Rafael Yglesias - Only Children

Don’t tell him. If you don’t tell him you made a mistake, he’ll never know. But please, please stop crying!

“An ambulance is on the way. I’ll get a blanket from the car. Don’t move, okay? You got that? Don’t move.”

I hear Byron. He’s coming. He peed in the bed again. Well, I’m staying asleep. Peter can deal with it.

I’m not needed.

Just go to sleep. In the morning, I’ll be different. I’ll go to Saks and get a new mother.

“MAMA!” LUKE said. He jumped in front of her, arms out, grappling for her love, “Mama!”

She took his long body — the feet banged against her hips — and hugged him. Luke still fit onto her body, a perfectly designed accessory. His head rested on her shoulder, his face into her neck.

“Eric?” she called. She had worried; she had felt wrong all day.

“I’m here,” he said from the living room. An admission, and not a happy one.

She carried Luke with her. Eric sat on the couch, staring at a tape of He-Man playing on the television.

“What happened?” she asked.

“It’s over,” he said. “They’re all against me. There’s nothing I can do.” He gestured at the television and laughed. “Market was down today, down fifty-three points. Tom would have made money. Fuck him.”

“Eric!” She glanced at Luke to warn Eric about his language.

“Sorry. I’ll shut up.”

“What happened?”

“Your father — Joe called your father while I was out. Your father fired me. Joe is generously offering to keep me on under the old terms.”

“He what?” Luke said. He smiled as if Daddy must be making a joke. “Grandpa did what?”

“It’s an expression,” Nina began.

“Nothing, Luke,” Eric said harshly. “It’s nothing.”

“Sounds like something,” Luke said. He kicked his legs. “Let me down.”

“Okay,” Nina said. Luke’s body slid down her, fireman on a pole to the rescue.

“How could Grandpa fire you?” Luke asked Eric. “What does that mean? You’re not on fire.”

“We shouldn’t be talking about this,” Eric said to Nina.

Not talking about it is how you get to be like Father, Nina thought. She was angry. She stood on a hill and saw the hurt and the rage from a distance, in the past and in the future — the dark, swirling cloud of her family rushing to blot out her patch of sunlight, to rain on her happy meadow. “To fire,” she said to Luke, “means to stop someone from doing a job you’ve asked them to do. Like, if you pay somebody to do something, and you don’t want them to go on doing it, and you tell them to stop — that’s firing them. It has nothing to do with putting them on fire.”

Eric laughed. Not happily: he groaned. “Grandpa didn’t think I was making good bets with his money.”

“Well …” Luke put his hand out, palm up. “Well … it’s his money, right?”

“Actually, it was given to him by his grandfather,” Nina said. “But it’s Grandfather Tom’s now.”

“I see!” Luke hopped on one foot. “It was given to him and now he’s supposed to give it to Daddy.”

“We really shouldn’t be talking about this,” Eric said, but he smiled at Luke.

“Why not?” Nina asked Eric. “Why not? You didn’t do anything wrong. So Joe called up and Tom just let him do—”

“Yep,” Eric said.

“Did you call Tom?”

“No. I left the office without saying anything. Joe gave me a choice of staying on the old terms or leaving immediately. I didn’t answer him. I just left. I was a fool! I should have told your father first. I should have left a year ago when I was hot!” Eric lifted the cushions of the couch in his big hands. They came up as if they were small pillows and he flopped them down like an excited infant unable to control his motions.

“I know!” Luke called out. He glanced from the tape of He-Man and to Nina, his attention divided. “If Grandpa Tom’s grandpa gave him the money, then Grandpa Tom should give me the money, right? I’m his grandson. Then Daddy can make the bets.”

Made sense to Nina. Luke smiled at them, pleased with himself, convinced he had found the answer.

“You left the office,” Nina said to Eric. “Where have you been all day?”

“Daddy picked me up from school!” Luke said in a shout of joy.

“We went to the park, we went to Forbidden Planet and got a toy. We had fun, right, Luke?”

“Yep,” Luke said. “I got a new space toy.” Luke hooked her hand and gently tugged. “I’ll show you.”

“Why don’t you bring it out here and we can keep talking to Daddy?”

“Okay,” Luke said in his high trill of good cheer. He skipped out of the room.

“I’m sorry,” she said.

“I don’t know what to do,” Eric said. He didn’t look at her. He was ashamed.

“I love you,” she said. But that wasn’t enough. That wasn’t enough for him.

“I guess I have to stay. Can’t pay the bills otherwise. I’ll go in tomorrow and eat whatever I have to eat from Joe.”

Maybe it’s for the best, Nina thought. She went over to Eric and kissed his hot and worried brow. Eric leaned his cheek on her hand and closed his eyes.

“I love you,” she whispered.

He has us; he doesn’t need anything else.

PETER’S FORTRESS of truth was under siege. They kept trying to break in, and tell him lies. But Peter was busy. He had to take Byron to Philadelphia for Lily’s funeral; he had to explain Lily’s death in advance.

“You’d better tell him,” Diane had said. God, she sounded awful. Enervated, frantic, desperate, hopelessly lost, intensely focused on errands — as if her emotional keyboard had no chords, just atonal keys played by a chimp.

Peter’s mother called. Peter hung up at her hello.

Peter’s stepfather called. Peter hung up at his hello.

Then Peter turned on the phone machine. He ignored Byron’s insistent interrogation: “Why didn’t you talk? We’re here. Why don’t you answer?”

Peter shut off the phone machine speaker so he and Byron wouldn’t hear the pleas for him to pick up.

He gave Byron a bath. Byron sat in the water on his knees. He poured, he danced toys on the surface, he splashed them under the faucet’s torrential waterfall. Byron sang to his pretend things: oh, no, look out! Duck! I’ve got you now, you evil one! The tips of Byron’s mop of sandy hair got wet. The water darkened their color; the curls were glued to his neck and ears.

Do I tell him now?

“We’re going to Philadelphia tomorrow to see Mommy,” Peter said.

“Yay!” Byron shot up with pleasure, his lean stomach, perfect penis, and strong legs silky from the water. “We’re gonna see Mommy!”

“Yes. Won’t that be great?”

“Yeah,” Byron said, and looked solemn. “She’s been away a long time.”

“Well, she’ll be coming home with us.”

“Yea! Yea!”

(How do I tell him, Kotkin?

(Explain it simply. Don’t hedge. Tell him what you know and what you believe, but keep it simple. If it makes him unhappy, comfort him, but let him be unhappy. Don’t make him pretend he isn’t.)

“Will Grandma be there?” Byron asked.

The phone rang again. The machine picked it up.

“Well, you know Grandma’s been very sick. And she got sicker. She’s—” Peter couldn’t say the word — such a naked, ugly word.

“She died!” Byron’s eyes became circles; his mouth and jaw squeezed. He looked furious.

“Yes.”

“Because she got too old,” Byron said, his face set, very angry.

“Well …and sick too. We’re going to miss her.” Peter felt his eyes water. He had hated Lily. Well, not hate, but she was a silly woman with stupid values, and her presence was sandpaper on Diane’s skin.