Flights (19 page)

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.

Biddy sat opposite him, and fiddled with the sugar bowl. He looked at the clock. He could hear Kristi in the den with the Saturday morning cartoons.

“Kristi, Louis is out here,” he called.

“So what?” she said. In the silence that followed her answer, Road Runner beeped.

Louis shifted, a glove sliding to the floor. His nose was still red from the cold.

Biddy got up and went to the refrigerator. “Sure you don't want anything? Did you have breakfast?” He looked again at the clock.

“No, thank you. Do you have to go somewhere?”

“No. Someone's coming over, though.”

“Oh.” He gazed at the cabinets, not in any rush. “I just wanted to talk.”

The doorbell rang. Biddy let Laura in and led her back to the kitchen, uncertain what to tell her. Louis nodded at her.

“Laura, this is Louis,” he said.

“Hi, Louis.”

“Hi.”

She stood awkwardly half in, half out of the room, and he pulled a chair out and motioned for her to sit. She made the long silences that seemed to punctuate discussions with Louis even more uncomfortable than usual for him.

“Let's go out or something,” Biddy said. “Let's fix the snow fort.”

Louis shrugged.

Biddy could tell she thought something was strange but wasn't sure what. She didn't know Louis was retarded and Biddy had blown his opportunity to tell her. Maybe she would figure it out, he thought.

“What do you want to talk about?” Biddy said.

Louis looked at him.

“It snowed a lot last night,” Laura offered. “I saw buried cars that you couldn't see almost on the way over.”

“I had to help my father dig out this morning,” Louis said. They were silent, Biddy thinking of nothing as a rejoinder. Louis ran his fingers along the edge of the tabletop. “I don't usually come over here. I came because Biddy's my friend and I wanted to talk.”

Biddy waited, and finally asked again what he'd like to talk about.

“Are you a football player?” Laura said.

Louis nodded and rubbed something from his eye.

“You look like a football player.”

“Thank you.” He looked at the fruit bowl before him. “Can I have a pear?”

The back door opened with a merciful bang and a bag of groceries tumbled in. A foot edged it forward and then his parents followed with additional bags, stepping over the one on the floor.

“Here we go, here we go, here we go,” his father said. “Hey, Louis. Long time no see. Where's Mom and Dad?” They swept to the counter and set everything down with a gentle crash. “Help us with the bags in the trunk, Biddy. Hey, Laura. How're you today?” Laura smiled.

His mother was outside pulling more bags from the open trunk. Biddy went out and took a big one from her arms. She asked about his coat and he said he'd only be out a second. He brought two bags in.

His father was putting cheese away in the refrigerator. “So you both fell a little short last night, huh?”

“We're glad for Sarah Alice,” Laura said. “I missed a dumb one.”

“How about this guy? He got all the hard ones, and then he goes in the tank on one I could spell.”

Biddy set the bags on the counter with a clank: cans inside.

“So how's Mom, Louis?” his mother said.

“Okay.” He got up, still holding his coat, hat, and gloves. “I guess I'm gonna go now.”

“Hey, stick around,” his father said.

“No. I have to go.” He put his hat on. “I feel better now.”

Laura smiled up at him. “It was nice meeting you.”

“It was really nice meeting you.” He walked to the door, stepping over a jar of peanuts, getting his arm caught in his coat. Biddy followed him, stooping over the tumbled bag and closing the door behind him.

His father ran a finger down the long white receipt. “What'd he want? Why'd he say he feels better?”

Biddy shrugged.

“Did he feel bad when he came?”

“I don't know.”

“He probably feels bad about that job,” his mother said. “He was supposed to have part-time work by this point.” She was collecting things for the freezer in one bag.

“Hey, I'm doing the best I can. It's not like placing Frank Borman, you know. If it's at all possible to get the kid a job, we'll get him a job.”

Biddy sat back down next to Laura. “Who's Frank Borman?” she whispered. He didn't know. They watched more of the unpacking—fish, five or six packages of it, and club soda—before going outside to explore the new drifts the wind and snow had created the night before and was reshaping even as they played.

He'd put off going to Confession for three weeks and his mother wasn't having any more of it. That was it, she said. No more screwing around. She was going over this afternoon and he was going with her.

