“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, as I 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 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 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 rationalizing 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 school. ‘Damage’ as the graffiti would have it. The Cage doesn’t fail them so much as they fail the Cage. The rest of you — and I am counting you among the rest (though exceptional among the rest, which I’ll get to momentarily) — the rest lack true malice. You all have good intentions, you want to be good, but the one percent has filthied up your environment, has not only made school feel unsafe, but has made it dangerous, and you can’t help but respond with dangerous behavior, for dangerous behavior begats more of the same. It does so by means of undermining trust in authority. You look around at all the dangerous behavior… You look around and feel unsafe, and you think, ‘The school is failing to protect me. I must protect myself. I must blend in with my dangerous surroundings.’ And when you get in trouble for it, for blending in, when you get in trouble for engaging in what seem to you to be acts of self-protection, you think, ‘Not only is the school failing to protect me, but it is attacking me. It is as hostile toward me as those who initially made me feel unsafe.’
“And this is the kind of thinking I want to put a stop to. I must put a stop to it before the damage becomes permanent. So I’ve decided that, along with a few other measures, a goodwill gesture on my part is in order. A gesture to show all of you that the school is on your side, is here to protect you. That we are not here to punish you for acting in ways that you feel you must act in order to remain safe. Thus: amnesty. Amnesty to show all of you that I know — that Aptakisic knows — that you are in a compromised position, that you are not acting out of malice, but rather attempting, however misguidedly, to survive. A goodwill gesture to show you that we understand you: that is the beginning. That will grant us all a fresh start. And I believe this schoolwide rash of misbehavior, the fistfights and detention-skipping as well as the graffiti, and this nonsense with the scarves — because they have not for the most part been committed by the malicious few, but the endangered many… I believe this misbehavior will cease. By the end of next week, the graffiti will have been cleaned up, and by the end of the month we’ll have security cameras installed throughout school. Those few malicious students who are causing all these problems will be neutralized, if not expelled. The good ones will feel safe again.”
Here, Brodsky popped a toasted-coconut donut hole. He chewed it vividly behind an all-lips smile, nodding his head with each clench of his jaw, his chomping and swallowing way louder than necessary. I knew it wasn’t possible to like donut-holes that much, but what I wasn’t sure of was whether he was he trying, with his dumbshow, to infect me with enthusiasm, or if he meant to cue approval from me that he believed already imminent. Either way, he was taking too much for granted.
I said, Why’d you just tell me all that stuff?
He showed me his pointer and his Adam’s apple bobbed. He sucked a flake of stuck coconut off the front of his teeth. “I thought you’d be happy to hear it,” he said.
Why would I be happy to hear it? I said.
His big pink head deluminesced a little, but except for that loss of candle-power, the question didn’t seem to deflate him like I wanted it to. “To begin with, as I began before, you played a big role in my decision-making process, and credit is due to you. If I failed to express that—”
I didn’t ask you for amnesty, I said. I said, I definitely didn’t ask you for cameras.
“Not by name,” said Brodsky, “but in spirit, I think. I’m not certain, here, why you want to deny that. I heard how you helped out in the Cage yesterday, and your actions speak volumes.”
What exactly do you think my actions say?
“They tell me you want us to be on good terms, that you want — as we discussed at our meeting yesterday — you want to help me. That you want to make Aptakisic safer.”