Flights (28 page)

He put his head back against the wall. “We're okay,” he said. “He won't find us.”

“I want to go back,” Laura wailed quietly. “I told you I didn't want to come.”

He took her hand and led her down the driveway to the next street, easing a tricycle away with a gentle push. A dog barked nearby and the wind made a soft, sweeping sound through the leaves of the trees. He heard the engine just in time and clapped a hand to her mouth, pulling her back; it was the station wagon, driving without headlights. They sprinted back the way they'd come, not speaking, not slowing down, staying in backyards, clawing their way over dividing fences and hedges, cutting their feet, scraping their knees, their running as headlong as it could be without total loss of control. Laura raced ahead of him, her hair alive in the wind. They swept through the vacant lot, crashing through vines and creepers, and near her yard Laura missed a turn and sprawled headlong over a bush with a great crash of wood and vegetation, her heel lashing the air in front of him.

He rushed to her, asking if she was all right, and she was crying harder, more from the shock than anything else, and she stood and knocked his hand away and continued down the path. As they approached the fence, she pushed him away again and he ducked back, sure she'd be safe at that point, with lights and anxious voices of people filling her yard, for Sarah Alice, tangled in her nightshirt and buried under the sleeping bag, had woken up to find her missing.

The Sieberts were in the Lirianos' living room, pants pressed, hair washed, dresses ironed, and bearing presents, when Louis came downstairs and announced he wasn't going to the wedding.

“You're not going to the what?” Dom said, and Louis went back upstairs.

“He's not going to the what?” he repeated to Ginnie, his tie half tied.

Ginnie shrugged. It was news to her.

They sat around the coffee table in a semicircle, slightly embarrassed, while Dom went up to talk with him. They heard Dom's voice rise and fall. He came downstairs.

“He says he's not going. He won't tell me why.” He went into the bathroom and resumed tying his tie. “Christ,” he said finally. “Is the whole world going nuts? Is that it?”

Ginnie went up to talk with Louis.

“If he's not going, then I'm not either,” Mickey said.

“Don't start,” Dom said from the bathroom. “Just don't start. Because if you're staying home you're staying home in traction.”

Ginnie came downstairs grim. “We'll talk about it later,” she said. “He just says he's not going.”

“Doesn't that frost your ass?” Dom said. He was having trouble with his jacket sleeve. “These kids're gonna drive us all off cliffs. If they haven't already.”

Louis appeared at the top of the stairs. “Sorry I can't go, Mr. and Mrs. Siebert,” he said. “I can't, though.”

“Louis, what in the Christ is the matter?” Dom said.

“I can't, Dad. Sorry.” He went back upstairs.

Dom remained where he was, staring after him. “Aw, let's get out of here,” he said, shaking his head, “before I lose any more of them.”

The wedding itself was at Our Lady of Peace and the reception at the Red Coach Inn. It was Biddy's third wedding and the ceremony was becoming familiar. Sheona, the bride, glanced around as if wondering if all of this were not some sort of elaborate hoax.

Father Rubino handled the Mass with dispatch, labeling the occasion joyous and celebratory as though he were narrating a travelogue. Biddy stood next to his mother, with Cindy and Mickey in the pew ahead of them. Cindy was wearing dark blue, like her father, with a deep red sash. Her hair was up and the thin gold chains were missing from her neck. They had been gifts from Ronnie, he remembered.

The sun came through the windows. Irises on the altar moved slightly in the breeze from the open doors, heavy on their stems. “If he gets any skinnier, they might as well leave the hangers in the shirts,” he heard Dom say about the groom.

Biddy rode to the reception in the same car as Cindy. She hadn't said a word the entire day that he had been aware of. His father drove in silence, respecting her feelings, awkward.

At the Red Coach Inn they signed the guest register, his name following Cindy's and hers reading Cynthia Amanda Liriano—for her, oddly formal. They piled silver-and-white presents on one table and searched for name cards with table assignments on the other. Biddy and Cindy would be at table 8, his father at table 9. They threaded their way past circular tables arranged with place settings and fruit cups waiting. Kristi and Mickey were already at table 8, with two teenaged cousins; Dom, Ginnie, and his mother were already at 9. They were early. Uncomfortable where he was and spotting empty chairs at 9, Biddy moved and sat next to Dom.

