Don't Worry About the Kids (7 page)

“Do you know what the trouble is?” Mr. Marcus asked, his hands on his hips. “Do you?”

John Weldon shrugged. “They're too fast,” he said. Some of the players covered their mouths and giggled.

“I see,” Mr. Marcus said, nodding up and down. “I see. They're too fast. They're too fast. What else?”

Somebody to his left mumbled something. Mr. Marcus whirled toward him, then seemed to catch hold of himself, and when he spoke he did so firmly. “Would you mind repeating that for the other boys, Phil?”

Phil Siegel looked at the ground. “They got all those jigs on their team,” he said. Everybody laughed.

“Do you know what the trouble is?” Mr. Marcus said again, ignoring Phil. “Do you know what the trouble is?—You're not hungry ballplayers.” He sighed, as if he knew how useless his words were. “Damn it, pay attention!” he snapped, and he grabbed John Weldon by his shoulder pad, yanked him from the ground, and then shoved him back down.

“In your little fingers you guys don't have—you don't have… Oh, what's the difference—” He looked around and his eyes flicked from one side to the other. He took a deep breath, concentrating hard, and then he spoke again. “Do you want to know what else? Do you? I'm glad you're getting beaten. How's that? This is probably the last time any of those boys will ever beat you at anything. When you're coming back here someday, watching your pansy children run around the field against the latest group of orphans or deprived kids, the boys you're playing against will be, will be…” He threw up his hands. “—God knows where! And while you and you and you,” he said, pointing, “will be reminiscing about that time those jigs slaughtered you, none of them will even remember what the Fowler School was.” He stopped. He seemed very tired suddenly, and I wished more than anything that I could help him. “Okay,” he said, blinking. “This is the way it's going to be. I'm giving every one of you a chance to play, because I want every one of you, for once in your lives, to know what it is to get hit and to get hurt. Is that clear?” Nobody said anything. I was angry, and I wondered for a second if this was really what Mr. Marcus intended—if he'd only wanted to get us angry enough to go out and play hard-nosed football during the second half.

“That was a most interesting speech, Mr. Marcus.” Some of the boys started to stand up. “Sit, boys. Please. Sit—” Dr. Hunter said. “You've been playing hard and you need the rest.” He smiled, and when he did I looked at Mr. Marcus and the anger in his eyes made me imagine for a split second what my father's eyes might have looked like when he was moving in for a ball on the handball court, moving in to kill it. “I just wanted to wish you luck for the second half, boys. I know you'll do your best.”

Mr. Marcus muttered something under his breath.

“What was that?” Dr. Hunter asked.

“Nothing I haven't said in other words,” Mr. Marcus answered.

“Fine, fine—well, I'll leave you to your discussion.”

Dr. Hunter left. Mr. Marcus waited a few seconds, then started off toward the playing field. “Follow me, girls,” he said. “Don't be scared, now—”

The guys really hated him then, and during the second half they showed it. By the fourth quarter, when almost all the parents had stopped watching, they'd called their girlfriends over and were standing with them, wisecracking and showing off. One or two of them even took drags on cigarettes and necked with their girlfriends. It hardly affected Mr. Marcus. He just kept yelling at us and mocking us and he was true to his word about putting everybody into the game. For their part, the St. Dominick's team kept coming. At the time I would have given anything, I think, to have been one of them. And I kept hoping, all through the second half, that before the end of the game one of them would speak to me—would say something about how hard I was playing, about how I was hanging in there—would make some gesture toward me. None of them did.

When the game was over, Charlie Gildea and I were the only players who stayed on the field and shook hands with them. I shook hands with as many of them as I could, even though they hardly seemed interested. They huddled at the far end of the field, gave us a 2-4-6-8 cheer, then walked to their bus and left. The final score was 54 to o.

