Flights (16 page)

His father sat on the edge of the bed, scratching the top of his head and rubbing the hair around, looking at the floor. “I don't know about you, kid,” he said. “We don't have enough to worry about?”

Biddy sniffled.

“You look thin. You eating enough?” His father laughed at himself. “No. Of course you're not eating enough. You're never eating enough. I got those vitamins downstairs; I want you to use them.” Biddy nodded. His father blew some air from his mouth. “Your mother's upset right now. Go easy on her the next couple days. Don't do anything more to get on her nerves. She's unhappy.”

“What's she unhappy about?”

“Everything. Lots of things. Different things. You know your mother; she gets frustrated. Things don't work out the way she likes. She worries about you two. She's got no patience, she gets mad, and then you do something, or Kristi does something, and she, you know … explodes.”

Biddy wiped his eyes. “Sorry,” he said. “I'm sorry.”

“I know, I know. I get mad, too; I'm no better. C'mon,” he sighed. “Slide down.” Biddy straightened his legs under the covers and his father slapped his thigh and stood up. He paused at the door as if to add something, but said only, “Get some sleep,” the yellow light from the hall narrowing and disappearing with the words.

III

Christmas

KRISTI

Checking the Vital Functions

My brother told me that everything was going to be different soon. I asked him how he knew and he said he was going to make it different. I don't believe him. He can't make anything different. He came outside to play with me the day it snowed six inches and we dug tunnels for Stupid. He wouldn't let me hide in them. He was scared I'd get buried and suffocate. I hid in them anyway, and he pulled me out by my boots, and got snow up one leg. I hate it here and nobody cares. We made Sanka later and the wind came and shook the windows. I told him I hoped Stupid froze outside. I told him I hoped some Sisters were outside, too, and froze with him. I think everybody should be put in a box until they do something good, and then they can be let out. All my brother can do is things like when he was on the roof, which was stupid. They just catch him and nothing changes except he gets in trouble. He's going to do something else, I know, but he'll just get caught. He can't do anything. He can't make anything different.

Outside it was clear and cold and objects in the distance had a special clarity. Inside folding chairs squeaked all the way down the line: every boy and girl could see the blue sky through the windows and school had been out for half an hour, and yet here they were.

Sister leaned into the piano and the notes rose to the empty space high above them. The wood around the stage was old and filled the room with a damp, comforting smell. The winter sun came through the windows in great bands and swept across the maroon-and-black tiles in dull streaks.

Our Lady of Peace was forming a choir. It was, as Father Rubino often said without enthusiasm, Sister Theresa's idea. Sister Eileen didn't support it; Sister Beatrice thought her first-graders too young; Sister Marie Bernadette thought the same of her second-graders, and Sister Mary of Mercy claimed her sixth-graders were too far behind in their other work already. Mrs. Duffy knew her eighth-graders would never support it. Mrs. Studerus offered her fourth-graders, but at that point Sister was in no mood for it to help, and had decided to use, as an example, her own class, and only her own class.

Biddy sat beside Teddy and behind Laura, wondering if his voice was any good. Sister was going through the class members, one by one. There were only a few left, himself included. She banged out the introduction to “Joy to the World!” Sarah Alice stood by the upright piano, her hand on the nicked wooden top. She got as far as
“Let earth receive her King”
before Sister stopped and wrote something on a pad.

“Okay,” she said. “Thank you.” Sarah Alice picked her briefcase off a nearby chair and left, buttoning her coat, unsure whether she'd been accepted or rejected.

“Mr. Bell,” she said. “You're next.”

Teddy got up and crossed to the piano. Choirs were for fools, he had told Biddy while they had been sitting there.

“Do you know what you are?” Sister said. “Soprano? Tenor?”

“I don't know. Soprano,” Teddy said.

She looked at him and then launched into “Joy to the World!” He started to sing. She stopped playing, and he went on for several notes himself. The few people left along the empty chairs tittered.