“This guy's given up on Little League,” his father said.

“Yeah? Why's that?”

“Don't ask me. Paulie Rotondo would love to have him.”

“He's a great guy, Paulie. Knows his baseball, Biddy,” Dom said. “Don't kid yourself. Good man to play for.”

“I've heard he's a little wild,” Biddy's mother said.

“Wild? He's berserk,” Dom said. “Listen: here's a good Paulie Rotondo story. Me and Paulie, we go out a few years ago, we're going somewhere, I don't remember where. We're driving down the road, we go past a bar, Paulie slams on the brakes. ‘Aw, look who's here,' he goes. I don't see anybody. We pull over and go inside. There're two Puerto Ricans playing shuffleboard—you know, that bar game, like bowling. Paulie says, ‘Beer and an orange juice,' and then goes to the Puerto Ricans, ‘How you doing?' They're nodding and smiling, you know. Paulie picks up one of those shuffleboard discs and says, ‘Dom, don't get excited. I'm gonna kill this guy.' Then he goes to one of the Puerto Ricans, ‘Remember me? Sure.' Paulie's got this big grin, right? ‘Remember? You don't remember? You took the wallet right out of my pocket. Remember? Right after you kicked me right here?' And he points to his face. These guys had mugged him the week before. ‘Dom, watch the other one,' he says to me.” Dom pantomimed himself at the time, stunned. Biddy's father, already laughing, closed his eyes and shook his head. “And he goes, ‘Don't you remember?' and this guy starts backing away and reaches for the beer bottle and Paulie takes that metal shuffleboard disc and hits him like Warren Spahn right here”—he spread his forefinger and thumb across his sternum—“and the sound is like somebody just stepped on a rotten board. This guy goes down like he's shot.”

“That's horrible,” Biddy's mother said. His father was laughing so hard he had to wipe tears from his eyes. “And that's someone you think Biddy should be playing for?”

“Well, shit,” Dom said, his smile fading. “He's not Juan Corona. He's just a crazy guy.”

Ronnie Pierce found his seat at table 20, the table adjoining number 8. He could not have been closer to Cindy had he sat at her table. They were back to back with their left shoulders nearly touching. Dom put his hand over his eyes. Biddy's mother wondered in a fierce whisper how they could have put them together like that.

“They probably assigned them by number,” Ginnie said. “They probably figured eight and twenty were far enough apart.”

“Somebody forgot to look at a floor plan,” his father said.

When Sandy and Michael arrived, Biddy returned to his table and took his place beside Cindy. He would have liked to have said hello to Ronnie but wasn't sure whether or not he should. As far as he knew, Cindy and Ronnie hadn't acknowledged each other.

Everyone rose to applaud the parents of the groom, who were making their way to their table with a cautious, gracious clumsiness, and then the parents of the bride, and finally the bride and groom themselves, introduced after a dramatic pause as one couple, using the bride's new name.

They remained standing for the toast, all eyes turned to the head table. Cindy and Ronnie stood shoulder to shoulder beside their seats. Neither moved or flinched. The best man, thin and awkward, adjusted his glasses and began by mentioning that he'd culled some quotes from Homer but now thought them inappropriate. Biddy's gaze wandered to his parents' table, where Dom was looking back in his direction, keeping an eye on Cindy and Ronnie. He had said after the breakup that if he saw Ronnie anywhere near his daughter he'd have both their asses on a stick. But he couldn't blame them for this, Biddy reflected.

They settled down to fruit cups and then smallish gray-and-white plates arranged with a slice of roast beef, a pile of green peas, and some sort of mushroom-and-onion mix. He ate quickly, the food unremarkable. Cindy ate as though she were very tired. Kristi ate the meat and spooned the rest into the sugar holder. Beneath the crystal, ribbons of onions and slippery sliced mushrooms began to fill the cracks between the sugar packets.

“Kristi, you're so gross,” Mickey said. She smoothed a leftover brown bit onto her finger and flicked it at him but hit Biddy instead.

