The Instructions (64 page)

In any case, that was their usual pattern: my father believing I’d warp if taken too seriously, and my mother that I’d warp if not taken seriously enough; the one going one way, and the other the other, pressing against each other, further and further, til they overlapped deep into one another’s spaces like the fingers of a cage you might make with your hands to surround a ladybug or 590

ADAM LEVIN

THE INSTRUCTIONS

firefly. It was how they loved me and, on the whole, it was nothing to complain about.

I wasn’t thinking too much about any of that, though. I hadn’t even read
My Life as a Man
yet. After my mother had left the Office, I read the summary on the back of the cover and from that I got a basic handle on her motives, and, deciding that knowing them would interfere too greatly with my enjoyment of the novel—I wasn’t in the mood to feel condescended to—I put the book away and instead I read Rabbi Salt’s letter to Brodsky.

At first the letter cheered me—thrilled me even. He testified to nearly everything I wanted to believe about myself. But at the end of the letter, where he claimed that the Cage would be the end of me—that got to me a little, then more than a little. I tried to tell myself he was just hamming things up in order to persuade Brodsky not to put me in the Cage, but I knew Rabbi Salt, I knew him well, so I knew that he wouldn’t have brought out the big guns—Brodsky’s dead son, my old friend Ben, “Gurion attended his shiva… wept at his burial”—if he didn’t desperately believe in his argument. Rabbi Salt was not a heartless man. To use another’s emotions about a dead son to strengthen an argument he didn’t fiercely believe in; that was beyond him. That was beneath him. At the time he wrote that letter he had to have believed that the Cage would destroy me.

Or maybe I was wrong about him. I might have been wrong about him. I was wrong about something, because if he wasn’t the kind of person who’d use a dead son on that son’s loving father (in 591

ADAM LEVIN

THE INSTRUCTIONS

the same nasty way, no less, as I had the day before; same father, same son—I’m not trying to be coy), he’d either lost faith in me and since pretended—every time I’d seen him since the letter was written—to still have faith in me, or he’d lost faith in me at the time he wrote the letter but gotten it back before the next time I saw him.

Since it neither entailed his being cruel or condescending, the last of the three options seemed to be the most generous to Rabbi Salt, so that’s the one I chose, but it wasn’t like that option got me feeling all joyful—it still meant he’d thought less of me than I wanted him to think of me, even if just for a day or two. The Cage couldn’t break me. Nothing could break me. I wanted him to know that; I wanted him to have
always
known that.

I put the letter away to write my ISS assignment, but I couldn’t get my mind off Rabbi Salt, and to ignore a thing you have to concentrate on another thing, so I read Call-Me-Sandy’s “Assessment of a Client: Gurion Maccabee.” When I got to the end, my reaction was the opposite of the one I’d just had to the letter. I wanted to feel
more
upset at its writer. I wanted to hate her. I thought: You should hate her. If it wasn’t for her, you would be in normal classes; you might even be in class with June right now.

But that whole Klingon bit, and how she’d concluded that Flowers was imaginary, and the codeswitching part where she thinks she’s being slick, asking her professor on a date in a footnote—I couldn’t see her doing
anything
with malice, let alone to 592

ADAM LEVIN

THE INSTRUCTIONS

a student she seemed to like. To hate Call-Me-Sandy for dooming me to the Cage would be like hating a dog for farting. And so I gave up, and then gave up some more: on attempting to be happy about Rabbi Salt’s faith-loss, my mother’s muddled thinking, my father’s skepticism.

At least Philip Roth was good for the Israelites.

‪

‫

‬

‪

‫

‬

‬

I put “Assessment” away and was about to ask Pinge for a pass to the bathroom when Desormie burst into the Office, frothing.

He said, “You think you’re funny, Maccabee? You think
I’m
funny?” Some of the froth had built up and hardened into paste in his lipcorners and I didn’t know what he was talking about. I could barely think is how bad I wanted his paste to disintegrate.

I looked away, saying, The Gym teacher is talking to me during ISS, Miss Pinge.

Desormie leaned at me.

“Ron—” said Miss Pinge.

“And now you’re tattling like a tattle-tale telling tales outside school? Isn’t that ironic!”

“Lower your voice,” Miss Pinge said.

