“I am so sorry,” Enzo says. “It will never happen again.”
“Yeah, it won’t.” Ted holds up his hands. “Sorry, Enzo. He’s off the team.”
Enzo opens his mouth to protest, but then he shuts it again. He argued Nico’s case in the principal’s office, but this is different. We saw what happened. He punched that kid over nothing.
Instead, Enzo turns to our son, who is standing on the side, kicking his sneaker into the dirt. “Come on,” Enzo says. “We go home now.”
THIRTY-TWO
We don’t talk much in the car, partially because Ada is there. Enzo is the one driving, and his knuckles are bloodless on the steering wheel. Every time I glance over my shoulder, Nico is staring out the window. He doesn’t even seem upset over getting kicked off the team just a few weeks before the end of the season. It’s like it doesn’t even matter.
What is wrong with my son?
When we get into the house, Enzo instructs Nico to stay in the living room. Nico drops onto the sofa and reaches for the remote, but Enzo shakes his head. “No TV,” he says. “You sit there and be quiet. I will talk to your mother.”
I follow my husband to the kitchen, and when we get inside, he turns to face me. He takes a shaky breath. “Okay, that was not so good.”
“You think?” I sputter.
“He is good kid,” Enzo insists. “He just…”
“He just punched another boy in the gut for no reason.”
“Not for no reason. That was unfair call! He was not out!”
I grit my teeth. “That doesn’t matter, and you know it. You don’t punch another kid just because you don’t like what the umpire said.”
“He was upset…”
“He’s nine years old—not three. It’s unacceptable.”
“Boys are aggressive.” He runs a hand through his thick black hair. “That is normal boy behavior. Is good for him to fight.”
I stare at my husband in astonishment. Given his reaction at the game, I had hoped we were finally on the same page about Nico’s fighting, but clearly we are not. The fact that Nico’s behavior has gotten him both suspended and kicked off the Little League team is a sign that things are out of control. Yet Enzo is still defending what Nico did.
“This is not normal behavior for a boy,” I say firmly.
Enzo is quiet for a minute. I want him to agree with me that punching other kids is not okay for a boy to do, and it bothers me that he won’t do that. He always seems very controlled in his behavior, especially compared with me. I’ve never seen him throw a punch, even when someone deserved it.
But he’s done it—that’s a fact. His fists are the reason he’s in this country to begin with.
“Tell me,” I say, “is this how you behaved when you were nine?”
Again, he hesitates. “Yes, I had fights with fists back when I was a kid. Sometimes I did. It was not a bad thing. Makes you tough.”
That is not the right answer.
“Okay, okay.” He shakes his head. “Is different here in America. I see this now.”
I’m not a hundred percent sure we are a united front, but we go back out of the kitchen to where Nico is sitting on the couch in the living room. He is leaning back on the pillows, staring at a crack on the ceiling. He rolls his head to the side when we walk into the room.
“Am I grounded again?” he asks.
He’s already been grounded. He was just grounded, like, five minutes ago. It didn’t seem to make the slightest difference. I sit beside him on the sofa, and Enzo takes the chair next to the sofa.
“Nico,” I say, “you have to learn to control yourself. What you did today was really wrong. You know that, don’t you?”
“I’m sorry,” he says, although he truthfully doesn’t sound very sorry. “Grayson was being a jerk.”
“It doesn’t matter if he’s the biggest jerk in the world. You can’t hit him.”
“Fine.”
It disturbs me that Nico doesn’t seem more upset over all this. Why isn’t he crying? Why isn’t he begging for forgiveness? Isn’t that normal behavior for a nine-year-old boy who’s done something wrong?
I look over at Enzo, trying to gauge if he thinks this seems normal. But I’m sure if I asked him, he would say something like, Boys aren’t supposed to cry.
But there’s something wrong. Lately, Nico has just become so…
Cold.
“What’s my punishment?” he asks, like he’s impatient to get it over with.
“Well, you are off the team,” Enzo says. “So no more baseball.”
Nico shrugs. “Okay.”
Enzo seems thrown by how casual Nico’s response is to being barred from baseball. The two of them used to practice every day. Nico used to beg for it. When is Dad going to get home? We gotta practice!