“You better put some cold water on that,” Cindy said, and he decided against retaliation and left the table for the men's room.

He stopped at the door to let a busboy with a tray get by. The band was playing “Sunrise, Sunset,” and the bride was dancing with her father. The air smelled vaguely of melon and urine.

In the men's room he stood at the sink washing his hands, gazing at the spot on his shirt in the mirror. Two busboys stood at the urinals, heads turned toward each other. Their white coats were dirty. Their voices filled the bathroom. “It don't matter,” one said. “God's God. He can do whatever he wants to.”

“Yeah, well, I think like he hasn't got complete control yet,” the other said, shaking his hips, finishing up. “There's too much bad in the world.” He crossed to the sink next to Biddy and gave his hands a perfunctory splash.

“Well, my brother's studying to be a priest and he don't think so,” said the one at the urinal.

The one at the sink wondered what that had to do with anything.

It was fascinating and incongruous to Biddy, God at the urinals, God while checking the part in their hair. He was encouraged and discouraged at the same time.

“Something wrong, kid?” one of them said, and he realized he'd been staring, and shook his head.

When he returned, most of the tables were empty. The dance floor was crowded with couples shifting back and forth, moving in different directions.

Ronnie leaned back in his seat, turning his head, and tapped Cindy on the shoulder. She jumped.

“How you doin'?” he said.

She said she was fine. After a moment he turned away.

“‘For us there can never be happiness,'” she said.

Ronnie's head turned. “What?”

“‘For us there can never be happiness.'”

“Oh,” he said. “Oh. ‘We must learn to be happy without it.' What's-her-name, from
A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum
.”

“What's her name?” Cindy twiddled a knife, still with her back to him.

“Annette Andre.”

She smiled.

The bride and groom swept by, doing some sort of waltz. “‘Some things are not forgivable,'” Ronnie said, clearly and distinctly. “‘Deliberate cruelty is not forgivable.'”

Cindy paled, lowering her eyes to the tablecloth. “Vivien Leigh,” she said. “Vivien Leigh in
A Streetcar Named Desire
.” There was a long silence, the two of them sitting as if they'd never spoken.

His mother leaned over him, her perfume cool and not unpleasant. “Dance with me,” she said. “Your father won't.”

His alternative was staying at the table. They walked to the dance floor and eased into an open space. She showed him where to put his hands and they shuffled back and forth. The floor was the same deep maroon as the floor of the piano room at school. Relatives occasionally drifted into view, smiling with approval. His mother asked him if Ronnie and Cindy had been fighting and he said no.

The reception was well past the point at which table distinctions and seating arrangements broke down, and those he had been sitting with or near were scattered in every direction, Dom by the head table, his father at the bar, his sister outside. (He'd seen her flash by the dark window, a ghost in her white dress, while he was dancing.) At tables 8 and 20 only Cindy and Ronnie were left, still in their original seats. When the dance with his mother had ended, he joined them. The tables were emptying around them, some people leaving, others dancing. The three of them remained, listening to “Color My World.” The band segued into “Heat Wave.” Ronnie got up and crossed to the head table, congratulating everyone and saying goodbye before leaving by the far door. Biddy wasn't sure Cindy knew he was gone.

They left before the Lirianos, agreeing to meet at the party that his aunt, the mother of the bride, was having after the reception. From the door he could see Cindy where he'd left her, alone in a sea of tables, her dark blue dress solid and unmoving against the clutter and scattered chairs.

“Drinks,” the mother of the bride said. “Who couldn't use a drink?” They were sitting around the living room, adults tired and drunk, children tired and bored. The bride's father was spread over a chair and two hassocks. He looked boneless.

Disappointingly few had been able to come, a ragged few besides the Sieberts and Lirianos. Louis had refused even this second chance. Cindy was in the den. Biddy's sister and Mickey sat on the sofa nursing sodas, having long since given the day up for lost.

“Well, Sheona should be halfway to the airport by now,” the hostess said. Some of the guests nodded vaguely.

“It was a beautiful wedding,” his mother said.

“Beautiful,” Ginnie agreed.

Someone said that Sheona had looked marvelous.

“Well, we weren't sure about the gown at first,” her mother said from the kitchen.