For a long time in the city I was too fearful to allow him to walk to school alone, even though the school building was only a few blocks away and other kids his own age were already doing it; at the same time, I kept urging him to get up the courage to try it, pointing out to him that he was big enough and intelligent enough and would have to do it someday, and assuring him that nothing would happen to him if he waited always for the light to turn green and looked in all directions before stepping from the curb and crossing each street. I was afraid he'd get lost. I am afraid of traffic accidents. I also feared drunkards, junkies, unhappy laborers, explosions, bigger, bullying schoolboys, and truants from high school come to prey on the smaller children in elementary school, most of them Black, Puerto Rican, or Italian, who would take his ice cream money, tear his clothes, bloody his face, or pull his ears off; I was even afraid of falling cornices, and so, I think, was he. I would telephone the house two or three times a day from my office to ask if any important mail had come or my dry cleaning, but really to make sure that everyone there was still alive, as far as anyone who was there could tell — if no one answered the phone when somebody should have, I would think of calling the police, the apartment building superintendent, or one of the neighbors — to verify that he had made it back home safely from school for lunch — which meant, by deduction, that he had made ittoschool safely after breakfast — and that he had found his way back home successfully again after schoo — which meant, once more, that he had made it back safelytoschool after lunch, that day.
"Do you want to talk to him?" my wife would ask.
"Only if he has anything he wants to say to me."
"He doesn't. Do you have anything you want to say to Daddy?"
"No."
"Do you want to ask him anything?"
"No."
"He doesn't. You sound disappointed." I wouldbedisappointed. I'd feel he shouldwantto talk to me, even though he had nothing specific to ask or tell. Hadn't I worried abouthim?
I would brood about that too: his ingratitude. After all, I was investing so much of my feelings inhim,wasn't I?
Every trip from home for him then was, for me, another venture into unknown perils that were inching close. I would feel about him the way I believe I used to feel about my wife and daughter, the way some passive part of me still feels every time I walk up the ramp into an airplane on an ordinary business trip: I'm not sure I will ever come down. Wouldn't it be ridiculous for me to die on an ordinary business trip? Every day that he and I and the rest of us remain alive is another miracle. Isn't it wonderful that we can still be here and have not yet been knocked off by some accident or crime? I think that. I don't trust cars. God knows who may be driving the ones close enough to collide with us. I don't trust my wife when she is driving, especially now that I know she drinks during the day, and I don't like my daughter at night in a car driven by some kid who might be drunk also or loony with drugs. I don't really worry as much as I used to about my wife and daughter, possibly because they have both survived early childhood and seem old enough now to take care of themselves, or possibly because I no longer care for them as much as I used to, as much as I know I do care about my boy and myself. I do have morbid outlooks about myself; I don't like closed doors, sick friends, bad news. And my boy is still young and vulnerable enough, we feel, and he does too, to be very much in need of our love and our protection. And I know I do care for him, and I worry nervously about what jeopardy I have placed him in with Forgione, who — God bless him again — turns out to be just fine indeed.) Forgione, in fact, proves a surprisingly good-hearted man, and he is more generous and discreet with my boy than I would have thought him capable.
"I don't have to do anything in gym anymore," my boy continues with elation. "I don't even have to play. Until I want to."
And from that day on, my boy is a swaggering princeling. (But it does not, of course, last.) He treasures his respite in the beginning (he thinks he's smart); he basks in leisure, luxuriates in school and at home. Along with boys with plaster casts on hands and arms and legs and those with heart damage or other seriously crippling deformities, he is allowed to remain out of the games and races and to pass the time in the gymnasium watching and strutting, although he is required to report there and remain for the entire period. (There is one boy in the school his own age who is totally blind, and he is excused from gym. The school keeps him as an experiment.)
My boy spends his time in gym strolling around the outskirts of activities, he tells me, feeling superior. (He is pulling a fast one, he feels, and wants others to observe that.) He feels he ought to be envied. (He isn't. He is only a temporary novelty.) In a short while, though, and all at once, a transformation occurs, a draining of confidence, and he flickers in sallow indecision. He perceives that he does not want to be different (perhaps he is startled by the threat that what he thinks he is faking will prove to be real and that he is facing the risk of being excluded permanently, like those other boys his own age who do have heart murmurs of pathological origin and are not allowed to play, and all those others we always see wheeling and hobbling about who are disabled and deformed).
He wants to be the same as healthy ones, part of a normal group (before he is left behind and finds he can no longer catch up), even though he does not esteem the group and does not enjoy what the group is doing. He does not enjoy being classified with those who are weak and crippled (and cannot even band together into a group of their own, because they are handicapped in separate ways) and exiled and ostracized. So he stops faking fatigue, a limp, and a sore throat and goes to Forgione to report he thinks he feels okay again.
And back he plunges voluntarily into games and races (and into chinning, rope climbing, and tumbling, as well, which he still hates but consents to endure, for he cannot declare himself fit for games and races but not for gymnastics). And now he roars like a lion and fights like a tiger; he runs like a weasel and says "hubba, hubba, hubba" dutifully like an eager beaver.
("Mr. Forgione says nice things about me now," he discloses to us smugly one day.
"I scored four points today," he tells us another. "I was the second best on my team.")
And he learns it is easy enough for him to be good enough in sports if he has that true will to win (and even, perhaps, in gymnastics, if he applies himself), just as it is very easy for him to be good enough in math (even without applying himself). He is not the best at anything, but he is good enough (and lots of fun), and the ones who are the best enjoy him and want him on their teams now. (They are tougher, bigger kids, and he is one of them now.
