Ronnie gave a small smile and Cindy blushed.
The waitress arrived and set menus in front of each of them. She spaced three baskets of breadsticks evenly along the center of the table as well.
“It’s not going to be long now,” Biddy’s father said, opening a flap of the menu. “When’s Memorial Day? June?”
“May thirty-first this year,” Ginnie said.
“You guys have only a few more months.”
Ronnie nodded, picking the cellophane from two breadsticks. He held them like drumsticks and began to tap quietly on his plate.
“Ronnie’s going to have brown tuxes at the wedding,” Louis said.
Ronnie smiled. “Louis is a Cleveland Browns fan. Brown tuxes and orange shirts.”
“Lovely,” Biddy’s mother said, sipping some water. “Do they rent helmets, too?”
“It’s going to be a punk wedding,” Cindy said.
“That’s a good idea.” Dom crunched a breadstick. “We’ll give you punk presents, too.”
“We were debating where you guys should send us on our honeymoon.” Cindy smiled, lifting a flower in and out of the vase with two fingers. “We were thinking Martinique.”
“I was thinking Danbury,” Biddy’s father said.
“I think we’ll settle for Captiva.”
“Dom’ll get right on it.”
Dom nodded. “Your check’s in the mail.” He turned the menu over. “Let’s see what the Fage can come up with here.”
Biddy opened his own menu, trying to interest himself in one of the categories, “From the Sea,” perhaps, or “From the Grill,” but the candlelit tables of the bar he’d glimpsed on the way in had reminded him strongly of the chapel in the morning, and he was having difficulty concentrating on the choices presented him. Veal was his favorite, but he couldn’t decide.
“More layoffs at U Tech?” Dom said.
His father turned the menu over, dissatisfied. “Everybody’s laying off. Everybody’s cutting back.”
“I thought defense plants were a little better off, though.”
“These are hard times.”
“I hope they can afford to pay me next year,” Louis said. Biddy’s father was supposed to be getting him a full-time job at Sikorsky once he finished high school.
“I don’t know, Louis. I hope they can afford to pay me. We’re talking about a three-year cost-of-living freeze right now.”
“Things’re that tough?” Dom said.
“Things’re that tough.”
“And, of course, everything’s going up.”
“Of course. No freeze on that. The school told us now that tuition’s going up. I’m thinking about taking the kids out. We’re supporting the public schools, anyway.”
Biddy looked up from the menu.
“How about it, guy? How’d you like to be in Johnson next year?”
He couldn’t think. One fact occurred to him: all his friends were in Our Lady of Peace.
“I wouldn’t know anybody,” he said.
His father sat back. “Oh, well. You didn’t know anybody when you went to Our Lady of Peace, either.”
“The kids’ll stay where they are,” his mother said. “We’ll manage.”
“I’m not sure we’ll manage. And I’m not sure there’s any great advantage to having them there.”
Dom and Ginnie looked down, embarrassed.
“What’s he getting for the extra money? Hymns?” his father said.
His mother said it wasn’t the time or place to talk about it.
His father ordered for him: veal. He cut it realizing for the first time that he had some sort of choice; it was possible he could belong or be somewhere else. He was going to Our Lady of Peace because his parents had made a decision to send him there years ago, not because of any implacable natural law. He had never stopped to consider whether he would be happier or unhappier in a public school; he had identified himself completely with Our Lady of Peace when he thought of school, for better or worse. And now all of it — the Sisters, the spelling bees, the mornings in the chapel — all of it was unstable, all could change if the need or desire arose. Events and forces he had never dreamed of could interfere and wipe out that part of his life and send him in another direction entirely.
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 schooclass="underline" 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.