Flights

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.”

They were going Christmas shopping. Biddy and Kristi had changed out of their snowy clothes, Biddy finding a triangular lump of snow in his boot. They were coming along so they could point out a few things at the toy store. Their mother had little patience trying to decipher Christmas lists. Kristi had lost one of her mittens in the vicinity of the snow fort, and was kneeling on the seat, her hands on the dashboard.

“Where we going?” she asked after a turn. “This isn’t the way to Korvette’s.” They referred to the huge shopping mall in Trumbull simply as “Korvette’s,” the name of one of the larger stores, which had moved away.

“We’re picking up Cindy,” his mother said.

Cindy climbed into the back, smiling at Biddy and flipping her hair out from beneath her collar.

“You can get in front,” his mother said. “Kristi can get in back.”

“No, it’s all right.” Her coat was long and white and her hair shone against it. “I’ll sit back here with Biddy. Biddy’s my date.” He smiled, embarrassed, and Cindy scratched the top of his sister’s head in greeting.

“Where’s Ronnie?” his mother said.

“I told him not to come. I’m going to try and get his present today.”

“Does he still want that jacket?”

“What he wants and I can afford are two different things.” She edged a middle finger along the outline of her lower lip, checking her lip gloss. “He also wants Atari. Imagine that? This is a grown man we’re talking about. Biddy’s already outgrown it.”

He wouldn’t have minded one, but he remained silent.

“So what are you going to get him?”

“I don’t know.” She looked out the window. “He’d really like the membership in the health club renewed, but how can you give somebody that? Your fiancé?”

Biddy was hot in the car in his coat. They climbed the entrance ramp to the thruway.

“I don’t know,” Cindy said. “I’ll look around. A watch, or something.” She looked over at him. “So how about you? What’s new with you? Your mother tells me you’re in a choir.”

“Sister says he’s got one of the best sopranos she’s ever heard.”

“Really?” She smiled, raising her eyebrows exaggeratedly. “Another Caruso, huh?”

“Caruso wasn’t a soprano, was he?” His mother kept her eyes on the road.

“No, I don’t think so. I just meant a singer.”

They drove on, cars around them switching lanes in an effortless choreography. Cindy straightened a gold chain on her neck, moving the clasp around to the back. “So this is going to be a year-round thing, or just for Christmas?”

“Just for Christmas,” his mother said. “Sister thought it would be nice. I think it’s a good idea.”

Cindy said she thought so, too. She turned her attention to the road outside, and he watched the sun and shadow cross her face as they came off the turnpike. In the bright sun he could make out white hairs here and there, but in shadow her face was perfectly smooth. While they were parking, she peered into the mirror on the windshield absently, checking herself.

“All right, let’s get you kids out of the way first,” his mother said, shouldering her handbag. “Kristi, where do you want to go? That toy place?” Kristi nodded. “And, Biddy, you’re going to go to Herman’s first, right?”

He could wander endlessly through the sporting-goods store.

“Let’s do this,” Cindy said. “Save time: I’ll take Biddy to Herman’s and you and Kristi come get us when you’re ready.”

“That’d be great. You don’t mind?”

“I’ll look around for something for Ronnie.”

They split up and made their way through the crowd, Biddy fidgeting despite himself on the escalator down to the lower level. Ahead of him a woman had a large bag with a pink rabbit ear the size of an oar sticking out of it.

He threaded his way along the bottom floor, staying close to the larger plant stands in the middle and glancing back every now and then for Cindy. He led her past Koenig Art Supplies and Waldenbooks and stopped a few yards ahead while she poked her head into Hit or Miss.

She caught up to him and put her arm around his shoulder. “What’re you going to get me for Christmas, anyway?”

“Nothing,” he said.

“Nothing? What kind of sugar daddy are you?”

“Ronnie’s supposed to get you things,” he said, faltering.

“Well, you’ll never make any time with offers like that. Sheesh.”

They turned in to Herman’s, at its mall entrance a cacophony of racquets, strung and unstrung. Her hand left his shoulder and she strayed into the tennis section. He followed and waited before finally turning away and finding the camping department.

He circled tents of all sizes, assembled like crabs or moon landers on wooden frames, and plucked guy ropes, and got down on his hands and knees and looked inside. He examined two or three different models. When he’d decided on one, he pulled out a small pad he had brought along and wrote, “Tent: EMS Explorer.” There was a good chance they wouldn’t get him one, he knew. He lingered by the sleeping bags as well, but in the end decided against listing one, figuring the more he put down the less chance he had of getting what he most wanted.

Beyond camping there was more to see. He moved along a wall of sneakers, mostly white with stripes of different shapes and colors. A wall full of left shoes, each on its own shelf, arranged by sport. He paused at the football section and picked the black Puma off the wall, fingering the white plastic spikes. He tried it on in one of the nearby seats — at times the size would vary with spikes — and then carefully wrote, “Puma football size 7½” on his pad. Cindy caught up to him at the basketball row. He was looking at the Converse All Stars.

“You like the stars?” she said. “I like those, with the horns. What are they? Pumas?”

“Uh-huh.” He wrote, “Converse All Stars size 8” on the pad.

“I thought I’d find you with the baseball stuff.” He put the shoe back on its shelf and shook his head. She took his shoulder again, lightly. “C’mon. Help me pick out a ski sweater. They got a sale going here.”

He found himself in front of a table piled high with sweaters, tightly knit and filled with color. He saw a kelly green he liked, but it disappeared as Cindy sifted around.

“How about this?” she said. She held up a dark blue one with light blue and red stripes across the shoulders.

“It’s really nice,” he said.

“Hello,” someone said behind him.

He turned. A stranger was smiling at Cindy, holding a sweater himself. Biddy turned back; Cindy’s sweater was suspended where she held it.

“What’re you doing here,” she said.

Biddy didn’t turn around again. The voice came over the top of his head. “Guy can’t buy a sweater?”

She looked down at the pile. She’s embarrassed, he realized; why is she so embarrassed?

“I called before and you were out,” the man said.

“Sean, this is Biddy. Walt and Judy Siebert’s oldest. Biddy, Sean.”

Biddy turned and the stranger nodded to him.

“Here you are,” his mother said. Kristi shuffled up behind her. “What’re you, interested in sweaters this year, Biddy?”

“I’m looking,” Cindy said. “Biddy’s helping.”

He glanced around. The stranger was gone.

His mother pulled a bright red sweater out by the arm. “Who was that guy you were talking with?”

Cindy colored. “A guy from my old class. Guy I went to school with. Hadn’t seen him in a long time.”

His mother kept digging around and he kept his eyes on Cindy. She was absorbed in the sweaters. He watched her spread them out and check prices. What are you lying about? he was thinking. What am I missing?

Outside the wind shook the windows and the television antenna rattled as it buckled and swayed back and forth. It was a noise friends of his always noticed immediately on windy days in his room but one he had long since grown used to. He set the Cessna manual aside and pulled out The Lore of Flight, opening to the page with the bookmark. It was black outside, and the wind seemed fierce. He considered closing the curtains to conserve heat. The pencil made a soft scratching noise while he underlined.

Light aircraft, however, share one important feature with their larger counterparts: their flying control systems are fundamentally similar. All types of aeroplane, except for a few unorthodox research aircraft, are controlled in the air by movable surfaces on the wings and tail. These surfaces are operated by a control column (or handwheel) and rudder bar, and govern the attitude and actions of the aircraft when airborne.

His father poked his head into the room. “Hey, champ,” he said. “Heard we had a little trouble today.”

Biddy shut the book and nodded.

“Your mother says you were giving her a hard time at the shopping center?”

“Uh-huh.”

“What happened?”

Beyond the window the wind was making hollow, muffled sounds, like a ghost. “We came out of Herman’s and there was this dog that must’ve gotten run over or something. Its paw was mashed. It wouldn’t let anyone near it.”

“And you wanted to help.”

“Its paw was mashed.”

His father shook his head. “Albert Schweitzer, Jr. Look, Biddy … you said the dog wouldn’t let anyone go near him.”

“I wanted to get help.”

“Your mother said she got the security guard.”

“They wouldn’t do anything. They said they didn’t know whose dog it was.”

“Well, they didn’t. What are they supposed to do? Rehabilitate him?”

He looked away.

“Biddy, they’re running a business. This was just some dog from the neighborhood. I’m sure he’s all right now. His owner probably found him right after you left.”

He didn’t answer.

“What did you want to do?”

“I wanted to call someone. Firemen. I don’t know.”

“That’s right. You don’t know. Biddy, they wouldn’t’ve been able to do anything either.”

“They would have tried to find out whose dog it was.”

“That’s right. And then what? What happens when they don’t find out?”

He picked at the desk top.

“He goes to the pound, that’s what happens. Is that what you want? You know what happens at the pound if nobody claims him?”

They sat opposite each other, not moving. The panes shook.

His father shifted on the bed. “I thought I asked you to go easy on your mother. She’s unhappy right now and she doesn’t need this kind of aggravation. I thought I asked you about that.”

He nodded.

“Now am I going to hear a song and dance when I come home every time you notice an animal not in perfect health?”

Biddy hesitated a moment, then shook his head.

“All right. Now I understand you care for the dog — I’d feel bad too. But there’s so much in the world we can’t do anything about. I don’t want you making yourself miserable all the time.”

He nodded. His father sat watching him, silent.

“Your mother showed me the list you came up with today. Some haul you’re expecting. What’s with the camping stuff? You planning a trip?”

He shrugged.

“Tent, mess kit … maybe you could use that stuff in the summer. Maybe we could go camping somewhere up north.” He stood. “We’ll work on it. Maybe we’ll go to Lake Champlain. Guy I work with has a cabin up there.”

He stopped by the door and looked back. “Just excited to death by the possibility, I can see. Use the desk lamp if you’re going to read. You’re going to have glasses if you keep this up.”

He went downstairs. Biddy reopened the Flight book and his top drawer and pulled out a black notebook. In it he wrote, under the general heading “Questions,” “Are the brakes on the rudder pedals?”

He returned to the book. After a few moments he snapped on the desk lamp. He underlined:

Ailerons, on the wings and moving in opposite directions, push one wing up and the other down, causing the aircraft to roll. The elevator, hinged to the rear of the tailplane, pushes the tail up or down causing the aircraft to dive or climb. The rudder, mounted vertically and hinged to the fin, controls the aircraft in yaw, or its rotation about its vertical axis.

