Rafael Yglesias - Only Children

The last thought, of the circumcision, obsessed him. Everybody knew it was unnecessary. Diane, however, had been adamant. She had accepted his refusal to tolerate a bris , but the notion of an uncircumcised son actually caused her to laugh scornfully, as though Peter had proposed something pretentious and ludicrous, such as giving Byron a gold crown to wear at the playground.

When Peter forced Diane to discuss it seriously, she had found several books on child rearing that maintained although there was no medical benefit to circumcision, father and son should be similarly outfitted, lest the difference cause anxiety in the child. It had been done to Peter, so—

Yes, it was done to me, Peter thought, so how bad could it be?

He wanted to wave good-bye or blow Byron a kiss (just walking away after such a long communion seemed almost rude), but he was made self-conscious by the sympathetic and slightly patronizing gaze of the nurse. Peter waited until the nurse turned her back before waving his farewell to Byron. Peter kept up the wave so long, however, that the nurse caught him at it anyway. In response, made mute by the glass partition, the nurse mouthed, “Good night, Daddy.” Peter was disgusted.

He left humiliated and stood uncomfortably in the peculiar carton-shaped elevator (we are eggs, he thought) next to a lot of pale, puffy faces that housed enervated eyes. Peter held his breath, convinced the air must contain an infinity of deadly germs. With each stride across the marble lobby, Peter hurried toward life, through the swivel doors, and trotted out of New York Hospital’s cul-de-sac for First Avenue, where the cars rode a concrete conveyor belt in awkward starts and stops.

Peter was late for his dinner at Rachel’s and these days it was a mistake for him to give her any cause for complaint. And he wasn’t lucky in catching a taxi, so that by the time he entered the somewhat dark vestibule of the town house and rang the buzzer for Rachel’s apartment, he suspected (as always seemed the case with him and women) that things would begin badly.

Indeed, when he had finished trudging up the four flights, he found Rachel waiting at her door with a sad tilt of her head, biting her lower lip. She said immediately, despite the pretty green dress and heavy makeup, “I think we should have canceled.”

“Nonsense,” he answered, and led her in, shutting the door before embracing her. Her wide mouth remained closed and dry, although she arched her body into him pliantly. “I’ve missed you.”

“Oh, God,” she answered, and buried her head in his chest.

He looked down at her curly head of black hair, parted severely on one side. The white of her scalp gleamed in the tangle and reminded him of his son’s small head: both were fragile and in his care. He didn’t feel unhappy, disgusted by his desires and absurd immorality. He felt exuberant. “Cheer up,” he said, pulling her out from hiding against his body.

She looked shyly into his eyes and her chin quivered. But she spoke sharply: “That’s a pretty hopeless request.”

“No, it isn’t,” he insisted, and leaned forward, kissing her lightly, backing away, and going in again, this time pressing harder, staying longer, parting the lips slightly. “You’re sweet,” he whispered.

“Yeah, yeah,” she whispered, and ducked her head down to avoid another kiss. “What do you want to drink?” she continued, and walked away from him, down the short, narrow hallway, into her one-room apartment.

Once, presumably, the Chelsea town house had been a family residence and this small box of a room had belonged to the maid, the nanny or served as the nursery. The small brick fireplace still remained; but what must have been detailed moldings were now covered by featureless plasterboard, and the pretty lead-glass windows had become blank squares of Thermopane, their metal casings painted white in a futile effort to conceal their modernity. The first time Peter had seen the apartment it had been in a state of college-girl disarray. The sleeper couch was still open from the previous night (embarrassed, she had immediately closed it up, not bothering to straighten the sheets, so that one end continued to wink out even after the cushions were replaced), there were clothes everywhere, and a portable typewriter and a portable television were sharing space on the round butcher-block table. Beside them were an overflowing ashtray and several take-out coffees, one of them still half full.

Tonight, however, everything was in order or, at least, in the order it would appear for a social evening. The couch was a couch, the butcher-block table was set for two, and both the television and typewriter were put away on the white shelving that framed either side of the fireplace. Even the last was dressed for the occasion; several small, gray pieces of wood were stacked, unlit, inside. The results might have seemed pathetic to most, but knowing Rachel, knowing what it cost her to admit she wanted his good opinion, to masquerade as domestically female in any way, Peter was impressed with her bravery, no matter how small the tangible results.

“Do you want wine or scotch?” she asked.

“Wine.”

“How’s Diane?” Rachel asked after his wife’s health with a remarkable absence of tension, hostility, or curiosity.

“Ugh.” The memory of that scene in the hospital room weighed him down onto the couch. “She’s got post-postpartum blues. Raging hormones.”

“Who doesn’t these days?” Rachel said, her quick comic timing running smoothly. “God, I’m horrible. I can’t open this,” she added, bringing the bottle of red wine to Peter with the cork only slightly lifted out by her primitive opener. Peter had to hold the bottle between his feet and pull with both hands before succeeding in an almost explosive release. He looked absurd right afterward, hanging on to the corkscrew for dear life, the bottle still between his feet, a monkey botching a man’s job.

“Cheers,” Rachel said. “Let’s see if you can get it to your mouth like that.”

“Why don’t you get a decent corkscrew? This is a joke.”

She held out a glass for him to fill. “What should we drink to — your newborn baby? Or maybe to a second child?” She looked at him coldly, her black, black eyes challenging him.“Isn’t this fun?”

He started to pour. “It’s going to be.”

ERIC FELT like a murderer, a poisoner who has administered a dose strong enough to kill, but not kill quickly, and is forced to watch his victim’s death agony, the killer’s remorse and terror mounting even as he knows he cannot undo the deed. Nina had fallen apart in front of him, an exhausted, cursing, delusional wreck, and he was reduced to a wide-eyed child, speechless with fright.

Eric’s duties as a coach had been superseded hours before, first by one of the nurses and then by Dr. Ephron. Nina had shown absolutely no respect for Eric’s instructions. At one point, she answered him, “Fuck off. You breathe!” Not that she spoke to Ephron any differently. “Get your hands off me, asshole!” Nina had screamed during one of the internal examinations. My God, she was a tough lady underneath all that dreamy contemplativeness and girlish yearning for cuddles and hugs.

During transition Eric changed his evaluation. Nina wasn’t tough. The cursing, the wildness of her desire to be free of the pain showed a remarkable lack of endurance. Although he understood that she was going through the worst kind of delivery, over twenty hours of severe back labor, nevertheless her endless requests for painkillers (that had eventually provoked Ephron, he suspected, into overdosing Nina, since she was way too sleepy, passing out in between contractions) seemed cowardly and immature to him. Although Eric hated to think that — to criticize someone who is dying horribly of a poison you’ve injected didn’t strike Eric as polite — still, along with his awe at Nina’s free expression of rage, he was disappointed by her lack of guts.