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A Nine-Year-Old Boy Can Be Tough To Convince
By RAY DREYFACK
of TheColumnists.com
“Hey Bobbie, when’s your dad gonna buy you a computer?”
Nine-year-old Bobbie Boone desperately wants a computer like
almost every kid in his fourth grade class has. His best friend
Jamie can’t understand why his dad doesn’t buy him
one.
“My computer cost $525,” Jamie says, “printer
and all. You can get a used one for under $300. Can’t your
dad afford that?"
“Of course, he can,” Bobbie says angrily. “My
father’s a vice president. He bought a wide screen TV for
more than $3,000."
“Then why -- ?”
“ -- I don’t want to discuss it.”
“You can tell me for God’s sake. We’re best friends,
aren’t we?”
Bobbie hesitates. Jamie’s right. Best friends shouldn’t
have secrets. “Promise you won’t tell anyone.”
“I promise.”
“Swear.”
“I swear. Why won’t your dad -- ?”
Bobbie’s lips quiver. His answer is almost a whisper. “Because
he hates me.”
Jamie’s look is incredulous. “Come on, Bobbie, your
dad doesn’t hate you.”
“What do you know about it?”
“Did he tell you he hates you?”
“He doesn’t have to tell me. I can feel it.”
It is beyond Jamie’s conception. “Why? Why does he
hate you?”
Bobbie pulls in a breath. “Because I killed my mom.”
Mrs. Brewer thinks the strange hoarse sound that awoke
her at 3:18 a.m. by the digital clock on her nightstand was from
outside. An animal or something. Then she realizes it came from
Bobbie’s room down the hall. The boy is crying. Darlene,
who sleeps in the nude, throws on a robe, ties it tightly and
hurries to the boy’s room. He is crying softly, deep, pained
muffled sobs.
Darlene sits on the bed and kisses him gently on the back of
the neck. She adoringly smoothes down his hair.
“Did you have a bad dream, Bobbie?”
He shakes his head, unable to stifle the sobs.
“What is it, dear?”
He doesn’t answer. So many tears. She can almost smell the
boy’s torment.
“You can tell me. When something troubles you, telling it
always makes it feel better.”
The sobs peter down but don’t stop. They are now intermittent.
She finally gets him to confess he is crying because he thinks
his father hates him for killing his mom.
Darlene is shocked. “Oh Bobbie, your father doesn’t
hate you, not at all! Your dad loves you. I know this for a fact.”
Laura Boone died during childbirth. Mr. Boone told her that.
“These things happen, dear; they happen all the time. Ask
any doctor. Your mom’s death was nobody’s fault, nobody’s
at all.”
Bobbie will not be convinced. The logic is simple. His mom died
having him! If she hadn’t had him she wouldn’t be dead.
He insists between sobs that he is guilty; his father hates him
for what he has done.
Small wonder he feels this way, Darlene thinks. George Boone
is as cold and formal with his son as he would be with a stranger.
He relates to Bobbie more like a strait-laced Sunday-school teacher
than his dad. Darlene believes the man has deep love for his
son but is unable to show it.
How explain all this to a nine-year-old boy with sensitivities
as fragile as gossamer silk?
Darlene does her best to comfort the boy. She stretches out alongside
him, talks to him soothingly, and finally hugs him to sleep.
When he breathes softly and evenly she leaves the room and sees
George Boone coming towards her.
“What’s wrong? I thought I heard voices.”
“It’s all right,” Darlene assures him. “The
boy had a bad dream.”
George Boone is embarrassed, knowing it is he who should have
been there, not this woman. “Thank you,” he murmurs
awkwardly, “thank you so much.” He hesitates, as if
to say more, then turns and shuffles back to his room.
Darlene gazes after him shaking her head. She wonders: Was he
always like this?
Brookdale is a tree-shaded New England town, population
2,514. Bobbie lives in a large colonial house with his bank executive
father, his ailing hard-of-hearing grandma Emma; and his governess
Darlene Brewer. Darlene, 34, a divorced woman hired eight months
before, is the last in a succession of governesses. Her predecessors,
regarded by George Boone as too lax with his son, were either
fired or quit voluntarily. Maria, a “cleaning woman,”
comes in twice a week to keep the house spic and span in response
to her employer’s high standards. Darlene helps Emma with
the cooking, light chores, and shopping and looks after Bobbie.
George Boone, 40, is a confirmed workaholic. He believes computers
belong in offices or plants, or in the bank where he works, not
as playthings for children. He’s read articles about how
kids fritter away valuable time playing frivolous computer games.
Computers also keep children from mastering sums in their head.
Robert uses a computer in school, that’s enough. He lectures
him repeatedly on the importance of keeping one’s nose to
the grindstone. “Time,” he stresses again and again,
“is life’s most precious gift. To waste it is a sin.”
Bobbie Boone is a well-behaved freckle-faced boy with scraggly
rust-colored hair. Too well behaved, in Darlene’s opinion.
The boy’s main goal in life seems to be to win his father’s
love and approval, a task at which he believes he has failed.
Bobbie arrives home from school at 4:30. Darlene’s heart
picks up six beats at his appearance. Never having had a child
of her own, she has come to love this caring serious-minded child
as if he were her own flesh and blood.
On this day Bobbie thinks he has a fighting chance to win his
father’s approval. The report card he proudly clutches shows
significant improvement: 'A' in Social Studies and English, 'B+'
in most other subjects. Math, Bobbie’s nemesis, has been
upgraded from 'C' to 'B-.' A glowing note from his teacher praises
his excellent progress. He can’t wait for his father to
come home.
