He was beginning to feel this whole thing might have been a mistake. “I don’t know. He’s pretty unhappy.”
“Poor little dork,” Ronnie said.
“Well, you must think so or you wouldn’t be coming to me with it. You tell his mother?”
“No.”
“Well she should know, don’t you think?”
Ronnie sang from the bathroom that he had to dance.
“All right, you,” Cindy called back. “Try and concentrate on what you’re doing.”
Ronnie sang that the Broadway rhythm had him and that everybody had to dance. Cindy laughed and said he was crazy. He kept singing.
“We’re just going to ignore you,” Cindy said. “That’s all.” She got up for the coffee. “Don’t you think you should tell his mother?”
“I don’t know,” Biddy said. “She’s never around.”
“Well, I’m sure she cares,” she said.
Ronnie was still singing about that Broadway rhythm. “Ronnie, we’re tryin’ to talk. We got a serious problem out here,” she said.
“Serious problem? Who cares?” he called. “Biddy and I crush serious problems. We destroy serious problems. When I get out of here, we’re gonna put our heads together and bury that serious problem.”
“Well, hurry up.”
“Ah, you’d rush a wet dream.”
She was quiet.
“Sorry.” He bumped around, muffled noises coming through the walls. “You didn’t hear that, did you, Bid?”
“No,” Biddy said.
She poured the coffee, and the phone rang. Ronnie continued to sing. She put a finger in one ear. “Who?” She darted a look at Biddy. “Hold on.” She stepped around the corner into the living room, stretching the cord taut.
After a moment he went over to the corner to listen.
“I don’t know when,” she said, keeping her voice low. “What are you, nuts? What are you calling me here for?”
Ronnie swung open the bathroom door, the toilet flushing behind him, and caught Biddy. “Hey, champ,” he said. “What’re you, master spy?” He sailed into the kitchen. “What’re you guys having, coffee out here?”
Cindy came back in, hanging up the phone.
“Who was that?” Ronnie said.
“A friend from work.” She sat down and tapped the table with her open palm. “Biddy, let’s get back to Simon.”
He sat in the front line of desks with five girls in the otherwise empty classroom. Laura was on one side and Sarah Alice on the other. The second hand of the clock above the blackboard ticked off calibrations silently. Sister Theresa returned to the room and sat at her desk, facing them.
She looked up and snapped her pencil down with a curt, pleasant snap. “Okay,” she said. “Before we begin, I should say I’m proud of all of you, and I only wish you all could go. You’re all our best spellers and I would hate to have to pick two of you. So this is as good a way as any.”
They were the five finalists from the classwide spelling bee that day. The class period had ended before any of them had been eliminated, so after several extra rounds Sister had decided to have a special extra session after school. Of the five, only Laura was a surprise, still something of an unknown quantity.
“Now I don’t have to remind you to take your time and give the game your undivided attention.”
He smiled. Teddy had been first in the earlier spelling bee, and had immediately spelled “awful” o-f-f-l-e.
“Janet,” she said. “‘Obvious.’”
Janet spelled “obvious.” Margaret spelled “resource.” Mitsu spelled “algae.” Laura spelled “conservative.” Biddy spelled “political.” Sarah Alice spelled “expressive.”
On the second round, Margaret and Mitsu missed on “enigmatic” and Laura spelled it correctly, halting and picking her way over the word like someone barefoot stepping from boulder to boulder. They went through three more rounds.
Sister picked up another vocabulary book. “Well, I can’t send four of you,” she said. “Three is the absolute most.”
“‘Architect,’” she told Janet. They went through another round.
“It’s okay,” Laura said suddenly, out of turn. “I quit.”
The others sat shocked, Biddy included. Sister stared at her.
“I quit,” she repeated, an offering. “They can go instead.”
In Sister’s dumbfounded silence, Janet offered to quit as well, and then Biddy.
“You can’t quit,” she said, recovering. She focused on Laura. “See what you’ve started? Now, miss, if you don’t want to represent Our Lady of Peace, we don’t want you to represent us — and this goes for the rest of you as well — but you’re not going to decide that for yourself. You’re not the only ones sacrificing extra time to do this. You’re going to take part in this and only be excused when you’re eliminated. Laura. ‘Excretion.’”
Laura looked down. “E-x … c-r-e-a-t-i-o-n,” she said.
Sister looked at her. “You misspelled that on purpose. Janet.”
“No, I didn’t,” Laura protested.
“Yes, you did. And if anyone else tries that they’ll be in trouble. Believe you me. Janet.”
Janet, thoroughly rattled, misspelled it as well.
Sister stared at her for a moment. “You’re eliminated,” she said. “Biddy.”
Biddy spelled it correctly, the others already having eliminated other plausible versions.
“Okay,” Sister said. “Biddy, Sarah Alice, and Laura, you’re the representatives. Laura, you’re also staying after today and tomorrow.” She stood up. “It seems even the simplest things become aggravating with this class. Tomorrow I’ll have some practice vocabulary sheets for the three of you to work on over the holiday.” She made a small, dismissing gesture with her hand. “Go ahead, go home. Congratulations.”
“I didn’t miss on purpose,” Laura said.
“Laura, please,” she said. “I can’t argue with everyone today. Stay in your seat.”
Biddy filed out, turning at the doorway. “And don’t bother to wait for her, Mr. Siebert,” she said. “She’s going to be a while.”
“Keep an eye on him,” his father said from the kitchen. The dog circled around in the backyard, trailing a leg through its own manure.
“Stupid,” Kristi said. “That’s a good name for him.”
“Not the way you say it,” Biddy said. They sat at the redwood table, Kristi waving a Milk-Bone toward the dog and pulling it away as the dog approached, producing an occasional whine or impatient snort.
Stupid stopped, barking furiously.
“It’s all right,” his father said from the kitchen. “Hold him. It’s only the garbageman.”
A large black man dragged some cans from behind the Frasers’ garage. Stupid, straining at Biddy’s hand on the collar, twisted free.
“Hold on to him!” his father said, hearing the dog sprint past, and he rushed to the door and swung out onto the frame and yelled, “Come back here, you black bastard!”
Biddy heard the clang of the cans dropping at the foot of the driveway.
“Oh, not you,” his father said. “I was talking about the dog. I’m sorry—”
“Jesus Christ,” his mother said, her voice coming from the bathroom. “He can embarrass me with the garbageman.”
“All right, all right, all right,” his father said, hustling the collared Stupid back onto the porch. “No harm done. Get in there, you goddamn idiot.”
“Do you have to fly off the handle every time that dog does something?” his mother said. The mirrored door on the medicine chest swung shut. “You scream like a banshee. The whole neighborhood’s got to know Walt Siebert’s missing his dog.”
“Get away from me,” Kristi said from the porch, giving the dog’s rear a rough shove. It snapped at her and she bounced the Milk-Bone off its head. There was a crash from the bathroom and his mother wailed, “Oh, no.” Stupid barked at the noise.