The Instructions (128 page)

“I miscalculated,” said Brodsky, emerging from his office.

“They’ll serve ISS on Monday, though.”

“So they get to go to the pep rally.” “I smell a rat.” “The rat smells like Desormie.” “A testimonious sack is what it smells like.”

“You’ll go to the pep rally, too,” Brodsky said. Then he left to go to the bathroom.

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“What about the Orthodox kid?” “Where’s he at?” “There’s still an empty desk.” “It’s saved for that Elijah, right?”

Hey, I said.

“What?” “What’s wrong?” “What’d we do?”

I said, When Eliyahu comes in here, you make him your best buddy.

“You can’t just make someone a best buddy like that, Gurion.”

“It takes time.” “There’s a whole set of things that goes into it.”

“We’ve never even seen a movie with him on Sunday.” “Let alone on seven consecutive Sundays.” “And batting gloves?” “Forget it—

we’ve never even watched a game on TV with him.” “He might be a Sox fan.” “Best buddies, at this juncture, even if we wanted to…

it’s impossible.” “We can do friend, maybe even pal.”

Pal shmal, I said.

“Good pal.”

Sounds pally to me, I said to June.

“It does,” June said.

“Now she’s weighing in?” “Fine.” “She says good pal sounds pally, maybe it’s pally.” “Straight-up buddy’s the final offer.” “Can we really do that, Mr. Goldblum?” “Franklin Gurstein. Three weeks ago. Precedent’s been set.” “That’s different.” “How’s it different?” “Franklin Gurstein told us what frottage was, and the Brumpy.” “And the Dirty Sanchez and the Angry Dragon.” “He told us all about the Ray Charleston Chew.” “Point taken. But maybe this Eliyahu can tell us what something dirty is?”

He can teach you words for penis in Yiddish, I said.

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“We know all those words.” “Shvontz.” “Putz.” “Schmuck.”

“Shlong.” “Pizzle.”

There’s more.

“How many?”

At least ten more.

“If he can teach us ten more, we’ll call him Buddy.”

Five more and good buddy, I said.

“Good buddy’s too much.” “Just a half-step below best.”

“Straight-up buddy, Gurion.” “And only if he asks.” “And he has to teach us seven words for penis in Yiddish.”

“That’s enough with the penis,” said Miss Pinge.

“Miss Pinge said penis.”

Miss Pinge bit a smile back.

Pretty good buddy, seven words for penis, and he doesn’t have to ask, I said.

“There’s no such thing as pretty good buddy.” “Who ever heard of pretty good buddy?” “Pretty good buddy’s a unicorn.” “A winged unicorn.” “A horned Pegasus from Atlantis with rainbows in its eyes.” “Work with us here.”

Pretty good buddy, three words for penis, and he doesn’t have to ask.

“That’s not how you do it!” “We go lower and you go higher.”

“We meet somewhere in the middle.”

Pretty good buddy, one word for penis, and he doesn’t have to ask. Anything less I walk away unhappy.

“Do you see what he’s doing?” “Look at what he’s doing!” “It’s 1208

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an affront to the process.” “He’s undermining the process.” “It’s now or never.” “Gurstein’s gonna call it a ripoff.” “Everyone’s gonna call it a ripoff!” “Pretty good buddy!” “Is it even real?” “It’s definitely
not
real, but can we make it real, if we really try? That, best buddies, is the question.” “Let’s say we could, let’s say we can make pretty good buddy work. If Gurstein hears of it—” “Why would Gurstein hear of it?” “If Gurstein hears of it, we’ll make him a pretty good buddy, too.” “We’ll have to.” “No way around it.” “Can we do that?” “If we can make pretty good buddy real, how hard could it be to make of Gurstein a pretty good buddy?”

“It’s settled then.” “It’s settled then?”

It’s settled then, I said.

Brodsky returned. “Who wants to go first?” he said.

June poked my knee.

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Next to Brodsky’s phone was a box of donut-holes shaped like a house. He pushed it my way and opened the roof. He wasn’t just offering me donut-holes, though.

I’m not talking about my father, I told him.

He showed me his palms, chuckled
hurt hurt hurt
. Then he tapped on the box and said, “Please. I’ll be diabetic by noon.”

