“Turn around a little bit. The other way.” He turned his back to the window. Stupid brushed by and his mother asked in despair if he could believe the way this dog was shedding.
He and Laura had decided to sit together and she and her parents were going to save four seats. He was more anxious about keeping them waiting than about the spelling bee. He hadn’t told his parents about the saved seats.
When his mother finished, he stepped out of the trousers and dawdled around the kitchen, chilly in his underwear. The sewing machine buzzed and chugged in the cellar. He walked into his father’s room. His father was combing his hair, a green bottle of cologne on the dresser beside him, luminous against the white wall.
“Get your shirt on,” he said. “We need a tie, don’t we?” He opened the closet and looked over a rack on the door.
Biddy indicated a green one with small brown-and-blue pheasants.
That one would be around his knees, his father said. He slithered one off the rack and flipped it around Biddy’s neck. The knot failed and he squinted and knelt close, his breath smelling of whiskey. It failed again. He couldn’t do it that way, he announced. He turned Biddy around and tied it from behind. One end was long and they tucked it in his shirt.
His mother returned and handed him his pants and he pulled them on in the kitchen. He could hear the clock on the stove. His coat and hat were on a kitchen chair, and he put them on and stood at the sink, looking out the window at the unceasing snowfall.
They were minutes late and he picked out Laura among the rows of folding chairs and led his family over, suddenly unsure of what he was going to do with both sets of parents together. They introduced themselves: Laura’s parents had already been warned and his seemed unsurprised as well. They took their seats, and Sister Theresa climbed the stage to thank everyone for coming, mentioning that the students participating were the best spellers in the diocese and there were no losers tonight, only winners, and that everyone had a good deal to be proud of. She introduced a Sister from St. Ambrose and another from Our Lady of Perpetual Grace who said the same things in different words. Eight parochial schools were being represented. Each student was called out of the audience to polite applause to sit on the folding chairs on the stage behind the podium. Three judges were introduced and it was explained how the words had been selected. He was surprised by the shabbiness of the trappings, the casual, thrown-together look of the whole event. The judges sat at card tables.
He was near Laura and Sarah Alice, looking out over the audience. His mother smiled at him. They began. They had to repeat the word after it was given, spell it, and repeat the word again. The judges used the word in a sentence and they were allowed a minute and encouraged to take their time. Almost no one did.
It went rapidly. He heard his name called and crossed to the podium, looking over the microphone, away from his father. “‘Stationery,’” one of them said. “I have to go to the store to get some stationery.”
He refocused on the microphone. He’d gone over the word the week before with Sister: the trick was distinguishing between the homonyms. Something fastened in place was a-r-y; paper for letters was e-r-y. Just remember paper, e-r, she’d said. He spelled it, quickly. “That’s correct,” the judge said listlessly, and he went back to his seat, relieved.
On the second round, people started to miss. Whenever it happened, there was a silence and then a judge said, “I’m sorry.” The silence was chilling. Every now and then a contestant would receive an extremely easy word, inspiring furious envy in some and detached appreciation of his or her good fortune in others. Of all the contestants only one, a short, plain girl from St. Ambrose, took her time, pausing between each letter like someone working on high explosives. She wore a black dress and had sticklike arms. He got bored and irritated just listening to her.
He passed safely through five more rounds and by the end of the sixth only six contestants remained. As the eliminated contestants had missed, they had returned, in shock or relief, to their original seats in the audience. The six survivors looked about the sea of empty chairs on the stage. The judge announced “intransigent,” and the first two to attempt it failed, leaving only the girl from St. Ambrose and three from Our Lady of Peace: Laura, Biddy, and Sarah Alice.
“‘Intransigent,’” the girl from St. Ambrose said into the microphone. She was relishing this, he was beginning to realize with some distaste. She began with paralyzing deliberateness, and he could sense the audience’s suspense and resented how easily she had been able to manipulate them. When she finished, there was a burst of heartfelt applause.
Laura was next and misspelled “ostentatious.” He froze when he heard the wrong letter in sequence, and after a beat the judge said, “I’m sorry.” She descended the stairs and took her seat next to her father, who patted her hand.
The rounds continued. He lost count of the number of words he spelled. The girl from St. Ambrose labored through another one, and he returned to the podium and waited, one of three left.
“‘Diary,’” the judge said. The crowd relaxed audibly, happy for him. “I like to write in my diary.”
“‘Diary,’” he said, rapidly. “D-a-i-r-y.” He stood waiting but there was a silence instead, a familiar silence, and the judge said, “I’m sorry.” He went down the steps unbelieving, repeating it to himself, unsure of what had happened. Had they made a mistake? He sat beside Laura, and his father leaned down the row. “You spelled dairy,” he whispered.
Sarah Alice and the girl from St. Ambrose went back and forth for some time. By this point the audience applauded them both for every word, and when Sarah Alice finally missed she was allowed to stay onstage, in case the other girl missed as well. She didn’t, and everyone gave her a rousing ovation.
“It’s too bad,” his father said in the car on the way home. “To get all those tough words and then miss one like diary.” It was very cold in the back seat. Biddy kept his hands in his pockets.
“How come you’ve never had Laura over the house?” his mother said.
“I don’t know,” he said. “She’s coming over tomorrow.”
They turned a corner and the rear of the car slid to the left. “What kind of doctor is he?” his mother said. “Psychiatrist?”
“Um-hm.” His father rubbed the windshield with the flat of his palm.
“Maybe we could get some free advice,” she said.
“We could use it,” his father said. The car turned carefully onto their street, its traction unsteady beneath them.
The next morning when he answered the door, it was Louis, not Laura.
“Hi,” Louis said. “Can I come in?”
Biddy opened the door wider. The snow had stopped, and the wind was blowing powder around, wet and cold.
Louis stomped his boots on the mat on the back porch and bent over and brushed away the snow that clung to his dungarees.
“C’mon in,” Biddy said. He looked back into the kitchen, as if for help. “Your parents coming over too? Mickey?”
Louis shook his head, pulling off his hat. It was white with a large red pom-pom at its peak and the red letters EXECUTIVE SPIRIT across the front. Biddy’s father had given it to him. It advertised Sikorsky’s new business helicopter, the Spirit. It was an awful hat, but Louis was being a staunch employee, even before he was hired.
He’d come alone, he said. He took off his jacket and waited on the porch, holding everything in front of him.
“Well, come on in,” Biddy repeated, wishing his parents were home. He led Louis into the kitchen and pulled a chair away from the table. Louis sat down, clothes in his lap.