• Choose a category
• All
• Classic-Fiction

Nevertheless: Another shrink, when he was in sixth grade, he said. “I saw another psychologist when I was in the sixth grade.” If so, it would be forgotten by all else and examinations would have been brief and cursory and not illuminating. (Attention deficiency/imagination, of course.) Janice saw same shrink this time, he said. “My mother did, too.” If so, she wanted to know what was really happening down in that den and how it related to the very poor schoolwork. Gradewise, he flatlined always, a D-minus dunce with a million better notions of what he wanted to learn. Pattern came to be that teachers uniformly gave him 65s on everything, so as not to flunk him, which he often deserved, so as not to get him back the following year, which they felt they did not deserve. Stanley signed his report cards with heavy heart, also with disgust, and would give the boy unholy hell. That he demonstrated an industrious bent in the birthday business did not make up for lack of academic luster. Goddamned door of den sealed off too goddamned much reality (only little Carol or the family dog, a small Yorkshire terrier named Snoopy, were occasionally privy to fantastic obstreperousness within; Michael somewhat, too). Stanley was never home, except for dinner/weekends, gave up on son, refused to give up on son, looked the other way, could not ignore it, bore down upon him when energy permitted, goddamned jewelry business sucked him dry, and this kid with his lousy grades and off-center ideas—well, he tried and tried to impart paternal wisdom, new approaches, to jar the kid into living in the same world all else inhabited. HOUR MAGAZINE: What type of work was your dad involved in? Was it a normal childhood? One of you must know. CAROL: Oh, yeah, it was real normal. MICHAEL: Oh, yeah, it was wonderful. ANDY: Every night he would come home for dinner, and he’d sit down—we’d all sit down at the table and eat. CAROL: And he’d ask us, “What’d you learn today? Let’s review current events.” ANDY: And if we didn’t know, then we couldn’t watch television. You know, he wouldn’t let me watch Soupy Sales if I didn’t know the answers.

Stanley proudly read The New York Times each day he rode the Long Island Rail Road to work. “When I came home at night and we all sat at the table for dinner, I would try to find out what my children knew about the world and the current events of the day. So I would ask questions—about world politics, national politics, crime, sports, it depended. And the kids did very, very well with their answers. If they didn’t, it was nothing. I would just tell them what was going on. I was the big shot who read The New York Times.

“But one time—I don’t exactly remember what it was—I had apparently asked a question which required an answer that was correct. No other answer would be satisfactory. And Andy answered this particular question and I said, ‘No, Andy, that’s wrong,’ and he said, ‘No, Dad, it’s right,’ and we started getting into a very heated debate. Maybe I’m known for being stubborn, dogmatic, whatever—but if I know something is right, it’s right! Goddamn it! You don’t disagree with me! We got into a real tussle. Then I made the analogy, ‘Goddamn it, isn’t two and two four?’ And he looks me in the eye and he says, ‘Not necessarily.’ So I just threw my hands up and said, ‘I can’t go any further! That’s it!’ He’s a kid, for crying out loud—eleven, twelve! Later on in life I learned that two and two maybe in Eskimo language doesn’t make four. Two and two can be something else entirely. This was what he was getting at. He had a perception of life that was always questioning everything.”

Still, punishments were levied for bad grades and slack attitudes. The requisite rumpwhacks or, far far worse, television deprivation—which cut to the bone and severed the lifeline—were enforced by Janice when Stanley worked, which felt like conspiracy, which he ostensibly took just fine, although he simmered and stewed and plotted revenge within. His anger, he learned, was best dealt with on paper, with pen or pencil, which was nicer