Mom reminds him to take it in before you let it out. She means he should take in the big picture, see what he’s angry about and if it really matters, and then, if it does, go ahead and have a tantrum. Or when Sadie complains that she’s got too much stress from debate team, mock trial, homework, and college applications, Mom tells her to keep your eye on the end zone, which is perfect for Sadie because the one thing she does for fun is watch football on the couch with Dad. And whenever I’m about to do something impulsive like reach for a seventh cookie, Mom quietly reminds me to think it through, Sam.
Think it through. All the way to tomorrow morning, when you wake up with a stomachache.
Think it through. All the way to your next piano lesson and how you’ll feel if you didn’t learn the song.
Think it through. All the way to this afternoon, when the email makes it home before you do.
“A three-day suspension?!” Mom says.
I guess I didn’t think things through.
“There goes your chance of getting into a decent high school,” Sadie butts in. That’s a sister for you. Helpful, isn’t she?
Mom sighs her dragon sigh. “You will write an apology to Mr. Hill, Mr. Powell, and the class. And you will make up all the work you’re going to miss.”
But Dad defends me. “Why are they giving so much homework anyway?” he says. “We didn’t have homework when we were in sixth grade. And we turned out just fine.”
Sadie tilts her head as if to say she’s not so sure about that.
“It’s a different world now,” Mom says. “More challenging. More competitive.”
“When’s the last time Sam played outside with his friends?” I hear Dad say. “When’s the last time he built anything with me?”
“All the other kids are doing homework. Do you want Sam to fall behind?”
“All the other parents have lost their minds. Should we lose ours too?”
They ping-pong it back and forth like this for a while. Then Dad makes an astonishing, you-go-Dad declaration that warms my heart.
“From now on there will be no more homework in this house!” he says. “I forbid it!”
Would you trade this dad to another family? I wouldn’t.
“Really?” Mom says. “Okay, so if Sam doesn’t do his homework, he won’t get all As on his report card. If he doesn’t get all As on his report card—Sadie’s right—he won’t get into a good high school. If he doesn’t get into a good high school, he’ll land at a third-rate college, where he’ll graduate deep in debt with a worthless degree. If he graduates deep in debt with a worthless degree, he won’t be able to find a decent job, attract a wife, or support any kids. So, if he doesn’t do his homework, your only son will grow old miserable and alone, and that’ll be the end of your family line.”
Wow, she really thought that through!
“What about Sadie?” Dad asks.
“I’m not sure I want to have kids. They create too big of a carbon footprint.”
Dad turns to me, gives me a straight-on father-to-son look, and says, “Sam, go do your homework.”
If I owned this team, he’d be a free agent now.
After dinner I Skype with Alistair.
“Will I be needing a suit for your funeral?” he asks.
“Mine is a fate worse than death,” I tell him. “It’s homework.”
I ask him for the assignments. He says he’s not sure I want to hear.
“After you got thrown out, Mr. Powell teamed up with all our other teachers. They went on a rampage.”
“Just give it to me straight,” I say. “The whole list.”
Onscreen, I see Alistair push up his sleeve. He reads the first assignment from his arm. “Science, chapter three, on volcanoes. Do chapter review and connections.”
He pushes up his sleeve a little more. “Read up to page forty-seven in Black Ships Before Troy—that book gives me nightmares—and do a character chart.”
“Anything else?” I ask.
“There’s one on my left leg.”
He hikes up his pant leg. “Flash cards. We have to look up definitions and draw vocabulary pictures.”
“How many words?”
“Twenty-five.”
“Anything else?”
Alistair’s pant leg comes up over his knee. I can see the scar from when he rolled down his backyard slope and struck a sprinkler head.
“Remember the early humans diorama that’s due before Christmas?”
“Yeah.”
“Now it’s due before Thanksgiving.”
“Terrific. Anything else?”
“Hang on. Got to check one more place.”
He steps away from the computer, untucks his shirt, and yanks it up. Alistair’s been known to write reminders across his stomach, too.
Lucky for me, it’s just his face that pops back onscreen. “Nope,” he says, “that was just an itch.”
“Thanks, Alistair. Glad I Skyped you before you took a shower.”
And we hang up.
Day one of my suspension is actually kind of nice. I get to sleep in on a Wednesday. Around nine thirty I roll out of bed, head to the kitchen, and pour myself a bowl of Lucky Charms. Lucky Charms are supposed to be a rare breakfast treat, but with all the work I’ll be doing, I’m giving myself permission to eat the whole box.
