Rafael Yglesias - Only Children

“Sure, Eric. Give her my love. Call me. Call me when you can.”

“I will.” Joan had said his name so sweetly, unlike her more typical formal tone. He had never heard any emotion in her voice before.

He walked back, through the rooms that an hour ago he had thought would be witness to a great tragedy. They looked small, dirty, unimportant now. A nurse waved him into a room with several beds separated by curtains. “She’s over there.”

Nina was asleep, her head rolled to one side, her lips cracked and dry.

“You can wake her,” the nurse said. “She won’t remember, but you can wake her.”

Eric shook her shoulder. Nina’s eyes opened. They were large pools of blue, unfocused. “Hi,” she said, her voice lilting, although hoarse.

“We had a boy,” he said softly.

“Really?” She sounded happy.

“You had a beautiful baby boy!” the nurse called out. “He’s big like his daddy.”

“Is that true?” Eric asked. The nurse nodded. He looked down at Nina. She was asleep again. He took her hand, the IV still plugged into her thin arm.

Her eyes opened. “What happened?” she asked.

He started to laugh, then realized she didn’t know. “You had a boy.”

“Really?” The same wonder and happiness and surprise.

“She doesn’t remember?” he asked the nurse.

“The anesthesia. You had a beautiful baby boy! Lots of hair! Big!”

“Have you seen him?” Nina asked.

“Yeah, I held him! You did great, Nina.”

She shivered. “I’m so cold. Can I have a blanket?”

She was already covered by two. He turned to the nurse, who answered before he asked: “The anesthesia. She doesn’t need a blanket.”

When he looked down at her, she was asleep again. He moved to go, but her eyes opened. “Eric?”

“I’m here.”

“What happened?”

“You had a baby boy. He’s fine.”

“Really?” Pure happiness. Then sleep.

He waited. The nurse said, “Go home. You need rest. She’ll be out of it for a while.” But he waited.

Nina opened her eyes, her teeth chattering.

“Eric?”

“I’m here.”

“What happened?”

“We had a baby boy.”

“Really?”

Finally, he left, convinced his presence was pointless. The walk home was tedious, dreary, and made him feel his almost hallucinogenic fatigue. There was no noise of congratulation. There should be a parade, a crowd of welcome. People went about their business as if it were just another day.

But he knew it wasn’t. His son was born. His missile into the future. Eric had to make his fortune for him, ready the world, beat it down if necessary, so his boy could tread on a smooth surface into glory.

Ramon, the small, plump doorman, was on duty. He pumped Eric’s hand. “ Un muchacho! ” he said. “A boy! You must be happy.”

Frances, a mother of three (she was explaining to the eldest that Eric and Nina had just had a baby), interrupted: “Now, now, a girl is just as good.”

Ramon nodded solemnly at her and then winked at Eric.

Eric went upstairs and walked into their empty apartment. Then he remembered that he had forgotten to ask if Gomez was dead.

He went into the bedroom that tomorrow he would have to set up as the nursery. Next to the phone was the list of friends he was supposed to call.

After four conversations, he quit. The tone of them was hollow, routine, drained of the pleasure he felt and wanted to go on feeling. The memory of that little face, scratched, puffy, needing him, came back over and over.

He left the phone off the hook and went into the living room, searching for the right cut on the Messiah , and gingerly put the needle down. He did something that Nina never allowed — he turned the volume all the way up:

“ And unto us a child is born … ”

The thrilled voices drowned everything, the traffic, the vague echo of conversation from the courtyard. He climbed on top of the coffee table, shut his eyes, and swayed, embraced by their exhilaration and his joy.

“ And unto us a son is given … ”

Yes, he had almost died. He was a gift snatched from death.

“ And He shall reign forever and ever … ”

Beyond their deaths. Beyond their love. He would go on forever.

“ For unto us a child is born .”

He had survived to be theirs, to be the perfect product of their union.

“ For unto us a son is given .”

A gift from the heavens, from the pure universe. A chance to be perfect. He held his invisible son in his arms, the music cascading in the apartment, his eyes shut, seeing the little bruised face, and exulted: his son was born and the world would be changed forever and forever.

THEY NAMED him Luke Thomas Gold.

Nina had wanted to honor her uncle Lawrence, Eric his grandmother Tessie. Eric’s religion, although he didn’t practice it, forbade Nina from using the actual name, so she settled for the same initial (choosing Luke from the New Testament), and Eric didn’t object. That was typical of his erratic obeisance to Judaism. “Luke was a Jew, wasn’t he?” Eric said. “All the early Christians were Jews.” Eric chose Thomas for Tessie — the connection seemed dim to Nina — and Luke won out as the first name because he was a son after all and was going to bear his father’s surname forever. Eric himself made that point. All in all she was pleased.

When Nina came out of the anesthesia, she phoned everyone she felt safe disturbing at midnight. They all said, “You must be tired,” and she agreed, she was, but she had no desire to sleep.

She told the nurse to bring Luke in — he wasn’t called that yet; he was known as the “Gold baby,” summoning an image of a statuette — but she was told that he was under the incubating lamps as a precaution, given his traumatic birth, and was supposed to remain there until 6:00 A.M. Did she want to be disturbed then or left alone until 10:00?

Surely she would be asleep by 6:00. She spoke with Eric. They settled on the name. He sounded dead. His voice was empty, bereft. He kept asking, “Are you all right? You sound fine,” sounding disappointed by her answers. She tried to explain. Her muscles hurt, she dared not move, touch, or even think about her vagina (when the nurse changed the bandage, a glimpse of the blood-soaked wad made Nina queasy), and Nina worried about Luke, replaying the doctor’s assurances, yet fussing over the fact that he had to be under an incubating lamp. Nevertheless, in spite of it all, she felt free, young, alive again. The mass was out of her stomach, she had had a boy (something about that was a relief, she couldn’t say what), and she knew, for the first time really, that it was going to be all right, that she had made it through, succeeded in the only things that really counted, the production of a child and the preservation of her life.

She tried to sleep; but the room was hot, and her sore body needed coolness. The air conditioning, Nina discovered, wasn’t working. She summoned a nurse, who impatiently said, “They’ll fix it in the morning. You should sleep.”

“I can’t! It’s too hot. That’s why I want the air conditioning fixed.” Nina let out a noise of nervous laughter, a habitual punctuation mark to any expression of anger.

“We’ll open the window,” the nurse said, moving to it.

“It doesn’t open,” Nina said.

The nurse worked at it anyway, pulling and groaning at the narrow metal handle. No one believes me about anything, Nina thought. I have no authority in my voice, that’s what it is. If it was deeper, they’d believe me.

“It doesn’t open,” the nurse said.

Nina’s snort of laughter pushed the words out: “That’s what I said.”