He reread the final sentence two or three times, concentrating, before finally writing, “What is yaw?”

Laura passed a candle to him after lighting it with hers. He stood there, in the gloom, waiting for the hot wax to drip onto his fingers.

They were in one of the smaller side naves of the chapel with the overhead light off. The darkness seemed a warm brown from the candlelight on the wood, but it was drafty as well, and they stayed close to each other, three rows deep around the baptismal font. Sister had a hymnbook she was reading from in the yellow light of her candle. The class had half-page dittoed sheets.

“O come, o come, Emma-a-anuel,” she sang softly. Her voice rose toward the beams of the high-pitched ceiling. They joined her. The song was dirge-like, slow, and reminded him of a moment from a film he’d seen: Napoleon’s army returning from Moscow. He wasn’t sure why.

“And ransom captive I-i-is-rael, That mourns in lonely e-ex-ile here, Until the Son of Go-o-od appear.” They grew louder together suddenly, those in class who hadn’t been singing joining in: “Rejoice! Rejoice! Emma-a-anuel shall come to thee, O I-i-is-rael!” Their voices dropped again. The volume of the darkened space seemed to enforce quiet.

On the font they encircled, Sister Theresa had one of a set of four red candles burning for the first week of Advent. In the catechism it was the first of four weeks preceding the coming of Christ, each with its own special significance. To the class, it was the first step in a countdown to Christmas, the beginning of a series of incessant reminders that the day was moving ever closer. On that Monday and the next three, they would assemble in the chapel with the lights out and sing “O Come, O Come, Emmanuel.” For those few moments the ceremony lasted even the rowdiest of the class stood quietly and gave Sister no trouble.

They completed the song and she looked at them uncertainly. A few people shifted and coughed, in the darkness every sound magnified.

“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 through 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.

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.

Father was silent. Then he said, “Biddy, we all have those kinds of feelings. We all think maybe we could do more for other people. All we can do is try.”

Biddy knelt in the dark, wiping an eye with his hand.

“We can’t torture ourselves about it. All we can do is resolve to be better, to try harder.” Father paused. “Now tell yourself you’re going to work harder at it and try to live those words.” He moved around, apparently waiting for some response. “And Christ should certainly live in you always, not just at Christmas.”

Biddy looked down. “He doesn’t,” he whispered.

There was an awful silence. He waited for expulsion, public exposure, shouts, flashing lights. For the roof to lift off and God to pluck him away.

He could feel Father looking at him and he swallowed, ready to absorb whatever he deserved.

“Say twenty-five Our Fathers and twenty-five Hail Marys,” Father said. He absolved him in the name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit.

He stumbled to the altar, the air cool on his cheeks and ears, alternating the prayers while his mother waited at the back of the church. He was going to get out of here, he thought. He was going to change things or get out of here, because he was inadequate and everything around him was inadequate and no one seemed to care one way or the other. What was his penance? Did God expect only fifty prayers, as well? He finished his penance in the car on the way home, the houses reeling past as he avoided his mother’s gaze, feeling spiritually fraudulent beside her.

Ronnie sat across the table from him, his hat still on, losing at War. Something was bothering him and he was flipping the cards on his turns with irritation.

“Your turn, sport.” He tapped the table impatiently.

Biddy pulled a jack. Ronnie turned his card face up. A jack as well. Biddy laid three face down off the jack and turned over a two, sagging, trying to build up the foundations for some sort of drama. Ronnie was playing as if he were waiting for a train.

Ronnie flipped over his card after three face down: two as well. Biddy spread three more and turned over a nine. Ronnie did the same.

“Whoa,” Louis said. The rows of stalemated cards reached almost to the end of the table. Biddy was grateful for the extraordinary, and anxious to acknowledge it. He wanted an outside observer to lean over them and ask Ronnie if he realized the odds against what had just happened. But there was only Louis watching, attentive to everything and reacting to almost nothing. They sat around the Lirianos’ kitchen table, Ronnie waiting for Cindy, Biddy for Mickey.

Ronnie was drinking dark beer. They had themselves a little standoff here, he said. He laid three more out and edged the tip of his next card off the top of the pile and dropped it back, teasing. He put a head on his beer.

“C’mon,” Biddy said.

He smiled and flipped his card, looking at Biddy as he drank. It was a queen.

Biddy turned his over slowly, and then with a yelp as the image leaped at him: queen.

The door banged open, cold air filling the room.

“Don’t even ask,” Cindy said, sweeping into the kitchen. “I don’t even want to talk about it.” Her nose was red and her pants wet from the knees down, and she went right to the stove and put a kettle on. She pulled a mug out of the cabinet and dropped a tea bag into it.

“Have trouble with the car?” Ronnie asked.

She pulled at her scarf. “I’d like to push it off a cliff.” She piled her coat, hat, and scarf on the hamper in the hallway. “My legs are soaked. I’m gonna take a shower. Get the water when it boils, all right?”

The bathroom door shut and they heard the thump of her empty boots on the tile floor. After a few moments the shower went on.

Ronnie finished his beer and set the glass down carefully. The two queens still lay face to face atop the table-long lines of cards. “Whose turn is it?” he asked. He started a new line of three face down and turned over a seven. He seemed to be listening to something in the sound of the shower.

Biddy waited, not for the sake of dramatic tension, but for Ronnie’s attention to refocus on the game. He turned over the fourth card off his deck. It was a three of clubs.

“Three,” Louis said. “Ronnie wins.”

Biddy waited, and then pushed the long rows together into a pile in front of them. “I quit. I don’t feel like playing anymore.”

Ronnie looked at him. “No, let’s play. I win, right? My turn.” He turned over another card. Biddy watched him for a moment before continuing.

The teapot was whistling. Ronnie concentrated on the cards and they sat listening to it until Louis got up and turned off the heat and poured the water into the mug.

He won three or four in a row before the shower stopped. Ronnie’s concentration on it had affected Biddy and Louis as well, and they too were waiting, ready, as if Cindy’s emergence from the shower had a special significance.

The bathroom door opened and she appeared wrapped in a bath-sized white towel. A big orange cat on it looked at Biddy sideways. MOMCAT was written over its head, the large letters running down Cindy’s left side. She shuffled into the kitchen in her father’s slippers, big maroon things, and sat down at the table, hair dripping.

Ronnie’s eyes were on the cards. “You gonna sit here like that?”

She looked over for her tea. “It’s pinned.” She lifted the mug from the counter without rising and set it in front of her. “Who’s winning?”

No one answered. “Ronnie is,” Biddy said finally.

“What’s wrong with you today?” Cindy asked. She blew on her tea. “What’re you, mad because I’m late? How fast am I supposed to change a tire in thirty below?”

“I stopped by on the way home from the Tap last night,” Ronnie said, flipping over a six. “You weren’t here.”

She flinched. Ronnie, with his eyes lowered, missed it.

“So what time’d you come by?” she said. She tried to sip her tea but it was too hot.

“Two. Two-thirty. We closed the place.”

Louis stood up. “I’m gonna go watch TV,” he said uncertainly.

“What are you doing here today, guy?” Cindy asked Biddy, smiling. “Just come over to play cards with the Cincinnati Kid here?”

“My mom says I got to make up with Mickey,” he said. “He’s supposed to be back by now. I don’t even know why he’s mad at me.”

She lowered her chin to the hot mug and slurped some tea without picking it up. She focused on the beer glass. “You drinking in the morning now?”

Ronnie looked at her. “You don’t want to talk about it?”

She lowered her eyes. “It’s stupid. It’s not worth talking about. And it’s cold sitting around like this,” she said. “I’ll be right back.” She took her tea with her.

“I’m gonna go,” Biddy said, standing before Ronnie could react. He didn’t seem to hear. “Tell Mickey I waited awhile.”

Ronnie stirred. “You going to walk all the way home?”

“It’s not too far. Bye.” He pulled on his hat and coat, holding both gloves in one hand in his rush to the door. “Bye,” he repeated.

“Uh-huh,” Ronnie said, looking at the sink. “Take it easy.”

He shut the door, the cold rushing through his open coat. He was two houses down when Dom’s car turned onto the street, and he ducked behind a tree instantly, not wanting to go back. He made certain no one in the car had seen him before edging around the other side of the trunk and starting down the street, kicking up snow as he went, his hands stuffed deep in his pockets.

The twentieth was a school day and when he woke up he padded downstairs to see if anyone had remembered his birthday. They hadn’t. His father was shaving and his mother sat in her robe at the table with the paper from the day before and some black coffee.

“What are you doing up so early?” she asked. “You can sleep for another half hour.”

He shrugged. “I know.” He put some water on, and a teaspoonful of Sanka into a cup with some sugar.

“You want something hot? Some farina?”

He made a face. “I’ll get some cereal.”

He poured the cereal and ate across from his mother, waiting, but nothing happened. Usually they said Happy Birthday, and his mother had once had special pastries for breakfast. Some years, though, they forgot, and this was one of them. He finished the Sanka, his feet cold in his slippers, and went upstairs to dress.

In school it was the beginning of the final week of Advent, and they returned to the chapel, where Sister had all four candles lit, and sang in the dark, starting with “O Come, O Come, Emmanuel,” and finishing, this time, with “O Come, All Ye Faithful.” Laura stood near him. Between songs she whispered, “Happy Birthday.”

When he got home, his father was in the kitchen and asked him if he wanted to go look for a tree. He agreed, surprised, dropped his book bag in a chair, and they left on the spot.

They searched through four different places, wandering up and down endless crooked aisles of trees, examining candidate after candidate that seemed fine to Biddy but never quite right to his father. When they left the fourth lot, he suggested one more place.

They didn’t find anything there, either. It was in Shelton, and by the time they pulled onto Route 8 for the drive back it was dark. Halfway home they stopped at a shopping center and his father ran in and bought razor blades, napkins, and camera film.

When they finally reached their driveway, it was ten after six. He wondered abstractedly if his mother would be angry at their being late.

