Rafael Yglesias - Only Children

“That’s the most sleep he’s ever gotten.” Eric’s voice boomed in the trafficless, unpeopled auditorium of the country, his sound abrasive amid the soothing noise of lapping tide, rustling leaves, and complaining gulls. “He’ll probably be up all night.”

“I’ll stay up with him,” Nina said calmly.

Eric cocked his head.

“Really,” she said, self-assured. Nina held Luke up to the side of her face. “See the stars, baby,” she whispered to the little circle of Luke’s countenance. “I think that’s Venus,” she added.

Eric stepped to her side. “Where?” Nina pointed to what she remembered her father had always told her was Venus. She showed Eric reluctantly, afraid that, with his literal mind, he might know otherwise and correct her.

“Wow,” he said instead. Eric looked at Luke and put out his enormous hand, reaching for Luke’s miniature version. “Maybe when you’re grown,” Eric said to Luke, closing on the little fist, “you can fly there.”

Luke frowned at his father’s big face, as though disgusted by the notion.

“I doubt it,” Nina said, thinking that this worried, clutching child would hardly dare the unknown.

“Yeah,” Eric said. “They don’t have money for the space program. Instead they’ll put up lasers to zap him.”

“God, Eric,” Nina said, disgusted.

“Just kidding,” he said.

“I know,” she reassured him. Eric was bound to reality, she reminded herself, and no matter how far the leash stretched, he would always be yanked back. Nevertheless, the spell had been broken and she carried Luke toward the house.

The four-bedroom cottage, set in a cleared circle at the edge of Blue Hill Bay, shielded from the road and neighbors by white birches and tall firs, was two hundred years old and had been in Nina’s family for a hundred and fifty years. Just inside the front door, on a hand-hewn beam, four generations of Nina’s family had marked the growth of their children. “Could you get a knife, Eric?” she asked.

“A knife?”

“I’m going to mark Luke’s height.”

Eric paused for a moment, studying the beam, and then peering at Luke. Nina knew he was about to make some pragmatic objection, something like the fact that Luke couldn’t stand up, but Eric must have decided against it, because he went to the kitchen for the knife.

The tradition was to make the first indentation for height at age five on Thanksgiving when all, or most of the family, was usually in attendance. Nina had always found the ritual boring. From age fourteen on, she had refused to participate, believing that it only intensified the endless competition among the siblings — her brother John had chortled over outgrowing dead relatives — and that, as a connection to previous generations, measurements of height were hardly a profound legacy. There were old American families who kept journals, or whose correspondence, when found in attics, spoke down the long hallway of time. And there were old American families who had at least left relics of their taste and interests and benevolence, who had begun institutions, endowed universities, founded museums, and had civic works named in their honor. But Nina’s family, the Winninghams, had merely left behind several turn-of-the-century Ivy League championship squash cups; a stuffy painting of Great-Grandpa, the banker; and a grant for Princeton, by a bachelor uncle, to give a graduating senior money to travel in Italy for a year. To what end no one knew.

The family had endured and lived hearty lives — that was all Nina could deduce from the stories of them. They were good amateur athletes; they made money steadily, although never excessively; they were helpful, but not extraordinary, citizens; they gave decent amounts to charity, but never boldly. The blank markings on the wall were a perfect symbol of their mute past: they had grown; they had procreated. Nina had decided instantly on seeing the beam that no matter how dull this conversation with her ancestors might be, she wanted Luke to speak early. None of the Winninghams had ever stepped out of line, made a rude noise, or changed anything they encountered. Luke, at least, would begin his life with an alteration of their tradition even while obeying it.

She had Eric hold Luke while she used the knife. Luke’s curved legs dangled like feelers. The gouge she made in the wood was, at best, a crude approximation, but she took great pleasure in writing the date and Luke’s name big, so big that no other infant’s data would ever have room to fit, unless its size was radically different. The braggadocio of her large writing was also against the diffident family tradition. “Leave room for the next one,” her mother would always say. Nina hadn’t been polite; there would be only one newborn Winningham on the beam.

The caretaker and his wife had done a good job preparing the cottage. Wood was split and stacked in the two fireplaces, there were fresh-cut wild flowers in every room, and a crib had been set up in the smallest of the bedrooms. Nina took Luke on a tour. For the first seven weeks of his life, Nina hadn’t gone in for much talking to Luke. He was unhappy, tired; always awake and fussing. All her efforts had been to keep him calm and quiet. But now, walking through the rooms of her happy childhood summers, she held Luke up, showing him the things and explaining, “This is your room. When Mommy was a baby, she slept here. That’s Blue Hill Bay, which goes right into the Atlantic Ocean. See that? That’s the mast of Grandpa and Grandma’s sailboat. We’ll take you out tomorrow if it’s nice.”

Luke moaned and whined at first. His legs made spasmodic movements in the air, objecting to the lack of support, but Nina kept talking, turning him, her voice soft, like her own mother’s, explaining everything.

“That’s a spider web. Is the spider home? No … Did you hear that? An owl.”

She saw that Eric followed them about with a puzzled expression on his face. “Something wrong?” she asked faintly.

“Don’t you think you’re worrying him?” Eric said.

Luke wasn’t crying; he had even stopped peeping with complaints. “He’s fine,” she answered. “He’s listening to me.”

“Okay,” Eric said, agreeably. “He is quiet. But his eyes look worried.”

Nina turned Luke, put him face-to-face with her. The blue marbles glowed at her, radiating their wonder. “We’re having a conversation,” Nina said. Luke seemed to be studying Nina, filling his eyes; they widened more and more, as if he could expand his vision limitlessly. Luke seemed to want to absorb more than merely the sight of her; he wanted to take in the idea, the function of her. He squawked at Nina.

“I’m Mommy,” she said to him. She knew that was his question. “That’s your daddy. I’m Mommy. This is Grandma and Grandpa’s summer cottage. We’re going to stay here.”

Luke winced. His legs pulled up and then thrust down. He cried.

“Oh, God,” Eric mumbled.

But Nina didn’t feel the sinking despair this time. She sat down on the bentwood rocker, its arms worn to silver nudity by four generations of use. She told Eric to turn out the light. She bared her breast and fed Luke.

From time to time Luke pulled off to scream at the spasms in his stomach. He shouted up at her; he pushed with his legs, trying to swim away from the hurt. Nina shushed him, held his hot melon head, and kissed the almost liquid softness of his brow.

The moon lit up the bay and the water reflected a shiny blue light on the beams, the crib, Luke’s body, Nina’s arms. The rhythms dulled her thoughts; amidst the steady lonely sound of the runners treading wood and Luke’s smacks of pleasure, Nina abandoned her self — her selfish core that had fought this duty.