There’s a Post-it from Mom on the fridge: “Gone to a caravan. Home by noon. Get some work done!”
A caravan is an open house just for real estate agents. So they can see what’s new on the market and spread the word. Once, when I was home sick on a Wednesday, I got to go with her. I noticed how all the agents seemed more interested in test scores than in house things like countertops, termites, or if the yard had room for a pool.
“Reed has some of the highest scores in the city,” Mom always says. “Among the top ten in the state.”
Seems to me, if our test scores are driving up the home prices in the neighborhood, we should get a cut of the money every time a house sells. I tried to tell Mom that, but she said those ideas are better kept to myself.
Then she gave me a cookie.
At ten I look out the window and see Mr. Kalman’s newspaper in the gutter in front of his house. Mr. Kalman is the oldest living person on our street. His property has the oldest living trees. Mom says he stopped having them trimmed when his wife died. If you were new to the neighborhood, like a temporary mail carrier, you might wonder why there’s a mailbox in front of an overgrown lot. Dad says tree trimming is expensive and maybe Mr. Kalman is short on cash. Mom says she doubts that because Mr. Kalman is a retired lawyer.
Since I’m off for the day—and my bibliography woke him the other night—the least I can do for Mr. Kalman is rescue his paper from the gutter sludge. I head across, pick up his paper, and push open the gate on his wooden fence.
His wife used to paint this fence every year on the first day of spring. She’d start at six in the morning and finish at six at night, her floppy yellow hat making its way across the yard like a sun. One time she saw me watching from my window. Her yellow hat tilted back and showed me this big smile on her face. Then she held her paintbrush out to me. I pointed to myself and gave her a look like, Me? You want me to help paint? Her yellow hat waved up and down.
You’ve never seen a boy who just turned five tie his shoes so fast. When I got outside, she was waiting for me on our driveway.
“But I’m just a kid, Mrs. Kalman. I don’t know how to paint a fence.”
“A kid can learn to do anything, Sam,” she said.
Her hand held my hand, and my hand held the brush, and together we turned the fence white again.
I carry Mr. Kalman’s LA Times up to his front door. The path used to have sunlight and shadows. Now it’s all shadows.
I knock on the door hard because he might not have his hearing aid in. It takes him about as long as it takes me to brush my teeth before the door opens. Mr. Kalman stands there in a long T-shirt, sagging track pants, and old slippers. I’m pretty sure he wore something spiffier when he went to court.
He puts up a finger because he’s on the phone.
“You keep a man on hold? What if there’s a gun to his head? No, there’s no gun to my head. That was a hypothetical question. Fact of the matter is, I’m calling to report a theft. My LA Times.”
“Mr. Kalman,” I say, but he turns away.
“It wasn’t on my driveway this morning.”
I tap him on the shoulder. He doesn’t turn around.
“Well, could you at least send a patrol car around tomorrow morning at, say, five thirty? Patrol car is a deterrent to this sort of crime.”
“Mr. Kalman!” I say again, jumping up and down and waving the plastic-wrapped newspaper at him.
He gives the dispatcher his address. “Otsego with two Os, beginning and end. It’s a Native American word meaning ‘rock,’ or ‘place of rendezvous.’ Thank you for providing good value for my tax dollars.”
Then he hangs up and turns around.
And sees what I’m holding in my hands.
“You’re the thief who stole my LA Times?”
“I didn’t steal it. I got it out of the gutter. Thought I’d save you from bending over.”
“You’re worse than a thief, then. A murderer.”
“How so?”
“Deprive a man of his daily exercise and you shave years off his life.”
“I was only trying to—”
“I don’t need any help.”
“Fine!” I say. “I’ll put it back where I found it.”
I haul back and hurl the paper onto the driveway. It skids into the gutter right where the delivery boy left it.
Man, that felt good!
I step off the creaky old porch of this cranky old man. He calls after me.
“What are you doing home anyway? You’re a school-age boy who’s supposed to be in school.”
“I got suspended.”
“No kidding. What for?”
“Refusing to do homework.”
He puts a hand to his forehead. It’s got nothing to do with a headache. Just his way of thinking.
“They give you a hearing?”
“A what?”
“A hearing. Did they inform you of the charges and give you an opportunity to respond?”
“No. They just threw me out.”
“Go back to school tomorrow.”
“I can’t. I told you, I’m suspended. Not allowed back for the rest of the week.”
“If they didn’t give you a hearing, it’s unconstitutional. Goss v. Lopez. Look it up.”