Rafael Yglesias - Only Children

“Hello!” Rachel answered with the enthusiasm of a teenager.

“Hi. It’s Peter.”

Despite the year that had passed, Rachel didn’t hesitate, or seem surprised. She didn’t even bother to conceal her delight. “Peter! It’s so great to hear your voice. How are you? I’ve been wondering.”

“I can’t talk long. I want to see you. Is that possible?”

“I’m always here! What have I got to do? You want to have breakfast tomorrow?”

“How about theater tomorrow? I’ve got tickets to Sincerely Yours .”

“Oh, it’s supposed to be good!”

“I’ll meet you at the box office. We’ll have dinner afterwards. All right?”

“Lovely, darling,” Rachel said grandly.

Peter returned home with a loaded camera, more at ease and ready to join in the applause for Byron. Diane had Byron on display, set down in the middle of a circle of admiring adults. Peter’s son stood among the tall trees, hooting to their tops. He stood boldly, planted on the rug, his fat little legs stiff, his eyes open wide, his mouth pursed with excitement. He shouted to them. He lifted his arms and hailed them. He clapped at their sounds of pleasure.

And then, just as Diane hoped, Byron showed his new trick. Out went his right foot — out forward into space — and then down, firmly, on the rug.

“Oh … ” mumbled his relatives.

Byron wobbled for a moment.

“Uh-oh.” The relatives worried with him.

With a shout of effort, Byron jerked his left foot to join the right, his toes pointed out, a penguin on the ice.

“He’s walking!” Lily, his grandmother, shouted.

Byron met Lily’s eyes and laughed to her. He put his hands up to her.

“Come to Grandma, baby,” Lily called.

Byron, his head bobbing, stepped out into dangerous air, his right foot forward, knee locked, arms out for balance. He wobbled as his foot landed, and then snapped his left leg forward to even things up.

“Yes!” Lily shouted.

Again. Right, teeter, left.

“Wow,” said someone.

Right, rock, left. Now faster, ahead to the astonished grown-ups, sounds of triumph pouring from him.

“Homo erectus!” Peter called, and shot picture after picture.

Byron dove at his grandmother Lily when he got close enough, hurling himself recklessly to gain the last few inches in one movement. Lily rescued Byron from smashing onto the rug, took him in her arms, and whirled him around. She clasped him to her breast and began to dance with him, to the amazement of Peter’s relatives. That plump old Jewish woman made herself dainty. She twirled Byron, prancing on her tiptoes, covering his face with smacking kisses, taking possession. “My bubeleh, my beautiful baby doll,” she sang to him, unashamed of her passion.

Peter looked at his mother. Gail’s genuine smile at Byron’s steps was left over on her face, the warm sauce of her amazed pleasure jelled into cold glop.

Then, as if to torment Gail further, Lily danced Byron over to Gail and showed him off, a bride flashing her big diamond. “Isn’t he gorgeous!” she demanded of Gail. “Isn’t he a big gorgeous boy!”

Gail nodded cautiously at Lily, the way she might have responded if she were cornered by a raving bag lady. Gail put on a mollifying smile to veil her embarrassment and desire to escape.

“He can walk!” Lily pushed herself on Gail. Byron grabbed for Lily’s huge eyeglasses.

“Sort of,” Gail demurred.

“What do you mean?” Lily protested.

“He collapsed there at the end,” Gail said.

“What do you expect?” Lily demanded. “He’s one year old. That’s very early to walk.” Distracted by her outrage, Lily allowed her eyeglasses to get within reach of Byron’s grabs. The tiny fingers hooked the frames and sent them flying.

“I could see that was about to happen,” Gail commented.

Diane retrieved the glasses and offered them to her mother. Lily, however, ignored her daughter, attempting to focus on Gail. Lily’s nearsighted squint creased the wrinkled skin into hundreds of new breaks. “He can grab my glasses anytime,” Lily said.

“I’m glad,” Gail answered. Lily studied Gail’s expression to find evidence of sarcasm, but Gail showed a calm and pleasant exterior. “That’s what grandmothers are for,” Gail added. She brushed Byron’s cheek with her tanned hand, lean and long compared with Lily’s plump paws.

Byron, relaxed and laughing in Lily’s arms, fussed at Gail’s touch. “Unhh,” he groaned, and averted his face.

“Don’t be frightened,” Lily cooed to Byron. “She’s your grandmother too. Don’t be frightened of her.”

“Ma!” Diane said. “Take your glasses. Give me Byron.”

Gail turned away and met Peter’s stare. He had been fascinated by her cool reaction to Lily’s insulting behavior. Gail returned his look for a moment. Then she winked.

“Peter!” he heard his stepfather, Kyle, say only a moment before laying a heavy hand on his shoulder. Peter tightened at the touch. “You have a CD player.”

His stepfather didn’t ask questions, he made accusations. Peter nodded sullenly.

“You didn’t get it at the store.”

“You’re right,” Peter answered.

“You paid two fifty.”

“I don’t remember.”

“I’ve got them for two hundred. Sell the disks for eleven bucks. They’re as much as fifteen elsewhere.”

“How do you do it, Kyle?” Peter’s father asked this. Jonathan stood a few feet away, his wavy gray hair combed back from his high brow, worn long in the back, bumping over his shirt collar. Jonathan was half sitting, half standing against the radiator cover in front of the window. His chest and stomach were pushed forward by this pose. Jonathan could be living in the Philadelphia of Franklin, with the big belly, thin legs, and the noble, yet intimidating, features of a hawk.

Peter tried to remember the last time Kyle and Jonathan were in the same room — Peter and Diane’s wedding?

“The old joke. Volume, volume, volume.”

“It’s not boxes falling off trucks then,” Jonathan mumbled into his scotch and soda.

“No. That’s how I got started,” Kyle answered with a sarcastic snort. “Now I play fair and square, Mr. Hummel.” Kyle’s usually subtle western accent — he grew up in Arizona — got thicker from Jonathan’s challenge.

“A rare man, indeed,” Jonathan said, his tendency to affect an English enunciation worsened by a desire to sound equally distinctive.

Peter felt the old anxiety, the short worried breaths of his childhood, the spiritual yearning to escape, wrenched by the stronger magnetism of the drama. Peter used to think that his father would go too far with his teasing and say something unforgivably contemptuous, that Kyle might punch Jonathan at any moment, that suddenly one of them would blurt out — what? Their true feelings? Those were clear.

“He’s a fine baby,” Kyle said. He smiled at Jonathan as best he could, his broad jaw yielding reluctantly. “You have a fine grandson.”

“Say, Peter,” Jonathan called to him as if he were across the room.

“Yes, Dad?” He knew from the smirk on Jonathan’s face a witticism was coming.

“Do you know why grandfathers and grandsons get along so well?”

“No, Dad.”

“They’re united against a common enemy.”

Peter lowered his head, looked down, down, down. He felt smaller, battered by the hubbub of sounds in the room, wanting to be alone, afraid to move. Jonathan laughed at his own joke.

“Don’t get it,” Kyle said. “Who’s the common enemy?”

“Me,” Peter said. He looked up from his shy, oppressed childhood — looked up through the sullen fog of adolescence, up to the equality of armored adulthood. He met their eyes bravely, a grown-up again, and they were old. “Me,” Peter repeated with the knowing smile of a teacher’s brightest student. “Both son and father. I’m the common enemy.”