Opening the back door, he saw his uncle’s car parked across the way in the Frasers’ driveway, recognizing it even in the gloom, and it hit him all at once before he stepped inside and the chorus of voices called “Surprise!” He remained in the doorway with his parents behind him, looking on a kitchen transformed with streamers, presents, faces. Two balloons drifted along the ceiling. Dom was there, Cindy, Louis, Teddy, uncles and aunts and cousins. Kristi, Simon, Ronnie, and Laura, holding her present against her leg. A white-and-brown cake lay centered on the table. The writing on the frosting was illegible.

His mother stepped around him. “Did we surprise you?”

He came farther in, admitting he’d seen his Uncle Michael’s car. Everyone groaned and spoke at once, largely to his Uncle Michael.

“Did we fool you up to that point?” his mother said.

He assured her they had. They led him to a seat and began to pile presents before him on the kitchen table, stacking them on the floor near his feet when they ran out of space. They demanded he open them and talked while he did about the preparations he had missed, the times they had been convinced they’d given the whole thing away. He didn’t remember any of the instances they spoke about. As he opened each present, someone claimed it as his or hers: toys from Teddy and Simon, one or two books, and clothes from everyone else. He thanked everyone, unsure what to do next, and the party began to gain an energy independent of him. One by one everyone shook his hand and wished him Happy Birthday, even Simon, who seemed proud to have been given his own separate opportunity. His Aunt Sandy kissed him and Teddy punched him on the arm. Cindy hugged him cheek to cheek, and he could smell her skin and the soap she washed with. Frank Sinatra came on the stereo. He slipped down the hall and into the den, Stupid barking and scratching at the cellar door as he went by.

Laura and Louis were watching the news. Rescuers were kneeling over a hole in the ice. Louis took the party hat off his head. Along the bottom of the screen, “Winter Storm Warning” was announced in small yellow letters. Motorists were advised not to drive unless absolutely necessary. In the other rooms, attention was also moving toward the weather: the snow was coming down harder.

The party started to break up. Michael and Sandy, with their long drive, left almost immediately, coming into the den to wish him one more Happy Birthday before leaving. Simon’s mother arrived to pick him up and Teddy’s parents phoned and told him to head home before it got much worse. A steady stream of people seemed to be saying goodbye, and then it was quiet. With Louis intent on the television, Laura reached under her chair and pulled out her present.

“Here,” she said. “I didn’t want to give it to you then.”

It was one of Jane’s All the World’s Aircraft. He held it with both hands and thanked her.

“Was it a surprise?” she asked.

He nodded.

“I’m glad.” He heard the doorbell over the noise in the kitchen and his father began to call her.

“That’s my mother,” she said, pushing herself out of her chair. “Bye. Happy Birthday.”

“Thanks,” he repeated, still holding the book.

No one flipped the Sinatra record when it finished. The sounds from the kitchen were subdued; only the Lirianos remained. His father called him.

Ronnie was standing away from the table, leaning against the counter. His parents and Cindy sat with their backs to the wall; Dom and Ginnie were more in the center of the room.

“C’mon in here,” his father said. “This is supposed to be your party.”

The presents had been moved to the back porch to make way for the liquor, coffee, and cake. His father sipped some anisette. “You made out like a bandit.”

“He gets two Christmases this year,” his mother said.

Cindy gestured toward the table. “You never had a piece of cake.”

“You never got our present either,” his mother said. She handed forward a small wrapped package. While they cut him a piece of cake, he opened it. It was a silver digital watch with a large face. The face reflected the lights on the ceiling.

“Seiko,” his mother said.

He lifted it from its box and snapped it around his wrist, and it slid around and down his arm, too big.

“It’s great,” he said. “Thanks.”

Ronnie raised a glass. “Here’s to the birthday boy,” he said. “Eustace Lee Siebert.”

“Eustace Lee,” Dom said.

“Eustace Lee.” They raised their glasses.

“Thirteen today,” his mother said.

“God help us,” Ginnie said. They drank.

He wandered into the den. “I think we choked him up,” he heard his father say.

Louis was dozing, his head to one side. The party hat was on the floor near his feet. Biddy sat down and pulled his legs up onto the chair, holding the book on aircraft in one hand and the Seiko watch in the other.

A commercial ended and Charlie Brown appeared. His head was down and he walked off the screen, leaving a tiny tree bent in half by an oversized ornament hung from its top. The rest of the Peanuts cast walked on and decided it wasn’t such a bad tree after all. They surrounded it, and when they backed off it was sumptuously decorated and no longer scrawny. Charlie Brown came back on screen and they all faced him, spread out behind the tree. Biddy wrapped his arms around his legs and held on, watch clacking on the book cover.

They all shouted: “Merry Christmas, Charlie Brown!” And started to sing: “Hark! the herald angels sing, ‘Glory to the newborn King.’” Charlie Brown joined in, and after a chorus, so did Biddy, his eyes watering and his knees pulled in tight against his chest, mouthing the words as the screen filled with falling snow and credits.

Obtaining Clearance

Everyone asks about my brother and no one asks about me. I bent my finger all the way back a while ago and showed them, and they told me if it hurt the next day we’d go to the doctor. They didn’t ask me about it the next day. It still hurts and I don’t care and they don’t care.

The Sisters never yell at him. They said to me once I wasn’t as good as he was. They try to hurt me but they can’t. They all try, but they can’t. They can make me stand in front of the class and apologize or sit in the office alone. They can tell my parents things. I don’t care. When I get old, I’m going to Long Island or England, and I’m never going to see anyone again.

I’m tired of talking about him. He’s a baby sometimes. He never cries or yells but he gets his way anyway, and it doesn’t matter what I do. When I do anything I’m just bad, but everyone treats him like Louis, and that’s not fair, because Louis is retarded.

Biddy lifted a stack of boxes from the bottom, raising himself slowly to his full height and pausing to make sure everything was balanced. The ornaments shook and rattled in the boxes like bones.

“Dad, you want all of these?” he called.

“Bring ’em all.”

He stepped gingerly into the hallway and took the stairs one at a time, the boxes shifting slightly every so often. He was leaning backward as far as he dared so that they would all rest gently against his chest. His head was turned aside for the top box, which lay against his cheek.

At the bottom step he stopped, unsure how best to execute the turn around the foyer into the living room.

“Oh, look at this,” his mother said. “Walt, look at this.”

He stood teetering, face to the wall and cool cardboard on his cheek.

The top box was lifted away and he could see his parents again. “Sometimes I don’t know about you, kid,” his father said. “All we needed was for you to trip coming down those stairs.”

More boxes were taken from him, and the two he was left with seemed weightless. He imagined the unlucky step near the top, his foot catching, knee bending sharply and unexpectedly, boxes spilling out in a lazy arc, the fragile flat sound of shattering Christmas ornaments, his wrists and elbows and knees landing on the boxes and stairs.

“C’mon here,” his father said. “Start unwrapping.”

His mother had their trim-the-tree music on the stereo, The Voices of Christmas, a hodgepodge of different artists’ versions of Christmas carols. Mahalia Jackson was singing “Silent Night.”

His father had picked out the perfect tree, and they’d sawed a good two feet from the top in the garage to fit it to the living room. Then they’d wrestled it onto the tripod base, where it had swayed unsettlingly, a full fifteen degrees off the perpendicular, and they’d sawed at the trunk once again at an angle and jammed chips of wood into the cylinder that held it in the tripod to straighten it. At present it stood, with reasonable steadiness, in front of the picture window. It really was a beautiful tree, although a bit full at the ceiling, and the living room was beginning to smell of pine.

Open boxes of ornaments were laid out on the couch side to side. He lingered over his favorite, a rose-colored, grapefruit-sized sphere with hand-painted red and silver bands. It had been part of a pair, and Lady had broken the other years ago as a puppy. His mother claimed they had belonged to her grandmother — they were that old — and if anything happened to this one she’d throw herself under a truck.

His father finished the lights and Biddy crawled underneath the lowest branches and plugged them in. He remained there, gazing up through the tangle at the artfully spaced colors. His parents circled the tree critically, replacing dead bulbs and exchanging a red for a green here or there to balance out the colors. He lay on his back on the rug, with pine needles poking his neck and tree-sap and wood smell filling the air. Danny Kaye was singing “The Little Drummer Boy.” His eyes followed the trunk of the tree from branch to branch and from color to color. So many of his most cherished moments he forgot from year to year, he realized.

His father pulled on his foot. “Hey. Let’s go. You pass away under there? Ornaments.”

They circled the tree slowly, ornaments swaying from each hand and catching the lights on their curved surfaces. Space them out, his father told him. Look for the gaps in the branches.

He found himself considering Cindy and her lie in the sporting-goods store. The image of her at the moment of the lie nagged at him.

His sister came into the living room and turned the stereo down. “I can’t hear my show,” she said.

“We still have to get something for Michael and Sandy,” his mother said. “And Cindy. What should we get for Cindy, Biddy?” She was concentrating on a clear ornament with a skiing scene inside.

“We can get her a gold chain or something,” his father said. “We’ll find something tomorrow.”

“I don’t know what’s wrong with those two.”

“Who?” Biddy asked.

“It doesn’t concern you,” his mother said.

“Cindy and Ronnie?”

“If you don’t start hanging ornaments, we’re going to put a lantern in your hand and stick you in the front yard,” his father said.

Christmas was harder to stay with this year, he was noticing, harder to appreciate, to focus on. He set the ornament he held down on the stereo and lifted the tone arm on the turntable, interrupting “The Twelve Days of Christmas” and easing the needle back down with a crackle at the beginning of the Mormon Tabernacle Choir’s “Hark! the Herald Angels Sing.”

His mother woke him at seven the next morning. School had ended for Christmas break the day before, with grab-bag presents (he’d forgotten his and so hadn’t been allowed to draw one) and a half day, but the choir needed a final practice, Sister felt, so they were meeting at 8:00 a.m. three days before Christmas to give it one final attempt. This choir was going to come together, Sister said, no matter what the naysayers thought.

They sat in the places they would occupy on Christmas Eve. The church was cold and dark and the chapel colder. There was very little enthusiasm, even for misbehaving. Sister quietly went through the program. The robes still hadn’t arrived, but they could pick them up the day after tomorrow. Teddy sat behind him, pulling licorice sticks apart on his lap. Biddy put his hands behind his back for some. He tore off a piece, his eyes on Sister, and handed the rest back.