“Lower my voice?” Desormie mock-whispered. “I’ll lower my voice,” he mock-whispered.

He was leaning with his hands on my desk and he wanted to break my nose. He was leaning so close, and he wanted to 593

ADAM LEVIN

THE INSTRUCTIONS

break my nose so bad, that his eyes were crossing to keep my nose in focus. I scratched it on the septum. I should have used my swearfinger, but instead I used my ring one. The one good thing about him being that close was I could look right at his eyes like a killer and not see the paste in the periphery.

“The Indians,” Desormie said, “have worked their butts off to get good enough to bring you glory on Friday. They’ve slaved to develop the skills it takes to bring decisive victory that will reflect for the better on all of us. It! Is! Un! Grateful!

To! Damage! Their!—”

“Stop yelling, Ron,” Miss Pinge said.

“Stop yelling?” Desormie said, standing up straight. “Don’t you want to know
why
I’m yelling, Ginnie? Don’t you wanna know? Because I wanna tell you why I’m yelling.”

“What’s the yelling about?” Miss Pinge said.

“I’m gonna tell you,” said Desormie.

Tell it, I said.

“You don’t tell me what to tell.”

I said, Stepitup, man. Tell ’em where it’s at.

“Oh, I will, and—”

Break it down righteous. Take ’em to the bridge.

Miss Pinge said, “Are you making James Brown jokes, Gurion?”

“Who knows what kinda jokes he’s making? They’re inappropriate jokes is what I know. And what else I know is whatever kinda jokes it is, ever, not only don’t I think his jokes are funny, ever,” said Desormie, before revolving to look at my nose again.

594

ADAM LEVIN

THE INSTRUCTIONS

“Not only don’t I think your jokes are funny, ever,” he said to me,

“but I don’t even
get
your jokes. And I don’t think
any
one does.

And even if they do, I don’t think
they
think your jokes are funny either, because you’re not mature. Maturity, Maccabee, is control of yourself, and I don’t think you’ve got control of yourself. You make jokes because you can’t help it is what I think. If you had some intestinal fortitude, you
could
help it, but you don’t have any intestinal fortitude because that’s a part of maturity, too. For example, I don’t think you’ve got the intestinal fortitude to fess up to what you or those so-called friends of yours did today is an example of what I mean by maturity. Maybe you think what you did took a whole lot of intestinal fortitude, but it didn’t. Maybe you think the silence you’re keeping about the crimes you and your friends have committed is the same kind of silence Frank Pentangeli kept to protect Michael Corleone, but it isn’t. The silence of Frankie Five Angels was the silence of
omerta
, which is honorable, and Frankie Five Angels became a suicide in a bathtub to keep that silence so he wouldn’t dishonor himself and shame his family, which believe me he was tempted.
That
is the kind of silence that requires intestinal fortitude. And I don’t see you in a bathtub. And I definitely
don’t see you
bleeding from the wrists
in a bathtub. What I see is you sitting beside an administrative assistant, reading a book, trying to save your own hide and thinking,

‘I’ll never rat on my friends and I’ll always keep my mouth shut,’

like that’s omerta, but it isn’t. It’s not omerta. It’s what Henry Hill thought is what it is, and guess what. Eventually he
did
rat 595

ADAM LEVIN

THE INSTRUCTIONS

on his friends. He
didn’t
keep his mouth shut. And look at him.

Look at where his path has led him. To witness protection, probably in Arizona—no one’s for sure about it, of course—but what is for sure is the marinara there is ketchup and he’s a shnook. I don’t think you want to be a shnook, Maccabee. I don’t think you want to be on that path, but the way you’re mistaking the saving of your own hide for omerta, and the way you’re mistaking jokes for control, not to mention how you’re mistaking gutless silence for intestinal fortitude, well let me tell you: You’re worse than on that path. You’re taking the
shortcut
. The shortcut to shnooksville.”

When he was finished giving his speech, Desormie chinned the air at Miss Pinge = “My interrogation method, though unconven-tional—some might even call it ‘controversial’—is pretty impressive, if I don’t chin so myself.”

Miss Pinge looked at her lap.

You’re tall, I said to Desormie. How tall are you?

“Tall enough,” Desormie said. “Don’t try to change the subject with non-sectarians.”

