Rafael Yglesias - Only Children

Peter had opened his mouth several times to answer, but she kept on, her pauses unexpected.

“—she knows what she’s doing. And she’s ready right now, just like your wife needs. But you don’t even have to see her or talk to her. I just felt obliged to help out, you understand?”

“Yes—”

“And my friend, she’s good, just as good as me. Although I like to think I’m the best, you understand; we all think we’re special in some ways. I may not be much — I didn’t get much schooling, I’m no good handling doctors or Con Edison, but I knows children. I love them and take good care. My friend’s the same. But let me tell you something, you can never tell my friend I said so, but there’s no need to be paying her three hundred dollars. She’ll be happy with two hundred and fifty.”

“Oh?” Peter said, at last with something firm to grasp.

“Oh, my, three hundred! You don’t need to be paying nobody that much. But now don’t you be telling Francine I said so. She’d kill me! But really there’s no need to be paying anybody that much.”

“I see. How do I — how do we get in touch — how do we call—”

“I can give you Francine’s telephone number. She knows all about the job. Hope you don’t mind my talking. Course, I didn’t tell her nothing about money. I don’t be talking money with my friends. That’s not something I do. Her number is—”

“Hold on.” He got a pad and pen and wrote down the digits. She repeated her speech again about how rarely she recommended anyone because of her fear that she would feel ashamed later. And once again she referred to the money, asking for an assurance that Peter and Diane wouldn’t tell Francine how much they might have offered if she, Pearl, hadn’t told them otherwise.

The call left him laughing. The intrigue this black woman had gone in for, on the one hand getting a job for her friend, on the other making sure she wasn’t paid more than herself, reminded him of New York theater people, allies who pulled for each other as long as none of their separate boats got too far in front. When Ted Bishop, head of the Harlequin Theater, had lobbied Peter to get the Stillman Foundation to put up money to help relocate the Uptown Theater (in theory a rival of Harlequin), Peter had done so and reported back to Ted his success: a hundred thousand for the move. Peter had forgotten to calculate that that was twice the foundation’s contribution to Harlequin for the past two seasons. Consequently, for the next six months he had to listen to Ted slight the Uptown Theater (now in midtown) until Peter convinced the foundation to liberate additional funds to give Ted one hundred thousand to refurbish Harlequin. Indeed, he reflected, this ignorant southern black had, unlike Ted Bishop, known in advance she would be jealous if her friend was paid more. What a thought. What if education and a privileged rearing only resulted in more self-deception rather than extra generosity?

And who had taught Peter his lessons? His mother, with her pretense of artistic talent? Or sad-eyed Swedish Gertrude, too shy to look his stepfather in the face, but able to read bedtime stories with such passion and fervor that Peter fell in love with being an audience? Or was it his English nanny, Betty? Betty had a taste for the theater and talked his parents, or at least his pretentious mother, into permitting her to bring Peter along for her weekly excursions to Shakespeare in the Park, Broadway matinees, and even several baffling Off-Broadway works.

But that was different from these black women caretakers. Surely they wouldn’t be taking Byron to see Kevin Kline at the Public or hear Mandy Patinkin sing Sondheim. Maybe Dreamgirls , he thought, and broke up again.

Shouldn’t I be horrified? Allowing my son to be raised by ignorant, overweight women? Spending forty, fifty hours a week in their care — that must have an effect.

He tried to remember his mother, Gail, caring for him — young, embracing him, taking him to the park, bathing him, holding him, reading a story at night.

But there were few memories.

Gail had held Peter’s head over the toilet one ill night, sick with dreams of grotesque creatures, wakened by vomiting. Later her elegant hand had tilted a crystal glass of ginger ale to his lips. He remembered the pale bubbles dancing on her wedding diamond.

It must have been a Sunday. The nanny’s day off.

Otherwise the images were of Gertrude’s thin, straight blond hair, so stiff the edge of her ear split through it; or the Pole’s sauerkraut lunches; or the little heaves of Betty’s shelf of a bosom, sighing over romantic lyrics, swelling with the brassy Broadway overtures.

Then, later, in real childhood, in the limber elasticity before the voice changed, Peter’s life was school and visiting his friend Gary. Dinner after dinner with Gary. Summer camp with Gary, overhearing fights between Gary’s parents, sleeping in Gary’s upper bunk on weekends.

Peter must have spent time at his own home.

But he couldn’t remember it.

“Do you remember that awful woman Paula?” his mother said idly at one interminable Thanksgiving dinner.

“Gary’s mother? Of course.”

“She liked to tell people that we dumped you on them. That you were constantly at their house.”

“I did spend a lot of time there.”

“Because you wanted to! And because Gary refused to stay over with you. Remember? He was too sensitive.”

Peter thought about it, tried to recall. He just naturally seemed to end up staying for dinner at Gary’s. Adding him wasn’t hard. After all, Gary’s parents almost never cooked. Mostly it was a diet of pizza, deli, Chinese food.

“They didn’t seem to mind,” he had answered.

“No! She loved it. Kept Gary out of her hair. And she could brag we were neglectful parents.”

But you were, Mother. Children didn’t interest you.

“Peter! Peter!” Diane’s voice, hoarse and angry, called out. Behind it, a background noise: he heard a siren wail. Not a siren. His son, crying.

Peter got up from his desk, opened the study door. “What is it?”

“Give him a bottle!”

“What!” he said, shouting to be heard above Byron’s siren.

“There’s a bottle of formula on the counter!” she shouted from the dark of their bedroom. “Give it to him!”

Peter had heard the first time. He considered reminding Diane that he had warned her — he wouldn’t help take care of Byron. He listened to Byron’s wail, rising to a pitch, fading out, rising again. It didn’t bother him.

“Hurry up!” she said.

Why not? Peter walked into the kitchen. A bottle — it looked like a missile to him — stood on the counter. He took it into Byron’s room.

Byron’s body was thrashing in the crib. He grunted and farted and then let his siren sound. There was something frightening in the activeness of his activity. Arms flailed. He bumped his face into the mattress repeatedly, trying to lift himself.

For a moment, Peter puzzled over how to pick up Byron and hold on to the bottle. He put it on a shelf beside the rocker. When he grabbed Byron, the siren was cut off. Peter lifted him by his bird’s chest, puffed with bone. Byron arched his back when Peter took him in his arms, his head thrusting for escape. But when Peter brought the bottle into Byron’s vision, the little boy went still. His eyes widened.

With delight at the sight.

With suspense at the pause.

His mouth opened in an O. Peter put the bottle nipple inside and the lips clamped, the cheeks puffed, his jaw worked.

“You like this,” Peter said, chuckling.

“What?” Diane called out.

Byron’s body started. “Shhh,” Peter said. “Nothing,” he called out.