"How long has it been," said Nailles, "that you've asked permission to watch television?" He knew that in dealing with his son sarcasm would only multiply their misunderstandings but he was tired and headstrong. "You never ask permission. You come home at half past three, pull your chair up in front of the set and watch until supper. After supper you settle down in front of that damned engine and stay there until nine. If you don't do your homework how can you expect to get passing marks in school?"
"I learn a lot of things on television," Tony said shyly. "I learn about geography and animals and the stars."
"What are you learning now?" Nailles asked.
The cartoon figures were having a tug of war. A large bird cut the rope with his beak and all the figures fell down.
This is different," Tony said. "This isn't educational. Some of it is."
"Oh leave him alone, Eliot, leave him alone," Nellie called from the kitchen. Her voice was soft and clear. Nailles wandered back into the kitchen.
"But don't you think," he asked, "that from half past three to nine with a brief interlude for supper is too much time to spend in front of a television set?"
"It is a lot of time," Nellie said, "but it's terribly important to him right now and I think he'll grow out of it."
"I know it's terribly important," Nailles said. "I realize that. When I took him Christmas shopping he wasn't interested in anything but getting back to the set. He didn't care about buying presents for you or his cousins or his aunts and uncles. All he wanted to do was to get back to the set. He was just like an addict. I mean he had withdrawal symptoms. It was just like me at cocktail hour but I'm thirty-four years old and I try to ration my liquor and my cigarettes."
"He isn't quite old enough to start rationing things," Nellie said.
"He won't go coasting, he won't play ball, he won't do his homework, he won't even take a walk because he might miss a program."
"I think he'll grow out of it," Nellie said.
"But you don't grow out of an addiction. You have to make some exertion or have someone make an exertion for you. You just don't outgrow serious addictions."
He went back across the dark hall with its shifty submarine lights and outside the noise of rain. On the tube a man with a lisp, dressed in a clown suit, was urging his friends to have Mummy buy them a streamlined, battery-operated doll carriage. He turned on a light and saw how absorbed his son was in the lisping clown.
"Now I've been talking with your mother," he said, "and we've decided that we have to do something about your television time." (The clown was replaced by the cartoon of an elephant and a tiger dancing the waltz.) "I think an hour a day is plenty and I'll leave it up to you to decide which hour you want."
Tony had been threatened before but either his mother's intervention or Nailles's forgetfulness had saved him. At the thought of how barren, painful and meaningless the hours after school would be the boy began to cry.
"Now crying isn't going to do any good," Nailles said. The elephant and the tiger were joined by some other animals in their waltz.
"Skip it," Tony said. "It isn't your business."
"You're my son," Nailles said, "and it's my business to see you do at least what's expected of you. You were tutored last summer in order to get promoted and if 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 slap 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 a problem 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 single night 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.