Rafael Yglesias - Only Children

Maintain steady pressure . Eric replayed the phrase of their instructor to encourage himself while his arm muscles cramped from the unrelieved exertion. Maintain steady pressure, Eric thought, watching Rock Hudson’s leering eyes. Nina had selected Pillow Talk from the television schedule to distract them while they waited for the labor pains to be only five minutes apart. Then they could head for the hospital.

Nina moaned. In response, Eric pushed down on her back even harder. “Oh, that’s better,” she said, dismaying Eric, because he could never keep up this new level of effort. The blood in his arm seemed to have gelled, ready to burst through the skin.

“I’d better write the time down,” he said. He had noted the time on the video recorder’s digital clock, and he knew without checking the sheet that the pains were still eight minutes apart. They had been stuck at this interval for over an hour. Nina already seemed worn-out, her face drawn, her eyes scared, her voice enervated. She’s not going to make it, he thought. What did that mean? She couldn’t quit. But by the look of her, a few more hours of this seemed unimaginable. He wanted to get to the hospital. There the medical people could take over, deal with it if she couldn’t finish. “Eight minutes,” he said.

“I can’t believe it.” She sighed.

“Should we call the doctor and tell—”

“We’re not supposed to call until it’s five minutes!” Nina said furiously.

“But — just to tell her that they’re not getting any closer—”

“No!” She sounded as if she were training a dog. “I’m not going to keep bothering Ephron when she’s told me what to do.”

“You mean, no matter how painful it is, no matter how long it goes on—”

“If it gets too painful, I’ll call. God, Eric, don’t make this any harder than it already is.”

Is it me? he wondered. Or is she irritable from the pain? Everything he said grated on her. I’m supposed to be strong, he criticized himself. Supply patience and confidence — not worry.

Patience and confidence. That’s what it would take to be a father. What a colossal effort — to stand on the lonely hill of responsibility, the wind whipping his hair, and clench his jaw bravely for years and years. To conceal how frightened and inadequate he really was.

He wanted to run from the room screaming. Hail a cab to the airport, board a plane to Las Vegas, and spend the rest of his days playing, whoring, and sleeping. Every time he met Nina’s glazed eyes, they focused on him and came to life, burning with mute requests. For reassurance, for efficiency, for solace. And soon there would be another pair, needing even more things. Security, love (unstinting, uncritical, and absolute), and … money.

How could he — of all people — have entered into this enterprise without taking into account how much goddamn money was involved? If he had to cite one thing that was absent from his childhood, one gloomy cloud that darkened his parents’ windows, its dense atmosphere poisoning their lungs, lidding their eyes, that was the absence of money. Eric’s father, Barry, a floor manager in Gimbel’s shoe department, had tried one bold move to make money: he quit his steady paycheck, borrowed from relatives and friends, and opened a place of his own in Washington Heights. But it had failed, and although Barry was taken back by his old employers, there was debt, there was a cut in pay, there was gloom and shame and fear.

Eric had sworn to himself that he would grow up to be rich, that nothing would prevent him from shooting through the black mist into the sunny life of the wealthy. And yet he had committed to the birth of his child, his heir, without knowing if he could sustain his income, if he could swell it into a mountain of capital to elevate his son effortlessly — the sweat, the climb, the danger of falling … all eliminated by Eric’s brilliance.

What if it isn’t a son? Then Eric’s lack of a fortune would be even worse. After all, a daughter might inherit his features, and then it would take a trust fund of at least two million to attract a husband.

“What are you smiling about?” Nina asked, letting her body descend on the floor.

“I was hoping, if it’s a girl, that she doesn’t look like me. She’d need one hell of a dowry.”

“Oh, Bear.” Nina sighed, hurt by his cynicism. “If she looks like you, she’ll be beautiful. Six feet tall, beautiful skin.”

“Brown eyes?”

“She’ll have my eyes,” Nina said firmly, her blue eyes widening with conviction.

Eric laughed, pleased he had wrung this little admission of vanity. “Only a one-in-four-chance,” he warned, shaking his finger at her.

“It’ll come through.”

“Will you love this baby if it doesn’t?”

“What do you mean?” she protested.

“I don’t know. I just hope — for its sake — that it’s got blue eyes.”

“That’s not funny,” she said, turning from him to look balefully at the television. Her thick brown hair shifted off her back, fell across her shoulder, and exposed the pale white freckled skin of her neck.

“I was kidding, for chrissakes.”

“I don’t feel like joking right now,” Nina answered in a faint voice. “Ugh,” she groaned, a hand reaching for her back.

Wearily, Eric planted his fist there and pressed. Hard. Pushing, pushing, pushing. Hoping he could get the little bugger to come out already. To end the fantasy and begin the reality.

“ELEVATE THE BLADDER,” she heard Stein say. Peter winced. He tried to mask his reaction, but a flicker of queasy disgust peeped through-Diane felt weird about their poking around her insides like shoppers at a sale counter, but only intellectually. She couldn’t picture — even to scare herself — what they were doing. And this abstracted relationship to the birth of her son was a relief. She had worried she wouldn’t be up to natural childbirth, that like some scared kid on the first day of battle, she’d panic and flee, only to be dragged, crying, back to the front — humiliation following cowardice.

Instead, this seemed almost queenly. Her husband, the doctors, and the nurses attendant on her various parts, the heavy painful lower half of her body whisked away to a numbed dimension.

“Here he is!” Stein said. She strained her neck and caught a glimpse (above the tented blue sheet rising from her chest) of a slimy bald head. “Clip. All right.”

The baby cried. Not the bloodcurdling scream she expected, but a feeble squeak of protest, a kitten startled from sleep.

Stein, his eyes warmer, bigger, and kinder than she had ever seen them, approached with her son. Stein’s hand, covered by a transparent rubber glove, encompassed the whole of baby’s skull; the fingertips spread beyond, petals open, cradling the blossom within.

“Let’s say hello to Mama and then we’ll check you out,” Stein said to the creature — it was too much of a miniature, too strangely animate, too wet to be called anything else — and then laid it in between her swollen breasts. One of the nurses — also beaming with tranquil joy — raised Diane’s head so she could look at the face.

“Hello,” said a voice at her side. She was surprised to find it belonged to Peter; she had almost forgotten he was there. Peter leaned in, his hand covering baby’s tiny, furiously clenched fist. By comparison, Peter’s hand looked gigantic and terrible.

“Easy,” she said involuntarily.

“I’m barely touching him,” Peter complained.

She looked at the face. It was unreal — the skin translucent (hardly protecting the blue-green veins beneath), fine hairs everywhere, the lips full, brilliantly red against their pale surroundings. Baby’s legs and arms cringed and yearned, as if finding the open air harsh— a mute appeal for cushions and warmth.