Rafael Yglesias - Only Children

“Fine. She’s bounced back from the C section.”

“Strong girl,” Gail said, with a nod to herself, confirming previous knowledge. “I admire her for planning to go back to work so soon. I should have.”

Peter closed his eyes and sighed. Since women’s liberation had made such talk fashionable, Gail spoke this way, in little phrases of sacrifice, about her now-defunct ambition to be a painter. Even the recent trend toward praising women for staying home, for the benefits of a nonworking mother, hadn’t discouraged the subtle complaints. Peter’s irritation made him provocative: “You’re chief fund raiser for the most important museum in New York. If you’d gone back to work earlier, you couldn’t have accomplished anything more. You merely would have done it sooner.”

Gail smiled to herself. “I meant my painting. You can’t not garden for ten years and expect to have fertile soil when you return.”

“What about Grandma Moses?”

“What are you saying, Peter?” Gail picked up her ice water and took a healthy gulp. There was nothing dainty about her physically; she might push her emotional food about with a reluctant appetite, but she swallowed the real meal with gusto.

“Since Diane fired Mrs. Murphy, I haven’t gotten a solid eight hours. I must be cranky.”

“You’re saying I’m a dilettante,” Gail commented.

“If you’re a dilettante, what does that make me? No, I’m saying, if you had wanted to paint, you would have. You didn’t sacrifice it for your children.”

“Well, thank you. I’m glad to find that out. Why did Diane fire Mrs. Murphy?” Gail moved on, but without rush, her tone not making a point of changing the subject — simply altering it.

Peter laughed. “I’m sorry if I hurt your feelings.”

“That’s nice of you. Did they have a fight? Was she a nuisance?”

“Diane likes things done her way.”

“Good for her. But she’s going to get some help?”

“She has to. To go back to work.”

“Trying to make partner means late hours,” Gail said. She squinted at the bright light coming from the restaurant’s windows. “I remember that much from being married to your father. Are you going to take the load?”

“No. Now that I’ve convinced the foundation to commit more money to theater, I’II have to go more often. We’re funding six theaters in the city and maybe one particular production. That means a lot of cocktail parties and openings.”

“When is my grandson going to see his parents then?” Gail asked without emotion, despite the accusation of neglect.

“On the weekends. You’re not making sense, Mother. You regret giving up your career, but attack—”

“There’s a difference between going to work from nine to five and never being there.”

“I’ve never done anything right in my whole life. You know that. Why should this be any different?” Peter smiled pleasantly, held his head still, his eyes returning her irritated glance evenly. The bluff seemed to work. She opened her mouth to speak, but then shut it, looked off, and frowned. Peter’s heart beat loudly while waiting to see if she would fold, but taking in the chips seemed a lonely victory after all.

“When you screw up with children,” Gail said, her head still turned away, the small diamond in her earlobe washed out by the strong light, “you mess up a person, not a project.” She looked at him. “And you’re faced with your failure for the rest of your life.”

“Are you—”

“No, I’m not,” again faster than he could be. “But I came close. I think it’s my duty to warn you. I’ve told you many times, there are no hidden meanings in what I say. If there’s something I don’t want to admit to, I say nothing. I don’t believe in lying. People always know, or can guess, or, worse, find out.”

She doesn’t have to lie, he thought. She can contradict herself with absolute conviction, sometimes within a sentence. “How old was I when you and Dad split up?”

“You don’t remember?”

“I don’t know how old I was.”

“You were five. Your fifth birthday was the last party we hosted together.”

“I presume that was when you came close.”

Gail blinked her eyes. “Came close to what? Are you done? Do you want more coffee?”

“Yes. I mean, no, I’m finished.”

She signaled to the waiter, again the hand up, assertive, but casual, and made a writing motion. She looked back at him, with cocktail cheerfulness. “Going back to the office?”

“Yes. Was it the divorce?” Peter asked.

“What are you talking about?”

“Was it the divorce that came close to screwing me up forever, is that what you meant?”

“What gave you that idea?” The waiter handed her a leather case with the check inside. She opened it and frowned. “Outrageous.”

“Let me put it on the foundation,” he offered.

She laid a platinum American Express card down. “Let your stepfather pay.”

“He has a platinum card!” Peter couldn’t suppress his horror at this foolish ostentation.

“He likes to remind himself he’s rich. I think he worries it’s all a dream and needs to pinch himself.”

“Never thought discounting electronics would bring Gimbel’s and Macy’s to their knees?”

“Exactly. He chuckles every time he sees one of their sales in the Times .”

“He does ?” Peter was again unable to keep disdain out of his tone.

“Kyle had to struggle for everything he has — you wouldn’t understand.”

“I know, I know. I’m spoiled, privileged.”

“Well, you are privileged, Peter. You can’t deny it.”

“I was admitting it.” He felt the exhaustion of being with Gail; he had spent the lunch shoring himself up against the surf of her critical and whimsical tide, but erosion was inevitable. Time to move away from her ocean.

He put Gail in a cab and walked back to his office in the humid, smelly midtown streets. Only when standing above the central air conditioning vent under his office window, feeling the cool billow his shirt, did he remember that he never got an answer.

Was it the divorce, Mom? Did that almost crush me?

Why wouldn’t she answer? Habit?

She didn’t want to answer. She admitted that herself.

The cold air snaked up his arms and chilled their hollows. He shivered. I am crushed, crumpled in her pocketbook like a forgotten phone message. Your son called.

Like a recalcitrant city agency, she just never got back to him. So what? He inspected himself for damage. He didn’t feel a thing. His mother was a vain woman who took out his father’s desertion on him. She neglected Peter to cater to her new husband, making sure she didn’t lose another. So what?

Diane would never do that. She loved Byron. Couldn’t stand anyone, not even Mrs. Murphy, handling him. Diane was ferocious, a lioness. There was no danger. At least he’d done that one thing right: found a real mother to his son.

“I’M GONNA drive you home from the hospital,” Eric’s father had insisted on the phone that morning. “I don’t want some schmuck cabdriver killing my grandson.” Eric had tried to dissuade him, knowing that Nina would want their first experience at home with Luke to be private, but lost the battle.

Later he and Nina sat together, ashamed to look each other in the eyes, while they knew Dr. Ephron was doing the circumcision in the nursery next door. Nina’s mother, Joan, interrupted with a phone call. She wanted to fly in for the weekend, along with Nina’s youngest sister, and “help with the transition home,” as Joan put it.

“I can’t talk right now. But I think you should wait until the following weekend. Give us a chance to settle in.” Nina listened for a second and insisted, “I can’t talk right now,” and hung up. Faintly they heard a baby wailing. Eric looked at her. Nina dismissed his silent question. “Could be anyone. We should walk around. Do something.”