Rafael Yglesias - Only Children

“Eric!” Nina called out. “What’s going on?”

“I can’t open the fucking bottle!” he yelled, but there was hopelessness in the volume. He had wanted so badly to take over, to relieve her of the burden. To be beaten by this silly bottle top, to have his altruism turned into buffoonery humiliated him.

“Don’t try to pull the whole top off!” Nina shouted from her bed. “Just the tip. It’s serrated.”

Luke wailed, gasping for air in between his raging sorrow. Eric stared at the beaten-up metal top. He had been grasping the larger lip where it met the glass. Now he could see the serration where the stove top widened out. Slowly, in disbelief that this would work, he gently pulled the tip to one side.

Magically, it came off in his hand, revealing the translucent brown of the nipple.

Eric gave the water to Luke who accepted the liquid ungraciously. Luke moaned and squealed from time to time, nagging Eric about his long delay in providing decent service. I’m not giving you a tip, Luke seemed to be saying.

Eric thought: this is the first night home. It won’t be this way forever. Luke’s eyes closed while he sucked. The rigid board became flesh again. Eric leaned his head back on the rocker. He was so tall it provided little support. Eric moved his ass forward so he could catch wood for his head to rest on. Luke started and moaned during Eric’s shift, and then relaxed again. At that, Eric allowed his own eyes to close.

The numbers of the ticker rolled by. The symbols were magic: they marched the world to poverty or wealth, executing dreams and tiring reality. Eric knew this wasn’t his life. In time, when he was stuffed with money, his body calm, his boy grown, his wife respectful, his name would roll by on the ticker with the equanimity of the numbers, the assurance of place. “One million,” he mumbled. “One point six million,” he whispered, a lullaby. “Two million five hundred thousand. Annual income. Net assets, forty to fifty million. The Wizard of Wall Street.” He would be picked up each morning at the door of their town house by a sleek limousine, its smoky glass revealing to the curious only their own ignorance and, inside, him, invulnerable, pampered, envied, his ideas (conceived in the quiet of his graceful life) assuaging panics and igniting booms.

A weight fell into Eric’s lap, startling him. The bottle had slid out of his hands. Luke was asleep, his mouth open, his body flat with relaxation. Success had come at last and Eric had missed the moment of its achievement.

But what had Eric achieved? If he got out of the chair, to place Luke in the carriage, wouldn’t the movement waken Luke?

I could stay here, holding him in my arms, lean my head back and sleep. He tried that. But Luke, despite his smallness, weighed in the crook of his arm. And keeping still was a distraction; the doing of nothing became an effort. He decided to risk moving Luke. He started to sit up.

The initial motion forward, the tightening of his stomach muscles produced an immediate reaction. Luke moaned, his head twitched, and his lips pursed. Eric froze in position, his back no longer leaning against the chair, and held his breath. Luke quieted, settled in; only now Eric had lost even the relative comfort of his former posture. He had begun the process of rising from the chair, and to give up, sagging back, would be as much of a jolt as continuing.

If I do this fast, with confidence, sure of myself, sure of my control of him, he will stay asleep. Eric committed himself to this notion and after a pause to ready himself, rose in one quick movement.

Although Luke’s head rolled in his arms and Eric tightened his grip around the body, there was no reaction. Luke remained passed out, his toothless mouth open, his neck retracted, the lids of his eyes shut, tiny blue veins made distinct by the translucence of his freshly made skin.

Luke sighed.

Eric stood in front of the carriage. How could he put Luke into it smoothly? Nina had said Luke must be put on his stomach — so as not to choke from spitting up — and that meant flipping him, like a pancake. Surely the splat of contact would rouse him.

But if Eric simply laid him down as he was, faceup, removing the mattress of his arms only a second before the real one, the transition would be less felt.

Could Luke really choke if he slept on his back? Eric had asked Nina that before, and she’d answered, irritated, “I don’t know! At the hospital they put them on their back sometimes, but the book said they should be on their stomachs. Just do it that way.”

He was exhausted. He couldn’t face another round of back and forth, back and forth. He leaned over the carriage, his arms extending, lowering Luke. Eric released Luke’s bottom and paused. No reaction. With his free hand he supported Luke’s head and slipped the other arm out. Luke’s eyes twitched, then were still. Gradually Eric allowed the head to rest and Luke was asleep in the carriage. Faceup. But asleep.

Eric covered him with the blanket and turned out the lights in the hall and in Luke’s room. Then he carefully maneuvered the carriage from the living room to the nursery.

There was a blissful quiet. A rest in the household that had had no peace since they arrived.

Could he really choke, I mean, choke to death, because he’s on his back? To risk flipping him seemed insane. Luke was at peace, at last; why bother him?

Eric went to bed. Nina slept stretched out, sunning herself in the night, a position she had gotten used to while big from the pregnancy. She used to sleep curled up, shrinking into infancy. Now she lay like a continent, floating on the world. One leg crossed onto his side. He nudged it to get room. She stirred, angrily (that day everything from her was either angry or hysterical), and he turned on his side, hugging the pillow.

He listened. He would hear choking.

The ticker began. ITT ANNOUNCES BUYBACK, TRADING CLOSED, ITT REOPENS AT 50. The options would be worth fifteen hundred each and he had paid two. They would be worth a hundred and fifty thousand dollars. Silly. A boy’s dream.

Nina woke him with a yell. “Eric! Eric!”

Eric stumbled on his way out of bed, his hand on his soft penis. He usually wore his underpants to sleep.

“Eric! Come in here!” She was screeching in a high pitch.

“What?” he asked, coming into Luke’s room. The sunlight glowed in Nina’s hair. She was crying.

“I can’t wake him!” she screamed, tears streaming down her face.

And there in the carriage was Luke. Dead.

Eric woke up.

He woke up gasping for air, his head thrust forward.

It was still night. Outside he heard a car alarm wailing for its owner. His heart pounded in his chest, rapping out its criticisms: put Luke on his stomach, you selfish pig.

There would be no rest anyway, he realized, lying there, his ear aching to hear sounds from Luke.

He got up, went inside, and stared at the motionless body. For a moment he thought the nightmare had come true: the chest was still. But he finally saw a slight rise and fall.

He pulled the blanket off.

He put his hands under the little arms.

He turned Luke. The legs curled; the head nosed into the mattress. For a moment Luke rubbed his face sideways, settling in.

Then the little empty mouth opened. A silent yell.

Eric nodded to himself with dismay.

Now came the scream.

Luke was up again.

NINA ACHED for bed. she begged her body for more energy. She peered past the nursing head of Luke to look at her thighs, studying the flab squashed out by the hard wood of the kitchen chair, and wondered if all her muscles were gone. She closed her eyes, her hot eyes, watering to relieve the harsh sandpaper lids, and felt her neck go liquid, her weighted chin sag. One deep breath and she would be asleep.