All the chocolates were gone. I wrapped three cinnamons in a napkin, and Brodsky handed me a spreadsheet. Thursday’s detention roster jammed in a grid. Since June and I had gotten collared 1209

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together, I already knew we were in the Office for ditching detention, but what surprised me was that next to Eliyahu’s last name (Weitzman, it turned out—a small surprise in itself, to learn he was a Yeckie), instead of a blank space or check-mark, were the letters EXC. A couple slots above Eliyahu’s name was June’s, and next to hers another EXC. I scanned the whole STATUS column and failed to find a blankspot, let alone an INEXC or ABS.

“EXC means excused,” said Brodsky. “You won’t receive an ISS for ditching detention.”

I snapped a curled, stray thread off the cuff of my hoodiesleeve.

“Neither will June. No one will.”

This nub of elastic poked out from the cuff where the thread had been. I pinched it between my nails and pulled, but the nub just got longer, which I should have expected. How many out-sticking elastic nubs had I made elastic string of, pulling them?

“Do you know there were nearly eighty students on yesterday’s detention roster?” said Brodsky. “Forty were from the Cage, but the average number of students in Thursday detention is sixteen, so even without the students from the Cage, who account for an average of thirty-nine percent of detentions on any given day, roughly seven percent of the school was in detention. Unheard of. And nine students skipped, also unheard of. Now: all of you will serve a detention to make up for the skipped one. None of you, however, will be disciplined for
having skipped
, nor for any other offense for which you haven’t yet been stepped this week.”

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The move my dad had showed me was you grasp the fabric on either side of the nub and massage it; it took a few seconds sometimes to get the action right, but the nub never failed to suck back inside the garment. I rarely thought to massage til after I’d pulled the nub, though. I usually made string of the nub, and you couldn’t massage string away. You could wind string around your swear-tip and yank suddenly, but half the time that made more string. The only guaranteed method was sawing side-to-side at the base with your teeth. This got spit on your garment, but was always effective, so that’s what I did. I brought my wrist to my mouth and started to chew.

Brodsky hadn’t stopped talking. “…Then yesterday you told me the students in the Cage act like they’re in a cage
because
they are in the Cage. Now, as I’m sure you’re well aware, that’s not a new idea. However, it’s not an entirely insupportable one either.

In fact, were you to allow it to soften a little—were you to qualify it… were you to say, instead of
the
students,
some
students, or even ‘
Many
students in the Cage act like they’re in a cage because they are in the Cage,’ then you’d find yourself saying something I might entirely agree with. Whether or not I’d agree it was problematic, however—that’s a different story.”

The trouble was lining your teeth up right.

“Here’s another idea that I’m sure you’re familiar with: The world at large is like a cage. The world is bounded and governed, and those who violate its boundaries or defy its governance meet with negative consequences. And yes, even those who stay within 1211

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their cage’s boundaries and allow themselves to be governed meet with negative consequences, and indeed that happens far more often than should be the case, you’ll hear no argument from me on that—I do not deny the world contains its share of injustice, but…
Most
people, Gurion—
most
people do not violate boundaries, do not defy governance, and most of them come out intact, whereas
very few
of those who act lawlessly do. And that is why school is so much about following rules. You are here, above all else, to learn to live lawfully for the rest of your life. You are here to learn how to exist in cages without acting as if they are cages, to live like mensches despite being locked in cages. You are here to learn to survive in the world. That is the most basic purpose of our educational system, and it is a high purpose. It is good. I stand behind it. I want you and your fellow students to leave Aptakisic more capable of survival than you were when you entered.”

You didn’t just have to get your teeth down to the very base of the string. You had to get one of the two big middle ones in the top row to press the string base directly against two of the three small middle ones in the bottom row, and once you started sawing you had to go perfectly side-to-side so that you wouldn’t pull the string longer, and you had to be mindful of the width of the top tooth so you wouldn’t over-saw and lose the string and have to start over, and plus with your inner-lips and gums flush with the fabric, your saliva gets triggered if you don’t remind yourself every half-second that your cuff isn’t food, so there was that to concentrate on too, and finally I just 1212

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twirled the string around my swear and wound it til it ended and my cuff was that much looser.