After I got dressed in my regular clothes, my gray flannel slacks and blue Fowler blazer, I went back to the field to look for my mother. Most of the parents were gone by now, and I couldn't find Mother anywhere. I walked over to the school building, and went inside, but it was deserted and her homeroom was locked. I came back outside—the sky was starting to turn orange from the sun—and, scared suddenly of being left alone, I found myself wondering for a second if she'd gone off with some other guy's father, if maybe one of them was divorced or a widower and if they were already sitting together in some plush lounge, having cocktails. I kicked at the ground and then got angry with her for not having told me where she'd gone, and for making me think such stupid thoughts and see such stupid pictures in my head. Didn't it ever occur to you that I might think things like that if you went off and left me alone? I wanted to shout at her. Didn't it?
Didn't
it…?

Mr. Marcus saw me walking across the field, and he called to me and asked if I wanted a ride home with him. He had an old 1966 green Dodge Dart, and when I sat next to him we didn't say anything to each other. He smoked one cigarette after another, and since I'd never seen him smoke at school or practice, I was surprised. I gave him directions to our house, and when we got there I was relieved to see Mother's car in the driveway, and lights on in the kitchen. I asked Mr. Marcus if he wanted to come inside. I told him Mother could make us some coffee or hot chocolate.

“Some other time, Eddie. Okay?” He put his hand on my head and he stared at me for what seemed like ages, his mouth slightly open and a cigarette stuck to his lower lip. His eyes didn't shift or blink at all. Then he seemed to wake up. He looked at his hand as if he were puzzled to find it resting on my head. “Christ!” he said, ruffling my hair. “You're a sweet kid, Eddie. Now get inside, take a nice hot shower, and stay warm.”

“Thanks for the ride home, sir,” I said, when I was out of the car.

“Sure,” he said. He backed the car out of the driveway and I started toward the house. Then he honked and I turned toward him. He looked out of the window and waved to me. “You played a good game, Eddie,” he called.

On Monday I looked for him at school but he wasn't there. He didn't show up all week, and in assembly on Friday morning, Dr. Hunter announced that owing to illness in his immediate family, Mr. Marcus had been forced to leave the school for the remainder of the term. He said he hoped Mr. Marcus would be returning for the spring semester. When the spring semester began, Mr. Marcus didn't return. No announcements were made, and I was probably the only student in the school who even remembered what Dr. Hunter had said. I was feeling pretty upset, and when, on the evening after the first day of classes for the new term, Mother told me that Dr. Hunter was calling for her and that she'd have to leave me alone in the house for the evening, something inside me went click.

I stalked off, but while she was dressing, I walked straight into her room and asked her if she was going to marry Dr. Hunter.

“You should knock before you come in, Eddie. I might have been undressed.” She looked into her mirror and fastened an earring.

“Are you?” I asked again. “I'm serious. I have a right to know!”

She kept working at her earring, as if I hadn't said a thing, but when I saw her mouth open slightly, I didn't give her a chance and I spoke before I even thought about what I was going to say. “How—how could you ever marry a man with a gimpy arm?” I demanded. “How could you—?”

She turned toward me and looked at me sternly for a second or two. Then her face broke into a big smile. “Oh, Eddie,” she laughed. “Of course I'm not getting married.” She stood and came to me and hugged me. Her perfume was strong, and I struggled to get loose. “You know you're the only man in my life.”

“I'm not,” I said, freeing myself. “I'm your son. You should get a husband while you're still young and pretty.”

She backed off and looked at me for a long time after I said that, and I kept having these alternate feelings—that I shouldn't have said it and that I should have. I think she wanted to kiss me and hug me again, but for some reason she seemed afraid to do it now. She simply closed her eyes, nodded once, and then opened them. She turned back to her mirror. “Will you finish the dishes while I'm gone?” she asked.

“Sure,” I said. And then: “How come Mr. Marcus didn't come back this term?”

“You're full of questions, aren't you?”

“Can I ask Dr. Hunter why Mr. Marcus didn't come back?”

She sighed, then smiled again, but in a much easier way than she had a few minutes before. “I don't think that would get us anywhere, do you?”

“No,” I admitted.

“Well, then?”

“I guess I ask too many questions.”

