don't know what I want him to be — except no trouble. He does not know yet what he's supposed to want to be when he grows up, except that he now knows he is not supposed to want to work in a filling station. And I can't guide him. A doctor? He has no idols. A lawyer? I wouldn't want that. I have no models to give him. James Pierpont Morgan II? August Belmont, Jr. III? Clara Bow? At least I had people like Joe DiMaggio, Babe Ruth, Joe Louis, and Cordell Hull I could want to be when I grew up, although I'm glad now that I didn't grow up to be any of them. But I still don't know yet what I want to be when I do grow up. Or even what I
So he struggles manfully (childishly), doggedly, dazedly to change himself into everybody else his age. He wishes to be able to conform successfully without effort or thought. He wants to wear, at nine years old, what other boys of nine or ten are wearing (even though he might not like what they are wearing) and experience the same enthusiasms and frustrations. (He really doesn't care about baseball anymore, I feel, and also feel he doesn't know that yet. One time when I was very young and had doubts, probably, that I would ever grow larger or older — there must have been a time, I think I recall, when I was unable to believe I would ever be any different from the lonely, isolated little boy I was then — I wanted to be a jockey in a cerise and white cap and ride race horses, even though I had never been on a horse and was too frightened even to step near the ponderous, spiritless ones that delivered ice or milk or laundry or dropped dead in the street, like people — I never could feel friendly with my brother's wife after he died and never see her now, am not clear in my mind anymore just where in New Jersey or Long Island she and her two children, my niece and my nephew, live — and soon attracted dense, buzzing clouds of green and blue pot-bellied flies. As a jockey in a red and white cap astride a huge, speeding, lunging thoroughbred, I think I felt I could trick everyone into believing I was a tiny man instead of a little boy. I'm glad I never became a jockey. I would be too heavy now and would not win many races.) And this is unfortunate in many ways (not for me, but for him) because there is so much about him entirely his own that is profoundly endearing (there is also much about him that he would be better off without, and maybe he will be able to shed that all someday, although I doubt by now that he will be able to shed any of it. By now I feel we remain pretty much the same. We grow scar tissue instead, or corns and callouses in our soul that cover, and we forget, when we can, what's there. Until occasions remind us); and what there is about him that is good, I'm afraid, we all (not my daughter, but me, my wife, Forgione, the world, and even those dusty, ghostly rocks and craters familiar to us on the moon now, connoting dark times and transparent specters) collaborate to destroy. (Even Derek exerts a haunting effect upon him, and tall buildings. If we were stones instead of people we would have an effect upon him, perhaps that same one. Everything does. Perhaps we are stones to him. I do not know how he thinks of us. I know I do not always think of my children as children. I know I remember my father now and other dim adult males from my early childhood, and even my big brother then when he was alive and I was small, as figures of voiceless stone capable of swift, unobservable journeys from one locale to another and communicating always obscure intimations of awful, indefinable things about to occur.) He has a lively, imaginative taste for the comic, some courage, and a warm heart; and even the colored maid we have now, who pads about on tiptoe in my presence and is rarely valiant enough to talk in anything louder than a faltering mumble, will grin at something unpredictably funny he has said or done and blurt out impulsively:
'That boy. Oh, that boy of yours. He is really something.'
We think so too (we are somewhat vain and braggarty about those precocious intuitions and idiosyncracies of his in which we can take proprietary delight) and (like rigid, high-powered machines not really in charge of ourselves) operate automatically to change him — to harden him, soften him, smarten him, desensitize him — lying to him and to ourselves (as I lied, and knew I was lying, when I filed my mother away into that repulsive nursing home that I described to her and others with false energy as being beautiful, new, and comfortable as a modern hotel) that it is for his own good. (And not for ours.)
'Be good,' we fire at him. 'Don't be afraid. You can do it. Try. Try harder. You can be anything you want to be. Don't do that. You're getting me angry.'
(Maybe it is for his own good.)
(And maybe it isn't.)
And even the nurse we have for Derek now, who is considerate to none of us (and especially dislikes my daughter, who is defiant and impolite to her and never truckles at all), not even to Derek anymore, I suspect, singles my boy out periodically for loud flattery that embarrasses him and clumsy, possessive hugs that make him miserable as he sees her scowling reproachfully at the rest of us in taunting contrast, even though she does not approve of the way he acts toward Derek either.
'It's no wonder he doesn't want to play with him,' she has censured the rest of us in his presence, 'when he sees how the rest of you treat him. None of you want to play with him.'
My boy does not like Derek's nurse or the harsh spotlight of her praise. (I think he senses he is being used by her to get at us.) He is actually afraid of her, as he is afraid of most of his teachers and the school nurse, and wishes, without evincing any of his dislike (he is always afraid to show antagonism to anyone), to avoid all possibilities for conversation with her and to escape her pinches, touches, and embraces. (He finds her obnoxious.)
'Get rid of her,' I decide on cranky impulse and snap at my wife.
She sighs. 'I don't want to have to start again.'
'She isn't even good to him. She doesn't keep him clean.'
'Where should I go?'
'Get someone young this time, can't you?'
'Where?'
'I wish we could get someone who would really like him. You can't. I know. They don't want to have to take care of him either.'
'Maybe I should do it. Maybe I should devote my whole life to taking care of him.'
'Holy you.'
'What do you mean?'
'Become a nun.'
'Maybe I should.'
'Not if you think about it that way. You don't mean it. You'd probably be worse to him than any of them.'
'Fuck you.'
'I like the way you swear now,' I joke. 'You say 'Fuck you' much better than you used to.'
'Practice. You taught me.'
'I'm proud.'
'Only with you. You make it very easy to say 'Fuck you' to you.'
'You do it better too.'
'Any complaints?'
'Not at this moment.'
'Well fuck you again.'
She rolls away from me. We are nearly naked. I continue laughing.
'I'm trying to,' I tell her, coaxing her back. 'I'm trying to get you to.'
'Maybe we should start thinking about sending him away someplace.'
'Maybe we should stop talking about nun now.'
'I want to.'
'No.'
'Where he'll be much better off.'
'No, I said.'
'We'll have to, sooner or later. Think about it, I mean. You never want to think about it.'
'I don't want to talk about it.'
'We'll have the money now. Won't we?'
'You don't understand, do you?'
'I'm asking.'
'If I decide to take the job. I've got money enough for that anyway. It isn't money.'