Confession was between four-thirty and six on Saturdays, and it was now four-fifteen. Laura's mother had picked her up earlier, honking the horn and waving from the car. He sat on the back porch, his rear end and knees wet and his feet cold. The dog lay on the floor nearby, dozing. One ear was flapped out as though he were listening through the floor for something.

His mother came into the kitchen from the bathroom, a lipgloss brush between thumb and forefinger. “Come on. Change your pants and shoes. I want to get back.”

He got laboriously to his feet and stepped out of his boots. As he passed through the kitchen he asked if Kristi was going.

“Kristi went last week.” His mother's voice echoed faintly in the bathroom. “If you'd gone with her you wouldn't have to go now.”

Upstairs he dug around in his closet and found his other pair of boots. They were olive drab but his pants could cover them.

“I don't have any sins anyway,” his sister said from her bedroom.

“You got big ears, you know it?” He sat on the bed and pulled on his black pants.

“You got big everything,” she said.

He buckled his boots and left without answering. His mother already had the car warmed up. “Give 'em hell,” his father called from the den. “Don't tell them about your old man's drinking.”

The wind died at the church door, leaving them in a hushed quiet, the brightness of the afternoon shut out behind them. “Don't rush your penance,” his mother said, and after that they were quiet, not to speak again until they were safely out of church.

There were five or six others present in a rough line in the pews, one behind the other. Biddy and his mother sat together. They swung the kneeling benches down and knelt, the creaking obtrusive but expected. He folded his hands in the adult manner, fingers interlocked casually. Only the young and the very pious folded them palm to palm with the fingers aligned. His mother bowed her head, and he tried to compile a list of sins at the last minute, vaguely uneasy at his lack of remorse. He had long since stopped believing he could accurately recount all of them, and had settled on one of Sister Theresa's concessions during a discussion: whatever you can remember, as long as you don't willfully leave anything out.

He glanced at his mother. Her head remained silent and still above her hands, her eyes gazing into the floor as if for support. Her intensity shook him. His eyes traveled to the Novena candles and from there to the Virgin Mary. He found himself taking stock, reviewing whether or not he was worthy to receive the grace and mercy that a Sacrament, even Confession, the most casual of sacraments, represented. He wondered if he was worthy of this church and these things around him.

He leaned back, surprised at his own sudden intensity, solemnity. Yet he was certain that all of this was in some central way good and that he had to in some way earn it, that he couldn't simply continue to wander into the building and expect to be a part of it all. He shivered, rubbing the sleeve of his coat. He was taking stock of himself whether he wanted to or not, out of the blue, kneeling in the darkness beside his mother, and he wasn't sure he knew how to do it.

He looked into the face on the crucifix. People shifted in the pews and an odd snort or gagging sound lingered in the silence. He didn't know where he stood in the eyes of God.

He wasn't, he knew, even sure God was present at times. Where did somebody who wasn't even sure stand?

His mother rose as if in response and padded to the confessional curtain, pausing before slipping in. He was next, and his thoughts crowded against one another with urgency: he was basically good, he felt. He rarely willfully hurt anyone. He did what people said. He broke a minimum of commandments. So why was he not happy? The simplicity of it shook him. If he was good, why was he so unhappy? Why was he only sure of God on Christmas, if then? Why couldn't he do more with Louis? Why did he always aggravate his parents?

His mother emerged from behind the curtain and passed silently into the nave for her penance. He hesitated until he heard the people behind him shifting expectantly, and then he got up and moved past the curtain into the dark.

He knelt on the wooden bench in front of the screen as his eyes adjusted. Father Rubino was picking at his eyebrow with his thumb and forefinger, looking off to his right.

“Bless me Father for I have sinned,” he said. “I haven't been to Confession in three weeks.” He spoke in a whisper and Father Rubino wasn't supposed to know who he was, but that was a fiction. He steadied himself on the partition. “I don't know, Father. I was going to tell you all these things like lying and swearing. But that's not right.” The boards beneath his knees groaned.

“What?” Father said. “What's wrong with you?”

He was close to tears and felt foolish because of it. “I don't know,” he repeated, and started to cry and hold it back at the same time. “I don't think about God except at Christmas, I don't help my sister at all, and sometimes I don't like to be around my friend Louis and I know that's wrong. I make my parents unhappy all the time.” He stopped, still not having heard any sort of response at all, having taken a chance and still not certain how to proceed.