) He keeps cumulative (clandestine) records (in his mind) of his own and all other kids' triumphs and failures in pushball, punchball, kickball, throwball, shoveball, upball, assball, and baseball (he is back now with all his balls, ha, ha) and is aware always of how he stands in comparison with others. (He is like our sales staff at the company.) In relay races and in basketball, he will connive to place himself opposite some fat boy on the other team whom he knows he can beat. (He feels guilty about that fat boy, and sorry for him. But someone is going to beat the fat boy anyway, so it might as well be him.) It is not so much that he wishes to look good but that he wants to avoid looking bad. It doesn't really bother me anymore that my boy does not want to be best.
"Maybe I do," he hints enigmatically.
"Then why don't you try?"
"Maybe I know I can't," he replies, with a trace of a mysterious smile (and it is impossible for me to know, as I study him, whether he means what he implies or is merely practicing slyly some cryptic and discerning and unpleasant game he has devised to confound me. Is he clever enough for that?).
At least we do know he is smug: on days when he does do as well as he hopes to in gym, when no one makes fun of him or criticizes, or when nothing at all happens to him there (or in public speaking), he comes home confident, jubilant, and composed, swaggering almost conceitedly with an exalted view of himself, so it all isn't all bad. On days, though, when something bad happens, he turns cranky and anguished and declares he hates things and people, so it isn't all good either. He sits motionless, then rises abruptly to move about in rage and shame that he only expresses in dribs, yearning (we see) to cry, but restraining himself unhappily. It is pitiful to watch him (my wife and I want to cry too), and infuriating (I want to yell at him in displeasure, perhaps beat him, for reacting so disconsolately). He doesn't want to talk about unpleasant events beyond a certain point. And he continues to try as hard as he can at chinning, push-ups, and rope climbing. He improves, but slowly (and he probably is already gazing ahead in discouragement to high school and more chinning, pushups, and rope climbing and to swimming nude with others in the chlorinated pool. He probably will not want to swim nude. I know I didn't. If he is like so many of the rest of us, he will think that his cock is small and in danger of vanishing. I will have to tell him, if he lets me, to stare at it in the mirror if he wants to see it look as large as it appears to other people. I will not go into the phenomenon of foreshortening, unless he asks me. He does not like having his hair cut, even when we leave it long, and is afraid of having his teeth pulled or his gums injected with Novocain. If he had to have his tonsils taken out now, he would probably refuse to cooperate and would have to be lugged to the hospital by force. We clipped them from him at the right time. He doesn't like injections of any kind, except those in the side of his ass when he really does have a red throat and is too disoriented by fever to remember he's afraid). And Forgione is pleased with his "hubba, hubba, hubba," for my boy, under Forgione's tutelage, tries hard now, competes vigorously, and has developed (or at least displays for Forgione, Forgione's assistant, and others in the gymnasium) that good competitive spirit.
"You didn't tell me," my boy murmurs to me accusingly, "that you went to see him."
"How did you find out?"
"I did."
"Who told you?"
"I did. You told me. Just now. By answering me. I guessed. You did. Didn't you?"
"You ought to be a lawyer too."
"I figured it out."
"You wanted me to do something, didn't you? I know you did."
"You didn't tell me," he answers peevishly. "So I'd know."
"What else did you think I could do?"
He shrugs.
"You aren't being fair to me now. If you don't tell me what else you think I could do."
"I don't know."
"You're glad I did. Aren't you now?"
And soon, almost imperceptibly, because things have worked out so well for him, he moves back to worrying again about going to school on days when he has gym (and public speaking), worrying that he might perform poorly and his team might not win because of him. Because he has shown a good competitive spirit and a true will to win, he is now afraid of losing. He does not want the blame. He is afraid of making errors in baseball, mistakes in basketball, stumbling or dropping the beanbag in relay races, and getting part way up the rope and being unable to come down, ever, without falling. And soon, at breakfast on days he has gym, he is depressed and pasty again and complaining of nausea and red throats. He has bellyaches and doesn't want to eat, and I am right back where I started from. (I get nauseated when I see him this way, and I don't eat either.)
"Do you want me to speak to Forgione again?"
"No, I'll manage."
"I will if you want me to."
"I don't."
"Or to someone else. I can go to the principal."
"No, don't. I'll manage."
"Big shot," I respond with a laugh, trying to buoy him up. "You don't even know whatmanagemeans."
"No. But I will, anyway."
"Okay."
And he does. So far.
(While I watch.)
(And wait.)
He is waiting too.
(For what? He doesn't know. I don't have to ask.) The pity of it is that (instead of waiting) he could probably be having a good time if he would only stop waiting and were allowed to develop and do things his own way. But he has never been allowed to (I wasn't allowed to either, and nobody else I can think of was); he is not being allowed to; and he will never be allowed to, not by me, by my wife, by himself, or by others. (I wonder what we would all grow up to be if we were never ordered about by anybody else. Apes, probably. Instead of babies.) The «others» are all virtually superfluous by now, even Forgione: there is enough right here at the family hearth to shackle, twist, and subdue him (and render him and all the rest of us all the more susceptible to haphazard, unfriendly «others» like Forgione and Horace White, with whom I really have little contact, and whom I know I would be afraid of even if I did not have to be. He's got the whammy on me. We were put into that relationship from the beginning, before we even met. And he is a simpleton. Horace White is a simpleton; yet, I was prepared to kneel before him even before I knew he existed. What has happened to my boy and me to make us so subservient?).