odd piles.
“Mom, it wouldn’t cost anything to go to Johnson?” he asked.
His mother shook her head. “Don’t worry about that. You’re staying with the Sisters.”
“I don’t want to go if you guys can’t pay.”
“We can handle it. Your father gets a little dramatic sometimes. I’ll make sure we can handle it.”
He watched her hands move swiftly throu
gh the pile. “What’re you doing?” he finally asked.
“I’m taking down those who sent us Christmas cards.”
“Why do you write them down?”
“There are always a few surprises.” She finished sorting, and went back through a pile. “Some of these people we have to add to our list.”
“You didn’t know you wanted to send them cards?”
She put her pencil down. “Biddy, I’m not running this show. I don’t choose our friends. I don’t choose our activities. I don’t make decisions. I get a vote. Sometimes.”
Biddy looked down, sorry he’d done this. His mother’s tone softened. “They’re people we haven’t been in touch with, or friends of your father’s I never met. Here, you can help. Address some envelopes. You can stamp, too. There’s the sponge.”
He took the envelopes as she passed them, each paired with an incoming envelope and address he could refer to.
“When’s that spelling bee?” she asked.
“Tuesday night.”
“We have to get you some pants. You’re growing out of the black pair.”
He began to worry about the spelling bee again. He was probably the best speller in the class and he wanted no part of it.
She glanced past him, out the window. “It’s snowing again.” He went to the back porch and turned on the garage light. The wind was blowing the snow down in a hard diagonal, the tracks and marks in the old snow beginning to fill in. He remained at the window, watching.
“Hey,” his mother said from the table. “Whatever happened to the envelopes?”
“I’ll help,” he said, distracted. “I’m just thinking.”
“Don’t think too much,” she said, wrapping rubber bands around finished piles of envelopes. “Remember, that’s how I get into trouble around here.”
The snow mixed with sleet, covering halves of trees. The windows began to glaze, and snow piled upon the sills as if to protect them from the darkness.
“This weather sucks the big wazoo,” his father said. He closed the drapes, moving the dog’s nose away.
“Stand still. Take your finger out of your nose,” his mother said. She was pinning cuffs on his new black pants, annoyed she hadn’t done it earlier, and he was shifting, trying to see out. It had been snowing lightly and intermittently for nearly twenty-four hours.
“Turn around a little bit. The other way.” He turned his back to the window. Stupid brushed by and his mother asked in despair if he could believe the way this dog was shedding.
He and Laura had decided to sit together and she and her parents were going to save four seats. He was more anxious about keeping them waiting than about the spelling bee. He hadn’t told his parents about the saved seats.
When his mother finished, he stepped out of the trousers and dawdled around the kitchen, chilly in his underwear. The sewing machine buzzed and chugged in the cellar. He walked into his father’s room. His father was combing his hair, a green bottle of cologne on the dresser beside him, luminous against the white wall.
“Get your shirt on,” he said. “We need a tie, don’t we?” He opened the closet and looked over a rack on the door.
Biddy indicated a green one with small brown-and-blue pheasants.
That one would be around his knees, his father said. He slithered one off the rack and flipped it around Biddy’s neck. The knot failed and he squinted and knelt close, his breath smelling of whiskey. It failed again. He couldn’t do it that way, he announced. He turned Biddy around and tied it from behind. One end was long and they tucked it in his shirt.
His mother returned and handed him his pants and he pulled them on in the kitchen. He could hear the clock on the stove. His coat and hat were on a kitchen chair, and he put them on and stood at the sink, looking out the window at the unceasing snowfall.
They were minutes late and he picked out Laura among the rows of folding chairs and led his family over, suddenly unsure of what he was going to do with both sets of parents together. They introduced themselves: Laura’s parents had already been warned and his seemed unsurprised as well. They took their seats, and Sister Theresa climbed the stage to thank everyone for coming, mentioning that the students participating were the best spellers in the diocese and there were no losers tonight, only winners, and that everyone had a good deal to be proud of. She introduced a Sister from St. Ambrose and another from Our Lady of Perpetual Grace who said the same things in different words. Eight parochial schools were being represented. Each student was called out of the audience to polite applause to sit on the folding chairs on the stage behind the podium. Three judges were introduced and it was explained how the words had been selected. He was surprised by the shabbiness of the trappings, the casual, thrown-together look of the whole event. The judges sat at card tables.
