Jim Shepard - Flights

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.

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.”