“In any case, when you say all the students in the Cage act like they are in a cage because they are in the Cage, it’s too extreme a position. I can dismiss it with great ease. The rest of the world is in a cage as well, and the vast majority of us
don’t
endanger others. The vast majority of us act quite decently. However—”

You’re arguing semantics with me? I said.

“Excuse me?”

You’re saying, ‘For one to act like one is in a cage is for one to act decently. To endanger others is not to act decently. The students in the Cage endanger others. Therefore the students in the Cage do
not
act like they are in a cage,’ I said.

“I appreciate your intelligence,” he said, “but this isn’t one of your detention assignments. I’m being serious here.”

I said, So am I. If the world’s in a cage, and most of the world acts decently, then to act decently is to act like you’re in a cage.

“Fair enough, but it’s beside the point. Let’s forget the phrase

‘act like one is in a cage.’ Let’s focus instead on ‘endangering others.’ Can we do that?”

I chinned the air at my shoes = It’s your office.

“Thank you. Now. Were you to qualify your statement—were you, asI suggested earlier, to say, ‘
Some
students in the Cage
endanger others, at least in part,
because they are in the Cage,’ I could not dismiss that, not responsibly. Were you to say ‘some’ instead of

‘all,’ and add the ‘at least in part’—after all, everyone in the Cage 1213

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was originally put in the Cage for having, in some way, endangered others while outside the Cage—it would be my responsibility to ask, ‘How many?’ And yesterday, on my drive home, I imagined a dialogue with you in which you did say ‘some,’ and added the ‘in part.’ You said ‘some,’ and ‘in part,’ and I asked you

‘How many?’ And you said, ‘Five or six.’ You said, ‘Five or six students endanger others, at least in part, because they—the five or six—are in the Cage.’ And I said, ‘That’s eight to ten percent of the Cage who endanger others, at least in part, because they are in the Cage; that’s one percent or less of Aptakisic. That is not troubling. That is something to celebrate. That is a system that works for ninety-nine percent of the student population.’ You see, it’s about math, Gurion, it always is. Yet I thought maybe I wasn’t being fair. Maybe, in our imaginary conversation, I had formed your argument of straw. So I rewound. I rewound the conversation so that when I asked how many, you doubled the number. And still your argument was weak. So I rewound again and had you triple the number. Yet again, your argument was weak. I had you increase the number by increments of eight, then ten. I had you increase it until you were back to ‘All the students in the Cage endanger others, at least in part, because they are in the Cage’; until you were up to forty students. Forty students is roughly seven-point-five percent of the school, I reasoned, which would mean the system worked for over ninety percent of the school. And though a ninety-two-point-five percent success rate is not as admirable as a ninety-nine percent success rate, it is 1214

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nothing to scoff at. But this is where the revelation happened.

“You, the imaginary you, said two very intelligent things to me in succession. First you said, ‘Mr. Brodsky, you are rational-izing the abandonment of seven-point-five percent of your students.’ And I saw that you were right. And it stung me, Gurion, it did—even in fantasy the idea stung. I am an idealist, a do-gooder, I have always been. I am not ashamed of it. I am, in fact, proud of it. Do-gooders who disregard practicality, however, are a dime a dozen. It seemed impossible to reconcile the sting with the ninety-two-point-five percent success rate. So I wasn’t perfect, I thought, but no one was, I thought, and it’s nothing short of hubris to strive for perfection as if it were attainable. It is hubristic to fail to leave well enough alone. Who is to say that if I changed the system, I would make it better? Who is to say I wouldn’t make it worse? Could it be anything other than selfish, I wondered, to take such a risk? But then you said, ‘Last month, only five or six of the students in the Cage endangered the school, at least in part, because they were in the Cage. This month it’s forty.

The danger has spread and the danger will continue to spread.’

And that, Gurion: That was a strong argument for change, an argument based in math, however imaginary. And this is what I decided, in my car, with an imaginary you as my audience: I decided that the danger needed to stop spreading, and I saw that it was not the Cage itself that caused most students in the Cage to endanger our school, but those original five or six—that original one percent. That one percent truly wishes harm on the 1215