He wants to be the same as healthy ones, part of a normal group (before he is left behind and finds he can no longer catch up), even though he does not esteem the group and does not enjoy what the group is doing. He does not enjoy being classified with those who are weak and crippled (and cannot even band together into a group of their own, because they are handicapped in separate ways) and exiled and ostracized. So he stops faking fatigue, a limp, and a sore throat and goes to Forgione to report he thinks he feels okay again.
And back he plunges voluntarily into games and races (and into chinning, rope climbing, and tumbling, as well, which he still hates but consents to endure, for he cannot declare himself fit for games and races but not for gymnastics). And now he roars like a lion and fights like a tiger; he runs like a weasel and says "hubba, hubba, hubba" dutifully like an eager beaver.
("Mr. Forgione says nice things about me now," he discloses to us smugly one day.
"I scored four points today," he tells us another. "I was the second best on my team.")
And he learns it is easy enough for him to be good enough in sports if he has that true will to win (and even, perhaps, in gymnastics, if he applies himself), just as it is very easy for him to be good enough in math (even without applying himself). He is not the best at anything, but he is good enough (and lots of fun), and the ones who are the best enjoy him and want him on their teams now. (They are tougher, bigger kids, and he is one of them now.) He keeps cumulative (clandestine) records (in his mind) of his own and all other kids' triumphs and failures in pushball, punchball, kickball, throwball, shoveball, upball, assball, and baseball (he is back now with all his balls, ha, ha) and is aware always of how he stands in comparison with others. (He is like our sales staff at the company.) In relay races and in basketball, he will connive to place himself opposite some fat boy on the other team whom he knows he can beat. (He feels guilty about that fat boy, and sorry for him. But someone is going to beat the fat boy anyway, so it might as well be him.) It is not so much that he wishes to look good but that he wants to avoid looking bad. It doesn't really bother me anymore that my boy does not want to be best.
"Maybe I do," he hints enigmatically.
"Then why don't you try?"
"Maybe I know I can't," he replies, with a trace of a mysterious smile (and it is impossible for me to know, as I study him, whether he means what he implies or is merely practicing slyly some cryptic and discerning and unpleasant game he has devised to confound me. Is he clever enough for that?).
At least we do know he is smug: on days when he does do as well as he hopes to in gym, when no one makes fun of him or criticizes, or when nothing at all happens to him there (or in public speaking), he comes home confident, jubilant, and composed, swaggering almost conceitedly with an exalted view of himself, so it all isn't all bad. On days, though, when something bad happens, he turns cranky and anguished and declares he hates things and people, so it isn't all good either. He sits motionless, then rises abruptly to move about in rage and shame that he only expresses in dribs, yearning (we see) to cry, but restraining himself unhappily. It is pitiful to watch him (my wife and I want to cry too), and infuriating (I want to yell at him in displeasure, perhaps beat him, for reacting so disconsolately). He doesn't want to talk about unpleasant events beyond a certain point. And he continues to try as hard as he can at chinning, push-ups, and rope climbing. He improves, but slowly (and he probably is already gazing ahead in discouragement to high school and more chinning, pushups, and rope climbing and to swimming nude with others in the chlorinated pool. He probably will not want to swim nude. I know I didn't. If he is like so many of the rest of us, he will think that his cock is small and in danger of vanishing. I will have to tell him, if he lets me, to stare at it in the mirror if he wants to see it look as large as it appears to other people. I will not go into the phenomenon of foreshortening, unless he asks me. He does not like having his hair cut, even when we leave it long, and is afraid of having his teeth pulled or his gums injected with Novocain. If he had to have his tonsils taken out now, he would probably refuse to cooperate and would have to be lugged to the hospital by force. We clipped them from him at the right time. He doesn't like injections of any kind, except those in the side of his ass when he really does have a red throat and is too disoriented by fever to remember he's afraid). And Forgione is pleased with his "hubba, hubba, hubba," for my boy, under Forgione's tutelage, tries hard now, competes vigorously, and has developed (or at least displays for Forgione, Forgione's assistant, and others in the gymnasium) that good competitive spirit.
"You didn't tell me," my boy murmurs to me accusingly, "that you went to see him."
"How did you find out?"
"I did."
"Who told you?"
"I did. You told me. Just now. By answering me. I guessed. You did. Didn't you?"
"You ought to be a lawyer too."
"I figured it out."
"You wanted me to do something, didn't you? I know you did."
