Rafael Yglesias - Only Children

“It doesn’t make any difference, Ma,” were the last words Diane had spoken to her mother before she went in. “You’re not going to a bar mitzvah. Don’t worry about your outfit.”

That farewell was a far cry from “I love you, Ma!” She’s going to be all right, so it doesn’t matter. Diane reached Francine at home. Byron was out again with Peter. Diane’s absence seemed to be a blessing. Peter had taken off three days in a row, treating Byron to a movie, the circus, and now, although it sounded unlikely, according to Francine, to a play.

Diane sighed and stared out the waiting-room window at the hospital’s half-empty parking lot. A drizzle had begun. There was nothing to see but the cars, put in slots like empty shoes in a closet, longing for use. Diane had enjoyed that nighttime drive down from New York. Alone, urgent, scared, music playing out of the darkened hollow beneath her, the dashboard lights glowing like cat’s eyes.

If she dies, I’ll get in the car and disappear. Drive and drive and drive. If she dies, I’m an orphan. And orphans wander. Alone.

NINA WANDERED the aisles of the drugstore until she found the laxatives. She hadn’t needed them in years; the worst of her constipation had ended in college when she began to drink coffee.

Maybe I should start Luke’s day with three cups of espresso, she thought.

Tad had asked her to work for him on next year’s line. He suggested she drop her courses at FIT and work full-time.

“You’re not one of these children,” Tad had said. “You don’t need this. Work for me for a few years and they’ll all be going to you behind my back and offering you the world.”

She almost believed him. She said yes, she would drop her courses and become his assistant, my number two, as Tad called it. But she hadn’t told Eric the news. That was wrong. But she needed at least a few days to think up her explanation of why taking the job was so important. She knew it was, but she couldn’t explain why.

There were lots of new twists to the laxatives, so-called natural laxatives, but when Nina studied their labels, they all had chemicals of one sort or another and cautioned that regular use might lead to dependence. Eric wouldn’t accept that for his son. Although Luke was getting the shit out, his body wasn’t making it easy. She called the behavioral psychologist and he said, “Well, as long as he’s trying and doing it, you can continue the mineral oil to make it easier.”

But Eric had said no to that. “He’ll be on it for the rest of his life,” Eric said.

The Perfectibility of Man. But Eric was right. Luke was happier, freer, his spirit blossoming. He played for hours now, no longer comatose on the couch, staring at television. He concentrated on his pretend games, learned the alphabet merely by osmosis, used the slide fearlessly, let go of her and Eric in the mornings with assurance — Luke was tougher, more decisive, surer of himself.

She found something new. Fiber biscuits. She read the package carefully. All natural ingredients. Can be used as a daily supplement without a risk of dependence.

Don’t be dependent. Don’t need anyone. Dress yourself, fight your own battles, carry your sword into the world and conquer it. There’s love at home, but there’s happiness outside.

She showed the biscuits to Eric. He read the box three times. “It doesn’t seem to have chemicals or anything bad,” he admitted, but with suspicion. “What do we do? Have him eat one a night?”

“Why not? It’s just bran, that’s all. He can have it before he goes to bed, right after pooping.” Luke now made a regular trip to the toilet with Eric right before his bedtime stories.

It was all so absurd, so laughable. But it wasn’t, not really, she knew it wasn’t.

Over dinner, she tried to tell Eric about Tad’s offer, but she couldn’t let go, sever herself from being Eric’s wife, always convenient, always willing to make things easy.

What do I say if Eric says, no, I need you to be here, I’m under a lot of pressure?

Eric is under a lot of pressure. His face seemed to be pulled so tight that he couldn’t loosen enough to smile. He sat at dinner, staring into space, not hearing Luke’s happy monologues: “You know something? It’s not so good to build something very tall, because they fall down. Unless you make a bottom—”

“Foundation,” Nina said. “A foundation is what goes on the bottom and holds up the building.”

“Yeah! A foundation. You have to make a big foundation or something tall will fall down.”

Eric stared off. His eyes were big and absent. Their brown color usually had depth, allowing light to penetrate into his soul; these days they were clouded, a muddy pond, no reflection, no transparency, just swirling, stormy dark.

“Are you with us?” Nina asked softly, touching Eric’s hand.

“Has your mother called you lately?” he asked, quickly, as if an answer were urgent.

“No. I have to call her. I haven’t — why?”

“Nothing.”

He was like a baby. Eric said, “Nothing,” just the way a petulant child does, a concealment so inept it might as well be a confession.

“Sounds like it’s something,” Luke said, his broad mouth smiling, his blue eyes shining love at his father.

Eric answered Luke with a confused look, as if he didn’t recognize him. “It does?”

“Yeah,” Luke said. “Are you winning these days, Daddy?”

When Luke was two, he had asked Eric what he did at work. He had been told that buying and selling stock was like a game, that you won points or lost points each day. For a while, Luke would ask, “Did you win today, Daddy?” Lately, he hadn’t.

“No,” Eric said, but he looked at Nina. “I’m not winning.”

“Well”—Luke put out his hand, palm up, and shrugged his shoulders, an imitation of Eric’s cool manner about the pooping—“you’ll have to try harder.”

“I’m trying as hard as I can,” Eric said. Nina couldn’t tell if he understood the irony of this conversation.

“You can do it, Daddy. Maybe you need to do more of your reading things. After dinner, I could watch some cartoons and you could do your reading.”

Eric smiled a heartbroken smile. Something is terribly wrong, Nina admitted to herself. He must be losing a lot. He’s scared. “Okay,” he croaked in answer to Luke.

“That’ll help you, won’t it, Daddy?”

“Yes.”

“See?” Luke said with another broad smile to Nina. “I can help Daddy do his work.”

“That’s good,” she answered Luke, and leaned across the table to kiss his sweet skin. Her beautiful boy was good, so good and so beautiful that he could get his father to talk. So good and so beautiful that it hurt to think of it.

“WHO’S HE, DADDY?” Byron’s voice trumpeted out of the enforced silence of the audience toward the legal noise of the stage.

“Shhh,” Peter whispered. “Remember, it’s not television. Everyone can hear you.”

“Okay, okay,” Byron answered in his whisper, dramatic and high-pitched. Byron dug his nails into Peter’s arm. “But who is he?”

Peter explained that the man was the hero, but he looked different because time had passed and he was grown up.

“Oh,” Byron said, and his mouth stayed open, slack, astounded by the lights, the sounds, the restless movement of the actors. Peter watched their actions play on his son’s face, their sounds animate his short legs, dangling over the cliff of his center aisle seat. When they’d gone to their seats, Peter and his three-year-old son had gotten incredulous, scandalized looks at their appearance on the fifth-row center of a Friday-night performance on Broadway.

“You’re bringing a child to this?” one rude woman had the temerity to say to Peter.