“You got it all sweaty,” Teddy whispered in his ear.

The trick was to chew when he could and not let the licorice interfere with his voice when he couldn’t.

They were two choruses into “Angels We Have Heard on High” when Sister said, “Stand up, Mr. Bell.”

Biddy froze and Teddy stood, wobbling a bit, his jaws clamping down on the licorice.

“Sing it, mister,” she said, and played the first few chords. Teddy began, with no chance of hiding the fact that something was in his mouth. Sister came over to him and took his chin in her hand and put her fingers in his mouth, to everyone’s horror, moving them around until she had located the offending object and pulled it out.

“Eeyou,” Sarah Alice said from the back, Sister or no, some of the others involuntarily echoing her, transfixed at the sight of the black goo dripping from the length of Sister’s finger: “Eeyou, eeyou, eeyou.”

“So how did Teddy Bell get himself kicked off the choir with three days to go?” Biddy’s mother asked. She had the happy air of someone making her final shopping trip of the season. She settled herself, adjusting the front seat, while Biddy got in.

“How did you know that?” he said.

“His mother told me. He won’t tell her why.”

He put his hand over the dash, tracing dust. “He was eating licorice.”

“During practice?”

He nodded.

“That was all?”

“He was grossed out by her finger, too. She took it right out of his mouth.”

“Did he say anything?” They backed out of the driveway, the house edging past. “I can’t believe that was all he did. Three days before the Mass she gets rid of him?”

He shrugged. “She’ll take him back, I think. We were short even with him.”

There were two roads out of Lordship, both through the great salt marshes that isolated it from Bridgeport and Stratford. During the great hurricane of 1955, when the flood waters had risen ten to twelve feet, there had been no roads out of Lordship. On a map the peninsula hung southward into Long Island Sound like the tattered hem of a dress. To the west his father’s Burma Road connected directly to Bridgeport, passing south of the airport into Interstate 95. To the north, the route they followed, Stratford Road, led to Stratford, past Avco Lycoming Industries and, again, the airport. They drove in a lazy arc around one of the runways guarded by hurricane fences and lights, the tarmac freshly plowed and now stained by melting snow. The airport and all it was beginning to represent to him had been happily muffled somewhat in the last few days, and yet here it was, back again, parading before him and unwinding in a string of tarmac, lights, hangars, towers, and planes that seemed a kind of dark parody of temptation. And he realized that even if they’d taken the other route, the effect would have been the same: there was no way out of Lordship that did not run past the airport. The realization did nothing to lessen the feeling that something somewhere was steering his affairs.

He had been collecting information on Cessnas and how to fly them. It was a passing idea that was beginning to take shape and, like the sailboat that stormy afternoon, to thrust itself upon him.

His mother’s left turn through the terminal gates and into the parking area seemed additional confirmation. Enjoying his surprise, she explained only as they passed the hangars that they were meeting his father, who was putting in a half day and picking up a package for Sikorsky.

His father hadn’t arrived yet; they had to wait. Biddy sat facing the panorama of the winter airport, surprised at how relentlessly it suggested itself to him. Piper Cubs and Cessnas were lined wing to wing toward the sun, the silver wings glinting over the cockpits and creating the illusion of a single long band of metal or a straight-edged frozen stream leading into the Sound and beyond. The snow edged the tarmac around them unevenly, stubby lights on the shoulders emerging here and there like winter growths.

To his right the tower rose on the other side of the runway, two stories high with a line of simple, oddly shaped antennae rising from its top. Nothing seemed to be moving. The enormous hangars shielded many of the aircraft parking areas from view, either from the tower or from the Bridgeport Flight Service. In the distance a bluff rose behind the far runway, surmounted by a fence that was the end of Birch Street. The small-scale geography was conspiring even there, he realized; the street he lived on was a dead end, leading to the airport.

His father’s Buick pulled in a few spaces down. He held up one finger and went into the building nearest him.

“I don’t know how your father ends up doing things like this,” his mother said idly. “Mr. Nice Guy. They must have messengers or something. Fourteen years he works at the company, and he’s picking up mail.”

His father opened the door and Biddy almost toppled out. “Shove over,” he said. “Let’s go.”

“You going to leave your car here?” his mother said.

“Sure. Otherwise we both go all the way home and all of that. … I’ll pick it up on the way back. It’s all right here. What is this, the South Bronx?”

They pulled out of the parking space and stopped at the gate for a break in the traffic.

“Someday I’ll show you around,” his father said. “It’s a shame, we got the airport right here and you don’t take advantage of it.”

Biddy peered over his shoulder at the hangars, the wind sock in the distance, the planes. “We can come back,” he said, feeling more and more as if the Cessnas were a kind of frightening, exhilarating last chance, or best chance. “I can find out more.”

“Railroad Salvage,” his father said when they arrived. “What are we doing at Railroad Salvage? What kind of chiboni shops for Christmas presents at Railroad Salvage?”

“Hibachis,” his mother answered, shutting the car door. “They’ve got triple hibachis on sale. I thought we’d get one for Michael and Sandy.”

“Hibachis.”

“That’s right.” She walked ahead of them. “You didn’t have any ideas.”

“Hibachis,” his father repeated. They went inside.

Railroad Salvage was a cavernous warehouse piled high with great stacks of odd items that had flimsy red-and-green “Sale” signs perched over them. Merchandise was arranged as if it had been unloaded randomly from trucks: peanut butter next to snow tires, Fort Apache Play Sets beside cutting boards. Red-and-green streamers hung between steel beams on the roof. Above him a sign read CHRISTMAS CARNAVAL. It depressed him when adults couldn’t spell.

His parents had threaded their way to the hibachis and were handling one, moving the grills to higher and lower slots. They decided to get it.

The line at the cashier was discouragingly long. The woman in front of them had twelve jars of apricots and a wrench set. His mother wandered off and after a few minutes his father did as well. Biddy stood holding the hibachi with both hands, seeing with perfect clarity his eventual confrontation with an impassive cashier, his parents still missing and the line behind him growing restive and angry.

He could faintly hear a Christmas carol piped in above him, lost in the great noisy space of a giant metal box filled with bargain hunters. His mother reappeared beside him. “Where’d your father go?” she asked. “We still have to get something for Cindy. Then we’re through. There’s Ginnie.”

Ginnie was waiting in a line two rows down. She waved and hesitated, then relinquished her place in line and came over. She said something about the last minute.

“It’s terrible,” his mother said. “Every year I say I’m going to finish early, and there’s always someone you forget.”

“I was looking for a vaporizer for Dom’s mother,” Ginnie said. “Of course they sold out. They probably had two.”

“How’s Cindy?”

Ginnie rearranged the packages in her arms. “They have some sort of bug up their ass. Every time I turn around, they’re not talking or one of them’s mad about something. They’re supposed to be getting married in a few months. You figure it.”

“Well, you get nervous. It’s a big step.”

“I don’t know. I thought you were supposed to fight after you got married, not before.”

He attempted to be as inconspicuous as possible, seemingly absorbed in the gums along the checkout counter, but they changed the subject. He hefted the hibachi higher, against his chest.

His father arrived after they’d checked through and said hello and goodbye to Ginnie, ushering them to the car. They drove to the Trumbull shopping mall. “So what are we going to get her?” his mother said.

“What about a chain?”

“She’s got a lot of chains,” Biddy said.

“How about a nice sweater?”

“She said she doesn’t need a sweater.” They both looked at him. “When we were looking for a sweater for Ronnie.”

“Okay.” His father fiddled with the radio. “You’re in charge then, if you’re the expert on Cindy. Check Read’s first and pick out something and show us. I want to show your mother something anyway.”

When they arrived, his father gestured vaguely at the front of the store, saying to meet them in Housewares, and to see if he could stay under twenty dollars.

He wandered through Ladies Lingerie, the For Her Shop, and Junior Miss, sure that in his ignorance he was bypassing perfect gift after perfect gift. He finally stopped at the perfume counter, drawn to the octagonal island terraced with colored bottles. He peered at the yellow Chanel bottles.

“Can I help you?” a woman said.

He found his parents twenty minutes later, eyeing a sink.

“What’d you come up with?” his father said. “Perfume?”

His mother took the red case in her hands. “Cinnabar? That’s nice.”

“You don’t give a girl perfume,” his father said. “That’s like something Ronnie would give her.”

“A sales slip,” his mother said. “You already bought this?”

“I had some money,” he said. His parents looked at each other, and his mother shrugged. “Well, we’ll pay you back, that’s all. Unless you want to give it to her all by yourself. Then we still have to get her something.”

“Perfume,” his father said. “We’ll give her something from Frederick’s of Hollywood next.”

“Oh, leave him alone,” his mother said. “I think it’s nice.”

When they got home, he finished putting tinsel on the tree, a job his parents always considered his and his alone, in some sort of effort, he sensed, to pretend he was capable of separate but equal responsibilities: Dad cuts the tree, lays in the wiring; Biddy hangs the tinsel. Still, he enjoyed it — he enjoyed any sort of work on the Christmas tree, except stripping it — and he stood beside it, hanging the thin, fluttering silver strips from branch to branch, the main body of tinsel he was drawing from draped over his arm like a maître d’s linen.

The sun was going down, the sky gray and blue with a bit of orange showing behind the houses to the west. His sister was out. His parents were in the den and the bedroom. More Christmas carols were on the stereo: Nat King Cole soothing his way through “It Came Upon a Midnight Clear.” The dog lay sprawled on its side near the tree, rear legs twitching occasionally to the rhythms of a dream. And Biddy was luxuriating in the silence and the time it took to insure an even distribution of tinsel on a Christmas tree. By the time he was finished, he was standing in a thick gloom, the windows liquid with the twilight, and he paused to survey the tree in its lesser glory, shimmering feebly in the darkened room, before crouching low and plugging in its lights.

The effect was, as it was every year, breathtaking. The silver strips became filaments of chrome reflecting, refracting, quadrupling the orange, red, blue, and green lights. The tree was a masterpiece of decorative symmetry, of warmth, and of as much tradition as a thirteen-year-old could invest it with. He sat back on the sofa slowly, a celebrant, his eyes on the tree, its lights mirrored in the darkened glass of the picture window behind it. Stupid shook and drooled.