When Dr. Hunter called for her, I didn't go out to say hello to him. After they left, though, still feeling worried about what I'd said to Mother, I kept walking around our house, going from room to room, upstairs and downstairs. It seemed terribly large to me, and I wondered if Mother was afraid when she stayed in it by herself sometimes. I tried hard to remember what things had been like when Father was there, but I couldn't. I went into Mother's room and took out her box of photos again and looked at the pictures of him, but that didn't help either. Not even when I found a picture of him with his arms around some other guys in sweatshirts, and a football on the ground in front of them.

But looking at the pictures of him, and seeing the way he smiled, reminded me of Mother being alone with Dr. Hunter, and when I saw that picture in my head, for the first time I asked myself if she could actually
enjoy
going out with him. Then I closed the box of photos and went downstairs to watch television.

I must have fallen asleep on the living room couch, because the next thing I knew, Mother was sitting next to me, stroking my forehead with her fingertips. The television set was still on.

“Hi, Eddie,” she said. She bent over and kissed me. She held me for a long time, pressing her lips against my forehead in a very gentle way. Then she sat up.

“Did you have a good time tonight?” I asked.

She seemed surprised that I should ask her, but when she answered me I saw that I'd said the right thing. “Thrilling,” she whispered. “I talked about irregular French verbs, and he told me about his eating club at Princeton.”

“His
what?”
I asked.

“Never mind,” she said, laughing. “At any rate, there was one interesting thing that occurred tonight. I couldn't stop thinking about our conversation, and about how much, when you get angry, you remind me of your father. You made good sense, you know…” I looked away from her then. She stood up, turned off the television, and sat down across from me, letting her shoes drop to the rug. “All right,” she said. “Let me ask you something, Eddie. What would you think of our leaving the Fowler School and moving somewhere else? Maybe back to New York City, where—”

“Do you really mean it?” I exclaimed. My face must have registered how happy I was at the idea, and when she smiled and said that she did mean it, I tried to check myself, to hold back my enthusiasm. “Well, don't do it because of me,” I said.

“You?” she laughed. “If we do it—and I'm not promising anything yet—we'll do it for the two of us.” She leaned forward, and bit her lower lip before she spoke again. “I think we could both benefit by giving ourselves the chance to meet new people, don't you?”

“I suppose,” I said, trying not to appear too excited. I didn't fool her, of course, and soon I stopped pretending and we were both talking about what it would be like to live in a place like Manhattan and of all the things we might do there together, and all the interesting people we might meet.

When she spoke about selling our house, though, I began to feel sad, and when she began talking about my going away to college someday and beginning a life of my own, what I wanted to do was to cry out that I would
never
leave her.
Never!
I didn't say anything, though. Because I guess I knew she was right about my leaving her someday, and what I was hoping was that by the time I did she would be married again. But I knew that she might not be. I guess she knew it too, even though you never would have guessed it from the sweet way she kept smiling at me.

Romeo and Julio

J
ULIO
LAY
ON
HIS
SIDE
, as if, Tony thought, he had been folded into position like a paper swan. An aide gave Julio an injection, then wrapped him in a straitjacket. Patients swarmed around, chattering like birds, shuffling in carpet slippers, bare feet, broken shoes. They asked Tony for money, for golf lessons, for candy bars, for skate keys.

Tony imagined that Julio's skin was made of glass, that he could see through to the skeleton below. Julio was a large prehistoric bird—more deadly and beautiful than an eagle, his bones held together be gleaming black railroad spikes. Julio was flying home, his wings spread to the width of the highway, his eyes bright as emeralds.

Tony went over his lines, so that, afterward, when he brought Lynne home to Brookline from the dress rehearsal of
Romeo and Juliet
, he would be ready.
O, Wilt thou leave me so unsatisfied?
he would ask. He saw Lynne lean against her door, smile, take her cue.
What satisfaction canst thou have tonight?
she would reply.

He wondered: if he were to tell her he had spent the afternoon visiting his brother Julio in a mental hospital, would that make her like him more? He did not want to be liked
because
he had a brother who was mentally ill. Still, it pleased him to imagine Lynne asking questions, gazing at him with admiration while he talked about how close he and Julio were.