He was near Laura and Sarah Alice, looking out over the audience. His mother smiled at him. They began. They had to repeat the word after it was given, spell it, and repeat the word again. The judges used the word in a sentence and they were allowed a minute and encouraged to take their time. Almost no one did.
It went rapidly. He heard his name called and crossed to the podium, looking over the microphone, away from his father. “‘Stationery,’” one of them said. “I have to go to the store to get some stationery.”
He refocused on the microphone. He’d gone over the word the week before with Sister: the trick was distinguishing between the homonyms. Something fastened in place was a-r-y; paper for letters was e-r-y. Just remember paper, e-r, she’d said. He spelled it, quickly. “That’s correct,” the judge said listlessly, and he went back to his seat, relieved.
On the second round, people started to miss. Whenever it happened, there was a silence and then a judge said, “I’m sorry.” The silence was chilling. Every now and then a contestant would receive an extremely easy word, inspiring furious envy in some and detached appreciation of his or her good fortune in others. Of all the contestants only one, a short, plain girl from St. Ambrose, took her time, pausing between each letter like someone working on high explosives. She wore a black dress and had sticklike arms. He got bored and irritated just listening to her.
He passed safely through five more rounds and by the end of the sixth only six contestants remained. As the eliminated contestants had missed, they had returned, in shock or relief, to their original seats in the audience. The six survivors looked about the sea of empty chairs on the stage. The judge announced “intransigent,” and the first two to attempt it failed, leaving only the girl from St. Ambrose and three from Our Lady of Peace: Laura, Biddy, and Sarah Alice.
“‘Intransigent,’” the girl from St. Ambrose said into the microphone. She was relishing this, he was beginning to realize with some distaste. She began with paralyzing deliberateness, and he could sense the audience’s suspense and resented how easily she had been able to manipulate them. When she finished, there was a burst of heartfelt applause.
Laura was next and misspelled “ostentatious.” He froze when he heard the wrong letter in sequence, and after a beat the judge said, “I’m sorry.” She descended the stairs and took her seat next to her father, who patted her hand.
The rounds continued. He lost count of the number of words he spelled. The girl from St. Ambrose labored through another one, and he returned to the podium and waited, one of three left.
“‘Diary,’” the judge said. The crowd relaxed audibly, happy for him. “I like to write in my diary.”
“‘Diary,’” he said, rapidly. “D-a-i-r-y.” He stood waiting but there was a silence instead, a familiar silence, and the judge said, “I’m sorry.” He went down the steps unbelieving, repeating it to himself, unsure of what had happened. Had they made a mistake? He sat beside Laura, and his father leaned down the row. “You spelled dairy,” he whispered.
Sarah Alice and the girl from St. Ambrose went back and forth for some time. By this point the audience applauded them both for every word, and when Sarah Alice finally missed she was
allowed to stay onstage, in case the other girl missed as well. She didn’t, and everyone gave her a rousing ovation.
“It’s too bad,” his father said in the car on the way home. “To get all those tough words and then miss one like diary.” It was very cold in the back seat. Biddy kept his hands in his pockets.
“How come you’ve never had Laura over the house?” his mother said.
“I don’t know,” he said. “She’s coming over tomorrow.”
They turned a corner and the rear of the car slid to the left. “What kind of doctor is he?” his mother said. “Psychiatrist?”
“Um-hm.” His father rubbed the windshield with the flat of his palm.
“Maybe we could get some free advice,” she said.
“We could use it,” his father said. The car turned carefully onto their street, its traction unsteady beneath them.
The next morning when he answered the door, it was Louis, not Laura.
“Hi,” Louis said. “Can I come in?”
Biddy opened the door wider. The snow had stopped, and the wind was blowing powder around, wet and cold.
Louis stomped his boots on the mat on the back porch and bent over and brushed away the snow that clung to his dungarees.
“C’mon in,” Biddy said. He looked back into the kitchen, as if for help. “Your parents coming over too? Mickey?”
Louis shook his head, pulling off his hat. It was white with a large red pom-pom at its peak and the red letters EXECUTIVE SPIRIT across the front. Biddy’s father had given it to him. It advertised Sikorsky’s new business helicopter, the Spirit. It was an awful hat, but Louis was being a staunch employee, even before he was hired.
He’d come alone, he said. He took off his jacket and waited on the porch, holding everything in front of him.
“Well, come on in,” Biddy repeated, wishing his parents were home. He led Louis into the kitchen and pulled a chair away from the table. Louis sat down, clothes in his lap.
“Want me to take your coat?”
“It’s okay.” He looked around the kitchen, apparently content.
