"Not trouble with your parents, I hope?"
"No." Long, long pause. "My brother."
"Younger?" I asked sympathetically, thinking about the number of times I'd had to bail my baby sister Patricia out of trouble when we were younger.
"Older, actually, six years."
"Is he also a teacher?" I asked. He could be an Indian chief for all that I cared, but when Charles stopped talking, I kind of stopped breathing, so anything to get an answer.
"Nah, he's a, uhh—I don't know what he is now. He used to play ball. Baseball. And then he just…quit."
"Whoa, like professional ball?" I thought of the baseball card in the wallet.
The smile again, fainter this time, but still there. "Yeah. He's pretty good."
"So you're going home to talk him out of quitting?"
Long silence. I looked in the mirror: Charles had wrinkled his forehead. It was taking him too long to work his way around my syntax. I hadn't been thinking about the ambulance, but shouldn't it be here by now? "Charles, are you ok?"
"Yeah, I…yeah, it's just…I don't understand." He sounded about ten years old when he said it, ten years old and totally lost.
"Don't understand what?" I asked, trying to decide if it would be all right to leave him for a second and radio from the car.
"There aren't a whole lot of people who are as good at anything as Don is at baseball," Charles said. Don, I remembered, was the name on the card. That must be the brother. "So isn't it kind of, I don't know, wrong not to keep playing? I mean, how many people wouldn't give a lot to trade places with him?"
"Well, what does he want to do?" Career counseling. Just another service provided by your friendly NJ-Newark Transport Officers.
"He's going to join the FBI."
I nearly laughed out loud. Jesus, a math professor and an FBI agent. In one family. What I wouldn't give to be a fly on the wall at their Thanksgiving dinner! I didn't laugh, though, because I could tell that Charles really was upset.
"What made him choose the FBI?"
"He says it's important."
"Ok." I tried to elaborate: "I guess I can see that some people might not find baseball games a really, uh, fulfilling life. After all, it's…only a game?"
"But he's so good at it."
Wow, Charles, you're really stuck on that point, I thought, but what I said was, "You don't have to be good at just one thing, you know. You're probably good at lots of stuff beside math, right?"
No answer.
"Right, Charles?" I looked in the mirror and was surprised to find him staring right back at me with those serious eyes.
"No," he said, simply, "math is about all I'm good for."
I didn't know what to say to that. I mean, I was trying to keep this boy's brains—his considerable brains—from leaking out his ears. It didn't seem right to just laugh it off and say I was sure he was good at lots of things. If he could admit that he wasn't good at stuff, the least I could do was take him at his word.
"You could be, though," I said finally, "I mean, you might not be as good at everything as you are at math…" I remembered that little trick he'd done with my badge number; didn't know what it meant, but it had sounded impressive. "In fact, I guess it would be pretty incredible for you to be as good at everything as you are at math…but you don't have to be brilliant at everything." I kind of fed his own words back to him. "It's not really an end-sum deal. Being good at other things won't suddenly make you bad at math. Ok?"
I caught his eyes again in the mirror, just for a second before he looked off again. He looked about ready to cry, but he did mumble "yeah."
"Who knows," I said, trying to cheer him up, "you might decide someday to give up on math and go into law enforcement yourself."
Charles looked genuinely shocked, "I could never give up on math."
"Right. Sure," I agreed quickly, not wanting to upset him, "maybe you could do both? Your brother could get you a job."
I got a real smile, then; too gentle to be a thousand-watts, but pretty illuminating nevertheless. And it's not like I was lying; they've got to need mathematicians in those federal agencies, right?
"They might not take you once they see your driving record, though," I added, only half teasing. "What—five crashes in two years?"