He listened to “O Little Town of Bethlehem,” the notes of the melody ringing soft and clear on the stereo. He was happy, and knew enough by now not to question it. He realized with some surprise that the Vikings had made a run at the playoffs and fallen short almost without attracting his notice. He’d picked up the sketchy outline of what had happened here and there, and it hadn’t bothered him. They seemed very distant, as if, like the Orioles, they were out of season. At times during the days right before Christmas, the world didn’t seem to be pushing in on him as much, and such things as the Vikings were not as necessary or important.

The kind of respite the Christmas season afforded, he was beginning to realize, was something he counted on, and could count on every year. It was as important as ever this year, if not more so, since talismans as disparate as Cindy and Louis and the Vikings were threatening to lose their power, and the alternatives he would be left with frightened him. Sports would not be enough, he knew, even as he knew Christmas would not last forever. Beyond the end of his street he could imagine the lights of the airport, twinkling cold and clear in the darkness.

“Clean up some of the mess on the floor,” his father called from the bedroom. “The Carvers are coming over later.”

The silence hissed and crackled on the stereo. Mr. Carver was coming to answer all questions and keep the answers preeminent in his mind, to dog him through whatever hesitations or barriers he threw up, to penetrate the charmed circles of Advent and Christmas.

His books were upstairs, dog-eared and marked heavily with underlinings and marginalia. Mr. Carver was coming. Questions that had been problems would be dealt with. On his hands and knees he raked the loose tinsel from the rug, piling it with the unused portion, turned off the tree, and went upstairs to prepare.

Put the book away and come say hello to the Carvers, his father told him. And call his sister.

The Carvers were having a drink in front of the tree when he brought her down.

“It’s a beautiful tree,” Mrs. Carver said.

It had a nice shape to it, Mr. Carver agreed.

His father opened the interview for him. “Bill, you still taking the Cessna in to work, or what?”

“Very, very rarely in the winter.”

“I can’t imagine coming to work by plane every day,” Biddy’s mother said.

It wasn’t that expensive, Mr. Carver said. And the time difference was significant.

“How long’s it take to drive?”

“Three and a half hours. That’s opposed to a ten-minute flight.”

“That’s right,” his mother said. “He has to go all the way into the city and back out.”

“You take the Long Island Expressway?” his father asked.

“The L.I.E. to 95, yes.”

“I just think it’s quite a way to begin and end a day, flying,” his mother said.

Carver nodded and sipped his drink.

“When will you be flying again?” Biddy asked.

Mr. Carver peered over at him, mildly surprised at what Biddy realized was an interruption of a sort. “Oh, I expect I’ll be going again when the weather gets better.” He shifted comfortably in his chair. “The cold I don’t mind, but there’s no sense fighting everything else.”

He pressed ahead into the silence, feeling incautious but emboldened by his earlier, still resonating impression of having glimpsed a mechanism of events beginning to take shape. “Which is harder, taking off or landing?”

“Oh, landing,” Carver said without hesitation, and didn’t elaborate. The conversation drifted to other things and dinner was announced. The beef was praised lavishly, though he saw nothing special in it. Afterward the adults slumped in their chairs, lazy with four courses, after-dinner drinks, and coffee. Carols played quietly on the stereo.

He sat at Carver’s feet at the base of the tree. His father seemed lost in the songs, a drink on his thigh; his mother spoke quietly with Mrs. Carver across the room. He asked about the takeoff checklist. He asked about yaw and cruising range. And finally, when he sensed Carver’s attention focusing on the glitter of the ornaments spread before him like the watch fob of a hypnotist, he asked about airport security.

The adults’ argument over nuclear war later that evening raised the possibility in his mind that in fact what he had been doing was simply stockpiling all this information, and although it was being stockpiled there was no inevitability, necessarily, in its ever being used. He drew a double line under the last of the questions that had been answered and shut the note pad and put it away, the Cessna closer than ever and having to wait for the weather. He released the image from his concentration, resolving halfheartedly to give Christmas its chance.

The next night, Mickey was his official guest. The visit wasn’t his idea; they hadn’t said more than a few words to each other since Thanksgiving. Mickey had never explained his earlier behavior and Biddy had long since lost the energy to press for an explanation. Dom and Ginnie were making an annual Christmas trip to Pittsfield to visit friends. Mickey, who hated the trip, was being allowed to stay with the Sieberts, who, Biddy was sure, had only occurred to him in a moment of desperation. Cindy had gotten out of the trip as well, he’d related indignantly to Biddy over the phone, claiming she had other friends to see upstate, near Hartford, so there was no reason he should have to go. Louis alone was going. Long car trips never bothered him, and he bore all strangers and distant relations with equanimity.

They played Nerf Basketball and War and Sports Illustrated Football and then, although he’d never shown anyone else the game and hadn’t touched the dice in months himself, he tried dice baseball. Mickey was bored in minutes and lost interest by the fifth inning.

“This game sucks,” he said. “You got anything else? You got Atari?”

Biddy shook his head. There was nothing on television, either.

“I got Stratamatic Baseball,” Mickey said, without enthusiasm. “Wanna play that?”

Biddy felt himself a host, his guest’s happiness his responsibility. Mickey’s boredom was his failure. “Sure,” he said.

It was at his house. Biddy protested his parents would never let them out so late, but Mickey interrupted impatiently that they would just say they were going out in the yard, to build a snow fort or something. Biddy relented, and after some discussion his parents did as well.

They walked along the road in single file, the wind cold and the snow crunching in the moonlight. The sky seemed a deep blue curtain in the distance over the airport. The plan was to pick up the game and return, pretending Mickey had had it all along.

There seemed to be no cars on the road, nothing stirring.

“It’s so quiet,” he murmured.

“Yeah.” Mickey took it as a complaint.

“Won’t your door be locked?”

“There’s an extra key in the garage.”

They scraped on in silence. Powdery snow drifted across ice and pavement like sand on a dune. They could hear the hiss of snow tires on a nearby street. He was bundled and secure in his coat.

They turned onto Ryegate Terrace and Mickey said, “Someone’s home.”

A warm, feeble light was visible in the downstairs bedroom.

“Ronnie’s here,” Biddy said. His car was behind Cindy’s.

“My sister, too. What a liar.” Mickey wiped his nose with a mitten, the smear across it shining under the streetlight. “We should spy on them.” He seemed to have no interest in the idea.

They came up the driveway quietly and Mickey tested the door. “It’s unlocked,” he said. He creaked it open. It occurred to Biddy while he waited that something shameful or illicit or exciting might be going on, but the door was swinging open and he followed Mickey in.

They could make out Ronnie at the kitchen table, his finger to his lips. He wasn’t moving.

“What are you doing in the dark?” Mickey whispered, quieted more by the lack of light than by Ronnie’s gesture.

“Be quiet,” Ronnie said. A radio was softly playing in another room. They came into the kitchen soundlessly. Ronnie still hadn’t moved, frozen in his chair. His voice came out of the darkness like a recording. “What’re you doing here?”

“Came to get a game,” Mickey said faintly. “Where’s Cindy?”

“Go get it. Go upstairs. Don’t make a sound.”

Mickey edged past him into the hallway and disappeared.

“You too,” he said. Biddy couldn’t see his eyes. “Get out of here. Go upstairs.”

“What’s wrong?” The whispering, the sitting in the dark, the tone of Ronnie’s voice scared him.

“Go upstairs.”

Biddy slipped past him through the hallway and into the living room, shrinking into the shadows against the wall. He could make out other noises in the bedroom as well as the radio, but they were muffled and intermittent.

Ronnie was still perfectly silent. The pendulum of the clock near him clicked steadily. Finally there was the slightest noise, of the chair on the linoleum floor, and the faint clatter of the cutlery drawer being opened. Something was slid out, the sound like that of a single stroke of a knife on a sharpening steel.

Biddy waited, the only sounds coming from the bedroom. When he couldn’t bear it any longer he eased forward and was about to peek around the corner into the kitchen when Ronnie moved noiselessly past, their faces only inches apart, with the wall between them. He disappeared down the hall. After a moment Biddy followed, amazed at himself. The hall closet door was slightly ajar and he slipped behind it, his feet nudging aside clothes baskets and boxes of detergent on the floor. He edged in until, leaning on the inside wall, he could peer out of the crack under the hinge between the door and the jamb.

Ronnie stood framed in his vision, pausing at the bedroom door. His hand was closed around the knob. The noises inside were more distinct now and Biddy could distinguish Cindy’s murmurs. Ronnie had a knife in his hand.

He realized it with a shock — Ronnie had a knife in his hand, ten inches, twelve inches long. Leaning there in the dark, with an eye screwed to the crack between door and wall and one foot on the other to avoid moving anything else on the floor, he had a sudden horrifying sense of something inconceivable about to happen, and before he could cry out or even react fully Ronnie turned the handle and threw the door open, the light flooding into the hall until he moved into the doorway to block it.

“Oh, my God,” Cindy said.

There was no other sound. The radio was switched off. Ronnie was perfectly still. Biddy strained to see what was going on, moving his eye up and down the crack in terror and suspense.

“Why don’t you just pull right out, trooper.” Ronnie’s voice was low and even and terrifying. “Don’t even bother to wipe the goo off. Get up.”

The bed squeaked and someone’s leg appeared beyond his silhouette.

“Get your car keys.” Ronnie still hadn’t moved. There was a jingling of a belt buckle and coins. He gestured past Biddy down the hall, the sudden motion startling. “Get out.”

The other man said something, his voice low, as frightened as Biddy would have been.

“Touch those clothes and I’ll cut your pecker off. Get out.”

The man said something about pants.

“Get out.” Ronnie’s voice was indescribable: Biddy was momentarily certain that if he was discovered he’d be killed as well.

The man popped through the doorway abruptly, naked, his penis gleaming before Biddy could look away: the man in the store, Sean. Ronnie followed him down the hall, and the back door opened and slammed shut. Biddy imagined the man standing naked in the driveway, bare feet on the ice.

In the bedroom he saw Cindy’s naked thigh, her arms struggling with a pair of pants. The closet door swung open. Ronnie loomed above him, the knife pointed at the floor. Biddy froze, breath changing direction in his throat. “All right, get out of here,” Ronnie said. “The show’s over.” He called Mickey, his raised voice the first loud noise in the house.

