Rafael Yglesias - Only Children

In the night of their apartment Eric continued to rock his son. Nina slumped to her knees slowly. He heard her sob.

He didn’t care.

PETER LAY on the couch in his study, the book for a new musical in his lap, and listened to his just purchased compact disk player, a clever machine hardly larger than the disk itself, through his new earphones. He had on a recording of the Follies concert and was enthralled.

There was so much genius in the world.

Writers, actors, composers, designers, painters, dancers, directors — geniuses everywhere, it seemed to Peter (at least sometimes), even though the arts were dying financially, even though serious work was rarely popular. But that sad fact was what made Peter necessary. And important. And worthwhile.

Peter was today’s commissioning Borgia, today’s Pope ordering Michelangelo to paint the Sistine Chapel, today’s Theo supporting Vincent. He stood, like a breaker wall, against the surf of mediocrity, the foam of vulgar nonsense. If Peter hadn’t funded The Titan , its brilliant score might never have been heard, certainly not on Broadway, and then there would have been no Pulitzer, no big-budget movie. That gem, that work of genius, would never have shone so bright without Peter’s quiet support. Quiet? Invisible, rather. Oh, to be sure, there was a little note in the program: the producers thank the Stillman Foundation for its help, blah, blah. But no Peter Hummel was identified as having talked the foundation into writing the check. Among his colleagues, Peter was credited. To the theater producers, to the major artists of today, Peter was known to be an angel, a true angel, his money not a lien against future success, nor an unthinking pretension of a rich widow. But of course — and recent cutbacks had made Peter feel this fact keenly — the money wasn’t Peter’s.

Diane had promised sex. Peter glanced at the clock. She had wanted to take a bath first. Time was up.

Peter had come home hungry for Diane. But now, after dinner, after Byron’s and Diane’s baths, Peter was hours away from the titillation of the Harlequin Theater’s cocktail party. There, along with the sour wine and dry cheese, were the female hors d’oeuvres that had whetted his appetite. Blond, brunette, black, and red-haired; full-breasted and languorous, small-breasted and energetic; long-limbed and shy, small-boned and bold; wide shoulders and long necks, tiny wrists and red nails; big eyes, warm browns, bright blues, glistening greens; dark skin, white skin, freckles, pimples, shaved armpits, downy arms, the menagerie of women, so various, each reinventing her sex so that they seemed unrelated, loose from their cages, free in the wild to dazzle men. Peter had come home horny, wanting to go out, to seduce Diane, to taste her long-haired vagina and the dark meat of her skin.

That appetite hadn’t survived the tepid pizza and the dinner conversation, an hour of Diane’s complaint that Byron hadn’t greeted her when she came home. The sexual hunger had cramped in his belly and been forgotten.

While they ate the thick-crusted and tasteless pizza, Byron ignored Diane’s sporadic and irritated “Hello, Byron!” to coo at Peter. Finally Peter held out his hand to quiet Byron. Byron gripped his father’s pinkie in his soft, padded fist and squeezed with an impressive but harmless might.

“He loves everybody but me,” Diane said.

“Nonsense,” Peter answered. “It’s just the opposite. Punishing you for deserting him proves how much he loves you.”

“He’s four months old! How could he know to single me out?”

“We learn early, my dear,” Peter said, and laughed, shaking his pinkie and, with it, Byron’s hand. “Right?” he asked his son. Byron opened his toothless mouth and chortled. The baby feet kicked with pleasure.

“Come here,” Diane said, and grabbed her laughing son. This time, held aloft, while Diane buried her face into Byron’s belly, kissing his chest and then the round pearl of his face, this time, this Byron giggled and smiled at Diane with pleasure. Relieved, Diane squeezed Byron to her, madly kissing his skull, his ear, his brow, his eyes, his dollop of a nose, and then she pursed her lips in front of his rounded, puffy lips and kissed him on the mouth.

The sight was obscene to Peter. “Okay, okay,” he said. “You’re gonna turn him into a fag.”

“Oh, that’s disgusting!” Diane said. Byron kicked, reached for her, pulling at the long black hair, latching onto her big nose, digging at the mystery of his mother. “You know, we’re very lucky with Byron.”

“We are?” Peter asked. Peter liked Byron, even loved him when they communed for a half hour each night before dinner, but he couldn’t quite feel that having any son, no matter how charming, meant he was lucky.

“He’s a very good baby.”

“Why? Are other babies his age stealing cars and dealing drugs?”

“No!” Diane barely smiled. “I know from talking to Betty, from Francine, from my mother, for God’s sake. He sleeps through the night, he doesn’t fuss—”

“Just like you,” Peter said.

Again she ignored his joke. “He’s an easy baby.”

“Well … we get the credit, don’t we? They’re our genes.”

“That’s right!” Diane agreed, and held Byron out, regarding him with the possessive self-satisfaction of a prizewinner enjoying her trophy. “We get the credit,” she said in a baby voice.

Byron chuckled, his feet paddled, his fingers stretched, and he answered: “Ooo! Ooo! Ooo!”

Later Peter watched Diane play games with Byron’s body on the living-room floor: astride him on her knees, she patted his feet together, rolling him from side to side, lifting him in the air, letting go for a moment, and catching him with an exclamation. Byron roared with delight at every maneuver, his excitement continuous, his pleasure in her attention absolute. When Diane would pause, he’d surrender himself to plead for more: arms and legs out, crucified on the carpet, his eyes wide, staring at her with awe.

She is his universe, Peter thought.

Peter remembered that envy while leaving his study to find Diane so they could make love per his request and her agreement prior to the pizza. Peter didn’t feel sexy anymore — his lust had boiled away hours ago — but these days to let a payment date pass could dangerously spoil his credibility for future collections.

Diane was at the pine desk in their bedroom she used for night and weekend work. She wore a huge terry-cloth bathrobe, regal in its proportions, but bourgeois in its thick, unrevealing comfort. She had a hand spearing her long, straight black hair, the fingers splitting its shape and pulling at her scalp. A cigarette burned in an ashtray (she had stopped smoking during her pregnancy, but had started again with her return to the law firm) and she stared angrily at several pages of yellow notepaper filled by her small perfect lines of writing.

“How’s it coming?” he asked.

She looked startled at his presence. “What! Oh. Okay. You want to make love,” she said, checking that off like a momentarily forgotten errand.

“Do you?” he asked.

“I need a back massage,” she said.

Good, he thought. That could mitigate the cold-start quality of this appointment. Diane got up, Peter kissed her, opening the robe’s belt, and pushed it gently off her shoulders. Her body looked soft from the bath, loosened by relaxation, fragrant from soaking in perfumed water. Her olive skin was still tanned, except for the white-striped reminder of her bathing suit, so that her sexual parts blared from the dark of their surroundings. With Byron weaned, the swollen breasts had shriveled some, the nipples even darker than before, almost brown. Now they sagged, sloping away gradually from her chest with a modesty and calmness Peter thought beautiful, especially in contrast with the terrible explosive look of the milk pouches.