Free Bullet Park by John Cheever Page A

your marks don’t improve you won’t be promoted this year. Don’t you think it’s my business to see that you get promoted? If you had your way you wouldn’t even go to school. You’d wake up in the morning, turn on the set and watch it until bedtime.”
    “Oh please skip it, please leave me alone,” Tony said. He turned off the set, went into the hall and started to climb the stairs.
    “You come back here, Sonny,” Nailles shouted. “You come back here at once or I’ll come and get you.”
    “Oh please don’t roar at him,” Nellie asked, coming out of the kitchen. “I’m cooking veal birds and they smell nice and I was feeling good and happy that you’d come home and now everything is beginning to seem awful.”
    “I was feeling good too,” Nailles said, “but we have aproblem here and we can’t evade it just because the veal birds smell good.”
    He went to the foot of the stairs and shouted: “You come down here, Sonny, you come down here this instant or you won’t have any television for a month. Do you hear me? You come down here at once or you won’t have any television for a month.”
    The boy came slowly down the stairs. “Now you come here and sit down,” Nailles said, “and we’ll talk this over. I’ve said that you can have an hour each day and all you have to do is to tell me which hour you want.”
    “I don’t know,” Tony said. “I like the four-o’clock show and the six-o’clock show and the seven-o’clock show …”
    “You mean you can’t confine yourself to an hour, is that it?”
    “I don’t know,” Tony said.
    “I guess you’d better make me a drink,” Nellie said. “Scotch and soda.”
    Nailles made a drink and returned to Tony. “Well if you can’t decide,” Nailles said, “I’m going to decide for you. First I’m going to make sure that you do your homework before you turn on the set.”
    “I don’t get home until half past three,” Tony said, “and sometimes the bus is late and if I do my homework I’ll miss the four-o’clock show.”
    “That’s just too bad,” Nailles said, “that’s just too bad.”
    “Oh leave him alone,” Nellie said. “Please leave him alone. He’s had enough for tonight.”
    “It isn’t tonight we’re talking about, it’s every singlenight in the year including Saturdays, Sundays and holidays. Since no one around here seems able to reach any sort of agreement I’m going to make a decision myself. I’m going to throw that damned thing out the back door.”
    “Oh no, Daddy, no,” Tony cried. “Please don’t do that. Please, please, please. I’ll try. I’ll try to do better.”
    “You’ve been trying for months without any success,” Nailles said. “You keep saying that you’ll try to cut down and all you do is to watch more and more. Your intentions may have been good but there haven’t been any noticeable results. Out it goes.”
    “Oh please don’t, Eliot,” Nellie cried. “Please don’t. He loves his television. Can’t you see that he loves it?”
    “I know that he loves it,” Nailles said. “That’s why I’m going to throw it out the door. I love my gin and I love my cigarettes but this is the fourteenth cigarette I’ve had today and this is only my fourth drink. If I sat down to drink at half past three and drank steadily until nine I’d expect someone to give me some help.” He unplugged the television set with a yank and picked the box up in his arms. The box was heavy for his strength, and an awkward size, and in order to carry it he had to arch his back a little like a pregnant woman. With the cord trailing behind him he started for the kitchen door.
    “Oh, Daddy, Daddy,” Tony cried. “Don’t, don’t, don’t,” and he fell to his knees with his hands joined in a conventional, supplicatory position that he might have learned from watching some melodrama on the box.
    “Eliot, Eliot,” Nellie screamed. “Don’t, don’t. You’ll be sorry, Eliot. You’ll be