But how tall are you exactly? I said.

“Quid pro quo,” Desormie said. “Quid. Pro. Quo… Means you answer my question, and only then I answer yours.”

You didn’t ask a question, I said.

“You know what I mean by a question, Maccabee.”

A question? I said.

“Stop playing the fool.”

Maybe I’m playing the foog, I said.

596

ADAM LEVIN

THE INSTRUCTIONS

“What the heck is a foog?” he said.

I said, Quid pro quo, Clarice.

“You said I’m a Cla
rice
?” he shouted.

“Stop shouting,” Miss Pinge said.

“Yes, Ron,” said Mr. Brodsky from his doorway. “Please stop shouting.”

“The scoreboard is destroyed!” he shouted.

Brodsky said, “I’ve already discussed the matter with Gurion, and further-more, the scoreboard is not destroyed. Two letters are missing from the—”

“I’m trying to tell you it’s destroyed, Mr. Brodsky. It’s no two letters. The whole reason I came in here is to deliver the information that at nine this morning it was two letters, which is the last I checked was nine this morning—the last I checked until ten minutes ago, that is—and some time between nine this morning and ten minutes ago, while I was at the pool or in my office, him or his so-called ‘friends-of-him’ went into the gym and threw so many rocks at the scoreboard that almost all the letters are broken and almost all the bulbs, and those bulbs that are left won’t even light up anymore because those thrown rocks those kids threw blew the fuses or something. Scoreboard.

Is. Destroyed!”

I wondered about the clock—if Nakamook or Vincie or whoever hit the scoreboard also got the clock. I was so excited I even started asking before I caught myself. I said, What about the—

“What about the
what
?” Desormie said.

597

ADAM LEVIN

THE INSTRUCTIONS

I recovered, saying, Does smoke purl from the sockets when you give the thing juice?

“Look at him smiling about it!” Desormie said. Forgetting again to use my swear-finger, I touched my mouth-corners with my thumb and pointer, and this triggered Desormie to touch his own mouth-corners, which smeared the paste onto his cheek a little.

“Let’s talk about this in my office,” Brodsky said to him.

“Good,” said Desormie. “Let’s go,” he said to me.

I have to use the bathroom, I said.

I really did have to.

“Go ahead, Ginnie,” said Brodsky, “give him the pass.”

“But we have to discuss the—” Desormie protested.

“Gurion was with his mother this morning, and he’s been in the Office since noon,” said Brodsky.

“That wasn’t the case yesterday,” Desormie said. “It wasn’t the case when the E and the V got busted out. He’s unaccounted for for yesterday.”

“You think that he damaged the scoreboard yesterday, but someone
else
did it today?” Brodsky said. He said it like it was the dumbest thing anyone could possibly suggest.

And I thought: Why
not
think that?

And then I thought: Brodsky wants for you to be innocent.

He wants to keep you from being bullied.

I thought: Count your blessings, you’re off the hook.

“But why
not
think that?” Desormie said. “They’re all copy-cats. And/or they’re organized.”

598

ADAM LEVIN

THE INSTRUCTIONS

Brodsky set his hand on the back of Desormie’s elbow and pushed on it, just barely. He pushed Desormie’s elbow gently in the direction of his office, and took a step toward the Office, and said, “Who’s they?”

And Desormie, who only a split second earlier was dying to break my nose and yell about me, followed Brodsky’s cue—took a step in the direction of Brodsky’s office without hesitation—

and when he said, “I don’t know who they are, but I know there’s a group of them, Mr. Brodsky,” his voice was all but entirely drained of anger.

Miss Pinge handed me the bathroom pass, and I didn’t have to piss as bad.

I wanted to do something nice for Brodsky.

I said, “Gym teacher.”

And Desormie revolved. He said, “My name is Mr. Desormie to you.”

And I said, You are suggestible, Mr. Desormie.

And Desormie said, “What the heck are you talking about?”

And I dragged the back of my hand back and forth across my mouth twice.

And Desormie dragged the back of his hand back and forth across his mouth twice. And Brodsky coughed fakely to mask his laughter. And there was no more paste in the mouth-corners of Desormie. And Brodsky would not have to stare at paste while they talked in his office. That was nice of me.

I went to the gym.