Flights (29 page)

“Oh, Christ, were we not sure,” said the father of the bride. Biddy had assumed he was asleep. The guests laughed, and then the room was as uncomfortable as before. There was some desultory talk about the choice of honeymoon spots. Biddy got up, hearing the piano, and went into the den.

Cindy was sitting straight-backed on the piano stool, her hands hesitating over the white and black keys. She flipped a page or two of the worn music book, intent on the notes. As far as he knew, she couldn't read music. She tested a few notes, singing softly, and ran through it again. She was awful.

He moved closer and stood by the piano, the open interior and lid like black-and-tan jaws. She did not acknowledge his presence and he stood quietly content with that decision.

The music book was swinging shut as she tried to play, and he reached out and held it, belly across the corner of the cabinet. Her eyes never left it. She played a bit more and then cried, her sobs full and low as she fought to control them. “Goddamnit,” she said. “Oh, goddamnit.” She closed the key cover sharply and the keys made a startled dissonant sound.

“You all right in there?” Dom called from the living room.

They hadn't heard her crying, he thought, they couldn't have, or they wouldn't have stayed where they were, calling in a question. They couldn't have left her to cry alone. He wanted to help, and was absolutely helpless: someone without pump or patch watching the boat go down. She straightened up, blinking and miserable, and shook off his attempt to lay his hand between her shoulder blades. Then she opened the key cover and shut it again, uncertain what to do with herself. He watched her for a short time before easing into a nearby chair in a kind of vigil, heartbroken.

Afterward the Lirianos' car refused to start. On the way home, with everyone in their car, his father mentioned that it was a shame Louis hadn't come.

Dom shifted in back, his blue suit rumpled, collar open. They were packed in tightly. “Yeah, it's too bad,” he said. There was an edge to his voice. Biddy detected it immediately and his father seemed to miss it altogether.

“Well, Louis is a good kid,” his father continued. “I'm sure things'll work out. If there's any real problem, I'm sure it'll come out.”

“Walt,” his mother warned. Even she sensed some sort of thin ice.

“Yeah, there's a problem,” Dom said. He was drunk, and angry. Biddy was gradually beginning to perceive that the car was a hideous trap of a sort, eight people in a locked closet with an explosive. “There's a problem all right. The problem is he still doesn't have a job.” There was a silence, Biddy holding Kristi more tightly on his lap as if to protect her physically from the awfulness of the situation. They had passed the airport minutes ago, and the blue-and-white Cessna had stood out, tail erect and wings catching light. Biddy's father had been promising to find Louis a part-time job for thirteen months. He had not succeeded.

“Look. I've told you I've been working on it.”

“Yeah, you're working on it. Meanwhile the kid stays home and begins to wonder if retards ever get jobs in this world.”

“Dom,” Ginnie said.

“He's working on it. The kid tells her he can't go to the wedding, he feels like a bum, he's not working. We tell him he's still a student, he don't want to hear it. All he knows is that he's been trying to get a job for over a year. And he wants to work at Sikorsky. Anywhere. Don't ask me why. He likes Walter here.”

“I told you these things don't happen overnight,” his father said, also angry. “They're not hiring. We're all in the same boat.”

“No. You're in the boat. He's in the water,” Dom said. Biddy wanted to jump out of the car. “Yeah, times're tough. You're working your fingers to the bone for him.”

They drove the rest of the way in silence and let the Lirianos out at Ryegate Terrace. As they drove away, Biddy closed his eyes and tried prematurely to begin the process of ending, once and for all, a day that had already dragged on for far too long.

With the sunlight mirrored in undulating patterns on the water ahead of him, he cruised just on the surface, the lower half of his mask below the water and the upper half above, the waterline wavering across the glass in front of his eyes like the bubble in a level. He struck out straight from shore and dipped down with the control of a sand shark, slipping through the colder water near the bottom and leveling out just above the sand, kicking hard and gazing at the various tiny landmarks of the sea floor as they reeled by.

