Rafael Yglesias - Only Children

I’ve spent the better part of my life wanting to know what he was thinking. Did he think at all, or was it just a physical craving, nothing diabolic, nothing calculated, an addiction, a yearning he couldn’t squelch?

The assistant returned. She looked unfriendly. “Mr. Hummel? Come with me.”

Peter followed her.

Is this a trick? Will I be led into a room of security guards and thrown out?

They passed the usual lineup of secretarial cubicles opposite medium-sized private offices, the doors open, overdressed men and women on phones talking the friendly chatter of a phony business:

“Bill? Hello, how was London? Yeah, I hoped you could—”

“Are you kidding? I’m fatter than ever!”

“Great. Let’s do the Tea Room? I know it’s a bore—” We’re heading for the corner office, Peter knew. He rubbed his palms. They were wet. His throat felt thick and clogged. In a moment of panic, he thought he might not be able to talk. He could see himself, a hand on his Adam’s apple, choking, mute.

He cleared his throat. He wanted to shout before he entered. There were only a few more feet to go.

Speak! Make sure you can speak!

The assistant stopped a foot or so before the door. It was open. Peter could see an L of couches, empty, cornering a huge black glass coffee table. Larry was out of sight, probably behind a desk. The assistant gestured for Peter to go inside alone.

Alone in an office with Larry. Come with me, Peter wanted to say to this neutral woman. Come with me. Don’t leave me alone with him.

“IT’S ME, Grandpa,” Luke called at the door. Eric knelt at his son’s height, and saw the sight he had seen all his childhood, the door to his parents’ apartment towering in front of him, a tall, fat guard with its one circular metal eye, blind and fixed.

“Hey! Hey!” Barry said from the other side, and the police lock clanged. Luke hopped up and down. The door opened and they were in each other’s arms, the bookends of Eric’s life, his softhearted father, his sweet-spirited son.

They don’t need me, he thought. No one needs me.

Since Eric had become cruel to Luke, the implacable explicator of life (everybody goes to the bathroom, Luke, it’s time), since then, Luke had flourished. Gone were all the moody reactions to new things. The shyness remained, but only a normal amount. The intelligence test proved Luke was more than sound. Nina’s success at work proved she was more than sound. Gone were all their difficulties. Luke adored her. Unlike Eric, Nina still got the gift of Luke’s tender side, his baby self. “Mama,” Luke would say when she got home, and wrap his legs around her stomach, rest his head on her shoulder, and gaze into her eyes with absolute concentration.

Eric entered the home of his parents unheralded, an afterthought, a nanny. His mother and father circled about Luke, chattering over his height, listening to him talk, telling him what he could have, what they might do, and Eric wandered in unnoticed. He went to the kitchen, in search of coffee. He looked for coffee all the time now, because his brain never seemed to reach consciousness, because he never got enough sleep, because only coffee was warm and for him alone, only coffee narrowed his vision to the thing he had to solve.

Which was what, exactly?

The Boston Beans were gone, had moved their accounts to Joe’s supervision. Therefore, Eric had lost half his management fee. Tom had done nothing, which was good and bad. Tom hadn’t called Eric after speaking with Joe, hadn’t phoned to say that he continued to have confidence in Eric. And when Eric discarded his pride and initiated a call to Tom, Tom didn’t reassure Eric, didn’t say that his refusal to let Joe take over the management was permanent, or merely a final trial of Eric’s abilities.

What do they want? Two bad quarters after eight good ones! Do I have three months to keep Tom? Do I have six? Do I have nine? Do I have a week?

Eric could have asked Tom to declare his intentions. But he didn’t. He convinced himself that to pretend with Tom that nothing had happened showed self-confidence. Later Eric realized it was an excuse for cowardice.

Nina’s response to the situation wasn’t helpful. Leave, she said. Open up your own firm. You can work out of our apartment. Next fall Luke will be in school, we can make it on what you earn from Tom’s money, and my salary, and soon we won’t need Pearl anymore—

Work alone? With no one to tell me what I should think, no one to fight off, no one to give in to, no secretaries, no coffee machine, pay for my own Quotron, pay commissions to some broker … it was sickening, impossible. Nina’s suggestion caused despair, forced Eric to face himself in a way he had hoped never to.

I don’t have the guts. And if Tom left me then, I would be ruined. Maybe we could make it without my salary for a while, as Nina had suggested, maybe I would get some of Joe’s clients, the ones who know me, people like Fred Tatter, to come along, but then I would have to produce every day, every week, and—

Eric’s father had tried and failed. Barry had left the store where he had worked for ten years, where they had valued him, although that was a low estimate, as a mere floor manager. Eric’s mother thought Barry could be more, pushed Barry until he opened his own store; but Barry was too nice, he let the clerks steal, he got bad prices, he let people slide on the layaways, he didn’t change locations when he should have—

“Hello, Eric,” his mother said, floating into the kitchen on her slippers, her hands out to take hold of his face and kiss him. “We ignored you,” she said. She kissed. “That’s only because your son is so gorgeous.”

“I don’t mind,” Eric said, and he meant it. He would have hated it if his parents didn’t make a fuss over Luke, if they were civilized about grandparenthood, like Nina’s parents.

Last Thanksgiving, Nina’s mother had finally acknowledged Luke’s superiority. “He’s very handsome,” she had said. “And very intelligent.”

“Yes,” Eric had answered, pleased that Nina’s mother had finally said the obvious.

“I guess all grandmothers think that about their grandchildren,” she went on, and spoiled it. Civilized. Sensible. Nina’s parents could only see a miserable gray in every rainbow.

Eric’s parents neglected him, blind to Eric’s dimmer light, a boring streetlamp compared with Luke’s fireworks — but that was all right. In loving Luke, they were really loving Eric.

“You look tired,” Eric’s mother said. “Are you working too hard?”

Eric peered out of the kitchen, past their dull, by now ancient green living room furniture. His father and Luke were gone: probably into Eric’s old room, to play with Eric’s old toys. “Tell me something, Mom. You think Dad made a mistake going into business by himself?”

Miriam narrowed her eyes suspiciously. She saw criticism everywhere, especially from Eric. “I told him to go into business by himself.”

“I know. Think you were wrong to push him?” That relaxed her. Open attack didn’t bother her; she liked that. “He would have driven me crazy if he didn’t try. I told him to go ahead, but I was really telling him what he wanted to hear. He would never do something he didn’t want to do because of what I said. He’s stubborn. He’s a stubborn man,” she said, and rubbed her stomach thoughtfully. “How are you doing with your father-in-law’s money?” she asked.

She always asked. Every visit, “How are you doing with your father-in-law’s money?” her anxiety irrepressible, her lack of confidence in Eric almost a nervous tic.

“Okay.”

“Just okay?” she said, suspicious again. She opened the refrigerator. “Are you hungry? Did you eat?”