She glared at him. “You sing seriously, young man,” she said. “Or you'll wish to God you had.”

She played it again, and he sang with absolute seriousness.

“It turns out you have a very nice voice. And you're certainly no soprano. Mr. Siebert.” She wrote on her pad. “You're next.”

He took Teddy's place at the piano. His fingers picked at the scars in the wood. Teddy indicated at the door that he'd wait. Biddy nodded without enthusiasm: Laura was already waiting. He opened the music book to “Joy to the World!”

Sister was looking at him expectantly. “Any idea what you are?” she asked, conscious of the futility of the question.

His temples grew cool. “Maybe a soprano.” His fingers made ghost fingerprints on the wood.

“Soprano's high.”

He nodded.

She started the song, unconvinced. He knew as he sang that something was off, that he wasn't singing even as well as he could. She continued to the end before stopping, dissatisfied. “Well, we need sopranos,” she said, and leaned forward, fingering a page. “You want to try something else?” She flipped through the book.

“How about ‘Hark! the Herald Angels Sing'?” he suggested. She agreed, surprised.

She misplayed the beginning and restarted. The introduction rose around him and he watched her, hesitating, and began, weak at first, hearing his voice lost in the huge room, but gaining strength and feeling his confidence grow as he climbed the higher notes. He gained power and swept into the highest parts with his voice ringing clear and strong across the empty floor:
“Joyful, all ye nations rise, join the triumph of the skies,”
and without loss of power or clarity his voice carried up and over the highest of the bridges:
“Hark! the herald angels sing, glory to the newborn King!”
Sister stopped, and the room shone. In the silence it was as though the metal chairs were still resonating, holding the sound.

Outside the bare branches of a maple moved silently in the wind, the glass insulating them from exterior sound. Laura shifted in her chair and it squeaked, ending the moment. Sister cleared her throat quietly, and reached out to touch the music book.

“That's a beautiful voice God's given you,” she said. “Just a beautiful voice.”

That night it snowed. Biddy and Kristi knelt at the picture window in the living room with the lights out, watching the snow drift down past the telephone pole at the end of the street, the individual flakes flashing like dull fireflies as they passed beneath the streetlight. They were descending in perfect silence and beginning to lightly cover the road.

Their parents had gone into New York to see a play and the baby-sitter had turned off the TV and was reading a book in the den. In the silence they were both listening for the snow, their faces to the cool windowpane, hushed by the snow's quiet even while they realized that they were behind glass and that falling snow should make no sound in any event.

They could hear the dog bothering the baby-sitter before she let it out. The door slammed and they watched the dog trot into the cold, nose to the thin layer of snow. It, too, made no sound, swinging into the neighbor's yard, its paw prints showing dark where it crossed the driveway. It stood unmoving with the snow coming down around it, its head to the side and raised, sniffing.

His sister sat back, away from the window. “I'm going to get a sled,” she said. Even she was quiet, beside him in the darkness. “If we had a sled we could go sledding.”

“There's not enough snow.”

“Tomorrow there'll be,” she said.

They watched the dog, its nose edging along the base of a tree.

“You were crying last night,” she said.

He looked at her, then returned his attention to the darkness outside.

“What were you sad about?”

He put his palm almost to the glass, feeling the cool air especially on his fingertips. He had the sensation of dipping his hand into shallow water. “Lots of things.”

In the other room the baby-sitter turned the TV back on.

“Will they be able to come back from New York?” Kristi asked.

“They went on the train. That still goes even when it snows.”

There was a sound of a police siren on the television, and cars screeched back and forth. She got up. “If Lisa can't come over tomorrow, you want to make a snow fort?”

“If there's enough snow. If there's enough snow and Lisa can't come over, we'll build two snow forts and have a battle.” He got up as well, and turned from the window, following her into the den. The ordered light and noise of the television were warm and welcome after the living room. He stood watching for a few moments before remembering the dog and going back into the kitchen to let it in.

