Rafael Yglesias - Only Children

“Thank you.” Diane was melted. After all, this wasn’t a job interview. Pearl had no motive to praise Byron. This woman loved babies. Diane had to have her. “When does Lau—” she stopped herself. She didn’t want Pearl to know that she had met Karen the day before. “What’s your girl’s name?”

“Laura. She makes me laugh. She’s so proud and smart. Wish my daughter was like that. She has no opinion of herself. Not like Laura. She knows she’s something.”

“Laura’s in school?”

“All morning! I miss her. Have nothing to do. I get my work done in a hour. Do the washing Monday, my ironing’s done Tuesday. ” Pearl looked off, couldn’t spot Laura in the sandbox (she had crouched beneath the low concrete enclosure), and stood on her tiptoes until she did. “Wish they’d have another baby.” She peered in at Byron. “Right? Like you, strong boy! A baby brother for Laura. That would be good.”

Oh, Diane sagged, disappointed. She is fishing for a job. Laura’s mother, Karen, knows that, hence her reserved praise. For a moment Diane was quiet and considered abandoning her plan. But after all, even if it was an act with Byron, the performance was excellent. Isn’t that what we pay for? she asked herself. I’m a terrific lawyer, I don’t really care about my clients, but I work my butt off because I’m a performer. What’s the difference? “Next year,” Diane said, “I guess she’ll be in school all day.”

Pearl shook her head. “Don’t want to think about it. I’ll be so lonely.”

“I have to go back to work soon. I really should be back now.”

“Really? So soon? That’s terrible.”

“I need someone to take care of Byron.”

“What?”

“My son.”

“I’m getting so hard-of-hearing. I’m almost deaf. I really am. What’s his name again?”

“Byron,” Diane confessed, embarrassed.

Pearl looked puzzled. “Family name?”

“Sort of. I’d really like to hire you.”

“Thank you very much,” she said easily, unsurprised by the offer. “But I couldn’t leave my girl so soon. Her parents are counting on me, at least for the summer.”

“That’s not fair to you. Keep you hanging on through the summer without guaranteeing you a job for the fall and winter.”

“Oh, when they done with me, I be moving to Florida. Got good friends living there. I can get easy work. I stayed on for Laura.” She looked off again to check on her. “If they had another, I’d keep working up here. I don’t think they will. Her mother … ” She trailed off. “She has an important job. Don’t have time, I guess.”

Diane listened. She was convinced all of it was merely negotiating. She nodded seriously and thought about how Brian Stoppard handled such matters; dealing with this poor black woman was probably no different from handling a corporate vice-president. “I’d appreciate it if you could recommend someone. We live right there on Fifth and Tenth, in a three bedroom co-op. We can pay three hundred a week, maybe more if she can work at night sometimes.”

Pearl said, “Three hundred?” immediately.

“Is that too little?”

“I never was good at arithmetic. How much is that an hour?”

“Seven-fifty an hour.”

Pearl smiled. “No, ma’am. That’s not too little.” She looked into Byron’s carriage again. His eyes blinked rapidly at the spectacle of her face; his legs rippled the blankets; his arms waved at the air. “Hello,” she sang to him. “Oh, you’re cute. Can I pick him up?”

“Sure,” Diane said. A smile of triumph welled within her, although she kept her lips tight, her manner casual.

Pearl lifted him from the carriage. Her hands were enormous, the fingers meeting around his torso, smoky brown against the white stretchy. Pearl lifted him into the air. His mouth formed an O; his tiny feet kicked at the absence of ground; his eyes bulged at the big bright world.

Diane sighed. She had Pearl hooked. Things were under control.

ERIC AND NINA left the hospital with Luke on a beautiful spring day. They were driven the twelve blocks home by Eric’s father, Barry, who never went faster than fifteen miles an hour.

Miriam, Eric’s mother, sat next to her husband in the passenger seat, twisted around to keep her eyes on Luke, talking to Nina throughout the ride. Nina held Luke in her arms. She winced at every pothole (the episiotomy, the episiotomy, she thought, will there ever be an end to my pain?) and only occasionally heard her mother-in-law’s chatter.

“Eric was so big when he was born! I couldn’t carry him.”

“Oh, yeah!” her husband, Barry, said.

“He was over ten pounds!” she argued to him.

“Please!” he answered.

A truck rattled past Nina’s window, the unevenly paved section of Second Avenue shaking its cargo. Luke squealed. His sleepy eyelids squeezed together unhappily. “It’s okay, baby,” Nina said to him. “Just the crazy city.”

“No place to raise a child,” Miriam argued.

“The only place to raise kids,” Barry answered. “You want him to be some schmuck Westchester kid who wouldn’t have the smarts to pump gas?”

“That’s right, Dad,” Eric said. “Kids who grow up in the suburbs are almost unemployable in this country.”

“Please!” Barry said. “Their rich fathers give them jobs. They couldn’t get anything on their own.”

“Sure, sure,” Miriam said sarcastically about her husband’s remarks, although she kept her eyes on Nina and Luke. “Even if we had made the money to move to the suburbs, we wouldn’t have done it. For Eric’s sake! So much better for him to grow up playing in between cars, being chased by the blacks in the park.”

“There were no blacks chasing us in the park, Mom,” Eric said quickly, hoping to cut off his father’s angry response.

He failed. “Money had nothing to do with it! We could have moved to the suburbs on our income.”

Miriam smiled at Nina. She shook her head and closed her eyes sadly. Then she brought a hand to her lips, kissed it, and put the hand on her husband’s cheek. “No excitement! We have our baby grandson in the car.”

They’re kooks, Nina thought, not for the first time, but without a shudder of revulsion. They were gutted fish on a dock; their innards quivered in public for all the world to see. She looked down at Luke, asleep, his face a mask: the bridge of his nose fiat, the beautiful lips sealed, lying in state like a sculpture on a bishop’s tomb, the occupant done in cool marble, making him perfect and timeless. But he was a Jew, this baby, this son, this person from her and yet not from her.

Nina had told Eric not to let his parents come upstairs, just as she had prevented her parents (or her mother at any rate) from being there. She didn’t know why she had felt that she and Eric being alone with Luke the first time was important — until now. She didn’t want Luke to know anything of the world but them, the two of them, so different, her interior hidden, his exploded; she wanted Luke to make himself out of their incompatible materials, to fashion himself new, created by none of the old forms.

“Will you raise the baby Jewish?” Nina’s mother had once asked.

“Do you even know what that means?” she had answered.

“You know what I mean.”

“He will be raised by us,” Nina had said.

Her mother had frowned and said, “These things have to be thought about. I don’t care what you decide. But confusion isn’t good for children.”

“You think being raised Jewish isn’t confusing?”

“Being nothing is more confusing,” her mother had said.

“My baby won’t be nothing,” she had answered, furious.

The car pulled up in front of their building. Ramon, the afternoon doorman, rushed out to open the door, the cheeks on his fat, round face puffing up with his broad smile. “ ¡Hola! ” he shouted at Luke.