Jim Shepard - Flights

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.