"You didn't tell me," he answers peevishly. "So I'd know."
"What else did you think I could do?"
He shrugs.
"You aren't being fair to me now. If you don't tell me what else you think I could do."
"I don't know."
"You're glad I did. Aren't you now?"
And soon, almost imperceptibly, because things have worked out so well for him, he moves back to worrying again about going to school on days when he has gym (and public speaking), worrying that he might perform poorly and his team might not win because of him. Because he has shown a good competitive spirit and a true will to win, he is now afraid of losing. He does not want the blame. He is afraid of making errors in baseball, mistakes in basketball, stumbling or dropping the beanbag in relay races, and getting part way up the rope and being unable to come down, ever, without falling. And soon, at breakfast on days he has gym, he is depressed and pasty again and complaining of nausea and red throats. He has bellyaches and doesn't want to eat, and I am right back where I started from. (I get nauseated when I see him this way, and I don't eat either.)
"Do you want me to speak to Forgione again?"
"No, I'll manage."
"I will if you want me to."
"I don't."
"Or to someone else. I can go to the principal."
"No, don't. I'll manage."
"Big shot," I respond with a laugh, trying to buoy him up. "You don't even know what manage means."
"No. But I will, anyway."
"Okay."
And he does. So far.
(While I watch.)
(And wait.)
He is waiting too.
(For what? He doesn't know. I don't have to ask.) The pity of it is that (instead of waiting) he could probably be having a good time if he would only stop waiting and were allowed to develop and do things his own way. But he has never been allowed to (I wasn't allowed to either, and nobody else I can think of was); he is not being allowed to; and he will never be allowed to, not by me, by my wife, by himself, or by others. (I wonder what we would all grow up to be if we were never ordered about by anybody else. Apes, probably. Instead of babies.) The «others» are all virtually superfluous by now, even Forgione: there is enough right here at the family hearth to shackle, twist, and subdue him (and render him and all the rest of us all the more susceptible to haphazard, unfriendly «others» like Forgione and Horace White, with whom I really have little contact, and whom I know I would be afraid of even if I did not have to be. He's got the whammy on me. We were put into that relationship from the beginning, before we even met. And he is a simpleton. Horace White is a simpleton; yet, I was prepared to kneel before him even before I knew he existed. What has happened to my boy and me to make us so subservient?). Only my daughter has never attempted to improve, damage, educate, or train him (just to dominate and manipulate him) once she succeeded in tearing her way through that draining, turbulent period of stunned and bitter wrath that raged through her like a flame at his having been brought into her home and family at all (even though she had been taught and promised for months that a brand-new baby brother or sister for her, and a baby for us also, would be coming into the house soon and wasn't she happy and lucky? The irony is that she would have felt equally deprived if we had permitted her to remain an only child. She did not want Derek either and blames herself for his affliction — at times — because she cursed him silently before he was delivered and wished him harm). She used to try to injure my boy when he was an infant in his crib or lying prone or supine, unable yet to walk or squirm away to safety, on our bed or on our blanket on the floor or sitting in his stroller or his high chair or his playpen. (She tried to push him over and he did not know what was happening.) When he was learning to walk she would knock him down if we were not alert enough to stop her. She would try to put her fingers in his eyes. Now she's stopped. They get along well now, affectionately (unless she is with friends and does not want him around), and almost never have any serious disagreements. (He gives in readily.) My daughter does not like me to shout at him: she cannot bear it when I lose my temper with him and begin shouting, and she will often scurry away in flight with her head down or whirl upon me hysterically and harangue me (and then scurry away before I can reply and defend myself. That's another tactic of hers, and I am often caught unawares and find myself shouting abuse or explanations into empty space after she has sped away. That makes me angrier). Sometimes when I do lose my temper with him (usually without realizing I have done so until afterward) and begin to bark demeaning, threatening remarks (I have called him «sissy» more than once merely by warning him contemptuously not to act like one, although I never intend to do just that while I am doing it and will detest myself afterward for having done so and seek some face-saving way of apologizing to him. Usually by letting him see I am no longer angry with him and offering to buy him something expensive I think he wants), shouting, probably (without knowing I am doing so and denying that I am if charged), with my lips deranged, probably, and my teeth bared and my whole red or bloodless face glaring at him, probably, my daughter will fling herself between us heedlessly to shield him from me, holding her ground there to defend him against me and actually start to cry.