He was in a thermocline, and the effect was striking: six inches above his head, the water, markedly warmer, held so many particles in suspension it seemed opaque, and the separation was so distinct the effect was that of a brown ceiling, a long, low tunnel, brown sand inches below him, brown water no less penetrable to the eye above him. Through it he soared, kicking away from the land with still plenty of air in his lungs, the water itself a corridor for him, showing him a way, setting him on a specific track.

Taking Off

Things are not the way they should be. I keep complaining, and Kristi's right: I'm too scared to do anything about it. We have to be better to each other, and we're not. We have to think about each other, and we don't. I don't do enough and what I do doesn't work. If I'm not such a fool, I should prove it. Things get worse and worse, and doing something isn't so scary anymore. I've been playing kids' games all this time like it would help and it won't. All that planning and work I was doing and I just had to ask myself: Who are you kidding? Really, who are you kidding? Because I knew I was just playing games. I knew then that I had to make it real and not chicken out, to stop being such a baby about everything. Who was going to help me if I didn't? Who was going to change me if I couldn't? I think if you don't do something about things you don't like, you get what you deserve. I've been stupid all along. When my father told me either to shit or get off the pot, I should have listened. He was right.

A cardinal lighted nearby, a marvelous red against the backdrop of green, and was gone, the branch swaying in its absence. Biddy sat on the corner of the cellar door in the backyard, the dog's leash in his hand. The dog was in the house. He thought about nothing. Flies crisscrossed over the tomato plants in the garden. There was no reason for him to be holding the leash.

His father was cutting the grass. The engine housing on the lawn mower was loose and it added immeasurably to the racket. The mower crossed back and forth before him, edging nearer each time, his father trudging along behind, arms sweaty and flecked with grass.

A newspaper lay near his foot, luminous in the sun. In it Biddy had read how to come up with cool alternatives to summer suppers and had seen a UPI photo of a German shepherd curled on the shoulder of a highway near its mate. Its mate, one leg sprawled at an odd angle, was dead. The caption, entitled “Lonely Vigil,” related that the dog had refused food for three days. The lawn mower rolled to the side of his foot and stopped.

“Lift your feet,” his father said. He lifted his feet.

His father bent over the engine housing, and the mower idled down and went off, the blades spinning with an empty, stuttering sound. He pushed it a few feet away and sat down.

“Little distracted today?” he asked, looking at the mower as though it bothered him.

“Mmm.”

His father shook his head, sweeping grass from his pants. “Biddy and his magic violin.” He sighed.

Biddy looked at him. “Where'd you get that?” he asked. “What's that mean?” His father had used it for years and it had always seemed a kind of nonsense or catchphrase, interesting or funny, if at all, only in its meaninglessness.

“Get what?”

“That—‘magic violin.'”

He seemed startled by the question. “Oh, I don't know. It's years and years old.” A distant lawn mower started, a ghostly echo of the one silent before them. “Maybe it was a lead-in to a radio show.”

“You don't remember?”

“I don't know. I don't know what the big interest here is, either,” he said. He squinted as if the outlines of the memory were taking shape in the hazy sky to the north. “I have an impression of an all-girl orchestra, for some reason, but I'm not sure. They'd introduce them in those days like they did more than just play or perform, like they did magic things with their instruments.” He rubbed his nose. “What was funny was that they were usually terrible. You know, Joe Blow and his magic xylo-phone. I guess I just remembered somebody with their magic violin.”

Biddy spread his toes in the grass, tearing up strands.

His father stood, flapping the back of his shirt to cool himself. “That's the best I can do, guy. Try and make sense out of everything that comes out of your old man's mouth and you'll really be in trouble.”

He bent over the mower to restart it while Biddy wrapped the dog's leash around his arm, rolling it tightly in an idle attempt to create the effect of chain mail. His arm from wrist to elbow wrapped in metal, he got up and returned to the house, testing his new armor by banging it against the drainpipe on the way in.

