Rafael Yglesias - Only Children

Maybe anti-Semitism is an excuse.

Maybe I’m just a loser.

Eric tasted metal in the hollow of his tongue, tasted the sour fear of a lifetime in a single swallow.

He couldn’t stand this indecision, this waiting.

“Market’s open,” Sammy said. The red numbers began their undulation across the ticker.

Eric picked up the phone, their direct line to Joe’s two-dollar floor broker.

“What are you doing?” Sammy asked.

Fuck you. Eric stared ahead. “Billy?”

“Hey, Eric. Got something for me?”

For months now, Eric had absorbed the white noise of market opinion, thousands of pages of it, hours and hours of statistics and interpretation. The market was at an all-time high. He was going to sell it. The overwhelming majority of traders were bullish. In history, great fortunes on the Street were made by going against the crowd, exiting against the mob rushing in, or entering while they ran out, shouldering through the babbling herd with no apologies to ease the way.

“I’m gonna sell the market, Billy. In the Winningham account, I want to clear out all positions. I’ll give them to you—”

“Eric!” Sammy tapped him on the shoulder. “Eric!”

Eric went ahead with the recital of Tom’s positions, ignoring Sammy.

Sammy rolled his chair over, bumping Eric’s. “Eric, have you lost your fucking mind? You can’t go to cash in this market. Tom can invest in cash by walking to the fucking bank. He doesn’t need us to earn six percent.”

There was heat in Eric’s body, terrible heat. It flashed through him; he put his face at Sammy’s pale ferret face. “You shut your fucking mouth! I don’t want to hear a goddamned word out of you! Shut your fucking mouth!”

“Eric?” Billy called out plaintively through the phone. “Eric? Is that you?”

The room clicked and whirred into action. Sammy moved; the secretaries looked over; Joe pushed his chair away from his monitor. Eric shielded his eyes, stared down at the list he had made weeks ago, and talked to the phone, only to the phone. He finished reading off Tom’s stocks. “Okay? That’s the exchange. I’ll handle OTC. Now, when you’re done getting out, I want you to go short these Dow stocks in thousand lots: IBM, GM, International Paper—”

“Eric!” This was Joe now. “Eric, I’m long those stocks. They’re very strong.”

Eric continued the recital of his list—

“Use the options! Or the futures! If you want to hedge, that’s the right vehicle!” Joe’s voice sounded nearby.

Eric glanced up. Joe had left his chair.

I got the old bastard off his perch.

Joe’s hand landed on Eric’s shoulder. “Listen to me. This is not the way to be short.”

Eric stared ahead, down at the sheet with the short list, scrawled in his hand one late night months ago when he had dreamed of this, of a decisive triumph—

“Good evening, our guest tonight on Wall Street Week is Eric Gold, chief investment officer of Washington Heights Management, his own firm. Mr. Gold went short the stock market at its all-time high two years ago. We’ll find out tonight—”

“Eric,” Joe whispered in his ear. “I’m asking you to delay for an hour. Let’s have a talk in my office first. I’m sure we can work out a mutual strategy—”

“Hold it, Eric,” Billy said on the phone in Eric’s other ear. “Let me close out the long positions first, then I’ll get the shorts.”

“Okay. Get back to me.” Eric pushed away from his desk, bumped into Sammy’s chair, and got free of Joe’s hand. “It’s done,” he lied. It wouldn’t be done until Billy called back. “There’s nothing to discuss.”

“It’s inappropriate for you to be short stocks that I’m long.”

“Then get out of your stocks.”

“Eric,” Joe said, and put his hand out again, gesturing to his private office. His voice was low, seductive. “We need to talk.”

If I go in there, he’ll manipulate me out of it. I don’t have the strength to fight him.

“Forget it. What’s done is done. I’m going for a walk.” He rushed out, ran from Joe’s plea—“Eric!”—and from Sammy’s insult—“You’re an asshole!”

“Tell us, Mr. Gold,” they will ask me. “Tell us, Mr. Gold,” they will honor me. “What was it like to go against the crowd? When everyone was sure, when no one had the courage, how did you feel?”

I am strong. I stand alone. I am strong. Nothing was given to me in this world; my father let me go into the world without weapons, with nothing to make me equal to the rest. I stand alone now — Eric Gold, the Wizard of Wall Street, brave and lonely and brilliant.

DIANE DECIDED to stay in Philadelphia with her mother throughout the recuperation. She believed that Lily’s health and her own life were inextricable. She offered to take Byron down to Philadelphia during the nursing of Lily, but to her surprise, Peter said no.

“He’s started at nursery school, we have the IQ test next week. He can’t miss them. We’ll visit on the weekends.”

Peter’s self-assurance amazed her. And she felt relieved not to have to put on a show for Byron. Whenever Diane was away from Lily’s sight, she had a tendency to burst into tears. It infuriated her because she didn’t feel like crying. There was no gentle lull of self-pity beneath the weeping. It happened at the images: Lily broken on the wheel of modern medicine; the angry stitching down her chest, a zipper branded on her skin; Lily’s pale, dead face; her eyes, weak and scared, pleading for everything to be all right. Diane hated the reversal of nature: her mother, the great force she had resisted, surrendered to, run from, railed against, prayed to, was a scared kid now, utterly at Diane’s mercy. There were no more criticisms of Diane’s dress, or Diane’s values, or Diane’s eating habits, or Diane’s marriage, or anything else — just gratitude, and a pathetic conviction that Diane’s reassurances were guarantees.

Lily’s doctors told Diane they didn’t want to discuss Lily’s condition unless Diane was present. Without Diane, there were hysterics, accusations, and misunderstandings. The doctors talked to Diane while Lily listened. She lay smashed on the bed, an oxygen mask over her month, her eyes on Diane, trusting when Diane approved, nervous when Diane, by asking further questions, seemed not to be satisfied.

“She’s doing well,” the internist would say.

“You’re doing well,” Diane would say to Lily as if the doctor had spoken in a language unknown to Lily.

Lily would nod at Diane with a ridiculous and sad faith.

Back at her mother’s kitchen table, Diane cried every time she thought of Lily.

And Diane hated herself for her tears, hated the discovery that she needed her mother’s madness, her mother’s irritations, her mother’s crummy values. They were gravity; without them, Diane clutched at the spinning earth, holding on by her fingernails. She had to save this woman, she couldn’t let her go. It meant nothing to Diane, made no sense, that of course, someday Lily must die. It was gibberish. Lily was the world, the never-satisfied world, and she could not die.

Every day Diane woke up with iron in her belly — long, hot rods stuck through her stomach. She had to press in with her fingers to break them; they cracked and she’d belch their metal out.

But new rods were stuck through Diane the minute she relented; they reappeared instantly, burning and sizzling inside her. Only when Diane got into her mother’s car, a decrepit and wheezing vehicle, to drive to the hospital did the metal in her stomach dissolve and leave her free to feel happiness. She loved driving. It reminded her of the last two years of high school and her college days. She bought a dozen tape cassettes of sixties music and played them loud. They filled the vacuum of the car with memories and exploded her present, sent her back to the happy past: young and intense, full of energy and hope. No death, no failure, no compromise.