Rafael Yglesias - Only Children

“I’m squeamish,” he said.

Diane squinted, puzzled, trying to bring him into focus. “Squeamish about taking his temperature?”

“Yes.”

Diane shook her head, her eyes wide, her mouth open. She sat down, collapsed by his incredible remark. “You’d better see a shrink,” she said, nodding. “You’re nuts all right.”

Peter swallowed. Her comment, presumably just the residue of her anger, hurt. He believed, suddenly, that if she really knew him, that would be her serious judgment, not a hostile remark, but a final conclusion.

He went to the drugstore. While waiting for the prescription to be filled, he decided to tell Diane that he couldn’t stand what had happened to their life. He didn’t want things to continue this way. They would have to get sleep-in help. She would have to accompany him in the evenings. Her centering on Byron had to be shifted. Either that, or he’d leave.

This decision calmed him. He went home with the medicine, cured of his anxieties.

Diane was on the phone with Betty Winters. Diane sounded happy, laughing, and she called out to Peter while still on the phone: “You’re not going to believe this! We didn’t have to do a rectal—”

Peter blanched at her shouting the word.

“—there’s a thing called a Fever Strip. You just hold it on their”— Diane listened to the phone—“hold it on their forehead for fifteen seconds. Can you believe it?”

Diane sent Peter out again to get this modem miracle. The Fever Strip was nothing more than a few inches of plastic with a color band to read the temperature; the druggist said it was just as good as any other method. When Peter returned, Diane kissed him enthusiastically and then eagerly opened the Fever Strip, testing it on Peter’s forehead and then her own.

Byron woke up, complaining. They cooled his body with washcloths, used the Fever Strip, gave him his dose of penicillin, and he fell back to sleep.

Peter opened the champagne. Diane had a little, he drank most of it. Before Peter got around to his speech, Diane said she was exhausted. He let her go to bed.

Thinking about his earlier upset, Peter thought it was just a case of bad nerves. There’s penicillin to cure the infection; there’s a Fever Strip, a thin plastic device, that makes parenting easy. It would all work out. He had to relax and be patient.

He loved them.

Presumably they loved him.

He would have to wait his turn.

DIANE’S VISION moved ahead of her, a camera tracking, divorced from her mind: the sight of the bedroom, the look of the hallway, the closed door of Byron’s room, loomed and then passed, seen through a stranger’s eyes.

But when Diane opened Byron’s door and saw her eleven-month-old baby, standing in his crib, hands on the bars, head cocked curiously, sandy hair in a wave across his brow, she woke up. Woke up with pleasure.

“Ma! Ma!” Byron shouted, crying Hosanna at the appearance of a miracle.

“Hello, baby!”

Byron bent his knees and then jerked up. He opened his mouth and showed the two miniatures of teeth on bottom and a stub of another on top. He grinned and chuckled. He hooted and squealed.

She rushed to get him, to capture his happiness in her. Byron grappled onto Diane, nuzzled his head in her neck, his little but insistent fingers touching, poking, patting, stroking. His delight in her presence was electric in his body.

She changed his soaked diaper, again accompanied by babbling, laughing excitement. Byron tried to roll this way to get the fresh diaper, then that way to grab the tube of ointment. He rolled his bottom up and made his legs accessible to his hands. He grabbed his toe and pulled it to his mouth. He burst into resonant giggles at the cool feel of the wet wipes. His brown eyes glistened at Diane’s, as though only they shared this profound joke: the hilarity of his body functions, the absurdity of cold and cloth, the silliness of feet and diapers.

Diane had her coffee after she put Byron down on the kitchen floor with his bottle. He finished it quickly, and with gusto. He smacked his lips at the last drop, and hurled the vessel contemptuously to the floor. While she mixed formula into the powdered oatmeal, Byron immediately swiveled on his bottom to face the kitchen cabinets. “O!” he shouted to the stainless-steel handles. He flopped forward, palms out. Diane smiled at his adept movements, a baby tank on the move, knees and hands mastering terrain. In a flash he scurried to the cabinets and began his assault. Byron braced himself with one hand and reached for the handle with the other.

Byron took hold of the handle with his right hand. His weight pulled the door open. It swung out, and took him along, tipping him over backwards. … Diane dropped the box of oatmeal. With a hiss, its contents spilled over the counter and stove. She caught Byron’s head only inches from the hard tile floor. For a moment, Byron looked worried by his sudden upside-down placement. Then his cheeks puffed out, and he laughed.

“You’re gonna kill yourself,” she said, smiling at his amusement.

Byron groaned in an attempt to get up.

Diane righted him. She took out a pot from the cabinet for Byron to play with. She looked at the scattered flakes of cereal. “Shit,” she said. Byron had grabbed hold of the pot handle and now banged it on the floor. Steel on tile: a terrible clatter.

Diane’s timing in the morning was precise. Cleaning the cereal would stretch its limits. She hurried: pulled the metal tops off the stove, dumped them in the sink, grabbed a sponge, and went to work on the counter.

She heard a thud beneath her. Then a piercing, although muffled, scream from Byron.

Diane looked at her feet. Byron had fallen forward, right into the pot, his head submerged, his ass up in the air.

Diane shrieked and picked up Byron by his waist, half expecting the pot to be permanently wedged on his head. It did stay on briefly, carried up a foot or so before it fell to the floor with a ringing bang. Byron’s face emerged crimson, his neck retracted, his mouth gaping while he wailed, terrified.

“Okay, okay,” she said. Diane tried to lean her head back to get a view of Byron’s face. But he clung to her shoulder and pressed his nose into her neck. “Let me see,” she said, prying him off. “Let me see.” Byron’s head jerked at hers and he cried right into her eyes. There weren’t any cuts.

“Diane!” Peter’s voice came from behind her. “What happened?”

“He fell into a pot,” she said, turning to face Peter. Byron’s wails were cut off by the sight of his father. He lurched forward, arms out, to Peter.

“Da! Da!” he announced.

Peter’s hair was askew from sleep. He was in his underpants. He blinked at Diane and Byron. “Try and keep things quiet. I didn’t get to bed till four.” With that, Peter returned to bed.

Byron’s arms stretched for the departing Peter, a plea for Daddy to stay. “Oooh!” he called.

“Forget it,” Diane said to Byron.

Byron’s brown eyes queried her, his thin eyebrows bunched together above the bridge of his nose: “Da, Da?”

“Da, Da would rather sleep,” she answered.

Byron leaned back and clapped. He patted his pudgy hands together and watched her curiously. “Mama! Mama!” he said, explaining his applause.

She laughed. Although each night left her tired and disgusted by the workload of job and baby, these mornings were delights, full of hugs and cuddles, the warm comfort of Byron’s soft cheeks, and the flattery of his adoring eyes.

And his growth! His amazing acquisition of skills, subtle at first, but now explosive, were put on display by his morning energy. Byron greeted life with joy, so different from the adult attitude to a new day. Only half a minute after Byron’s disaster with the pot, he was back on the floor, crawling to the scene of the calamity, and rerisking its dangers.