Biddy scrambled from the closet, intercepting Mickey in the kitchen in his rush to the door.

“What’s going on?” Mickey said. “Did Cindy leave?” Biddy shook his head, unable to speak. “I couldn’t find all the pieces to the Stratamatic.” Mickey opened the back door and stepped out. “I should tell my parents those two were here when they weren’t supposed to be.”

He continued to talk, and at the corner Biddy collapsed to a sitting position and refused to get up, mired, it seemed, in the ice and snow, not responding, tears filling his eyes and the cold and wet coming through his pants, until Mickey gave up in exasperation and left, disappearing in the direction of Biddy’s home, leaving him alone and soaked in the rear with the night closing in around him.

“Biddy’s sitting in the road and he won’t get up,” Mickey announced after taking off his mittens in the Sieberts’ kitchen.

His father arrived in minutes, the dark Buick pulling up next to him and sliding a little in its haste to stop. He wouldn’t respond to questions and his father, impatient, frightened, and despairing, finally picked him up, Biddy as quiescent as a drunk or baby, and carried him into the car. All he was able to say was “Nothing” in response to their questions of what was wrong, what had happened. Mickey was almost no help. Biddy was put to bed. Mickey was put in front of the television. Kristi stayed in the living room, shooting at ornaments with a rubber band. His parents huddled outside his room debating in fierce whispers what should be done. His mother wanted to call Dr. Hanzlik here, now, this minute, get him out of bed if they had to. His father favored waiting until after Christmas: Hanzlik probably wouldn’t see him until then anyway, and why ruin everyone’s Christmas? And who knew what was wrong? Who knew how serious it was? Maybe he’d seen another three-legged dog, for all they knew.

Finally, in whispers that grew calmer, they got hold of themselves and decided they’d wait until after the holidays.

Before she went to bed, Kristi poked her head into his room, a crack of light from the hall spreading across the floor.

“Are you sick?” she said.

He lay under his covers like an exhausted Channel swimmer.

“They say to leave you alone.” She stepped a bit farther in, the hall light slanting across her cheek, catching on her hair. “Cindy called you. They said you were sick and couldn’t come to the phone.”

He lay as if asleep.

“Are you gonna get real sick right before Christmas?”

He opened his eyes at the worry in her voice, and raised his head. “You don’t want me to get sick?” he asked quietly.

She sat on the edge of the bed. “No.”

They remained where they were. The furnace kicked on in the cellar.

She rubbed her leg. “Know what I got you for Christmas?”

He shook his head, his hair making soft noises against the pillow. “Where’s Mickey?”

“They got him downstairs in the living room. He says you have a nervous breakdown.”

He shook his head again. “I don’t have a nervous breakdown.”

In the near darkness he could see her picking self-consciously or abstractedly at the covers. “Mickey said you wouldn’t get off the road.” He shifted under the covers. “Are you okay?”

“Uh-huh.”

“If I did that they’d kill me.”

He let it go.

“The Sisters say I should be nicer to you.” She waited, the air audible now in the heating vents. “Do they say that to you?”

He wiped his nose on the covers. “They say that to everybody.”

She rose to leave. “I hope you’re not sick. If you’re still sick tomorrow, I’ll ask if we can eat up here.”

“Thanks. That’d be good,” he said, and she closed the door behind her, her hair under the light as beautiful as he had ever seen it before the black door shut it out.

“Get out of bed, pal. You may not have any Christmas spirit but you got some singing to do.” His father stripped the bed of blankets and sheet with one pull, leaving him a fish on a beach, foolish and exposed. The cool air chilled his feet.

“Let’s go. Your Aunt Rosie’s coming over and you’re not receiving visitors in bed.”

He had been in bed all day this Christmas Eve. Cindy had called again, his sister had had jelly sandwiches with him on a TV tray for lunch, and his father had gone over to the school to pick up his choir robe. His mother had come up to talk with him while she was baking. His father decided enough was enough forty-five minutes before company was due to arrive.

“You see your Aunt Rosie twice a year,” he said. “You can make a little effort. You can only take this Camille bit so far.”

His Aunt Rosie was actually his mother’s aunt, who lived in upstate New York and came down to visit that part of the family in Connecticut — her nieces’ families — twice a year, at Thanksgiving and Christmas. This year she had missed Thanksgiving. She would see everyone at Christmas, she’d said. And besides, who wanted to drive all the way up there, pick her up, and take her back? She was in her nineties and had come over from Naples fifty-three years earlier and was still convinced her stay in America was only temporary.

She never had pretended to understand any of the children, but Judy’s Eustace was another story altogether. From start to finish: What kind of name was Biddy? Or Eustace, for that matter? And he was always standing around like a chidrule. He never ate. You could count his ribs. He was a nice boy and he gave them nothing but worries.

Biddy stood in the shower, soaping up. His father was shaving and singing “The First Noël.” In the living room his mother was vacuuming and the stereo was playing “Buona Natale,” from a Jimmy Roselli Christmas album. Kristi was watching Miracle on 34th Street in the den, with the volume turned up. Rather than mixing, the sounds were fighting with each other for his attention, snatches of one, then the other, dominating.

His father grinned at him when he came into the kitchen dripping and barefoot, hoping to coax him into the same hearty good humor by example. His mother was levering red-and-beige cookies off a metal sheet with a spatula. He rubbed his arm dry, his wet hair stiff and cold on his neck.

“Look at him. He’s got the weight of the world on his shoulders,” his father teased.

“Your clothes are laid out upstairs,” his mother said. “What time did Sister say to be over there?” He could sense their anxiety in the tone of her voice: what if he refused to respond and continued to refuse to respond? He had an unpleasant feeling of power. “Eleven-thirty,” he said, and headed obediently for the stairs.

Rose arrived a few minutes later in a welter of greetings and warnings about icy steps. She leaned on Michael’s arm, and one by one they kissed her. Biddy still didn’t look good, Kristi was getting bigger and bigger, and what had Judy done to her hair?

“I cut it, Rosie,” his mother said. “I want it off the face. I don’t want to have to worry about it for a while.”

Rose suggested she looked like a feminist.

Michael and Sandy brought the presents into the living room and piled them under the tree. They’d driven Rosie down the day before, and were now taking her from relative to relative on her Christmas tour. They looked tired already.

She was led into the living room and settled into a chair near the tree while his father put on his Mario Lanza record, a Christmas tradition when she visited. It was not a Christmas album, but Rose didn’t have a stereo and Mario Lanza held a place in her personal pantheon, his father said, just a notch or two below the Holy Ghost. Her hearing was still sharp. She’d just have a little of the homemade white wine she’d brought, they shouldn’t bother over her, sit down, relax. Mario Lanza sang “My Buddy.” To Biddy it always sounded like “My Body.”

“What about this one?” Rosie asked, gesturing toward Kristi, who was edging her present back and forth on the rug with her toe as if movement might reveal its nature. “How’s she been?”

His mother sipped her drink, which was a rich honey color in the warm lights of the lamp and tree. “She’s been okay. You know. Stubborn as ever.”

“She’s the scourge of the nuns,” his father said. “She has them living in fear.” Michael and Sandy chuckled, and Kristi rocked back and forth, pleased with the attention.

“What about Biddy?” Rose said. “Has he been behaving?”

Both his parents hesitated and his father set down his drink. “We had a little excitement yesterday.” He gestured toward her with his head. “Tell Rosie what you did yesterday.”

Biddy looked into her eyes.

“He sat down over on Ryegate Terrace over here last night and—”

“Where?”

“Over here on Ryegate Terrace, where the Lirianos live, and he decided he wouldn’t get up.”

“He couldn’t get up?”

“He wouldn’t get up.”

It took some additional discussion to make it clear to her what they meant. Once she had it clear in her mind, she looked at him, baffled. “Why wouldn’t he get up?”

“He won’t tell us. Maybe the world grew too heavy on his shoulders. I had to pick him up in my car.”

“What’re you, cuckoo?” Rose said, concerned.

Biddy managed a smile.

“You’re cuckoo sometimes,” she decided.

“I think he saw another hurt dog,” his father said. “Is that what it was?”

“I didn’t see any dog.”

“Are you going to be able to go to midnight Mass with us?” his mother asked. “Biddy’s in the choir this year.”

“I heard,” Rose said. “Sandy and Michael told me.”

“Sister said his voice is just like an angel’s.”

“It’s pretty icy out, Rose,” Michael said.

“I’m going to go,” she said. “If Sandy and Michael can wait around.”

Sandy and Michael, sagging noticeably, said that would be fine.

She requested that Biddy sit next to her at dinner, whether to show he was favored or to keep a closer eye on him he wasn’t sure. She tried a bit of everything that was put on the table: fennel and black olives, prosciutto and melon, turkey and turnips, mashed potatoes, stuffing, yams in syrup, broccoli. She spooned out his portions besides, claiming if he’d mangia a little more he wouldn’t look like such a ghost. She waved her hand slightly and shook her head, chewing. “Yesterday on Mervin Griffin they got two women in love,” she said. “Two women in love. You believe that?”

“No, Rose, they were kidding you,” Michael said. “They were just friends.”

“Two women in love.” She gave up, appalled either way.

Dessert was anisette cookies and coffee, of which he had two cups since he was singing in the choir.

Afterward they returned to the living room and the tree, all of them directing Michael as he resat Rosie. His mother talked with Sandy about the President, whom they considered a fool. Michael asked his father what the heating bills had been like that winter. Kristi lay with her head under the tree, inert. He was left with Rose, who watched him every so often as if, sitting at her feet in front of the Christmas tree, he might betray what had prompted him to refuse to get off an icy street the evening before.

“You looking forward to singing tonight?” she asked. Her hair was white and uneven and her skin hung in soft folds beneath her neck. “You nervous?”

He shrugged.

“What are you gonna sing?”

He went back over his songs, remembering bits of the practice sessions: “‘Joy to the World!’ ‘Angels We Have Heard on High,’ ‘O Come, All Ye Faithful,’ ‘Silent Night,’ and ‘Hark! the Herald Angels Sing.’”

She fidgeted and asked if he’d had enough to eat.

He assured her that he had. He’d never had so much mashed potatoes, he added as proof.

