Rafael Yglesias - Only Children

(“And me?” Kotkin asked. “Am I also a little shit?”

(“You’re not real. You don’t exist.”)

Gail moved her hands away, twisting them together above her empty plate, wringing something out of them. “I didn’t know,” she said.

“I wasn’t a bad son, Mother. You were a lousy mother. My father wasn’t a lousy husband. You were a selfish, adulterous bitch.”

My God, I’m free.

Gail’s face trembled. She got small and wrinkled and old.

My God, I’m home. I’m out. I’m out of the sea of lies.

“Peter,” his old mother pleaded.

Beg me, Mother. Beg me for my love.

“Peter, that’s not true,” her voice watered, words sagging out of her throat, drowning in the air.

“You tell lies to protect yourself. I thought it was to hurt me. But the lies are to cover your nakedness. I’m not your son anymore. And Byron will have nothing to do with you. I don’t want to be reminded of your existence. It’s crazy—”

(“What do you think will happen if you say this to your mother?” Kotkin asked.

(“I think you’ll be out one customer.”

(Silence. Kotkin thinks I’m acting out, crazy, escaping from one jail cell into another.)

“It’s crazy, I know,” Peter groaned to the old woman who was his mother. “But I’ve never really been your son anyway. So let’s make it real. Let’s take away the fiction. Why should you have your illusions? I don’t have reality! Let’s take away your dreams, then maybe I can have some.”

He was crying. Happy five-year-old Peter was back in his cheeks, in his mouth, in his eyes, in every part of himself, crying at what they did to him, crying at their stupid, selfish love.

He pushed away from the table, fought to stand on the teetering world.

“I’m going home.”

Her face was strange, something old and different. I didn’t even know her.

“Home,” he sang to her. Maybe the word would tell her. Tell her his regret. “I wanted to love you.”

Peter covered his face on his way out. He didn’t want to see himself in the stranger’s eyes.

Go to the love you’ve got, Peter. Get there fast.

MOM DIED alone.

The doctor said it had happened fast, mostly during her sleep. Lily woke up with the episode already well under way; she suffered little, he claimed.

What bullshit. He was also in bed when it happened.

Diane tried to be rational. She went to the doctor, listened to his explanations, spoke to Lily’s friends, asked them where to arrange a funeral, found the director, made all these plans, all to happen quickly, to bury Lily as Lily would have wished: a respectable Jewish woman, with a solemn rabbi and a full house of her peers. Diane spent the day of her mother’s death being a good girl. She made all the right arrangements.

But orphans wander. In Philadelphia she was an orphan.

At first, she tried to stay. She sat in her mother’s kitchen, after the long, incredible day, and the event came to the door, entered, and sat at the table: Hello. Your mother died today. How do you feel?

She jumped up. Turned on the television. Cried.

Peter called to check on her and asked, Should we come down right now?

No, wait till the morning. Brave Diane. I’ll be all right.

We’ll come over, Lily’s friends said when they phoned.

No, no, brave Diane said, tomorrow. I want to be alone tonight.

Everyone said, We understand.

But Diane didn’t understand why she turned them away. Because I wasn’t there. I didn’t save her. And she cried, moaned in agony on her mother’s furniture. Peter said, “I’m very sorry. She loved you very much.”

For a second, she thought he was kidding her. He liked to be ironic, so ironic that the slow-witted took him literally and never knew they had been insulted.

But his voice choked when he repeated it: “I’m so sorry. She loved you very much.”

“Do you want me to tell Byron?” he asked later.

“We have to tell him!” Diane had shouted.

“I know. But do you want to — or me?”

She cried at that. She saw Byron, sandy hair askew, run in the door — right now; there he was, arms out, belly forward, face stretched: “Grandma! Grandma!”

Lily’s fat arms opened for him, hands greedy for him, at last a male she had made, on whom Lily could lavish all her vanity and indulgence. “I have a present for you,” Lily always said.

“Where?” Byron cried out, squirming in her arms, in ecstasy.

It was as though they had both died, not just Lily, but also the Byron that existed because of Lily.

And Lily’s Diane — she too was dead. Diane was pretend, a gift for Lily: a strong young woman, independent, determined, and efficient. That Diane lived in Lily’s mind and, with its death, must also die.

Later she walked into her mother’s room to look for clothes to bury Lily in and got stuck there weeping in front of the closet.

Do it right, Diane. You weren’t there to help her die; at least bury her right.

But she couldn’t stay in that house.

Finally, she gave up the vigil, walked out of the house of her childhood, out to her dead mother’s car, put on the sixties music — music of love and betrayal, of idiotic hope, music without any notes for death — and drove away.

Orphans wander. In Philadelphia she was an orphan.

Diane decided to drive to New York.

Mom died alone, she kept thinking.

Diane looked through the skimming cars and could see Lily, desperate, writhing in the pool of light from her hospital reading lamp, could see Lily now, on the highway, reach for Diane as her heart contracted, wringing life out of her. “Diane! Help me!”

Over and over, on the turnpike, car lights floating ahead— behind — hovering over the gray river, Diane could feel Lily’s horror: Where are you, Diane?

Why wasn’t I there? To hold her through it, to say good-bye, to kiss her away …

She pushed the car, pushed it up, faster and faster, away from the mistakes, from the pictures:

Lily, hand frozen in terror, reaching for Diane:

Lily, seated beside Byron, watching her grandson eat with the miracle of it reflected in her face; Lily in bloom, amazement at the presence of Byron’s life smoothing her jowls, easing her mouth into a smile: “Do you like it?”

“Un-huh!” Byron nodded at his grandma. “I love it!”

“He’s so delicious,” Lily had said that just yesterday when Diane told her Peter’s report of Byron’s happiness at the prenursery school.

Diane and Lily smiled at each other, at their mutual triumph. They had made Byron together, a relay race across the years, two husbandless women; Byron was there in their hands to show the world that they had survived.

Who’s going to listen to me brag now? Who’ll listen to the worst of me? Who’ll make me go on?

How much longer to New York? Diane checked the clock, her mileage, tried to identify where she was on the turnpike. She had to get back to Peter and Byron.

The Beatles sang it now on the stereo: “Get back. Get back to where you once belonged.”

But I don’t want to be Peter’s wife; I don’t want his invention. I want my mother’s: the brilliant student, the tough lawyer, the Supermom. “You were the smartest girl in your class. The other mothers died with envy.”

In Lily’s lonely triumphs, Diane was created. Diane had fought Lily hard as a teenager — and lost. Ended up just the way Lily had wanted: married to a rich man, worked at the right law firm, made the male Lily had craved.

The car began to vibrate. Diane felt the rumble run from the front to the back, across the roof, and start again.

I’m going too fast. Mom’s old car can’t take it

But in the cave of night, on the gray river, she had to hurry back. Only another half hour at this speed and she would be back, back to Lily’s creation. She could go into Byron’s room and hold him. She could put her ear on his smooth back and listen.