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.