"No." I shake my head and try to bury a smile. (Good for you, kid, I want to cheer out loud. But it's not so good for him.) "I guess not."
I have to chuckle softly (and Forgione grins and chuckles softly also, shaking his trim, swarthy head complacently in the mistaken belief that I am chuckling because I share his incredulity), for I can visualize my boy clearly far out in front in one of his relay races, laughing that deep, reverberating, unrestrained laugh that sometimes erupts from him, staggering with merriment as he toils to keep going and motioning liberally for the other kids in the race to catch up so they can all laugh together and run alongside each other as they continue their game (after all, it is only a game). I am gratified, I am thrilled, by this picture of my boy but I know I must not reveal this to Forgione (or display any mockery or superiority), for Forgione does have him totally at his mercy three times a week and can get back at me effectively by inflicting all sorts of threats and punishments on him (while I am safely encapsulated in my very good job in my office at the company, smothering in accumulating hours, aging and suffocating in stultifying boredom or quivering intolerably with my repressed hysteria, or otherwise ambitiously preoccupied in something idle or sensual. Who can possibly imagine all the vicious crimes and atrocious accidents that might befall my boy or my wife or my daughter or Derek while I am biting my nails at my desk or peeing in a urinal here or ducking encounters with Green or feeling Betty's, Laura's, or Mildred's tit in Red Parker's apartment or flirting with Jane in the narrow corridor outside the Art Department? I can. I can imagine them all, and then fabricate new ones without end. Disasters troop across my mind unbidden and unheralded like independent members of a ghoulish caravan from hell or from some other sick and painful place. I seek skeletons in decaying winding sheets as I study company reports, and they aren't grinning. I smell strange dust. I shudder and am disgusted. I am often contemptuous of myself for imagining the catastrophes I do. They are not worthy of me, and I will often catch myself at it with a scornful rebuke and make myself get busy on something immediately to evade the sinking feeling in my chest and the network of tremors I experience coming alive inside me like a wicker basket of escaping lizards. Or a gale of colorless moths beating their wings. Or I telephone home in order to make sure that everyone is all right, as far as whoever answers the telephone there knows. The most I can generally find out, though, is that there has been no news of anything bad. Even if I undertook daily the fantastic effort of calling each member of my family in turn at the different places they are, I would have no binding assurance that some tragedy had not struck the first one I called by the time I had finished talking to the last one. Of course, I could use three or four telephones and get them all on at the same time. At least that way I could be sure — until I hung up. At least a policeman or ambulance attendant does not pick up the telephone when I call home, and I am thankful for that. In these situations, it's a case of no news being good news, I always say. Until the bad news comes. Ha, ha. I'll bet I haven't said that once. Until just now. Ha, ha again). And I therefore dare not risk offending Forgione, or cause him to dislike me, for my little boy's sake (if not, eventually, for my own. What troubles him troubles me). So I am meek, humble, respectful.
"Does he have to race?" I inquire. I am deferential and disarming with Forgione. I control my urge to be sarcastic: I do feel superior to him, and afraid; I know I am better than he is, and that I am weaker. "Isn't there something else they can do? Or him?"
"Life is hard, Mr. Slocum," Forgione philosophizes (and I would like to tell him to take his philosophizing and shove it up his ass). "He has to learn now that he has to be better than the next fellow. That's one of the lessons we try to teach him today to prepare him for tomorrow."
"I feel sorry for the next fellow."
"Ha, ha."
"Who is the next fellow? Poor bastard."
"Ha, ha."
"Maybe he's the next fellow."
"That's why we train him now. You wouldn't want that to happen to him, would you? You wouldn't want him to be the next fellow that everyone's better than, would you?"
"No. He's this fellow to me. He's the one I care about. That's why I came to the school to speak to you."
"Maybe I am riding him a little too hard. But that's only for his own good. It's better to be too hard than too easy. Sometimes."
"Mr. Forgione, you have children, don't you?" I argue back in a reasoning, slightly more determined manner (inasmuch as he has not yet smitten me dead with the short-handled hammer of his fist and has retreated to a position of vindicating himself). "You know I can't just look the other way and allow a child of mine to come here if he's going to be so upset by things or because he thinks you pick on him. Would you do that?"
"I don't pick on him, Mr. Slocum," Forgione objects quickly, swallowing uncomfortably, his neck bobbing with emotion. "Did he tell you that?"
"No. But I think he feels that way."
"I try to help him. I don't pick on him. It's his friends. It's all his friends that pick on him. They get angry and begin to yell at him when he slows down and starts laughing and doesn't try to win. Or when he passes the basketball deliberately — he does it deliberately, Mr. Slocum, I swear he does. Like a joke. He throws it away — to some kid on the other team just to give him a chance to make some points or to surprise the kids on his own team. For a joke. That's some joke, isn't it? He throws the ball away when someone charges at him. He gets scared. It's his friends that get angry and start to yell at him — not me. I just try to get him to do things right so they won't. That's when they really get sore and turn on him, and then he starts moping and looks like he's gonna cry and says he feels sick or has a sore throat and wants to see the nurse and go home. He acts like a baby. He turns green. I don't like to say this, Mr. Slocum, but sometimes he acts like a baby."
(I could kill Forgione for that; I could kill him right there on the spot because what he says is true and I didn't want anyone to notice.) "He is only a kid, you know." I fake an indulgent laugh.
"He's nine years old."
"How old is that?"
"That's time to start learning some responsibility and discipline."
"I don't want to argue with you."
"I don't. I tell you this, Mr. Slocum. He's got to learn to start facing things."
"He's trying. He's trying very hard."
"Then they don't want him on their team. They complain to me that they don't want him on their team if he's not going to try. It's no secret. They do it right in front of him. Now they complain to me that they don't want him on their basketball team because he isn't any good. That isn't such a funny joke to kids who are playing their hearts out to win. What amI supposed to do? Whose side should I take? Can't you do something?"
"That's why I came here. To try."
"Can't you talk to him, Mr. Slocum? And try to explain to him why he should try to do things straight and right. It would be better for him, not me."
It would indeed. With no great effort I can picture my little boy looking scared and green with Forgione, for I have seen him often enough looking that same way with me when we are in some unfamiliar place and he thinks I'm going to leave him there or that I am going to try to make him dive from a diving board. How can I explain to Forgione that I like my little boy pretty much the way he is (do I? I'm not sure), that it's all right with me if he's not competitive, aggressive, or outstanding, although there are times, I must admit to myself, when I wish he were more so, when I am displeased with him because he isn't, and would probably be more proud of him if he were. And I guess he must know that too.
He does not know yet that I have come to Forgione to try to obtain special favors for him, and I do not want him to find out. I think he might be too mortified, feel too nakedly degraded, ever to be able to face Forgione again. And I know that I will be peeved with him when I leave for having made it necessary for me to come (and for spoiling my morning and most of my peace of mind the evening before after I made my decision to go to Forgione once and for all and was already regretting it), and that I would like to kick all those other snarling, snapping little kids in the ass and smash their smelly, snotty, bellicose little heads together for ganging up against him. (And making it necessary for me to do something. Oh, shit — I sometimes think I could be so happy alone, but I know I would not be.)