He shows Darlene the report card and note, eyes expectantly bright.
Her pearl-gray eyes open wide. “Oh Bobbie, I’m so proud
of you.” She gives him a hug and a kiss on his cheek. Bobbie
glows.
Alas, today he has inadvertently tracked mud into the hallway.
He regards the dirt anxiously.
“Go have your chocolate milk and Orios.” Darlene urges.
“I’ll clean it up.”
“That’s not fair,” Bobbie replies. “I made
the mess. “It’s my job to clean it.”
He removes his shoes, sets his school bag on a chair, and goes
to the kitchen for paper towels and a washrag.
Darlene watches him scrub each smear like it’s a stain worse
than vomit.
“Bobbie, it’s not an operating room in a hospital.”
“Father likes the house to be spotless.”
Father! The word trips a peeve switch in Darlene’s medulla
oblongata. How many kids in this day and age call their dads
‘Father’?
There’s such a thing as too conscientious, Darlene feels.
Bobbie acts like a nine-year-old going on 30. There are times
she feels like shaking him. She is determined to turn this brainwashed
child into a fun-loving kid if it kills her. If she had a potion
that might instill a bit of mischief into his system she would
slip it into his chocolate milk.
“Want to go for a run?”
The boy’s face lights up. “Okay.” His fondness
for Darlene has grown day by day, but he fears giving way to
it. Darlene is his best governess yet and he worries constantly
that she may quit because Father is too harsh with her. Or that
Father will fire her like the others because she is so feisty
and outspoken.
Darlene changes into a blue sweater that accentuates her fine
breasts. She goes for runs every day, and sometimes takes Bobbie
along. A shade short of attractive, she takes good care of her
body. They keep pace side by side and chat while they jog. Bobbie
exerts extra effort to keep up with her.
“Bobbie, what do your friends call their dads?”
The question makes him uncomfortable. “I guess Dad mostly,
or Daddy.”
Then why do you call your dad Father?”
“I don’t know. It’s what he prefers.”
“Will you do me a favor?”
“Sure. Yeah. I guess.”
“When you show your father your report card, will you call
him Dad?”
Bobbie frowns. He doesn’t like the request.
“He prefers Father.”
“How do you know? Did he say so?”
“No, but - "
Darlene stops jogging and gently takes the boy by the arm.
“Please, as a special favor to me?”
Bobbie hesitates. “Okay.”
George Boone arrives home at six sharp. Bobbie’s
on pins and needles, tense and hopeful.
Darlene, sharply observant, stands close by, pretending to dust
a side table. Mr. Boone gives the boy a hard look that says,
“Well?”
Everyone knows that this is report card day.
Bobbie moistens his lips. He hands his father the report card
and note from Mrs. Sullivan. “Here’s my report card…Dad.”
He almost chokes on the word and shoots a side glance at Darlene
who smiles and winks.
Dad! The word stymies George Boone. His brow wrinkles into puzzlement.
His son never calls him Dad. He swallows the word like it is
a new medication. Then he makes sense of it. It’s that meddlesome
woman again. Mrs. Brewer will be the death of him. Dad! George
Boone frowns. He doesn’t know how he feels about it. He
turns it over in his mind but doesn’t comment.
Well, he concludes, it isn’t the crime of the century. Returning
to the report card, he inspects it like an IRS man checking Bill
Gates’s tax return. His face remains impassive. He reads
the note, nodding slightly. Inspects the report card again and
pronounces his verdict.
“Not bad, Robert.” He adds hastily, “But don’t
let it go to your head. You still have a way to go to bring your
math up to snuff. If a tutor is necessary, it can be arranged.”
“Oh, fudge!” Darlene spits the indictment from between
angry lips. “’Not bad, Robert’. Is that all you
can say?”
George Boone backs up a step as if struck by a blow.
“Bobbie’s progress is great,” she continues. “His
report card is gorgeous. “Is ‘not bad’ the best
you can do? And that idiotic remark about a tutor? Mr. Boone,
you’re really one for the books.”
“I, ah, oh . . . “ George Boone is stunned to put it
mildly. “Robert - "
Darlene isn’t through. “’Robert!’ That’s
another thing. I know at least eight people with that name. The
only one I know who’s called Robert by their intimates is
a 67-year-old minister. Kids named Robert are called Bob or Bobbie
by friends and family alike.”
George Boone stands there gaping, his face taking on the color
of carrot juice
“Another thing, Mr. Boone: Are you too cheap to buy this
boy a computer like his friends and classmates have? Or are you
simply thick or stubborn?”
George Boone’s lips tighten. He slowly regains his composure.
He’s this woman’s employer for God’s sake. An
employee at the bank wouldn’t last two minutes if he talked
to him like this. Why does he put up with her? He has asked himself
this question before. Yet, for all the woman’s impertinence
she appears genuinely fond of his son, and Robert quite clearly
cares for her.
“Mr. Boone, may I ask you a question?”
Darlene takes his failure to reply as acceptance.
“When was the last time you gave Bobbie a hug?”
“I, uh - "
“ - That’s what I thought.”
Skirt swirling, she flounces out of the room.
Next day George Boone phones the house at 5 p.m. He
will be delayed an hour or two. He arrives home at 8 p.m., hauling
a carton behind him. The letters IBM appear in large print on
the top.
Bobbie shrieks with delight.
Darlene, all smiles, steps up to George Boone and plants a large
lusty kiss on his lips. Mr. Boone stands there, speechless, his
face growing redder and redder.
©2005 by Ray Dreyfack. This story first posted on Jan. 31,
2005.
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