She smiled. “You know who used to love mashed potatoes? Your grandfather. We used to fight over the mashed potatoes when he’d come over for dinner. You know what he’d do? He’d take his false teeth out, like a cavone, right there at the table, and throw them into the bowl, and ask, ‘Anybody want any potatoes?’”

Biddy laughed.

“Of course we didn’t. We just learned, that’s all. Make two bowls when your grandfather came over.” She smiled again and rubbed the top of his head. “You going to come up and see me in Albany?”

He agreed to if his parents came up. “Are you okay? They said you were sick around Thanksgiving.”

“They worry too much. I tell them, I’m ninety-two. Very few people die at ninety-two.” She gave him a sip of her anisette.

At eleven he went upstairs to change. His mother had laid out a white shirt, black tie, and black pants on the bed. His father had polished his black shoes to a high gloss. He put everything on and combed his hair in the upstairs bathroom, wetting down one area that stuck up stubbornly and holding his hand over it.

When he returned there was a good deal of talk concerning how sharp he looked, Rose remarking on it three or four times. His father dug the choir robe out of the hall closet, and he tried it on for the benefit of those assembled. It was scarlet and pleated at the shoulders, billowing out at the arms. The fit was perfect, the hem brushing his shoe tops. He took it off and stuffed it back in the box. As he left, they called “Good luck” from the kitchen and the living room.

The room off the sacristy where the altar boys changed was six feet or so by fifteen, with a good three feet of that width taken up by cassocks and hanger space, and when he arrived all the boys in the choir — eight of them besides himself — were crammed in shoulder to shoulder, arms swinging and pivoting, trying to climb into their robes. The walls, which were unpainted cement, echoed the giggles and whispers back at them, and magnified the musical crash of metal hangers on the floor. He noticed Teddy, apparently reinstated, without surprise. Teddy’s robe didn’t fit; it hung just below his knees. His pants stopped just above his ankles, producing a silly, tiered effect. “I shoulda looked at it when I picked it up,” he said. “Or I shouldn’ta come back. Now I look like a retard.”

Father poked his head in and whispered to quiet down, and there was a good deal of accidental and intended slapping while they tried to get their arms into their sleeves. Someone hit the forty-watt bulb above them and it swayed back and forth, swinging shadows across their faces and producing an effect worthy of a horror film. “Curse of Dracula,” Teddy said. They all made what they believed to be horror-film sounds, and Father had to poke his head in again.

Once ready, they lined up in the sacristy proper to wait for the girls. “We gotta dress in a closet and he gets all this,” Teddy whispered into his ear.

Father stood before them in a white chasuble, with thick gold bands forming a cross from shoulder to shoulder and neck to hem, INRI printed at the apex inlaid with black and gold. The gold seemed impossibly rich and provoked a kind of reverence in all of them. The door leading to the spare rooms in back creaked open and Sister led the girls in, most of them looking prettier than any of the boys would have thought physically possible. Laura slipped by him, her brushed hair golden brown over the scarlet shoulders of her robe. Sister checked the formation one final time before she left them, with a nod intended to inspire confidence, and took her place at the organ. When it swelled to life, Father finally broke into a smile and said, “Merry Christmas. And sing your brains out.” He turned and took a measured step down and out of the sacristy, and they followed in a controlled mass, hands clasped in front of them as Sister had instructed.

They were singing as the congregation rose to greet them, the pews thundering dully, and they filed down the side aisle past the familiar faces of friends, relatives, and neighbors. The entrance hymn was “Joy to the World!” and Biddy was only aware of singing it halfway into the second chorus. From the side they turned up the center aisle, Christ high on his cross above them and never closer, red and white poinsettias flanking the altar like a Christmas jungle, gold everywhere and glittering with the candlelight and occasion: candlesticks, chalices, water and wine vessels, the tabernacle. They stepped up from outer to inner altar, turned in pairs past Sister to the right, and filed into the choir pews as if they’d grown up filing into choir pews. After one more chorus the singing stopped. The lay reader announced — because of the special treat of a real choir this year — a second entrance hymn, number 36 in the missalettes: “Angels We Have Heard on High.” As they rose to sing he glanced down the row of faces alongside him with a growing happiness and pride that one could only begin to feel when singing, and singing well when it wasn’t expected, in a makeshift choir on Christmas Eve. His voice rose as the highest and strongest soprano, with Teddy and Sarah Alice’s right beside it, supporting, and the others ranging alongside in chorus. They were a unit singing as a part of a celebration separate from Sister and Father and even the Mass, and yet privy to it in a more wonderful way because of that separation. He led everyone in the song through the soaring eighteen-note expansion of the Gloria and the supporting In Excelsis Deo, and back through the Gloria again, to finish by expanding the supporting phrase in a final cadence: “In Excelsis De-e-eo.”

They sat down.

“In the name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit, Amen.” Now more than ever he wanted to be in tune with the mechanism of the Mass, to see and appreciate all that had during the year for one reason or another cruised effortlessly by him while he stood oblivious in the pews. But even as they spoke the opening prayer together, he could see that the magic did not extend to all aspects of the Mass; that only the songs and the night itself would be different and so then memorable, and that would be enough. Alone, either was a great deal more magic than he had bargained for. In a vague way he wondered if it might be capable of producing some sort of change in him, and he wondered if that was what he had been hoping for all along.

Laura glanced back at him from the front row, and he smiled. They stood and sat and knelt as a group, and recited the prayers crisply without the usual murmuring and trailing off at the end, and Mass continued to glide by seamlessly.

“Be seated,” Father said. “A reading from the Holy Gospel according to Luke.”

“Glory to you, O Lord.”

He shifted at the podium, and began.

“Now it came to pass in those days that a decree went forth from Caesar Augustus that a census of the whole world be taken. This first census took place while Cyrinus was governor of Syria. And all were going, each to his own town, to register. And Joseph also went from Galilee out of the town of Nazareth into Judea to the town of David, which is called Bethlehem, because he was of the house and family of David, to register, together with Mary his espoused wife, who was with child.

“And it came to pass while they were there that the days for her to be delivered were fulfilled. And she brought forth her firstborn son and wrapped him in swaddling clothes and laid him in a manger, because there was no room for them at the inn.

“And there were shepherds in the same district living in the fields and keeping watch over their flocks by night. And behold, an angel of the Lord stood by them, and the glory of God shone round them, and they were much afraid.

“And the angel said unto them: ‘Fear not, for behold, I bring you tidings of great joy, which shall be unto all people, for today in the town of David a saviour has been born to you, who is Christ the Lord.’…

“And suddenly there was with the angel a multitude of the heavenly host, praising God and saying, ‘Glory to God in the highest, and on earth peace to men of good will.’”

Father closed the book with a quiet slap. “This is the Word of the Lord.”

Biddy sat transfixed, murmuring with the rest, “Thanks be to God.”

The Homily went by unnoticed, an uneven drift of words in the distance. His mind stayed out with the flocks in the darkness under the ancient night sky, with the shepherds and stars and angel who spoke so beautifully that to his complete surprise the Gospel, of all things, had provided something as vivid as the Orioles or the Vikings and a rough hillside thousands of miles and years away had become as familiar and comforting as Three Rivers Stadium or the Oriole dugout.

It was not a moment to rush through. He stood for the Profession of Faith a second later than the others, the first moment he was aware of when the choir was not in complete synchronization.

And as he recited, he did believe: in one God, the Father, Almighty, Maker of heaven and earth, of all that is seen and unseen. In Jesus, in his crucifixion, in the rest of the prayer, which grew progressively harder to keep concrete, to keep meaningful, until, as always, he felt even in his faith a lack of faith, a nagging conviction that he didn’t believe hard enough.

Father had begun the Liturgy of the Eucharist and was preparing the host: “The day before he suffered, he took bread in his sacred hands, and looking up to heaven to you, his Almighty Father, he gave you thanks and praise. He broke the bread, gave it to his disciples, and said: ‘Take this, all of you, and eat it: this is my body which will be given up for you.’” Biddy knelt without moving, lost in thought, and found himself mouthing along: “When the supper was ended, he took the cup. Again he gave you thanks and praise, gave the cup to his disciples, and said: ‘Take this, all of you, and drink from it: this is the cup of my blood, the blood of the new and everlasting covenant. It will be shed for you and for all men so that sins may be forgiven. Do this in memory of me.’”

He sat back, wishing he could understand, as Father rang the prayer to a close. Upon the final lines the choir stood together, relieved and moved, bored and distracted, to sing the answering Amen.

The Our Father followed. They gave each other the Sign of Peace. Down the bench Teddy farted, trying to muffle it. Father said, “This is the Lamb of God, who takes away the sins of the world,” and Biddy, hoping somehow that it would help and knowing that he was wholeheartedly sincere in at least this prayer, said, “Lord, I am not worthy to receive you, but only say the word and my soul shall be healed.”

They sang “Silent Night” while the congregation received Communion. When the song was finished and the choir filed out of the pews to receive as well, the congregation, unsure of its new singing responsibilities with the addition of a choir, began haltingly to start a new verse before petering out and leaving only the shifting sounds in the pews to accompany the quiet dialogue between celebrant and communicant, not quite lost in the hush: “ … The Body of Christ. … Amen.” His mouth full of the dry tasteless wafer, he sat down, his eyes closed until the saliva could break it down.

There were more prayers, and suddenly they were all standing for the concluding blessing. Father said, “The Lord be with you,” and the response was the most wholehearted, the most enthusiastic of the Mass, as it always was: “And also with you.” “The Mass is ended. Go in Peace.” “Thanks be to God.” And Sister looked at them over her shoulder from the organ and nodded as her hands began “Hark! the Herald Angels Sing.”

Biddy sang. He sang as he never had before and perhaps never would again, realizing the song had always been his favorite, realizing it to be the perfect song with its power and joy to appear here to end the ceremony, to send them out into the snow and Christmas: “Joyful, all ye nations rise, join the triumph of the skies, with the angelic host proclaim, ‘Christ is born in Bethlehem!’ Hark! the herald angels sing, ‘Glory to the newborn King!’”

There was another chorus but the congregation thundered into the aisles, leaving only the choir and Sister to appreciate it. And with small knots of parents remaining, clustered at the main doors, they sang the final notes and turned to one another in exhilaration, grinning and clapping congratulatory hands on shoulders.

