It seemed to him, lying in the grass with the sun warming his arms, that he hadn’t talked to anyone in a long time. Laura had a new friend and seemed distant. He hadn’t seen Ronnie since Christmas. He rose without waking the dog, walked past the house to the street, and stood at the end of the driveway. Nothing was moving in either direction. Four houses down, Simon sat on the curb, hands on his shoes.
Biddy walked over and said hello. Simon didn’t look up. “My mother went to the beach and I couldn’t go,” he said. There was not the slightest hint of sadness in his voice. His mother had a boyfriend, and they didn’t always want him with them.
“Is she right down here?”
“In Milford.”
“Well, you want to go down this beach?” Biddy said, pointing. “I’ll take you.”
“I don’t want to go anywhere.” He scuffed the pavement.
“Where’s your baby-sitter?”
“Watching TV. I don’t want to do anything. Leave me alone.”
“Want me to—”
Simon got up, moved farther down the curb, and sat again. Biddy straightened up, angry, and turned away. Sit in the street, he thought. Get your feet run over. He returned to his yard and, before passing behind the house, glanced back and saw Simon still sitting where he’d left him, stubbornly determined, in all probability, to be in that same spot when his mother returned.
Biddy’s math had been poor and was going downhill steadily. That was the gist of Sister Theresa’s talk.
“And you know what it is, Biddy? You know what it is, don’t you? It’s carelessness. You can do the work. You do do the work. And then you make stupid mistakes, from carelessness.” He nodded, let his eyes wander through the tangle of papers on her desk.
“It’s a lack of respect, Biddy. For yourself, especially, but also for the work, and for me.”
They were sitting in her office, off the main hallway. He was forfeiting part of his lunchtime. He was thinking only of the Cessna. Outside the sun beat down and waves of heat rose from the playground.
She pointed to a number on a sheet. “See this? This is your average right now. That’s pretty shocking, young man. Are you shocked?”
“I’m surprised,” he said.
She looked at him grimly. “We’re trying everything we can with you, but our patience has a limit, let me tell you. You have to do something, too. If you earn this grade, I’m telling you right now I’m going to give you this grade. Is that understood?”
He nodded.
“Now go eat your lunch. And I want to see some improvement starting tomorrow, mister.”
He nodded again and shut the door behind him on the way out.
The hall was empty. Teddy appeared from the niche for the drinking fountain. “Let’s go up to the roof,” he whispered.
It was possible. The class was left on its honor, as Sister liked to say, for lunch, so they wouldn’t be missed unless someone checked. There was a shed adjoining the outside wall in the back. It had a low roof that allowed access to the higher roof. It was possible, for a few minutes. They slipped out the side doors and scrambled atop the shed, quickly pulling themselves up onto the main roof. Biddy stood up.
Sister Theresa stopped, halfway down the sidewalk, staring up at him.
“What are you, crazy?” Teddy whispered. “Get down.”
“Young man,” Sister called. “I’m not really seeing what I think I’m seeing, am I? Not two minutes after we talked?”
“Oh, God,” Teddy said. He lowered his face to the roof, thumping his forehead on a shingle.
“Come on down,” Sister said. “And as soon as your feet touch ground you’re in serious trouble.”
Sister didn’t believe in suspensions. Missing school never helped anyone, and she wasn’t handing out vacations but punishments, she used to say. Sister believed in detentions, long strings of them; the longer ones students would sometimes imagine to be the worldly equivalents of Purgatory. His was for two weeks, which was, not coincidentally, all that was left of the school year. Teddy’s was for a week. Biddy’s parents did not take the news well.
“The roof,” his father said. “Can you imagine this? She calls him in to try and straighten him out and he ends up climbing around the roof. Biddy, just what is wrong with you?”
Biddy sat in the kitchen feeding the dog his supper bit by bit under the table. Sister had called home with all the details.
“I don’t know who’s more aggravating, you or your sister.”
His sister had recently thrown chalk at one of the lay teachers.
“I really don’t know what to do with you,” his father said. “I really don’t. What am I going to do? Ground you? You never go anywhere anyway. Tell you you can’t stare out windows?”
“He needs to see someone,” his mother said. “We don’t know what we’re doing. A professional.”
“I’ll tell you what I will do,” his father said. “If your grades haven’t improved on this last report card, you can kiss Our Lady of Peace goodbye. If you’re not going to learn, you might as well do it for free.”
“Don’t be an idiot,” his mother said.
“I’m not being an idiot. And I’m not pissing money away if he’s not interested, either. I can tell you that right now. Maybe the school has something to do with it, anyway. If they stopped working on his soul and tried working on his head we’d all be a little better off.”
His father went into the den and his mother tossed salad in a beige ceramic bowl in front of her. “Finish your supper,” she said. “Your father’s upset right now, that’s all.”
“I don’t need to see a doctor, Mom,” he said quietly.
“Well, what do you need?” she said, pausing over the salad. “We’d all like to know. Have any idea? What do you need?”
His parents, unfortunately, did not enjoy the luxury of being able to worry about him alone. His sister over the last four months had thrown chalk at a teacher, attempted to feed the dog tacks, shoved Sister Theresa on the stairs, started a fight at the water fountain, and tried to bury all of her school-books in the garden. She had racked up more detention time and earned worse grades at school than Biddy. And there was the matter of her temper. “Don’t ask me where she gets it,” her mother would say. “When she gets upset, it’s like Raging Bull.” Recently she’d had a fight with her friend Lisa, whose mother had called to complain that her daughter was “still bleeding” as of the time of the phone call. Kristi had remained unrepentant.
She sat in the backyard next to him, on a lounge chair she had pulled alongside his. Both of them were eyeing the dog, waiting idly for it to do something amusing or interesting. It stretched and rubbed the side of its head in the grass. “You stay around,” their father said, and the dog looked up apprehensively. “You stay around or you’ll really be on my shit list.”
The three of them had been in the sun too long and Kristi was growing dangerously bored. They had been spending a lot of time in the yard recently, owing in part to their various punishments but also of their own accord, to get on their parents’ nerves. Their father was setting the ladder up against the garage wall nearest them. They were getting rain in the garage, and he wanted to check the shingles. The ladder had a sliding arrangement that allowed it to extend to twice its storage height and two hook clamps that kept it in whatever extended position was required. He set it up carefully, working unhurriedly in the bright sun, and returned to the house.
Kristi had been watching all of this with a close interest. When the back door closed, she got up and crossed to the ladder and, reaching high on her tiptoes, one hand spread delicately against the garage for support, she flipped one of the locking clamps away from the rung it was to support. That accomplished, she returned to her chair.