Rafael Yglesias - Only Children

“We’re going to slime them?” Luke asked.

“We’re gonna have a long play date, right Luke? I told my mommy and daddy that we had to have a long play date.”

“Well — okay, but I want to go back to my place.”

Good. “That’s good, see? We can make chemicals in the bathroom.”

“No, I don’t want to do that, Byron. Those aren’t real chemicals. That’s just soap and water.”

“Okay.” Can’t argue. Luke will play with those stupid boys if I argue. When we get to his house, I’ll do it anyway. “We’ll always be friends, right, Luke?”

“Well.” Luke put out his hand and looked at the sky. Even the sky was not as blue as his eyes. “If we know each other.”

“But we’ll try to always know each other, right?”

Luke put his eyes on Byron; they got dark. “Okay. But we can’t fight all the time about what to play.”

“But sometimes I don’t want to play what you play.”

“When that happens, we’ll play different things. Then, when we want to play something together, we’ll do it. Okay?”

“But it gets boring waiting.”

“Well.” Luke lowered his head. His black hair showed the white underneath. How does the dark show the light? “That’s the only way I know how to be friends.”

“Okay,” Byron said.

It’s too hard to fight everybody.

“We’ll do what you want, Luke.”

EERIC, LUKE, and Barry left the apartment to go to the park. It was early Sunday morning. The day before had been Luke’s fifth birthday. They carried with them Luke’s present from Nina and Eric. It was a bike, a two-wheeler, to replace his tricycle. Eric had prayed that Luke would ask Nina to teach him how to ride. Luke was still fearful of new physical adventures, a kind of instinctive cowardice that disturbed Eric and reminded him of his own indecisiveness. But Luke declined Nina’s tutorial offer and insisted that Daddy teach him. By chance, Eric’s parents had asked if they could come downtown for breakfast that morning, and Eric seized on this opportunity to invite his own father along, in the hope that if there were problems, Barry might be a help. After all, Barry had taught Eric how to ride. Of course, Eric was older when he had learned. Eight years old — it had taken Barry that long to afford a bike.

By now Eric understood that Luke was unusually smart. The response of the schools to the results of the IQ test made that clear. Despite Eric’s lack of connections, despite the horrendous surplus of applications, despite all the warnings that in order to get into a superior private school, a child had to be specially tutored from age zero, despite all that, Luke was accepted everywhere. Three schools called to urge Nina and Eric to select them. Their experience was so different from other parents that only one conclusion was possible.

Eric wanted to shout the news, to brag at every social function. He wanted every parent to know what they had been told at the nursery school by Luke’s teacher, a woman who had taught four-year-olds for thirty years. She said that Luke was the brightest child she had ever had. But Nina clamped down on Eric. Just say Luke is bright. That’s enough.

With the limitless choice of schools offered, they had a difficult time making their selection: they spent three weeks revisiting each school; they had meetings with headmasters and headmistresses eager to win them. Even Hunter was eager to get Luke. Eric wanted to pick Hunter, but Nina vetoed that. She thought the kids at Hunter were too grim, made into little adults, urged to acquire knowledge in order to gain applause. Luke loved learning; he wanted to know everything because he loved understanding. Nina wanted to preserve Luke’s unselfconscious love of knowledge. Eric could see that, so he went along with Nina, and they placed him in one of the better but not the hottest of New York private schools. “He’ll get bored,” Eric protested. “We’ll tell him what he needs to know,” she answered. By now, Eric had to read books on evolution, on biology, on the current developments in physics in order to keep up with Luke’s curiosity, his memory, and his ability to detect contradictions in the books they read to him. Luke worked with Nina on her designs, he listened with Eric to the business shows, Luke gobbled up all the scraps of information the world scattered about him, and then he played with his friends — there were so many of them — without displaying any of it. In kindergarten, Luke managed to keep his teachers in the dark for months, but by the end of the term, at the parent-teacher conference, Luke’s teacher said, “You have a remarkably intelligent child. Do you know that?” she asked, quite curious, apparently unsure.

“Yes,” Nina said. Eric nodded.

The teacher stared at them. “He knows things about geology, about space, about, well, about most things, that I don’t know. I sometimes ask him to answer the questions of the other kids. He used to refuse to answer. He’s getting over that. He’s more comfortable with his natural role as a leader.”

A leader. The word expanded Eric’s nostrils; he breathed in the air, electric with promise. He dared not hope his son would escape the generational curse of failure. The brains must come from Nina, Eric thought, so he prayed that self-destruction wouldn’t come from him.

Eric had accepted his defeat a year ago. He continued to work for Joe under the old terms, salary and a cut of commissions. No management fees, no discretion over client’ money. Joe had developed heart trouble over the winter and left each day after lunch, putting Sammy in charge. Once Joe was out of the office, Sammy copied Joe’s manner toward Eric, slipping his feet into his father’s vacant shoes. Sammy treated Eric amiably, but with an undercurrent of contempt. It didn’t matter. Eric earned a hundred and fifty thousand a year, enough to pay the bills. Tom, perhaps out of guilt, had set up a trust fund for Luke. The money would be there for Luke to go through Harvard, or wherever it was that he would end up. As long as Eric’s genes didn’t interfere, Luke would be extraordinary.

Eric didn’t feel bad. He was Luke’s caretaker; he was there to guard the jewel until it went on display for the world to gasp at.

And best of all, Nina was eight months pregnant. Only a month and there would be another. Another chance. And this time Eric wouldn’t be nervous, he wouldn’t doubt it was worth the effort, he wouldn’t allow his own struggles to distract him from the pleasure of watching new life grow in his garden.

Luke was excited. He wanted to try the bike on the street.

“No, let’s get to the park,” Eric said.

“Why?” Luke asked.

“It’s easier to ride at the park,” Barry said. “The pavement is much smoother.”

“It is?” Luke said, and his brain clicked on. Eric saw it happen, knew it was coming. “No, it isn’t. Grandpa. It’s true this is cement and that’s tar, but it isn’t much smoother.”

Eric looked at his father and smiled.

“Well.” Barry tried desperately. “The park has wider streets—”

“No,” Luke began gently. He was forced to contradict grownups a lot and it pained him. It took Nina more than a year to persuade Luke that if he spoke politely, no one would mind being corrected. “No, Grandpa, actually—”

Eric interrupted. “The reason we should try in the park is because it’s your first time and there are people walking around here. If you have trouble controlling the bike, you’ll worry about hitting them. At this hour the park is usually empty and you can concentrate on balancing, you don’t have to worry about steering.”

“I have to worry a little about steering, right?” Luke said, and laughed. “I don’t want to crash into trees.”