Growing Up (Vorse)/Chapter 2
WHEN Tom Marcey came home that afternoon, they agreed that something had to be done. "That child has got to learn to mind," Tom asserted.
"I can't bear to think of spanking him, he is only two and a half. He was always a perfectly reasonable child until the goldfish came," said Alice hotly.
"Mother's fish are only the immediate cause," Tom argued. "He's always had the germ of this unreasonableness."
They walked together into the library. Between the windows stood the globe. Before it, absorbed as a scientist, was Robert. His yellow head was as shining as the goldfish. His fat hand was clutching in the water, while the desire of his heart forever eluded him. He did not even turn at the sound of his parents' footsteps. He had not learned fear. He had decided to catch a fish, and he didn't care who knew it.
Something indeed had to be done.
"Robert!" said Tom.
He looked around, a frown on his face.
"I couldn't get him," he told his father.
"You disobeyed father!" Tom began.
"Oh, Tom! Don't do anything rash! I hated my parents every time they spanked me. It never did any good. Oh, if you make Robert hate you"
"See here, Alice," said Tom, "he's got to understand, hasn't he?"
The object of this discussion stood before them. He looked with his usual magnificent calm from one to the other. He seemed but mildly interested.
"Come," said his father.
Alice cast one glance at his gallant retreating rear and ran up-stairs with her fingers in her ears.
They faced each other, father and son. The son was calm, the father nervous. The son smiled reassuringly. The father tried piteously to echo the smile. He didn't know how to begin. He was deeply embarrassed. The first words he spoke were not those he had meant to speak. They were:
"Hang it all, your mother ought to do this!"
This was a wrong opening. He covered it up by: "You ought not to touch your Grandma's goldfish. We have told you time and again not to touch your Grandma's goldfish. You must mind your father and mother. All good little boys mind their fathers and mothers."
Robert looked at him unblinking and said nothing.
"Now," said Tom, "see what you've done. I've got to spank you so that you won't touch those fish again."
He felt in a false position. He was angry at the world, especially as all Robert did was to say dreamily:
"I like a goldfish."
"That may be," his parent replied. "You can't have them. Now I've got to spank you. Do you know why I've got to spank you, Robert?"
"Because I like a fish," replied Robert.
For the first time Tom understood why people in ancient times beat their breasts under the stress of emotion. "I'll get this over," he thought. He laid Robert over his knee. Robert was unresisting. His fat legs hung down one way, his fat arms hung down the other. He lifted his head up like a turtle and looked inquiringly at his father.
"This is awful!" thought Tom. On that plump and trusting rear he administered three half hearted taps, at which Robert wept, not loudly but heart-rendingly, and climbing up on his father's knee he ducked his soft canary-colored head in his father's neck, turning to the author of his discomfort to be comforted. They always do this when they are little—they are so accustomed to have you kiss them and make them well. It would be easier if they didn't.
Alice was upstairs crying. She turned her red eyes on Tom and asked in a whisper, "Is it over?" And Tom, whose nerves were overstrung, snapped:
"One would think that Robert had been having a major operation. Now he knows what will happen if he does it again. Next time you'll have to Do It."
"Next time?" Alice quavered.
"You've got to see it through, you know. It's only fair to him," said Tom, leaving for the office.
Alice knelt down in front of Robert and pleaded with him. She held him in her arms and begged him not to make Mother spank him. She looked at him searchingly, expecting to see in his eyes temper or humiliation, but neither was visible. He replied with his usual engaging ardor to her kisses, but on the subject of the goldfish he was silent. From time to time Alice paused in her work to find Robert, to kiss him, because the brutal hand of his father had been laid on him in punishment. Robert himself seemed unmoved.
Happily, Alice was having friends to lunch next day, so that she was too busy to dwell morbidly on the crisis through which they had passed. They were half through their luncheon when from the other part of the house came sounds of strife. One could hear the voice of an older person raised in remonstrance. One could hear the voice of Robert. Then came the sound of feet running, and Robert, flushed and tearful with the excited tears of victory, stood before them. In one hand he held a flapping goldfish. He advanced on his mother and lifted up his skirts indecorously around his fat legs, turning his back to her.
"Spank me now," he gasped. "I got it!"