The next morning, his parents were up early and his father was ruining eggs.

“How was the play?” Biddy said. He sat at the table and rubbed his eyes.

“Good,” his father said. “Very good. I recommend it highly.”

“You want some coffee?” His mother had an orange Sanka jar in her hand. He nodded.

“Your sister's outside.” His father flipped an egg with élan, yolk breaking in midair with a flash of yellow. “She said to come out when you got up.”

“Have some breakfast first,” his mother said.

He got up and went to the window on the back porch. Kristi was hunched in the snow, piling up a mound. “How much is it?” he asked without turning around. “How much did we get?”

“Six inches.” His father's attention remained largely on the eggs. “How's that? You kids wanted more snow, you got more snow.”

He ate two of the eggs his father had made, drank some Sanka, and went upstairs and scooped everything out of his winter drawer. He pulled off his pajamas and pulled on a pair of thin cotton socks, and long underwear over them. Over that he slipped heavy woolen socks, choosing carefully from the pile and checking for holes, and then some dungarees. He found his lumberjack shirt and one of his heavy sweaters. He buckled his boots over his pants as a final touch and stood feeling secure and able to roll in the snow without any icy leaks. He grabbed his down mittens and hat and trooped downstairs.

“You need a scarf?” his mother asked as he went by.

“Nope.” He let Stupid out, adjusted his hat, and followed. It felt wonderful in the winter air and he realized he'd been hot and uncomfortable inside with everything on.

“Get your fort ready,” Kristi called. “Mine's almost done.”

Stupid loped around, tracking rolling areas of white that Kristi had left untouched. Biddy chose a spot away from the house, at the back of the yard, and started to sweep the snow into a kind of wall with his down mittens.

“That's too far,” Kristi said.

“Not for me.”

She made a face and he finished a short wall he could crouch behind, and then helped with hers. Their breath puffed around them and his feet were cold, though his hands sweated in the mittens. He curled his toes around in his boots. The air seemed to slip down his throat like water and leave him breathless.

“That's good,” she said.

“You don't want any more?”

“No. That's good. Let's go.” She knelt and started scooping snow together and as he ran back to his fort a snowball thumped against his jacket.

He called her a cheater, packed a ball together, and whizzed it at her. It sailed. It was hard to throw with down mittens. He kept trying but he had no control; nothing came close. One hit the house. He stayed low pulling another one together, and when he rose to throw, a snowball hit him dead center on the forehead, like a wet, easy slap. He teetered for a moment, the snow rolling off his face, and then flopped backward, arms outstretched, with Kristi laughing. He lay in the snow dead, a tribute to her aim, and then made angel wings.

Abruptly he got up, piling snow into a long line of snowballs behind the wall while Kristi's throws landed around him. When he was ready he set himself, pulled off his gloves, and stood up, grasping a cold snowball in his bare hand, pivoting at a snowy second base and firing at his sister. He kept her pinned like that, flinging them in rapid succession, and then waited, wanting her to think he'd run out of ammunition. She raised her head and he caught the top of her hat and knocked it off.

“I give!” she called. “I give!” But he had a double line of balls left, and he pelted her fort, laughing; the balls, hardened in his hand before he threw, were starting to break down her protecting wall. He used an exaggerated overhand motion, discovering he could throw down into the fort that way, the snowballs disappearing behind it and his sister shouting with every hit. “I give!” she repeated, and finally, in blind frustration, she scrambled over the wall, rushing at him, head down, scarf twirling behind her in the wind like a tail. Laughing his aim was no better than it had been with the mittens, she stormed his wall shouting “I said I give” and drove her wet blonde head into his jacket front, toppling them both into a drift, laughing and wrestling, with snow leaking in everywhere and neither of them caring.

“Don't think you're going to get everything you see, because we're only going to look,” his mother said. “Sit on the seat, Kristi. I slam on the brakes and you'll go through the windshield.”