“Fasten them?” he said. “Or unfasten them?” he said. He winked for some reason. He said, “Either way.” Then he rested his pointers on the wingnut’s wings, pressed, spun it. “I believe that you are partially responsible for this sudden rash of vandalism,” he said. Just like that. “However, I know you aren’t entirely responsible — you couldn’t be. There are hundreds of instances by now, and a large portion of them occurred while you were in ISS yesterday. I’m not going to ask you who else was responsible because I know you won’t answer me.”
You’re just expelling me, I said.
“No,” he said. He said, “I don’t believe that’ll solve anything. Why must everything be so extreme with you, Gurion? You’re not in any trouble and I am not threatening you with any trouble. I want to have a conversation with you. Can we have a conversation?”
I won’t tell on anybody, I said.
“I won’t ask you to.”
We can try to have a conversation then, I said.
“You have a very powerful influence over some of your fellow students,” he said, “particularly the ones who are vandalizing our school, pulling fire alarms, getting into fights. Deny it to me all you want, I believe you know it’s true.”
I didn’t say anything.
“I want all this trouble to stop. I suspect that you want that as well. At least some of it.”
I didn’t say anything.
“Those five boys who fought with Eliyahu and Shlomo told me that you tried to break up the fight. I am proud of you for doing that.”
Be proud of Eliyahu, too, then, I said. I said, Revoke his ISS.
“Eliyahu,” said Brodsky, “was not trying to break up that fight. He was trying to harm those five boys. They said something he objected to, something he wouldn’t repeat, and he tried to harm them — he told me that himself. The other two — Bryan Maholtz and Billy Baxter — they were the only ones who claimed to have been doing anything noble, but looking at the bruises on Eliyahu’s face, anyone could have seen they were lying. All eight of them will be in ISS tomorrow, and Shlomo Cohen as well, if he recovers enough to return to school.”
I said, If you were Eliyahu, and you’d believed what he believed, you would have done the same thing he did. You would have had to.
“I am glad you are a friend to Eliyahu,” said Brodsky. “He is in a very sensitive place right now. He will be for quite a while. And I urge you to continue to be a friend to him. I also urge you to consider the influence you have on him, to take into account that his mistakes, as those of so many others in the past few days, are at least partially being made to impress you. You have sway, Gurion. You have power that teachers and principals don’t have, power that teachers and principals can’t have. I want you to use that power to better ends. I believe you broke up that fight because you want the same thing. That’s why you’re not in trouble right now. I want to give you a clean slate. I want to offer you the opportunity to be good.”
I am good, I said.
“I want to offer you the opportunity to act like you are good.”
You want me to make your job easier, I said.
“When you put it that way, you make it sound conniving. If you do what I’m asking, my job will become easier, but that’s not why I’m asking you to do it. I want you to improve yourself and I want you to see that improving yourself will improve those around you. You will find it satisfying, Gurion. You have my word. And yes, I will find it satisfying too, but not because it makes my job easier. I took this job because I care about the world and I believe that the better children are educated, the better the world becomes. Children cannot be well-educated in an unsafe environment. I want you to help me make Aptakisic safer because I want the world to be better. Don’t you want a better world?”
Get rid of the Cage, I said. I said, If you get rid of the Cage, a lot less kids will act like they spend their days in a cage.
“That’s Jerusalem you’re asking for. The district requires we have a lockdown program.”
So have a lockdown program, but don’t put anyone in it, I said.
“That wouldn’t fly.”
Fire Botha, I said. I said, Hire a monitor who isn’t a schmuck.
“Mr. Botha can be a hard man to deal with, I know, but we’ve had worse in the past. I’ll tell you the truth: his job’s not a terribly desirable one. Those who want it… It takes a certain kind of personality.”
I said, So you won’t do anything. I said, You want me to act different, but you won’t do anything different.
“I am reaching out to you, Gurion. I’m not bargaining.”
I said, Botha banned us from the pep rally, the whole Side — the whole Cage.
Brodsky said, “Why?”
It wasn’t to make the school safer for the benefit of better education, I said.
“I can’t undermine his authority, Gurion. If he’s suspended your pep rally privileges… that’s within his power.”
What about Scott Mookus?
“What about him?”
I said, He’s supposed to sing with Boystar at the pep rally.
“And he will.”
Won’t that undermine Botha’s authority?
“Mr. Botha said Scott Mookus couldn’t go to the pep rally?” said Brodsky.
Everyone, I said.
He spun the wingnut a couple times. He wanted to let Main Man sing, but something was making him hesitate, and I realized it was exactly what he’d claimed. He really didn’t want to undermine Botha’s authority. He believed in Botha’s authority. Believed it was good that Botha had authority. As wrong and arranged as he was, Brodsky was trying to be ethical. The choice to override Botha and let Main Man sing was actually the easier choice, here; Brodsky was Botha’s boss and Botha was as much Brodsky’s sycophant as any of the other robots. Whatever Brodsky would do, Botha would not complain. The Boystar people, though — the parents and the Chaz and the shotframer; all of them but for Boystar himself… If Mookus wasn’t allowed to be in the video after all the preparations those sleazebombs had made, after all the money they’d already invested (“the best acoustics man in the business,” etc.), they would complain. Loudly. Yet Brodsky was willing to suffer them, if that was the ethical choice…
Not that it impressed me so very much. It is not impressive when people try to do what they believe is right. It is only right. Yet I was a little surprised.
Still, what Brodsky suspected was right wasn’t right. Main Man did not deserve the brunt of Botha’s collective punishment. He didn’t deserve anyone’s punishment. Anyone who punished him deserved punishment. The severest.
One time I asked my father what he looked for in potential jurors during the selection process. He told me, “Ethics,” a much simpler answer than I had expected. I’d thought that he would’ve laid out a matrix: X-type juror for Y-type client in Z-type dispute, B-type juror for C-type client in D-type dispute. And so on. But he said, “Ethics,” and for a second I thought he was making a reference to that movie Miller’s Crossing that he loves, and I chuckled, and he told me, “Ethical people — even those whose systems of ethics may appear hideous — can, by their very nature, be reasoned with. And I, boychical, am a very, very reasonable man.” And then he chuckled. I still don’t know what that chuckle was about. Maybe he’d just caught himself being cocky, or maybe he hadn’t meant what he’d said at all and thought it was funny that I seemed to believe him. Maybe he really did want me to believe the world was a place where there were enough ethical men to fill juryboxes, but knew I doubted it. It was a back-of-the-throat, possibly arch, likely uncomfortable, nearly atypical Father-type chuckle, but whatever it indicated, the idea that ethical people were inherently reasonable seemed like it made sense.