tells me something, you know.’
‘Yes, I suppose it does. Very well.’ He folded his hands. The Camel protruded from
between the second and third fingers of his right. He straightened his back and lifted his
chin. There was something almost Prussian in his mental coming to terms, Rubber Ed
thought, something that made him think of all those war movies he’d seen as a kid.
‘My son and my daughter-in-law are having troubles in their home,’ Bowden said,
biting off each word precisely. ‘Rather bad troubles, I should think.’ His eyes, old but
amazingly bright, watched as Rubber Ed opened the folder centred in front of him on the
desk blotter. There were sheets of paper inside, but not many.
‘And you feel that these troubles are affecting Todd’s academic performance?’
Bowden leaned forward perhaps six inches. His blue eyes never left Rubber Ed’s
brown ones. There was a heavily charged pause, and then Bowden said: ‘The mother
drinks.’
He resumed his former ramrod-straight position.
‘Oh,’ Rubber Ed said.
‘Yes,’ Bowden replied, nodding grimly. ‘The boy has told me that he has come home on
two occasions and has found her sprawled out on the kitchen table. He knows how my
son feels about her drinking problem, and so the boy has put dinner in the oven himself
on these occasions, and has gotten her to drink enough black coffee so she will at least be
awake when Richard comes home.’
That’s bad,’ Rubber Ed said, although he had heard worse – mothers with heroin habits,
fathers who had abruptly taken it into their heads to start banging their daughters … or
their sons. ‘Has Mrs Bowden thought about getting professional help for her problem?’
The boy has tried to persuade her that would be the best course. She is much ashamed, I think. If she was given a little time…’ He made a gesture with his cigarette that left a
dissolving smoke-ring in the air. ‘You understand?’
‘Yes, of course,’ Rubber Ed nodded, privately admiring the gesture that had produced
the smoke-ring. ‘Your son … Todd’s father…’
‘He is not without blame,’ Bowden said harshly. The hours he works, the meals he has
missed, the nights when he must leave suddenly … I tell you, Mr French, he is more
married to his job than he is to Monica. I was raised to believe that a man’s family came
before everything. Was it not the same for you?’
‘It sure was,’ Rubber Ed responded heartily. His father had been a night watchman for
a large Los Angeles department store and he had really only seen his pop on weekends
and vacations.
That is another side of the problem,’ Bowden said.
Rubber Ed nodded and thought for a moment. ‘What about your other son, Mr
Bowden? Uh …’ He looked down at the folder. ‘Harold. Todd’s uncle.’
‘Harry and Deborah are in Minnesota now,’ Bowden said, quite truthfully. ‘He has a
position there at the University medical school. It would be quite difficult for him to
leave, and very unfair to ask him.’ His face took on a righteous cast. ‘Harry and his wife
are quite happily married.’
‘I see.’ Rubber Ed looked at the file again for a moment and then closed it. ‘Mr
Bowden, I appreciate your frankness. I’ll be just as frank with you.’
Thank you,’ Bowden said stiffly.
‘We can’t do as much for our students in the counselling area as we would like. There
are six counsellors here, and we’re each carrying a load of over a hundred students. My
newest colleague, Hepburn, has a hundred and fifteen. At this age, in our society, all
children need help.’
‘Of course.’ Bowden mashed his cigarette brutally into the ashtray and folded his
hands once more.
‘Sometimes bad problems get by us. Home environment and drugs are the two most
common. At least Todd isn’t mixed up with speed or mescaline or PCP.’
‘God forbid.’
‘Sometimes,’ Rubber Ed went on, ‘there’s simply nothing we can do. It’s depressing,
but it’s a fact of life. Usually the ones that are first to get spit out of the machine we’re
running here are the class troublemakers, the sullen, uncommunicative kids, the ones
who refuse to even try. They are simply warm bodies waiting for the system to buck
them up through the grades or waiting to get old enough so they can quit without their
parents’ permission and join the army or get a job at the Speedy-Boy Carwash or marry
their boyfriends. You understand? I’m being blunt. Our system is, as they say, not all it’s
cracked up to be.’
‘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 ‘-1 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.
‘I understand.’
‘So let us give them that long to solve their own problems. Pulling one’s self up by