That Wednesday the report card came: they sat in their chairs, twenty-eight shining examples of self-control, while Sister called their names, one by one, alphabetically. And one by one, alphabetically, they went up to receive their card, thanked Sister, returned to their seats, took a breath, girded themselves, and opened it. Biddy, an “S,” was near the end. Every student, having watched others before him, tried to keep a poker face; every student failed. Teddy Bell had been one of the first, and after sitting down he'd given a stifled cry as if he'd been bitten.

Biddy had taken Sister Theresa's remarks to heart, studying diligently for the final math test, and had suffered through it nonetheless, having fallen too far behind. It was possible he got a good grade, he reminded himself, watching her. Nothing, in fact, would have surprised him more.

“Eustace Siebert,” Sister said. He went up and took the card from her hand, murmuring his thanks. She looked directly at him and he was unable to read her face. He sat back down and unfolded the white card deliberately, his eyes slipping down the column of letter grades to Pre-Algebra at the bottom, across from which was printed, in blue pen, an F. It was gracefully done, the spine reinforced with a double line and the upper arm disappearing in a smooth wisp of a curve. His eyes roamed back up the column: B and B and B and B. For the first time, no A's. For the first time, an F. He closed the card.

Laura had received her grades. She was an exception to the class rule: he couldn't tell with any assurance how good or bad they were, although he guessed good. He wouldn't find out, because she wasn't talking to him anymore, either.

All the students were settled, flipping their cards open or closed in various stages of despair or relief. Sister sat forward, clasping her hands.

“Let me say that I was not satisfied with the grades this year,” she said. “Some of you, I know, did very well—you know who you are—but even those who did could have done better. There's always room for improvement. God knows you've heard me say that enough times. And some of you could have done much better.”

While she spoke, the consequences of the card on his desk began to seep in like an oil stain slowly becoming visible through layers of fabric.

“In many ways it's been a good year, but in many ways some of you are letting yourselves down, not realizing your fullest potential. Next year you'll have Mrs. Duffy and you'll be in eighth grade. You won't be able to get by with any more nonsense at that point. You all have great potential—remember this—and should never accept second best. Now keep in touch and have a good vacation.” The class jolted from their seats in a body, ready to bolt free of Our Lady of Peace for another year, but Sister held up her hands, freezing them more or less in their positions. “Wait, wait, wait. Don't neglect the reading lists you've been given, and the Sisters and I hope we see you this summer.” She spoke louder, her voice ringing over the noise and scramble. “If there are any questions about the grades, I'll be around this afternoon and tomorrow. But I think most of them are pretty straightforward.”

The noise became overpowering, with students whooping and rushing to the doors, and while he felt in no rush he found himself in the middle of the pack, and as he was swept out the door he remembered Sister's last words being “If your parents have any questions, they can call the convent.”

His mother shrieked at the math grade. The noise startled him. He'd left the report card on the counter as he always did, as if in a daze, as if there were nothing unusual about it. She'd opened it expecting the same thing.

“An F!” she exclaimed. “An F! Oh, my God, he got an F!” There was scuffling in the kitchen, Kristi apparently wanting to see and trying to grab the card from her mother. A pot fell over, cascading dirty dishes into the sink. Stupid ran back and forth, barking ecstatically.

He shut the bathroom door and slumped on the toilet seat. This was even worse than he had expected.

His mother pounded on the door, demanding he come out of there. It swung open violently when he didn't respond.

“Do you hear me?” she said. “What in God's name have you done now?”

He remained where he was, arms at his side. His sister peered cautiously into the bathroom, and the dog calmed somewhat, trotting from kitchen to hallway.

His mother stood before him, the card wagging in her hand. She did not, they both realized, know how to deal with this.

“Well?” she said. His response to all of this plainly disconcerted her and was beginning to frighten her as well. Her anger dissipated but the F remained in her hand, and she looked back and forth in the tiny space, frustrated, as though something in the room might help. Finally she turned, Kristi and Stupid moving quickly out of her way, and stalked into the kitchen.