His father sat on the edge of the bed, scratching the top of his head and rubbing the hair around, looking at the floor. “I don’t know about you, kid,” he said. “We don’t have enough to worry about?”
Biddy sniffled.
“You look thin. You eating enough?” His father laughed at himself. “No. Of course you’re not eating enough. You’re never eating enough. I got those vitamins downstairs; I want you to use them.” Biddy nodded. His father blew some air from his mouth. “Your mother’s upset right now. Go easy on her the next couple days. Don’t do anything more to get on her nerves. She’s unhappy.”
“What’s she unhappy about?”
“Everything. Lots of things. Different things. You know your mother; she gets frustrated. Things don’t work out the way she likes. She worries about you two. She’s got no patience, she gets mad, and then you do something, or Kristi does something, and she, you know … explodes.”
Biddy wiped his eyes. “Sorry,” he said. “I’m sorry.”
“I know, I know. I get mad, too; I’m no better. C’mon,” he sighed. “Slide down.” Biddy straightened his legs under the covers and his father slapped his thigh and stood up. He paused at the door as if to add something, but said only, “Get some sleep,” the yellow light from the hall narrowing and disappearing with the words.
III. Christmas
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.