‘I appreciate your frankness.’
‘But it hurts when you see the machine starting to mash up someone like Todd. He ran out a 92 average for last year’s work, and that puts him in the ninety-fifth percentile. His English averages are even better. He shows a flair for writing, and that’s something special in a generation of kids that thinks culture begins in front of the TV and ends in the neighbourhood movie theatre. I was talking to the woman who had Todd in Comp last year. She said Todd passed in the finest term-paper she’d seen in twenty years of teaching. It was on the German death-camps during World War II. She gave him the only A-plus she’s ever given a composition student.’
‘I have read it,’ Bowden said. ‘It is very fine.’
‘He has also demonstrated above-average ability in the life sciences and social sciences, and while he’s not going to be one of the great math whizzes of the century, all the notes I have indicate that he’s given it the good old college try… until this year. Until this year. That’s the whole story, in a nutshell.’
‘Yes.’
‘I hate like hell to see Todd go down the tubes this way, Mr Bowden. And summer school… well, I said I’d be frank. Summer school often does a boy like Todd more harm than good. Your usual junior high school summer session is a zoo. AH the monkeys and the laughing hyenas are in attendance, plus a full complement of dodo birds. Bad company for a boy like Todd.’
‘Certainly.’
‘So let’s get to the bottom line, shall we? I suggest a series of appointments for Mr and Mrs Bowden at the Counselling Centre downtown. Everything in confidence, of course. The man in charge down there, Harry Ackerman, is a good friend of mine. And I don’t think Todd should go to them with the idea; I think you should.’ Rubber Ed smiled widely. ‘Maybe we can get everybody back on track by June. It’s not impossible.’
But Bowden looked positively alarmed by this idea.
‘I believe they might resent the boy if I took that proposal to them now,’ he said. ‘Things are very delicate. They could go either way. The boy has promised me he will work harder in his studies. He is very alarmed at this drop in his marks.’ He smiled thinly, a smile Ed French could not quite interpret. ‘More alarmed than you know.’
‘But—’
‘And they would resent me’ Bowden pressed on quickly. ‘God knows they would. Monica already regards me as something of a meddler. I try not to be, but you see the situation. I feel that things are best left alone… for now.’
‘I’ve had a great deal of experience in these matters,’ Rubber Ed told Bowden. He folded his hands on Todd’s file and looked at the old man earnestly. ‘I really think counselling is in order here. You’ll understand that my interest in the marital problems your son and daughter-in-law are having begins and ends with the effect they’re having on Todd… and right now, they’re having quite an effect.’
‘Let me make a counter-proposal,’ Bowden said. ‘You have, I believe, a system of marking halfway through each quarter?’
‘Yes,’ Rubber Ed agreed cautiously. ‘Interpretation of Progress cards — IOP Cards. The kids, of course, call them Flunk Cards. They only get them if their grade in a given course is below 78 halfway through the quarter. In other words, we give out IOP cards to kids who are pulling a D or an F in a given course.’
‘Very good,’ Bowden said. “Then what I suggest is this: If the boy gets one of those cards… even one — He held up one gnarled finger ‘-I will approach my son and his wife about your counselling. I will go further.’ He pronounced it furdah.
‘If the boy receives one of your Flunk Cards in April—’
‘We give them out the first week in May, actually.’
‘Yes? If he receives one then, I guarantee that they will accept the counselling proposal. They are worried about their son, Mr French. But now they are so wrapped up in their own problem that…’ He shrugged.