Sister stood away from the organ and said, “You were just wonderful. Merry Christmas to you all. I’m proud of you.”

Their ranks broke with a whoop, and he wished them all Merry Christmas — Sarah Alice, Teddy, Janet — trying to catch them before they disappeared into the chaos. Laura hugged him. She wished him a Merry Christmas and swept down the central aisle to her parents, leaning forward with their arms out at the main doors.

They found him still at his seat: his mother, Rose, Sandy, and Michael. The altar boys were moving swiftly back and forth extinguishing candles, anxious to get home. “You were wonderful,” his mother said. “Did you see us over on the left?” He hadn’t. Everyone agreed the choir had been marvelous. Rose kissed his cheek, a glancing blow, and it occurred to him she was happy her talk had turned him around. His mother asked what they were waiting for.

“I’ll be right there,” he said. “I just want to do something.”

She offered to wait but he said he wanted to talk to Father. They said they’d go on ahead in that case, and left, wrapping coats and mufflers around themselves and hunching forward as they passed through the main doors. Michael brought the car around for Rose. Biddy could see the snow coming down beyond. A noise from the sacristy intruded, and he turned and slipped into the second choir pew. He lay back along the bench seat gazing up at the ceiling beams brightly lit from below. He could hear odd metallic and wooden noises, as well as the rustle of Father’s chasuble as he bustled around the church preparing to leave. When the noise grew very close, he knew Father was taking a last look in the chapel, and suddenly the lights went out, leaving only the glow from the sacristy coming over the horizon of pews like a yellow sunset. When the door shut, the light disappeared, leaving him in darkness. He imagined he could hear the snow piling up outside. An outer door swung shut with a much heavier sound, and he sat up.

It was already Christmas. Probably near one-thirty. He couldn’t see his watch. There was a faint light coming in the rose window at the end of the nave. He could smell the smoke of the candles. As his eyes adjusted, he could make out the lines of pews, silent in the dark. He started to sing.

It was very quiet at first: “Hark! the herald angels sing,” and then his voice grew louder and he sang it all the way through, once, and fell silent, listening to the church.

“Merry Christmas,” he said finally, his voice almost a whisper, the sound taking flight in the darkness.

He woke with Stupid on the bed and Kristi pulling at his mouth. “Come on,” she said unnecessarily. “It’s Christmas.”

He got a tent. An EMS Explorer, extremely light and compact, rolling up to the size of a football. A mess kit. A big flashlight. A ground cloth. A compass. He had to be reminded he had other presents to unwrap.

When they were finished, his father returned to the kitchen and started cracking eggs into a big bowl. He stacked the shells inside each other and they looked like a fat necklace or smooth caterpillar.

“Thanks for the hot-lather machine,” he said when Biddy came up to the counter next to him. “Did you expect so much camping stuff?”

Biddy lifted the line of shells delicately, from both ends. “No.”

“Well, in the summer you can take advantage of them. Get some use out of them.”

The phone rang. Teddy said, “What’d you get?” when he picked it up. They each listed the highlights.

“Teddy got Atari,” he said when he hung up. His father was swirling eggs around the pan with a plastic spatula.

“Good for Teddy. Just what a kid needs — something to keep him in front of a television,” he said. “Come and eat something. Then you can play for a while, but we’re going over the Lirianos’ at noon.”

What was there to do? He didn’t want to see Cindy again. He couldn’t believe he hadn’t realized this would pop up in the middle of his Christmas, like a horrible bug found under his pillow. He sat in a living-room chair gazing past the tree to the snow outside, and his father appeared before him, half his face covered with lather.

“You stare out more windows than I don’t know who,” he said. “Are you going to get dressed?”

Upstairs he chose the same clothes he’d worn the night before. He couldn’t refuse to visit the Lirianos. And he realized as he pulled his pants on that he didn’t want to, for the same reason he’d found himself listening with special care to his parents’ conversations around the house the last few days: he still hadn’t completely deciphered what had happened, and he wanted to know.

He hesitated before entering their living room, causing Dom to inquire whether he had passed away in the hall. He came in and found sanctuary on the sofa, concentrating on their tree. It was smaller, decorated more carelessly. Presents were jumbled around it, Mickey’s strewn in an arc across the room.

Gifts were exchanged. Only Louis was present. Mickey was already at a friend’s house. “Someone got Atari,” Dom said. “And the kid found out. We don’t expect him back until Tuesday.”

“Where’s Cindy?” his father said.

“She’s upstairs. Cindy!” he called. “She’ll be right down.”

They unwrapped gifts, thanked each other, and held them up for all to see. Biddy opened his and pulled out a Viking jersey.

“See the number?” Dom said. “Fifty-nine.”

“What’s fifty-nine?” his mother said.

“Who’s fifty-nine, Biddy?” Dom asked.

Biddy folded it up. “Matt Blair,” he said.

The Lirianos received a knife block. “Great,” Dom said, hefting it. “We don’t have to cut our hands to ribbons in the knife drawer anymore.”

Cindy still hadn’t appeared. “Cindy!” Biddy’s mother called. “C’mon. You got two presents to open this year.”

His eyes widened in horror. His parents had gotten their own present.

“Where’s Ronnie, anyway?” his mother said.

“Don’t ask,” Ginnie said.

Cindy came downstairs in a royal-blue robe with yellow embroidery on the shoulders. She glanced at Biddy first and smiled and wished everyone a Merry Christmas.

“Merry Christmas,” his father said. “Come get your presents here.”

She moved to the middle of the room and knelt on the rug. Her hair was brushed close to her head and tied back in a tight ponytail. Biddy wanted nothing more than to be out of the room.

“Two,” she said, raising an eyebrow politely. “How’d I get two?” She was very quiet.

“Biddy bought you one all by himself,” his mother said. “The small one.”

She looked at him, and he had to look away. “Well, let’s see what we have here,” she said. She opened the large package first, a blouse, and lifted it gently from its wrapping. “It’s beautiful. Isn’t it?” Her parents agreed.

“Now open Biddy’s,” someone said.

She tore off the paper, the dark red box showing through. She gazed at it silently before opening it and pulling out the bottle. She screwed off the cap and sniffed.

“Mmm. Very nice. Smell.” She dabbed her wrist and held it up to her mother, looking at Biddy intently. “Thank you,” she said, leaning forward until their faces were almost touching, and, smiling hesitantly, she kissed him.

He started to cry.

“Now isn’t that the goddamnedest thing you ever saw?” his father said. “What’s wrong now?”

They waited, stunned, until he stopped sniffling. He said something about having to watch TV, and left the room.

His father followed, alone, and sat opposite him. “What was that all about?” he finally asked.

He didn’t know. His father squinted at him. “Are you all right?” He nodded vigorously and his father stood up, half satisfied. “I don’t know about you, guy,” he said at the doorway. “Sometimes I’m not sure you have both oars in the water.”

At eleven-thirty Christmas night his parents shut their bedroom door, telling him to get to bed soon, and at ten after, he went to the back porch and climbed into his boots, coat, scarf, and mittens. Stupid followed, and after a moment’s indecision Biddy got his leash and took him along.

It was very cold outside, with no wind. Stupid led him down the driveway, weaving from snowbank to snowbank, his breath showing silver in the streetlight.

They walked toward the beach quietly, Biddy silent and the dog’s sniffing muffled. The only sounds were the crunch of his boots on the snow and the jingling of the dog’s license. He could smell the salt water, which surprised him. They passed Father Rubino’s house on the corner facing the bluffs and he noticed a light on in the living room. He crossed over to it through the yard, the dog loping along in chest-deep snow to keep up. He crept along the bushes and peered over the sill.

Father was alone, his back to the window, playing the piano. On a small table nearby was a glass of wine. There were a few sprigs of holly about, and a red candle over the fireplace. The rest of the house was dark and empty. The whole image seemed melancholy and sad, and Biddy pulled away from the window, turning his back to it.

At the edge of the bluffs the beach spread out below him, dark and noisy, the waves glistening in long lines. Stupid strained to go down, his breath hoarse and visible, and after Biddy tested the steps for slipperiness, they did, the sand poking through the snow in great coarse patches after they’d reached the bottom and walked up the rise to the water.

There was a suggestion of wind. At close range the waves made a sibilant sound slapping under the ice at the water’s edge. It was salt-water ice, less smooth, greenish. It crumbled easily in his hand, as if made of countless tiny pellets, and lay tumbled about in slabs like translucent pavement that had been torn up. A piece of driftwood rose from it nearby and he maneuvered over it and sat down. The dog, after wandering the length of the leash, sat next to him. The horizon was invisible, the stars simply fading away at a certain point.

“I used to take Lady down here,” he said, but Stupid gave no sign of understanding. A wave advanced a little farther than usual, collapsing some slabs in front of him.

“I could sing,” he said. “Want me to sing?”

The dog sniffed the air, as if to guess his mood.

“I don’t blame you,” he said. He rubbed his thighs, bunched his mittens into fists. “It was a good Christmas. I was the one who had to make it a good Christmas, and it was a good Christmas. I’m the one who has to help me.”

His rear felt wet, cold. There was ice on the log. “I wonder what Ronnie’s doing,” he said. He broke off a piece of ice and offered it to the dog, who sniffed it and turned away. He tossed it into the water. For a second it stayed opaque, bobbing, but then the dark sea color poured into it and it disappeared completely except for the faintest trace of an outline.

“I keep thinking I’m going to figure out something down here,” he said. “What to do, how to make things better. What’s wrong, even.” He stood, wiping the seat of his pants. “And I never do.”

You’re a very fortunate boy, Sister had told him once. Jesus loves you, your parents love you, you’re healthy and bright, you live in the best country in the world. Imagine if you lived in Pakistan or a place like that. What do you have to be so unhappy about? He shook his head, starting for the bluffs with Stupid. There was a piece of salt ice on his mitten, and he touched it to his tongue, wincing at the familiar saline taste. He labored up the stairs behind the dog, surprised by his fatigue. The wind was picking up behind them. It had been a good Christmas and the beach at night was beautiful. Stupid was a good dog. He would get some sleep. Things would get better. At the top of the stairs, with the new wind across his face as he turned for one last glimpse of the beach in the moonlight, that was what he decided: things would get better.